The Frayed Ledger guild hall was quiet.
Set beneath one of House Seravin’s old rchant corridors, the place had the feel of a forgotten storefront. The stall itself sat under a worn stone arch, its vendor NPC blinking slowly like she was waking from a dream. Her silver braid hung over one shoulder, eyes glowing erald and unfocused. The velvet-trimd rchant uniform she wore gave her a noble look—clean, highborn, and oddly welcoming despite the dusty gloom.
Above the terminal, a glass lamp flickered in low intervals, casting dull gold light across faded blood sigils and ledger stamps burned into the counter. To the left, a warped bench sagged under a cracked canopy—once elegant, now just part of the background.
The Frayed Ledger naplate hung above in faint, etched runes. Inventory listings were neat. Structured. Nothing flashy.
Catria stepped into the Frayed Ledger guild hall quietly, pausing to take it all in—the NPC stall under the stone arch, the faded sigils, the low flicker of the glass lamp overhead. She gave Theo a nod as he looked up from the rchant interface.
"Ready to start?" she asked.
Theo smiled faintly and tapped the guild permissions nu. One silent confirmation later, her access lit up.
"Forge access unlocked," Theo said.
She moved to sit near the terminal, cross-legged, scanning the projected interface with quiet focus. She hadn’t touched anything yet. Just watching. Reading. Processing.
The screen was bare-bones—just tier tags, batch origins, and inventory sort filters.
The interface projected in front of her was bare-bones and functional. No neon, no costics. Just tier tags, batch origins, and a dull grey-green filter that made everything look older than it was.
The door opened. Raven entered.
"Material inflow’s handled by Raven," Theo said without looking up. "I handle the selling. You don’t need to gather. Warehouse gets fresh stock every twelve hours. You see sothing interesting, take it. Mark it if you start crafting."
Catria blinked. "Raven handles the drops?"
"Through Darkrchant, my alt" Raven answered with a nod. "Everything drops in steady volu every 12 hours. Output’s stable."
She hesitated, then gave a slow nod and turned back to the screen.
Most of the ti, Frayed Ledger sold raw stock. But this ould be the first ti they took on sothing riskier.
"Today," Raven continued, pulling up a separate tab and dragging a window between them, "you’re starting with this."
A system chi rang.
[Helix Scythe — Sponsored Relic]
Helix Scythe
Unique Weapon (Not Class-Bound)
30 Agility
20 Critical Chance
Passive: Spiral Echo — If user scores a critical hit, create an echo illusion for 3 seconds that mirrors basic attacks (50% damage).
Costic Tag: Helix dia Partnership Item — Strear Sponsored
Catria leaned forward and gasped. Her eyes widened. "This... This belonged to NekoNekoNyan. She’s huge. Top-tier PvP strear."
She turned slowly. "Did you—?"
Raven shrugged casually. "She ambushed during a raid. I beat her. This dropped."
Catria stared at the screen again. "We can’t sell this."
"Exactly. Too traceable. The tag alone would get us flagged. You’re going to break it down. Reforge it into two new items. High-level. At least orange. Different class types, different identities. We don’t want anyone recognizing its origin."
Catria leaned back, hands folding under her chin. "Two items minimum. Noted. I’ll need supporting materials."
Raven nodded once. "Theo sent a list from the warehouse. Use what you need."
Within minutes, she had the crafting suite open and was sorting materials:
Duskrunner AlloyBloomspore HuskEmbersteel SinewSpinal BloomPhantom Seer Cloak scrap
She ran multiple simulations on blueprints first. Color-coded charts, layering rune compatibility, stat affinity, passive interaction traces.
Then, finally, she spoke.
"I can do two red-level results. One ranged. One armor. Spiral Echo gets fractured across them, reinterpreted. Not a clone, not a copy. Just fragnts that play differently."
Raven nodded, "The best priced items are cos from armor, weapon and utilities. I trust you will create the best result."
Catria stood up, nodding to both of them. "Sure! I’ll take it from here."
She headed through the side corridor toward the crafting wing of the guild hall. The Frayed Ledger didn’t have the largest workshop, but it was clean—a row of modular workbenches with embedded arcane stabilizers and segnted projection trays. A few unused alcoves still glowed faintly from past enchantnts. Quiet. Functional.
She slid into one of the side stations and brought up her personal craft interface. The Helix Scythe blueprint hovered in front of her, spinning slowly with each finger swipe.
No crafting tadata. No origin concealnt. Just raw data—and the unmistakable branded tag glowing like a red flag: [Helix dia Partnership Item].
Catria muttered, "You’re basically radioactive."
She activated the disassembly tool and started pulling the weapon apart into its component layers. As expected, most were fused through private enchant structures. But not all.
[Recovered Core Material #1: Spiral Sigil Plate]
Type: Illusion Enchant Anchor
Trace: Passive trigger — duplicate strike logic
[Recovered Core Material #2: Compressed Alloy Fra]
Type: Stat Anchor (Agility & Crit Scaling)
Trace: User-bound precision control channel
Two pieces. Two paths forward.
She exhaled slowly. "Okay. Repeater for the Sigil. Cloak for the Fra."
Then she dragged over the materials Theo had unlocked from the guild warehouse and started sketching combinations.
--
Reforged Item #1: [Duskthorn Repeater]Type: Red-Class Ranged Weapon (Repeater Bow)Stats: 22 Agility, 18 Crit, 6 MoventPassive:Fang Echo – On successful ranged critical, fire a shadow bolt at a random enemy (50% base damage, up to 3 targets).
--
Reforged Item #2: Whispercoil ShroudType: Red-Class Light Armor (Cloak)Stats: 20 Agility, 12% Stealth Duration, 15% Dodge TimingPassive: Ghostshell Haze — Delayed afterimage creates desync against lock-on and auto-aim
--
Catria wiped her brow. "It’s done. The stats are split. No visual continuity. The illusion passive was unbound and recoded in pieces."
Raven reviewed both profiles. Silent. Sharp-eyed.
Then he smiled, "You have a talent as item ga designer. All these are good but not overpowered. This could fetch us good prices and in turns, nice commission for you."
Catria nodded slowly. All these years, she’d had a thing for mix-and-match. First, it was clothes—three tis she applied to fashion school, and three tis she got rejected. It crushed sothing in her. She stopped showing anyone what she made. Stopped talking about it. Eventually, she found this ga.
In here, she still mixed things. Patterns, effects, traits. Numbers that shouldn’t line up—but did, if you turned them just right. She didn’t call it crafting. Not really. It was more like solving a puzzle. A Rubik’s Cube. A weird alchemy ga.
She never showed her creation. Never said a word in global chat. She didn’t want to get laughed at again.
But now? Now soone looked at the output and just said: "Good."
Her confidence started to creep back in—quietly, but real.
"So what now?" she asked, still catching her breath.
Theo laughed lightly. "You can go around, play your own ga and co back if you get ideas. We’ve got base materials stocked—weapon cores, armor fibers, potion reagents, poison catalysts—you na it. We usually sell them raw. But if sothing clicks, just use what you need."
He leaned back in his chair, tapping a tir on his screen. "Every 12 hours, fresh batch gets routed in. You can stay and craft more, go out and grind your own content, or just log in tomorrow and head straight to the crafter wing. It’s your rhythm."
Catria stood, stretching her arms with a bright grin. "Alright! This sounds cool. I’ll play around a little and co back later if sothing hits."
She paused halfway to the exit, glancing over her shoulder. "And what do I do with the items I made?"
Theo leaned back. "The ones from the test trial yesterday? Already on display here in the guild. But these new creations—we’ll fence them through one of my alt accounts. I don’t want Frayed Ledger drawing heat."
Catria nodded slowly. "Ah, I see." She didn’t really get the full picture, but she understood enough to leave it alone for now.
Still, with that settled, she stepped out of the guild hall, already thinking through material pairings in her head.
Theo watched the door close behind her. He let out a breath, then glanced at Raven.
"We’ll need another alt in a new guild soon," Theo said. "But don’t worry—I’ve got one lined up that can join a Cindraleth Union guild."
He tapped the guild overlay interface and began slotting nas into his ntal structure. "With that, the base web’s done: main guild here in ridian Fold, first alt in Velkarin Axis, second in Cindraleth. We’ve got all three factions covered."
Raven folded his arms. "Should I expand the item list?"
Theo shook his head imdiately. "Oh no. We need to breathe. Let the market adjust to our presence. You drop a new item today, another one tomorrow, and keep going like that? We’ll be in the spotlight."
Raven considered that. "Spotted any competitors yet?"
Theo smirked slightly. "So nas are suspicious. Patterns aren’t clean. But nothing solid yet."
Raven gave a short nod, then turned toward the exit.
"I leave it to you then, partner."
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