Operation Dumb Braveheart started with a yell, and everybody looked at where Simms was pointing—and at that point, the Gloomsprite Dust and smoke bombs were thrown into the goblin area.

  Normally, when an alpha spawned, there weren’t sparkles and smoke clouds.

  People should’ve thought twice about it.

  But with expectations high in the air, nobody did.

  It was pure herd mentality.

  A mob response.

  And this time was no different.

  The guilds immediately split in half.

  Six hundred players rushed toward the goblin sappers, weapons flashing. Desperate for that first clear. The four guilds had only temporarily banded together to hog the boss, they had no plans to cooperate further.

  The other six hundred turned outward, forming a perimeter facing the crowd to keep random players from sneaking in and stealing the kill.

  That’s when Simms shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “For freedom! Screw you and your guilds!”

  And he charged straight in, wild and waving his weapon over his head.

  At the same moment, the rest of the Scrap Rats picked up the call.

  “For freedom!” they all shouted, running after Nox—but not nearly as fast.

  They weren’t suicidal.

  They definitely didn’t want to get into the thick of the fighting.

  What made it especially effective was that the Scrap Rats were all spread out through different parts of the crowd.

  Not grouped up.

  Not clumped together.

  Each of them had blended into different sections of the random players—so when they moved, it didn’t look like a single group rushing the guild line.

  It looked like the entire crowd had decided to move forward at once.

  There was no clear leader to blame.

  No isolated troublemakers to pick off.

  Seeing the movement, dozens of random players in the crowd got swept up in the surge.

  They charged too—seeing their only chance at loot, glory, and revenge against the guild bullies.

  This really started the rush.

  Ren, meanwhile?

  Ren hadn’t moved a step at first. He was buried deep in the back of the crowd, arms folded, shouting with the unshakable confidence of a man who absolutely, positively, had no intention of stepping into the fight himself.

  “Get those guild fuckers!” he bellowed, his voice full of gleeful rage.

  He wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t a frontline hero.

  He was a cheerleader—a very loud, very enthusiastic, very deeply cowardly cheerleader.

  And he was killing it.

  “Solo players don’t need to be bullied!” he yelled again, switching his tone like he was someone else entirely—just a random bystander with a heart full of justice and a complete lack of armor.

  Then he started to move. Not toward the front—never toward the front—but around the crowd. Sliding sideways like a grifter looking for the next best mark. Every few steps, he stopped, raised his voice, and flung another spark onto the dry wood of player frustration.

  “Don’t let the loot go!” he cried, punching the air.

  He gestured dramatically at the guild. “They’re trying to keep it all for themselves! That’s not balance—that’s corporate monopolization of shared content!”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  More players turned to look. Some laughed. Others nodded. A few clenched their fists.

  “They didn’t even tag half those mobs!” he shouted again, voice rising. “That’s everyone’s loot! Not just their streamer showcase!”

  He wasn’t swinging a weapon.

  He wasn’t even buffing anyone.

  But Ren was doing what he did best:

  Throwing gasoline on fire and hiding behind the guy with the biggest shield.

  The goblin sappers, cowardly little creatures that they were, weren’t about to stand their ground against six hundred screaming players.

  They immediately started running around in panic, trying to scatter in all directions.

  But the guild players rushing toward them were a horde.

  No EXP was going to escape their tightening circle.

  Meanwhile, the other six hundred guild players—the ones manning the perimeter—were realizing they had a much bigger problem.

  Because the randoms?

  They weren’t just watching anymore.

  They were attacking.

  It was unclear who fired the first arrow.

  It came from the crowd—lost in a sea of names and helmets, launched without warning, aimed straight at the nearest guild player. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe it was on purpose. Maybe someone just got tired of being looked down on.

  But it didn’t matter.

  Because once that first arrow flew, another followed. Then came a firebolt. Then more arrows. And when the crowd realized the guild players weren’t firing back—at least, not at random—they grew bolder.

  Shouts broke out. People surged forward.

  Who said the guild was allowed to retaliate against solo players? Against randoms?

  That was the thing—if one person got aggressive, they’d get reported, punished, blacklisted. But a mob? A mob couldn’t be blamed. A mob couldn’t be banned.

  It was just pandemonium.

  And in that moment, the crowd realized something the guild hadn’t planned for:

  If everyone attacked together, then no one got punished.

  Arrows, Firebolts, thrown daggers, and charging warriors surged toward the guild’s defensive lines.

  As mentioned before, there were about 1,200 organized guild players in total… but close to 2,000 random players in the crowd.

  Normally, that wouldn’t have mattered.

  The randoms had no leadership, no plan.

  But now?

  Now they had a rallying cry.

  Now they had momentum.

  And 600 guild players were trying to hold off nearly 2,000 surging randoms.

  The results were inevitable.

  The battlefield was pure madness now.

  Firebolts, arrows, throwing daggers—everything flying in every direction.

  Random players clashed with guild players.

  Guild players smashed into randoms.

  Nobody even knew who was fighting who anymore.

  Goblins fighting for their lives were also in the mix.

  And somewhere in the middle of it all, someone screamed, “Where’s the Goblin Alpha?!”

  Another Prosperous Guild player shouted back, “I haven’t seen it! Did somebody kill it already?!”

  “No, you moron! We would’ve had a system notification if it died!” someone else yelled.

  The fighting didn’t stop.

  Once a brawl that size broke out?

  There was no stopping it.

  It didn’t matter that the so-called big boss wasn’t there.

  It didn’t matter that there never had been a boss.

  It was about survival now.

  Pride.

  And, of course, loot.

  Players were dropping left and right.

  In Towerbound, dying didn’t drop your money—

  it dropped one random piece of your equipped gear.

  And that meant the battlefield was slowly littering itself with fallen weapons, cracked armor, and the occasional sparkling accessory.

  Ren moved like a ghost through the mayhem.

  He didn’t fight.

  He didn’t charge.

  He didn’t even look at people if he could help it.

  He just ducked low, weaved through the brawls, and scooped up abandoned gear when he spotted it.

  If one of the Scrap Rats who were doing the same thing was about to get crushed, he’d throw a Heal at them—but otherwise, he kept to the shadows, picking his way carefully through the swirling melee.

  Grab and go. That was the mission.

  They weren’t here for honor.

  Or revenge.

  Or some imaginary Alpha kill.

  They were here for scraps.

  And because they knew the truth—that there was no Goblin Alpha—they kept their heads clear while everyone else lost theirs.

  By the time they regrouped behind a half-collapsed stone wall on the edge of the fields, every Scrap Rat had grabbed at least two or three dropped pieces of gear.

  No gold.

  No silver.

  But gear?

  Gear was even better at this stage.

  A battered iron sword.

  A dented leather chestpiece.

  Even a cracked silver ring that still looked sellable.

  All told, they were sitting on a tidy sum—at least for newbies.

  Ren grinned as he tucked a battered steel bracer into his inventory.

  ‘Sometimes the best wins,’ he thought, ‘are the ones you don’t even have to fight for.’

  They slipped away from the battlefield like shadows.

  All around them, the wild uproar still raged—players shouting, spells flaring, steel clashing against steel.

  The whole field had turned into a mad, swirling free-for-all.

  Ren and the Scrap Rats didn’t stick around to admire the mess.

  They ducked low, skirts of smoke and dust helping to conceal their retreat, and hustled back toward Greenwild Cross.

  Nobody noticed.

  Nobody cared.

  Everyone was too busy trying to bash each other’s skulls in over an Alpha that had never even existed.

  By the time they reached the gates, the town guards were already forming up at the edge of the fields, but they weren’t intervening.

  Not yet, anyway.

  In Towerbound, guards didn’t step in until a full massacre happened—and even then, it took a while.

  The system liked “natural resolutions.”

  Ren wiped a little dust off his sleeves and straightened up like nothing had happened.

  He looked over the group.

  Everyone accounted for.

  Everyone alive.

  Everyone richer than when they’d started.

  Simms was breathing hard but grinning like a lunatic.

  Torren was already flipping through the battered loot they’d snagged.

  Dren was silent as ever but gave a tiny approving nod.

  And Mira practically bounced on her toes, excitement shining in her eyes.

  “Not bad,” Ren said casually, as if they hadn’t just committed mass incitement.

  “Not bad?” Mira snorted. “That was brilliant.”

  Ren shrugged modestly.

  Behind them, in the distant fields, the shouting kept getting louder.

  But that was no longer their problem.

  They walked through the gates of Greenwild Cross like perfect little newbies who had definitely not just started a war.

  And the best part?

  They were carrying the spoils.