The Awakened City's outer gates were louder than Aryan remembered, though he supposed it had only been a day since he'd walked out through them carrying someone else's supply pack. Hunters moved in and out in clusters, mages haggled over mana crystals at roadside stalls, and nobody so much as glanced at the bloodstained, limping teenager weaving through the crowd toward the Guild's appraisal office.
That suited him fine. He preferred being invisible to being pitied.
The appraisal office was a squat stone building tucked behind the main Guild hall, staffed by clerks who specialized in exactly one thing: telling hunters precisely how much their kills were worth, then taking a cut for the privilege. Aryan had escorted Kael here twice before, standing silently in the corner while the appraiser fawned over whatever trophy the Silver Fang squad had dragged in that week.
This time, he walked up to the counter himself.
The clerk on duty — a thin, balding man with a jeweler's loupe pushed up on his forehead — barely looked up from his ledger. "Core or pelt?"
"Core," Aryan said. "Boss-tier."
That got a glance. The clerk's eyes flicked over Aryan's torn, bloody clothes, his missing weapon, the general absence of any guild insignia, armor, or escort that would normally accompany someone claiming to carry a boss core.
"Let's see it, then," the clerk said, in the tone of someone expecting to be disappointed.
Aryan reached into the spatial pouch and drew out the core, still wrapped in the torn strip of his shirt. He set it on the counter and unwrapped it.
The clerk's loupe nearly fell off his forehead.
He snatched it up properly, pressing it to his eye, turning the glowing core under the lamp with hands that had gone slightly unsteady. "This is... this density, this is easily Level 25 boss-tier. Alpha-class, if I'm reading the core veins right." He looked up, and for the first time actually saw Aryan — the blood, the exhaustion, the missing weapon. "Where in the hells did a porter get a Bloodfang Alpha core?"
"I killed it," Aryan said simply.
The clerk's expression cycled through disbelief, suspicion, and finally something closer to caution, the look of a man who'd learned the hard way not to argue with whatever a bleeding hunter told him about how they'd gotten their loot. "...Right. I'll need to log the dungeon clear separately — Guild policy for anything boss-tier. Give me a moment."
It took the better part of an hour. Forms were filled. A second appraiser was called to confirm the first one's valuation, muttering the whole time about how a core this size shouldn't exist outside a coordinated A-Rank clear. Aryan sat through all of it in silence, too tired to feel impatient, watching the slow, grinding machinery of bureaucracy process the single most important thing he'd ever done.
The final number, when it came, still made the clerk's pen hesitate above the payment slip.
"Eight hundred and twenty gold," the clerk said, "minus the Guild's twelve percent appraisal fee. Seven hundred and twenty-one, after rounding."
Aryan had earned a hundred silver a day as a porter. A hundred silver coins made one gold. Seven hundred and twenty-one gold was more money than he had seen in his entire life, more than his mother's remaining hospital debt, more than enough to finally, finally stop drowning.
He kept his face still. He'd learned that much from Kael, if nothing else — never let anyone see exactly how much something matters to you.
"There's also the matter of the dungeon report," the second appraiser added, pulling out a fresh form. "A Level 25 boss clear needs to be filed with cause of party casualties listed. Your squad — the Silver Fang, yes? — they're already logged as having returned without you. Filed as 'porter lost, presumed deceased, in line of duty.'"
Something in Aryan went very quiet and very cold.
"Presumed deceased," he repeated.
"Standard wording," the appraiser said, oblivious. "Happens with porters more than the Guild likes to admit. Do you want to file a correction? It'll flag their report for review."
Aryan thought about it — really thought about it, turning the offer over the way he'd turned the core over minutes earlier. A formal review. An official mark against Kael's name in some Guild ledger somewhere, quiet and bureaucratic and ultimately meaningless to anyone who hadn't lived through that cavern.
"No," Aryan said slowly. "Don't file anything yet."
The appraiser blinked. "...You sure? This is exactly the kind of thing reviews exist for."
"I'm sure." Aryan collected his payment slip, folded it once, and tucked it into the spatial pouch beside the silver he'd already earned. "I don't want a form to handle this for me."
He left the appraisal office with more gold to his name than he'd ever held at once, a dungeon report sitting unfiled and dangerous in some clerk's drawer, and a very specific, very clear idea of exactly where Kael and the rest of the Silver Fang squad were probably spending their evening.
Tavern noise drifted from two streets over — loud, cheerful, the unmistakable sound of people drinking on someone else's memory.
Aryan straightened his torn, bloodstained shirt as best he could, and started walking toward it.