CHAPTER 44: CH-44- THE EXCHANGE (DEVIN STORY)

The world outside the dungeon felt unnervingly bright, too loud, and yet profoundly fragile. Every rustle of leaves in the wind made Devin’s heart stutter, every distant shout from the city streets sounded like the roar of the beast that had slaughtered his team. He moved through the crowds like a ghost, his body aching, his clothes torn and stained with things he didn’t want to identify. But clutched tightly against his chest was a burlap sack, its contents humming with enough power to change everything.

He had escaped. The words were a mantra in his mind, a fragile prayer against the tide of grief and guilt.

He’d outrun the impossible horror that had been Baelgor, the dungeon boss who had treated SSS-rank hunters like insects. In his frantic flight, he hadn’t been stupid. While others had panicked, he’d used his E-ranker’s knowledge, the only thing that had kept him alive this long, to scavenge.

He’d shoved his hands into glowing mineral deposits and torn loose fist-sized mana stones of a quality he’d only ever seen in Guild Master display cases. Their value was incalculable. Billions. A king’s ransom.

A faint, almost invisible warmth prickled at the nape of his neck, but he brushed it away, attributing it to adrenaline and grime. He was free. That was all that mattered.

His other hand, trembling slightly, dipped into a separate, smaller pocket on his vest. His fingers closed around a small, laminated photograph. He pulled it out, his thumb gently stroking the faded image. It was a picture of a little girl with bright eyes and a gap-toothed smile.

Lily, the daughter of Daelen, his friend, The hunter that help him in the dungeon.

Daelen, who had died when the aura of Baelgor crushed him and every other hunter and how Devin managed to survive was a mystery to himself.

Devin had seen the photo fall from Daelen’s pocket in the chaos. He’d grabbed it. It was the only thing he could save.

"Mother

," he whispered into the bustling air, his voice hoarse. "Don’t worry. Everything will be alright now."

The memory of his own mother, frail and fading in a hospital bed, her illness slowly winning against the prohibitively expensive treatments, fueled his steps with a new, desperate strength. He could afford it now. He could afford the best. An A-rank healer, a full cellular rejuvenation, nothing would be beyond his reach. And for Lily... he would ensure she never wanted for anything. He would make Daelen’s sacrifice mean something.

His destination was not a guild hall. The Shadow Guild had tricked them, sent them into that death trap for reasons he couldn’t fathom. He trusted no one. His destination was the underbelly of the hunter economy: The Exchange.

It was a place every unaffiliated hunter knew of, a grim, neutral ground where dungeon spoils could be converted into hard currency. No guild took a cut, but there were no guild protections either. The rule was simple: the money was yours as long as you had the power to walk out with it.

The dimly lit corridors of The Exchange were rumored to be paved with the ambitions of hunters who’d struck it rich but lacked the strength to keep it.

Devin knew the risks. He was just a E-ranker, bruised, battered, and alone. But the image of his mother’s smile and Lily’s photograph burned away his fear. This wasn’t about ambition. It was about redemption.

He paused in a shadowy alley across from the nondescript entrance of The Exchange, marked only by a flickering neon sign of a broken sword. He took a deep, shuddering breath, tears finally welling in his eyes and tracing clean paths through the dirt on his cheeks. He wasn’t crying from pain or fear, but from the crushing weight of being the only one left.

"I’ll make it worth it," he vowed to the memory of his fallen friends, his voice cracking. "I swear it. Your sacrifice won’t be for nothing."

He wiped his face roughly with his sleeve, his expression hardening into one of grim determination. Adjusting the heavy, humming sack on his shoulder, he stepped out of the shadows and walked toward the entrance, ready to trade a fortune in mana stones for a chance to heal the past.

He never saw the pairs of hungry, calculating eyes that followed his every move from the darker corners of the street, already sensing the immense power radiating from his poorly concealed bag. The hunt at The Exchange didn’t begin inside. It started the moment you were foolish enough to look like you had something to sell.

The Exchange wasn’t a place; it was an ecosystem of shadows and whispered deals. Nestled in a forgotten sector of the gleaming, neon-drenched metropolis, it thrived in the space between towering skyscrapers that scraped a smog-orange sky. Holographic ads for combat enhancers and cheap cyberware flickered over damp, graffitied walls, casting a sickly glow on the crowd below. The air hummed with the low thrum of conversation, the clink of cred-sticks, and the faint, ozone smell of activated tech. This was where the city’s hunters came to move loot that was too hot, too strange, or too powerful for the official guild channels.

Devin moved through the press of bodies, his E-rank badge feeling like a target on his chest. Around him, rogue hunters with scarred faces and augmented limbs haggled over monster parts, illicit tech, and sacks of lower-grade mana crystals. The values here were a gamble, common goods went for less than market price, but truly rare finds, unburdened by guild taxes, could fetch a king’s ransom.

His eyes scanned the makeshift stalls until they landed on a booth tucked under a flickering hologram of a cracked diamond.

Behind a reinforced counter sat a man who looked like he’d been poured into his synth-leather chair and forgotten to rise. He was immense, his neck a series of fleshy rolls that spilled over a tight collar. A data-scanner was grafted over one eye, its red lens whirring as it automatically assessed everyone in its view. A cigarillo, emitting a sweet, acrid smoke, was clamped between thick fingers adorned with heavy, brass knuckle-dusters that doubled as cred-chip readers. This was a man who dealt in weight, both physical and financial.

Devin approached, the burlap sack feeling impossibly heavy. The man’s scanner-lens focused on him for a second, flicking from his face to the E-rank badge. The red light dimmed almost instantly. The fat man’s expression, already bored, curdled into outright disdain. He took a long drag from his cigarillo and blew the smoke in Devin’s direction.

"What?" he grunted, his voice a gravelly thing worn down by smoke and scorn. "Make it quick. I don’t deal in scrap."

Devin swallowed, his throat dry. "I... I want to exchange some mana crystals."

The man barked a short, ugly laugh. "Kid, this ain’t a charity for failed awakeners. I don’t trade in the pebbles E-rankers dig out of goblin dens. Piss off."

The dismissal was like a physical blow, but Devin held his ground. The faces of his mother and little Lily flashed in his mind.

"It’s not low rank," he insisted, his voice gaining a sliver of steel. "It’s... better. You should take a look."

The man’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of annoyed curiosity breaking through his contempt. "Better? You’ve got five seconds to impress me before I have my boys toss you out with the trash."

With trembling but determined hands, Devin loosened the drawstring of the humble burlap sack. He didn’t rummage. He simply reached in and pulled out the first crystal his fingers touched.

The moment it cleared the bag, the dim, neon-lit stall was transformed.

The crystal was the size of his fist, a perfect, geometric prism that seemed to contain a captured galaxy. It glowed with a deep, pulsating inner light, a pure, vibrant azure that cast sharp, dancing shadows on the fat man’s stunned face. It wasn’t just high quality; it was transcendent. The air around it shimmered with condensed mana, so potent it made the grafted scanner on the man’s eye fritz and emit a panicked beep.

The cigarillo fell from the man’s slack jaw, landing on the counter with a shower of sparks he didn’t even notice. All the color drained from his face, his bloated arrogance replaced by pure, unadulterated shock. His one natural eye was wide, reflecting the crystal’s mesmerizing glow.

"By the corporations..." he whispered, his gravelly voice now thin with awe. He leaned forward, his bulk straining the counter. "Ninety percent purity... maybe higher. In the real market... this is ninety million. Minimum."

His eyes darted from the crystal to Devin’s face, then to the unassuming burlap sack. The calculation in his eyes was instantaneous and overwhelming. This wasn’t a transaction. This was a tectonic shift in his entire operation. An E-ranker with a single crystal this pure was a miracle. An E-ranker with a sack of them was a cataclysm.

All rudeness was gone. In its place was a frantic, hushed urgency. He held up a meaty hand, signaling for silence. His gaze swept the area, paranoid that someone else might have seen the light.

"Don’t move," he hissed at Devin, his voice low and intense. He quickly tapped a sequence on a hidden panel under his counter. A reinforced door behind him slid open with a quiet hydraulic hiss, revealing a dimly lit back room. "Not here. We can’t do this here. Come with me. Now."

This was far beyond his paygrade, and he knew it. But the potential profit was enough to make him risk everything.