[Cyber Cafe Golden Hand - Osaka]

In a certain VIP room of the Cyber Cafe called Golden Hand, a young man came out of a Premium-type Pod.

This youth, Tenkawa Shouya (20), got up from the Pod and smashed the table beside him with an angry expression. Snacks and drinks on the table that have been prepared in advance by robot waiters inevitably fall and scatter on the floor.

Luckily, the plates and glasses used were made of shatter-resistant acrylic glass, so nothing serious happened.

"Dammit! Dammit!! DAMMIIIIIIIIT!!!"

Shouya who was having a bad day spat out cursed words in anger.

In the game, he played as Nefertius, a Lv107 Human Paladin and was the Guild Master of the Nebula Guild, the owner of Drusel Fort which was attacked by the Orc army.

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As soon as the update procedure was finished, Nefertius hurriedly logged in to defend Drusel Fort. But unfortunately, when he managed to get online, the situation was already irreversible.

The protective barrier collapsed at the same time the mana supply ran out. Without the barrier, the shockwave caused by Orc Lord's skill devastated the entire city, killing many of the people who had not managed to escape via the Teleportation Gate. Only a few people who had at least over 50k HP and high defense survived the disaster, including Nefertius.

Not only that, the shockwave also destroyed all the Save-Crystals. This automatically shifts each related Player's Save Point to their last intact Save-Crystal. Now, no one can respawn in the Fort anymore.

At this point, Drusel Fortress City has officially fallen.

The Orc army started to enter the Fort which had lost its barrier. But of course, Nefertius and the rest of the Nebula members still didn't give up. If they could just kill the Orc Lord, then the difficulty of retaking the Fort could be drastically reduced.

They resurrected every Players that can be resurrected, and kill the Orcs as many as possible.

Nefertius himself is a tanker, Paladin full-defense build that minmaxes his VIT stat to increase defense and Max HP. He wears a set of Epic-ranked equipment that gives over 200,000 HP, high HP regen, and a 90% physical damage reduction.

With those stats and equipment, he boasted himself for being immortal, never experiencing death even once. And for those who reached LV100 without death, they get a bonus +10 all stats, which further strengthens them, but canceled upon death.

But in exchange, his attack power is low and he needs to rely on counter skills such as "Counter Strike" and "Reflect Shield" to defeat his enemies.

Unfortunately this time, the Matthew effect applied very well on him.

- When something goes wrong, everything goes wrong too.

Nefertius and the surviving members managed to kill some Orc mobs without problem. However, when facing the Orc Lord, they discovered that in front of absolute strength, any strategy was meaningless.

The roar of the Orc Lord instantly paralyzed all Players present, removing all buffs and inflicting various bad statuses. The stomping of its feet caused a small earthquake, destroying several nearby buildings. Except for Nefertius, none of the Players present could withstand the Orc Lord's punch, and anyone who took a direct hit was turned into particles.

Not only that, the black aura that enveloped the Orc Lord seemed to block all damage, be it physical or magical. No, to be more precise, the aura reduced each damage inflicted by 50,000.

What was the concept of 50,000 damage reduction?

This means all attack that dealt damage less than 50,000, be it skills or spells, can only dealt 0 damage. Even the famous Ultimate Skills such as "Assassinate" was also have the final damage reduced and can only deal less than 1000 damage.

For this boss, 1000 damage is just a drop of blood... No, it doesn't even count as damage.

With the boss's regeneration skill, those little damages were simply healed in less than a minute, which only brought hopelessness to everyone present. There was absolutely no way to kill this boss with their combined strength.

And thus, it didn't take long for the players to be annihilated, except for Nefertius who was able to survive due to his extremely high defense. But even if he survives, with the loss of DPSes, he couldn't even inflict a single damage to the Orc Lord.

He could only endure while endlessly asking for help in the Guild Chat and Region Chat, which were largely ignored, and hoping for reinforcements that would never come.

Until he runs out of his 8-hours consecutive login limit.

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Back to the present.

Shouya's expression was ugly from extreme anger.

"TRASH! ALL OF YOU ARE TRASH! UNGRATEFUL PIECE OF SYITT!!"

He recalled the battle earlier.

His guild members, allies, friends, as well as everyone who ignored his pleas for help. Nebula Guild had brought them many advantages, but when needed, they couldn't be relied upon.

And then, Nefertius who had reached the login limit, couldn't help but be forced to log out. Moreover, since he was in the middle of a battle, this forced logout had to be a quasi-logout that left his body unprotected.

"Dammit...! I got forced logout in the middle of battle! My Heroic Equipment Set! My bonus stats!!"

With his minmaxed VIT stat and Epic-ranked equipment, his defense was extremely high, to the point that his HP won't fell into the yellow zone even if the Orc Lord hit him for several days.

But once his avatar left soulless like that, anyone could strip his equipment as if peeling boiled eggs. No need for Trickster's Divest skills, they can just strip his equipment, like stripping a girl's clothes. Once that happens, killing him was not that hard. And once he died, his "no-death" bonus stats will be gone like a smoke.

It wasn't like he hadn't receive the warning beforehand. But because he opened a lot of chat windows, the warning message was buried. In addition, the sound of the battle also deafening his ears, making him missed the sound warning.

Realizing this, Shouya could only hold his head in despair.

He tried to log in again but ended up receiving another warning from the Pod.

This 30 minutes was enough for anything to happen to his body in the game.

"It's over... It's all over...! My company, my Nebula Guild... Everything..."

His loud voice that was amplified by anger gradually lessened, replaced by bottomless despair.

With the fall of Drusel Fort, he couldn't imagine how much loss he suffered. All of the wealth the guild had collected until now were buried in the Guild Treasury at the castle's basement. The total value is estimated at around 8 billion.

In addition, countless Natives have died in his territory and some of them are important figures.

The sons of the nobles who joined his Knight Order, the Master Architect Samuel Mardath and his daughter, then the Master Alchemist Genedis Richendal, and then several other church members... Those were just the corpses he saw earlier.

With their death, his relationship with the nobles in the Gemmerio Empire will definitely be bleak. There is a possibility that the Emperor will retract his territory permit and noble status later.

And that's not all.

In the destroyed Fort Drusel, there are many projects related to the real world, such as the Film Industry, Entertainment Industry, Virtual Land Estate, and many others. Those industries might as well declared bankrupt tonight.

In this incident, 18 TV Drama series and 5 Movie series had to be suspended indefinitely or cancelled, as filming locations were lost. Even some of the hired Native actors died, went missing or injured.

Even without seeing the trade fair, Shouya knew that the Nebula Guild's shares had plummeted. He didn't even know what to say at the shareholder meeting later.

Shouya started to think hard, searching for a solution.

"...No, this situation can still be fixed. I just need to recapture the Fort, and then..."

Fortunately, the Guild Treasury wouldn't be lost just because the base has fallen. It's just that they cannot be picked up directly from the Guild Interface anymore. If Nebula Guild wanted to retrieve the treasury at this time, they would have to go to the castle's basement themselves and retrieve them manually.

He was thinking of reorganizing his army and recapturing the fort first and then using the treasury to rebuild the fort. After the base is rebuilt later, he can go to the Pope and use his Faith points to revive some important Natives.

With that thinking, Shouya activated his terminal device, and turned on the virtual keyboard.

But before he could type, he saw the forum headline about the fall of Drusel Fortress. There are many videos from various players arranged neatly showing the incident from start to finish, including during the battle with the Orc Lord.

That itself was not really strange, but when he saw the comment section, his anger resurfaced again.

At this time, the Forum was currently in a state of mourning.

What is special about the VRMMORPG Ascension is that NPCs, or Natives as they are called, are AI with independent thinking. They have emotions, can learn on their own, and are made to look as human as possible. When talking to them, almost no one would assume that they were AI and treat them normally as real humans.

In fact, when Players first logged in to this game, they thought they had been teleported to another world. It didn't take too long for them to mix with the Natives, exchanged cultures, and some even proposed marriages. 

There were many sensational topics, conspiracy theories, human-AI relationship issues during the year.

But that's for another matter.

All of those Natives who died, many of them had acquaintances who were Players. Their deaths naturally caused their Player acquaintances to grieve.

And those grievances, including the loss of properties and other stuff, the Nebula Guild was the first to bear them.

"Damn you all! Why are you blaming this on us? If you want to blame, blame Gaia for sending that boss!"

Those mad Players are so irrational, it was clear that his Nebula Guild was also a victim. But more than that, he was more angry with Gaia Corporation, who unreasonably sent a World BOSS to his territory, especially in the middle of update.

Shouya typed over a thousand words to express his injustice and sent them to Gaia Customer Service.

"This isn't fair, Gaia...! You have to give me a good explanation!"

It didn't take long to get a reply from Gaia's customer service.

Maybe he was hoping that everything that was going on was a bug and he was hoping the situation would be fixed back to normal and get some compensation. But, contrary to his expectations, the reply he received was not what he wanted.

Shouya could only be dumbfounded when he saw the reply.

"Not a bug? Sabotage?"

Is this true? This entire disaster was caused by a sabotage of other Players?

Who the heck is so ruthless, destroying the fort and ultimately killing so many lives?

The Nebula Guild naturally had many enemies during their campaign. There are so many interests involved, and it was impossible to please everyone. But those who have so much hatred that they dare to do this...

"Is it Stellar Wing? No, they're just thugs, not someone who can do this..."

The people of Stellar Wing weren't too holy, but they weren't too evil either.

Even if they became a red guild and robbed people, they wouldn't do something that killed the Natives. The karma penalty caused by killing Natives is extremely harsh and hard to wash off, even if they restarted their account.

They wouldn't dare do this unless they were ready to retire from playing Ascension.

"...No, wait!? If there are other people than them who dared to do this, it must be him!"

Shouya suddenly remembered about a certain person.

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About one and a half years ago, the current patriarch of the Tenkawa family, Tenkawa Jinzou (67), had given instructions to determine the heir. He has 5 sons who were each given the resources to start their own business. And the person with the highest profit rate will be the primary heir who inherits all of the Tenkawa family's wealth and business.

Then from the 5 heirs, the currently holds the record of highest profit rate was his oldest brother, Tenkawa Ouma.

Ouma started his business not long after he received the fund, and miraculously multiplied it more than twenty times in just a year. He established Genesis Guild and managed to became a lord in the game called Ascension.

And just a few days ago during the family virtual meeting, not long after Jinzou cut off the connection, Ouma said something with unknown meaning before leaving.

"Very good, very good! My little brothers! Your attempt to overthrow me is really good!
But if you think such a little play can overthrow my position as the main heir, then you're dreaming!"

With that, he cut off the connection, leaving the meeting without waiting for a reply.

♦♦♦

 

After remembering this episode, Shouya was convinced that the mastermind(?) behind this incident was him!

Shouya originally founded the Nebula Guild because he wanted to emulate his brother's success. He wasn't very interested in the heir position. As long as he could manage his company well, he was quite satisfied.

But alas... this happened.

"Do you really want the main heir position so much, Ouma-niisan?"

Shouya gritted his teeth in hatred.