Chapter 2: The Zookeeper’s Dilemma

I stood in front of the Guild Association building—marble facade gleaming in the afternoon sun, bronze statues of legendary heroes lining the entrance. Everything about this place screamed prestige and honor, everything except the pitying looks I got whenever I walked through those doors.

I pushed through the entrance, finding the lobby packed with adventurers. Groups huddled around quest boards while merchants haggled over loot prices. The air buzzed with energy and ambition—normal guilds operated here, guilds with balanced parties and reasonable members who didn’t try to kill each other over breakfast.

I walked past them all.

“That’s the Crimson Rose Guild Master,” someone whispered.

I didn’t look, kept my eyes forward. I knew what they were thinking: Poor bastard, stuck with those psychos—I’d rather fight a dragon barehanded than deal with his team.

They weren’t wrong.

I reached the reception desk where a young clerk looked up at me, her expression shifting from professional courtesy to uncomfortable sympathy in about two seconds flat.

“Guild Master Rian, how can I help you today?”

“I need to file the completion report for last week’s dungeon clear,” I pulled the paperwork from my bag.

She took it with trembling fingers—like I might explode if she moved too fast—and scanned the document, eyes widening.

“You cleared a B-rank dungeon with only three members?”

“Yeah.”

“The recommended party size is eight.”

“I’m aware.”

She stamped the document with shaking hands, glancing at the notes section where I’d written a very sanitized version of what actually happened. I didn’t mention that Valeria decapitated the boss before it could surrender, didn’t mention that Elara deliberately tanked a poison breath attack because she wanted to feel the burning sensation, and definitely didn’t mention that Seraphina turned half the dungeon into a psychological horror show for her own amusement.

“Your… your reward will be processed by end of day.”

“Great—one more thing.” I leaned against the counter. “I want to submit a recruitment request. We need a scout or maybe a porter, someone low-level who just wants steady work and decent pay.”

The clerk’s face went pale.

“I… I’ll need to escalate that request to management.”

“Why? I filed the same request three months ago and you approved it.”

“That was before the incident,” she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Right, the incident—how could I forget? We recruited a young scout named Marcus, decent kid with good tracking skills. He lasted exactly four days before Seraphina convinced him that the walls were watching him. He quit adventuring entirely and became a baker.

“That was an isolated event.”

“Guild Master, with all due respect, your team has traumatized six recruits in two years.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“One of them still flinches when he sees the color red.”

I rubbed my temples, feeling the headache from this morning return with a vengeance—pulsing behind my eyes.

“Look, I just need one normal person, someone to balance out the chaos. Is that too much to ask?”

“I’m sorry—the Association has flagged Crimson Rose as a high-risk placement. No recruits will be approved until your team undergoes psychological evaluation.”

“My team won’t sit still long enough for an evaluation.”

“Then I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

She slid a pamphlet across the counter, title reading “Coping Strategies for Guild Masters in Difficult Situations”—complete with a small illustration of a man screaming into a pillow.

I took the pamphlet.

“Thanks, this is super helpful.”

I walked away before I said something I’d regret.

The walk back to the guild hall felt longer than usual, my feet dragging against the cobblestone as the sun set. Orange light painted the buildings in warm hues while couples walked hand in hand and street vendors called out their wares—normal people living normal lives.

I was jealous.

I opened the door to the guild hall, and chaos greeted me immediately.

“Rian! You’re back!” Elara rushed toward me with surprising speed for someone who’d been brutalized a few hours ago. Her robes were clean now, hair brushed—she looked almost angelic. Almost.

“I’ve been waiting for you! I need to confess something!”

“Can it wait?”

“I was useless during our last quest! I failed to protect you properly!” She dropped to her knees, hands clasped together like she was praying, face flushed with that familiar look of desperate hunger. “Punish me, Guild Master—I deserve it, I need it.”

“You healed us through an entire dungeon crawl, Elara. You weren’t useless.”

“But I could have done better! I should have suffered more!”

“That’s not how performance reviews work.”

“Please! Just a little punishment! I’ll be good after, I promise!”

I stepped around her, making it three steps before Seraphina materialized in front of me—literally materialized. One second the hallway was empty, the next she was standing there with that calculating smile.

“Welcome home, Rian.”

“Don’t teleport inside the building, you know it messes with the wards.”

“But I wanted to surprise you.” She tilted her head, silver hair catching the light from the window—looking innocent, harmless. It was a complete lie.

“Remember our conversation last week?”

“Which one? You have a lot of conversations with yourself.”

“The one where you promised to take me into town for research materials.”

“I never promised that.”

“Are you sure? I remember it very clearly,” she tapped her chin thoughtfully.

I didn’t remember any such conversation, but with Seraphina, that didn’t mean anything—she was a master manipulator who could gaslight you into believing the sky was green if you weren’t careful.

“I’m not taking you anywhere until you apologize to Marcus.”

“Who?”

“The scout you psychologically destroyed.”

“Oh, him—he was weak-minded. Not my fault he couldn’t handle a little creative direction.”

“You convinced him his shadow was plotting against him.”

“I merely suggested the possibility, he drew his own conclusions.”

I felt my eye twitch.

Seraphina smiled wider, clearly enjoying this—watching people squirm was her favorite hobby after reading forbidden texts and experimenting with chaos magic.

“Face it, Rian—you promised, and you always keep your promises, don’t you?” She leaned in closer, breath smelling like mint tea, eyes sparkling with mischief and something darker. She was testing me, seeing how far she could push before I snapped.

“I’m not playing your games today, Seraphina.”

“Who said I’m playing?”

The sound of metal scraping against stone echoed through the hall.

I turned.

Valeria sat at the dining table, armor off, wearing a simple black tunic that clung to her frame in ways that were definitely intentional. She was sharpening her sword with long, deliberate strokes—the whetstone singing against the blade.

She wasn’t looking at the sword though.

She was looking at me, specifically at my neck—her red eyes tracking the movement of my throat when I swallowed. A slow smile crept across her face.

“Long day, Guild Master?”

“Average day.”

“You look tense.” The blade gleamed as she held it up to the light. “Perhaps you need to release some stress—I volunteer as your opponent. We could spar, and I promise to only break the bones that heal quickly.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Are you afraid?”

She stood up, chair scraping against the floor, walking toward me with that predatory grace she always had—each step measured, deliberate, like she was already planning which angle to strike from.

“I don’t fear you, Valeria.”

“You should.”

She stopped right in front of me, close enough that I could see the faint scar on her collarbone, close enough that I could smell her scent—something like steel and roses. It shouldn’t have been attractive, really shouldn’t have been.

“I’ve been thinking about this morning, how easily you dominated me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I want a rematch, but this time I’ll be ready—this time I’ll make you submit.”

“Not happening.”

“Scared you’ll lose?”

“Scared I’ll have to file more incident reports.”

She laughed—a dark, throaty sound that sent chills down my spine. The good kind of chills, the dangerous kind.

I was surrounded.

Elara was still on her knees behind me whimpering about punishment, Seraphina was to my left probably plotting seventeen different ways to manipulate me into doing what she wanted, and Valeria was directly in front of me radiating bloodlust and something that felt disturbingly close to genuine affection.

This was my life.

These three impossibly beautiful, impossibly deadly women—talented, powerful, capable of clearing dungeons that would wipe out veteran parties—but also completely, utterly insane.

And I was stuck with them.

I walked past Valeria, making it to the quest board on the far wall where new assignments had been posted while I was out. Most were standard fare: escort missions, herb gathering, monster culling—safe, boring work that paid decent money.

Then I saw it.

A crimson-bordered notice with S-rank designation—the kind of quest that made veteran adventurers pale, the kind that required a full twenty-person raid party with balanced roles and military-grade coordination.

“Dragon’s Maw Dungeon. S-rank. Recommended party size: twenty members. Reward: 500,000 gold.”

I read it twice.

The description was brutal: multiple boss encounters, environmental hazards, corrupted mana zones that would drain unprepared mages dry—the kind of place where one mistake meant death and two mistakes meant your entire party got wiped.

“That one looks fun.”

Valeria appeared at my shoulder, reading the notice over my arm—her breath tickling my ear, smelling like leather and something sweet I couldn’t quite place.

“We should take it.”

“It requires twenty people.”

“We have four.”

“That’s not even close to twenty.”

“We’ve done worse.”

She wasn’t wrong—we’d cleared quests that should have been impossible, survived encounters that should have killed us. But this was different, objectively suicidal.

I looked at the reward again.

Five hundred thousand gold—enough to pay off our debts to the Association, enough to maybe, possibly, eventually get them to let me recruit normal members, or at least fund a very long vacation far away from these lunatics.

“I want to test myself against a dragon.” Valeria’s hand rested on my shoulder. “I want to feel its claws tear through my armor, want to taste my own blood while fighting something that could actually kill me.”

“That’s not a healthy motivation.”

“Since when do we do things for healthy reasons?”

She had a point.

Seraphina drifted over, scanning the notice—her calculating eyes lighting up with interest.

“A corrupted mana zone? That’s perfect for my research—I could study the degradation patterns, maybe even harness some of the ambient energy.”

“We’re not turning a quest into your personal science experiment.”

“Why not? I promise only minimal reality distortion.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

Elara joined us, reading the notice with her face going bright red.

“A dragon! Dragons have such powerful attacks—I could test my healing limits! Maybe I’ll finally find my threshold!”

“Your threshold is called death, Elara.”

“Exactly! How exciting!”

I looked at the three of them.

They were all smiling—different kinds of smiles. Valeria’s was sharp and hungry, Seraphina’s was cold and curious, Elara’s was disturbingly blissful. They wanted this, wanted to throw themselves into hell just to see what would happen.

I pulled the notice off the board.

“We’re doing this.”

Valeria’s grin widened.

“Excellent decision, Guild Master.”

“On one condition—you all follow my orders. No improvising, no experiments, no deliberately tanking damage for fun.”

“Of course,” they said in unison.

They were lying, absolutely lying. The moment we entered that dungeon, they’d do whatever they wanted and I’d be left scrambling to keep us alive.

But what choice did I have?

This was Crimson Rose, this was my guild—these were my monsters to wrangle. The Guild Association was right to fear them, right to pity me, because at the end of the day I was the only one crazy enough to lead them.

I looked at the S-rank notice in my hand.

Tomorrow we’d face a dragon and probably die, tonight I’d file the paperwork and pretend I had any control over this situation.