Commander Klein of the Red Liberty marched his men up Route 6 towards Harehill. The advance party, made up of a few of his strongest Level 24-26s, had cleared the road for the rest of his battalion to move safely. The advance party had been strictly told to stay off the road as to not alert any of the so-called “Commonwealth” members to their arrival. Klein was confident that they had the manpower to easily win in a head-to-head confrontation, but he realized that every man he saved was another loyal man down the line. Everything was about planning for the future. One had to be strict. One had to be cruel. One had to be respected. If a man wasn’t respected, how could be certain in his control?

The first mile out of Eastland had been the slowest. Getting 306 soldiers up and moving was no easy feat. However, like a train, once it started it wasn’t stopping. There wasn’t a force on heaven nor earth that would slow the encroaching doom of Armistice’ 2nd Battalion. They might not have been the highest leveled, but they were the premier fighting force for the nation based out of Lubbock. Klein had made sure of that. If Armistice wanted to keep what he thought were the best and brightest cooped up inside of Lubbock, that was fine by Klein. Klein would take charge of the rest.

As the group marched forwards, Klein looked back over his companies. 5 companies of 61 soldiers each were grouped up in sections. Alpha Company, 1st Platoon was followed by Alpha Company, 2nd Platoon and so on. Before all of this, Klein was the principle of a high school. He spent one week yelling at teachers for his poor performance review by the superintendent and spent the next week slaughtering the Bison-Men that laid siege to his hometown. For a lot of people, this was a horrible world to live in. For Klein, he was finally self-actualized. This is what he was built for. He noticed that, among the humans, those who were ‘mediocre’ before everything were excelling in this new system. Those who were great at the old system failed in this one. The tables were quite literally turned.

As Klein led his army like a Roman Centurion, complete with red cloaks, neither he nor his men noticed the strange mound of mud in the road. It was just low enough to go unnoticed by the soldiers and just high enough to be little more than a nuisance. Klein’s horse and the horses and boots of Alpha as well as Bravo Company strolled over the mound. Once the dirt mound was in the dead middle of the formation, a fireball flew from the tree line. A few shouts of alarm went off as the fireball soared towards the mound. A few hundred shouts of alarm went off as the mound exploded into a torrential blaze of flame and death.

————————————————————————

I rocked back in the new chair someone had brought back from an office building in Moran and enjoyed my new status as the Sharpshooter Sub-Class. It was true that the carpenters in the Commonwealth, and certainly the ones on the Market, could make and sell chairs that were far more comfortable. Still, there was something fun about sitting in an old $1,000 gaming chair from before everything. The duality was made even more intriguing by the medieval rabbit village that I had taken residence in.

“Village” was a bit of an outdated term now. The town of Harehill had grown to over a hundred rabbits. The newborn Rabbitfolk took a month and a half to become mature and therefore start reproducing and contributing to the workforce. The NPCs were really and truly breeding like rabbits. The town hall was now two stories with around 20 rooms inside of it. The Texas Pony was now three stories with several extensions. The houses in the downtown sector now resembled two-story cottages instead of single-room huts.

One of those downtown buildings, what used to be a warehouse, had become our new office. I forgot how many times we had changed meeting rooms. It seemed like every week there was some new event that forced us to change. Hopefully the new building would last a while. A large warehouse floor provided a theater for us to do announcements. Several rooms on the second floor gave me something that I only dreamed of before everything: an office. That office contained my chair, my desk, my window, my pens, my enchanted chest that acted as a cooler for vegetables.

All of that stuff was mine. It was odd how fast I had exploded in value to the community. People respected me and my opinions. I had to make sure to keep my ego in check. Pride was most likely how all these other guilds got started as well.

The knock on my door woke me up from my daydream evaluations and I sat up a bit straighter in my chair. “Come on in.”

The bald man with tattoos walked in with Nick.

I gave a smile. “Hey, Lincoln.”

He grinned back. “Morning, President.”

I rolled my eyes. “Status on the attack?”

“Ruined. Nicky here did perfect. Not sure how many we actually killed, but they were lugging red profiles back the 5 miles they walked. We crushed them.”

“Scouts?”

“The Hunter’s and I took out the vanguard. Another 16 high levels down.”

“How’d you do it?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Lincoln smiled. “One by one. We’ve all got stealth skills and they split up into 3 squads. It was easy.”

“You lose anyone?”

“Not one.”

I sat back in my chair and breathed a sigh of relief. Destroying Raphael and his company was a declaration of war, but this was something else entirely. If we hadn’t brought the wrath of the Liberty on us so far, we certainly had now. It was only August 2nd. We had a long way to go before borders are firmly established. We had to get used to this type of conflict because, if history was any indicator, this wasn’t stopping anytime soon. All we had to do was make the Liberty believe that we were more trouble than we were worth. “Great job, Lincoln. You too, Nick.”

Nick gave a grin. “You should have seen ‘em, J. They were running like chickens with their heads cut off.”

I tried not to imagine the hundreds of men nursing shrapnel wounds and third-degree burns. A year ago, this would have been a war crime. Now…the rules were different. “Thank you both. Nick, we have a council meeting tonight after Cain and his group arrives. Lincoln, if you would like to be there, you’re welcome too.”

“I’m good, J. Just give us the orders. We’re happy to help.” Lincoln and Nick turned and walked out, closing the office door gently behind them.

I picked up one of the area maps that Graham had drawn up for me and nodded as I read over it. I felt like a college football coach with the way I was drawing arrows and circles all over the paper. I was designing the “plays” the best way I could to have something to show at the meeting tonight.

I looked out my open window and took in the sunlight. The system seemed to remove the weather extremes from the climate. I wasn’t sure exactly how this wasn’t killing the ecosystem in some way or another, but all of the colds were brisks and all the hots were warms. It was wonderful. As I looked out the window, a small raven flew in.

I stood up, realizing who it was. I waited for Pastor Gabriel to transform back into human form, his charismatic smile permanently glued on his face. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Mr. Lakewood. How’d it go?”

“The information you gave us was great. We took out the attack before it got with ten miles of town. How was the reaction back home?”

Gabriel’s face got dark. “It…well…let’s just say the news isn’t great.”

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As Klein rode back into Eastland, he fiercely rounded up the citizens. “Anyone with a skill that comes even close to healing, get the fuck out here right now!”

He assigned the healers to work on the more than a hundred wounded bodies as he stormed into the town hall. He called in the four surviving company commanders. The Delta Captain went down to a red profile, but was healed back to full health almost immediately. That was one of the benefits of this new system. If your healers had the right orders, it was a lot harder to kill the high value targets.

“What the fuck happened out there?”

The Alpha Captain gave a shrug. “Looks like we got bombed.”

Nearly everyone around Klein was terrified of him. He commanded fear and respect with every step he took. That said, there was an exception to the rule. His Captains were the only ones who, as long as it was behind closed doors, were allowed to question him and act somewhat casually. Even Klein saw the benefit of having people who were willing to tell you when an order was wrong and advise another course of action. Now, one of those trusted five men were dead. Klein had no family or children anymore. The closest thing that he had to family were these soldiers, and the rabbit-fuckers had killed who knows how many of them.

The Echo Captain rubbed the back of his head. “1st Platoon isn’t showing up on my raid menu anymore. They either all left the guild simultaneously, or they’re dead.”

Klein blew air through his nose. The entire vanguard was dead. Those 16 men had been trained from Level 1 to be fast, efficient, and as stealthy as shadows. The thousands of hours of training that each of those soldiers had was gone. He wasn’t even sure how to calculate the cost of the dead.

The system, in what was probably an effort to give a few disincentives to killing other players, made a few rules with player kills. You can’t loot player bodies, you can’t gain experience for your main level or your skill levels from player kills, and you are worth more experience to monsters if they manage to kill you for every player kill you had. The Red Liberty had discovered that third rule out through less-than-ethical means. The first rule was the real issue, though. All of that gear, all of the money and time spent tailoring the uniforms to look identical, all of that gold was just gone. If a monster had killed them, Klein could have had the bodies looted and the gear and gold recovered and redistributed. Instead, it was all lost into the damn nether.

Klein looked at the Bravo Captain. “Get me Sergeant Mia.”

The Captain gave a nod. “Roger, sir.”

In took less than fifteen minutes of awkward silence before the Captain returned with a young girl in the Liberty’s spell-caster uniform. Her long black hair was tied back into a neat bun and her face showed the age of a thousand-year veteran, despite her true age of 25. Klein supposed all of his soldiers had the same look. That was a good thing. “Sergeant, you still have your orb?”

Mia gave a nod. She opened her inventory menu and retrieved the (Orb of Communication - 25M). The Mastery-Tier item could be paired with any other orb of communication to allow instant communication. Their rarity could not be overstated. In the entire Red Liberty Empire and its territories, only 4 were known and all were assigned by General Armistice personally. The item was so valuable that Klein and the other two battalion commanders were ordered to not carry the item themselves and instead give it to a mid-level soldier. The thought was that Klein, as commander, would be targeted more than anyone else. If he was killed by enemy players, the orb would be lost.

“Send a message to the High Lord. Say, ‘Attack repelled. 50 or more dead. Require assistance’.”

Mia took in a deep breath. Every word took a considerable amount of energy to send. Mia was a Level 25 and Klein could tell she was doubtful on her own success. More than 5 or 6 words in an hour was hard. 8 at once was brutal. Klein gave her a nod that he hoped came off as reassuring and she began to focus. As she sent the last word, she fainted and collapsed into the arms of the Bravo Captain. He set her down in a chair as the group picked up the orb and watched it.

The few minutes it took for a response felt like an eternity. None of them blinked for fear of missing a single letter from the High Lord. Finally, the message came through. “En route with 1st and 3rd.”