“I am Phantom," he said. "Now, hand over the package so I can inspect its contents.”

Alan hurriedly did so, excited to see what was inside. A message popped up once he transferred it to Phantom.

Phantom carefully took out a metal key, similar to the one Alan recently found. As soon as the key was near the small black box an opening appeared, and Phantom inserted the key into the slot. Phantom then removed the top of the box revealing… an unmarked bottle of amber liquid, which Phantom took out and examined with a joyous smile on his face.

“Um, what is that?” Alan asked, curious.

“Why, the finest Haxlardian whiskey, of course! Only 250 bottles of this stuff is made a year, and it’s illegal to sell it outside of the Haxlard Empire.”

“Wait, so I braved the Undercity for… a bottle of liquor? How much is it even worth?”

“Hmm? Oh, about 15,000 credits, maybe. It’s finding the stuff that’s so damned hard.”

15,000! I bribed those guards 20,000 credits, each! Then spent 60,000 to teleport it up here!

Yes… it seems this quest wasn’t actually as important as I thought it was… Maybe… Well, we’ll see.

“Wait, you know that it wasn’t even yours to pick up, right? Some other person came to pick it up right after me!” Alan said.

“Interesting," Phantom said, examining another recruit. "I’ll have you tell me more about this later, but that will have to be after your initial assessment. Assuming you get accepted into the guild, of course.”

“Initial assessment?”

“You don’t think we just let anyone with a recommendation that completes a fetch quest in, do you? Impress me in the assessment, or at least do reasonably well, and I’ll recruit you as my squire. Now, I have errands to do, but I’ll watch the streams. Probably.”

And with that, Phantom turned around and strode away.

“Wait, aren’t you tired?” Alan called out after him.

“Nah, Erudites don’t need much sleep,” Phantom yelled back, as he merrily took a swig from the bottle of liquor Alan had gone through so much effort to acquire.

I’m not sure I want to work under him…

Yes, we’ll have to see. I think it should be noted that I did not notice his approach at all. He seemingly appeared out of nowhere… We should concentrate on this initial assessment for now, though.

Nodding, Alan walked over to Kitana, who had finished her conversation with the grey-skinned giant. To Alan's surprise, Kitana had risen to level 120 and was wearing a completely outfit. He thought his leap to level 79 had been fast, but Kitana had only been level 80 when he last saw her aboard the Titan. She now had on black robes over a black vest and grey undershirt. Alan could tell her clothing was not made of ordinary material, as the light around it seemed to be absorbed by the cloth, creating a sort of dark aura. She still wielded the same katana.