[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/k6ISKjx.png[/img]
[hider=𖦭]STR [b][2][/b] | DEX [b][3][/b] | MAG [b][1][/b] | DEF [b][1][/b] | RES [b][1][/b] | AGI [b][3][/b] | LCK [b][4][/b]

[b]《 Luck of the Devil 》[/b]
[i]Fortune favours the foul. +3 LCK.[/i][/hider][sub][@Zeroth][@TheMushroomLord][@PKMNB0Y][/sub][/center]
He was beginning to see what it was then. The Guild existed as a job board, perhaps similar to Upwork or Craigslist, while adventurers were fundamentally freelancers whose trade generally involved violence or travel. Adventurers leveraged the reputation of the Guild in order to get work, while the Guild got a cut of the profits in return. No doubt, there was some sort of vetting service at play, and perhaps more famous adventurers would find themselves working directly for specific employers, but that’d be the gist of it. In the meanwhile, those who eschewed from working with the Guild were still considered adventurers, but spent their time more as treasure hunters, digging through ruins for the gold of dead kings or the like. He had heard of treasure hunters breaking into pyramids; greed and sacrilege were commonalities of humanity, after all.

And, of course, with treasure hunting came sudden deaths. Flammable gas, decaying structures, and perhaps monsters too. Or maybe you just run out of money, after coming across such worthless things as just rusted armor and dry bones, and you end up starving to death instead.

[b]“But people who’d do such things are optimists. There’s only fortune to be had.”[/b]

And those who weren’t optimists were snakes, in their own way. Those with a clearer view, indeed, ended up as…

[b]“I was in finance,”[/b] Cassius replied. He paused a moment afterwards, trying to figure out how to explain that to someone who didn’t live in a world of global trade and public companies, where the profit of a single company could be worth more than the GDP of a nation. [b]“There are people who give money to businesses, in exchange for the future possibility of getting that money back at a greater or lesser amount depending on how that business develops. My work is in finding out which business is most worth giving money to, before others notice it too. Or do the reverse, and know when to take the money back before the business crashes and burns.”[/b]

They shared in the bitterness, perhaps. It was only here that Cassius let out a laugh, like a crack emerging in a frozen lake.

[b]“Fundamentally, I help make more money for people with too much money, so they can spend it on vanity projects. Does that make sense?”[/b]