POV : PROSPEROUS GUILD
The battlefield was a mess of flying spells and hacking blades, but Gareth Ironwall’s voice still cut through it like a brick through glass.
“Come on, everybody, fight!”
As the main tank, it was his job to keep the raid stable. Keep everyone alive. Keep Victor looking good. And he did that job well—even if deep down, he wanted to throttle half the raid team and maybe Victor himself.
Victor was here, and not just here—he was front and center, taking all the last hits, wearing the best gear the guild had in stock, and swinging around like some heroic badass. Was he a good player? Not particularly. Was he a good guild leader? Absolutely not.
So why was he leading?
One reason: his daddy was the majority shareholder of Prosperous Guild Holdings.
That’s it. That’s the story.
It wasn’t skill. It wasn’t game sense. It was nepotism, pure and simple. But that didn’t matter, not in Prosperous. Because Prosperous wasn’t built on friendship and fuzzy feelings. It was a business. A profitable one. Everyone got paid—weekly credit payouts, bonuses, equipment. It was a job, and jobs paid.
Victor was already level 7, gunning for level 8, hard. They’d heard the same rumors everyone else had: that Lanternlight Dungeon opened at level 8, and the real leaderboard started at level 10. Victor wanted to be the first name on it. Not because he earned it, but because it would look good.
Towerbound had its quirks. Some called them features. Others—like Gareth—called them bullshit.
The game gave 50% of the EXP for every kill to the person who landed the last hit. Not the one who tanked the damage. Not the one who healed the bleeding DPS through a firestorm. Just the one who threw the final punch, or spell, or arrow.
And that’s why Victor, as a mage, was racking up levels like a vacuum cleaner on turbo. He just had to time his fireballs to hit right as the enemy’s health dropped low. Boom. Last hit. Big EXP.
It wasn’t skill. It wasn’t strategy. It was pure cherry-picking.
Gareth Ironwall, Prosperous Guild’s main tank, knew this better than anyone. He’d stand there, shield up, armor cracked, pulling mobs off Victor’s back while the guy picked off every target like he was tapping bugs in a gacha game.
And of course, his girlfriend Adhir was right next to him, all smiles and passive-aggressive support. Not doing the best job healing. Not doing the best job buffing. Just being his number-one cheerleader and reminding everyone with her presence that Victor was the main character in this sad little play.
She got her gear upgrades first. She got her say in every raid. She was the guild’s unofficial second-in-command, not because she had game knowledge, but because she and Victor were glued at the hip.
Meanwhile, everyone else?
They fought in silence. They gritted their teeth. They obeyed the system.
Because Prosperous Guild wasn’t full of fools. This wasn’t their first game. They knew how it worked.
Towerbound might be new, but the game behind the game wasn’t.
You needed to level fast. Get the best gear. Control the economy. Craft ahead of the curve. Lock down every dungeon, every resource, every first clear. Guilds like Prosperous weren’t standing around with their thumbs up their asses going derp derp derp, I wonder if we need an alchemist?
No. They knew exactly what they needed.
They just hadn’t found anyone who could pass the damn test yet.
Still, even if they hadn’t secured a real alchemist yet, Prosperous wasn’t completely without its crown jewels. Adhir—Victor’s girlfriend, and perpetual priority recipient—was well on her way to becoming the world’s highest-level cleric.
She didn’t need to be the best healer. She just needed to look the part. And Prosperous made sure of that.
Every piece of high-tier cleric gear that dropped? Straight into her bag. Shields, robes, trinkets, staffs—if it sparkled and had a holy symbol on it, it was hers. The rest of the clerics in the guild could rot in their starter gloves for all the leadership cared.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
***
POV : ALCHEMY GUILD
Ren moved fast.
After another successful brewing session, he slipped right back into the auction house.
But this time, he wasn’t hunting herbs.
He was hunting cards.
Cards were a weird little mechanic in Towerbound—drops that showed beautiful little scenes from the Tower.
At first, players thought they were cool.
But when it became clear they didn’t grant stats, buffs, or cool gear, the market had flooded with them.
In fact, for the non-humanoid creatures, cards were one of the only things that regularly dropped.
Cards were sold for dirt cheap.
Practically trash.
Especially because each card took up an inventory slot—unless you had multiples of the same one, which would automatically stack.
Space was precious to newbies.
No one wanted to waste precious inventory room on “pretty pictures.”
Ren, however, knew something the rest of them didn’t.
If you collected a full set of 100 unique lore cards, you unlocked a third profession: Archaeologist.
Most players only had two classes—their main combat class, and a secondary life profession like blacksmithing or alchemy.
But a third?
A third profession was god-tier.
And Archaeology wasn’t some useless side hustle either.
It was critical.
It gave hidden tips about dungeons, weak points of monsters, and rare item recipes.
Some raids were impossible without an Archaeologist in the party.
Like the Level 26 Harpy God Dungeon—where you needed to forge a Hellfire Spike to kill the boss.
No Archaeologist?
No Spike.
No victory.
And even if someone told you about it, it wouldn’t help—you needed the profession buff from actually having an Archaeologist in party.
Ren knew this.
Which was why he wasn’t just buying random lore cards.
He was sweeping everything.
Cheap bundles of ten? Bought.
Stacks of duplicates? Bought.
Cards no one wanted? Bought.
He didn’t even care about duplicates—he could sort and trade them later.
Prices were laughable—only a few copper per bundle.
Players were practically begging someone to take them off their hands.
And Ren was happy to oblige.
But it didn’t take long for the scalpers to notice.
At first, they thought he was just an idiot wasting coin.
Then, when other randoms started panic-buying anything related to reagents or cards, they realized maybe—just maybe—there was a deeper play going on.
By then it was too late.
Ren had bought out 90% of the lore card listings on the auction house before prices even started ticking up.
He didn’t care about scalper tears.
He cared about one thing:
Money.
While everyone else fought over healing potions and fire resistance reagents, Ren was quietly laying the foundation for something far more dangerous.
A third profession months ahead of schedule?
Yeah.
Game breaking.
—
Ren returned to the dormitory, hauling a ridiculous number of cards in his inventory.
Ren took a break again from the game again and passed his helmet to somebody else.
He hadn’t gotten a rest notice yet. But he knew his body. He needed a break.
Sure, he was allowed up to eighteen hours of in-game play because he was a leader—everyone in the dorm had agreed to that.
But when he needed a break for things like sorting out lore cards, managing auction listings, or just doing inventory math, he could do that better in real life, using the in-game companion app, just like he could shop the auction house without fully logging into the game.
He passed the sweaty, still-warm helmet to the next player—a sleepy-eyed guy from the bunk across the room—and made sure the handoff was smooth.
They were now about two hours ahead of schedule.
A little messy, but manageable.
That was why that shoddy cardboard schedule they had taped up by the fridge wasn’t perfect—but it kind of worked.
Ren yawned, grabbed a half-flat bottle of soda, and sat down at the grimy table to get back to work.
Even off the battlefield, he had plenty of grinding to do.
And he wasn’t about to waste a single second.
He hadn’t even bothered to sort them at the auction house—he’d just bought everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Now came the tedious part.
Sprawled out on his narrow bunk, he opened his inventory menu and started dragging cards out onto the screen.
The first few were familiar.
“Founding of Greenwild Cross.”
“Birth of the Mana Trees.”
“First Clash of the Ember Knights.”
Common, early-game lore.
The kind of stuff even players at level 1 or 2 could find from random drops.
He chuckled as he kept flipping them over, card after card, sorting them into neat little stacks.
Some cards he had six or seven copies of.
Others, only one.
He wasn’t disappointed though.
He had always known there was no way to complete the set right now.
A full set of 100 unique lore cards was impossible at this stage.
Many of the rare cards only dropped in high-level zones.
Level 10 dungeons.
Level 20 elite camps.
Places that no one in the world had even sniffed at yet.
You couldn’t brute-force it either.
Cards had regional restrictions—certain ones only dropped in specific maps, and most players weren’t leaving Greenwild Cross anytime soon.
Still, by the time he finished sorting, Ren counted 43 unique cards.
Forty-three.
Almost halfway there.
And he hadn’t even left the starter region yet.
He sat back, feeling a slow, satisfied grin stretch across his face.
‘This is going to be beautiful later.’
Even if it took him a month or two to grind out the rest of the set, that was fine.
He added buy lore cards to the dormitories cardboard posting.
He would have something nobody else would even think about until it was way too late.
Archaeology wasn’t glamorous.
Wasn’t flashy.
It wouldn’t win you fights.
But it would win wars.
And Ren had plans.
Big plans.
He tapped the “Stack All Duplicates” button, neatly consolidating the extra cards to save space.
Then, after a moment’s thought, he tucked the duplicates into the warehouse he’d rented.
‘Might as well hoard these too. They’re going to be worth a fortune when people finally wake up.’
He logged off the auction app, leaned back against the bunk wall, and stretched.
The Scrap Rats still had another couple hours before shift change.
And Ren?
Ren was already twenty steps ahead.
And climbing.
—
