Dark Lord: Rise to Power

Arin walked towards the end of the hall with a trembling heart. He was imagining as if everyone in the guild were hiding behind the closed doors on both side of the alley. As if, they would pounce on him, as soon as the magic fox reveal his secret identity.

Anyway, he ended up behind a stall at end of an alley. He peeped through the window to see there was a stool and behind it were various merchandise, artefacts and a rack full of books. He recognized many of them, as he had seen them previously in the castle's library. But strangely there were no Magical Beast.

"Ahem" a voice attracted Arin's attention from behind. As Arin looked behind, he was surprised beyond imagination. There was a red Fox with glasses, in checked shirt and suspender slacks. "You…." Arin was unable to find a proper word to make a coherent sentence. "You seemed to be traumatized from last night's events greatly," the Fox spoke with a sympathetic tone, "Go and take rest, or go find a healer. Come back tomorrow!"

"You…. can….talk?" Arin said in complete disbelief.

In reply the Fox gave him such looks, that Arin immediately felt ashamed of himself; as if, he had expressed wonder about something which was as obvious, as mundane and natural, as the Sun rising in the East every morning!

He quickly collected himself and covered the situation up saying, "Forgive me, after the Barbarian Lady hit me so hard, I am still feeling groggy!"

Now the Fox burst into laughter, "Alright alright, now it all makes sense. It was you, right? Yes I too had seen it. Yes yes, as you mentioned, now I can remember it was you only!"

He sat on the counter and rang a bell. A human girl in a maid's costume arrived from behind. The Fox ordered two cups of coffee for himself and Arin and said, "So, let's have our discussion over a cup of coffee. You really need it, trust me. Till our order is served, lets make an introduction of each other! I am Finnian Vulpestra" he extended his arm.

Arin had noticed that in this world instead of simply grasping hands, people here would grab each other's forearms. This gesture was called 'Vowgrip' here.

Arin followed the suit and grabbed the Fox's forearm, as he grabbed Arin's, "Nice to meet you Mister Finnian. I am Arin Drez, a novice adventurer. I have just fulfilled my first quest and here to exchange my loots for money!"

"'Sell' would be more appropriate than 'Exchange''', said Finnian, "As you know, we just buy from our Adventurers. If we even sold to Adventures then the Merchant Guild would create objection. So, fair warning, if you are selling a good, then be ready to purchase it back at higher price from an outside merchant. So, unless you absolutely sure to not use it ever near future, don't sell. You can just store it in Guild Bank for a nominal monthly price."

"Thanks for the disclaimer" Arin smiled, and opened his back pack to take out his loots. First items were the strange amulets. The fox started inspecting them closely, "Well they don't have much value when we consider the design or material, but…" he turned around started shuffling some old tomes.

Meanwhile the girl brought two cups of coffee. Arin smiled back at her, as she left. He waited for Finnian to complete his surfing through the pages of his tomes. "YES! I KNEW IT" Finnan shouted with excitement, "I knew I had seen this pattern before!" Finnian grabbed Arin's hands tightly, "where have you found these? These Medallions!". The fox's face was a weird juxtaposition of both curiosity, excitement and an unknown fear. He was literally trembling, "Do you know what is meaning of these? It's implication? All the pillars will be shaken, it is a great omen!" Finnian was about to pull out all his furs. He grabbed Arin's hand and directed him towards outside, "get your bag, we are going to meet the Hall leader"

Without waiting for Arin's answer, he dragged him outside, in the guild Hall. People in the guild Hall saw the Guild Merchant dragging a newbie adventure outside. Ragna saw this and stood up from her chair. Suddenly the bustling guild hall gone eerily quiet. Finnian had no mood of noticing these. As he went upstairs, the receptionist lady walked towards them and said, "Mister Finnian, Guild leader is currently…."

Finnian bared his fangs and replied in a cold stern voice, "Do you think I am in mood to care? "

The lady didn't find any further courage in her to stop him. Arin felt like a Kid when the teacher used to drag him to Principal's room after he would do any mischievous thing.

Finnian knocked twice, and without awaiting reply from inside, he opened the door.

Arin entered a large spacious well decorated room. A middle-aged man was sleeping face buried in a book.

"Sir Zikar" Finnian said politely.

"I am no more a Knight" the man said without looking at them, face still buried in book. "What have you found?"

"A forbidden artefact of lost ages" he spoke I'm a grim tone, "Amulets of Nahun's followers, as well as,…."

"as well as?" Zikar stood up now, his glaring vision now scanning the new strange looking man who had entered the room along with Finnian.

"Amulet of Nahun's priest" Finnan said trembling with excitement and fear.

Zikar took one in his hand, carefully inspecting, "it seems there is very feint traces of dark energy, much much lesser than it should be!"

"Is it fake?" Finnian asked.

"No, then there won't be any trace of Dark energy at all. It has dissipated. Either someone drained them of Dark Energy or it was there for long to lose the residual energy." Zikar said. He looked at Arin, "Where have you find it? Did you find anything else?"

Arin was ready for the situation, and had already made a proper fake version of the story. He told them that he had found those amulets buried in a mound directly under a grate for rainwater passage. That mound struck unnatural to him, which was why he dug it, to unearth those strange amulets along with silver bars.

"Silver bar?" Finnian was amazed, "show me!"

Arin took out from his backpack the two silver bars. Finnian took them in his hands and slapped Arin's head, "You fool you think these are silver bars?"

Zikar laughed, "You see, that's why our founding leader had established this rule, so that unscrupulous merchants don't scam our bookworm or muscle head members."

Arin was dumbfounded. Looking at his dumb look they told him that those were 'Quicksilver bar' much more precious than Gold.

Finnian told him, "One Quicksilver Bar is around 500 gold coins". He continued while inspecting the Quicksilver bars, "they are so rare that they are only made in shape of Bar, not in coin, to avoid wastage. Not only that, they also contain seal of the owner…." and suddenly he stopped, his face turning grim. He showed the bar to Zikar, and his face turned grim as well.

"Are you sure you found it beneath the mound, along with the amulets?" he asked.

Arin just nodded.

"Finnian, go downwards to summon Captain Duran and tell Ashley that no one other than the Captain comes upstairs until I say so!" Zikar ordered Finnian.

As Finnian was leaving, Zikar called him, "wait, if Duran proposes to bring some people with him, let those persons come as well. But NO ONE ELSE!"

As Finnian left, Zikar looked at Arin, "Boy, you are surprisingly attracting too much attention for your own good! Whether it is for good or bad, let the ones above and below decide."

He said nothing else, and started reading a book. Arin was sitting completely at loss, no idea what had happened.

After a while, a knock was hard.

"Come inside!" Zikar said.

Arin witnessed Duran entered through the door. But he was not alone, rather, he was accompanied by those two guards of yesterday, who were on guard duty on main entrance gate of the city wall yesterday, and had stopped him at first. Not only that, there was also the guard who was in charge of sewer gate last night. However, beside them there was another odd person- a hooded man. However, as he took off the hood, Arin was taken aback. He quickly realized that he was none other than that suspicious man he had seen today morning in the plaza, who had gave him a strange glance and vanished in the thin air.

As he took off his hood, he looked at Arin and asked to the people present, "well is not this good sir supposed to take off his mask as well?"

Before Arin could answer, Duran chuckled and told that guy, "Trust me, you don't want him to take off his mask!"

"By Lathasa" Duran smirked at Arin, "As I had thought, you are really something, I knew it".

Arin was going to stand up in his honor, but he waved him to sit "You are really a troublesome guy, right?"