My first day as the city's official scout began with a tour of the familiar. I started with Sector Beta, the Administrator's domain. It was exactly as I remembered: sterile, silent, and impeccably maintained. I walked the clean, white-stone streets for an hour, map in hand, and found nothing. Not a single cracked paver, not a flickering street lamp, not a loose shingle. The structural integrity was absolute. It was less a district and more a testament to the faction's obsessive-compulsive need for order. I made a simple note on my data-slate: 'Sector Beta: No issues found. Annoyingly perfect.'
Next was Sector Alpha, the Adventurer's territory. The contrast was immediate. The streets were wider, the buildings more rugged, and the air was filled with the distant sounds of shouting, clanging steel from training yards, and the occasional, unexplained explosion. Here, there was damage. Minor, but present. A few cracked cobblestones near the main hall where a brawl had likely gotten out of hand, some scorch marks on a tavern wall, a dented lamppost. It was the kind of wear-and-tear you'd expect from a district full of powerful, rowdy warriors. I logged it all meticulously, but nothing was critical. It was cosmetic damage, signs of life rather than decay.
Then, I turned south, toward Sector Gamma. The Merchant District. I had seen it from a distance, heard its chaotic din, but I had never actually set foot inside. The moment I crossed the invisible boundary, the world changed.
The air, once clear and crisp, became thick with a thousand competing smells: the savory aroma of sizzling street food, the sharp, alchemical tang of potion stalls, the musty scent of ancient scrolls, and the underlying, electric hum of countless magical artifacts. The relative quiet of the other districts was swallowed by a tidal wave of sound. Hawkers shouted their prices, customers haggled with a ferocity that bordered on combat, and strange, melodic jingles played from enchanted music boxes to attract buyers.
And the people. The streets were packed, a river of bodies flowing in every direction at once. It was a chaotic, overwhelming crush that made navigating with any sense of purpose nearly impossible. I held my map tightly, feeling like a single, lost boat in a turbulent ocean. My job was to inspect the structural integrity, but it was hard to inspect the ground when you couldn't even see your own feet.
I pushed through the crowd, my senses on high alert. This place was a different kind of dangerous. You wouldn't get attacked by a monster here, but you might get pickpocketed by a rogue with nimble fingers or scammed into buying a "guaranteed-to-work" love potion.
As I navigated deeper into the sector's heart, the crowd grew even thicker, all flowing in one direction. They were converging on a large, central plaza, and the noise level somehow managed to increase. A single, clear, and magically amplified female voice cut through the cacophony, ringing with an infectious energy.
"And for the next ten minutes only, we're slashing the price on the Glimmer-Shine Potion! That's right, folks! For just three silver pieces, you can have a smile so bright it'll blind your enemies and charm your future mother-in-law! Don't delay, buy today!"
It was some kind of sales event, an auction or a special promotion. The crowd was gathered around a large, elevated wooden stage, their faces upturned, completely captivated. My duty was to inspect all city structures, and that included temporary ones. With a sigh, I began to shoulder my way through the throng, using the excuse of my job to get a closer look.
I finally broke through to the front, my eyes landing on the stage. And I froze.
The person at the center of the spotlight, holding up a small, sparkling pink bottle for the entire crowd to see, was not some random merchant.
It was Lunet.
The Founder of the Merchant Faction, one of the four most powerful beings in the city, was standing on a wooden stage, a dazzling, spotlight-stealing smile on her face. And she was wearing a bright, canary-yellow bikini.
My brain simply stopped working. The absurdity of the scene was a system-crashing error. This was a being who had helped seal away a part of my soul, a woman who sat on the city's ruling council and debated matters of life and death. And here she was, using her immense charisma and a frankly shocking amount of exposed skin to sell a teeth-whitening potion.
The crowd was utterly enchanted. They hung on her every word, their eyes filled with a mixture of admiration, desire, and pure, unadulterated consumer lust. She wasn't just a Founder here; she was a celebrity, an icon, the living embodiment of the commercial dream. Her golden eyes sparkled under the magical spotlights, and she moved with a practiced, show-stopping grace that was completely at odds with the solemn, powerful figure I had met in the spire.
I couldn't handle this. This was too much. I quickly scanned the stage itself. The woodwork was solid, the support beams were stable, no signs of rot or data-fraying. 'Stage integrity: sufficient,' I logged on my slate, my fingers trembling slightly. My job here was done. It was time to leave. This was a level of factional weirdness I was not equipped to deal with.
I began to back away slowly, trying to melt back into the anonymity of the crowd before she could possibly spot me. I was just a face among hundreds. There was no way.
"And hold on, folks!" Lunet's amplified voice boomed, a sudden change in its cheerful cadence. "What's this I see in the crowd? It seems a very special, very handsome customer has come to pay me a visit!"
A cold, horrible dread washed over me. I froze mid-step. No. Don't. Please don't.
Her golden eyes, sharp and piercing even from across the plaza, scanned the crowd for a moment before locking directly onto mine. A smile, so wide and brilliant it was practically a weapon, bloomed on her face.
"Darling!" she called out, her voice echoing off the surrounding buildings, silencing the entire plaza in an instant.
My heart stopped. My blood turned to ice. Surely, she doesn't mean me, I thought, a frantic, desperate prayer. She's talking to someone else. Some other poor soul named Darling.
But her gaze was unwavering, fixed on me like a hawk on a mouse.
"Darling Kael!" she shouted, pointing a perfectly manicured finger directly at me. "I was wondering when you'd show up! You came all this way just to see me! Was it because of our little promise?"
The world seemed to shrink until there was only me, the stage, and the hundreds of pairs of eyes that were now turning, as one, to stare at the man she had just called her "darling."
I was trapped. Pinned in place by the spotlight of her attention. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The sea of faces around me, which had been a chaotic but anonymous crowd just moments before, was now a collection of individual, focused stares. And the men… the men who had been looking at her with adoration and worship just seconds ago were now looking at me. Their expressions were a terrifying cocktail of shock, jealousy, and pure, unadulterated murderous intent.
I had faced a Fallen Founder. I had been judged by the city's rulers. I had accepted the ghost of a dead man as my new purpose. But none of it, absolutely none of it, had prepared me for the unique and utter terror of being singled out by a bikini-clad goddess in front of her entire legion of devoted fans.