Bus 828, D910 Southbound, Paris

Sitting on the bus in the second to last row, one of only three people, I scoop a forkful of rice from the convenience store salad I bought for tonight's dinner and grimace at the taste. When I was in university, I didn't really subscribe to the whole healthy diet idea that heavily. Sure enough, I'd eat most anything you put on young me's plate, but I was still the sort of person to actively avoid salads and things like watching nutritional value, sodium and so on never crossed my mind.

Over the years that changed, but my body is still at that point in time. That the quality of the meal I'm eating is barely scraping an acceptable standard isn't helping, but that's probably some of the bias from my modestly well-off lifestyle talking. I'd buy fresh when I could, but these days I'm obliged to plunder the shelf where the reduced price items are dumped to keep costs as low as possible. In the event my efforts with Astral Reckoning don't pay off, I have just barely enough left over to keep me going for a month or two while I seek an alternative form of employment. Every euro I save now is less pressure on me if that happens.

While I eat, I catch up on the report from Winfrey, and find that outcome to be less likely than she worries. Granted, there's someone moving an enormous amount of money to crush us - taking bets as to who could possibly have the means and motive - and I'm not going to pretend it isn't a gargantuan pain in the ass to have the entirety of Meteo's playerbase go from idolising us to wanting to tear us apart out of envy and nihilistic boredom.

Back when I was originally planning this all out, we'd have a great deal of influence and manpower at our disposal - enough that we'd be able to comfortably occupy the dungeons in the area with our own strength and without getting the powers that be involved in the short-term, at least. A sort of unspoken agreement to that effect was maintained by the playerbase originally.

Evidently, my projections were far too optimistic.

If matters continue as they are, relying on our strength alone, Truthseekers will legitimately be forced out of Meteo. Wolf Hunt can eat the losses much more easily than we can thanks to their larger roster, by contrast, and I have no idea what Sober Morning is doing while all hell is breaking loose, but it could very well be that they saw things coming to a head and decided to leave for greener pastures, as they promised they would.

Part of me wants to call that cowardice, but I understand why they'd prefer to stay out of the fighting. The target of this is, ultimately, us. Sober Morning has no stake in our problems, and even if I'd appreciate at least a token gesture of assistance or solidarity, I have no grounds from which to ask them to intervene.

Nor do I need to.

I open the link that Morn put in our group chat to a video uploaded by one of DDA's people, and find myself grinning uncontrollably when I read the title:

"Pioneer NPC tries to steal our dungeon and gets destroyed xD"

---

 

Liggit Mine, Fander Field

The editing is slipshod, so the video begins partway into the Pioneer representative's first spoken word. I vaguely recall seeing him loitering around in the main lobby of the Pioneers' Alliance. Nobody all that important, and if I were to estimate his combat power it'd be floating around Level 12-15, on the low end in terms of competence. Just a cannon fodder merc you'd find just about anywhere, not unlike myself once upon a time.

"-y the laws of the Empire and the agreement the nations of Foundation brokered with the Pioneers' Alliance, this dungeon is now under the management of the Alliance, and you are all hereby under arrest for illegally occupying a dungeon," he declares monotonously to the gathered gaggle of players at the bottom of the pit from the path a little above, flanked by two more Pioneers who don't appear to be any better than him, "You will be held in Meteo's Town Jail until your sentence is decided upon, but typical punishment for the offence is a 50 Stone Gold fine and one week in prison, not including any other crimes you are found to be guilty of which will be judged separately."

The point of view is of one of the copper node miners, and the area is clogged with teams of people with varying allegiances. Most are probably under the DDA umbrella, there to take advantage of the dungeon or else to keep the riffraff out. It's difficult to get an estimate of how many people are down there from the angle provided, but I'd say just under 40-ish people all told.

It takes a moment for the hubbub to die down and the representative's words to sink in. Once it does, a titter here and there becomes a crashing wave of mocking laughter. Jeers and insults and thrown from the crowd like they're heckling a poor comedian's routine.

What follows isn't hard to predict.

"If you will not comply, you will be subdued by force," the representative declares imposingly, drawing his mace and leaping down into the crowd to do battle, heedless of the difference in numbers.

After surprising a few people near his landing point, dealing heavy, clumsy blows to their skulls and presumably killing them instantly, he is promptly torn apart by the rest. Quite literally. His comrades don't fare any better and get swarmed under before they can flee. Like savages, a few player groups end up fighting over the pitiful loot that drops from the fallen Pioneers when the video cuts out, replaced by a stock meme of some actor in a parody movie going up to a podium to make a big speech before tripping over his ridiculous outfit onto the waiting spear of a soldier on guard below.

'tis a shame to see someone go out so pitifully, and pointlessly. But with all due respect to the dead and departed, I couldn't be happier that matters went as they did. From my understanding of the players in Meteo, and their actions in this video, even the smugness in the title; Most players in Meteo seem to have come under the delusion that they're somehow invincible, and entitled to do whatever they want without fear of repercussions from the local NPCs, just like Taladi's Waystation.

But the situation in Meteo is nothing like the far-flung frontiers of Panopla, and even those savage-minded fools haven't made as telling a mistake as the people that formed the lynch mob here.

Not only have they touched upon the bottom line of both The Empire of Stone and the Pioneers' Alliance by illegally occupying a dungeon in their territory - they even had the sheer gall to assassinate Town Guards, invade the vaults of a Cathedral and kill the representative of the single largest and most influential Guild in the entire world.

Karma won't be swift. It will take a few days for things to pick up the proper momentum, and even if RotA were live that wouldn't change. Exactly what they'll do is hard to fully predict, but sufficed to say that there's going to be a much heavier interest from the Empire, the Pioneers, and the Starlight Truth Faith. After the Siege, Arevas, my induction as Lord of House Fander and now this, they can't afford to continue ignoring Meteo to the same degree they have been.

As things stand, the atmosphere around Meteo promises to be vastly different from the history I'm used to, where things quietly went from bad to worse until eventually Rambling Rose provoked the wrong people and lost their foothold, while the Empire tacitly ignored matters and Zomn Klaeriss struggled to keep her branch stable.

I really want to be back with the others to take control of the situation, but it's far too late for me to just turn around, after getting within spitting distance of the Olton Mountain Shrine. After some thought on the matter during the remaining journey back to Tortue, I decide against sticking my nose in too much at this juncture and instead place my trust in the Guild.

As before, should they ask for my advice, I will give it. Except, they appear to have acquitted themselves just fine without me so far. Winfrey and Morn fought their way from the west end of the city to the east to get the word out. Olrica reportedly took down four of DDAs top assassins before escaping the ambush, and Sherry came up with a scheme on the fly to deal with the heretical spawncampers. Jupiter and Henry have been pretty busy in real life, unfortunately, but from what Angelus has been telling me he's making great strides developing as both a Scholar and an Alchemist - practically and in the associated theory - though in the latter case he's reaching a bottleneck from a lack of herbs and Formulae.

The only thing I really worry about is that until the powers that be mobilise, public order amongst the Meteo Newborn is going to take a significant nosedive. Which is all well and good for us, as the others can just avoid logging in for a day or two if push comes to shove, but there's one member of Truthseekers, in particular, that doesn't have that option...

---

 

Henna

Fander Street, West Residential District, Meteo Town

With things finally starting to properly settle in Meteo in the wake of the Siege, a sense of indelible peace and quiet had fallen over the citizenry. Walking towards Voinete Mansion to drop off a crate of iron nails to be used in the repairs and cleaning of the sprawling old building, Henna notes that her mood has turned sombre in the absence of Silver. The excitement of recent events had, finally, started to ebb away as she returns to her old routines, a little wiser for the experience and more appreciative of the others in her new circle of acquaintances, Truthseekers.

Especially Jade Fairy, who has taken the place of Silver as her nominal apprentice in the ways of working metal, with a greater focus on the basics and the reasons behind them. Not that Silver himself ever expressed any interest in learning them, nor do these strange people even need it in order to create items. A mystery, bundled up with several other questionable facts about their existence, such as where they came from and how they seem to completely ignore the concept of death, coming back as many times as they wish, if slightly diminished in strength each time.

These questions, to Henna's reckoning, are ultimately inconsequential and far beyond her meagre intellect to ponder upon. She is but a simple smith, looking to make her way in the world with a renewed interest in the ideals her father espoused before she was forced to gut his puppeted corse and crush his bones to stop The Magpie Demon from desecrating it further.

The act didn't bother her as much as she expected. Instead, she felt an odd sense of relief and pride that she was able to properly bring his story to a close in a dramatic fashion, in a way she felt he deserved. Not left as a disgusting demon's trophy for as long as his flesh still clung to his bones, but slain in battle against that same evil. Or so she chooses to believe.

Henna huffs, a cloud of misty breath leaving her lungs into the early evening air, the bite of frost prickling at her skin and promising snow for the night ahead. The season of Nenthue is drawing to a close, which for Fander Field means a not-insignificant chance of days-long snowstorms, depending on the fickleness of the Elemental Spirits. With the low supply of firewood for sale - much of Meteo's stockpiles used as building materials to repair the town instead - the nights ahead will be exceptionally rough.

While her thoughts drift towards the offer to stay in the mansion with the other members of the guild, approaching the building in question she fails to take notice of the large gathering of people in front of it's rusty old gates, dressed in a slapdash mixture of combat equipment from Miner's Nightmare and Farmer's Folly, with a piece or two of Beginner's Bronze here and there for good measure.

"Hey, it's that blacksmith vendor."

"Huh? What's she doing out here?"

"Didn't you hear? Truthseekers is all buddy-buddy with her. What rock have you been hiding under? Can I use it as a fallout shelter when China finally has enough of the Hong Kong Republic's shit?"

"Shut up, I've got classes to attend, man. I'm only here for the free hundred bucks."

"Cry me a fuckin' river."

"Hey, are we burning this place down or what?"

"No, dumbass, this isn't the eighties."

"Her gear looks like what Windy Fields uses. Think it's for sale?"

The commotion builds and spreads from there, leaving Henna understandably confused by the situation and unable to follow many of the conversations taking place, despite them being in the same language, full of strange references and in-jokes to things she's never heard of or doesn't have the context to. Not sensing any outward hostility, though, she decides it's better to just ignore them and do what she came here to do.

When she steps forward, her intentions to enter the building obvious, one man on the perimeter starts, then moves to block Henna's path, holding his arm out, "Whoa whoa whooooa. You aren't thinking of going in there are you?"

She stares blankly at the swarthy man, "Yes."

"No can do," he laughs haughtily, "Nobody goes in or out."

"On whose authority?" Henna questions, not getting any sense of camaraderie from these strangers. Probably not new recruits to Truthseekers from his attitude.

"Terrible Titans, of course!" the man scoffs incredulously, as if it were incredibly obvious, "I'm the Captain, Bloody Smile!"

The smith cocks her head, and can't recall this man standing so proudly in front of her in any capacity. His face, his name and the organisation he purports to lead are all complete unknowns to her.

"I have no idea who you are," Henna informs him, sincerely perplexed and hoping for an explanation as to what is going on. Should she know these people? What are they hoping to accomplish by obstructing the gate to the mansion?

The whispering and bantering of the people behind Bloody Smile die out in an instant, the large man's face stiffening up and turning slowly red, his body starting to shake with repressed anger.

"Oh no. She said the one thing you don't say to the boss," a flunky laments.

Surprising a few people in the crowd, Bloody Smile takes a prolonged breath, trying to remain calm, "Bloody. Smile. Captain of Terrible Titans. That's who I am."

Henna shakes her head silently, apologising in her heart for the obvious distress this stranger seems to be experiencing for some reason. Is this her fault somehow? She thought she was doing a good job of keeping up to date with the latest gossip in town.

"Sorry, I genuinely don't know who you are," she repeats, a mixture of pity and guilt bleeding into her words, "Should I?"

His fists clench, his jaw tightens and the shaking overtakes his body. Snapping, he grabs ahold of a cheaply made hammer and brandishes it, "GRRAAAAHHH! <Bull Rush> <Brutal Strike>!"

Hastily dropping the crate of nails, inwardly thankful the wood doesn't shatter on impact, Henna reaches for the hilt of her blanechblett a little too slow to mount a response to the sudden attack. Memory of the day she was opportunistically imprisoned flashes through her mind as the hammer comes down on her shoulder, the wild, Brutal Strike enhanced blow missing her head.

The force elicits a grunt from her, just barely enough to make her knees buckle slightly, but not enough to stagger or seriously wound. Surprise replaces fury on Bloody Smile's face, "What? 130 damage?! That's less than half!"

At this, the confidence of his followers drops down a peg.

"The boss can one-hit Level 9s with that combo, what the hell?!"

"I should go now. Going. I am go."

"Had a feeling this might happen when I saw her gear..."

Angered by the gossip taking place, the doubts in his strength, Bloody Smile swings his hammer again and again desperately, finding few successes. Henna, though still confused, finds herself in little real danger and chooses to use the opportunity to further her own training by observing his movements and refining her own. Within a minute, Bloody Smile is close to exhausted while the few successes he had at the beginning vanished into nothing by the end, as if this NPC was reading his movements before he even considered taking action.

Faced with either admitting his impotence and letting Henna have her way at the expense of Terrible Titans' last remaining shred of reputation in DDA, he reluctantly calls out to his subordinates, "What're y'all standing there slack-jawed for?! GET HER!"

As if waking up from a turbid dream, the gathered members of Terrible Titans lurch into motion, clumsily rushing forward with weapons raised and quickly reciting the chants to Minor Ignite respectively. Henna, now confronted by far more people, unsheathes her sword to meet the crowd, reluctant to kill them at the risk of being imprisoned a second time, but not willing to turn tail and run for the Guard.

"I don't understand why you're doing this...but if death's what ya want, it's what you'll be gettin'," she mutters to herself, eyes narrowing to observe the onrushing Fighters, singling out those clumped together near the front wearing Beginner's Bronze and Terrorsteel, "<Scrapstrike>"

Stepping heavily forward, the edge of the blanechblett traces a crescent arc almost perfectly recreating the same attack Silver used to disembowel those thugs in what seems like an age ago, bisecting each of the unfortunate fools easily without stopping, shocking her with how effortless it felt.

Was metal armour always so fragile?

No, her own armour shrugged off their attacks like pebbles and sticks wielded by small children, even the fire magic barely even tickled her face.

It was then, Henna properly realised, that she really had gained in power. The power to defend herself and those she cared about - a power which she promptly exercised on the rest of Terrible Titans, removing their stain from Meteo once and for all.

Stood upright amongst the resulting carnage, she smiled, wiped the blood from her sword, and picked up the discarded, bloodstained crate of nails she set out to deliver to begin with.

Not long after, a post on the official forums declaring that Terrible Titans was leaving the Darkest Dreamers Alliance and disbanding picked up traction, in tandem with a video uploaded by one of the members that fled early.