The northern district of Frontier, once the crown jewel of Earl Steim's architecture, had been transformed into a vision of the apocalypse.
The cobblestones—meticulously laid by master masons centuries ago—were no longer recognizable. They had been rendered into a scorched trench of jagged obsidian and cooling, viscous magma.
The very air tasted of burnt tin and ozone, a pungent atmospheric aftereffect caused by the rapid displacement of mana.
Jishuka arrived on the scene just as the last of the billowing grey dust began to settle against the damp alley walls. Her face, usually a mask of sultry, predator-like confidence, was contorted into a snarl of pure, unadulterated fury.
Her dark eyes scanned the wreckage, and for the first time in her career as the leader of the Tzedakah Guild, she felt a cold shiver of genuine disbelief.
At the center of the devastation sat Faker.
The number one ranked assassin, a man who moved like a shadow's shadow and whose name was synonymous with untouchable lethality, was kneeling on one pipe-clamped knee.
His chest heaved with ragged, shallow breaths. His health bar, visible only to his guildmates, was a sliver of blinking crimson in the critical zone. Beside him, Ribon, Zeldark, and Horyu—the pillars of the guild—looked equally battered.
Their high-tier armor, worth enough to buy several city manors, was cracked, smoking, and caked in magical soot.
"Someone... someone actually touched my guild?" Jishuka's voice was low, vibrating with a killing intent so thick it felt like a physical weight pressing down on the lungs of everyone present.
Before the era of Satisfy, the Tzedakah Guild had been the undisputed sovereigns of the gaming world in L.T.S. They were known as the "Unfathomable Group"—a small, tight-knit collective of monsters that even the largest multi-thousand-member alliances feared to cross.
In Satisfy, they were meticulously building that same legend. To reign as the strongest, they could not show a single hint of weakness. A scratch on one was a death sentence for the offender; a defeat of four was an existential threat to their brand.
"Find her," Jishuka commanded, her eyes burning like stoked embers. "If she isn't the blacksmith, I don't care who she is. Even if she's a hidden class, a world boss in disguise, or the goddess of magic herself. We will show her the dignity of the Tzedakah Guild. We will shatter her until she deletes her gaming account!"
The hunt that followed would later be whispered about in the taverns of Frontier as the "Week of the Wolf."
For seven days, a state of absolute, suffocating tension gripped the capital. The seventeen core members of Tzedakah moved through the city like a coordinated pack.
They utilized every tracking skill in their arsenal, from Faker's [Blood Scent] to the scouts' [Environmental Analysis]. They spent thousands of gold in bribes, lean-to informants, and tapped into the merchant networks of the Auction House.
They believed they were cornering "Euphemina," a solo player who happened to have some high-level defensive magic. They thought they were hunting a hidden class player who had gotten lucky with a few scrolls of rare magic.
They didn't realize they were cornering a Duplicator.
Euphemina was not a blacksmith. She was a beast that had spent the last month gorging itself on the ultimate skills of every high-ranker she had encountered across the continent.
She was a vessel of stolen miracles, and the Tzedakah Guild was about to provide her with the most prestigious additions to her collection yet.
Finally, on the eighth night, beneath a moon obscured by heavy, slate-gray clouds, they found her. She was waiting in the ruins of an abandoned cathedral on the jagged outskirts of the city.
The cathedral was a skeleton of stone. Its roof had long since collapsed, leaving the shattered nave open to the elements.
Euphemina stood in the center of the debris, her waist-length blonde hair illuminated by the pale moonlight filtering through the jagged remains of a stained-glass window depicting a forgotten saint. She looked tired—her eyes were underlined with the faint shadows of a week spent on the run—but her gaze held a terrifying, diamond-sharp clarity.
"You're persistent," Euphemina said, her voice echoing off the hollow stone walls. "I'll give you that. But in my experience, persistent and stupid are usually just two sides of the same coin."
"You humiliated my men," Jishuka said, stepping through the arched entrance. "You tarnished the the reputation of my Guild." Behind her, the seventeen elites spread out in a perfect semi-circle, cutting off every exit.
Jishuka's legendary bow was already notched with a Special Jaffa Arrow of Resentment, the black tip glowing with a lethal, violet light. "In this world, that has a price. You think because you have a hidden class, you can look down on the Tzedakah Guild?"
"I look down on you because you're creeps," Euphemina snapped, her temper finally fracturing. "Your people stalked me in stealth for two days like common voyeurs. Your people followed me into dark alleys while I was trying to conduct private business. You sent an assassin to watch my every move while I was looking for a production method! Who wouldn't attack? Nobody wants a pervert following them in the dark!"
"It was surveillance for a business proposition!" Toban yelled, raising his massive tower shield. "We wanted to recruit the person who won Winston's Blacksmithing competition!"
"It was harassment," Euphemina countered, her hand beginning to glow with a soft, lilac hue. "And since you won't take a hint, and you won't leave me in peace... I'll give you a funeral instead of a blueprint."
For the first time since she had completed her second class advancement, Euphemina opened her internal "Vault."
To the world, she was a mystery. To herself, she was a librarian of violence. Normally, she was frugal—using 5% or 10% of her stored spells to handle common threats. She guarded her " Copied Skills" like a dragon guards gold, knowing that once a copied skill was used, it vanished until she could find its source again.
But looking at the seventeen monsters surrounding her—the absolute peak of the current player base—she knew that half-measures would lead to her death. She wouldn't just lose her life; she would lose her progress, her gold, and her dignity.
She drew a deep, steadying breath and mentally turned the key. She released 90% of her stored power.
"Calas's Wrath!"
The ground beneath the cathedral didn't just break; it vanished. It was replaced by a swirling, violet vortex of localized gravity. The Tzedakah members, who had been coiling their muscles to lunge, suddenly found themselves pinned to the shattered floor by the weight of ten atmospheres. Armor plates groaned under the pressure; the stone beneath them cracked into powder.
"Hellfire Wave!"
Before they could activate their "Unstoppable" or "Cleanse" counter-skills, Euphemina swept her arm in a wide arc. A wall of white-hot flame—a skill stolen from a third advancement Great Maician NPC—roared through the nave.
The temperature rose so violently and so quickly that the remaining marble pillars didn't just burn—they vitrified, turning into jagged pillars of glass.
"Shadow Bind!"
Pon, the spearman, attempted to use a high-jump skill to escape the inferno, but his own shadow rose from the ground like a literal, physical chain. It wrapped around his ankles and waist, dragging him back down into the white-hot center of the spell.
It wasn't a battle. It was a systematic execution.
Euphemina moved through the chaos like a conductor leading a dark, dissonant orchestra. She was a blur of shifting roles.
When Toban tried to shield the healers, she used a High Priest's [Holy Smite] to shatter his "Indestructible" shield like a dinner plate.
When Vantner tried to close the distance with a warcry, she utilized a Great Swordsman's [Vertical Cleave], a shimmering blade of pure force that sent the tank flying through the cathedral's outer wall.
She even used the Spirit King's [Tidal Surge] to create a localized flood within the ruins, drowning the guild's healers in a sphere of pressurized water, rendering their incantations impossible.
Jishuka was the only one who remained standing for more than a minute. Her Agility was high enough to weave through the gravitational wells, and her bow hummed like a hornet as she fired arrow after arrow. Her speed was a blur, her accuracy surgical.
But Euphemina didn't even bother to dodge. She simply activated a Master Knight's [Indomitable Will]. For sixty seconds, her skin became harder than any alloy.
Jishuka's Resentment arrows—that could pierce drake scales—bounced off Euphemina's shoulders and chest as if they were made of dried straw.
Finally, the spells subsided, leaving the cathedral in a state of smoking, watery ruin. Euphemina stood over Jishuka, who was pinned against the crumbling altar, her legendary bow snapped in two by a well-placed kinetic blast.
The rest of the Tzedakah Guild lay in piles of grey ash, broken armor, and unconscious forms, waiting for their respawn timers to kick in.
"Listen well, Archer," Euphemina said. Her voice had lost its rage; it was now a terrifying, hollow whisper that carried more weight than the gravity spell. "It was your mistake. You started this. You stalked me, you threatened me, and you assumed that just because you have a fancy guild tag and high-level gear, the world belongs to you."
She leaned in, her lilac eyes inches from Jishuka's defiant gaze.
"Your old reputation is a crutch. Your pride as apex of L. T. S is your only power. Without them, you're just a group of talented bullies who forgot what it actually means to fight an unknown variable. This is Satisfy not L. T. S. If you think your old reputation could save you here, then you are mistaken. Don't look for me again. Next time, I won't leave you with enough HP to walk back to the city."
With a final, elegant wave of her hand, Euphemina cast a high-tier [Teleport]. She dissolved into a cloud of golden motes, vanishing into the night seconds before the Frontier city guards—alerted by the magical signatures—rushed into the ruins.
An hour later, the core members of the Tzedakah Guild sat in a heavily warded private room at the "Golden Griffin," the most expensive inn in Frontier.
The mood was funeral-black. For the first time in their collective history, they had been utterly and completely crushed—not by a rival guild, not by a regional boss, but by a single, solitary woman who had treated them like training dummies.
"She used... everything," Pon muttered, staring blankly at the splintered wood of his favorite spear. "Assassin skills, Mage spells, Summoner familiars, even Priest buffs... it wasn't like fighting a player. It was like fighting twenty Rankers at once, all sharing the same mind."
Jishuka sat at the head of the table, her head bowed, her long dark hair veiling her face. Her pride had been shattered more thoroughly than her bow. She thought of the "Blacksmith" they were hunting—the man who had made the Jaffa arrows. She had wanted him as a tool, a way to further cement their dominance.
"She was right about one thing," Jishuka said, her voice hollow but steady. "We've become complacent. We relied on the Jaffa Arrows and our unique equipment to carry us. We thought we were also the strongest here because our old reputation prevented anyone from engaging us.
But when we met someone whose raw versatility and 'hidden' power surpassed our skills, our gear... we fell apart like amateurs."
"It's the items," Vantner growled, slamming his fist into his palm, trying to save face. "If we had the more of that hidden blacksmith made items, we could have—"
"No!" Jishuka slammed her fist on the table, the wood groaning under the impact. "It is not the items, Vantner! It's us! We've used our old reputation as a shield forgetting that it's not L. T. S, it's Satisfy. We thought the blacksmith's work as a crutch instead of a tool. We stopped honing our instincts because we thought our old stats made us invincible."
She looked up, her eyes no longer filled with fury, but with a new, cold resolve.
"From this day forward, we rebuild. We don't just find the real blacksmith for amplify our power. We find him because we need to forge weapons that match our true potential. We will train until that woman is no longer a threat. And we will find the man who made those arrows, then we will take our revenge."
The Tzedakah Guild had been humbled, but in that humiliation, a more dangerous animal was born. They still wanted the blacksmith, but the hunt was no longer just about profit or guild prestige. It was about redemption.