Rushing

Half an hour later as I was considering logging out to have dinner with the family, I say, "Orion, my guy, you can't be like that with people. He's straight-up political and scheming. Were you wrong? No. Was that the right way to handle it? No."

"Leo, my guy," Go says, taking my own words from. "Like master like familiar, how is this any different from before you left? Bro, you're becoming a stressed out ass hat."

At the moment, my party and I were resting while using Orion for magic studies, hoping to help the others grasp their own darkness affinity from the demon's use of magic. Not only did he have his innate demon ability to produce his own 'spiritual' weapons which I had somehow assimilated but he also had several other dark magics.

"I know," I sigh tiredly after a few seconds of thinking about it. "He's going to start by sending a bunch of amateurs at me before sneaking a spy into the clan or corrupting a new member so he can send professionals."

Scoffing loudly, Ivana says, "That's not the issue, dumbass. We, your friends, can put up with how you defy common sense both in ability and your own decisions. Everybody else… they're not used to this side of you and you're getting kind of full of yourself out there. 'I'm stronger' this and that, even this new demon you brought was preaching the law of the jungle at people. Not okay."

"Did you see how many people he had stationed and ready at the wall?" I ask with a dismissive wave. "He was ready to put on a show and I doubt my spotlight would have been favorable. Honestly, we might have ended up having some serious words if not for the level two hundred here. He proves my point about needing to make the most thorough preparations and build up our forces as much as possible while we still can."

"Your leader has a-" Orion starts to speak in my favor again, only to be shut down by Ivana.

"Adults are talking, kids are better seen than heard," she quips quickly, cutting off the demon who was twice her size and probably more than twice her stats. While everybody in the group had at least one stat over three hundred, the rest of their stats were lucky to be half of their main stat.

"And people call me an asshole," I remark while munching on some simple herb bread just to give myself the feeling of satisfying hunger. "Listen, I'll make it up to them. Once we hit the next crafting phase, I'll give them some armor materials for them and their elites. That'll make everything easier later on. I already gave Thirteenth the big piece of the pie topside, this dungeon was my slice!"

"There's still some other issues," Papi points out. "Not just in your relations with Donna, but the overall stress on the other clans is beyond belief. Their people are only just barely up to par for the course right now and they're taking losses while we're basically playing a video game. Yes, I know it's a game, but you know what I mean. We put pressure on our allies as much as our enemies. Just imagine wondering how long the powerhouse is willing the keep sharing pie before turning on the other people at the table. That's the position they're in on top of dealing with the dungeon itself."

I could not argue with that. If I was in their shoes, especially with Thirteenth around, I would be constantly watching my back wondering how long I could trust the greater number of players around me. Sadly, that was honestly just how things were in this industry.

The very fact that money could be made openly and professionally through video games was revolutionary about a decade ago. Now, the industry had its powers and alliances already in place and all of them did not like when someone new made waves. If you rocked the boat you usually walked the plank.

"I'll apologize to Donna about the curse thing," I sigh in defeat, knowing that move in particular had probably crossed a line or ten. "As for Thirteen, this is just how we've always been. Once this is all over and everyone can relax, everything will go back to normal. Like you said, Papi, it's a stressful situation."

The others continued scolding me for a while as well as spit-balling ideas on how to smooth things over with the other clans. I, personally, was not too concerned with the conversation at that point and instead worked on plotting out a general strategy for tackling the our only remaining neighbor.

Without the wraiths the outpost should be easy enough to deal with, especially now that we knew for sure that the commander there was weaker than Orion. I even considered bypassing much of the other outposts and running straight to the manor. With the gap we made in the encirclement and an outpost manned my skeleton NPC to keep the demons busy, us players could easily sneak straight to the manor and work on resolving the dungeon in general.

Such a method would probably cost all of us a great deal of loot and experience but it would cut off the possibility of the other clans making any gains when the entered the dungeon.

As the others finally started letting go of the issue I finally decided to log out and see what was made for dinner. After a few brief prompts, I soon found myself lying in my gaming chair in my room. The first thing I noticed besides my ceiling was the fact that I had been sitting for so long so much recently that my butt actually hurt.

Getting up slowly from my chair, I take out my phone to check the time and find that I was actually a little late for dinner. However, I could still hear the sounds of my family downstairs and thus I quickly made my way down to the kitchen to hunt for leftovers.

Unlike my usual behavior, I was not buried in my phone while preparing a large plate of food in the kitchen but instead actually paying attention to what I was doing. The others were all in the living room doing their own researches on the game. My parents were deeply involved in their studies for the workshop my father was setting up while my siblings were intently watching videos about fighting different mobs and breaking down their characteristics.

Left to my own devices as I took a seat in the living room to eat in their silent company, I put on the AR visor I left charging in the living room and started monitoring the forums. The first place I went to was my own thread in the game's forums only to find that the thread was locked. Not only could others no longer post in it but even I had no options but to read.

The final message in the thread was from Melpomene saying the thread had been locked and it had been posted once the game went back online after the update.

At first I was a little disappointed by this despite the fact that people were still receiving donations from new readers but then I became a little ticked off when I went to the other threads. Just like mine, the rest of the forum threads my friends had posted were also locked. As well, they were still receiving donations.

Overall, my forum account had received almost a full platinum in donations and I could happily anticipate receiving many more. This was honestly a pretty slow but cheesy method of making money that I doubted I would ever actually use. However, it was good to get my name out there in a not-so-asshole fashion.

Going back through older posts, I find the thread where I had put out the bounty on monochrome members and skim through the dozens of newest messages I had not looked at since posting. Now that there was a level restriction on equipment my payment plan using powerful swords became much less attractive since most people would need to be around level ninety to use the swords I offered.

Among the few days old messages were a combination of people making counter offers, exclaiming they would work hard for one of my weapons, or people from monochrome openly threatening the player base. If anyone actually tried to claim my bounties by going after them they assured the world they would become the enemies or targets of not only monochrome but all of their allied clans.

Seeing these threats all over my post, I was tempted to make a scene by calling them out and insulting everything about them since they were all weaker than me. There were numerous times where they claimed they and their growing collective army would wait for me to leave the raid and then get to work on resetting my levels.

Instead of going all out by calling them on their BS and launching threats against their allies to make them just fuck off as far as possible, I instead posted a short ten-second video containing the taking of outpost A from my point of view. Not only did this reveal some of the incredible power at my disposal but also revealed the enormous levels of the enemies we were now fighting.

If we could hold our own against hundreds of one-twenty and one-fifty leveled enemies, what threat could they possibly pose?

Even if the enemy groups were gathering and taking over the Winter Wood region, the mobs there were only seventy at the highest and there were so many people that leveling would be slower than frozen running water. Since we were in two different areas and only a handful of people had character information available on the forum, there was no way they would be able to tell the vast difference between our abilities.

They should already know that I can clear a camp by myself! What could these people possibly do to threaten my entire party? Especially now that we had Zekrom, Reptor, and Orion. The three of them alone could potentially wipe the other clans around the topside territory altogether.

After I finished eating, my siblings seemed to come to a silent consent before bombarding me with questions about monsters, the game, and the things that my party and I were up to in the game. In response to this, I could only collect some gameplay footage from my account and stream it to the television showing them the scenes of my awakening the skeleton NPC in the cathedral before showing the siege of A followed by my fighting Orion.

Finding myself actually relaxing and enjoying the atmosphere of being idolized by my little brother and sister, I honestly cannot wait to play with them in the game and show off how strong my character was. Neither of them were really surprised by my in-game abilities and combat prowess. Simply by looking at my meathead self they seemed to think it was only natural.

They asked me questions incessantly about all of the different demons and monsters they saw, becoming excited like kids on the night before Christmas at the sight of all these enemies that other players had never even looked at yet. Very few people in the player base had seen actual demons yet unless they were a specialized summoner or they joined a dark faction of some sort.

After a while of messing around with them I finally got up to put my dishes away before heading back up to my room. In my room, I killed a few minutes doing some simple research on light elemental magic now that I finally had access to it. Then, I finally returned to the game.

Finding myself sitting in the same thoughtful position I had logged out from, I look around to see that most of the others were also logged out at the moment. The only people present were Go and Ivana and Lil who had probably all logged out at the same time as I did but logged in before me.

"You're back," Go says from his seat on a large pile of rubble, looking out toward the outpost wall nearby. "We've got a problem. Thirteen and Donna took you up on your offer earlier. They left to take the other outpost all by themselves."

"Oh?" I ask curiously with a small smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. "Well, then. Let's go enjoy the show, shall we?"

*