Darrell stood next to Brad inside the spacious cavern, surrounded by the chaos of a well-oiled crafting machine. All around them, their crafters worked on countless things, from small artifacts destined for the company store to giant parts that would find a place in the war machinery AFK was building.

  Naturally, not all of them belonged to his previous guild. After they arrived in the new town Solar had set up, he spent some time just organizing them and trying to find people to fill up the empty spots, but after a while of wasted time, Darrell just sat down with Brad and told him that there was no point running the group of crafters as a guild under AFK. With the way things were going and the support Lucy and Solar were providing, he felt that having his own guild was pretty useless.

  There was some crying, some yelling, but in the end, he managed to convince Brad to sit down with the leadership of Crysalis and set up their group as part of that guild. Granted, they asked for a rather comfortable compensation package, both for them and their guild leadership, but Crysalis just paid it, without almost any negotiation.

  So now he was leading Research Group 3 deep in the bowels under Ferabor with the inner circle of his guild and having a grand ol’ time!

  “Man, who could’ve known we end up here?” Brad asked almost in a whisper, looking around with wide eyes.

  Darrell just chuckled good-naturedly. “For some reason, most high-level research, sooner or later, always ends up underground. Easier for security, I think.” Based on the many security checks – both visible and invisible – they had to go through to enter this cavern, he was probably correct.

  “No, I don’t mean that,” Brad refuted him. “I was talking about that!” he exclaimed softly, gesturing toward one side of the cavern where a team of magical engineers was fixing two very distinct parts together.

  “Well, yes. We have been used to the usual games. Magic, swords, and monsters. It was a nice box. The safe box. But I don’t think Solar had ever heard of the box.”

  Brad sucked in some air, then let it out in an explosive sigh. “People are going to hate us for it.”

  “Correction. Our enemies are going to hate us for it,” Darrell replied with a smile as he saw several magical welding torches spark to life in the distance before averting his eyes. He had some skills to protect them, but a lifetime of following safety instructions was hard to resist.

  “Our enemies?” Brad asked with a raised eyebrow. He didn’t really look at Darrell, but he still could hear the movement in his friend’s words.

  “I’m afraid the moment we signed up with Solar, we inherited their enemies. Better to accept and plan for them instead of living in an illusory world.”

  “I know that! I knew that when you came back from that stupid event, that it was going to happen,” Brad spoke quietly. “I just don’t like how much you have assimilated… If this fails, we need a certain distance so that we can survive.”

  “Ahh, your eternal pessimism,” Darrell chuckled. “Even if this fails and for some unfathomable reason Solar doesn’t have a backup plan, and a backup plan for that too, then do you think our identity as the ‘engineers of Solar’ wouldn’t open enough doors to survive?” He grinned. “How many emails a day do you get about signing up with another guild?”

  Brad refused to look into his eyes. “Enough. I just worry. You know how it is…”

  Darrell nodded. Brad’s family, while rich by the average person’s standards, was way below his family’s, and he spent most of his life worrying about his family’s livelihood and how to make sure that they wouldn’t lose whatever they managed to get. Which was harder than it should have been. Brad’s grandfather and brothers were genius businessmen who elevated the family from poverty into a solid business that made sure that all of them were comfortable.

  However, since their death, the next generation was less than talented…

  With their rapid rise and sudden influx of money, they quickly went the way most second-gen rich children went and started squandering their inheritance. Fortunately, Brad had a few uncles and aunts who didn’t really go full cuckoo and kept the business alive.

  Thankfully, since Brad achieved his majority, he worked hard to make sure that the business didn’t collapse under the sheer stupidity of his parents and their generation. It was around that time he met Darrell, and the two of them hit it off quickly.

  As a friendly gesture, Darrell used some of his family’s connections to help stabilize Brad’s family business, earning an eternally thankful and always worrying friend.

  Darrell put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I know, I know… However, how about instead of worrying about things you couldn’t affect, you try to help figure out how to ask Liz out. The last time I tried I ended up in a meeting with several guild bigwigs and a bunch of women glaring at me.”

  Brad turned toward him and let out a snort. “How many times do I have to tell you that Liz only has eyes for Tim? The two of them are crazy about each other… Even if one of them doesn’t know about it,” he told Darrel with a grin on his face, his worry momentarily fading.

  Darrell just groaned. “Ugh, love is so stupid…”

  “I don’t think love is stupid. It’s just that you are stupid.”

  “Hey!”

  “How are things?” he asked, stepping into the war room. All around him, black marble walls, decorated with countless gory art pieces – all of them showcasing some kind of bloody act – and full of maps, projections, troop numbers, logistic routes, and other assortments of information.

  Most of the people here were either very well-paid analysts, recruited from game workshops, or found in the real world. The others were leaders of different subdivisions of the Blood Army (or their representatives).

  This room, this war room, was one of the places where some of the biggest decisions of the Blood Army was decided. Strangely, the Blood Brothers never really showed up here, but he chalked that up to paranoia. After all, there were many people out there who were inconvenienced by their actions, which resulted in a lot of bounties. Showing up in the same place, day after day, would lead to those bounties being connected. Instead, they simply sent messages with instructions or a representative – like him – to convey their directions.

  In the middle of the spacious room was a giant table, made out of some kind of redwood, the veins on it the color of black ichor that sometimes undulated if looked at from the corner of the eye. It was profoundly unsettling, but that was what one used when they were leading a group based on blood magic.

  He adjusted his armor, some of the spikier parts sitting uncomfortably on his body, and stepped closer to the map table, making sure not to actually touch it. He didn’t know what it would do, and he didn’t actually want to find out.

  The map was crafted by somebody in the room who had a cartographer skill and it showed. Every line, every icon was drawn beautifully, reminding him of the giant maps museums displayed. Hell, somebody even drew some silly dragons in the water parts.

  The current map that was being displayed was one that contained the Emerald Kingdom and its surroundings. On the right, it was bordered by the ocean, with a few islands here and there, and on the left, it was surrounded by the mountainous regions and the clans that called that place home. In the north, the snow made a lot of things impossible, but there was still a powerful nation there, allied to the Kingdom, since time immemorial. To the south, thanks to their meddling, were several city-states that were currently and openly at war with each other.

  Naturally, that was engineered by them, and to his knowledge, most of that was just posturing done for those watching. As far as he knew, they were in control of ninety percent of cities in the south of the Emerald Kingdom.

  The map reflected that.

  The Emerald Kingdom was represented by the color green, cities and towns showing up with different intensities of the color. The territory belonging to Solar was marked with yellow, centered around Ironwood and Ferabor, where their known headquarters were.

  Honestly, he expected all that to be a giant false flag operation based on what he saw Solar do over the months.

  ‘Heh, we would be in the middle of razing the town to the ground, and he just shows up in a flying city or a spaceship… Who the hell knows with that guy?’ he mused as his eyes moved to the other part of the map.

  Their important bases were marked with black lines radiating from them, connecting to red marks representing supply lines and lesser towns and cities.

  Most of the area beyond the Emerald Kingdom was annotated with their own signs, painting their half of the map red.

  “As you can see, we have control over sectors A to D,” one of the analysts reported, dressed in a robe decorated with small skulls bleeding out of their eyeholes. “Sector E is still mostly under monster control. Sectors F to H are almost there, but we still have to finish them.”

  “Hmm, anything else to report?”

  The man looked up, hesitated a bit as several other people visibly avoided eye contact.

  “I suppose you have heard about the fractures?” the analyst asked as he glared at the man.

  His hand curled into a fist, and he had to resist the urge to yell at them. Biting back some choice words, he responded. “Yes. I have heard. What about them?”

  The analyst swallowed before talking. “Well, we ran the numbers, and the destruction of those fractures has decreased our income from those sectors by several percentages. Also, as consequences we had to redistribute several logistic lines to resupply those posts that relied on those fractures.”

  He had to blink back another tirade. He may have had some power in the Blood Army, but complaining about Solar’s actions got old way before he fucked up the Sunspot plan. Nowadays, most high-ranking people in the Blood Army simply pretended that Solar either didn’t exist or treated the infuriating man as a natural disaster. You prepared as much as possible, then rebuilt after he goes away.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “But it is done? Nothing happened with the redistribution?”

  A shake of the head. “We managed to square everything away. No interruption in the supply line.”

  He nodded. “Good. That’s good.”

  Leaning over the table, he took in the rest of the information, running through the instructions he received in his head while mentally recalibrating a few things. After a few minutes of silence as the people around the table watched him and the rest of the room continued work in the background with a low murmur, he finally spoke.

  Pointing at a certain town, he began. “We need to start here. Reinforce it and start setting up barracks and storage places.”

  “Underground.”

  “Yes, as usual.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He moved his hand and pointed to three distinct points on the map. “Continue with these, but make sure to do it carefully, as they are closer to the border. Build forward bases and start setting up the siege equipment."

  The analyst made a note, then looked up. “What about sabotage?”

  “Do we have people in Ferabor?”

  “Yes, but not many with usable items. They filter the incoming for dangerous substances and magics.”

  He scratched his chin in thought. “I will relay that information, but for now, focus on setting up the siege and fortifications. As long as we have those Solar stands no chance.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He nodded confidently. Everything was coming together.

  “Your friend is an asshole!”

  “Well, hello to you, Grandpa. How are you doing? I’m doing quite well. Just had a beautiful date with Dan. He was amazing, and the food was to die for,” Lara replied to her grandfather.

  The man let out a sigh on the other side of the phone before replying. “Yes, yes. Hello to you, granddaughter. I’m glad that pest makes you happy. Your friend is still an asshole.”

  “And that was a surprise to you?” she asked with a roll of an eye.

  Her grandfather, however, just grumbled. “I hoped he would at least pretend to be not an asshole.”

  “Sam wouldn’t be Sam if he didn’t piss off everybody within a five-mile radius when he opens his mouth…” she replied with a grin. Lara wondered what her mysterious friend managed to do. She had some idea what her grandfather and family wanted from Sam, but she expected he would be able to maneuver around them.

  Thanks to the contract she had with Sam and his company, she was safe from the machinations, but deep down, she was still afraid that her family would manage to fuck up this situation. She enjoyed spending time with Lucy, Clarissa, Isabella, Katie, Dan, and even Sam when he wasn’t upending her understanding of the world for the fifth time that day.

  “I’m starting to see why…” her grandfather replied, and she could hear a small smile in his voice. “We just finished our meeting. His points were rather surprising.”

  “You tried to buy him out, huh?”

  “Something like that. Didn’t work as I expected.”

  “Really?”

  “Mhm. My experts declared our business propositions perfect. No matter what he choses we would win.”

  “And he chose something else?” Lara asked with a grin. Her friend never disappointed.

  “Yes. Now I have to fire several experts, as a boy with no education outplayed them.”

  That caused an eyebrow to rise. “You approved the play without going through it personally?”

  There was silence on the other end, which told her everything as she began to laugh.

  “Hahaha! You should fire yourself, Grandpa!”

  “Unfilial granddaughter, you dare to laugh at your elder?!” her grandfather exclaimed, but it just caused her to laugh much harder.

  “I’m high-fiving Sam the next time I’m meeting with him!” she told her grumbling grandfather.

  They talked about the situation for half an hour, which consisted mostly of Lara’s grandfather grumbling about the impertinent youth and Lara asking a few probing questions. If she had to work with her cousins, she wanted to know which idiot she would have to avoid in the future.

  Finally, after they exhausted the conversation, her grandfather’s voice turned eerily serious.

  “Listen, Lara, I need you to pay attention to what your cousins do in that city. You and they may think it is a game, but there are going to be consequences if they fail. Consequences that I wish to avoid.”

  Blinking in surprise, Lara nodded even though it couldn’t be seen through the phone.

  “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Your cousins are going to be talking with your little friend’s people. And, as much as I love them, you know how they are. Make sure to be there and smooth any ruffled feathers if it comes to that. I don’t want to wake up to angry messages calling for cancellation of the contract.”

  Lara let out a sigh.

  “Fine… I’ll talk with Lucy.”

  “Thank you. Love you!”

  “Love you, too, Grandpa!”

  The phone call ended, but Lara just stood there in her apartment and looked at nothing.

  ‘It seems my peaceful life is going to end. Bummer…’

  There was a reason why she wanted as little to do with her family as possible…

  “He is so cute!”

  “Is he going to grow big enough to ride on?”

  “Hehehehe!”

  “Stop your dirty thoughts! You knew I didn’t mean that!”

  “Anna!”

  “Sorry, Cynthia, but I couldn’t help myself!”

  “I still think that you should have gone with something fluffier…”

  Cynthia gasped theatrically, then leaned down and hugged her adorable new Spiked Wyvern while looking up at Dani, who was grinning at her. “You take that back! Mr. Murdermouth is adorable and the bestest boy ever!”

  Mr. Murdermouth, the Spiked Wyvern, chose this exact moment to open his segmented mouth to reveal several rows of sharp teeth, some of them transitioning into fangs and tusks. It let out a ‘cute’ yawn, then closed its mouth and continued to snuggle into Cynthia’s awkward hug that tried to avoid all the serrated spikes on its body. She reached out with one hand and began to scratch – awkwardly – under the wyvern’s neck, trying desperately to find a spot that wasn’t covered by spikes.

  “Who is a good boy? Who is a good boy?” she began to murmur, watching with fascination as the wyvern actually began to thump with his hind leg.

  Her friends just laughed at the spectacle.

  “It’s so unfair that he gave you this egg,” Dani exclaimed morosely, with her arms crossed in front of her. “Why you?”

  “Hey!” Cynthia called out, looking up from her ministration of the young wyvern. “I worked hard for that egg!”

  “Getting beaten up is not working hard, Cynth!”

  “Says somebody who hasn’t fought Solar…”

  “And I would like to keep it that way. He scares the crap out of me!” Dani replied with a dramatic shudder. Anna just nodded emphatically next to her.

  Cynthia just eyed them weirdly. “Why are you scared of him? He is just a big nerd!”

  Dani and Anna leaned over, trying to find a spot where they could pet the wyvern, while sending a queer look at Cynthia.

  “Girl, I don’t know where you live, but Solar is terrifying. Have you seen the compilations? And that’s just what is public!”

  “But-but he is just a dork! Like my sister!” Cynthia protested, thinking back on the corny one-liners and headache-inducing puns the man sent her way while they were ‘sparring’. ‘Why would anyone find that man scary? My mom is scarier…’ she thought with a shudder.

  Her friends stared back at her for a long moment before they both shook their heads as if giving up the topic.

  It was Anna who continued the conversation, waving her druidic staff around for emphasis. “Aaaanyway, what’s next? I feel like I am getting close to a breakthrough with my vines!”

  Cynthia finished petting her new pet and stood up, wiping her wyvern drool-covered hand in her pants.

  “Sam gave me a ritual to upgrade the wyvern. I thought we could mix pleasure with business. Some of those materials are in hard fractures.”

  Anna nodded in understanding. “Yeah, that’s good. Fighting those monsters will probably give me the push I need.”

  Dani just looked between the two other girls and let out a sigh.

  “Am I the only normal person here?”

  The chatter in the room filled the air as people sat at their stations, working on their tasks, drinking an unhealthy amount of coffee in different configurations. Some people were standing around 3D projections, gesticulating at something on them or writing notes on crumpled notebooks. A bunch of people, dressed in scruffy lab coats, were standing in the small kitchenette where half a dozen dirty microwaves were piled on each other, next to several types of coffee machines, each of them gleaming with cleanliness.

  On the far wall were several screens, showcasing either data, statistics, and graphs, or a few seconds of action from several players in the game. One of them, however, didn’t really jump around; it only showed one particular player.

  In the middle of the room were several smaller desks pushed together, forming a bigger unit, allowing several people to sit around it and stare at each other with heavy stares.

  Well, one of them was staring at them with heavy-lidded eyes, promising pain and suffering. The others, including the full-body projection of Selena dressed in a smart casual woman’s suit, grinning from ear to ear, just looked tired, like they actually wanted to be there and not anywhere else.

  The click-clack of keyboards and low murmur of conversation saturated the air for minutes as the man with the several days old five-o’clock shadow stared at his minions.

  Finally, after the oppressive silence, the man spoke up.

  “So, what should we do about it?”

  One lone researcher, shaking slightly, put his hands up. “A-about what, sir?” he asked, and instantly shrank back as the others sent him a withering stare.

  BAMM

  The man at the head of the table slammed his fist on the desk, causing several cups of coffee to almost spill. “Goddammit! That fucker is making a mockery of our game! We have to stop him!”

  Many people exchanged looks, wondering when they signed up to be the minions of a washed-up and severely sleep-deprived supervillain.

  Selena, always the bastion of grace and wisdom, chose this exact moment to speak up. “Are you talking about the thing they are building in–”

  However, she couldn’t finish it before she was interrupted. “Yes! That! I refuse to believe that doing something like that is legal!”

  Somebody piped up. “It’s not exactly illegal or against the TOS.”

  “I don’t care! It’s against the spirit of the game!”

  “The spirit of the game is that players can do whatever they want, as long as they can handle the consequences,” Selena chirped in with a grin.

  “Even that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we leak it?” the man asked desperately.

  Selena shook her projected head. “Please don’t suggest we do actual illegal things. I would have to report you, then you would be fired, and I would get a new boss. That would mean I would have to break... in a new person. And that’s just too much work…”

  The man looked around, trying to find somebody who agreed with him, but nobody dared to look into his eyes. He tried for a minute before sinking his face into his hands and letting out a sigh crossed with a growl.

  Looking up a few seconds later, there was a new fervor in his eyes. “Fine! Fine! If I can’t leak it, then I want a new marketing campaign. I want everyone to go over the preparations on both sides. Collect information that is public and start putting it on the forums. Hell, invite the experts to give an opinion based on the public maps and territories. I want all eyes on this clusterfuck. If the Fucker even farts, I want a post on the forum!” By the end of the rant, he was heaving heavily and halfway standing up. “Any questions?”

  A hand went up.

  “Yes?”

  “Do we favor one side, or are we balancing between the two?”

  Before he could answer, Selena interrupted. “The public is mostly against the Blood Army. Their tactics contain too much griefing, spawn camping, and so on. Supporting them could worsen our public perception. Logic would dictate that we should – softly – support…the Fucker.”

  The hand went down, and the man’s blood pressure visibly went up.

  “What if…what if…we do…ugh…”

  Another hand went up, this time a woman’s. “We could start going over the things they’re crafting and publish a behind-the-scenes documentary after the reveal.”

  “We would need permission from them for that…” Selena added serenely.

  “I can contact them and get started on the process. I know Steve in marketing did his graduate thesis on documentaries. He could lead the project!” the woman replied eagerly. Whether that eagerness was about the documentary or Steve was unclear.

  The man, visibly calming down, looked at the woman and nodded. “Yes. Yes! Good idea! Make sure to reveal every secret! And then…”

  As the man began to rant, Selena just looked over the woman and shook her head. The researcher nodded in understanding and began to scribble on her notepad.

  Another man spoke over the rant. “Are we going to talk about the actual war? I thought we were going to discuss the upcoming fight?”

  Selena nodded, and suddenly another projection appeared over the table, showcasing the Emerald Kingdom and its surroundings. The various powers were marked with different colors. Between the colorful points were glowing lines of different colors denoting connections, roads, logistical lines, and many more things.

  Everybody around the table leaned forward, ready to hear whatever was going to be said. The man at the head of the table also noticed that nobody was paying attention to his rant, so he fell quiet and slowly returned to his chair and cleared his throat.

  “Ahem. Yes. The war. We actually have a plan. There are several guilds who decided to found news groups that would declare neutrality to be able to observe the fights. After the talk with the higher-ups, we decided to support it. The meeting is about deciding how to go about it,” he told them, his voice going from hysterical into a calm baritone that set everybody at ease. Proving once again, if it weren’t for that Fucker he would be an excellent team leader. “Selena, if you would?”

  “Naturally, sir,” she replied with a smile, then another projection appeared over the map, denoting several lists. “The first is a one-time item giving them temporary invulnerability…

  Owed bonus chapters: ---

  Character Sheet

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