In his lab, Ren sat down and flicked open his inbox.

  It was jammed—overflowing with messages from guilds clawing over each other for the next batch of fire-resistance potions. Officers begging to get back on the list. Quartermasters asking for updates. Raiders trying to bribe him with credits, promises, or “exposure.”

  Ren didn’t even roll his eyes. He just stared at the screen for a moment, thinking,

  ‘It’s not gonna be ready anytime soon.’

  He had the reagents—enough to start a small revolution or a highly illegal skincare line. But time? That was still his limiter. He’d just burned two hours trying to level with the Scrap Rats and had another brewing shift coming up. And every potion took real, honest effort.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the world had caught on.

  Day 3 had hit. The NPC vendors had restocked their standard 50-potion allotment. Exactly 50. Not 51. Not 60.

  Just 50.

  And this time, the general store had turned into a warzone. Not with weapons, but with shouting.

  The Prosperous Guild, Silverlight Division, Ashen Bloom, and two smaller guilds had all shown up at the same time. The moment the vendor opened, the clickfest began. Yelling broke out. Accusations of macro abuse flew. A guy from Prosperous actually tried to slide-tackle someone away from the stall.

  That was when the guards stepped in.

  No swords. Just presence. Just warnings.

  Everyone shut up real fast—because they knew what was worse than dying in Towerbound.

  Jail.

  If you fought in a safe zone and got caught, you didn’t just get a warning.

  You got twenty-four hours.

  Not a ban. Not a logout penalty.

  You had to sit in a jail cell. For 24 hours.

  For a real-time, in-game, twenty-four hours.

  No logout, if you did that time didn’t count. No sleeping it off. Just a square room and one very judgmental NPC.

  It was a punishment so brutal it made people really wary. You could hear people in dorms whispering about it like it was a real prison sentence.

  So yeah, no one got violent. But plenty of alliances cracked over those 50 potions.

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  Ren leaned back and stretched.

  ‘Let ‘em fight over scraps. I’m the guy with the full cauldron.’

  Because yeah, those 50 potions got split up between a whole bunch of desperate guilds that managed to squeeze their way into the NPC shop before it was cleaned out. If just one guild had gotten their hands on the whole batch? Sure. That could’ve been another serious attempt. A full run, maybe even a real shot at the first clear.

  But split up?

  What’s six or twelve potions going to do?

  That fire resistance wasn’t optional. You needed it on for the entire dungeon run—not just one boss, not just one “uh-oh” moment, and definitely not for 20% of the encounter. If the buff ran out mid-fight, your entire front line turned into roasted meat skewers.

  Everyone knew that.

  Which meant the guilds were already eyeing each other sideways. Accusations of sabotage. Panic buying. Secret backroom deals. It was starting to feel less like a game and more like a stock market with fire damage.

  And somewhere in the middle of it all…

  Ren, brewing quietly in his cozy lab, humming a song about cheese.

  ***

  One unintended—but totally predictable—side effect of Ren sweeping the auction house clean and demanding both silver and reagents for his potions was simple:

  Guilds started hoarding.

  Big guilds. Small guilds. Wannabe guilds. Every single one of them.

  They weren’t stupid. They’d seen his post—the list of “acceptable reagents” that he would trade for potion batches. And that list? It wasn’t short. It had every ingredient you might guess could be in a fire-resistant draft… along with plenty of others.

  Gloomsprite Dust. Emberbark. Dewroot. Ashvine. Glowberry Extract. Paleplume. Even Ghoulwort and Voidcap Spores. Nobody could tell what was a real part of the fire potion recipe and what was just extra fluff—because Ren had included ingredients used for several different potion types.

  But that was the genius of it. He never confirmed which ones mattered.

  So everyone just assumed all of them might be important.

  Now, every halfway decent guild had told their members: Don’t sell anything. Not a mushroom. Not a sliver of bark. Not a droplet of jelly. Reagents were officially guild property now. Hoard it. Hide it. Track it.

  The only stuff still landing on the auction house came from desperate newbies or oblivious solo players who didn’t realize that every weird flower they were selling was suddenly worth its weight in silver. And as soon as it was listed? Scalpers and black-market types snatched it up.

  The result? Prices had detonated.

  Even if someone could brew fire-resistant potions—say, a real level 1 alchemist? It’d cost them nearly a full silver per potion in reagents alone. Assuming they could even find the ingredients.

  ***

  Lore Cards had jumped in value too, thanks to Ren’s sly insistence that every potion trade come with a set as a bonus. That little clause—tacked on casually, almost like an afterthought—had quietly flipped the local economy on its head.

  At first, it had just been a clever perk. Something small. A way to stack up cards he knew would matter later.

  But now?

  Now it was a full-blown market shift.

  Sure, his days of hoarding Lore Cards for pocket change were over—but it didn’t really matter. He already had all the foundational cards he needed, plus duplicates from every trade set that rolled in. At this point, it felt like the entire Greenwild Cross was unintentionally funneling Lore Cards straight to him.

  Ren had become the center of a weird little trade empire.

  All because of one potion.

  And with only 50 fire-resistant potions appearing in the NPC shop per day—and those being snapped up faster than dorm gossip—Ren was still the only consistent supplier in town.

  Which meant…

  The Lantern light Dungeon was functionally locked behind his alchemy bench.

  So what were the guilds doing?

  They weren’t quitting.

  They were adapting.

  If they couldn’t run it now, they’d grind levels.

  If they couldn’t buy potions, they’d trade herbs.

  If they couldn’t clear it, they’d prep for the next best chance.

  Ren had changed the rules.

  ***