章節 9: Hidden Twilight

{14 April 2048}

A young man scrutinized his surroundings, trying to take in as much as he could. The young man seemed to be wearing a cheap rip-off tuxedo, possibly with the intent to make people believe he was quite rich. Donning a White Reaper mask he picked up from a stall which cost him less than [10 credits], he seemed quite eager to go somewhere. The same way as a kid would love to go out to play, alas the only difference was that the young man seemed to be heading towards a rather "questionable" part of the town.

The young man navigated his way through the narrow alleys as he made his way toward an inn named 'The Golden Goose'.

From afar, the inn looked quite shabby, unkempt, and run down.

"Quite a wonderful-looking place, it suits its name perfectly!", The young man snickered to himself in irony.

Walking into the inn, the young man went over to the reception and demanded, "Give me a cheap for the night. I don't have much money with me so I'll do with the one in the basement."

Winking at the young lady sitting at the reception he noticed that her eyebrow was raised slightly, albeit only for a second before it returned to normal.

"Sure, help yourself, take third stairs from the second right while you go down this hallway."

"Alright, take care", giving a cursory nod at her, The Young Man minded his own business and trudged his way through this damp and old passage.

After arriving at the stairs and walking down into the basement, he found a wooden door that for some reason seemed quite sturdy.

'I must say the enchantments here are pretty good though.'

Tapping on the door 6 times, then giving a loud bang on it once, he uttered the words

"The stars guide us, The Shadows hide our secrets."

The door was then opened and inside it, could one see several men in black suits, armed with weapons such as Swords, Axes, etc each of which seemed quite well made.

'Those guards and their weapons are all at the [C] or [B] ranks probably.'

Weapons were also ranked from [G] to [SSS] just like the ranks of evolution for an awakened, minus the fact that there weren't any subranks in them.

'It seems they're guarding it pretty well after all.'

The young man followed one of the guards who lead him towards some kind of a magic circle embedded in the ground. Once the young man stood at the center of the circle, the guard activated a switch nonchalantly which made the whole circle start glowing.

The young man's vision was completely filled with brightness. Once his eyes adjusted to the light, he found out that he was in some sort of marketplace. Normally, there would have been nothing wrong with this. Nothing wrong, if most of the people roaming in here weren't all wearing masks coupled with the fact that their dressings all screamed out the words: 'FILTHY RICH'.

Shaking his head after, once again lamenting about how he was so poor, Asher started to randomly walk down the road, with seemingly no destination at all.

"Should I try selling some information first, or should I just go for the casino? Wait, I'd need at least a minimum amount of money to even start my path to success in the casino.

So.. information it is."

This place Asher was currently in was known by several names such as the [Hidden Twilight], the [Arcane Exchange], or simply the [Underground].

While what was going on might seem alarmingly suspicious to a normal individual and even illegal to most of the common denizens of this world, that was actually not the case at all.

As a matter of fact, several of the people that could be found in this place were often some top-ranked players from those major Guilds in the top 10.

The [Hidden Twilight] was a place that was used to facilitate in dealings that could not be done under the watchful eyes of the Association. The [Hidden Twilight] used several enchantments, spells and various other methods to block off all signals in this area. This meant that communication from the outside world would also not work in here.

Why was this done? Obviously so that, even if the Association was tracking you, throw your smartwatch, they can do nothing. Now, this doesn't mean that the Association "does" track people through smartwatches. This was simply a precaution, in case the Association ever tried to do such a thing. This also didn't mean that the Association didn't know what the [Hidden Twilight] truly was. They knew and they acquiesced to it, not officially though. You might even find some people from the Association in here, undercover of course!

Other than being able to buy and sell information, this place even dealt with the trading of [A] or even [S] ranked weapons. Not to forget the fact that this was one of the places you come to if you wished to have someone assassinated.

Overall, it was the best place for me to earn a lot of money, easily, and safely, whilst also keeping my identity safe.

Having decided on my objective to sell some information from the novel, I made my way towards some booths with several counters outside them.