The Legendary Fool

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As it turned out, the Neem Guild’s objectives were far smaller in scale in comparison to what Tom had feared. They were primarily a single floor guild, their operations limited to the Nexus City: Bulwark and a few other Nexus Cities which they either felt threatened by or wanted to challenge and claim for themselves in the future if the stars aligned.

But merely because they were smaller in scale did not mean that their modus operandi could not threaten Tom’s group. As it turned out, price gouging on artifacts wasn’t the only way the Neem Guild convinced new arrivals to the city to join their guild. There were a dozen other ways, some overt while others were subtler, covert ways like the price gouging on artifacts.

As it turned out, even most of the independent climbers within the Nexus City: Bulwark had done business with the Neem Guild and to keep their favor, they had to avoid teaming up with other parties or offering them support or knowledge as to what they could expect from the Nexus Quests.

It was a pretty devious move to pull, but didn’t quite cross into viciousness. At first, Tom couldn’t understand why climbers who had reached the pinnacle of power and entered the tower to ascend, some of which had to have been in the neem guild, would act like this. But, as it turned out, as far as Rowan knew, every member of the Neem Guild’s upper echelon, including its founding members, were born on the first floor.

They only wished to preserve the way of life as they knew it, to eke out a city for themselves and offer stability to their people. A noble cause, at least on a surface level.

The Neem Guild was nobler than the Shadow Guild that Zeth had run back on Artezia’s surface. And few, if any, new recruits left the Neem Guild shortly after joining. For the Neem Guild was generous in showering recruits with resources that would aid them tremendously, from an entire set of artifact armor to loaner sets of common and even uncommon cards to access to in-house alchemists that offered essential potions at discount rates.

What the recruits didn’t know as they climbed up the ranks of the Neem Guild was that if there came a day where they want to either leave the territory the Guild operates within or have decided to ascend the tower and seek both greater power and glory, they would have to pay back the sect for every card fragment that had been invested into them along with a high interest levied upon the sum from their date of joining.

If one didn’t intend to leave the Neem Guild, it was an amount that they were never expected to pay back.

And from Rowan’s understanding, a large portion of the guild members saw no problem in staying. It was, after all, their home.

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Funnily enough, it was Rowan who had a desire to lead the Neem Guild to greater heights. Once it became his turn to lead the Neem Guild, his ambition would no longer be contained to modest aspirations like claiming nearby nexus cities for themselves, but instead, he would direct his gaze towards the skies.

The members of the Neem Guild that turned their backs on the organization were deemed traitors under one pretext or the other, with allegations of betrayal and claims of joining rival guilds and in a surprising display of viciousness, were hunted down by the upper echelon of the Neem Guild themselves.

It was both a display of power and the Guild’s rules, that were few but considered sacrosanct. To break the Neem Guild’s rules was to betray it, but the debt they asked for was not something that was repayable on an individual level.

Grimly enough, Tom could even see why such a rule was imposed. If the Neem Guild’s objective was to reign over their corner of the world on the first floor, then they could not afford to have their members ditching them for higher pursuits. There were bound to be those that stumbled upon a yearning for a higher purpose, a goal beyond just existing as a cog in the wheel of an organization and once it struck them, the answer was obvious.

What Tom couldn’t stand was how they stifled and crushed ambitions out of those that decided their paths lay in a different direction, for that very opportunity had been offered to him not too long ago and he had embraced it.

If the Neem Guild stayed out of his way, then so be it. Tom couldn’t fix the world of Artezia and he wasn’t even sure if it was his to fix. But if they asked to recruit him, his answer would be a firm no.

How the Neem Guild would react to such a refusal, Tom couldn’t say based on Rowan’s memories alone. Knowledgeable he may be, Rowan was also inexperienced and he was sure that the Neem Guild’s true leader would find his ambitions for the higher floors naive.

Rowan’s thought process couldn’t speak for the entirety of the Neem Guild. And considering their tendency to lock talent away behind a conniving lure, he wasn’t sure if there was a way to avoid their attention.

Using Maya until he found the location of a nearby Nexus City was one option, but there was no guarantee if the next Guild he ran into would be limited to the first floor. The one advantage he had with the Neem Guild was that they had no intention to follow him into the next floor, though Tom wasn’t sure if inter-floor communication was even possible; it was still a worthwhile precaution to keep in mind.

Every day in the Nexus City cost him money and there had to be a reason why people agreed to pay in card fragments just to stay in the city. Whatever the city’s walls were protecting them from, Tom wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out just yet.

The most valuable information he’d gleaned from the Astral Gold star had to be the fact that now Tom not only knew the names of the individuals that made up the Neem Guild’s upper echelon and younger generation of talents, he also had an idea of their personalities and to a lesser extent, habits and in a few rare cases, their secrets, too.

Back in the real world, Tom’s lips had curled up into a smile as he had walked past Rowan.

He needed a new sword technique to go with Warrior’s Shardsong and thanks to Rowan’s Astral Gold star, Tom knew just whom to ask.

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