Horn opened his eyes. The small room was filled entirely with apparatus, machines quietly hummed in the background. He was lying on a metal slab of the VR pod. As he stirred, he heard Charles say, “Good morning, sleepyhead, glad to see you awake this time. Your clothes are in the locker in the corner of the room. When you’re ready, just call out, and we’ll head for the tests immediately.”

Grumbling Horn acknowledged and hefted himself from the bed. A few minutes later, he called for Charles, and they went for a medical exam. This time it was both shorter and more pleasant, and there was no debriefing, no prolonged procedures. Overall, two hours later, Horn was free to roam. He chit-chatted with Charles for a while. The tech seemed to forget about his previous rudeness. In a much better mood, Horn took a detour to the cafeteria, again loading up his plate with everything.

He looked for Ellaine, but she wasn’t around. He cursed under his breath as he didn’t get her com number, but then he had no idea how to even ask for one. The thought alone made him blush a bit, which made him irritated at himself. After finishing, the meal he took a walk while calling his manager. Dimitry picked up immediately, “Where the hell were you?!”

“Uhm, good to hear you too. I was eating breakfast.” Horn replied,

“Don’t you read your messages anymore? You have an interview in fifteen minutes!”

“What interview?!”

“With Game planet! They will be broadcasting it live. Get your ass to the holo booth right now!”

Horn stood there, trying to gather his jaw. He never had an interview before, not the least with the Game planet, the biggest show online. His mind pondered for a moment, running away and missing it, but he chastised himself and ran to the booth section. Grabbed an empty one and started up the equipment. It connected with his implant, creating his default environment. A neat gaming room he never had with top-end equipment in the background. Dimitry appeared next to him a moment later,

“Okay, listen up, here’s the deal. You cannot talk about anything that happened for the last two days in-game. This is still under NDA. Jimmy will try to wrangle that out of you. The last we’ve shown you were just as your caravan moved out from that Gibbins guy camp. You also don’t want to share any of your long-term plans. There were already cases of several players ganging up to destroy anyone posing a threat, and let me tell you – you’re in a tight spot. Three guilds! Three! Are moving to the surrounding area. I’m sure they’re already eyeing up your city. You’ve hit the jackpot with it.”

“Wait! What?”

“We don’t have time for that right now, just play cool, talk some gibberish, and don’t spill too many beans. We’ve cut out quite a lot from stream to keep you under the wraps. No one knows about the sudden influx of your dwarves, nor about that boar crazy auntie’s clan you have out there. We’ve shown her riders in the battle with Gnolls, but that can be sold as your own troops. You start in three minutes. Get yourself together, man!” With that last sentence, Dimitri’s avatar disappeared.

Horn sat there wide-eyed, trying to process his thoughts. The interview seemed like an awful idea right now. He had to get back to the clan and start making preparations! Now he was thankful for the alliance with Gibbins. He had to upgrade that one to a defensive one, get his people back home, start building up defenses. He was so engrossed in thoughts, he didn’t notice a countdown, 3, 2, 1, Live!

“Whaazzz up? It’s me, CrazyJimmy, and today I have a treat for you! Here’s a cookie!” An avatar appeared a few feet away. A middle-aged man in the literarily flashy suit with LEDs blinking on and of in some bizarre patterns. Horn knew the man from his show but never talked with him. Jimmy had the reputation of a goof, but he usually shot precise and tricky questions underneath a lot of banter.

“With me tonight, my bestie! Horn the star of DoN! Let’s give the man some applause. After being thrown from the tenth story by that birdy, he for sure need it.”

Horn saw the chat textbox just flooding with hearts, thumbs up, and an occasional curse which was instantly deleted by moderators and bots alike.

“Hi, Jimmy, good to be here, I…”

“It talks!” Jimmy interrupted, resulting in another wave of spam on the chat, “Sorry, couldn’t help myself! Horn, a rising star, some call you, a lucky bastard, I respond. We’ve all seen your adventures so far. So tell us, how do you like the game?”

Horn decided to let slide the snarky comment and replied, “It’s amazing. I don’t believe I can properly describe it. Whatever you see, it’s so much better!”

“Oh! We have a fanboy in here, alert, alert!” Jimmy replied, and a siren soundtrack played in the background, “How much they pay you? Don’t answer. I know you can’t. But back to the topic, you remember this?”

A screen popped up next to them, showing a clip of Horn climbing the back of Rockeater boss. He was shocked by his visage, and the rage on his face was terrifying. When Goran died saving his life, he remembered the feeling that the only thing that mattered in the whole world was killing that beast. “Yea, that was a ride. I can tell you. No other game makes it all that real. In there, you think it’s the reality, every sense tells you that, and the NPCs, they’re more real than half of the people I know in here. You included.”

“Ouch! It doesn’t only speak. It bites! Well done! But getting back to the topic, we’ve seen you through the tutorial. You’re a bit melodramatic, but we’ve seen worse. Now on the Nexus, you’ve found yourself cozy little ruins. What are the next steps?”

“That’s an easy one, Jimmy, build, build, and more building. We've got a few hu…” Horn stopped, remembering Dimitri’s words, “a few hundred ideas, but essentials are first. You’ve seen our great hunt. Now it's building time.”

“Sounds boring! Doesn’t it? Where're the adventures, an undead horde? You can’t leave us hanging! What about the Red Scourge? Will we see more giant crossbows? Or maybe flamethrowers?”

“Red Scourge?” Horn asked,

“You don’t know? Where were you for the past week? Oh, ingame, weren’t you? Then let’s see!” Jimmy replied.

The screen appeared again, this time showing a massive army charging a camp somewhere in the woods. Hundreds of goblins, orc, ogres even a few giants surged forward. There had to be at least two-three thousand of them. Half their numbers were composed of goblins, but these weren’t the ones Horn fought. These goblins started their day with a gym session, then ate a red steak and worked at a sharpening facility with their weapons for the remainder of the day.

Horn loudly gulped when he saw the army massacring a group of elves. The defenders fought valiantly but were overrun by the sheer number of monsters. The camera zoomed out, moving to the back of the greenskin army. Eight players stood in line discussing something, four goblins, an orc, an ogre, a giant, and a human. They were all clad in red. Behind them, an orc held a flag, a white skull on a red background. Horn recognized one of the players – Shadow was there.

“Pretty badass, aren’t they?” Jimmy asked, “They already wiped seven tribes on their way. Did you know that claiming enemy Soul Well gives you the ability to summon more troops? And a single-time bonus for wiping enemy tribe.”

“Ye- no, I didn’t know. I wasn’t too focused on ruining the game for others.” Horn replied absentmindedly. He was already imagining the huge army knocking on his door.

“Oh no, you didn’t! Reds, did you hear that challenge?” Jimmy shouted,

“What chall-“ Horn began saying when he realized the implications of his words. In for a penny, in for a pound, “Yea, if you’re watching this then come and get some! Fighting with overwhelming odds is what you do best? I’m not afraid of your horde, Lightforge will hold!”

“Brave words. We’ll see if you can back them up.”

“We’ll see.”

The interview went on for another twenty minutes. Horn was asked about his plans, army, champions. He tried to give up the least information possible. In the upcoming fight, he’d need every little advantage. As he kept prodding at the subject, Jimmy probably realized that, and they wrapped up seeing a lack of responsiveness. After a quick goodbye and a lengthy sponsor recognition segment, the stream ended.

Horn slumped in his chair, trying to digest the news. He finally had room to breathe, to start building, and it all had to be put on the backburner as the war was coming to his doors. He pulled up the web browser and started researching the enemy. The Reds were a twenty-man strong clan, infamous for their griefing in multiple games, how they entered the prerelease of DoN was unknown, but half of them did. They had multiple streams, but they were heavily edited. Mostly showing them plowing through enemies. Horn skimmed a few but didn’t learn too much. Whoever edited the footage was good in giving very little information and still making it interesting.

He called Dimitry, and his avatar appeared in an instant. “Not the stellar performance, but good enough. Calling out the Reds its suicide, but I hope you know what you’re doing.” The man started without a pause.

“Yea, that was an accident. What do you have on them?”

“Quite a bit, in fact. Do you remember what we talked about last time? I’ve followed your instruction and got you a whole war room. Six analysts are working nonstop to give you some intel. We’ll be joining them in a while for a summary.”

For the first time since the interview, Horn smiled. Dimitry was way above his expectations. He wanted to thank the man but was interrupted, “I have fifty strong guild ready to join you. Each was vetted by me personally. They’re not the cream of the crop but are decent enough. However, we cannot get them in the game for a while still. I’ve managed to wrangle ten spots for the launch, with another five added each week. The queues for them are just crazy.”

“Fifty?! We’re paying them?” Horn asked,

“Yes, did you see the numbers I’ve sent you?” Dimitry replied.

Horn pulled up the message on his screen. The number of zeros increased since the last time they talked. If he could just stay on top of things for a month or two, he could retire – at the age of twenty-five. He began laughing maniacally.

“Everything all right?” Dimitry asked with concern painted on his face.

“Yea, all’s peachy. I’ve never imagined it catching up so strong.”

“You tell me, I’ve canceled all other customers for you. Speaking of which, there are several things you need to sign. I’ve already gotten the player on the payroll, but you have to sign them off, same with the war room and a few other things.”

“Let’s get that over with,”

An hour later, they connected with Horn’s staffers. He didn’t know any of them, but half a dozen important-looking people sat around a table. Each had a virtual stack of papers in front of him. After a quick round of introductions, they dug in.

They’ve done what he wasn’t able to so far. Analyzed every little bit and piece of intel that appeared. They had a detailed report on all three guilds moving into the arena. They had their estimated location, based on feeds, and even created a visualization of the world. Horn couldn’t even imagine what amount of time was poured into making a preliminary map of the area.

In the middle, there was his city, which he had still to name. In the South-East swamps, that later on turned into a massive lake. One that could be called a small ocean. One of the three guilds was building a massive city at the coast. They found four Soul Wells within a day journey and claimed them. The first feeds showed that another one of Epic rarity was located on an island in the middle of the lake.

The sea of grass neighboring the swamps turned into plains. Quite a few villages were supposed to spurt out there. Behind it lay a massive forest, in which the Reds were spotted. The think tank estimated the distance to be over a hundred fifty miles. That at least gave Horn a few weeks to prepare. He imagined that such an army needed to plunder to keep feeding itself.

On the other side of the mountains, Gibbins city seemed to be the closest to his. They showed him a short clip of ruined fortification with an old but seemingly intact bridge leading to an island in the middle of a massive river. Another bridge connected the far bank. The location was impressive, and a horde of workers was renovating the city. Horn had to reassess Gibbins's abilities once again. The man was resourceful.

The river itself went into the Dark Forest, where the third guild – The Children of Gaia – built an elven stronghold. There was very little footage available, most of the players weren’t streamers, but they had to have at least a thousand Elves out there.

On the plain around the Free City, several other players started their own villages. Nothing to write home about, but the amount of colonization was astonishing. The Nexus was supposed to be an enormous place, and it seemed like every player was focused on a small area. Asking the question, he got the reply that it wasn’t the case. Between all rewards, there were more than a hundred thousand players in the pre-release. The number was mindboggling for Horn, but it made some strange sense. If there weren’t any NPC city to start in, they had to present a wide range of player communities.

Horn didn’t even notice when the meeting entered the third hour. They went through possible allies and enemies, he learned a lot about the topography of the area. One of the analysts even found the valley where Goran’s people fought their last battle. It even wasn’t so far from Horn’s location, around a hundred miles South-East.

They went through Horn’s development plans. The think tank thought that the focus on housing was a luxury he didn’t have and industry should be the priority, but he quickly vetoed them. They didn’t see the looks on his people's faces nor the grumbling that followed. But they did have one idea.

All of them agreed that the arena should be a priority. Once built, he could use the reward from the tutorial to create a portal to the main arena where weekly tournaments were held. They gave out great rewards for winning, including Essence and items, and he could use it to communicate with allies and trade with them on a limited scale.

A few industrious players already tried to use it for wholesale, but the entry portal seemed to have limited uses based on weight. It wasn’t an issue for teams that wanted to participate but clearly blocked any real trading.

Another idea was to focus on the House of Learning. The technology tree was enormous and gave out bonuses to almost everything. However, they said that if he would follow that route, building it should follow with building the marketplace and researching auction houses. It was an addition to the marketplace, which allowed trading at horrible fees with players worldwide.

They wrapped up with some ideas for unit composition. They all thought that building the shrine would unlock adepts to be summoned, and as that was part of his class quest, he shouldn’t put that out. His calvary was a good unit, but the strength of dwarves laid in thick formations and siege equipment, especially with the horde oncoming, he should invest into some fortifications.

Overall, Horn left the meeting with a headache. So many things were a priority, he couldn’t decide what to start with. The time flew by, and it was already getting late in the evening. Taking some time for personal calls, Horn decided to take the rest of the evening easy. He ate, watched some videos, and generally relaxed. Tomorrow another race against time would begin.