Lucas Green, Senior Development Manager at Tumult Corporation, and brother to Lester Green, sat with an unknown man inside the company headquarters. They were in a room that wasn’t set-up for external conferencing. In fact, they didn’t even seem to be carrying cell phones in their pockets.

There was no technology in this room at all, aside from whatever was providing an aerial view of the pair.

The room, aside from its severe lack of technology, was otherwise nondescript. This was not like the glass conference rooms Tumult used in other areas of the company. The walls were painted with an inoffensive, off-white color.

Lucas Green impatiently tapped his fingers against his left temple, as if he could shake loose the thoughts stuck in his head. The man across from him sat like stone, taking Lucas in, but otherwise not reacting to his fidgeting.

“This is a nightmare scenario,” Lucas rattled off. “What are we going to do? Details of Project: Strogian Death were leaked and uploaded to peer-to-peer sharing on an anonymous browser. We haven’t even been able to tell where the leak originated. I told you we should have watermarked or made identifiable project details.”

“What are you so worried about?” the other man asked. He folded his hands in his lap, completely waving Lucas off. “The documentation doesn’t have anything in it. It’s all code words and nonsense. Just make up a story. I don’t care, maybe create a piece of lore with a special monster in it. We can spin this into something of a boon.”

“We don’t have any real in-game lore,” Lucas protested. “Part of the whole appeal of the game is the lack of lore. The players can build their own history of the game. That’s why we made so many systems internal, for example, the Bestiary system.”

“I thought that system was designed by that studio,” the other man said, stroking a thin, wispy beard. “You know the one I mean, right? The small one? We tried to hire them.”

“I know the one,” Lucas nodded. “He was the one who designed the system, along with the Monster Hunter class. I pointed out what a terrible idea it was to let him stand up his own servers, but I was ignored. Paul… again, what are we going to do about the Strogian Project?”

“I told you, make up some lore,” Paul spat back. “Nobody’s going to care if we said there was no lore. Players, like everyone else, have a week-long memory. Just put some spin on it. Create a pretty new monster to dangle in front of them. Something rare. Besides, what kind of game has no lore?”

Lucas turned his head, staring at the wall. When he spoke again, he didn’t seem very confident. “I can come up with something, I guess. I can have them add in an ancient lost society or something. People shouldn’t ask too many questions about complete background history.”

“There you go,” Paul said, waving magnanimously. “This is why we pay you, after all. Anything else?”

“I wanted to talk about the real Project: Strogian Death. We ran into some road bumps.”

Lucas seemed to be the least thrilled about this particular topic. He nervously messed with the hem of his shirt, pulling the fabric loose from its tuck.

“Go on,” Paul said with the same generosity as a pirate captain sending someone to walk the plank.

“We’re having trouble with the reverse engineering,” Lucas admitted like someone delivering their last words. “The server is more… complex than we thought. Obviously, we need to migrate everything onto our own server, in-case anything happens. Except, well, we can’t.”

“What do you mean ‘you can’t’?” Paul demanded. “You told me your team had hired some of the best engineers in the world. You told me you could crack it. You told me you could build it from scratch if you needed to.”

“I’m sure we could,” Lucas said shyly, “but without cooperation, it’s taking more time than we have. The launch is supposed to be in three days. I mean, the team hasn’t even figured out how to generate a Monster Hunter character yet. Re-building the Bestiary system is a whole other hurdle. It could be months.”

At this point, Paul turned to the camera. His face was holding all the essence of a child caught eating the cookies on Christmas morning. He stared at the lens as if it held some answers, but he found none there.

“Is there really nothing you can do?” Paul asked. There was obviously no way for him to hire a new team. He was stuck with the people he had.

“We’ll try, but probably not,” Lucas admitted. “We’ll have to hope someone generates a Monster Hunter character. If they do, we can latch onto them. We can watch them and use their character as the basis for reverse engineering.”

“What would it take for you to reverse engineer the whole class?” Paul requested, his tone easing from earlier in the conversation. “Just out with it, I’m trusting you as the expert. I haven’t done engineering in years. I can help you with the board, but I need your earnest take.”

“A fully leveled character would be a good start,” Lucas explained. “If someone even generates a Monster Hunter, that is. Beyond that, we’ll need dozens of examples of monsters to run simulations on the Bestiary system. Once we can sense the pattern, we’ll be able to develop a model to fill in the blanks for other monsters.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“What about the other subsystem on their studio’s server,” Paul asked conspiratorially, his eyes firmly planted back toward the camera. “You know the one.”

“That’s a Mr. Georges question,” Lucas said. “It’s going to end up being a legal problem. We’ll have to argue that it’s justly ours due to its development while working for us.”

“Do you have proof he developed it on our company time?” Paul asked. “Mr. Georges is going to need something to go on. He’s a lawyer, not a wizard.”

“We can make some,” Lucas Green confessed. “I don’t think it exists, but it could.”

At this, Paul grinned darkly. “That’s the spirit. I look forward to seeing some of that proof. You know how much the company hates for our intellectual property to be unjustly stolen.”

Lucas nodded, though he looked like he was seconds from tears. He was agreeing to break a half-dozen laws, if not more. Least among them was future perjury.

“I’ll get right on it,” he agreed. “I was in control of his time cards, so it shouldn’t be too hard to cover my tracks.”

“Great,” Paul sighed. The whole meeting was clearly too much for him. He clearly thought it was a waste of his time. “Now. Anything else?”

“No, sir,” Lucas said. “I’ll get to work.”

***

Jay stepped back from the pool, still in shock. When Pami had suggested it was time for him to look inside the pool, he hadn’t been expecting much. The standing water wasn’t notable aside from its impossible clarity. Suddenly, he found himself witnessing a vision that looked to be stolen from a Tumult security camera.

Well, it wasn’t stolen, since it existed inside of their game. But they certainly didn’t want it being shown as part of a quest scenario.

For Jay, the replay, assuming the scenario was real, sparked several questions. He would have plenty to discuss with Ichibad and Lucille the next time they met. He resolved that he would find some real answers the next time. No more dancing to someone else’s music.

The references to the other gaming studio, the small one he had seen was suing Tumult Corp. in the news, caught his interest. There seemed to be a lot more to that lawsuit than could be seen at a casual search.

In the scene Jay had just watched, Lucas had admitted to falsification of data related to the project. The whole thing sounded like Tumult was trying to get away with stealing. He wondered if Lester knew about Lucas’s alleged misdeeds.

Jay would love to get into contact with the owner of the other studio. He wasn’t sure what he could possibly do to help, but he was very curious to hear the other side of the story. After all the stuff Mr. Georges had pulled to set him back, Jay was particularly primed to believe they were up to some wrongdoing.

The other studio had clearly done something to the servers to protect themselves. The scene also asked more questions about the Monster Hunter class. Jay’s class was coming from the other stuidio’s servers, which didn’t surprise him. What did surprise him was the lack of access Tumult seemed to have to that server.

He also took note of Lucas Green’s speculation on what it would take to reverse engineer the other studio’s code. He asked for exactly the things Jay was working on: lots of Bestiary entries and a level 100 Monster Hunter character.

Tumult Corp. had been profoundly lucky that he was able to roll a Monster Hunter character. He was exactly what they needed. The only thing missing was understanding why he was able to create the character in the first place.

“You alright buddy?” Ken asked, breaking through his processing of the scene. “Your eyes are lit up like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Jay had seen a ghost when he saw Lucas Green. A ghost named Lester Green. The reminder led him back to wondering whether or not Lucas would get his brother a new character.

“Something like that,” Jay laughed it off. “Sorry, back on track.”

He looked down at Pami, noticing that she also had the debuff removing her from the active scenario. It was an interesting way of placing NPCs outside of the activity. The game obviously didn’t want the party to have too much help fighting off the monsters.

“I saw the vision, Pami. Is there anything else we can do to help you? Your people have been ravaged by this battle. I still don’t understand how they were able to break through your traps.”

“Gereg only knows,” Pami said, though her faith didn’t seem to waver in the slightest. “Complete the quest to destroy the artifact. End the spell. That is all my people need. I will see the alligators restored, when I recover from my injuries.”

Jay nodded, turning to the warriors Igno and Svelt. “I’ll entrust her protection to you until we’re able to complete this?”

Both of the warriors agreed solemnly, taking their positions by the Elder’s side. Each of them was marked as being out of the fight, but they seemed plenty capable of fighting back, should another attack befall the village.

Jay shifted his attention to the rest of his party, needing to make plans for the future with them. In theory, they could still play for a few hours. The quest with the crocodiles could be ended that night.

“What do you guys think?” Jay asked. “I say we hop right on this quest. Who knows how long it’ll take for things to go south, if we don’t.”

“Should we try to pick Carlos back up?” Jenny asked curiously. “It would be really nice. Being the only healer is rough, especially without big direct target heals. I’m hopeful I’ll get a spell like that eventually, but for now, we need him.”

“We probably should,” Jay agreed, diving into his game menus. “I’ll message him now to see if he’s online.”

He sent off a message to Carlos, which didn’t receive any immediate response. His eyes watched for a message notification, but he returned his attention to the party.

“It’s all well and good to go after them,” Taylor Lynn said. “But the truth is we can’t. We have no way of locating their village. We’d have to search through the whole swamp. Even then, there’s a good chance we’d never find them.”

“Do you think crocodiles are masters of operational security?” Jay asked, rather pleased with himself.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Taylor Lynn said gruffly. She was unhappy with his leading questions but that didn’t bother him. Her grumpiness with him was well-established.

“Follow the yellow brick road,” Jay smiled. “Made of crocodile tracks.”