The group walked towards the gate of the city after having their caravans parked at the large garage that had many other vehicles of different varieties around.

Master Norman urged them to gather like a team, and then he left them towards the giant gate, were quite a lot of people from other communities had made their way too.

A considerable amount of them were already gaining passage into the city, and at the centre of the whole service were the gatekeepers, armed fierce-looking individuals who guarded the entrance to the city.

Master Norman approached them and had a short conversation with them before they let them enter the city and they took their caravan in as well.

Citadel City was everything Blood Trial Outpost was not, and Roman felt that the moment the caravan rolled through the outer gate.

The walls alone were enough to make most of the rookies go quiet. Tall, reinforced, and built with the kind of intention that said whoever put them up was not thinking about survival.

They were thinking about permanence.

Beyond the walls, the city stretched wide and deep, towers rising at measured intervals, the streets broad and paved and moving with the organised energy of a place that had been running at full capacity for a very long time.

Trade Day made it louder than usual.

The market district sat in the outer section of the city, a dense stretch of vendor stalls, trading houses, and open floor exchanges that covered more ground than the entirety of Blood Trail Outpost. Entrants from communities across different parts of the Frontier had come in for the day, and the result was a crowd that moved in every direction simultaneously and somehow managed not to collapse into chaos.

Master Norman led them through it with the practiced ease of someone who had done it many times.

"Stay together," he said without looking back. "The trading houses are on the inner ring. That is where you will get proper valuations. The open stalls will lowball you on anything worth selling."

Roman walked near the back of the group with Queenfang concealed under his jacket and his drop items sitting in his possession stat, already running numbers in his head. He had been running them since the night before and had come to the conclusion that his estimates were probably conservative.

Rena walked beside him, her hood pulled low enough to cover the upper half of her face. She had been quieter than usual since the morning, and Roman had noticed but had not pushed it.

Arnold walked several metres ahead with his own group, pretending Roman did not exist in the way that required active effort to maintain.

The trading houses were a row of well-built stone structures with their grade and specialisation displayed above the entrance. Norman stopped the group outside the third one, a general drop exchange that accepted materials from Ordinary and Extraordinary ranked monsters.

"You go in one at a time," Norman said. "Show them what you have. Do not accept the first offer. Do not let them rush you. And do not sell anything you are not certain about."

The rookies nodded and filtered in one by one.

Roman waited his turn and watched the others come out with varying expressions. Some looked pleased. Most looked like they had been offered something reasonable and had no framework to know whether it was fair.

Then it was his turn.

The buyer inside was a middle-aged woman with sharp eyes and the particular manner of someone who had seen tens of thousands of drop items and could grade them on instinct. She sat behind a wide counter with a BSP scanner on one side and a set of precision scales on the other.

"What are you selling?" She asked.

Roman placed his items on the counter one by one.

The Rot Flat Whisker from the Blood Mouse Boss went first.

"Forty silvers," she said without hesitation.

The Stone Shell Fragment from the Stone Beetle Boss followed.

"Sixty-five silvers."

The Hollow Fin Core, Uncommon Grade, got a longer look.

"Two hundred and eighty silvers. Umm, not in a good condition. That’s why."

The Ironhide Tusk from the Boar went for one hundred and ten silvers, and the Red Venom Sac from the Red Serpent made her pause for the first time.

"Where did you get this?" She asked.

"Valley hunt," Roman said.

She studied it for a moment longer. "Seven hundred and fifty silvers. The venom properties are intact which is rare. Most hunters damage the sac during extraction."

Roman nodded and didn’t say a word.

Then he placed the Alpha’s Fang on the counter.

The buyer picked it up and turned it over slowly. She ran her thumb along the edge and checked the density at the base.

"This is from a Dire Wolf Alpha," she said. It was not a question.

"Yes," Roman said.

"Four hundred and fifty silvers."

Roman accepted again wouldn’t making any comment, and then...

Then he placed the Sovereign Shell Plate on the counter.

The buyer looked at it.

Then she looked at Roman.

Then she looked at the plate again, picking it up with both hands and holding it toward the light that came through the trading house window.

The room had been carrying the low background noise of a busy trading floor since Roman walked in. It did not go silent exactly, but the nearby buyers and sellers had started to drift closer without appearing to, the way people do when something interesting is happening at the next counter.

"This is from a Bone Crawler Sovereign," the buyer said quietly.

"Yes," Roman said.

"A Rare Grade drop." She set it down carefully. "From a Level 60 or more Ordinary Monster." She looked at him again with an expression that had shifted from professional to genuinely curious.

"Who cleared that territory?" Then she asked.

"I did," Roman replied without a trace of any mode of reaction.

She studied him for a long moment. Then she reached under the counter and pulled out a different ledger from the standard one she had been using, the kind that seemed to be reserved for high value transactions.

"One thousand Gold," she said. "That is my offer and it is a fair one. The Shell Plate is one of the densest natural defensive materials available from an Ordinary rank source. There are three Blacksmiths in this city alone who have been looking for one for months."

Roman kept his face completely still.

’One thousand Gold?’

One thousand Gold was one million silvers. One million dollars in real world currency!

’Ah!!! That’s a fortune!’ Roman shouted inwardly.

He had come to Citadel City hoping to leave with a hundred silvers, and now he was getting a thousand Gold???

"I accept," Roman said immediately, not wasting any more second.

The buyer almost smiled. "Smart. Most rookies would have tried to negotiate and I would have held firm anyway."

She processed the transaction, and Roman walked out of the trading house with one thousand and three Gold coins registered to his BSP currency account, plus the additional silvers from the smaller drops converted and added to the total.

The moment he stepped outside, he stood still for a second and looked at the number on his BSP screen.

[Funds: 1003 Gold, 485 Silver.]

He read it three times, and looked away before reading it three times again!

Then he exhaled slowly and looked up at the busy market street around him.

"Okay," he said quietly to himself. "Okay."

He found a spot near the outer wall of the trading house and waited for the others to finish. The crowd nearby had already started talking, the buyer’s reaction having drawn more attention than Roman had intended, and he could hear fragments of it from where he stood.

"A Sovereign Shell Plate..."

"From a rookie?"

"Did you see how old he looked?"

Roman pulled his hood up and studied his BSP screen until Rena appeared beside him.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"Fine," Roman said. "You?"

"Four Golds and change," she said, with the tone of someone reporting something mildly inconvenient rather than a result that would have floored almost every other rookie in the group.

Roman looked at her. "That is good."

"It is nothing," she said, and went back to watching the crowd.

Arnold came out shortly after, four Golds visible in his expression in the way that people who care deeply about status make their results visible without saying them directly. He glanced at Roman once, registered that Roman was not going to offer him the satisfaction of a reaction, and turned away.

Norman gathered the group near the central fountain a short while later, counted heads, and nodded.

"Good. Everyone has finished, and I’m not going to ask you how much you made. Not because I don’t care, but because it’s simply not my business," he said. "We head back to the caravan and we are on the road before midday."

They started moving through the market crowd together, Norman at the front, the rookies strung out behind him in the loose formation of people who had gotten what they came for and were ready to leave.

Roman was walking and already thinking about what to spend the money on when the crowd ahead of them shifted slightly.

A figure stepped out from the flow of people moving in the opposite direction and stopped directly in Rena’s path.

He was tall, formally dressed in a deep grey uniform with the emblem of the Steel Empire on the left chest, and he moved with the composed precision of someone who had rehearsed this moment many times.

He looked at Rena sharply...

Then he bowed.

"Young Mistress," he said, his voice carrying just far enough for the people nearby to hear. "Your father has asked us to bring you home."

The market crowd around them slowed.

And Rena? She went completely still.