Chương 157: Chapter 156: Guild Titan's Blood Ledger

The underground memorial vault beneath Guild Titan's old headquarters on the outskirts of New York sat bathed in the cold white light of yellowing fluorescent tubes. There was no cheering fans here, no red carpet, no multimillion-dollar sponsor banners. Along all four reinforced-concrete walls ran row after row of steel memorial plates, each engraved with a name, a service number and a date of death.

Twelve thousand names in all — first-generation Hunters who had fallen in the Red Gate Catastrophe of 2018, saving the American East Coast from annihilation. The sound of Lucian and Sylvia's boots on the damp concrete floor came back dry and hollow, echoing through the silence. Lucian, in his black overcoat, held a magitech flashlight up to a rusted steel cabinet in the corner of the room.

Inside sat hundreds of dust-thick, hardbound ledgers — Guild Titan's original financial records, going back to the founding of the guild. His purpose in flying out here had been simple enough: review the filings and welfare ledgers before Vance Earth Holdings' board decided whether a hostile takeover campaign was defensible. Lucian opened the 2019 ledger. His finger traced down line after line of income and expenses, carefully logged in black ballpoint pen.

The more he read, the harder his ten-year-old brow furrowed. Ting! The dim black panel of Unified System V2. 0 opened in front of him: [SKILL: 'READ THE FINE PRINT' — CROSS-REFERENCING PROVIDED LEDGERS, FILINGS, AND WELFARE RECORDS] ● No evidence of leadership embezzlement found in the records reviewed so far. ● The files show that most available operating surplus was routed into a welfare fund for families affected by the Red Gate.

[PERSONAL ASSET REVIEW: CHAIRMAN THOMAS HALE] ● Public filings and mortgage records, where available, show a modest personal estate and substantial personal guarantees for veterans' welfare loans. Lucian snapped the ledger shut with a hard, metallic clap. He braced both hands on the steel cabinet, drumming his fingers against it. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"These idiots... it never occurred to them to set up a nonprofit trust for tax treatment? They have been paying school fees and insurance from operating cash instead of applying for every available aid program? Run a business this badly and of course you end up drowning in debt!" Sylvia stood beside him, holding the cross-referenced file, tilting her head to look at him.

"Lucian... are you scolding them for being financially illiterate, or are you moved?" Lucian turned, glaring.

"I'm angry that they're bad at accounting! Hand that money to me to manage as a portfolio back then, and that welfare fund would have tripled in value by now!" He turned and walked toward the far end of the vault. At the center of the far wall, above the plates, a line was carved deep into the soot-blackened steel:'WE FALL IN THE DARK SO YOU MAY LIVE IN THE LIGHT.' The original 2018 memorial carried the names and the older inscription.

A smaller dedication plaque, added years later after the novel became famous, bore a line from The Elegy of the Nameless Knight — Volume 1. Cough... cough... A hoarse, heavy cough rang out from the shadows behind a row of concrete pillars. Thomas Hale stepped out of the dark. The man who had once slammed his hand down on the table at the Grand Hyatt to threaten Lucian had come without the tailoring, without the bodyguards, and without the ten-carat diamond on his finger.

He wore a threadbare flannel shirt, leaning on an iron cane, limping across the concrete one step at a time. Beneath the thin fabric, blue magical scars flickered faintly along his neck and arms — the marks of Terminal-Stage Mana Radiation Sickness, from years of repeated dungeon-core exposure since the early Gate era. Thomas Hale stopped five paces from Lucian, leaning on his cane, and looked at the ten-year-old standing before the wall of names, his voice rough.

"You found the account books, didn't you, young tycoon?" Hale's mouth curled into a self-mocking half-smile as he gestured at the twelve thousand engraved names.

"You came here to laugh at a bunch of washed-up failures like us, didn't you? People who don't know how to run a business, who only know how to bargain with monsters using their own lives..." Lucian didn't step back. He didn't pull out a remote, or a contract. He stood straight in front of the wall of twelve thousand names, reaching up to straighten the snow-rose pin on the lapel of his black overcoat.

Lucian looked directly into the old veteran's tired, bloodshot eyes and spoke evenly, each word clear and deliberate.

"Mr. Hale." He picked up the dust-covered ledger in his hand and set it neatly back inside the steel cabinet.

"I'm here on behalf of Vance Earth Holdings." Lucian held his gaze.

"I'm officially calling off the entire hostile takeover campaign against your corporation." He stepped forward and held out his right hand to Thomas Hale.

"Now... let's sit down and discuss an Honor Restructuring Agreement that keeps Titan independent, protects its welfare obligations, and lets its people choose whether they join any joint programs."