Chapter 284 – Breach.

“Whose idea was it to not place traps in the tunnels?”

“Uh… guild master you said that we should focus on making them sturdy enough first…”

“…”

An uncomfortable silence filled the room as a bunch of tier 2 thieves were looking at the cloaked figure shrouded in mystery. The person they were looking at was the thieves guild master that didn’t really show up around this place that much. Now that there were skeletal monsters going through the underground tunnels there was a problem.

The room contained most of the thief guild leaders in this city and the person leading them. This woman who no one knew the true identity of was sitting at the end of the table where these ruffians gathered. On the sides of this table were the people she was supposed to be responsible for and now she might even be forced to act.

No one in this room knew that the guild master was part of the red light district. That persona to them was just one of the Brothel owners. There were several other madams like her out there and no one expected this one to be an actual tier 3 class holder.

To the right side, a large bald man that looked somewhat similar to the adventurer guild master was sitting. His whole body was covered in various beast tattoos with not much space being left for his actual pale skin. This man was responsible for the muscle portion of the city underground and also for the protection of their guild-led establishments.

On the other side, a man of a feeble stature and boney fingers was sitting. His face was covered by a mask that looked like a snake with small slits through which his yellowy eyes were barely seen. In one of his hands, he had a short dagger that he continuously flipped around with quite skillful movements. His body was covered with a dark green robe under which no one was really sure what was hidden.

Two chairs to his left was a rather voluptuous lady whose face was covered up with ample amounts of makeup. Behind her stood two large men wearing tailor-made suits that made them look quite professional. Right opposite them was a man wearing a long coat with a large cigar in his mouth. What made him stick out was a large horizontal scar running all the way from his upper cheek to the other one while going through the middle part of his nose.

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a meeting with the inner members only? Who let those two bozo’s in here?”

“Mr. Ivor, I’m just a defenseless woman, I need my boys to protect me.”

“I wasn’t asking you, who…”

The man with the large scar leaned back while scoffing at the woman. She in contrast to the others possessed no real combat class worth mentioning. Without the guards behind her, it wouldn’t be hard for any one of these thief guild members to kill her in one swift move. Before he could finish the sentence though the lanky man with the mask flung the short blade in his direction. It embedded itself in the table right next to where Ivor was resting his hand.

“Show the Madam some respect, it’s thanks to her girls that your gambling dens even earn us any money.”

The two men on one side of the table started to get up from their chairs. However, all of them stopped in their tracks before even being able to fully stand up. Everyone felt as if there was a hungry beast looking at them. They turned towards their guild master that was just sitting there without saying anything. They didn’t need to vocalize their dissatisfaction as the group of killers here instantly knew that if they continued like this, their life could be over.

“…”

A silence fell upon the room as the four inner guild members held their tongues. They could not risk offending the guild master that they didn’t even know the face of. Information was the key to any assassination and they lacked it. While their leader could easily reach their homes at any point in time they would not be able to retaliate. Their identity was unknown to them and the armor they were wearing could fit any gender.

“Viper, tell me what we can do to remedy this situation.”

The man with the snake mask quickly jolted his head toward the guild master. He was responsible for everything revolving around information in this city. After the skeletons made their way inside it was up to the scouts and assassins from his side-faction to produce all the info about this incident.

“Of course, guild master, we are looking at infiltration from multiple entrance points.”

“Can’t you just close the tunnels?”

Asked the guild master in a menacing voice that didn’t seem to belong to a human. Everyone was sure that they were using some kind of voice masking device at this point but were unable to comment on it.

“Regretfully the tunnels were still fresh and the contractors didn’t have enough time to prepare…”

The thieves guild in this city was still somewhat new. These tunnels needed to be first cleared out and reinforced so they wouldn’t collapse on their clients and guild members. The funds required for this were fleeting and in this case needed to be siphoned into different projects first. This left some of the tunnels without proper mechanisms that would collapse them onto anyone that dared to enter.

“Hmm…”

The guild leader didn’t answer as they murmured to themselves. Most of the initial funds went into digging up the underground and working with the black market merchants. Then another load needed to be injected into the city officials. Bribing them allowed the guild to function without getting in trouble with the law and also left them drained.

Usually, proper large-scale guilds would have various ways of taking care of situations like this. They on the other hand didn’t have any stop gaps nor could they blow up the tunnels from a distance. At most they could quickly gather some explosives in the hopes that it would be enough.

“They are still only skeletons, what’s the problem is the guild only made of useless good-for-nothings?”

“The quality of our men is indeed not great…”

The man with the snake mask looked towards the large bald man that quickly got annoyed. He slammed his fist down on the table which almost broke under the pressure.

“My men aren’t the problem, it’s that damn tier 3 skeleton, guild master you must…”

The man looked at their leader with furrowed brows but quickly turned his head away. To him the only way of contending with the monsters was through pitting a tier 3 class holder against another one. Here only their leader was at this tier and if the skeletons continued to push toward their inner sanctum a lot of money would be lost. Restoring the entire underground hideout along with their black market would be quite costly. Not something this guild could afford and the guild master knew it.

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“We can’t let this affect our bottom line…fine then, tell them to retreat if they don’t want to die, you have ten minutes.”

The figure cloaked in black answered briefly before standing up from their spot. Soon they faded into the shadows of the back room without making a sound. Only after half a minute had passed did the four thieves here decide to speak up.

“My my, the guild master will make a move themselves? Such a shame that we won’t be able to see it.”