The numbers didn't add up. They never had — Jace had known this in the abstract since freshman year, the way you knew that fire was hot without having touched it — but the abstract became concrete on Friday afternoon when the Guild's payment crystal arrived at the academy's administrative office and the abstract turned into forty credits sitting in his palm.
Forty credits. Per person. Two Ashfall Tunnels runs, three floors each, eight hours of combined delve time, one Magma Sentinel killed, and the Guild's standardized processing system had weighed the labor of four Normal-tier provisionals against the bureaucratic machinery of fees and deductions and spat out a number that wouldn't buy a decent pair of boots.
He stared at the payment slip — a mana-printed receipt on Guild-standard vellum, its ink shifting between blue and amber as the authentication enchantment cycled. The breakdown was precise in the way that institutions were precise when they wanted you to understand that your poverty was not a mistake but a feature.
---
**ADVENTURERS GUILD — PROVISIONAL CONTRACT PAYMENT**
**Contract: ASH-1147 (Ashfall Tunnels, Standard Clearance)**
**Party: Miller, J. / Blackforge, T. / Osei, M. / Voss, E.**
**Field Liaison: Cassar, R. (Guild-attached, separate compensation)**
Gross Payout (2 runs × 3-floor clearance): 340 credits
Sentinel Bonus (1 × Level 10 territorial): 90 credits
Salvage Value (processed beetle chitin, Wyrm segments, miscellaneous): 62 credits
**Subtotal: 492 credits**
Guild Administrative Fee (15%): -73.8
Academy Liaison Processing (5%): -24.6
Equipment Wear Surcharge (flat): -20
Dungeon Access Levy (per-run): -40
Insurance Reserve (mandatory): -40
Salvage Processing Fee (Guild rate): -12.4
Mana-Core Extraction Tax (Sentinel cores): -18
**Total Deductions: -228.8**
**Net Disbursement: 263.2 credits**
**Per Person (4-way split): 65.8 credits**
**Less: Consumables Used (potions, 2 × Common HP restoration): -25.8 per person**
**Final Payment: 40 credits per person**
---
Jace read it twice. Then a third time, because the third reading was where the anger lived and he wanted to make sure he'd earned it.
"Forty," Mara said, looking at her own slip in the Mess Hall's corner. The lunch rush had thinned, leaving their section of the right-side tables in the relative privacy that came from being the last ones eating. "Forty credits for two runs through a fire dungeon where things actively tried to melt us."
"The Sentinel bonus is decent," Elara said, though her tone carried the particular flatness of someone applying fairness to a system she found structurally offensive. "Ninety credits for a single territorial kill is above the standard rate for a Level 10 engagement. The problem isn't the gross. The problem is the margin."
"The problem is that the Guild takes a quarter of everything before we see a copper," Torrin said. He'd folded his payment slip into a precise square and placed it beside his tray with the deliberate care of someone who'd grown up in a mining family where every credit was accounted for and none were wasted. "Iron Holds miners see the same structure. Company takes the ore. Miners take what's left. What's left is never enough."
"It's worse than that," Jace said. He'd been doing math on the back of a napkin — the kind of math that Elara would have done in her head but that he needed to see written down, because the numbers were bad enough that he wanted them externalized. Visible. Undeniable. "The consumables deduction. Twenty-five credits and change per person for two Common-tier HP potions. We used those potions because the Sentinel fight produced injuries that field healing couldn't fully address. If we'd routed around the Sentinel — skipped the bonus entirely — we'd have saved fifty credits in potion costs across the party."
"But lost ninety in Sentinel bonus," Elara said.
"Right. Net gain of forty for killing a Level 10. Divided four ways. Ten credits each for a fight that could have killed Torrin." He set the napkin down. "The economy is designed so that the risk-reward ratio for Normal-tier provisionals is barely positive. The Guild takes its percentage regardless of the risk we assume. The Academy takes its cut regardless of whether we learn anything. The insurance reserve is mandatory and non-refundable — we're paying for the privilege of being allowed to almost die."
"And the real money goes to higher-tier parties," Mara said quietly. She'd been listening with the focused attention of someone whose mother was a Rare-tier [Restorer] in Silverhaven and who'd grown up hearing dinner-table conversations about the economic machinery of professional delving. "My mother told me about this. The payout curve is exponential — a Rare-tier party running the same dungeon earns three to four times the gross because they clear faster, take less damage, use fewer consumables, and the Guild's risk-assessment algorithm reduces their fee structure. The same work, the same dungeon, and they net eight times what we do because the system rewards efficiency that only higher stats can produce."
"Compounding advantage," Elara said. Her pen was out, annotating her payment slip's margins with the obsessive notation that meant she was converting frustration into analysis. "Better gear produces faster clears. Faster clears reduce consumable usage. Reduced usage increases net payout. Higher payout funds better gear. The cycle reinforces itself at every step, and the entry barrier for Normal-tier parties is set precisely high enough that breaking into the cycle requires either external funding—"
"Which we don't have," Torrin said.
"—or an alternative acquisition pathway that bypasses the standard economic structure."
The table was quiet. Around them, the Mess Hall hummed with the background noise of academy life — trays and conversation and the faint crackle of a second-year [Evoker] practicing a cantrip at a center table, fire dancing between his fingers with the casual ease of someone whose class gave him something worth showing off. Forty credits wouldn't even cover the reagent cost of that cantrip's practice sessions.
"There's something else," Jace said. He pulled the Subway Fang from its sheath — slowly, below the table level, just enough to expose the blade's upper third. The dark metal caught the Mess Hall's mana-light, and in the fluorescent glow, the damage was visible. Micro-fractures along the cutting edge, hairline cracks in the AGI-alignment enchantment's runic threading where the Sentinel's volcanic glass had stressed the blade past its design tolerance. The *Vermin Bane* passive still hummed, but the hum had a flutter in it — the enchantment's coherence degrading as the structural substrate it was bound to developed faults.
"The Fang is failing," he said. "Not dead — but it took hits against Level 8 and 10 targets that a Common-tier weapon wasn't built to absorb. Another three or four runs at this intensity and the blade's going to lose enchantment integrity entirely. I'll be swinging dead steel."
"Replacement cost for a comparable Common-tier finesse weapon?" Elara asked.
"Sixty to eighty credits if I go through the Underbazaar. More through Guild-certified vendors."
"And an *Uncommon*-tier finesse weapon?"
The number sat between them like a wall.
"Two-fifty. Minimum. Three hundred for anything with a useful enchantment profile." Jace sheathed the Fang. "At forty credits per contract, that's six to eight runs. Call it a month if we run twice a week, assuming every run is clean, no unexpected costs, no injuries that require purchased healing."
"A month for one weapon," Mara said. "For one person. Torrin needs gauntlet upgrades — the Iron Crawlers are cracking at the joints. I need a channeling focus to improve my sustained healing efficiency. Elara needs inscription materials constantly. And that's just the critical-path items."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Elara had been writing steadily. Now she set her pen down and turned the notebook so the others could see. She'd produced, in the ninety seconds since the conversation began, a table — neat, color-coded, the kind of document that an actuary would have spent an hour on and that Elara's INT of 16 generated as naturally as breathing.
**GEAR UPGRADE PRIORITY MATRIX**
| Item | Tier | Est. Cost | Priority | Timeline (current rate) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jace: Finesse weapon | Uncommon | 275 cr | Critical | 7 runs (~3.5 weeks) |
| Torrin: Combat gauntlets | Uncommon | 220 cr | High | 5.5 runs (~2.8 weeks) |
| Mara: Channeling focus | Uncommon | 180 cr | High | 4.5 runs (~2.3 weeks) |
| Elara: Inscription toolkit upgrade | Rare-mat components | 150 cr | Medium | 3.8 runs (~1.9 weeks) |
| Party: Consumable reserve (10 potions) | Common | 75 cr | Ongoing | 1.9 runs (~1 week) |
| Maintenance/replacement reserve | — | 50 cr/month | Ongoing | continuous |
**Total for critical + high priority: 675 credits**
**At 40 cr/person/contract: ~17 contracts**
**At 2 contracts/week: ~8.5 weeks**
"Eight months was my initial estimate, but that assumed we were running the Brine Warren at freshman rates," Mara said, reading the table. "The Ashfall contract is better. Eight and a half weeks for the critical items if we run twice a week and don't eat anything, don't replace worn-out gear, and don't encounter any surprises that cost us money."
"We'll encounter surprises," Torrin said.
"We always encounter surprises."
Jace looked at the numbers. Eight and a half weeks for the priority upgrades. That was two months of junior year spent grinding the same dungeon, twice a week, accumulating credits at a rate that the Guild's fee structure had been carefully calibrated to make *just* productive enough to keep provisionals running and *just* slow enough to keep them dependent on the system.
The machine was working exactly as designed. Feed the low-tier parties enough to survive. Take enough to ensure they couldn't break free. Let the higher-tier parties capture the real value, because higher-tier parties were the ones the Guild invested in, the ones that cleared the dungeons that mattered, the ones whose contributions to the civic defense justified the infrastructure costs. Normal-tier provisionals were rounding errors in the Guild's economic model — tolerated, processed, and forgotten.
Unless you found a way around the model.
"There's a man in the Dungeon Sector," Jace said. "Tam Corvin. Runs Corvin's Outfitting and Repair — the shop I worked at over winter break."
"The weaponsmith with the crushed knee," Elara said.
"Former [Skirmisher]. Level 14. He retired from active delving and built a business servicing the parties that didn't." Jace had been thinking about this since Tuesday — since the first Ashfall run had produced salvage that the Guild's processing system had valued at sixty-two credits and bought for twelve after fees. "Corvin mentioned something during winter break. A side arrangement he runs with certain parties. He called it *commission salvage*."
"Explain," Elara said, in the tone that meant she was already modeling the concept before he'd finished describing it.
"The Guild's salvage processing system is standardized. You bring in raw dungeon materials — chitin, metal, crystal, whatever — and they process it through certified channels, assess the value, deduct their fee, and pay you the remainder. The fee is twelve percent on top of the processing cost, which means the Guild takes nearly a quarter of every piece of salvage's market value before you see a credit."
"Standard extractive practice," Torrin said. The mining family's son recognizing the pattern.
"Corvin bypasses it. He has standing agreements with specific parties: instead of selling your salvage through the Guild, you bring it directly to him. He processes it himself — he has the [Weaponsmith] skills and the workshop equipment — and uses the raw materials to craft or repair gear that he sells through his shop. He pays the party a flat rate for the materials that's lower than the Guild's gross valuation but *higher* than the Guild's net payout, because he's cutting out the middleman fees."
"And the party gets—" Mara started.
"Cash. Or credit toward gear from his inventory. Or — and this is the part that matters — *custom work*." Jace leaned forward. "Corvin doesn't just buy materials. He takes *commissions*. You bring him specific dungeon drops — the right type of chitin, the right quality of fire-crystal, the right grade of slag-iron — and he builds what you need. His crafting costs are lower than retail because he's using materials you provided instead of materials he purchased. The savings get passed to you."
Elara's pen was moving before he finished. "Quantify. If we redirect our Ashfall salvage through Corvin instead of Guild processing — what's the net improvement?"
"Corvin's flat rate on raw materials is approximately sixty to sixty-five percent of Guild gross value. That's lower than the Guild's gross but higher than their net after fees. On Tuesday's sixty-two credits of Guild-valued salvage, we netted about thirty-eight after processing fees. Through Corvin, we'd net approximately forty."
"Two credits. That's negligible."
"On the standard salvage, yes. But Corvin's commission model changes the equation for *specific* materials. The Sentinel's volcanic glass, for example — the Guild processed those arm-crystal fragments as generic fire-aspected materials and valued them at commodity rate. But volcanic glass from a Level 10 Magma Sentinel is a *crafting-grade* material. In Corvin's hands, those fragments are worth three to four times the Guild's valuation because he can use them to forge fire-resistant weapon components that retail for Uncommon-tier prices."
The table went quiet. Elara's pen scratched.
"So instead of selling raw materials at commodity rate and using the credits to buy finished gear at retail price," Mara said slowly, "we sell *specific* raw materials to a craftsman who can convert them into the gear we actually need, at a fraction of the retail cost."
"We skip two steps in the supply chain. The Guild's processing margin and the retail markup. Corvin keeps his crafting margin, we keep the difference."
"How much difference?"
Jace pulled the napkin back. Added numbers. "For the Uncommon finesse weapon I need — retail through the Underbazaar is two-fifty to three hundred. Through Corvin, using commission salvage from our own runs to supply the primary materials, the crafting cost drops to approximately one-twenty to one-fifty. That's if I can source the right dungeon drops."
"Which means targeted farming," Elara said. She was ahead of him now — the model assembling itself in her mind, the variables clicking into place. "Instead of running Ashfall for general clearance credits, we identify the specific materials Corvin needs for each piece of commissioned gear and prioritize those drops during our runs. The contract payout becomes secondary to the material acquisition."
"The contract payout covers consumables and maintenance. The salvage covers gear upgrades. Two income streams instead of one."
Mara pulled the priority matrix toward her. Her lips moved — numbers, timelines, the quiet arithmetic of someone whose mother had taught her to read financial structures the way other parents taught their children to read books. Her pen found Elara's neat table and began annotating in the margins, her handwriting looser, more urgent.
"If commission salvage cuts the effective cost of priority upgrades by forty to fifty percent..." she murmured. The pen moved faster. "The eight-and-a-half-week timeline compresses to five weeks for critical items. Maybe four if we get efficient about targeting the right materials. That's—" She looked up. "That's still a month. But it's a month instead of two."
"And at the end of it," Jace said, "we have Uncommon-tier gear built specifically for our party composition, by a craftsman who understands what we need because I spent a winter cleaning his shop and learning his inventory."
The Mess Hall had emptied while they talked. The mana-lamps had shifted to their afternoon cycle — warmer, dimmer, the institutional lighting system's concession to the idea that not every hour required the same aggressive illumination. Through the windows, the Proving Grounds were visible — students running drills in the late-day light, the rhythm of training that never stopped because the world that demanded it never rested.
"I'll talk to Corvin tomorrow," Jace said. "Set up the commission arrangement. He'll want to see our salvage quality firsthand before he commits to custom work — he's too good a businessman to take our word for it. But I know his standards, and the Ashfall materials are clean."
"I want to see his workshop," Elara said. There was no request in her voice — only the certainty of someone for whom access to a professional crafting environment was a necessity, not a luxury. "If he's processing fire-aspected materials, his inscription workflow could inform my rune production. And if I can observe his enchantment-bonding technique—"
"One thing at a time. Commission salvage first. Workshop tours later."
Elara's pen tapped twice. "Noted. Under protest."
"Everything with you is under protest."
"Only the things that matter."
Torrin folded his napkin. The payment slip — forty credits, the fruit of eight hours in a fire dungeon — sat beside it, small and precise and insufficient.
"My mother sends money from the Holds," he said quietly. "Not much. She works the smelters. But she'd send more if I asked."
"Don't ask," Jace said.
"She'd want to."
"I know. And that's why you don't ask. We fund this ourselves. Through the work. Through the grind." He looked at each of them — Mara with her annotated matrix, Elara with her cost models, Torrin with his folded napkin and his mother's pride sitting behind his eyes like a weight he carried willingly. "The system's designed to keep us in place. The Guild takes its cut. The Academy takes its cut. The economy rewards people who are already ahead and taxes people who are behind. That's how it works."
He picked up the payment slip. Forty credits. The number that was supposed to define their ceiling.
"We work around it. The way we work around everything else."
The Mess Hall was quiet. The afternoon light slanted through the windows, catching the mana-particulate in the air and turning it to floating gold. Somewhere in the Dungeon Sector, Corvin's Outfitting & Repair was open for business, its shelves lined with the salvage of a hundred parties who'd learned the same lesson Jace was learning now: that the straight path was designed for someone else, and if you wanted to get where you were going, you had to find the roads that didn't appear on the map.
Forty credits.
It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough, not at this rate, not through the channels the system provided. But it was a starting point, and starting points were what [Vagabonds] turned into something else.
