"Manager Pocco, has the boy signed the NDA yet?" a gritty man in a dark suit seat at an office desk asked over a Grim Web conference call. The desk nameplate read, Zenith Guild's Vice Leader Ben Baroon.
"Vice Guild Leader, I have a team handling it as we speak," Pocco Pry, a man with narrow, heavy-lidded eyes, replied smoothly. "Things would move faster if he agreed to meet us, but you'll have the signed NDA on your table within two weeks or his obituary report."
It was a blatant lie, spoken by a desperate man trying to save his life. If he failed them, they won't just fire him but dispose of him without the slightest hesitation. He knew too much. It was both a blessing and a curse.
In truth, they couldn't even get close to the boy. He was holed up inside the city's Grimmyth Research Institute, a place they couldn't easily reach. Killing him was even more out of the question.
Also, the body wasn't responding to any of their attempts to contact him. Calls, messages, mails, everything had been ignored. Getting him to sign an NDA about the incident was proving far harder than expected, and the guild's higher-ups were getting anxious. They wanted the matter buried before it had the chance to blow up into a bigger scandal than it already was.
"The NDA can wait, take a month if you have to but see if you can recruit him. After all, he is a legacy and talented just like his brother," the Vice Leader said coldly. "I don't care how you do it, but I want this handled before the Young Grimlock Championship. Understood?"
Pocco grimly nodded immediately without voicing any complaint. Seeing the response he wanted, the Vice Leader ended the call.
Manager Pocco stared pensively at the dark screen after the call ended.
He knew how important this year was for the Zenith Guild. The guild was planning to rise from a third-tier city guild to a prefecture-level one by performing well in the Young Grimlock Championship. If they secured high rankings, they could attract major investors and finally expand their operations into Sunox Prefecture.
Because of that goal, the guild had spared no effort or resources over the past year. They had aggressively recruited talented rookie grimlocks and invested heavily in helping them complete their basic card sets, hoping a few of them would shine on the championship stage.
At a time like this, a scandal was the last thing the Zenith Guild wanted or could afford. Yet that was exactly what they got.
One of their guild members had a deadbeat brother who somehow became a grimlock outside of the Grimmyth, and the moment the news surfaced, the guild fell under public scrutiny. Questions poured in. Accusations followed. Before long, their name was being dragged through every forum and rumor mill on the Grim Web.
The guild mobilized its resources to suppress the scandal, pulling strings and spending heavily to bury the story before it spread further. But then the so-called deadbeat made things worse. He created a peak-tier gioncore card using a legendary gioncore stem.
After that, no matter how hard the guild tried to bury the issue, the boy kept dragging it back into the spotlight. Every move they made to quiet the matter only seemed to give it new life, turning the situation into a constant thorn in the guild's side.
In the end, the guild's higher-ups reached a pragmatic conclusion. Instead of wasting more resources trying and failing to bury the scandal, it would be far cheaper to change tactics. They would simply pay the deadbeat to step forward, clarify the truth to the public, and put the entire affair to rest once and for all. If even that failed, there was an old and reliable method they could rely on to get the job done.
And now the guild wanted him to recruit the very same boy. The thought alone made Manager Pocco uneasy. After all, he had been the one who orchestrated the boy's downfall to a deadbeat older brother in the first place. Seeing the situation come full circle like this left a bitter taste in his mouth.
Still, he reminded himself that he had only been doing his job. As a manager of the Zenith Guild, he was bound to follow its rules and carry out the orders handed down from above. If it hadn't been him, someone else in the guild would have done it anyway.
He had originally planned to meet the boy, apologize, even kowtow if necessary, as long as it got the boy to sit down and listen to the offer of hefty compensation and sign the NDA. But now the situation has changed. The guild wanted him to recruit the boy as well.
That made things far more complicated.
Given the boy's history with the Zenith Guild and how fiercely he had opposed his brother joining it, Pocco knew the chances were slim. The boy would sooner die than willingly join their guild.
So Manager Pocco adjusted his priorities. First, get the NDA signed. That was the real objective. As for recruitment, he would still bring it up, just to satisfy the Vice Leader's order. If by some miracle the boy showed even a hint of interest, he could pursue it further. But deep down, Pocco knew that possibility was close to zero.
To be on the safe side, Manager Pocco began making other arrangements in case the boy refused the compensation and didn't sign the NDA. When the Vice Guild Leader asked him to do whatever it takes to handle it before the young grimlock championship, he meant it.
He immediately called the team lead of the team he had assigned to handle this matter alone.
"Team Lead Maul, have you heard from him yet?" he asked as soon as the call was received.
"No, nothing," Team Lead Maul Fisher replied. "Manager Pocco, I don't think he has even opened any of our mails or messages. Also, he hasn't left the institute so far. I believe he doesn't plan to."
Maul paused before adding, "But he did register for a medical license exam. I'm guessing he's planning to join the garrison reserves as a medic. Either way, he'll have to leave the institute for both the exam and the registration. We can meet him then"
"That's good news—" Manager Pocco nodded instinctively. Then the implication of the deadbeat applying for a medical license hit him a moment later. If the boy passed, he could end up earning more than a Manager in Zenith Guild despite having only recently become a grimlock.
Before Pocco could finish his thought, Maul suddenly cut in, saying, "That's odd. His name was just added to the list of grimlocks called for garrison reserve registration tomorrow."
While Team Lead Maul was still puzzled by the sudden change in the list, Manager Pocco almost jumped out of his chair in joy, ordering, "Maul, get me the names and contact information of every Grimlock from our guild and all affiliated guilds who are attending the garrison reserve registration tomorrow."
There was a reason the Zenith Guild kept grimlocks like Pocco Pry in its middle management ranks. Men like him got the job done, even if it meant dirtying their hands, making sure none of it sticks to the guild.