The market square of Oakhaven's Lower Ring was a chaotic vortex of nocturnal commerce. Under the greasy illumination of fat-tailed tallow torches, vendors bawled out prices for salted river fish, dried tubers, and mismatched pieces of boiled leather armor. The air was thick, a suffocating mixture of coal smoke, roasted turnip grease, and the sharp, metallic tang of cheap ale spilled over damp cobblestones.
Ethan moved through the press of bodies like a ripple through dark water.
His physical baseline was wound to a terrifying peak, but he kept his head low, his eyes fixed on the dirty stones ahead of his boots, and his fingers loosely clutching the strap of his satchel. He was hyper-aware of everything around him—the precise weight of the five silver coins shifting in his palm, the rhythmic clink of the town guards' halberds two streets over, and the frantic heartbeat of a cutpurse who had been trailing him for the last three minutes.
[Target: Low-Ring Cutpurse (Level 2).]
[Threat Level: Entirely Negligible.]
Ethan didn't give the thief the satisfaction of a glance. He turned sharply down a narrow alleyway flanking the eastern edge of the market, his boots deliberately slipping slightly on the wet gravel to maintain his clumsy scholar facade. The moment he crossed into the deep shadow of an overhanging timber roof, the thief struck.
A hand darted toward the leather pouch in Ethan's hand, while a rusted iron shiv flashed toward his ribs—a standard, brutal mugging meant to silence a weak target.
To an ordinary Level 1 novice, it would have been a lethal encounter. To Ethan, the thief's movements were agonizingly slow, like an insect trapped in thick honey.
Ethan didn't use his maximized strength to strike back; a broken corpse in a Lower Ring alley would draw the town vanguard's attention. Instead, he simply twisted his torso an inch to the left, letting the shiv pass harmlessly through the loose folds of his muddy Westmere robes. At the same time, he extended his foot half an inch, placing it directly in the thief's path.
The Level 2 cutpurse tripped over the unyielding obstacle, his momentum sending him crashing face-first into a stack of rotting wooden crates.
"Ah! In the heavens!" Ethan let out a loud, high-pitched gasp of simulated terror, stumbling backward against the opposite stone wall. "A thief! Please, I have nothing!"
The thief scrambled out of the broken wood, his nose bleeding profusely from the impact, his eyes wide with a mixture of confusion and frustration. He looked at Ethan, who was trembling realistically against the wall, clutching his silver coins to his chest like a frightened child. Deciding the noisy, pathetic scholar wasn't worth the risk of an approaching guard patrol, the thief spat a mouthful of blood and vanished back into the market crowd.
Ethan's trembling stopped instantly. He wiped a stray splinter of crate wood from his sleeve, his expression flattening back into cold calculation.
[Warning: Stored EXP Reservoir: 994,200[span_2](start_span)[span_2](end_span).]
[Time remaining until energetic decay: 29 days, 23 hours.]
The countdown was ticking inside his mind. He couldn't afford to waste a single night. He needed a Source Anchor—either a Tier 1 Rift Core or an official Guild Resonance Stone. Accessing a guild stone would require registering with the local mercenary or adventurer factions, which meant subjecting himself to official appraisal tools that might pierce his system's concealment protocols. That left only one viable option: he had to find a rogue, unregistered Tier 1 Rift Core out in the local wilderness before the town vanguard locked it down.
And the only place to buy that kind of illegal, high-risk information was *The Broken Anchor*.
Ethan turned on his heel, navigating the twisting arteries of the Lower Ring until the heavy timber facade of the tavern loomed out of the fog. The muffled roar of drunken brawls, clinking pewter mugs, and coarse laughter bled through the thick oak doors.
He took a deep breath, forcing his shoulders to slump and his face to grow pale once more. He pushed the heavy door open, stepping out of the cold night and into a smoke-filled room where the true rules of Oakhaven's underworld were written in blood and silver.