I was sitting in the dining room, the room was bustling with activity. The kids were running around, shouting and playing tag, trying to involve the grown-ups. Mostly Shenshun and Melissa, Denise’s aunt, since they were the only of the kids’ parents that were not busy. Since four of the eight pre-teen kids were orphans, Mia was the only other parent in our group with a young child, but I had told them that she was not to be interrupted. Amazingly enough, the kids had listened. Well, mostly Alicia, Mia’s young daughter, who seemed to hang on my every word.

Mia was indeed busy and as my assistant and right hand man—woman, she was participating in the officers’ meeting that was taking place in the farthest corner of the dining room. Amongst the participating members were Ainsley, Edward, and Kira. Three out of the five original members I had started the Blue Lotus guild with.

Those three had been the only ones to accept, some of them reluctantly when I told them I was from the future. Not like I had physically travelled back in time, but in my previous timeline, I had been killed almost two years from now. Instead of dying, I had woken up in the past, in my slightly younger body.

I had used my knowledge and my sparse savings to hire five of my former students. The three previously mentioned plus Liam and Masuro. Masuro was Kira’s brother and had the hardest time accepting the truth about me. Liam had been openly hostile until someone from his past approached him.

Shenshun was a childhood friend of Liam’s brother and had worked for another guild called Dawnguard, the largest and most famous guild in the world. He was not a member of the guild, but working for an unofficial assassin squad, who had been sent to harass and kill our members, because we had snatched the title of First Recognized Guild in the game from Dawnguard.

Shenshun was not only someone from Liam’s past but also someone from my future. I had worked for Dawnguard in my other timeline and had gotten to know Shenshun. When we had persuaded him to join our guild and abandon Dawnguard, my secret had inadvertently slipped out, and he became the sixth person to know the truth.

Well, actually more like the seventh. There was one other that knew the truth. Not because I had told him, but because he was a time traveller or reincarnator himself: Marcus. I had believed Marcus to be the security chief and closest advisor to Dawnguard’s leader Aragoth. However, it turned out that Marcus had been pulling the strings behind the scene.

According to Marcus, when he threatened the lives of me and everyone else I knew, he had lived the same life over a thousand times. Hinted that in each lifetime that there was always someone else who had reincarnated, but only ever once. This timeline I was the Champion, as he called us, he was going up against.

The problem was that Marcus was clearly insane. He had murdered or had someone murder my assistant from the previous lifetime just to make an example. He had even gotten me arrested for hacking the game, though I had soon been released when the charges turned out to be false.

He was the reason why the entire guild, all twenty-two adults and eight kids were staying at the pod-hotel run by Perennial Enterprises, who also owned Perennial Entertainment that made the game Carn Online, which was the game Marcus and I fought to win.

The stakes were high, whoever won the game would own 15% of Perennial Enterprises, it was just that not many knew that yet. Besides me, Marcus, the six people I told, and of course whoever knew it within Perennial Enterprises. That would change soon. In just fifteen minutes there would be a press conference announcing the Challenges as they had become known in my previous timeline.

“Damian, you awake?” Ainsley asked loudly, breaking me out of my woolgathering.

Looking around sheepishly at the others at the table, they were all looking and grinning at me. Well, Denise had her face turned in my general direction, but since she was blind in the real world, she could not really look at me. Her boyfriend Phillip, better known as Phil and not to be mistaken for his father Philmore, was sitting next to her, holding her hand. They were a cute couple.

With a slight smile, I apologized and then asked, “What were you saying?”

“It’s dawn in the game soon, but you don’t want anyone to log in, and insist that everyone, even the kids, come and watch this press conference held at midnight in the real world?” Ainsley asked with a knowing smile. She bloody well knew, but Denise and Phil were not in the know.

“Right, sorry about that,” I said and sat up straighter, putting on a more serious attitude. “I’ve heard rumours that something important will be in the press conference that could have consequences for the guild, so I felt it important that everyone watched it. Also thought it was a good time to do a quick meeting, get an idea of where everyone is at because I’m planning to expand the guild very soon.

“We’ll start with the financial situation, which is me. So first off, we’re doing really well. I know people have been worried since the whole sea monster event because we’ve not really been doing anything splashy. I know a certain reporter is certainly cross with us.”

That got a chuckle from the table. HannahVixen was a star reporter that had struck out on her own again and had gained a lot of views and popularity by latching on to our coattails in the first thirty-four in-game days. She had also made an enemy out of Dawnguard.

However, it had been twenty-four in-game days since then, and we had frankly not been doing a lot of newsworthy things. So she had been hounding our members for news stories all the time. The fact that most of the guild had not been in Blackport made her irritated.

“You call that irritated? She’s been demanding answers as to why we’ve gone boring,” Mia mumbled, making the other chuckle. As my assistant, she screened all my mail making sure they went to the right people.

“I can understand that since after our splashy start, we’ve been spending almost a month in-game just running the dungeon,” Edward said. Time dilation meant that the 28 days in-game only had been 14 days in the real-world. “As exciting as it is, especially on Enhanced difficulty, it’s getting a bit stale.”

“We’ll get to that in a moment,” I quickly said to get the meeting back on track. “As I said, the guild is doing really well. We’ve had two groups running the dungeon each day for twenty-two days. Most of the runs have been on enhanced difficulty, so the guild has earned a lot of coin and equipment. In fact, yesterday I converted three point nine million copper coins to credits directly. After taxes, it netted us a bit more than one hundred and eighty thousand credits.”

“Holy crap, that’s a lot,” Kira whistled.

“Yes, and together what we had in the guild account, it brings us above two hundred thousand. Which will be deducted in a moment to pay for the hotel and everyone’s Minimum Welfare Tax when we change to February at midnight,” I informed them. Paying for twenty-two adults and eight kids was not cheap. Each room was 5,000 credits and the MWT was 3,000. We saved a little on couples having larger rooms together, but not a lot.

“Shit, so we’re broke now?” Kira grumbled.

“You ran the dungeon twenty-two times, you should know how much we brought in,” I said with a smile.

“It’s boring and undead are so gross, so I didn’t really pay attention. The most fun I had for the past month was when I beat up those Dead Lotus Alliance upstarts,” Kira complained. “Can I go back to that soon? Pretty please?”

“Even after converting the three point nine million copper coins, we still have five million left,” I explained. All of them looked stunned at that announcement, except Mia. She was privy to most of what was going on in the guild. The others only saw snippets.

Ainsley was the first to recover and leaned forward, “So that means we’ve already covered the regular expenses for March and then some?”

“Yes, but I already consigned all five million to the credit auction,” I told them.

“What?” Phil asked flabbergasted. I had him and Denise attend some of the credit auctions. He started protesting, “But the prices on the consigned coins are low. It’s a gamble. Most of the people consigning the coins get less than if they had sold them straight to the moderators.”

“I know Phil, but trust me on this. I’ve not really steered anyone wrong yet, have I?” I asked. I knew that most credit to coin auctions left those that consigned coins in a worse spot. However, in just around two hours a new one would start, and because of the Challenges, the prices would be insane. Companies were scrambling to join the game and a chance to own 15% of the largest company in the world.

“Most of us would be in Coffins if not for him, so we should trust that he knows what he’s doing,” Ainsley said. Reminding Phil that his parents would be in the Coffins if not for me taking him on. In my other timeline that had not been the case, because Phil had started a successful crafting guild of his own. I was just lucky to hire him before he started.

Mia shuddered next to me. Unlike most of the others in the guild, she, Phil’s parents, and Ainsley’s girlfriend Sarah had been the only ones to actually be put into a coma and locked away in what popularly was called a Coffin. A cost- and space-saving measure enacted by the Corporate Congress, to stow away some of all the people who could not pay their MWT.

“It’s just based on—you know what, you’re right. You’ve been right so far, sorry I questioned you,” Phil started to object and then turned it into an apology.

“It’s okay, I don’t need blind obedience, but sometimes I can’t tell you why I do stuff, and I need you to trust me in those cases,” I said. Then I turned to Ainsley. “Since we’re going to have a lot of credits soon, hopefully, we’re going to expand. Mia just sent you a bunch of dossiers of potential candidates. Look through them, we’ll find out how many we’re going to hire later, but think about twenty-five percent crafters.”

“Where did you get these?” she asked. She was the Public Relation Officer and for now responsible for recruiting as well, when I did not supersede her, like in the case of Phil and his father. Or everyone’s family. Mostly Denise and Rose’s family, who I had felt needed protection from Marcus, so I had hired them and put them into the pod-hotel.

Only Liam’s brother and Rose’s brother were the only family members not secured in the hotel. One was a criminal with underworld connections, the other was a BIS officer, Bureau of Internal Security. Both insisting they could take care of themselves. It was a little ironic that Liam and Rose were dating. If it ever became a full family dinner thing, it would definitely be interesting with their brothers there.

I turned my attention back to the meeting and answered Ainsley’s question, “Perennial was more than happy to have one of their AI’s search for people in the Coffins fitting the parameters I set.”

“Why would they do that?” she questioned, and with good reason.

“Because I promised we would hire at least twenty new people this month, meaning more revenue for them. This way we can keep the search from reaching Marcus, so he won’t be able to interfere,” I told her.

“Twenty new members are a lot of extra expenses,” she cautioned.

“I know, but please go over them. Those with gold stars are those without any family. Those with silver have all their family in the Coffins, if we hire one of those, we need to hire the entire family. While those with the bronze stars have young dependants in orphanages,” I told her. “While I would love to reunite the children with their parents, we don’t have the infrastructure to do it yet. Even with just seven kids, Miss Elleby is stretched to the limit, so if we hire more with young kids, we need to support at least one more caretaker.”

The other nodded at my explanation. I knew Mia would want a lot of bronze star candidates since she would be in that pile, but there was nothing I could do about that at the moment. I turned to Edward and the next agenda on the list. He was in charge of player development amongst other things.

“Ed, how are the levels of our players looking?” I asked.

“I got the highest level at thirty-five and Andrea’s got the lowest at nine,” he said with a frown. Andrea was Liam’s mother and she did the bare minimum. Planted fields and trees, and made fertilizer for it. That was it. She was uncooperative, and if not for the fact that the agreement with Liam stipulated I would support his family, she would have been tossed out. That said, she supplied fertilizer to her own fields and Denise, which was a lot of work I did not have to do, so I could live with that arrangement.

Edward continued, “In total, we’ve six people at level thirty or higher. The original five and Rose. You’re slacking behind buddy. Even Denise and Phil are catching up to you.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. Being a crafter meant you levelled slower. However, being a Pacifist meant I did not get extra XP for crafting items as Denise did for raising her livestock or her fields, because she was a farmer. “I hope it begins to pick up, I mean I’m at level twenty-five and I think I’ll get a boatload of free class XP when I hit thirty.”

“Okay?” Edward asked questioningly.

“When I hit the first class milestone at level fifteen, I got sixteen thousand XP. When I hit the milestone of level twenty I got thirty-two thousand XP. It doubled. Level thirty is also a milestone, so should give me at least sixty-four thousand XP,” I said. While I knew a lot about the game because I had lived through it once, I did not remember everything. With regards to Pacifist, which was a special class that I knew was very good for crafters with many different skills, but did not know all the details. This was one of them.

“You say at least,” Ainsley pointed out.

“Level thirty is both a levelling milestone and a class milestone, as some of you know. So theoretically I might get rewarded for two milestones. And if they double for each milestone, I should get sixty-four for the first milestone and one hundred and twenty-eight for the second milestone,” I explained.

“Damn, that’s a lot of XP,” Kira whistled.

“Yeah. I got another skill approaching Apprentice, which should speed up my levelling speed,” I said. Turning back to Edward, I asked, “What about the rest?”

“We got three combat squads. My squad has an average level of roughly thirty-two. Kira’s squad has an average of thirty, while the newb squad are all level twenty-one.”

“Okay, that’s good,” I said. “Edward and Kira, do you both have Leadership at Apprentice?”

“Yup,” Kira said, while Edward just gave a nod.

“Good, when we get the new influx of people we’re going to reorganize again. We’ll give Ainsley her exploration group—” I started to say.

“Finally!” Ainsley interrupted me.

I continued, “—and fold the newb squad into your two groups. We’ll fill out the rest of the ranks with new people.”

“Going to make a very lopsided group,” Phil commented. He did not know about the equalizing bonus for late joiners. No one outside those I had told my secret knew. At the start of a new month, the average level of all the players registered during the first month was recorded. Anyone who joined in the new month would enjoy a 25% bonus to skill XP until they reached that level. I had looked up the average level at the end of January, which was 19.

“True, but it’s also why I recommend people taking Mentor, it gives your mentee a bonus of ten percent to XP gains,” I said and moved on. “Kira. It’s been a day and a half since we got back to town in the game. How are DLA behaving?”

Kira grinned. She was in charge of our real-world physical training, as well as our player-versus-player centric squad. Before she lost her legs she had been a martial arts trainer, and while this was a game, her training enabled her to be a deadly force in the game. She preferred fighting other people, and her squad had a fairly rare speciality that could punish griefers.

“They were big in their britches while we were out camping, but right now they’re running scared. The four remaining Shadowguards are so crippled by Judgements that they’re stuck at level fifteen. Almighty Al’s people had picked up a few bad habits from the Shadowguards, so they are stuck with a few minor Judgements,” she reported with a big grin. She simply loved fighting those players. “The remnants of the Moronic Bears have finally deleted their characters.”

“Good,” I said and meant it. Dead Lotus Alliance, had become a reality after the sea monster event we had completed. The Dusks, two merchants affiliated with Dawnguard had organized the remaining Shadowguard, another guild called Almighty Al’s, some unaffiliated players, as well as both Airgead twins into a loose alliance that was all about causing trouble for us.

After an initial push, while we were out at the dungeon, where they had harassed the newb squad, they had ceased all overt operations. We had come back to reprovision at one point, and Kira had taken her squad and hunted down all the members with Taint. Something you got when you killed players unprovoked or griefed other players.

Because of the squad speciality, Kira could hunt them even inside the safe zones. They had paid dearly for their mistakes. Because they did not have a guild residence, they could not declare war on us, so all attacks were unprovoked.

Denise spoke up, “I heard that Almighty Al is closing in on getting the reputation needed for a guild residence. With Dawnguard financing them through the Dusks, they won’t have trouble buying a residence.”

Denise was technically not an officer, but she was handling all the sales we did to customers more or less, so she had an ear on the gossip. Amazing how a shy girl turned into such a popular one. It was not that she flirted or was overly friendly with the customers, but she was likeable and unintrusive. Never tried to sell the customers something they did not need. It endeared her to the population, so she heard the most recent gossip.

“That’s not good,” Ainsley remarked with a frown.

“I’m looking forward to a proper fight,” Kira said at once with a big smile.

“Thank you for the heads up,” I said. “That just means we need to power-level any new members we get. Phil, how’s the Sea Otter coming?”

“We’re almost done, and we’ll be netting ten platinum from that deal,” he said with a smile. A new player had approached them about building them a boat that would serve as a combat platform for his small group. They had hinted they were going to be playing as pirates. The boat was not that large, but they decided not to invest too much coin in a boat until Philmore’s skills as a shipwright were much better.

“Good, how about the boat and rafts for Ed’s squad?” I asked.

“Already done, just waiting for them to start hunting near the coast,” was the immediate reply.

“Damian, are you sure that’s the best use of our time?” the squad leader in question asked.

I looked at him. “Trust me, until you reach forty, this will be the best levelling spot. Then it’s back to the castle to run it on Special difficulty.”

He groaned at that. “I’m just not a fan of fighting at sea.”

“It’s best we get used to it. If you haven’t noticed we’re on an island. There is a limit to how long we can stay on the island and remain competitive. Going elsewhere requires sea travel, and sea travel brings about sea monsters and fights at sea, so best to learn it now,” I explained.

Ainsley leaned forward to look at Phil. “Phil, what about my ship? Are the plans ready now that I’m getting my own squad?”

“The plans are ready, but our skills are not there yet,” Phil answered. “We can build big boats, but an entire ship, even a small one like you want, is a little beyond us just yet.”

“Okay,” Ainsley said with a pout.

Mia then asked, “Anything else you need to cover, Damian? The press conference starts in two minutes.”

“Yes, one last thing. We’re going to get around to signing those magical contracts in-game. We’ve been so busy grinding we’ve not really had a chance to get it done. Oversight for my part, but we’re all in this together, so I trust you,” I said. “That said, we’ll be getting a lot of new people in the guild, and asking them to sign something we haven’t done ourselves, will set a bad precedent. So we’ll start doing that when we log back in.”

It was Phil who asked, “I thought you had consigned all our coins.”

“No worries,” I said. “I’ll be paying it out of pocket. With everything I’ve sold to Fillard and the extra charms on the lesser auctions, I still have almost two hundred platinum, despite having donated almost four hundred platinum to the guild.”

“Speaking of contribution points,” Ainsley said. “Was there anyone who didn’t make enough to pay the almost quarter-million contribution points?”

“Only Andrea, but Blaze—I mean Liam covered her shortfall,” Mia answered.

“Maybe you should have another talk with her?” Ainsley suggested.

I shook my head. “Not yet, because we’ll most likely get at least one more farmer for her to make fertilizer for. She’ll be getting more to do, we’ll just do it incrementally. If we push too hard, she’ll baulk and we’ll have to kick her. Not that I don’t have a problem with that, but it would be detrimental for our relationship with Liam.”

“It takes a long time making all the fertilizer she and I need,” Denise added. “She’s working long hours, and as our skills grow, we’ll need more, meaning that she’ll get more to do organically.”

“Okay, she just irritates me,” Ainsley said.

“She does that to most of us. Anyway, the press conference is starting,” I said and pointed towards the wall that showed the press conference was about to start. With a click on my wrist device, I allowed the sound from the broadcast to reach me. As I settled in to watch the conference, I noticed that there were only a handful of reporters, and that Hannah was one of them.

‘She normally doesn’t attend the press conferences. What’s she doing there?’ I thought to myself. A couple of people gasped with Ken Masters stepped up behind the podium. With a wry smile, I thought, ‘The game truly starts now.’