Might as Well

Lucrecia looked through the window of her much-upgraded office, walls covered with maps and graphs while several people ‘disguised’ as maids puttered around several tables covered with documents pertaining to the people of the city of Ironwood and surroundings.

Next to her, on a well-made (and extra fluffy) rug, was her favorite familiar, her gift from her beloved, Fortuna. The no-longer small shadow wolf was now big enough, thanks to some magical enhancements courtesy of their family mages, that she could ride on the fluffy predator if she wanted.

Granted, thanks to the luxury of the Silvercrest manor, the wolf was a little pampered, but he was still loyal to her. Already, there were several people who tried to insert people into her little operation and her loyal companion managed to smell them out. A little discussion with her parents in one of the cells in the dungeons and they sang like songbirds.

She sighed, and for a moment moved her eyes to the document that was on the desk in front of her. The movements of the recently created guilds were often confusing and maddening. The new adventurers behaved oddly and obviously had different goals compared to the ‘normal’ people who populated the city.

Still, several trends have emerged, mostly thanks to the people placed at the fracture that her family claimed for themselves in conjunction with her beloved, who reported everything they observed and overheard. Fortunately, most adventurers tended to treat the help and officials working at the fracture (and everywhere else) as air or as furniture. This meant they were rather free with their secrets, as long as no other adventurers were present.

Her people, directed by herself and her mother, made sure to make use of this phenomenon.

Already, they had mapped out most of the relationships of the newly sprung-up guilds with only a few holdouts proving to be hard to infiltrate. That, plus their access to the Heavenly Forest, made sure that they had been raking in money like nobody’s business.

On the advice of her mother, she hadn’t shared the information with her beloved, as according to her mother, it wouldn’t do good for her if she acted too ‘accommodating’.

Her current plan was to take the information and make sure that her beloved knight would reward her properly.

The only obstacle to her genius plan was that Samuel was nowhere to be seen. Her latest information put him in Deepanchor, from where he vanished to her consternation.

Still, she was always ready to act to help her beloved, no matter what.

“Young miss,” came a placid voice from behind her.

Lucrecia turned around and looked at her ‘maid’ as she stood before her, hand clasped in front of her, wearing an immaculate uniform. She was one of the new hires, recommended by an old acquaintance of her father.

“Yes?”

“It appears one of the factions has decided to raid our fracture installations.”

“Ugh, another?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Hm…” she mused as she idly scratched Fortuna’s head. “Surgical strike?”

“I believe a distraction would work better, young mistress,” came the answer from her subordinate.

She thought about it a little and nodded.

“A capital idea!”

“Thank you, young miss.”

“Now, show me what you have!” she spoke, reaching out with a hand.

The ‘maid’ took out a sheaf of paper from somewhere and handed it over. Lucrecia took a few minutes to read it over and ruminate on the contents. Those adventurer guilds that kept themselves in the shadows were rather annoying.

They would do anything for money, including murder, though she hadn’t heard about any rape cases, so she thanked the gods for that small mercy. This looked like some other family had hired the dark guild to cause the Silvercrest family trouble.

With a quick motion, she jumped up from her seat, Fortuna immediately following after her, and with both wolf and maid following her, she strode toward the door.

She had to have a short talk with her father about allocating some personnel. Plus, maybe her beloved had sent some message to her. There was constant communication between the Silvercrest family and the AFK family, but it was always that tart who ran things while her beloved was off to do more important things.

Soon, she stood in front of her father’s desk with the maid and Fortuna at her side, while her father perused the same documents she had read.

While he was reading over them, she was imagining how thankful her beloved knight would be when he found out how she had protected their joint investment.

It would be perfect for the future when their two families joined…

In the office, the maid, the wolf, and the lord of the manor watched with deadpan faces as the young lady of the house looked into the distance and began to murmur to herself while occasionally giggling and twisting and turning around and finally hugging herself rather pervertedly.

The lord exchanged a long-suffering look with the loyal wolf and returned to the documents. There were certain things that no men were meant to know and that involved the thought process of teenagers. His darling wife assured him that she had it well in hand, but sometimes he really worried…

The young maid was just really reconsidering her employment as she beheld her nominal superior giggling to herself.

‘This wasn’t worth leaving the army for…’ she thought while holding in a long-suffering sigh.

Lucy sat back and looked with satisfaction at what she had wrought.

The various subsidiaries of the AFK company created an oh-so-satisfying picture on her desk. They had covered several bigger cities in the kingdom, with their Heavenly Forest being one of the best and biggest chains of luxury accommodations. Their supermarkets were a hit everywhere, and the only thing holding them back was an approval to set up shop in the capital. If that was given, they would be spreading like wildfire around the area.

Her current goal was to set up shop in the Emerald Kingdom, effectively creating a monopoly of services with their shops.

Granted, there were dozens of copycats and while she could crush them in the kingdom, outside of it her power was almost non-existent, thus she could only watch through the internet as several people and guilds copied their concepts. There were at least a dozen chains of supermarkets, warehouses, and identification businesses.

The only condolence was that the Heavenly Forest was still the best. Thanks to Sam’s connection to the nobility and the creations of Liz, their advantages were hard to overcome by anybody. Plus, with the access to the sea through Deepanchor, the amount and quality of food and other products they could offer to their guest increased exponentially.

She reached over and picked up a deep-fried shrimp and dipped it into the pink sauce.

‘Mhmm, doing business is… delicious…’

Thanks to Tim, the security of their businesses had also increased. They used to get saboteurs and infiltrators almost all the time, and only thanks to her encryption spells and adorable familiars was she able to maintain any semblance of security.

But the moment the new guy started, he started implementing new processes and practices.

Password rotations, randomized patrol rotations, and some enhancements to the physical security of the shops thanks to some simple creations by Liz. Even now, the industrious streamer was working on magical locks and things like that.

Lucy was pretty happy that, seeing how effective those tools were, Tim decided to take up enchanting as a crafting disciple. She wondered what artifacts would be borne from the mind of somebody so paranoid.

Seriously, Tim was so paranoid that it almost hurt sometimes to watch.

“Please stop hiding in the wardrobe, Tim,” she spoke up, keeping her eyes on the document.

There was a little grumbling and her security officer clambered out of the wardrobe that she didn’t have yesterday.

“Hello, Lucy!” came the greeting from the man. He was wearing a hooded robe that hid everything and his voice was muffled by a simple artifact, once again crafted by Liz.

She looked up from her work and glared at the man.

“Tim. We talked about this. One, no hoods in the office. Two, no placing random items into my office that you can hide in.”

The man once again grumbled but with a smooth motion removed the hood covering his head, revealing his rather normal-looking face while he scratched the back of his head in embarrassment.

“Sorry, but it’s a lot of fun,” he admitted while taking a seat. “I’m here to report.”

She took a moment to sign the latest document, then placed it on the out tray and moved an empty paper in front of her, raising her pen, ready to take notes.

“I’m listening…”

Tim took a look around and moved his hands in front of him as Lucy watched a dark light appear between his palms which pulsed for a second then it expanded to cover the room, coating the walls of the room in darkness that seemed to swallow the light coming through the windows overlooking Ironwood.

“Do you see anything?” he asked the moment the spell was finished.

Lucy rolled her eyes.

“Every moment there are at least two dozen trying to look through the windows. I had Liz create something that made sure that glass is one-way.”

Tim looked like he would continue with his paranoia, but she stopped him.

“Tim, we’re as secure as possible. Now, stop worrying and tell me what you’ve found!” she demanded.

Tim took a deep breath and nodded.

“Alright. You are the boss!”

Lucy just looked back expectantly.

Tim coughed into his fist, then straightened out and began talking.

“I finished with my full review of the Deepanchor locations. Here is what I found…”

Tim was pretty happy.

Working with the Silent Step was exciting and everything, but roleplaying as an assassin was always so exhausting. Plus, he always preferred the missions where they had to break into somewhere and steal something. There was just something about figuring out a location’s weaknesses that excited him.

And now that the Silent Step has done away with him, and managed to square away the issue of his contract with them, he was excited to work in an area that always interested him.

Getting into security in the real world was rather hard. Most security experts come from one of the militaries around the world and are ‘raised’ internally by corporations. A person of his pedigree (see: none) had almost no chance to get into the industry without major luck. And as he wasn’t the type of person who would gamble his life on a small chance, he went with the safer choice, IT.

Silent Step provided him with an outlet, but it was always killing people on behalf of other people.

The AFK Company was different. A lot different.

The moment he started working for them, life became much more complicated.

He would travel around the Emerald Kingdom, looking at the locations where their company was set up and see how he could make them more secure.

Which was also pretty complicated.

After Lucy decided he could be trusted (and he signed at least three different NDAs) they introduced Tim to Liz, the very familiar-looking streamer, who turned out to be a crafter with a ridiculously busted crafting discipline.

The options that this crafting disciple opened up for him almost made him salivate.

Instantly, he commissioned several new tools from the young woman, ready to defend the company the best he could.

Back in the real world, he took out his old study materials to shake off the dust from his knowledge while also trawling through the net, hunting for more information while also looking up new courses where he could improve his knowledge.

The world of security was ever-evolving and Tim wouldn’t be caught with his pants down!

Plus, he expected that his old guild would definitely want to take revenge on him and his savior and he wanted to make sure that when they tried, they would be greeted with defenses strong enough to hold back a conquering army.

Dan was once again stupefied.

He sat on one of the benches in the park next to his dorm, eating some snacks and getting his required fifteen minutes of sunlight (prescribed by the school), and listening to one of his sorta friends, Roger telling him the latest gossip going on around the school.

Even though he didn’t ask.

But Roger was kinda his friend, and he was nice enough to share his notes with him when Dan was out sick, so he could do at least this much.

Predictably, most of the gossip was either about romance or Magic Unbound.

“So, Stacey decided that if Joe wanted to hang out with Lacey, she was going to show him by doing it with Gregory,” his friend explained.

Dan couldn’t help but ask.

“Roger, why are you telling me this?”

“Don’t know, Dan, for a moment I thought you were a regular human,” came the sarcastic answer from the man.

Roger was a tall man, built like a beanpole with dark brown hair that stuck up everywhere no matter how much time the man spent combing it, with an impressive beard that gave him a crazed look. Given that the man was doing his major in quantum mathematics, it fit him to the tee. Dan heard rumors that several firms were already in the process of headhunting him.

‘I wish they would headhunt me, but nobody appreciates plasma like me…’

Instead of voicing his slightly jealous thoughts, he brought up something else.

“At least talk about the game instead of about who is fucking who…” he grumbled while reaching for more snacks.

“It’s all part of networking, my friend!” Roger grinned at him, but to Dan’s relief, he did as he asked. “But sure, I can talk about that too!”

“Wonderful…”

“So, the Atomic Samurais merged with the Fierce Tigers after the guild leaders started dating last week.”

“So?” he asked between two bites.

“So, that means the Gerbil Collective is hunting them as their guild leader had a crush on the Fierce Tigers’ leader. Which means there will be a guild war soon!”

“Fun…”

“It is indeed fun, my friend!” His friend declared with good cheer. “We can sign up as mercenaries and make bank by working for them,” Roger said excitedly.

For some unfathomable reason, no guild would accept his friend, so he was currently playing the game solo. If what he understood, he was working for some kind of math-based class, that nobody understood, so nobody wanted him on their team.

“I’m pretty sure I’m close to a breakthrough, but I need money to get some lessons at the Mage Tower. Getting help with the theoretical is damn expensive…”

Dan looked over at his friend, and then down at his snack that was gone. He balled up the bag and with a smooth motion threw it into the trash bin next to their bench, and then he turned back to his friend.

“If you need money, I can spot you. I know you are good for it,” he told the weird math guy.

Roger sat up straight, emphasizing his height. “Really? You would do that? Wait! Do you even have that much money? The Mage Tower is pretty expensive!”

“How much do you need?” Dan asked with a frown. “I can spare a few thousand gold. If you need more than that, then I need to talk with some people.”

Instead of answering, Roger just gaped at him.

“How the hell do you have that much money?”

“Er, farming?”

Katie put down the helmet on its stand and stood up from her bed. She couldn’t wait until the pods arrived. According to the information she received, they were already en route and by the next week, her playtime would become much more comfortable.

She wondered how the others would enjoy it before remembering that she would only have access to one because they were rich. Scowling a little, she went through the stretching routine that their physician recommended then grinned.

Sam came up with an excellent plan that would annoy her father and would cost him a lot of money. With how much her life was controlled by her father’s whims, Katie delighted in every moment where she could annoy or otherwise bother the man.

She stopped the stretching and began shucking off her playcloths. She wanted to be at her best when executing the plan, and that required a shower and fresh clothes.

Katie sat in her brother’s parlor in one of the dresses that she hated but was forced to wear and looked back at her brother as he looked over the small slip of paper, she handed over to him, while she chattered about inconsequential things, fully aware of the maid that stood outside of the parlor, ready to be of service.

David looked up from the paper and gave her a searching look. She kept up the chatter and tried to convey how much she wanted this to happen through her eyes. Eventually, he just rolled his eyes, but nodded and then joined her in the chatter.

They started talking about the news and discussing the economic implications. With her being part of the AFK company and listening to Sam and Lucy discuss business, she had some rather unique insight into the topic. Not that she planned to share any of that with her brother and father. They were already rich enough; they didn’t need the help.

“So, what are you up to now?” David asked, following the small script she had prepared while also sounding genuinely curious. That’s why she loved her brother. He wasn’t much for rocking the boat or going against their father in major ways, but he was always up to helping her play pranks or annoy their father. The fact their ‘prank’ would cause millions of credits worth of damage to the man would probably horrify most people.

“Oh, you know, the same old, same old… Mostly grinding to raise our level in one of the fractures.”

“What’s the target?”

“I think between fifty and sixty. The current one is starting to get easy, so we were looking for a harder one.”

“And?” David asked, following the script.

Katie grinned, leaned forward, and lowered her voice while glancing at the door that was only slightly ajar. Not enough to look to be done on purpose, but enough that the maid outside could hear everything.

“Get this! My boss found out that the officials in the capital are ready to open up a new fracture.”

“Really? A new one?”

“Yes! His sources told him that they were finished with the investigations and the outpost was built to handle visitors. Probably, in a few weeks – game time – they would open it to the public!”

David hummed and nodded while Katie took a small breath, sent a prayer to anyone listening, and continued. “But get this. My boss’s sources told him a little secret.”

“And you’re allowed to tell me?” asked David skeptically.

Katie just shrugged.

“Sure, it’s not like it’s that important.”

“Then lay it on me, sis…”

“So, basically the fracture has some pretty vicious monsters that are very big on area of effect poison skills. Poison fog everywhere…”

“And?”

“It requires some pretty specific antidotes. Normal antidotes don’t work because of the dimensional nature of fractures.”

“And let me guess, your boss has the recipe…”

Katie just did a finger pistol at her brother.

“Right on, oh brother of mine.”

David looked back at her and nodded while throwing a glance at the door, then back at Katie with a questioning look. She went over the information Sam asked her to share and then subtly nodded, signaling that their ‘prank’ was finished.

They only needed to wait and see if the fish took the bait…

“I’m not even going to try to get the recipe from you. I probably don’t have enough gold in my entire guild to buy it.”

“Hehehehe,” she giggled, then switched the subject.

“And how is the guild?”

David immediately perked up. “Oh, we went to raid the fracture near the silver mines. The golems were really cool…”

“Do you have any pictures?”

“What do you think?”

“I asked around, and it seems one hundred percent true. The people I paid off even gave me some poison samples.”

“And?”

“Pretty nasty stuff. No player has resistances high enough to get in there without the antidote.”

“The recipe?”

“We had to burn some assets and intermediaries, but we got it.”

“Start producing it immediately. I want the entire market.”

“I doubt we are the only ones who got the recipe. After all, even our source…”

The man leaned back in his chair and considered what the man standing before him said.

“You may be right. Hmm, we have two options. Sabotage the others or increase the market…”

“Increase the market, sir?”

“Yes. Start spreading rumors about the fracture. I want every streamer, blog, and whoever talks about stuff like this to be discussing this fracture,” he ordered and the other man immediately started making notes. “I want to see that little asshole outproduce our production department.”

The other man wisely said nothing. After a few moments of silence, he spoke up again.

“Make sure we are ready for the rush and start preparing our raid team to clear the fracture. I want to make sure we get the valuable drops first.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you think he bought it?” Katie asked as they ambled through the garden with her brother.

David shrugged. “Who knows? He is not stupid, but this really looks like a surefire way to make a lot of gold, so it’s fifty-fifty.”

Katie just giggled. “Can’t wait to see his face when he realizes he has been had…”

David just shook his head. “You’re one dangerous menace, Katie…”

“Well, father shouldn’t have been an asshole, then I wouldn’t have to do this!”

“Seriously, Katie. One day, he’ll snap and lock you into a tower.”

“As long as I have internet I don’t mind. At least then I wouldn’t have to attend those stupid parties…”

David looked back thoughtfully, then nodded.

“If he figures it out, make sure to mention I helped. I call dibs on the east-facing room in the tower!”

The two siblings looked at each other and then broke out in laughter. For a moment, everything was alright in the world. There was no pressure from society, from their positions, and most importantly, from their father. They were a brother and sister pair, just having fun.

Isabella stomped away from the outpost surrounding the nature and illusion-themed fracture in a foul mood. Her assistant trailed behind her with a worried look on her face while the rest of her team was following at a safe distance.

Finally reaching an empty clearing she stopped in front of a tree. For a long moment she stared at the trunk, and then with the accompaniment of a scream, she punched clear through the poor tree.

She couldn’t believe it.

Her mortal enemy. Here in the game.

She expected that, of course. Katie loved games like that, but still, coming face-to-face with her mortal enemy shook her.

Especially in the company of a man she wanted to get for her team, and maybe more…

But that stupid gremlin was way ahead of her.

They had met at the beginning of middle school, thanks to both of their families being rather affluent. And those families only used a few schools. Thus, they spent a lot of time together.

Isabella didn’t really remember who started it, but one day they found themselves amid a war of pranks that would have caused them to be expelled from any school if it weren’t for their families.

Katie would spike her food with chilies, while Isabella would lube up surfaces that the other girl frequented. Then, in retaliation, Katie would plant glitter bombs everywhere Isabella went, and so on…

They fought over grades and tests. Sometimes Isabella taking the lead in certain subjects, sometimes Katie dominating them. It annoyed her that Katie, the little chaos gremlin, could defeat her in any school subject. Her parents probably only bailed her out because thanks to these events, her grades were phenomenal.

This ‘rivalry’ also transferred into games.

Both of them were avid gamers, and every time they ran into each other, they would make sure to fuck with the other. Monster trains, PK, and every other tool would be used to hamper each other.

And now, they were close enough that she had to prepare for the attack she just knew was coming.

‘Maybe a pre-emptive strike?’ she mused as she lashed out with her fist and punched another hole through the tree that had the bad luck to stand before her. ‘But I don’t know anything about her team. I need to prepare. She could be preparing right at this moment!’

“Alice!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have you made progress about the man?”

“Yes, ma’am. The report is ready in your office.”

She turned from the tree and grinned at her assistant, who, for some reason took a step back.

“Tell everyone to be careful. You can never know with that gremlin. She could be lurking around right now!” she told her, glancing around furtively as if expecting Katie to jump out of the bushes while yelling ‘boo!’.

“Y-yes…ma’am.”

She would prepare. She would be ready. No chaos gremlin can defeat her. Especially not with a guild like Eternal Light supporting her.

‘Still, to be sure I have to get some anti-stealth and anti-glitter spells…’