“What the hell was that?” Dan asked as he watched his friend and boss leave the restaurant citing something or other, but clearly leaving them to discuss the things that were said.
Lara took a dainty sip of her drink and then gave him a small, yet warm, smile. He involuntarily returned the smile.
“Negotiation,” she answered.
“But you were like… and then he was like…” he spoke, trying to express his confusion and jumbled thoughts.
Lara just giggled. Then she leaned over and bumped her head against his for a moment.
“Your boss clearly knows how the world works. And made sure to do his homework on me, just as I did on him.”
“But you barely said anything!” he exclaimed, still not really understanding what just happened.
“Because we didn’t really need to. We simply talked, he threatened me, I reassured him and so on…” she explained patiently to the frowning Dan.
“But…”
Lara put her hand back on Dan’s and interrupted him.
“Look. You know how my family is kind of a big deal. We talked about it…”
“Yes?”
“He knew it too. And your boss was familiar with how families like mine work. He didn’t want to support someone who would leave the moment somebody snapped their fingers.”
“That could happen?” Dan asked worriedly. He knew a few things about Lara’s family. Mostly that they were rich and had a lot of holdings, and that’s why a lot of guys were trying to get into her pants.
Lara shrugged causing Dan’s eyes to wander. Refocusing on his girlfriend’s eyes he saw she was smirking.
“Yes. Some families are like that. Family over anything,” she explained. “But as I told him, I’m not in line to inherit anything important and some of my cousins are already leading a guild supported by the family.”
Dan listened intently, then nodded. Then he had a thought based on his experience with Sam. Swallowing slightly, he spoke up.
“What about… when this venture turns out to be a goldmine? Sam is basically Midas in the game! Wouldn’t they want it for the family?”
Lara looked back at him with a warm smile, then shook her head. “The contract will be me, as a private individual and your boss, not the family.” Then she frowned, playing around a little with the straw in her glass. “And if they get uppity, grandpa is on my side!”
It was Dan’s turn to smirk. “Grandpa’s favorite little girl, eh?”
“Something like that…”
“Do I have to do something to help you?”
Her smile widened. “You’re very sweet, but this is family politics.” Then she got a funny look in her eyes. Her smile turned into a salacious grin. “You can help with giving me some good massage…”
“But I don’t have the training…” Dan muttered.
Lara cleared her throat and gave him a pointed look.
It took Dan a moment to understand the implications, then his face lit up with a blush.
“Oh…OH!”
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Liz carefully picked up the metallic part with her tweezers, her eyes shining with the light of her newest skill, and placed it inside the first of what would become the next generation of drones.
Her cute little helpers were adorable and made her streams pretty popular. A company even approached her about making plush figures of them. So now that the process had begun, she was locked into the shape she first created for them.
‘I hate branding…’ she grumbled as she made sure that the last part fit into the drone. Then, slowly and meticulously, she closed up the drone lying on the work desk in front of her.
Liz took a long minute to take in the new drone and let out a satisfied smile.
Thanks to her new skills, her crafting had improved by leaps and bounds as the synergy between crystals and light was just too good.
With one last look, aided by her new eye skill, she made sure there was no visible error on the wire model made up of light and nodded. Laying her hands on the drone, she sent a minuscule amount of mana into it, giving it a spark of life.
Ignoring the notification screens, she watched as the drone, at first hesitantly, then more assuredly, rose above the desk. First, it hovered there, turning this and that way, before fully focusing on Liz, dipping the front of the drone downward in its best approximation of a bow.
Liz reached out and gently pat the drone on its head. “Hello, little one. Welcome to the family!”
The drone buzzed adorably, then seemingly noticing the rest of the drones busily flying around the workshop while several Big Boys hovered around the room, guarding it vigilantly.
She watched for a while as the new drone almost seamlessly melded into the organized chaos, albeit flying and maneuvering more smoothly than its predecessors, then she turned back to the game and opened up her notification screens.
[Congratulations! You finished the first of the second-generation drones!]
[Drone v2.0 is finished and activated.]
[You have crafted over a hundred Tier 1 drones and one Tier 2 drone. Would you like to select Drones as your crafting specialty?]
Liz opened the screen and touched the crafting specialty expression, which opened up a small explanation window. It was vague, but it still provided some much-needed clarification.
[Crafting Speciality: No crafter can master all disciplines. Sooner or later one needs to choose a direction, or rather a speciality. Crafting items belonging to the specialty will be easier, and cheaper, and the items themselves will be stronger, faster, and altogether work better, where appropriate. As you progress with your specialty, items outside of its range will become harder and harder to craft to the same quality. You can only achieve the highest tiers within your specialty.]
Frowning slightly, she touched her finger to the Drone Specialty, but the game frustratingly remained silent.
“Ugh, what should I do?” she exclaimed with a deep sigh.
Drones were cute, cool, and rather good force multipliers, as well as allowing her to go solo clear several fractures.
But with the crafting she was doing for the company, Liz felt it would be stupid to lock herself into the Drone specialty. She doubted she could consider the lights and quality of life items she crafted for the Heavenly Forest drones.
For a long moment, she just stared at the system screen, then leaned forward and began banging her head on the desk in a futile attempt to dislodge the answer to the question from the deep recesses of her brain.
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The room was dark. There was not an iota of light.
He stood still in the darkness, covered by his new cloak, and reached up to adjust his slightly skewed bowtie. After all, even if one was an assassin, that didn’t mean they could present themselves with a sloppy appearance.
Naturally, Tim could see in the darkness just as he could in daylight, thanks to his skills.
The waiting part was harder, but he was doing his job so there was at least some excitement.
One of the bean counters that worked with the Heavenly Forest in Ironwood noticed some discrepancies in the receipt and incoming money and through a few cutouts, not that the bean counter knew about it, Tim received the notification.
Taking his job very seriously, he immediately began to hunt down the offender. Naturally, knowing how things worked, and having a lot of practice finding weak points in organizations, he started at the very bottom.
The people – NPCs – who nobody paid any attention to. The menial workers, busboys, and such.
Not that he didn’t respect them. Work was work, and he worked in a grocery store during his university years, so he knew the pains of customer-facing jobs, but he also acknowledged that there was an inherent ‘disdain’ toward those kinds of workers.
So he skulked around, talked to people in disguise and most importantly, he followed the clues until he found it terminating at one of the warehouse shift managers. Important enough to sign some papers, but not enough to pay attention to.
‘Smart…’ he mused as he kept standing behind a well-placed stack of crates. ‘According to what I found, he usually comes here to do some overtime. I really have to hand it to Future Unknown. The NPC AI is top-notch…’
And Tim was waiting for him to commit some kind of crime that could be used as leverage to figure out his motives and to find the people behind his actions.
Heavenly Forest housed a lot of important – or rather rich – people whose itineraries and actions were in high demand.
Stolen story; please report.
Hearing the footsteps coming toward this smaller warehouse, Tim couldn’t help but smile.
‘Right on time…’
Soon, the room was flooded with light, however, his skills prevented him from going temporarily blind and he could see the shift manager enter the room with a small box in his hands, nervously glancing around.
Tim waited patiently as the corpulent man fully entered the room, closing the door behind him, and approached a few crates that Tim knew he would access, thus his hiding place providing an excellent view of the crime being committed.
As he watched the man trying to put the box into the bigger crate without leaving anything out, showing his lack of skill with Tetris, Tim couldn’t help but smile as he began recording with a handy-dandy recorder, courtesy of Liz, crafted from the finest roadside crystals.
All right, it was thrown together in five minutes after he forgot that he couldn’t use the game’s in-built recorder as evidence at the in-game courts, but it was still nice and Liz only glared a little.
“…damn them all…why do I have to…who cares about some fop’s…”
His target kept mumbling, his voice raising in volume as his frustration grew. Finally, he managed to shove the smaller box into the crate and put the crate lid back into its place. Naturally, the amateur didn’t even notice the small bits and bobs he disturbed and knocked onto the ground, plus all the dust that managed to gather in the warehouse.
Instead, he threw his hands up, let out a curse-filled cheer, and then stalked out of the room, nervousness forgotten. He even forgot to turn off the light.
Tim approached the crate, and with gloved hands, recorder still rolling, opened it and retrieved the box.
Giving it a cursory look, making sure it wasn’t enchanted, but he saw nothing.
‘Probably easier to sneak in an’ out.’
It wasn’t even locked properly, just a simple metal latch and nothing more.
So, Tim, the curious person he was, opened it.
Inside he found a bottle of expensive alcohol that he knew the Heavenly Forest directly imported from the bottler, as it was only accessible by nobles. He knew it fetched a good price on the secondary market. Next to it was a bunch of papers, held together by twine.
He took the first, slipping out of the tightly bound stack, and gave it a glance over.
‘Fuck. Timetables for some big names… Lucy won’t be happy.’
Paper still in hand, he looked away and began thinking and after a moment, he let out a positively evil chuckle. Opening his inventory, he scrounged around until he found one of the pencils that were in use around the hotel. He then gleefully – after taking some pictures – began to alter the information on the papers. Not much, but enough to cause some confusion.
Plus, this would provide him enough opportunity to go after the people behind the shift manager.
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Half an hour later, bowtie once again adjusted, he stepped out of one of the lavatories, sans his cloak with a gentle and reassuring smile on his face. He walked through the service corridors of the Heavenly Forest, the workers all greeting him jovially or simply giving him a nod of respect as they rushed around doing their jobs. After all, he worked for the big boss, so naturally, he spent a lot of time helping around so his presence wasn’t out of the ordinary for anyone.
After walking through several service corridors, he finally arrived at his destination.
Opening it, he saw it was full of maids and butlers as they sat and relaxed, clearly resting between work. He looked around and instantly found his quarry.
“Claire,” he greeted the young woman as he approached her, ignoring the giggling maids around them. “You wanted to speak to me?”
The woman adjusted her glasses and smiled at him. “Yes, Tim. I have a few questions…”
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This time Katie arrived in a meadow in the middle of a normal forest.
She had a few seconds to get familiar with the environment before the nearest tree broke open its dark maw and tried to gobble her up.
After that, it was just once again a non-stop rush through.
She first had to fight through the forest as the local flora did its best to consume her while the yellow energy crackling around her destroyed everything in her path.
Then after she finally left the forest, she arrived in the fields where she fought the specter of Sam. And naturally, dozens of similar specters showed up. One hand holding a sword and the other crackling with magic.
The only difference was that instead of Sam’s head, all of their heads were replaced by fish heads. Ignoring the beady eyes, Katie threw herself into the fight, remembering how annoying it was to fight the illusion imitating her boss.
Katie knew that Sam was better at the game, but seeing how easily the illusion handed them their asses was eye-opening. They only won because they had the numbers advantage and the illusion was rather predictable with their movements.
She wanted to be that strong!
She knew that in real life, there wasn’t much chance of acquiring that kind of power, but here in the game, everything was possible, and Katie wanted to be one of the strongest.
And if that required defeating dogs with heads on both ends, spewing fire at her while flying through the air like helicopters, then by Jove, she was going to do it!
Plus, with the Cow’s inclusion into the group, she would also need to prove that she was stronger than her. Lucy had pulled her aside and told her that no large-scale tomfoolery would be accepted by her. Not unless it was aimed at their enemy.
And sadly, Isabella counted as an ally…
‘But I’m not giving up! I will show her who is the best!’ she thought while carving through a crowd of mad cows, all of them standing on one biological and pirate leg as they waved scimitars at her.
“RAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!” she roared, aided by her skill, and it caused the cows to flinch, giving her enough time to let lose a whirlwind of blades that destroyed them, only for the bloody pieces to turn into butterflies that flew up into the sky, raining pixie dust down that within two blinks turned the semi-destroyed field into the desert.
Barely a few steps later, the ground shook, sending sand everywhere, and a gigantic form broke out of the ground, creating a giant sand cloud, obscuring Katie’s vision.
Despite wanting very much to rush in, Katie waited patiently – if vibrating in one place counted – until the cloud of debris and sand dispersed and she beheld the majestic visage of a blue and red worm with a diameter of thirty feet. It had no eyes but one mouth with concentric circles of teeth. Each circle of which she could see at least seven, spun in the opposite direction than its neighbors, generating an incredibly horrible screeching sound.
Katie just grinned and raised her greatsword.
“This is going to be bloody great!” she exclaimed, then the next second she was off, trying to hack the worm into pieces.
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Leaving the Steel Lions was an easy decision after what his father did to it, but David was starting to regret it.
Soon after leaving, depositing all the items and gear that the guild provided him to make sure there were no accusations about stealing that his father could use, he spent some time just enjoying the game and doing a few fracture runs with random groups.
They failed some and won some.
But most importantly, there was no heavy air of expectation or the knowledge that if he fucked up something, then the first thing anybody seeing it would do was to tell his father.
David hadn’t enjoyed the game so much since before he founded the Steel Lions. It was really liberating, explaining somewhat his sister’s behavior. Not all of it, of course, but at least some of it…
However, after enjoying his freedom for a while, he decided if he wanted to seriously play the game, he would need a permanent group. That is a guild.
Only it appeared that nobody wanted him.
Oh, they could cite increasing prices, not enough equipment, too low level, but he could see clearly what was going on. Most bigger guilds were created by people of means. People who could supply the needed gold to start the guild, who in turn were all connected somehow.
And David knew his father was petty enough to blacklist him everywhere.
Cursing softly, David sat on the beach near Deepanchor, watching as ships left the harbor with sails up, vanishing into the sunset while the city began to light up as dusk approached.
‘It appears I have to do with pugs for the time being…’ he mused while he kept watching the idyllic scenery.
Then he shrugged. “Ehh, who cares? The game is fun, I’m having fun. Fuck the old man!” he exclaimed, raising a fist at the sky. He felt oddly free after his declaration.
‘I wonder when Katie’s boss is going to make a guild… I’m pretty sure Father can’t blacklist me there…’
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Adam sat in his room, on his favorite chair, where he always sat when he wanted to think, or according to his grandmother, brood, and well, brooded.
When that man approached him and offered proof of his friend cheating him, well, he simply humored the man. After all, he was pretty successful in several games, so it wasn’t the first time somebody tried the same tactic.
Sadly, this time, it was pretty much real.
It wasn’t some computer-generated fake conversation, or people pretending to be his friend, or rather ex-friend, but an honest-to-God recording, authenticated by the game itself. Honestly, he didn’t even need the authentication proof.
He knew his friend enough to realize that he wasn’t lying. However, based on how long he had pulled wool over his eyes, he really began to doubt himself.
Adam hated dealing with money. It just felt icky to him, putting a price on people’s actions and behavior so he was happy to leave it to his ex-friend and ex-partner. Thankfully, he had a rather airtight contract with the man, that included several provisos that in this new light were rather unfair to Adam and favored his ex-partner in case something happened.
Unless Adam had some very specific proof. Like authenticated video proof of a confession, notarized document copies from the accountant, and a few more things.
Basically, now that he looked at it closer it was written in a way that he would have to jump through dozens of hoops before he could do anything to his traitorous ex-friend.
Letting out a deep sigh, he closed his eyes, counted to thirteen, then opened them and reached for his phone.
Slowly and carefully, he navigated through the menus until he finally arrived at a number. He loathed to do this after all he had achieved, but he needed someone who was only in his corner no matter what happened in the past.
Pushing the button, he dialed the number and held the device to his ears. He could have called through video chat, but Adam felt it would be hard enough over sound. There was no need to increase the difficulty by seeing the other person’s face.
It rang exactly seven times. He counted.
“Hallo? Is that you, Adam, dear?”
He took a deep breath and spoke up. “Yes, it’s me, grandma. Hello! How have you been?”
“Oh, my gosh! It’s really you, dear! So good to hear your voice! I have been busy, as you know…”
As he listened to his grandmother rambles, Adam leaned back in his chair and marginally relaxed. The old woman might have liked to put up a visage of a dotty old lady, but she was still a vicious lawyer. With her in his corner, Adam didn’t have much to worry about.
Now he only needed to survive the social necessities and admonishments about family.
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Lucy was busy.
So busy…
After the inclusion of Isabella in the group, just as she was finished with all the paperwork, Sam sent over more information about potential people.
A woman, who was Dan’s girlfriend, from an affluent family, wanting to build a city. A betrayed guild leader who loved organizing people just like her, that was exploited by their partner.
‘Seriously, is he building a group based on psychological damage? Or just collecting damaged people?’ she mused, studiously ignoring what that said about her.
Still, according to Sam, they only needed to bring the ex-guild leader on board, and then they would be finally able to start building their own proper guild.
Per the plans, Sam would lead a small team to do very specific things that advanced guild and company interests, or hindered others, while Lucy, the newly approached Lara, and Adam would hold the fort, both figuratively and literally.
Lucy would deal with economics, politics, and human resources. Adam would lead the guild, while Lara would build them the perfect city to call home.
It was a bold plan.
Unfortunately, based on the things Sam had accomplished so far, she expected it to turn out just like all those things. And if she counted Liz into the group with her extremely unique crafting discipline and Tim with his odd approach to security, then they would be set for a long time.
Or unleash some kind of eldritch monster that devoured universes…
Naturally, this would attract a lot of attention, both good and bad. And with Katie’s dad no doubt already gunning for them after Sam clowned him with the first raid, Lucy knew it would be an uphill battle.
Despite that and a thousand other things that told her that the endeavor would be torture, Lucy couldn’t help but feel excited.
Here was the chance to make her mark on the world of Magic Unbound, the world’s current best game, as the entire world watched. And if she managed to do this while half the world was working against her, well then…
They were already making enough money through all their ventures that if they stopped and just concentrated on the business, they would live very comfortably, especially if they invested some of that money.
But Lucy wasn’t new at games. She knew that in games, especially roleplaying games like Magic Unbound, personal power mattered.
If they couldn’t protect their properties, then as soon as somebody out-leveled them, they would be coming to destroy them and take over the business.
That’s why they needed the guild. To shield the business and to distract the battle-hungry idiots with juicy targets while they fleeced the rich for their money.
Lucy couldn’t help but chuckle at how much her life changed ever since that fateful day when a weirdo sat down across from her at the coffee shop while a worried waitress waited for her signal to kick out another creep.
‘Heh… Good times…’ Lucy chuckled as she went through another document. “He's still a weirdo, tho…”