Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army 389 War

Many eyes focused on Yunan as he made his way to the trading post, he looked too young by any standards, to look so young and arrive alone at the 80th floor meant he has just entered the floor. Most adventurers that reach the 80th floor never leave it, they may even start families on this floor. That and the fact that many factions have disagreements and they may fight each other, it was therefore almost a guarantee that adventurers never leave or enter the 80th floor alone.

Lana and Rana were still the official faces of the trading post, upon seeing Yunan step inside, both bowed lightly, just enough to show respect and servitude but not slavery, Yunan waved at them and stood at a terminal. He checked the operational quality of the system, looked through the list of available items and information for sale.

He even planted his own information for sale, "the master of the trading post is declaring war on all factions, join the trading post faction to be spared from the devastation that will hit all the factions", this was the cheapest piece of information, even free for some of the customers, this action was something that has been torturing many factions ever since the trading post was created, they had been waiting for this move for so long.

It has been so long since the trading post established itself as the fairest trading partner, everything was bought or traded with good value, especially for those materials that were harder to get, even if their effect was minor, the pay always made it worthwhile to trade with the post rather than one's own faction.

The trading post never rejected any valid item, even monster corpses and bits, samples of flora and fauna and even mineral veins, as long as it had a value, was not counterfeited or known to be stolen, the trading post accepted everything, many adventurers were able to empty their useless hordes of items that no one wanted and ended up forgotten, the same was true for factions. The trading post was a good dumping site, many a faction had emptied storerooms that were filled with trash and refilled them with more valuable items.

Now that it came to this, many adventurers immediately broke away from their factions, and soon the rest of the loosely linked members followed suit. Employment under the trading post was inlaid with attractive offers, all items one would find or acquire, especially information is exclusively owned by the trading post faction, the finder is reimbursed according to market prices and the rewards for attaining the minimum required contribution was mouth watering.

With such attractive terms, one would not need to worry about items being stolen or losing contribution to a superior, everything was recorded and logs were maintained, as an employee, they were only tasked with finding items, they had no obligation to lay their lives on the line, not to mention the fact that the trading post faction had all kinds of memberships, from simple contractors who are the least bound to the faction to inner members, this allowed some to be contractors even while being affiliated with other factions.

The trading post faction as it was called by the residents of the 80th floors, had very well distinguished membership status, there was the family, members of this group are hand picked by the leader and are loyal, they have the right to make all the decisions and even disband the faction, the family had the highest status, currently, no one from those people are known.

The second status was employee, this is dedicated to all those employed to officiate the workings of the enormous system, and keep it running, even the receptionists were included in this bracket, and they would answer only to the leader, they had no status to give out orders or do any kind of a.s.signments, but they were to be protected at all costs.

Although many worked for the trading post, the actual working mules were the genie and the AI, Yunan needed to make some people mistake the ordinary workers as the pillars supporting the entire operation, of course, even those who worked for Yunan did not know such a thing, maybe only Lana and Rana knew since they were in direct contact with the genie and the AI.

The second status was member, these were given the right to take a.s.signments and quests, they had a minimum of contribution to uphold or risk being degraded in rank, the next rank is the marginal members, they were those who only took quests as they wished and sold their items exclusively to the post, lastly the contractors, those were able to just do as they wished, they could sign partial exclusivity contracts on certain things, but ultimately they were just like the old members who bought the membership rings, no strings attached.

With this system of great liberty for adventurers, many immediately went to register as members, there were spies and cheaters among them, but there was nothing to gain, it was established earlier that the trading post did not give away information to its members, most of the information was on a need to know basis, not even rumours could be heard from the members or the employees, that was one thing, but the mysterious owner and his family, who even the employees failed to meet, was entirely another.

With the challenge and the recruitment already spread as widely as possible, it was time to bring about war to Tartarus, many factions were ruined when the first message was sent to all the rings linked to the trading post, it was a notification with faction names that would be raided that week, many did not believe that a dozen or so factions can be raided and robbed without loss, but what happened was exactly that.

Thanks to the information gathered by the rings on all those factions, it was very easy for Bai and Lucian to sneak their way into vaults and empty them before leaving a small note, it was worse for those who had their vaults and headquarters in the same place, the floating castle appeared from within the clouds and laid waste to everything, along with the battle mechs. The gains were astronomical but of little value to Yunan and the family themselves.