Evelyn's eyes, burning with a fierce, frustrated light, held Lucas's gaze. The silence stretched, thick with the mist of the Shrouded Weald, broken only by the distant cry of some unseen creature. She was trapped, and they both knew it. The debt was a cage, and he held the key.
With a sharp, barely perceptible sigh of surrender, she gave a stiff nod. The gesture was a concession, a white flag raised in a war of leverage she had already lost.
"Fine, Thorne," she said, her voice tight. "You have a deal. We'll help you find your flower. But you get us the Elder Moss first. No tricks. You provide the strategy, my team provides the force. We are not your servants; we are your temporary allies. Nothing more."
"A transaction," Lucas agreed, his expression unreadable. "That's all this is."
They walked back to the Helios encampment together, a tense and silent truce hanging between them. The sight of their captain returning with the infamous "Quarry Ghost" sent a wave of shock and suspicion through the guild members. Whispers erupted, but a single, sharp glare from Evelyn silenced them.
She called a meeting in the command tent, the atmosphere thick with resentment.
"Thorne is with us for this objective," Evelyn announced, her tone leaving no room for argument. "He believes he has a solution to our problem with the Grove Guardian. His plan will be our plan. You will follow his strategic directives as if they were my own. Understood?"
There were grumbles of protest, but no one dared to defy her directly. Lucas, standing beside the tactical map, cut straight to the point.
"I need your full mission log on the Guardian," he said. "Every failed attempt, every attack pattern, every theory you've tested."
Evelyn's second-in-command, a gruff warrior named Marcus, reluctantly handed over a data slate. "It's all in there," he muttered. "Not that it'll do you any good. The thing's invincible."
Lucas ignored the comment, his eyes scanning the data. As he read, his [System Insight] went to work, cross-referencing their notes, analyzing the patrol routes marked on the map, and searching for the anomaly they had missed.
"You're right, it is invincible," Lucas said after a moment, looking up from the slate. He tapped a point on the map, far from the Guardian's location. "Because you've been attacking the wrong target."
He focused his talent on the map itself, a complex web of player-made annotations. The green text shimmered into view, connecting dots no one else could see.
[Hidden Trait: Symbiotic Root System. The Grove Guardian draws its power and invulnerability from three 'Heartroots' hidden throughout the Shrouded Weald. Destroying all three roots simultaneously will trigger a 10-minute vulnerability window on the main body.]
"The Guardian isn't a single entity," Lucas explained, his voice calm and authoritative. "It's a symbiotic organism. We've been trying to chop down a tree by hitting its leaves. We need to find and destroy its roots."
He pointed to three separate, heavily guarded locations on the map, miles apart. "Your data shows that powerful undead lieutenants patrol these three areas. You thought they were just random elites. They're not. They are the guardians of the Heartroots."
The air in the tent grew still. The Helios members stared at the map, then back at Lucas, their skepticism warring with the undeniable logic of his explanation. He had found a path where they had only seen a wall.
"Our mission is no longer a single, head-on assault," Lucas stated, taking command of the room. "It's a coordinated, three-pronged strike. We split into three teams. Each team will locate and destroy one Heartroot. We have to strike at the same time. Once the roots are down, we have exactly ten minutes to converge on the Grove Guardian and kill it before its invulnerability returns."
The plan was elegant, precise, and incredibly dangerous. Splitting their forces in the treacherous Weald was a massive risk.
Evelyn looked from the map to Lucas, her expression grim. She had to place her trust, and the lives of her guildmates, in the hands of her greatest rival. It was a transaction not of goods or services, but of something far more valuable.
"Alright, Thorne," she said, her voice firm. "We'll do it your way."
She turned to her guild. "Marcus, you lead Alpha team. I'll lead Beta. Thorne... Lucas... will lead Gamma with Kael. We move out at dawn."