Chapter 93: The Ganner Ball I

The venue was a converted event hall in the city center that Ganner Corp hired every year and dressed up with enough money to make the room forget it was rented.

James drove his mother and Nyra to the venue in his car, arriving while the press crowd outside was still building along the velvet barriers. Nyra pressed her face against the passenger window the whole way there while his mother sat in the back with her hands folded in her lap and said nothing.

Press stood outside the main entrance behind velvet barriers while cameras turned toward every arriving car. Security was posted at the doors in dark suits with earpieces and the kind of posture that said former military more than hired contractor. Challengers, guild executives, weapons buyers, and well-dressed investors moved through the entrance in clusters.

James handed the invitation to the security check at the door. The man scanned it, confirmed his name and his mother’s name, and stepped back to let them through without issue.

Nyra held James’s mother’s hand and kept her wings flat and hidden beneath a small jacket that James had specifically bought for the evening. She looked up at the entrance ceiling when they walked inside and her eyes went wide at the height of it.

James’s mother stayed composed while her eyes swept the room quickly and returned to neutral before anyone else noticed.

The hall opened into a wide space with high ceilings, a formal display arrangement of Tower-grade armor and weapon prototypes along the walls, and tables spread across the main floor between a central stage platform and a press section with cameras and journalists behind a low partition. Private negotiation rooms opened off a side corridor. The Ganner family seating was positioned near the center of the hall where it would be visible from most angles in the room.

People started noticing James almost immediately.

It started with a pair of guild representatives from a mid-tier Irish outfit who recognized him from the Floor 10 stream and introduced themselves with the careful politeness people use when they are not sure how famous someone is but want to be remembered if it turns out they are very famous. James shook hands and kept his answers brief and noncommittal while making sure he got their names and their guild affiliation before they moved on.

More followed in the same pattern. A weapons investor asked if Team Zero was planning to stream Floor 11. A Challenger sponsor asked about his current contract status and visibly brightened when James said he was still independent. A guild liaison from a company James did not recognize handed him a card and said his organization had been watching his progress since Floor 5.

James took each card and each name and said nothing that could be used against him later.

He was not comfortable exactly, but he understood what the room was doing. Everyone here was building something, and the question they were all asking under their polite introductions was whether James Ganner was worth investing in before the bigger organizations locked him down.

It was useful information and he intended to keep gathering it.

Finn was standing near the far wall beside Marcus when James spotted them.

Marcus was deep in conversation with a man James did not recognize while Finn stood slightly behind him with the expression of someone counting down the minutes until they could leave without it being rude. He noticed James at the same moment James noticed him and the slight lift of Finn’s chin said everything about how the evening was going for him.

James walked over while his mother kept Nyra close to the food section nearby.

"How long have you been here?" James asked.

"Too long," Finn said. "Marcus dragged me an hour early because he wanted first access to the product preview room."

James glanced at Marcus, who had not acknowledged his arrival and was still focused on his conversation. "He knows I’m here?"

"He knows. He’ll acknowledge you when it serves him." Finn said it without bitterness, which was somehow worse than if he had said it with any. "You look terrible in formal wear, by the way."

"You’ve seen me in a hospital gown. This is better."

Finn almost smiled.

A group of four girls approached them before he could respond. They were maybe a year or two older than James, dressed well and moving with the confidence of people used to these kinds of events. They had clearly been watching from a short distance and had come over together, which was a social move James recognized even if he did not know how to manage it properly.

"You’re Finn Hale," one of them said to Finn while already looking at James. "And you’re the Necromancer. From Team Zero. I saw the Floor 10 broadcast."

"We both saw it," another said. "We watched it three times."

"Four," the third said.

Finn’s expression settled into the polite neutral he used when he had no good options. "That’s kind of you."

"We heard you cleared on Hell difficulty," the first one continued while her attention stayed entirely on James. "That’s basically unheard of for Floor 10. How did it feel?"

"Difficult," James said.

She waited for more. When it did not come, she tried a different angle. "Are you signing with a guild soon? Everyone is saying you could name your price right now."

"I haven’t decided yet."

"That’s so impressive. The independence thing." She said this while touching her collarbone and looking at James like the answer had been more interesting than it was.

Finn caught James’s eye for exactly half a second and they both looked away quickly.

The conversation continued for several more minutes while neither of them said anything useful and both of them smiled at the right moments and waited for a natural exit that took longer to arrive than either of them wanted.

James’s mother had found a position near one of the long food tables with Nyra standing beside her, entirely uninterested in the event and entirely focused on the food.

Nyra had already worked through several of the small dessert pieces and kept tilting her head at each new tray that passed while her wings stayed flat and hidden beneath her jacket. She did not understand the room or why everyone was dressed the same way or why nobody was talking about anything interesting, but the food was good and that was enough for her.

"Those ones have chocolate on them," she said while pointing at a new tray.

"You’ve had enough," James’s mother said quietly without looking away from the room.

Nyra looked at the tray. Then at James’s mother. Then back at the tray.

James’s mother pressed a hand lightly to her shoulder. "A little longer."

Nyra considered this and decided the chocolate ones were worth waiting for.

A tone sounded from the main platform at the center of the hall and the room began to settle.

James’s uncle stepped up to the platform while the conversations around the hall faded into background murmur and then into quiet. He was a composed man who wore formal settings like they had been designed for him personally, and he had the particular quality of powerful people who seemed more relaxed the more eyes were on them.

"Thank you all for being here tonight," he began while his voice carried across the hall without effort. "When my father built this company, he believed that the Tower was not only a threat to be survived but a resource to be understood. Forty years later, Ganner Corp stands as Ireland’s largest Tower-grade equipment manufacturer because we have never stopped believing that."

The room listened politely.

He welcomed the guild representatives, TRB officials, contractors, investors, and international partners in the room while naming several of them by name, which made the people named straighten slightly with the satisfaction of being recognized publicly.

Then he moved to the product section.

His team brought out the first display piece and the presentation shifted from ceremonial to commercial. The gun-staff prototype was designed for mage-class Challengers who needed close-range backup options without sacrificing their magic output. It combined a compact firing mechanism with mana channeling nodes along the shaft so the Challenger could fire physical rounds or route a spell through the same weapon depending on the situation. The demonstration model sat on a rotating display stand under proper lighting.

The second piece was the new lightweight Tower-grade armor set. Standard Tower-grade armor was effective but heavy enough to significantly slow anything below a high-Agility build. The new alloy reduced weight by thirty percent while maintaining the structural integrity ratings that guild insurance contracts required. Three color variations were displayed on mannequin stands along the wall behind the platform.

The accessory line came next and drew a different kind of attention from the room. Necklaces, rings, and bracers crafted from rare minerals recovered from cleared floors had subtle enhancement properties that stacked on top of existing gear without requiring a System slot. Several of the women in the room moved closer to the display cases. Investors began speaking quietly to their aides.

Then the main hall’s rear panel opened and Ganner Corp’s event team rolled out the prototype vehicle.

It was not large, but it was unmistakably different from anything currently in civilian use. The frame was low and compact with paneling that caught the light in the specific way that Tower-grade alloys did, and the drive system ran on a stabilized extract from a cleared floor’s mineral deposit that produced enough energy output to make the current fuel market look expensive by comparison.

His uncle let the room absorb it for a moment before speaking again. "Ganner Corp does not simply manufacture equipment. We build the infrastructure that makes climbing possible. This vehicle is the next step."

The applause was genuine and carried the energy of a room that had just seen something with real market value.

James watched from where he stood near the side wall and understood why Ganner Corp controlled rooms like this. They were not pretending. They had real products, real resources, and real influence. The cruelty in the family was private. The legitimacy was public and it was real.

That was exactly what made them dangerous.