Chương 6: CHAPTER 5: THE GUILDMASTER'S ULTIMATUM

The private sanctuary of the regional Guildmaster was a stark contrast to the chaotic, blood-slicked operating theater of the main hall. The room was heavily insulated, lined with aromatic dark cedar wood and thick, sound-dampening silk tapestries depicting the sweeping, lacquered pagoda roofs of the capital, Indra-Kyoto.

A low, brass brazier flickered in the corner, burning compressed sandalwood bricks that filled the air with a heavy, meditative smoke, masking the ever-present stench of cheap mana potions from the streets below. Sitting behind a massive desk of polished mahogany was an elderly man with sharp, slate-grey eyes and a meticulously trimmed white beard.

He wore a structured, open-front Haori coat of deep indigo linen, layered precisely over a pristine, white cotton Kurta trimmed with faint brass threads—the unmistakable attire of a high-ranking, wealthy urban citizen of the Bharata-Yamato Kingdom. This was Guildmaster Ozu. A retired S-Rank Vanguard who ran Mizugaon's administrative networks with an iron, uncompromising fist.

"Sit, boy," Ozu commanded, his voice carrying the faint, heavy vibration of a man who still possessed dense internal mana reservoirs. He didn't look up from his work, his calloused fingers operating a heavy brass runic stamp to authorize a stack of merchant manifests. I slid into the low wooden chair opposite him, maintaining my hunched, submissive apprentice posture.

I deliberately kept my arms tucked into the sleeves of my shortened, rough hemp Yukata, shifting the rope sash uncomfortably to play the part of a clueless, terrified peasant orphan. I kept my gaze lowered to the floorboards, but beneath my bangs, my hyper-focused, analytical tracking was wide awake, watching the micro-expressions of his facial anatomy.

[SYSTEM: PROFILE INFORMATION] Name: Rudra Mishra (False Persona: Shin) Level: 8 Mana Status: Stable (Baseline Adjusted) Budaas (Old man),' I thought, a cold smirk crossing my mind.' Chashma toh pehna nahi hai, par aankhein aisi chala raha hai jaise sab dikhta ho (He isn't even wearing glasses, but he's rolling his eyes like he sees everything)'. Let's see how long you can maintain this theatrical gravity.'

"I've just received the report from the reception desk," Ozu said, finally setting the heavy brass stamp down with a dull, echoing thud. He leaned forward, placing his wrinkled, heavily scarred hands flat on the mahogany wood.

"An F-Rank copper-token rookie, wearing the stained rags of a common vagrant, walks into my hall and physically carves a high-density metallic mana parasite out of the internal jugular of a Level 24 Vanguard support combatant. No chanting circle. No holy scriptures. No divine intervention." He paused, his slate-grey eyes drilling into my face, looking for a twitch in my orbicularis oculi, a tightening of my jaw, or a single slip in my expression.

"The alchemists downstairs are screaming about demonic heresies and illegal biological tampering. The mercenaries are calling it an unmitigated miracle from the Sun Goddess. I call it an administrative nightmare. Who exactly taught you that style of tissue manipulation, Shin?"

"As I told the Vanguard commander in the outer woods, sir," I lied smoothly, letting my voice crack slightly with a perfectly fabricated pubertal tremor.

"It is a physical trade technique taught by my late master. It relies purely on anatomical precision, localized finger pressure, and natural coagulation pathways. It... it uses almost no mana, sir." Ozu didn't blink. Slowly, he reached down to the lower drawer of his desk and pulled out a small, velvet-lined wooden box. He flipped it open, revealing a jagged, pulsating chunk of dark purple iron ore—raw, unrefined material caked with active Iron-Vein Rot spores."

Do not insult my intelligence, boy," Ozu rumbled, his voice turning ice-cold as his mana flares subtly, causing the sandalwood smoke in the room to swerve violently.

"I've scouted every province under the crown, and no such 'trade technique' exists. I know how the human anatomy responds to corruption. If you truly rely on simple finger pressure, prove it." He slammed his own left forearm onto the desk, pulled a small silver stiletto blade from his belt, and sliced a clean, deep two-inch gash across his own flesh. Before the blood could even pool, he pressed his open wound directly against the pulsing purple ore.' Abe saale! Pagal hai kya?! (Hey, brother-in-law! Are you crazy?!)' My inner ER doctor violently short-circuited.' Apne hi haath pe cut maar diya sirf check karne ke liye? Yeh fantasy wale log alag hi namune hain. (Slicing your own hand just to cross-check? These fantasy people are a completely different breed of weirdos.)' Instantly, the parasitic reaction ignited. The dark, metallic spores tore into his broken skin via transdermal friction, hitching a ride straight into his cephalic vein.

Within seconds, thick, shimmering silver veins began to sprout outward from the cut, spider-webbing across his forearm like liquid mercury flowing beneath his epidermis. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. Ozu didn't even flinch. His jaw remained locked as he looked at me.

"Fix it. Right here on my desk. If your master's technique is real, purge the crystallization before it breaches my deep brachial pathways." My clinical brain instantly locked into the zone. The timid orphan act evaporated. I slid forward in the chair, my spine straightening as the absolute, commanding aura of a chief ER surgeon took over my fifteen-year-old body.

[SYSTEM: DIAGNOSTIC SCAN COMPLETE] TARGET: Male, Age 62 (Guildmaster Ozu) PATHOLOGY: Acute Biomechanical Thrombosis (Iron-Vein Rot Spore Induction) TIME TO DEEP VENOUS CRITICAL ACCUMULATION: 02 Minutes, 15 Seconds" You old fool," I muttered, my voice dropping its pubertal crack entirely, sounding chillingly calm and authoritative.

"Testing a doctor with self-inflicted vascular necrosis just to satisfy your administrative curiosity." I didn't have boiling water or silk thread here, but the infection was hyper-localized and hadn't matured into a dense clot yet. I grabbed the silver stiletto blade Ozu had left on the desk, poured a drop of high-potency cleansing alcohol from a vial on his shelf over the metal, and extended my right hand." Hold perfectly still," I commanded.

I used my left thumb to apply deep, digital occlusion pressure on his proximal basilic vein, physically putting a tourniquet-like block on his blood flow to trap the silver sludge in his forearm. With a surgical flick of my right wrist, I used the stiletto to cleanly widen the apex of his self-inflicted cut by exactly four millimeters.' System,' I commanded internally.

'Channel 'Micro-Cellular Suture' but keep the output tightly localized. Act as a localized magnetic vacuum to pull the microscopic spores away from his hemoglobin.' [SYSTEM: UNIQUE SKILL 'MICRO-CELLULAR SUTURE' ACTIVATED] [MANA FLUID DYNAMICS: CONCENTRATING AT TARGET INCISION] A faint, luminescent gold-blue glow enveloped my fingertips. Moving with the absolute, automated muscle memory of a veteran practitioner, I slid my mana directly through the open cut.

On a cellular level, my SSS-Rank passive showed me the jagged silver spores attempting to bind to his phospholipid bilayers. My mana micro-filaments wrapped around the metallic invaders like microscopic forceps, dragging the parasitic clusters backward against the natural current of his blood. With a wet, metallic hiss, a stream of thick, silver-flecked black sludge erupted from the gash, splattering harmlessly onto the mahogany desk.

The moment the foreign debris cleared, healthy, bright crimson blood washed through the cut. Without waiting for a needle, I ran my glowing finger across the margins of the wound, unleashing a controlled burst of active restoration. The cellular membranes re-aligned, the tissue layers aggressively knit themselves closed, and within three seconds, the skin sealed shut, leaving behind nothing but a clean, faint pink scratch.

I tossed the silver stiletto back onto the desk, pulling a linen handkerchief from my sleeve to wipe the silver residue from my hands.

"Don't ever do that again in my presence. I don't appreciate patients who actively try to make my job harder." Guildmaster Ozu stared down at his completely restored, unblemished forearm. He flexed his fingers, tracing the flawless skin where a terminal, flesh-crystallizing rot had been raging seconds prior. The sheer molecular speed of the recovery shattered every administrative protocol he had ever written."

Incredible," Ozu breathed, his slate-grey eyes lifting to meet mine with a dangerous mixture of profound awe and cold calculation.

"No magic circles, no three-verse stanzas, no divine favor from the Sun Goddess. You are a true anomaly, Shin."

"Freedom without power is just a slow sentence to a slave auction, boy," Ozu warned, his voice dropping into a dangerous, gravelly rumble.

"You think your little tricks can fool everyone? Let me see what you are truly hiding." Before the final word even left his lips, Ozu's slate-grey eyes suddenly flashed with a sharp, piercing crimson luminescence.

[CRITICAL ALERT: SYSTEM SOUL MATRIX UNDER FOREIGN INTRUSION!] [TARGET SKILL DETECTED: A-RANK 'APPRAISAL EYE'] [EXECUTING SSS-RANK COUNTER-PROTOCOL: ABSOLUTE OVERRIDE AND BLIND!] A sudden, invisible wave of heavy mental pressure slammed into the room, aiming directly at my temples. As a retired, battle-hardened S-Rank veteran, Ozu wasn't just guessing anymore—he was using a high-tier active tracking skill to forcefully peel back my status window and expose my hidden attributes.

In the known rules of the world, standard mortal limits were strictly bounded. Above the standard thresholds lay only the mythical SS-Rank and the fabled Legendary status that no living soul had ever reached. But he didn't encounter a standard mortal soul.

'Aukaat mein reh, budhau! (Stay in your limits, old man!)'I roared internally.

'System, iska dimaag kharab kar de! (System, mess his mind up!)' Crack! A localized burst of static mana snapped through the air between us, so sharp it caused the brass sandalwood brazier in the corner to rattle violently. Ozu gasped, his head jerking backward as the brilliant crimson light in his eyes violently shattered. He instinctively clutched his left temple, his chest heaving as a line of cold sweat broke out across his forehead.

The sheer feedback from my system's defensive wall had hit his consciousness like a physical blow.

"What... what kind of mental shield was that?" Ozu breathed, his voice laced with absolute, unadulterated shock as he stared at me, his fingers trembling slightly against his mahogany desk.

"My appraisal tracking is high-tier A-Rank... a focused investigative style built to pierce hidden cloaks. But the moment I tried to read your status, my vision was completely blocked by a pitch-black wall of suffocating energy. I couldn't see a single attribute. All it returned was your basic public log: Low-Medium Coagulation." I didn't blink. I simply leaned forward, resting my elbows on his desk, letting the cold, razor-sharp aura of a chief consultant anchor the room.

"I warned you, Guildmaster," I stated, my voice chillingly calm and steady.

"Do not attempt to map my anatomy. My master didn't just teach me how to knit tissue; he taught me how to lock the door to my house. Your appraisal tier is entirely insufficient to read my code. Try to force your way past my vision again, and I won't just block the scan—I will let the feedback loop scramble your neural pathways permanently." Ozu swallowed hard, the sheer dominance in my tone completely paralyzing his veteran instincts. He realized right then that he wasn't dealing with a lucky, low-level commoner.

He was standing in front of a completely unmeasurable, god-tier anomaly. He pulled a fresh sheet of official parchment from his drawer and began writing with a heavy obsidian quill.

"Very well. I will register your false persona as an independent, unaligned traveling herbal consultant. The Healer Guild will officially log your whatever monster tier status you're hiding under a 'Low-Medium Basic Coagulation' auxiliary anomaly to throw off any royal vanguard spies tracking the legend. But in return for this administrative falsification, you owe me a favor."" A favor?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Yes," Ozu said, his eyes turning dead serious as he pressed his regional stamp into the hot wax, sealing the document.

"The top two elite adventurer parties in this town—the Solar Vanguard and the Asura Blade —are currently trapped deep inside the Level 30 Blackwood Dungeon. If they return with a catastrophic internal trauma that my alchemists cannot resolve... you will operate. Do we have a deal, Shin?" I looked at the finalized document, then down at my smooth, youthful hands, a familiar digital hum echoing in my ears right on cue.

[SYSTEM: REPUTATION UNLOCKED — THE ANONYMOUS MEDIC] [GUILDMASTER OZU'S ALLIANCE: SECURED] [CURRENT OBJECTIVE: MAINTAIN THE VACATION]"Deal," I murmured, extending my hand to shake the old warrior's calloused palm Chalo, thoda toh chain mila (At least there's a bit of peace now),' I thought, letting a tiny smirk slip onto my face. The contract was forged, the economy was manipulated, and my quiet life was officially secured—or so I thought.

Because right outside the insulated timber walls of Mizugaon, the wheels of a much larger, global conspiracy were already beginning to spin.