A stadium mid-construction on the northernmost edge of Suchi's Slums.

While a certain someone was busy with one questline, here, his hired minions were doing the other on his behalf.

This building site had attracted many a local over the past days, curious as to the identity of the madman who’d commissioned such a garishly-massive stadium. So far, the gates had never been closed, with the labourers coming and going at all hours. To feed and entertain these hungry workers, a flea market of sorts had sprung up outside, where street urchins hawked stolen or self-made goods.

“Tobacco for sale!” shouted a boy of eleven. “Laughterfounts, Lechuga Dem Diablas, Basindi Boilers. No more than 20 copper a cigar!”

“A Diabla for less than 20?”

A solitary Offworlder had been riding by on a horse, its hooves stained with the dirt of the boar fields. The rider, enticed by the deal, dismounted and leaned over the rotting plank the goods were displayed on. As he did so, his hood peeled back, revealing a chubby face with a goatee.

The street urchin, his eyes bulging in shock, bowed. “Your majesty!”

His bow held genuine awe and respect.

Who was this before him? It was none other than King Ramiro, The Saviour of The Slums!

Although King Ramiro shirked the limelight, it was an open secret among the Slumdwellers that he'd spearheaded the reformation of their home, ushering in the new age of safety and prosperity. In many a shack, on the sacrificial altar, homeowners would now place a portrait of the King's noble visage beside the statues of their patron gods.

The street urchin, realising he was presenting his unwashed hair to The Saviour, felt his cheeks flushing an embarrassing shade of red.

“What’s this?” The King, ignoring the acknowledgement of his identity, chose a cigarillo with tobacco spilling out of a tear in a mouldy wrapping - it was clearly the worst of the bunch. “To think, you’d have a Sihai Smoker.”

“It’s a fake!” The street urchin confessed. “They all are.”

“Oh? Do you doubt my eyes?”

“Never, your majesty!”

The King gave an exaggerated sighed. “The standard market price for a Sihai Smoker is too extravagant for my budget. You'll have to accept this." He placed a single coin on the display plank.

The street urchin saw in the periphery of this downcast eyes, a white shimmer – a platinum coin!

Looking up in astonishment, he found The Saviour returning a soft, ironic glance.

“Tell anyone I scammed you, and...” The King jokingly squeezed his own throat, making a fairly realistic suffocation expression.

The street urchin, as The Saviour bid farewell and strolled his horse into the stadium, watched the man's noble strides with an ever-growing sense of patriotism.

Now, this was a king, charitable, humble, a man of the people!

Ramiro, once out of sight of the street urchin, tossed the imitation cigarillo away. An authentic one materialised between his teeth, its violet wrapping webbed with golden veins. Lighting it up, he slipped unchecked through a guard point and inhaled a lungful of smoke that caused his corneas to cloud over for a second.

In the stadium's inner grounds, he was met by a scene of thousands of The Empire's labourers rushing about with materials for one hundred identical duelling arenas. Each arena measuring 50 by 50 metres, they'd been replicated from ones used in The Company’s tournaments, their designs ranging from ancient ruins to children’s jungle gyms.

A hundred arenas was a mind-boggling amount for one person to commission. It almost matched the number the entire Empire'd built to serve the 1.1 million new players that passed through each month, except theirs were built with much more affordable materials. Moreover, as far as Ramiro were aware, this venue would be exclusively used for duelling.

The sight of massive project gave him mixed feelings.

Nearby, a team of Constructionists, the game’s builder Civilian class, were being addressed by an NPC in The Company's ash-grey uniform. The man had a hideous mass of scar tissue consuming half his face, including one eye. To Ramiro's knowledge, the wound had been inflicted by a Gargari Plainsbeast from whose stomach the NPC had been attempting to pluck a hair for The Trials of Nerin, a series of challenging quests required for entry into Central City. Despite being able to fix the scar, the NPC kept it as a psychotic memento.

Ramiro called out to him. “Impressive work as always, Senior Director Van!"

The Constructionists, spotting the king, bowed.

The Senior Director bowed, too, but much less deeply. "Your majesty."

“A friend and her entourage should be arriving soon,” said Ramiro. “Could you point them my way?"

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

“Of course, your majesty," answered the Senior Director flatly.

Here, Ramiro—intimately familiar with the NPC after bringing him over to their side himself—would normally have expected the disfigured man to flash a disgusting, orange-stained smile, but his mood today was much less arrogant.

From an earlier correspondence, Ramiro had gathered that the NPC had been unsettled after meeting with this grandiose stadium’s mystery sponsor a few hours earlier. According to the Senior Director, the sponsor had disguised himself too cleverly for identification, but they should be careful about disrupting the build any further.

No doubt, the NPC was withholding the full truth from Ramiro. If the unscrupulous man was willing to sell out The Company, he would have no qualms selling out The Empire

Such a betrayal warranted retribution. For the moment, however, the Senior Director would be kept alive - at least until their smuggling operation had been completed.

Puffing away, Ramiro climbed the steps of a grandstand and found a seat halfway up.

While enjoying the view of the labourers sweating away, he answered a couple of private messages. King Leon had been spamming him about a minor incident relating to The Grey Wolf Invasion where some trainees had perished.

-Ramiro: Move on to the next phase.

-Leon: A captain has been protesting that it’s too dangerous to enter the wolf forest. He says the wolves are far more organised than expected. They're using squad tactics.

-Ramiro: Replace him.

-Leon: He’s one of our rising stars, Bali of The Crimson Lions. A genius.

Ramiro, thinking, took a deep drag of his cigarillo.

He’d never cared for so-called ‘geniuses’. Of the thousands he'd met, almost everyone was a forgettable dork, hyper-focused on the narrow division of life assigned to them and incapable of perceiving history's grander picture, let alone drawing it. Man was an omnivore. To grow to his fullest, his strongest, he shouldn't clog his belly with one type of food but sample a bit of everything.

-Ramiro: Give him a final warning for insubordination.

Dismissing any further messages, Ramiro idly watched an Artist below sculpting a set of marble pillars.

Leon’s lack of autonomy, while a useful trait at times, was beginning to bore him. The steps for maximising the promotional value of the Wolf Invasion had been laid out in full, and all the imbecile needed to do was follow them without question.

"Filth," said Ramiro out loud, delighting in the taste of the word.

All he had to work with was human filth.

But that's the hazard of trying to forge an empire in a slum.

A stone in his pocket hummed. "We’ve arrived, your majesty."

In the grounds below, an NPC assistant of Ramiro’s was escorting a group in default adventurer clothing, amongst whom was a pretty Bengali girl. The girl, following Senior Director Van’s finger, spotted Ramiro among the grandstand and gave him an innocent wave.

Ramiro mirrored the gesture.

This girl, Dhaka_Sniper_1351, and her friends had approached Ramiro’s people wishing to fund a project for the cure of a curse hampering the Suchi Earthfriend Society. Her stated rationale was that the affliction was causing an unbearable delay to her and her pals' first day of adventuring.

Was this bullshit? Ramiro didn't know, but it sounded fishy.

His investigators, however, had uncovered little about the money-pant's background.

Without anything more to go off, Ramiro had suspected, from both the wasteful nature and the timing of her request, that she might be the self-same client who’d commissioned this cash-burning stadium.

However, this suspicion of his was dispelled by studying her now. She showed no reaction to the Senior Director, nor him to her. Moreover, as her group approached Ramiro, hopping up the steps, the girl's head swivelled about like a preschooler visiting at an aquarium. Ramiro could almost smell the stench of naivety from afar.

The girl, reaching him, expressed her astonishment openly. “This place is huge. It's got to be, at least, thirty times larger than the national cricket stadium.”

“Amazing what can be achieved with magic." Ramiro, much of his days lately spent wining-and-dining bourgeois kids, laughed in a way that seemed friendly. “You’re cricket fans?”

“Me? Certainly not. It’s far too slow for my tastes. But, Sanwar, his skills are top-notch.” She pointed at one of her friends, who scratched his head in embarrassment.

After some dull-witted small talk about sport, they got down to business, with Ramiro’s NPC assistant coming forward to hand him a letter.

The author was a Volefan Scholar using the pseudonym ’Dr. Iskander’.

In the letter, the Scholar described stumbling across this airhead hanging around The Earthfriend Habitat offering a fortune to any random passer-by who could expedite a cure within a couple of hours. While others had ignored her crazy request, the Scholar had a sense that she was being honest. Thus, he’d taken his chances. But unable, in the end, to solve the curse on his own, he’d sent her to Ramiro’s people for additional aid.

On the surface, the letter explained The Slum Empire had been chosen over the alternatives for their unrivalled capabilities and virtuous cause. Underneath this, though, was a not-so-subtle message that the Scholar hoped they’d have fewer scruples lying about the project budget to extract more money from the girl, before sending a share his way.

Was this scammer incorrect? Not in the slightest.

The contents of the letter had been summarised for Ramiro via private message, but he had a special reason to want see it in person.

Of the Slum Kings, only he had as his primary class a Civilian one. Before beginning the reformations, he’d deleted his old character to start anew as a Peopleworker, which provided him more abilities to aid in playing the political game and ruling over others. One such ability, he was presently using to covertly check the letter’s authenticity.

Scan complete. The item was created today by an NPC Scholar (4-2) from Riga, Volefa.

Convinced enough, Ramiro went on to browse some research documents the Scholar had sent outlining methods for solving the crisis and their estimated profitability. The more Ramiro read of these, the more he was astounded by the Scholar’s avariciousness and cunning.

It almost felt like a shame they'd have to dispose of someone so ingenious to safeguard The Empire's reputation.

Ramiro's thoughts were disturbed by a nudge to his ribs.

“Ouch!” The girl winced, rubbing her elbow in pain. “You’re like a concrete wall.”

“Sorry, a problem this deep requires deep thought."

“That’s fine. But can we hurry this along? I'm bored.”

Ramiro nodded. “Sure. First, though, out of curiosity, for a project of such grand scale, why come to us instead of The Company?”

As with this exorbitant stadium, any wealthy individual preferring them was highly unusual. The Scholar’s letter had provided an explanation, but it seemed, quite honestly, far too good to be true.

However, at his question, the girl’s face contorted in puzzlement - genuine, pure, naive, exploitable puzzlement.

“Who?” she asked.

Ramiro, her clueless expression sending a rush of blood to his loins, gave his cigarillo a heavy drag, filling every pocket of his lungs. “Never mind.”