Jack stood in front of his history class.

His teacher, Mr Richards, was leaning back on his chair, half-asleep.

His classmates were chatting with one another instead of paying attention to him.

Jack turned to Mr Richards in an attempt to get the class to be quiet.

“Just begin your presentation already, Jack. Lunch break is in ten minutes so be quick,” his teacher waved him off.

Jack grated his teeth but began his presentation anyway. “M-My presentation is… going to…be… how absolutism… and the concentration of power under Louis XIV would doom the French monarchy and cause serious problems for his descendants.”

The class chatter continued.

“Louis grew up in a turbulent time in French history that had many revolts and rebellions. I argue that this instilled in him the belief that a strong crown was needed to bring much needed peace in France. However, with great power comes great responsibilities. Louis’ concentration of power would lead to a culture of excess, corruption, a crown divorced from the realities of its subjects and a state riddled with debt…”

Jack continued his presentation even though no one was listening to him.

“While the Sun King will come to embody absolute monarchy, it would be wrong to believe that Louis actually ruled alone with no constraints on his powers…”

He became more confident as he carried on his speech and made sure his posture was upright and his gaze locked forward instead of staring at the floor.

Jack had to give his all for a good grade. If he keeps a perfect grade in all his subjects, then hopefully he’ll get accepted to the best university in the country.

Ding, dong!

The bell rang the moment Jack was done with his speech.

“At last,” Mr Richards groaned as he got up from his seat, “I need a drink. Today’s going to be a long day.”

Jack’s teacher left soon after without giving Jack any feedback on how his speech fared.

His classmates got up from their desks and walked out of the room too.

Jack’s heart was pounding quickly and it took a couple of deep breaths for him to calm down.

Jack would be the last person to leave the room.

He met his friend, Daniel, in the cafeteria.

“Bro, how was your presentation?” Daniel asked.

“I guess it went okay. Mr Richards was disinterested as usual. That guy should just quit teaching if he has no passion for it.”

“Cheer up bud, my ma packed us lunch today,” Daniel jokingly slapped Daniel’s shoulder.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Party leftovers. Ma had a work party thing last night.So there was something left for us.”

“Uhm, okay,” Jack shrugged.

The two friends sat at the far corner table of the cafeteria. They enjoyed the leftovers together.

Daniel then suddenly took out his phone.

“Look, bro,” he shoved the phone in Jack’s face. “Someone raided my castle base last night. I managed to push them back. But boy did that cheater leave a mess behind.”

A raid? The game Daniel was talking about was ‘Kings, Magic and War’. Most people refer to it as ‘KMW’ to be short

Players raiding each other's bases was not really surprising. So why was Daniel calling a raider a cheater?

“Don’t you think calling someone a cheater is a bit strong?” Jack chuckled at his friend. “Maybe you should’ve upgraded your village walls before a raid happened just like I told you a week ago.”

“My walls were never the problem. That cheater used spells I’ve never seen before and weapons the devs haven’t created. Seriously, I admire how brazenly he used hacked custom spells.”

“Did you report him to the admins at least? Cheaters like that need to be banned quickly. They ruin the fun for everyone.”

“Yeah, I tried. But the cheater disappeared after I stalled his raid attempt.”

“How?”

“After I used two of my trump cards, ‘Dawn of the Great Dead’ spell and activated my legendary item, the Book of Horrors, I was able to beat…”

“Hold up, you used Dawn of the Great Dead and the Book of Horrors at the same time? Are you nuts?”

“There was no way I was going to win otherwise. My undead army needed a major boost in morale and a doubling of their attack and defence points to ward off the raid.”

“You could’ve called me, bro. If you were that desperate, I would’ve helped you. You spent a lot of money to get those two trump cards and you lost both of them in one night.”

Most items and spell scrolls in the games players acquire after completing missions, raids, opening random loot chests, levelling up one's character or buying it from the merchant guilds.

But the most powerful weapons, spells and unique cosmetic items in the game you only get by using your real money.

So Daniel using his elite trump cards was costly. He’ll probably need to spend like $200 to acquire those trump cards again.

“You had a presentation today, dumb head. I wasn’t going to disturb you knowing how important your grades are,” Daniel explained.

Jack sighed realising that Daniel was correct. For the past week, he’s been preparing for this presentation and probably wouldn’t have had the time to help him.

But Jack was curious about what happened after Daniel got raided, “So you beat the cheater off your base. So how the hell did he disappear? Surely you captured his username or at least checked one of his troop units to find out who he really was.”

All raids require a player who controls an army of soldiers. So if you can’t get the player’s username directly, you can check one of the soldiers they brought into the raid to find their username.

“I tried doing that. But the username had a weird script I couldn’t read. And his minions also had a weird script.”

Jack scratched his head, “So whoever this person is, they’ve covered their tracks.”

“Clearly. That’s why I need your help. I’m sure I missed something. I’m sure you'll be able to find something in order to nail who this guy is so he can get banned.”

Jack nodded, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Daniel nodded.

###

After school, Jack went home.

Today was Friday so there was no school tomorrow. Jack had the whole weekend for himself. He was giddy at the thought of playing ‘Kings, Magic and War’ for the whole day.

But then Jack got a call from his manager.

Huh. That’s odd. He had this weekend off.

Jack worked part-time in a fast food restaurant. He needed the extra cash to buy the high tiered weapons, spells and skills in the game for his player character.

“What’s up?” Jack answered.

“Jack, I need a favour,” Sophia, the restaurant manager, said through the phone. “Mike and Thomas are sick today and I don’t have any other replacements. Could you please cover for them?”

Crap. Today was supposed to be a free day of relaxing. And he promised Daniel about investigating that suspicious raid.

“I don’t know, Sophia,” he scratched the back of his head. “I kinda made plans today. And this is really short notice.”

“I stuck my neck out to get you this job. Besides, it’s not like I’m asking you to come in and work for free. You’ll be compensated, as usual. So I’ll see you in an hour?”

Jack groaned.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Good. I knew you were a team player. See you soon, Jack.”

He hung up the phone.

If Jack didn’t need the job, he would’ve quit.

But KMW was his addiction that needed to be fed. He doesn’t want to rely on his parents for ‘fun money’. Besides, his parents would probably be annoyed about how badly he spends money on so-called stupid games.

So earning money separate from his parents is what keeps the peace in the house.

He went inside. His parents were still out as the house was dead quiet.

Jack rushed to his bedroom, turned on his computers and launched KMW. He probably had 45 minutes to play and 15 minutes to make it in time for work.

As the game loaded on his computer screen, he placed his VR headset on to get fully immersed in the game.

A screen with a green loading bar appeared in front of vision.

LOGGING IN…

###

Name: Lord Zodark

Rank: Demon Lord

Race: Half-Demon

Level: 100

Class(es): [Beast Summoner lvl 50], [Talismanist lvl 50],

Load Player Character?

Jack chose ‘Yes’.

He then entered the game.

Lord Zodark was loaded to the throne room of his Demon Palace. He was sitting on a magnificent throne that had two wings on both sides and a grotesque sneering face at the top head of the throne chair.

“Welcome back, my lord,” the throne chair spoke in a rough and raspy voice. It sounded rather intimidating but when Zodark was crafting the throne chair, he chose this type of voice in order to match its hideous look,

“Greetings to you too, Throne,” Zokark responded.

Yes, Zodark called his throne chair ‘Throne’. He didn’t know any better names to give a chair.

“[Menu],” Zodark said out loud.

A screen opened in front of him. He went to his contacts and called the Great Lich Murghar (his friend Daniel’s player character).

Murghar picked up at the first ring.

“Where are you?” Zodark asked.

“I’m in a village near my base. I just sent you the coordinates so it should appear in your map. Come quickly before stuff starts despawning.”

Zodark stood up. “Very well. [Gate]!”

A portal opened before him.

“Are you leaving already, my lord?” an NPC who suddenly appeared out of nowhere asked Zodark as he was about to enter the portal.

“Uhm, yes,” he said and looked at the NPC. It was Lady Isoldea, a [Vampire Countess], who is also second in command in the palace and the current [Chief Steward].

She does the tedious stuff of managing the every day operations of the Demon Palace. Such as acquiring resources for the palace like food, raw materials, magic scrolls and stuff like that.

“[Palace Management Screen]!” Zodark stated in his mind. A new screen popped in front of him.

He stared at the screen and analysed the numbers. The palace had enough food in case of a raid or long siege.

According to the System Estimate, the palace had a 5 year supply of food. A bit of an overkill. Hoarding that much food was unnecessary but since he upgraded the palace pantry last week, food doesn’t perish as quickly and Zodark had plenty of space to store said food. So it doesn’t hurt keeping that much food.

And Zodark also noticed that the morale score point in the palace was at 100. So palace staff had bonuses to their stats.

However, raw materials were a bit low. If Zodark were to be raided now, then his low supply of raw materials would be an issue. His ability to repair palace walls and structures would be impeded and thus could jeopardise a defence from an attacking player.

“Lady Isoldea,” Zodark turned to the NPC.

“At your service, my lord,” she nodded.

A new screen appeared in front of her. From this screen, Zodark could instruct Lady Isoldea on the exact amount of wood, coal, stone, and iron he needed her to buy from the Merchant Guilds.

Thankfully, he had an NPC to automate such tedious work.

‘Confirm Supply Amount to Buy’

Zodark confirmed once he had selected the appropriate amounts of raw materials.

Lady Isoldea nodded once again and disappeared.

Zodark entered the portal gate.

Great Lich Murghar was waiting for him on the other side.

“You took your bloody time, Jack,” Murghar groaned at Zodark.

“You’re ruining the roleplay by using my actual name,” Zodark shook his head.

“Maybe I’ll be in a better mood when we get that cheater banned.”

“We’ll find him.”

“Yeah, I hope. So Jack… I mean Zodark, where will you first investigate?” Murghar asked him.

Zodark looked around.

The village was in a mess. NPCs lay dead on the ground. Their clothes were stained in red. But since the developers of KMW don’t allow gore, that’s as much blood allowed in the game.

It’s kinda stupid but also understandable. Gore stuff will get the game rated to be for adult audiences and therefore most of the game’s customers won’t be able to buy it.

Jack was like 13 or 14 years old when he first played the game. The devs knew their customers so simple rules were implemented such as no gore, sexual acts or nudity and excessive violence (like torture) is banned.

Jack stepped over a body.

“Why did you build a village here?” Jack was curious.

“Well, I wanted to build a farming village for berries. I need certain potions for my undead army to function optimally. Rather than paying merchants all the time, I thought I might as well grow my own.”

“Isn’t growing the right kind of berries tricky since you have to take into account genetics?”

Murghar shrugged, “Trial and error. And also I’m pretty stubborn. It’s going to take some time to rebuild this village once again. I want the guy who did this to pay for what they did.”

Zodark wasn’t sure where to first look. At first, he walked around inspecting the dead bodies of the fallen enemy soldiers.

Murghar had an undead army since he’s a lich. But the enemy had demons in their army.

But these demons looked weird. At least their horns were.

Zodark looked closer at one of the dead demons on the ground. The horns looked like antlers.

All demons in KMW had horns resembling goats. In fact, Zodark’s two horns were goat-like and thick.

The second weird thing was that none of the demons had runes on their chest.

All demons in the game had a kind of rune inscribed on their chest. Lower level demons who are normally NPCs should at least have a simple rune with one or two lines.

Something was very off. Would a player go to such lengths to create a custom demon army to fight Murghar?

Why would a cheater do that? It would be too obvious they were modding the game and the anti-cheat program of the game would easily pick up on it.

And that’s not including the use of custom spells that Murghar told Zodark during lunch break that this cheater used to attack him.

“What are you thinking?” Murghar asked Zodark.

“I’ll be real with you. This doesn’t look like a player. Maybe the devs accidentally released a new DLC enemy.”

Murghar shook his head, “I know how the AI thinks and attacks in this game, Jack. This was a player. I can’t explain it to you but I know it.”

Zodark sighed. There was one thing he could do.

“[Summon] Hellhound!” Zodark cried out.

A black hound with eyes of flame appeared.

“Find the highest level demon,” Zodark instructed the hound.

It then sniffed the air.

Zodark looked at the time. He’s been in the game for 40 minutes now. He had five minutes left.

A hellhound was more economical than going through every dead body and using the [Appraise] skill on them.

The hellhound ran away from the village and into the nearby woodlands.

“What’s going on?” Murghar asked, confused.

“Relax. Just follow me.”

And so the two friends ran after the hellhound. The two followed the barking sounds of the hound.

When they reached the hellhound, Zodark and Murghar found a dead body.

[Appraise]

Name: FF&@^#(O*YTG

Class: G&(Y(&#(*((((**((_)

Level: ?>>::”

Description: ))*)(:”:”L:::^7y783299*^:><22@!){}:>n:

Complete nonsense.

[Open Inventory].

Zodark pulled a piece of steak from his inventory.

“Good boy!” he rewarded the hellhound and threw the steak at it. The hound immediately tore into the steak when it hit the ground.

Zodark then turned his attention to the dead body. He inspected it.

Nothing.

They had hit a deadend. Maybe Zodark’s suspicion that these demons were nothing more than rogue upcoming DLC characters.

Wait. Zodark looked closely at the body of this individual. It was wearing expensive garments compared to the regular soldiers in the village.

But what caught Zodark’s attention was the bracelet on the body. Why was this item not being shown as loot?

Zodark tried forcefully removing the bracelet. But as hard as he tried to pry the bracelet away, it did not nudge off the arm of the dead guy.

So a new strategy had to be done..

Zodark took a cheap bracelet from his [Inventory] and placed it on his arm. Then he cast a simple spell.

[Fortunes of Exchange].

Both bracelets glowed. When the items stopped glowing, the bracelets had swapped places.

Zodark was now wearing the dead guy’s bracelet.

This spell is obscure now. Players in the past who had some talismanic magic used this spell to swindle merchants by secretly swapping real items with fake ones.

Merchants now place magic nullifiers on their stalls to prevent this kind of theft.

And now this trick worked on prying the bracelet off the dead soldier.

“What’s with the bracelet?” Murghar asked.

“I don’t know exactly. I’m hoping it’ll give us a clue.”

Zodark prodded the bracelet, trying to see if there was going to be some reaction. But nothing happened.

A screen popped in front of Jack.

‘YOUR 45 MINUTES ARE UP!’

The alarm he set had rung. He had to go.

“I need to go,” Zodark scratched his head. “I have work today. When I get back, I think we should contact the devs for help.”

Murghar nodded.

[Menu].

A screen appeared before Zodark.

[Log Out].

LOGGING OUT…

############################

Jack put away his VR headset and put on his work clothes quickly.

He checked himself in the mirror to make sure he looked okay for work. His hair was a bit messy but the cap will hide it.

His face didn’t look tired. His skin looked okay. Yeah, Jack looked normal.

Then he noticed something on his arm.

A bracelet. It looked familiar. What the hell?

Jack tried taking off the bracelet but it did not budge. His mind was racing. What in the world did he get this bracelet?