The cat-eared human sat in the large camp stationed in the golden plains.

Over eighty players made an appearance at the anti-moderator meeting.

Horses, goats, carts and other exotic mounts moved players and supplies alike.

The camp itself was located in a large, flat clearing located along the river cutting the Rolling Plains from Mournwood to Lokle.

Several benches, fires and tents were surrounded with makeshift wooden barricades which were there for looks more than anything.

Large jGuardian banners hung from every building.

Alexander, Revenberry, Bolst and Kevin sat around a small fireplace, one of dozens.

For some unknown reason, Curstl, the leader of the jGuardians, the organisers of this event, was late.

“Bolst: Any idea what this is all about?” he questioned, seeing some server-famous cheaters chatting to others about their various exploits.

Alexander shrugged.

“Bolst: I’m not talking to you!” he exclaimed, pointing to Kevin who sat opposite him.

“Alexander: Oh, sorry…” he replied awkwardly, his name was still showing as “???” to people outside his non-existent party.

Kevin laughed anxiously.

“Kevin: Why me? I’m just here to stab the dude that banned my mossback-hunter!” he exclaimed.

His reply was met with silence, unlike before, both Revenberry and Alexander stared at him as well.

“Damn it… I knew the /anxious laugh emote was overkill… why does everybody use that anyway?!” Kevin thought with a sigh.

He leaned in slightly.

“Kevin: I’m just here for a good show,” he said with a finger over his lips.

Before Kevin could continue, he was approached by a depressed-looking human with dark, messy chestnut hair and a green bucket hat over it.

He wore a lab coat, glasses and had a lit cigarette in his mouth.

“Bromy: There you are…” he said listlessly.

“Kevin: Oh s#*t, it’s ya boi!”

Bromy breathed a long, drawn-out sigh as he contemplated the pros and cons of stabbing Kevin there and then.

“Bromy: Right…”

“Bromy: Curstl said you have thirty seconds before she burns your house down… she’s in the tent…” he explained.

Kevin laughed.

“Kevin: Guess she’s being lenient!” he said turning to Alexander and the others.

“Bromy: I walked here in twenty seconds, so have fun with that…” he continued before pointing to a blue tent in the distance.

Kevin’s expression sank magnitudes lower.

“Kevin: I should get going!” he said looking to the others with a forced smile.

Before they could say anything, he took off towards the large tent in the distance.

After a few seconds, Bromy cracked a smile.

“Bromy: I lied…”

“Revenberry: SERIOUSLY!? You could have given the poor guy a heart attack!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet.

Bromy turned towards the harpy.

“Bromy: I only lied about which tent I pointed him to,” he shrugged.

He pointed to the purple tent situated on the opposite side of the camp.

“Bromy: She’s waiting there,”

“Alexander: Isn’t he… Going to get in trouble?” he questioned.

“Alexander: It… kind of seemed like you guys were friends.”

“Bromy: Pfft, friends? With Kevin?” he demanded slapping his knee.

“Bromy: That’s hilarious.” His character never so much as cracked a smile during the entire display.

“Alexander: You are a horrible friend…” he remarked.

Bromy shrugged.

“Bromy: Hey I didn’t ask to be here… with… those…” he pointed to a cluster of people drinking beer and talking amongst themselves in small clusters.

“Revenberry: Cheaters?” she asked.

Bromy squinted.

“Bromy: People…” he replied coldly, still looking over to the group of regular players.

He looked back to Revenberry and her group.

“Bromy: Speaking of…”

He spun on his heel and began walking away from the group.

Bromy glanced down to his friends list and about thirty green and grey names one was orange.

“What the hell is Bonifacius doing? I can’t even message him…” he thought.

“If you were to get banned… Curstl would…” Bromy felt a chill run down his spine as he continued heading down to the medic-tent which was set up purely for looks since you can’t heal banned players.

“Revenberry: Quite the character, eh?” she asked with raised eyebrows.

“Bolst: Whatever, I’ll be right back,” he shrugged before leaving his computer to take a piss.

“Alexander: Yeah, he seemed… upset…”

“Revenberry: Well, I’d say that’s reasonable, if we’re all banned, then everything you wasted your life doing here is as good as gone!” she replied with folded arms.

“Alexander: Yeah, I guess losing something your pour your time into would suck,” he remarked.

“Revenberry: Obviously! Like Bolst’s shop, Bromy’s weird… books…? And so on!”

“Revenberry: I’m sure you have something you’re at least a little attached to here!”

He shrugged.

“Alexander: No, not really.”

“Alexander: But I’d accept a yacht for a row boat any day…”

“Revenberry: …”

“Revenberry: Where’d the yacht come from?! We were talking about your in-game experiences!”

Alexander breathed a sigh.

“Alexander: It’s nothing.”

A few minutes later, Bolst returned from his piss-break.

“Bolst: Did I miss anything?”

“Revenberry: ??? likes boats.”

“Bolst: …”

He looked over to Alexander with a confused expression.

“Bolst: Good to know…”

Suddenly, the player everyone was waiting for began to speak, she stood in the centre of the camp, wearing the normal black and crimson dress, a rare drop from a fire-themed raid.

“Curst: Hello, people and cheaters alike!”

Like a swarm of bees approaching their queen, the players gathered around Curstl who stood on a small wooden podium.

“Curst: I think it’s safe to say that if you’re here, you know of the recent threat to the integrity and continued playability of this server!” she explained.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“Curst: As you may know, a player known as Alexander has somehow gained access to a moderator account.”

“Curst: Specifically, a level 6 account.”

Murmurs spread around several cheaters and hackers as they discussed this revelation.

“Curst: This is only speculation of course, his ability to ban players as well as create admin-fire would place him at least at level six.”

“Curst: Since we haven’t seen him create new maps or custom items, we have no idea if he’s any higher – though it’s possible.”

“Curst: Upon receiving messages from a fallen ally by the name of Avocadont, we have come to the conclusion that Alexander is planning to ban players for the sake of his game.”

“Curst: Whether that means that he wants to grab a hold of this server, the engine this game runs on, or simply to move some of the banned players from here to his game - we don’t know.”

Everyone quietly listened to Curstl speak only for her to smile victoriously.

“Curst: The bannings started in Glumington, a very player-dense area and then seemingly stopped afterwards, it’s almost as if Alexander was looking for large groups of players…” she speculated.

Her eyes scanned the crowd.

“Curst: In fact, I’m more then certain that Alexander is in this very meeting!”

Alexander’s blood turned cold.

All the players exchanged looks of concern and suspicion while others laughed.

“Curst: This whole event was publicized across the entire server, of course you’d find your way here!”

Kevin walked out, holding a small crate in his hands.

“Curst: As such, you and all the unfortunate cheaters and try-hards that have gathered here will be banned!” she explained with an innocent smile.

Instantly, the players began to panic, some began to run away while others tried to attack Curstl.

Everyone became immobilized by an area-of-effect spell that paralyzed those outside Curstl’s party.

Bromy, Kevin and a few jGuardian guards where the only ones standing as everyone else fell to the ground limply.

Curstl turned towards Kevin and nodded.

“Curst: I’ll leave the rest to you guys,” she said before revealing that she was never present at the meeting in the first place, it was a remotely-controlled doll enchanted to act like a hologram when used.

Bromy Sat down near the podium, smoking a cigarette as Kevin turned and gave him a thumbs up.

“Revenberry: What the hell is this about?!” she demanded; her character lay on the grassy earth, immobilized.

“Bolst: WHAT THE F#*K ARE YOU DOING!?” his character was also on the ground, although, he fell in a rather strange way, his foot was glitching into the floor causing it to spaz out and shake violently.

A similar sentiment was given by the other players.

With a simple spell, Bromy trapped all the already trapped players by entangling them with roots and vines.

“Kevin: You heard her, the moderator is probably here, so we’re taking you guys down” he exclaimed cheerfully.

“Revenberry: KEVIN, YOU BASTARD! I KNEW WE SHOULD HAVE KILLED YOU!”

“Kevin: Hey! I’m trying to do something good, alright?!” he shook his head.

“Bromy: Quit rambling and ban them already…”

“Kevin: You’re no fun…” he pouted.

“DeceptionDan: How the hell is a stupid box going to ban us anyway?!” demanded an ogre wearing a green camo tank top and dark-green pants, he had a shovel on his back.

“Bromy: Don’t get him started!” he exclaimed.

Alas, it was too late.

“Kevin: FANTASTIC QUESTION!”

Bromy breathed a sigh.

“Kevin: This chest is filled with 24,975 dice, of course since it’s just a container you’re not lagging, they’re not literally inside!” he explained.

“Kevin: But when I drop this chest, all the dice are going to be rolled, assuming you’re part of some game, the game will make each one of you gain and lose an insane amount of luck!”

“Kevin: The game’s famously bad anti-cheat system will assume you’re cheating and ban you!”

“Bolst: DOESN’T THAT MEAN YOU’LL BE BANNED TOO!?” he demanded.

Bromy clapped unenthusiastically.

“Bromy: Nice explanation… now do the thing!” he smacked Kevin.

“Kevin: ALRIGHT!”

Kevin let go of the box.

Moments before it hit the ground, the box disappeared.

Kevin and Bromy smiled in unison as from the field of paralyzed players rose a single, cat-eared player.

He tossed his mask aside exposing a visibly upset expression.

“Kevin: Cat-ear guy!?” he gasped.

Bromy smacked Kevin again.

“Bromy: Let’s go already…”

“Kevin: Alright, alight!” he replied with an unapologetic grin.

As Alexander caused the entire podium to burst into blue fire, Kevin and Bromy remained alright for several seconds before slowly crumbing away, revealing that they too were just magic dolls.

“Bromy: Thanks for participating in our experiment, we have successfully recorded your speech patterns and animations” he boasted before fully disappearing.

“Alexander: Damn! They got away!”

Panic spread across the players as they realised they were about to be banned by Alexander.

“Bolst: We were tricked!” he exclaimed.

“DeceptionDan: Hold on! Don’t ban me!”

Alexander turned towards the crowd, noticing the judgemental looks he was receiving form everyone, especially Revenberry and Bolst.

“Alexander: Well, this is awkward…” he began.

“Revenberry: Alexander?!”

He turned towards the other players.

“Alexander: Now then! How about we get to the banning!” he asked, clasping his hands together.

He glanced down to his tally seeing that over one-hundred players were banned already.

“Bolst: What’s the big idea, as#*ole?!”

“Alexander: No need for name-calling, I’ve been very open about my goals from the start! I’m the creator of a game, but I’m not really good with that whole coding thing, so, I’m going to recycle this defective game!” he explained.

“Alexander: My game is basically done too, but I’ll admit it runs a bit slow, so I’ve had to clear out some of you guys!”

“Bolst: Honestly… You expect anybody to play your game after you do this!?”

Alexander breathed a sigh before cracking smile.

“Alexander: I expect at least some of you to be mature enough to give my game a shot, especially since you’ve been wasting your lives playing a stupid kid’s game!” he exclaimed.

Alexander was about to ban everyone present when he decided to continue speaking.

“Alexander: You know it’s true! Wolfpeople, frogpeople! The borderline seizure-inducing class system!” he exclaimed, his words carried more and more vitriol as he spoke.

“Alexander: Every quest in this ‘game’ is a joke or has some sort of punchline!” he clenched his fists.

“Alexander: The developers made an engine which was pure gold! A marvel of science and they MAKE THIS!?” he gestured around him.

“Alexander: That is not only unfair but an insult to all of you playing! As if I went to an expensive restaurant and they served me chicken nuggets!”

Everyone remained silent, not because they agreed but because they had no argument that could fit his warped perception of things.

“Paranoloid: I like nuggets!” argued a fishman in the back of the crowd.

Alexander took a deep breath.

Moments later, the fishman burst into flames, once the thirty-second timer ran out, he was banned.

“Alexander: Right…”

Something akin to a genuine smile emerged from his soured expression.

“Alexander: I just want to make a game! I just want to make something that you’ll enjoy!”

“Alexander: I promise to consider any mechanic you want to be added! I’ll make it so your booze isn’t weird slime stuff!” he exclaimed looking over to Bolst.

“Alexander: You’ll still be able to write books, build homes, run towns, form guilds!”

“DeceptionDan: F#*k you!”

“Muffinski: Nobody asked you for this!”

“Vinelle: I also like chicken nuggets!”

“Hibbo: Me too!”

“Hibbo: Wait, no, I thought you meant onion rings.”

“Vinelle: What the f#*k do you mean? How can you mix up onion rings and nuggets!?” he demanded.

“Bolst: Not one damn person will set foot in your ego-project, d#*khead!”

Dozens of players began to echo the same message to Alexander.

“Why?” Alexander thought, it was a matter-of-fact question, he simply couldn’t look at their actions from an angle that would justify them.

He leaned back in his chair and reached for his teacup.

His hands were unsteady, the surface of the expensive brew wobbled to represent Alexander’s unease.

“Am I actually worried?” he laughed nervously.

As if to try and supress a very real feeling of fear and uncertainty, he began to laugh.

“Come on, Alex! Your game is better in every way than this anarchy!” he thought, forcing this outlook onto his entire mind like a dictatorship where every contradictory thought would be sent off to the gulag and executed.

He glanced back to the game, seeing that all the players were gone.

After reading over the chat, he realised that a cheater by the name of ChephGardon broke free from his two immobilizing spells and quickly released and teleported everyone to someplace safe.

While Alexander had no idea where this place was, it was the capital city of Ajuan, the desert continent.

He breathed a sigh.

“It can’t be helped… I need to ban at least another hundred before the servers run normally… Ideally two-hundred…” Alex thought.

A relieved smile grew on Alexander’s face.

“Well, looks like I can’t ban those guys!”

“Guess they’ll get to check my game out on launch!” he laughed.

He opened his map and noticed that a small town should be located a bit north, near the centre of the Rolling Plains.

Meanwhile, in the jGuardian base located east of the Rolling Plains…

Curstl sat in her office located on the top floor of the massive fort standing on the inside of a crescent-shaped lake.

The fortress stood amongst a sparse forest of birch trees with golden leaves.

She sat on the red couch usually reserved for guest, drinking a cup of odd-looking tea.

“PastaPerfect: we’ve streaming the video of the moderator; it looks like he’s heading to Levelgreen.” The blond-haired man remarked staring at the several paintings depicting a heavily-armoured shield-user.

“PastaPerfect: Though we successfully pissed off every cheater and a few legitimate players in the process…” He added.

“Curstl: It’s a shame we went through all the effort of tracking down his animations and speech patterns only for him to walk around undisguised…” she remarked.

She tabbed out of her game and into a video-streaming website where she watched the hidden jGuardian stream a video of where Alexander was heading from afar.

She tabbed back into the game.

“Curstl: Even if a hidden illusionist can keep track of where Alexander is, the best we can do is run away from him, we need a long-term solution…”

PastaPerfect clicked his tongue.

“PastaPerfect: The dice trick was a bluff, the game wouldn’t process the rolling of a dice in an inventory, but we could crash the Arlepia map…” the man offered.

“Curstl: Ah, yes, permanently making one-third of the game inaccessible – seems reasonable…” she smirked before taking another sip of the blue mushroom tea.

“PastaPerfect: Avocadont got banned and the other two officers are offline… I have no idea what to do…”

“Curstl: Either way, I refuse to allow for a continent-crasher to be used,” she said standing up from her couch.

PastaPerfect folded his arms.

“PastaPerfect: It might be our only shot!”

“Curstl: My decision is final. If my continent is going to go down then so are all the other bastards’ continents,” She said before stepping out of her own office into a long hall with massive windows and even more paintings depicting the same human.

“PastaPerfect: Damn it!...” he kicked the table causing the collection of teacups and an ornate, violet flower pot to fall down to the ground with a loud crack.

He walked up to the large window located behind Curstl’s desk and looked outside, he could see the dozens of players hiding in the bushes surrounding the jGuardian base.

Everyone already knew who the mysterious players were, an anarchy-loving “terrorist” guild called “Silverlight”.

They were only referred to as a terrorist guild by the jGuardians, most other guilds just called them incompetent.

The countless defeats they faced against the larger and more equipped guild ruling almost all of Arlepia forced them to be more cautious, and so they sat around the outside of the jGuardian base, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Suddenly, a player began sprinting towards the jGuardian base, like a single grain of salt in an over-saturated solution, that one player starter a chain reaction, a full-on charge by the Silverlight guild.

“Hold on… isn’t that… the undead from Grimwood?” PastaPerfect thought as the jGuardians prepared to defend their base once again.