The Devil's Cage

Broker!

Kieran frowned when he saw the sender on his PM tab.

Towards the person who showed extreme hostility and even used his life as leverage to collaborate with the killer players, Kieran couldn’t stand it anymore.

If the chances presented itself, he would kill Broker without a doubt.

Though, it still didn’t stop him from checking the message content. He was curious to see what Broker wrote.

"Monien: Buying all your rewards with 30% market price."

Kieran was stunned by the out-of-the-blue content of the message.

"Shameless bastard! Being the mastermind who created all the trouble, now he wants to take advantage of your misfortunes?"

Lawless scolded angrily after Kieran revealed the message content to him.

"Taking advantage of my misfortunes? His goal is not only that! He is declaring that he and Extremus have started their close collaboration, so he has gotten the address of all the killer players that I killed. If I don’t rely on him, I couldn’t even withdraw all the spoils of war!"

Kieran analyzed with a calm manner.

"I can go in your place!" Lawless said straight out.

He didn’t mean anything else, just a friendly thought for a friend. Though maybe because of this, Kieran felt even more that he couldn’t agree to that.

If it was someone else with some hidden agenda, Kieran wouldn’t mind using him to test the waters, but because Kieran was certain Broker had set up his sources around the locations, waiting for him or the ones related to him to fall into the trap.

The 30% market price purchase was a hoax. Only an idiot would believe what Broker said under such circumstances.

"That is a trap!" Kieran said.

"But just because of the traps, surely it doesn’t mean you have to give up the rewards, right?"

Lawless looked at Kieran with an astonished look.

After mixing with Kieran for a long period of time, Lawless knew what kind of person Kieran was. No matter how it looked, he surely didn’t look like one who gave up his rewards like that.

"Give up? No way! I’ll just take them out at a later time!" Kieran said loud and clear.

How would a scrooge give up his own properties? It was not even possible if one would kill him!

"Other than that, 30%? Don’t underestimate me! What I want is..."

Kieran said with a cold smile. The last part of the sentence was too soft even for Lawless, but Kieran’s tone struck a shiver in Lawless’s heart.

Lawless could guess what Kieran wanted to do.

"Be careful! That bastard Broker is not easy to deal with!"

Lawless didn’t dissuade Kieran but instead he reminded him.

"Got it! So I need more accumulation of strength, make myself even stronger!"

Kieran nodded.

Against Broker the cunning bastard, Kieran could never be too safe.

Then the topic switched back to Lawless’s explanation that he promised.

"This is something that happened outside the game. I am hitman, a real hit man. But after years of killing, I had gotten fed up of my job. I wanted to find a place and start over, but the organization sent Golden Canary’s brother after me... After a harsh battle, I killed her brother, and the organization task force even blasted the whole organization to hell. I got what I had longed for the most, freedom!"

Lawless tried to explained in a calm manner, but regardless of his efforts, the shaking in his tone was unmistakable.

"Just that I didn’t thought someone would survive that and seek revenge against me... What a lousy retribution!" Lawless exclaimed.

Kieran looked at him. Even with the system blur, he could tell that Lawless was behaving oddly. Lawless also seemingly hid away some other details, but Kieran didn’t press on.

Everyone had matters they wished not to discuss. Lawless choosing to be honest with him in this matter was enough to make Kieran feel surprised.

After all, he never thought he would spill his life matters to anyone in the game, even a little bit.

So, Kieran switched the topic again.

"A total of 18 Magic rank items, help me sell them! I’m looking for horse-riding skill and if there’s some other skill that could increase my own defense, it would be great! Oh, other than that, I need you to introduce me a player that you can trust in repairing armor."

Kieran pointed at his rewards from the previous dungeon and stated his request briefly.

Riding skill was not only to compensate [Night Owl Token] but to deal with many more situations. Same went for the skill to increase his own defense.

Although [Primus Scale] and [Body of Evil] granted Kieran a decent defence, but both of them had obvious disadvantages. The former had a time limit and the latter was restrained by holy energy, especially items of blessing and holy artifacts which would even cause extra damage, it couldn’t fulfill Kieran’s request in dealing with all sorts of sudden situation.

A lone wolf needed to attend to all aspects of a matter.

Kieran had a deep understanding of this.

"Selling the items and riding skills are not a problem, just that I can’t guarantee the skills that enhance your defense, I’ll try my best. As for armor repairing, you can find Blacksmith. At first, she relied on repairing armor for players to earn her gemstones-embedding fees. Though your luck is really out of this world! Unlike me when I started, I prepared so long for a couple of times but was sent into a incompatible time period in the dungeon world. My strength was halved and my preparations were in vain!"

Lawless exclaimed once more when he saw all those Magic equipments.

"I’d like to listen to more interesting experience and take it as a warning to myself!"

Kieran said with a smile.

Lawless straightaway pointed up a middle finger to Kieran but he continued talking.

When Lawless was still a newbie, he equipped himself with a ton of electromagnetic and laser weapons but was thrown back to the middle ages. Another time was when Lawless had to foil a robot uprising with a holy sword.

After Kieran listened to Lawless’s story, he was glad he joined the game late and had some veterans to share their pioneer experience with him. He became more determined to build his strength in all aspects after that because he never knew what would be waiting for him in a strange new dungeon world.

The chit-chat went on for another hour or so. After making an appointment for their next contact, Lawless left.

Kieran then opened his PM tab and contacted Blacksmith, but she was not online.

"2567: Found an intact ruby."

"2567: I have an armor, mantle to repair."

After Kieran left his message, he sent over the screenshots of [Paul’s Conceal] and [Crow’s Black Feather] and waited patiently for a reply.

He believed Blacksmith would contact him even for that intact ruby.

Kieran was not sitting around doing nothing while waiting for the reply. He took up the [Shop] paper and pen and started scribbling on it.

The doubts that had been troubling his heart for a long time could be solved now.

Soon, following his pencil drawing around the paper, two round circles with different sizes were drawn. The small one was within the big and an abstract scorpion icon was drawn inside the smaller circle. Then between the space of the big and small circles, runes were drawn on it, beginning with a forward pentagram and ending with a reverse pentagram.

The Grand Demonic Heptagram!

"I see!"

Kieran could carefully read the magic circle he had drawn on relying Pro level [Mystical Knowledge].

Some questions that he couldn’t figure out before were solved following his realization.

In fact, the whole secret of Grand Demonic Heptagram presented itself before Kieran, but still he frowned hard over it.

Translator’s Thoughts

Dess Dess

I guess this would be the most satisfying chapter ever? Cept for the cliff lol so much revelation!