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"Happy birthday again bro," Kagehisa said, patting his shoulder until he suddenly felt a painful zap.
The contact lasted only a second before the unexpected feedback forced him to pull his hand back. "Gah?! What the hell?! Y-You! You’re...! How strong...! How strong... did you just get?!"
He stared at Riven’s shoulder, feeling the aura he’d perceived, it was terrifying.
"A bit," Riven said with a gentle smile. "I feel like weaker monsters won’t give me anything though, gotta start hunting only C Rank and above... I feel it within my bones."
He felt it within him that the lower-ranked monsters would no longer register any real progress when he checked he devoured them.
"H-Huh, good for you then! I guess... it’s about time I start joining you," Kagehisa seemed ready to start fighting as well. He straightened up and already looked like he was calculating which of his team members would come along. "I’ve been hunting and leveling steadily with my ninjas in your dungeon so don’t think we’re as weak as we used to be."
"Sure," Riven nodded. "For what I am doing, I’ll gladly take as much help as I can."
The more reliable people he had on the ground, the cleaner the next set of jobs would go.
Before moving to Beach City, Riven planned to take three more dungeons from Central City to completely cripple Claymore and Frostbane and any affiliated place, and all three of them had Mana Reactors and Spirit Reactors.
Each of those reactors supplied a large share of the city’s daily energy needs, so removing them would create an immediate shortage.
Yes, he’s gotten bolder... and greedier, but he knew they were never guarded by high-ranking officials and members of prestigious families because they were always busy or thought they were too good to guard stuff.
The usual security details stayed at mid-rank levels and rotated on predictable schedules.
And, thing is, he was going to strike all three dungeons... at the same time.
Hitting them together would keep reinforcements from moving between sites in time to stop any of the raids.
It was his last goodbye to Central City, one to make everyone in the city, and Claymore Enterprises, shit their pants in fear of what this new "Terrorist Group" can truly do.
The message would be clear once the three gates and their reactors disappeared in the same window of time.
But above all... thanks to Kagehisa and his ninjas level grinding and his own grinding in the previous dungeons he’s robbed, he’d also gotten a massive amount of loot.
After distributing all the high-quality loot he could to his allies and saving some for himself.
He’d started selling everything and already made massive waves around the Hunter Forums and every worldwide news.
Listings for incredibly high-quality materials and equipment had started appearing Enigma once again, and the sudden volume was already drawing questions about where the items had come from or who was Enigma to begin with.
From social media going crazy over Enigma selling SS Rank and even now, SSS Rank items at dirt cheap prices, and also how he insisted on never selling these products to members of big corporations.
Posts about the listings kept spreading across every major hunter group and trading board.
His items also came with special directives imbued by the Hunter Forum Market’s system, which made it so whenever they were resold or gifted to these groups he’d banned, the items would be destroyed instantly, thus, they couldn’t even employ secondhand buyers to buy the items for them.
A few early attempts to bypass the restriction had already ended with the gear vanishing the moment the ownership changed.
As all of that happened, Sunrise Pharmaceuticals had already started selling their new, incredibly affordable and amazing potions to the general population, with people calling it a miracle drink.
The daily stock sold out before noon in most cities and forced the company to increase production again.
Claymore Enterprises’ sales on both Hunter Tech Equipment and Weapons and also Medicine and Potion Department had plummeted, from what he could check on his phone, by a whopping 17%.
The internal reports circulating on the forums showed the drop was still continuing rather than leveling off.
They were literally losing billions because not only were Enigma completely flooding the market with better gear they could even produce, turning what they make completely meaningless and worthless, but Sunrise Pharmaceuticals was finally fighting back, selling so much their stock was constantly running out every day.
While checking how Claymore and Frostbane stocks fell massively, which served as a nice birthday gift by itself, Riven set the phone aside once the latest numbers updated and turned his attention back to the table.
He enjoyed the birthday cake with his wife, drinking a little wine while enjoying the food she ordered, there was pizza, hamburgers, noodles, and more, from several of her favorite, high quality and high-cost restaurants, which employed high-quality monster ingredients too.
The variety covered most of the table and left very little empty space between the plates.
"Hey, Vladimir."
"...?"
Vladimir narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Riven after he was called.
He had been sitting apart from the main group for most of the evening and clearly preferred it that way.
"What do you want?"
Riven shook his head.
"Come sit down and share a moment with all of us."
"...What?! No I won’t- ugh...!"
He couldn’t refuse, so he ended up standing up and sitting in between everyone else, making an annoyed face as he was offered birthday cake, pizza, and more.
Someone pushed a plate toward him before he could move away again, and he took it with a short glare.
He ate with everyone, wearing a sour expression, even though he was secretly enjoying how delicious the food was and how... warm the atmosphere felt.
Vladimir kept the same annoyed look the entire time and only answered when someone directly asked him a question.
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