Anna was frustrated. Really, really frustrated. The man that infuriated her at the moment was someone named Damian. She was not sure that was his real name, but she cursed him anyway. Not because she did not like the man. He was an older warm teddy bear that seemed to care about people around him.

  However, for the last almost thirty days in-game, he and his guild had done nothing newsworthy! Nothing. They had just kept their heads down and grinded like there was no tomorrow. It was a valid improvement strategy, and they grew well in levels from what she could see.

  Nevertheless, it was infuriating. Because for the first thirty-five days or so they had been making splash after splash. It was on the back of their achievements that she had managed to break free of not just her old job, but also the raping bastard Aragoth’s clutches.

  She missed her old job sometimes. All the contacts they had would make things easier for her. However, she had enough of the management basically trying to pimp her out to horny guild leaders, so she had struck out on her own. She had hitched her star to the rising newcomers that were the Blue Lotus guild.

  The first few weeks after she had broken with her old job had been great. They had managed to make headlines again and again. Culminating in the epic sea event battle that had netted her a lot of income and viewers. However, ever since then they had done zilch, nada, nothing. Except grinding.

  She had managed to get some other minor stories and events covered, but nothing exclusive like the sea event had been. No one else from the other news companies were there. They had all caved to Dawnguard’s threat. If anyone covered Blue Lotus in a positive light, they would find it hard to get interviews and footage of Dawnguard in action.

  Since Dawnguard was the biggest guild in the world that was a threat most had to take seriously. However, Aragoth was the guild leader of Dawnguard, so she had no intentions of caving to that demand. Especially not since he had tried to blackmail her into sleeping with him. Something she had not paid him back for just yet.

  She decided to go into Carn Online and try to talk with her one source in the Blue Lotus. Well, they were all sources, but only one of them liked to complain, while the others were keeping mum about any future plans if they knew about them.

  She found Andrea, the mother of Blaze where she could usually be found. Sitting outside staring into space. The woman made as little effort as possible, as far as she knew, but she was a terrible gossip.

  “Hey Andrea,” Anna greeted cheerily, though she could not stand the woman. The way she talked about her guild sometimes made Anna mad. However, Andrea would gladly share what she knew, even when she was not supposed to talk about it.

  “Hannah,” the woman said with a half nod that could be taken as a greeting. Or disinterest. “They’re all out grinding or something.”

  “That’s okay, I came to talk to you,” Anna replied and sat down on the bench next to the woman. “How are you?”

  “Terrible. The boss is making me grind bones to make fertilizer, even wants me to mix it with the chickenshit. It’s so disgusting,” the woman immediately started complaining. “And then he has the gall to threaten to kick me and my son out if I don’t do it. Can you believe that?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  ‘Yes, you’re a whiny bitch,’ Anna thought but shook her head sympathetically. “Sounds harsh.”

  “Exactly. And it’s not like he’s actually doing something, always galvanising around with that hussy, who’s trying to corrupt my son with her provocative outfits,” Andrea continued whining.

  ‘No, they’re quite modest dresses actually,’ Anna thought as she remembered the dresses that Mia had started making. She did make some provocative ones for Petals, who was definitely influencing Blaze to be a better person.

  Anna sat through another ten minutes as the grown-ass woman ragged on everybody in the guild. After the ten minutes she finally wound down, so Anna saw her opportunity to change the subject. “So, besides grinding, is the guild doing anything exciting?”

  “No, not really. We’re going to stay logged out, so we can view some press conference, or something, at midnight. Don’t know what for, Damian wouldn’t say,” Andrea complained and then launched into even more complaining.

  ‘Press conference?’ Anna was very confused. The only press conference she knew was scheduled at midnight was the Perennial Entertainment one month status briefing. They had held a short one each week so far but had promised a larger one for when the game had been live for a month.

  Those press conferences had been boring though. No real useful information, unless you were an economist and a numbers nerd. They only talked about occupancy in pod-hotels, the number of players etcetera. Nothing truly extraordinary going on.

  However, if Damian thought it important enough to stop his people from playing and earning money, then something had to be going on. Damian seemed to know a lot of things, like the warning about Aragoth and Marcus at one point. He did not outright say what he knew, but he definitely knew more than what other people knew.

  Then there were all those little things he had let slip when she had talked with him from time to time. For someone who did not play a combat role, he knew a lot about that part of the game, or even other parts. Even found the secret of trophies. The auctions were flooded with them these days, and the guilds all tried hoarding them.

  She had also heard a conversation between Blaze and Petals, where Blaze had told her about the time Damian had tricked one of Dawnguard’s spies into signing a contract that meant he was banned from playing the game for a year. Anna had never found out how he knew about the spy, no one in the know would give her an answer.

  She suffered through another twenty minutes of Andrea ragging on everyone and everything before she managed to extricate herself from the conversation. She logged off immediately and started doing research.

  By the time it was time for the press conference, she still had no idea what was so special about this one. None of her contacts, no one on the chats or forums had heard anything. So when she logged in to attend the conference which was held in the virtual world, she was not surprised that she was one of only five reporters there.

  Two of the other reporters were known to report economics, so it made sense they were there. The reporter from GameNewz was a newbie she did not know, but GameNewz sent out a lot of reporters for stuff they never used. The last one was the star reporter of the largest news network in the world. The network was owned by Perennial, though they had not sent anyone from their network to the other press conferences.

  It came to a shock for everyone in the room when Ken Masters stepped up to the podium and started the press conference. He rarely held press conferences. However, when it registered for Anna what he said, all she could think was, ‘Holy shit!’