Choi and Tanner stumbled back into the dormwhen the third shift ended, both of them looking like they’d been through a warzone—and loving every second of it.

  Tanner flopped dramatically onto his bunk, tossing his gaming helmet into the sheets with a theatrical groan.

  “Dude,” he said to no one in particular. “That was awesome.”

  Choi laughed, pulling off his sweaty shirt and hanging it off the bunk rail.

  Advanced VR pods would take care of little things like body temperature regulation, preventing you from sweating, and even gently shifting your muscles to avoid cramps.

  Their cheap gaming helmets?

  Not so much.

  If you played for six hours, you were going to sweat like a pig.

  There was no avoiding it.

  Choi and Tanner both looked like they’d just run a marathon by the time they pulled the helmets off, wiping their faces on the ratty towels every dorm bunk came with.

  “Best sweat I’ve ever earned,” he said.

  “I can’t believe we actually survived fighting three Spiky Pigs at once,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “Those bastards are mean.”

  Ren, who had just woken up from his short, much-needed nap, stretched and grinned at them from his bunk.

  Ren chuckled, tossing them each a fresh water bottle from the communal fridge.

  “Welcome to the glamorous life of professional gamers,” he said dryly.

  Choi just grinned, wiping his forehead.

  “Well?” Ren asked, voice still hoarse with sleep. “How’d you guys do?”

  Tanner proudly opened up his inventory window for everyone to see, projecting it to the cheap communal display screen hanging over the bunk rows.

  “Thirty-two copper, baby!” he said, grinning like he’d won the lottery.

  Choi pulled his up too, showing his total haul.

  “Only twenty-eight copper here,” he said, a little sheepishly. “Tanner kept stealing the last hits.”

  “Hey, hey, rogue privilege,” Tanner said, winking.

  The dorm burst into light laughter.

  It wasn’t much.

  Compared to the alpha slayers who had hauled in close to 500 silver each, it was basically pocket change.

  But for two newbie players, in their very first shift, playing honestly?

  It was real money.

  Thirty copper was thirty real-world cents.

  Enough for a cheap street snack.

  Enough to mean something.

  Ren clapped them both on the back.

  “Good job,” he said seriously. “That’s how it starts. Copper today, silver tomorrow.”

  Choi and Tanner both straightened proudly.

  Ren looked at the coins with a relaxed grin, stretching his arms behind his head.

  “Keep the coppers,” he said. “But hey—just a heads-up, I won’t always be around to play delivery boy for the coin shuffle.”

  He gestured casually toward the coins in their inventory. “So this is our mini-bank now. Next guys who log in? If I’m not around, make sure they get a few coins. Enough to get better than the bargain-basement starter gear we had.”

  There wasn’t a trace of frustration in his voice—if anything, he sounded relieved. For the first few shifts, jumping in and out to hand off a couple copper coins had been a necessary evil. He hadn’t minded, but he definitely wasn’t going to miss it.

  Now that Choi and Tanner had some coin in their pockets, the system could finally start running on its own.

  Ren gave a small nod of satisfaction.

  ‘Finally. No more playing coin concierge every ten minutes.’

  The Scrap Rats were leveling up—literally and logistically.

  “And besides,” Ren added, grinning slyly, “you two did an even bigger job than you realize.”

  Choi blinked. “What’s that?”

  “You spread the word, right?” Ren asked.

  Choi and Tanner exchanged a mischievous glance—and nodded.

  “Oh yeah,” Tanner said. “Everyone and their dog knows about the supposed goblin alpha by now.”

  Choi laughed. “Heck, I think even the rats in the inn know about it.”

  Ren leaned back on his bunk, satisfied.

  ‘Perfect,’ he thought. ‘Everything’s in place.’

  When the fake “accidental gossip” took full effect, Greenwild Cross was going to see a goblin hunt like no other.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  And Ren’s little slum guild?

  They were going to be right at the center of it.

  “Alright, I guess it’s time to work,” Ren muttered, grabbing the gaming helmet from the bed.

  He sprayed a good amount of cheap cleaning solution into it, giving it a quick but thorough wipe-down.

  Gaming helmets got sweaty and stinky fast—like an old football helmet left in a high school locker room for a month.

  But there wasn’t any point in complaining.

  Having their own personal helmets was still a far-off dream.

  Maybe if they made it big.

  His partner for this shift was Simms.

  Simms worked for a butcher—but not the kind that sold meat. In the slums, “butcher” was street slang for a rogue surgeon. The kind who didn’t ask questions about where a liver came from, or why the client needed a new pair of lungs at midnight. These weren’t hospital-grade professionals. These were back-alley cutters with bone saws and just enough anesthetic to keep their donors from screaming too much.

  Simms wasn’t the one holding the scalpel, though. He was the middleman. The finder. The one who made the calls, scouted the bodies, and handled the logistics. Most of the time, the parts came from desperate slum-dwellers selling off what they could live without. A kidney here. An eye there. Voluntary, technically.

  The rest? Taken from corpses—ones that had the decency to die on their own, or from “natural causes” like gang turf wars. Sure, Simms had helped a few of those deaths along, but it was always gray. Never cold-blooded. Because if they crossed that line—if they started hunting the living—the cops would stop looking the other way. And a real raid? That was the kind of heat that made people like Simms disappear permanently.

  In Towerbound, Simms picked the Thief with Harvest Specialist as his profession, a dark crafting hybrid that let him extract rare reagents and biological materials from fallen enemies. Not just bones and hides—nerves, organs, glands. Stuff that made alchemists and shady crafters drool.

  The Harvest Specialist was, in a way, the dark mirror of the Skinner/Hunter profession. Where Skinners took hides, bones, sinew, and meat, the Harvest Specialist went deeper—literally. They were the ones who peeled back muscle and cartilage to reach the soft, valuable things most people wouldn’t even look at. Glands that pulsed with residual magic. Still-warm hearts infused with elemental energy. Even brain matter, if the extraction was clean enough.

  It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t noble. But it was invaluable.

  Because while warriors and rangers took the glory, and mages burned everything to ash, someone had to be there when the killing was done. Someone had to walk among the bodies, scalpel in hand, muttering to themselves as they opened corpses like treasure chests—praying the drops hadn’t degraded, or worse, dissolved.

  Simms was one of those people.

  He wasn’t a fighter. He didn’t pretend to be. But he didn’t have to be. His value came after the fight. He knew how to spot a healthy mana gland under bruised muscle, how to remove a drake’s venom sac without popping it, and how to store it all properly before it spoiled. Where others saw a dead monster, he saw a payday. A pharmaceutical opportunity. A rare catalyst for a black-market potion that could sell for twenty gold if you knew the right buyer.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  Alchemists—the serious ones, the ones worth their salt—didn’t work alone. They couldn’t. Their entire craft was built on materials that were hard to get and easy to ruin. So every real alchemist had a network.

  Harvest Specialists like Simms.

  Herbalists who knew which flowers to pick at night and which mushrooms only grew near dungeon rot.

  Foragers who could crawl through poison-thorn ravines just to snag a batch of silverleaf before the sun scorched it.

  If an alchemist didn’t have at least three gatherers working for them, they weren’t an alchemist. They were a hobbyist.

  And in Towerbound, where monsters bled magic and every death could be profitable, Simms would find his place. Quiet. Gruesome. Necessary.

  He wasn’t built for front-line combat, but when the bodies hit the ground, that’s when Simms went to work. Just like in real life, he wasn’t the killer—he was the one who cleaned up afterward and made it profitable.

  Ren passed him the helmet, and Simms slid it on without a word.

  They both logged in.

  When they materialized back in Greenwild Cross, Ren blinked in surprise.

  The town, which had been packed with shouting players and open-air sales just hours ago, was…

  Quiet.

  Too quiet.

  The streets felt almost deserted compared to before.

  Only a few players lingered here and there, browsing shop stalls or chatting by the fountain.

  Everyone else?

  They were probably getting ready.

  Waiting.

  Building up for whatever they thought was coming.

  ‘Perfect,’ thought Ren with a small grin.

  Exactly what he had wanted.

  Greenwild Cross might have looked like a sleepy backwater, but it was one of only ten starter towns worldwide. At launch, Towerbound hadn’t built a full map yet, so every player was either randomly assigned to one of the ten—or, if you were part of a hardcore guild like Prosperous, you picked your starting point carefully. They had chosen Greenwild Cross because it was small, quiet, and they figured it would be easy to dominate.

  Ren hadn’t picked Greenwild Cross by accident either.

  It wasn’t just a starter zone. It was a destined point—one of those automatic assignment hubs where everyone playing in the same local region got funneled. Every newbie logging in from this area slum-dwellers who’d scraped together just enough credits to afford a basic VR cot… they all landed here.

  And that was exactly what he needed.

  Because while the ten-man dorm was his starting crew, Ren had no intention of stopping there. Not even close. He’d seen what the slums had to offer—grit, hunger, desperation, and more importantly, numbers. Everyone else in the game might be forming elite teams and chasing stream-worthy clout, but Ren was building something different.

  He wasn’t planning a guild.

  He was planning a movement.

  A force made up of the overlooked and underestimated. The kids with secondhand gear. The players no one wanted in their parties. The ones who threw rocks and flailed swords because they couldn’t afford real spellbooks or fancy armor yet.

  Greenwild Crossing was perfect.

  Because when the time came, Ren wouldn’t have to go looking for an army.

  He’d already be standing in the middle of one.

  And this sleepy little town atmosphere?

  It was all because of the rumor—the rumor—that somewhere out in the goblin fields, an Alpha was about to spawn.

  Ren and Simms made their way toward the goblin zone, weaving through narrow back alleys and slipping past the few players still milling around the outskirts.

  When they finally reached the ridge overlooking the goblin fields, Ren stopped dead.

  Simms let out a low whistle beside him.

  The fields were packed.

  It looked like the entire town had shown up.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of players lined the edges, all armed, armored, and absolutely itching for a piece of that Alpha kill.

  Everyone wanted to be an Alpha Slayer.

  And front and center?

  The asshats from Prosperous Guild.

  Not just them either.

  Prosperous had linked arms—metaphorically and literally—with three other major guilds: Vanguard Dawn, Iron Pact, and Scarlet Valor.

  Together, they had formed a massive, organized encirclement around the goblin fields.

  Improvised guild banners were on staffs above their heads.

  Armored players stood shoulder to shoulder, forming human walls that blocked any random player from stepping foot into the spawn zone.

  And they were making damn sure everyone knew it.

  “This Alpha belongs to us!” one of the Prosperous lieutenants bellowed.

  “Back off if you don’t want to die when PvP unlocks!”

  Players outside the cordon immediately started shouting back.

  “This isn’t fair!”

  “You don’t own the spawn, assholes!”

  “Typical guild scum!”

  But shouting was about all they could do.

  Because inside that circle?

  There were over 1,200 guild members, standing in tight, battle-ready ranks.

  While the random players outnumbered them technically, they weren’t organized.

  There were lone wolves, small friend groups, duos…

  Nobody was willing to be the first idiot to rush the line and get turned into pincushions.

  Ren watched the scene unfold with dark amusement.

  ‘Exactly like I expected,’ he thought.

  He glanced sideways at Simms, who was eyeing the crowd carefully, already calculating paths through the madness.

  Good.

  They were going to need that cool demeanour soon.