Josh didn't like surprises.
He liked old stains even less when they resurfaced.
The footage of Phong at the decoy farm had spread farther than anyone expected.
Then came interviews.
Clips of a quiet level-one farmer saying he "just wanted to grow crops" started trending as a counterpoint to all the polished hero edits.
That face.
That name.
It pulled at something rotten in Josh's memory.
The boy who survived.
The loose thread.
The one his father had chosen not to erase because losing two rare-class divers over it would have caused a scene.
Unlike his aunt and uncle, Phong had leverage in the eyes of corporate overlords.
Alex and Dominic were his friends.
Back then, keeping Phong alive had been strategy.
A controlled variable.
A traumatized nobody.
Now?
Now that nobody had a camera on him.
Now that nobody's name was being spoken next to Alex's.
Now that Horns of the Earth had already shaken investor trust and forced his father into a humiliating public apology…
Risk was stacking on risk.
Josh hated it.
For someone like him, control hit like a drug.
Bullying gave him that once.
Then he gave it up for a while, because playing knight in shining armor for the cameras gave him even more.
Control the story.
Control what his fans think.
Control what they feel.
And with enough attention, Phong might threaten that throne.
Josh sat in a private lounge above a glass-walled conference room, city lights glowing behind him.
His phone screen reflected in his eyes as he scrolled through analytics.
Engagement numbers.
Sentiment charts.
Negative spikes tied to his family name.
He let out a slow breath.
Then he made a call.
Olen picked up on the second ring.
"Busy?" Josh asked lightly.
"Always," Olen said. His voice was controlled, but tight. "I assume this isn't social."
A pause.
"You've seen the farmer?"
"I have."
Josh walked to the window and looked down at the traffic below.
"He's gaining sympathy."
"He's harmless," Olen said.
Josh did not answer right away.
"Harmless people are the most dangerous when the timing is wrong."
Silence.
Then Olen's tone shifted.
"You think he's tied to the Horns narrative?"
"I think," Josh said carefully, "optics matter. My father's portfolio just took a hit. Insurance payouts. Supply chain damage. Investors are nervous. The last thing we need is a martyr story attached to a survivor."
Olen tapped something on his keyboard.
A map came up on his second monitor.
Location data.
Drone coordinates.
The decoy farm.
"You want him quiet," Olen said.
"I want him irrelevant."
Olen leaned back.
For him, the math was simpler.
Everything changed the moment Alex rejected him in public.
Before that, Phong had just been annoying background noise.
Now he was an insult.
A level-one farmer daring to exist as an alternative.
Worse, daring to be chosen.
It did not matter whether Alex's feelings were real.
Narrative reality mattered more.
If the farmer disappeared, the speculation would collapse.
The sympathy would fade.
And the lesson would be clear.
Farmers thrive under structure.
Under Olen's system.
Not outside it.
Those who refused alignment vanished.
Olen lowered his voice.
"I have his routine."
Josh did not ask how.
"Security?"
"Minimal. He works alone. Level one. No visible escort."
Josh thought for a moment.
"We don't want noise."
"Of course not."
"And nothing traceable."
Olen smiled faintly.
"Please."
Josh turned from the window.
"What's your angle?"
"Consistency," Olen said smoothly. "If farmers start thinking they can operate alone, the Guild weakens. Escort contracts weaken. Monetization weakens."
Josh understood that language.
"Control the model."
"Exactly."
"And the girl?"
A beat.
"That will resolve itself," Olen said evenly.
Josh smirked.
"You always hated losing."
"And you always hated being embarrassed."
That was enough.
Different motives.
Same answer.
Josh opened an encrypted app.
Private channel.
He typed only a few words.
[Confirmed location.]
Olen sent back coordinates.
Timestamped.
"Before morning," Josh said.
"Before morning," Olen agreed.
Neither of them called it murder.
They called it correction.
Narrative stabilization.
Risk management.
Outside, the city moved on without noticing.
Inside two separate high-rises, two young men, polished, praised, interviewed, aligned their interests.
One protecting legacy.
One protecting ego.
A level-one farmer in a decoy field had become inconvenient.
And in their world, inconvenience was not tolerated.
They wanted him gone by sunrise.
---
Phong felt it before he saw anything.
A shift in the soil.
A ripple in the network below.
The moletatoes did not panic.
They passed the signal along.
Subtle pulses through root and dirt.
Carried by fungal threads.
Lifted upward by eavesdropping woodears hidden along the treeline.
Footsteps.
Measured.
Disciplined.
Not wandering divers.
Not amateurs.
Purpose.
The woodears caught pieces of speech.
Distorted, but enough.
[…confirm visual…]
[…interceptor active…]
[…no signal leakage…]
They were careful.
Professionals.
Likely illegal contractors.
Likely deniable assets.
The kind of divers who worked between laws.
The dungeon did not care about criminal records.
Murderers awakened classes too.
Smugglers got skill trees.
Assassins gained stealth modifiers like anyone else.
Some criminals got folded into the state.
Others became private tools.
Black hands.
Doing dirty work for people like Josh and Olen.
Phong did not rush.
Did not run.
He simply turned and walked back toward the real Camp Stymphalian.
Calm.
The assassins were good.
They tracked him by disturbed soil and faint mana traces.
They brought interceptors to jam outgoing signals.
They sent low-level monsters ahead as bait and cover.
If a level-one farmer died in the dungeon, the story would write itself.
Unlucky.
Low-level threat.
Tragic.
Clean.
They expected fear.
Confusion.
Panic.
They did not expect the first one to step on something soft under the leaves.
Click.
Garlic mine.
The blast was not flashy.
It was brutal.
A concussive hit from below, followed by a second detonation as hardened garlic cloves burrowed in and ignited inside flesh.
A scream cut off at once.
Before the others could adjust, green angry chilies fired from hidden rows like guided micro-missiles.
Capsaicin-loaded rounds hit and burst, turning exposed skin into raw agony.
One assassin raised a shield skill.
A bonktato slammed into him from the side hard enough to break skull and spine in a single crushing arc.
The interceptor flickered.
Another one tried to cast.
A carrocket launched under manual command.
Impact.
Half his upper body vanished in a burst of heat and splintered bone.
The forest edge shook.
Not with chaos.
With coordination.
Shiitake shields tilted to deflect stray spells.
Oyster blades snapped up to cut off escape routes.
Moletatoes shifted below, collapsing soil under anyone trying to retreat.
The assassins were skilled.
But they had prepared for a human ambush.
Not a biome.
Not a farm that had survived a siege and learned from it.
One tried to run.
Onion gas burst into a thick choking cloud.
His vision blurred.
His breath burned.
A final bonktato strike put him down.
Then silence came back.
Almost as fast as it had broken.
The whole fight lasted less than 30 seconds.
---
Phong stepped out from behind a wall of hardened shiitake.
No speech.
No warning.
They came for blood.
They got it.
He did not monologue about morality.
Did not debate vengeance.
Did not offer mercy to men who had brought interceptors to make sure no one would witness his death.
He checked their pulses.
None.
He exhaled once.
He had thought killing would make him throw up.
But looking at their bodies now, he felt almost nothing.
Only cold indifference.
Then he turned toward the lizardman canal.
A group of lizardman warriors emerged, drawn by the noise.
He met their captain's eyes.
"Drag them," Phong said evenly.
"To the decoy camp."
The captain tilted his head.
"Explain."
"Divers died to a rampaging lizardman mage."
Understanding came at once.
A lizardman mage stepped forward and spread scorch marks across the already broken bodies.
Burn patterns.
Arcane residue.
Impact marks that fit a chaotic skirmish.
Tracks were changed.
The low-level monsters the assassins had brought were released and killed in visible spots near the decoy plot.
It would look like a bad farming attempt too close to hostile territory.
Three divers.
Too confident.
Ambushed by territorial lizardmen.
Tragic.
The kind of story no one dug into.
Phong paid the lizardmen with bonktatoes for the trouble, then turned away before they finished staging the scene.
He did not want trolls involved.
Did not want human flesh traded as spoils.
He wanted the story clean.
Then he walked back to his strawberries and peas.
Knelt down.
Checked leaves.
Adjusted supports.
His hands stayed steady.
No shaking.
No triumph.
Just maintenance.
Above, the jade dragon watched again.
This farmer did not escalate.
Did not boast.
Did not chase spectacle.
He defended.
Neutralized.
Then folded back into routine.
Efficient.
Cold when needed.
Balanced.
Interesting.
---
Far away, encrypted channels stayed quiet.
Josh checked his phone once.
Then twice.
Then a third time.
Olen stared at a blank status window.
Dawn approached.
No confirmation came.
Only later would the reports surface.
Three divers.
Dead near the treant forest.
Lizardman mage aggression suspected.
Unfortunate.
Containable.
On the surface, it would be filed under dungeon hazard.
Inside Camp Stymphalian, strawberries were watered.
Peas were tied.
And a level-one farmer kept tending the soil as if nothing at all had happened.