I Stopped Simping and the Heroines Lost Their Minds

The commercial districts surrounding Lornfell Academy were a playground for the wealthy. The streets were paved with polished cobblestone, and elite hunters walked around in gleaming, high-tier armor.

But the city of Lornfell was massive, and wealth never trickled down.

Arthur took a magi-bus far past the commercial zones, descending into the lower industrial sectors. The polished cobblestone gave way to cracked asphalt and packed dirt. The air here smelled of cheap coal and stagnant water.

He navigated the cramped alleys and finally stopped in front of a massive, dilapidated warehouse. The corrugated metal roof was rusted, and half of the windows were boarded up with cheap wood.

Hanging above the heavy iron sliding doors was a faded, chipped wooden sign: The Obsidian Hand.

Arthur pushed the heavy door open. It ground loudly on rusted tracks.

The interior was exactly as the game’s lore had described. It was a massive space, but it was painfully empty. The weapon racks lining the walls were mostly bare. The guild’s forge in the corner was cold and filled with cobwebs.

Sitting around a battered wooden table in the center of the room were three young hunters. Their armor was scuffed, their faces bruised. They were quietly sharing a single, meager loaf of bread.

The moment the heavy door creaked, all three heads snapped up.

Their eyes locked onto Arthur. It wasn’t the look of proud, established guild members. It was the starving, desperate gaze of a pack of wolves watching a lone deer wander into their den.

"A client?" one of the rookies asked, immediately jumping to his feet and tossing his piece of bread aside. "You got a commission, cadet? Escort mission? Material hauling? We’ll do it cheap!"

The other two leaned forward eagerly. Their tired eyes burned with a desperate hope for a paycheck.

"I’m not here to hire you," Arthur stated flatly.

The atmosphere in the room died instantly.

The rookie who had stood up groaned loudly, slumping heavily back into his wooden chair. The desperate hope evaporated, instantly replaced by hostile, exhausted annoyance.

"Then get lost," another muttered, tearing a piece off the loaf. "We aren’t running charity tours for rich academy brats."

"Enough."

A sharp, exhausted voice called out from the raised wooden office overlooking the warehouse floor.

Arthur turned his attention to the stairs. Sitting behind a desk piled high with red-inked parchment and unpaid invoices was Sylvia.

The Guild Master of the Obsidian Hand looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. She had messy, shoulder-length brown hair and dark circles under her sharp gray eyes.

She rubbed her temples, looking down at Arthur. Her gray eyes narrowed slightly as she took in his academy uniform and dark leather gear.

"If you aren’t here for a commission, what do you want?" Sylvia asked, her tone defensive. "If you’re a runner for the noble creditors, you can tell them I have until the end of the month. They can’t legally seize the property until then."

Arthur casually walked up the wooden stairs to her open office. He pulled out the chair across from her desk and sat down.

"I’m not a debt collector," Arthur said, resting his arms on the desk. "I’m an investor. And I’m here to buy fifty percent of your guild."

Sylvia stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then, she let out a dry, bitter laugh.

"Fifty percent?" Sylvia scoffed, tossing her quill onto the desk. "Listen, rich boy. I don’t know what kind of fantasy novel you think you’re living in, but running a guild isn’t a hobby. It’s a meat grinder. You don’t just buy a title and get to play commander."

"I’m well aware of what it takes," Arthur replied, entirely unfazed.

"Do you?" Sylvia challenged, leaning forward, her protective anger flaring. "Do you know that standard gear repairs cost upwards of five thousand credits a week? Do you know that city taxes on guild property increase by ten percent every quarter? Do you know how much a funeral costs when a rookie gets gutted by a Hobgoblin?"

She slammed her hand down on the stack of red invoices.

"We are over two hundred and fifty thousand credits in debt," Sylvia stated, her voice tight with bitter pride. "So unless you’re carrying a small fortune in your academy backpack, stop wasting my time. I have a guild to save."

Arthur didn’t argue. He didn’t try to match her anger.

He simply reached into his spatial inventory. With a heavy, resounding thud, he dropped a large, bulging leather pouch directly onto the center of her desk. He reached in again and dropped a second pouch right next to it.

The heavy clinking of high-density credit chips and gold coins echoed in the quiet office.

"Seventy thousand credits," Arthur said flatly. "Liquid."

Sylvia blinked. She reached over, untied one of the pouches, and glanced inside at the gleaming chips. For a second, she looked surprised. Then, she let out another sharp, humorless laugh and pushed the bags back toward him.

"Seventy grand?" Sylvia shook her head, looking at him like he was an idiot. "Are you out of your mind? My gear repair bills alone used to hit ten grand a week when we were active. Seventy grand is pocket change. It doesn’t even cover the interest on our noble loans, let alone buy you half my guild."

Arthur smiled. It was a cold, incredibly predatory smile.

She had passed the test. She wasn’t just a greedy amateur blinded by flashing gold; she actually understood the macro-economy of the world.

"You’re absolutely right," Arthur agreed, leaning back in his chair. "Seventy thousand is a joke. It’s just a band-aid. It buys you a few weeks of breathing room, maybe a month of food and basic repairs."

He crossed his arms, locking eyes with her.

"Money is finite," Arthur continued. "Even if I dropped three hundred thousand on this desk right now, you would just go bankrupt again within few months. Because cash doesn’t fix your fundamental problem: the corporate guilds lock you out of the high-tier farm zones."

Sylvia frowned, her initial dismissal turning into cautious curiosity. He actually knew how the system worked.

"If you know that, then why are you here?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.

Arthur reached into his inventory one last time. He pulled out a folded piece of parchment and slid it across the desk toward her.

"Because the seventy thousand isn’t the buyout," Arthur said. "It’s just the expedition fund. This is the buyout."

Sylvia cautiously unfolded the paper. It was a hand-drawn map of the southern Whispering Woods. Deep within the unmarked territory, a sharp red circle was drawn.

"What is this?" Sylvia asked.

"A monopoly," Arthur stated. "That is the exact location of an unmapped, entirely undiscovered F-Rank subterranean crawler cavern. Nobody in the city knows it exists. It is completely untouched."

Sylvia’s heart began to hammer violently against her ribs. An undiscovered dungeon was the holy grail for an independent guild.

"If you claim the territorial rights with the Guild Association," Arthur continued, his voice dropping into a smooth, calculated rhythm. "And your hunters clear it without shattering the Dungeon Core, it becomes your private property."

He tapped the map.

"Crawlers drop low-tier iron, mana stones, and carapace," Arthur explained. "It’s a permanent farm ground. It will generate a massive, daily output of raw materials that you can sell directly to the blacksmiths."

"The seventy grand pays for your immediate supplies and the expedition," Arthur finished. "That map secures your future."

Sylvia stared at the red circle on the map. Her hands were actually trembling. This was it. This was the miracle she had been praying for every single night.

But she was a hunter. She knew that miracles always came with a price.

She slowly looked up at Arthur, her gray eyes piercing and incredibly sharp.

"Why give this to me?" Sylvia demanded. "If you know where an undiscovered dungeon is, why not just sell the coordinates to the Red Boar guild? They would pay you triple what you’re offering me."

"Because the corporate guilds are bloated and impossible to control," Arthur answered honestly. "I don’t want a payout. I want an empire."

Arthur leaned forward, holding her gaze.

"Here are my terms," Arthur said, his voice completely devoid of negotiation. "You keep your title. You are the Guild Master. You run the day-to-day operations, you handle the logistics, and you manage the hunters. You get to keep your dream alive."

He pointed a finger at the center of her desk.

"But I own fifty percent of the Obsidian Hand," Arthur dictated. "I take half of the net profits generated from the dungeon farms. And I hold ultimate, uncontested veto power over the guild’s roster. Who gets recruited, and who gets fired, goes through me."

Sylvia swallowed hard. Fifty percent was a massive bite. He was essentially making himself the shadow-owner of her entire life’s work.

But she looked down at the warehouse floor. She looked at her three starving rookies. If she said no, the guild dissolved, her friends ended up on the streets, and she went to debtor’s prison.

"That location is just the down payment," Arthur added softly.

Sylvia’s head snapped up.

"I have the coordinates to more unmarked farm grounds," Arthur revealed. "A flora grotto for alchemical reagents. A beast-kin den for standard cores. But you don’t get those until you prove you can manage the first one, the paperwork is finalized, and my shares are legally allocated to my name."

More?

He wasn’t just a rich student. He was a goldmine of untraceable, high-value intelligence. Partnering with him wouldn’t just save the Obsidian Hand. It would turn them into a powerhouse.

She looked at the heavy bags of credits, then at the map, and finally at Arthur’s cold, confident face.

Sylvia let out a long, heavy exhale, running a hand through her messy brown hair.

"I’m going to send a scouting party to these coordinates tonight," Sylvia said, her voice completely steady, her Guild Master authority returning. "If there is a crawler cavern there, and it’s unconquered like you say..."

She reached across the desk and extended her hand.

"We draw up the legal paperwork on Monday," Sylvia finalized. "Fifty percent equity. Veto power on the roster. And you fund our clearing expedition."

Arthur smirked. He reached across the desk and firmly shook her hand.

"Deal."

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