CHAPTER FOUR

Wass's living quarters were only two doors down from Jason's room, but the supervisor's apartment was far larger than Jason's single-room accommodations. Of all the people living in the Overdrive apartment complex, Wass was the only person who got his own independent working space.

Everyone else effectively worked from home, leaving the beds of their studio apartments to play at the company procured state-of-the-art Overdrive pods placed at the far corner of the room.

Jason and Wass entered the supervisor's apartment, then immediately turned to the right. Nobody had ever been inside Wass's bedroom before. The man was extremely secretive, only opening his door the barest of cracks before sliding his thick body in.

He scowled whenever anyone tried glancing inside.

Unfortunately for Jason, the same couldn't be said of Wass's office, which was located opposite his room.

The strict gaming supervisor was always inviting Jason and the other Discreet Player Killers inside for private talks.

Wass's office was very plain - a simple white room with very little furniture. The professional disciplinarian had a basic wooden desk with a very beat-up laptop on it. As someone who didn't play Overdrive, Wass had no need for either a control pod or a large computer tower.

Behind Wass's desks were a series of framed posters.

Although Wass himself probably had no idea who those people were, Jason recognized them at just a glance.

Every serious Overdrive pilot knew the players the four posters depicted.

Furthest to the left was a brash and muscular man who wore a martial arts gi with a katana at his waist. The gi was very loosely tied, revealing an extremely muscular chest.

DISTINCTIONMAN50000 was Overdrive's most famous streamer.

His bombastic personality had won him countless fans despite his rather mediocre skills.

He'd recently signed a contract with the Overdrive Corporation to represent them as a Player Killer - a wandering challenger who randomly challenged players to battles.

A bright pink machine posed victoriously behind the absurdly buff pilot. The Mech's powerful arms were bent above its head, almost like it was dabbing. The Deadeyes Lionknight was DISTINCTIONMAN's signature Mech. He'd upgraded it from a powerful Reality Shaper frame given to him by the Overdrive Corporation.

Beside DISTINCTIONMAN was an older woman with a very shy smile.

Vile had shoulder-length blonde hair and a set of very circular wire-frame glasses. Unlike DISTINCTIONMAN, the thirty-five-year-old former schoolteacher wore a conventional piloting suit with her traditional colors - pale blue and bright white.

In sharp contrast to her mild appearance, Vile's signature Mech was a horrifying zombie Hemoborn. The dreadful creature stared out from the poster, taunting the viewer as it stuck out its long and mottled tongue.

Vile was a Fortress Master, a professional Mech and map designer for the Overdrive Corporation. They served somewhat like gym leaders from the famous Pokemon franchise - a player who was able to defeat any Fortress Master and their teammates in a four-on-four battle was automatically qualified for the World Championship.

Beating just one Fortress Master was considered an incredible task.

In fact, most players qualified via third party qualification tournaments instead of challenging a Fortress team. Vile herself had famously never lost a challenge battle.

Player Killers and Fortress Masters received the bulk of the praise from Overdrive's community. Very few people knew about the One Star Bosses like Jason who did all the work behind the scenes.

On the other side of the desk were two posters graced by players who didn't officially work for the Overdrive Corporation. Instead of taking a set salary from the gaming company, they competed for various tournament and event prizes.

The player second to the right was covered head-to-toe in stark white armor. The plain plastic piloting suit rendered the player underneath completely unrecognizable, but anyone could recognize the Mech that stood behind them.

Twister was the leader of The Hive, a mapping guild that only used machines based on insects.

They were famous throughout the server for their individual skill, coordination, and determination to conquer maps before everyone else. The group made over two million dollars a year just selling loot. Twister's personal Mech was a tall Paragon that looked like a combination of an insect and a human.

The mint green Mech had a feminine type frame with heavily accentuated hips. Befitting an insect-inspired machine, all the limbs were segmented.

The pilot's plain white armor was known as Guest Account Armor.

Normally, players who wanted to log onto Overdrive had to undergo a body scan before they were admitted into the server. The VR headset and computer would scan their body and place a digitized version into the game. A lot of players found the process weird and intrusive, including Jason himself, but at the end, they didn't really have a choice. All registered players needed to undergo the body scan, and Guest Accounts came with plenty of annoying restrictions.

However, Twister had famously used a Guest Account until just a few months ago, when the Overdrive board finally got rid of the requirements and allowed personal avatar customization.

However, Twister had simply created a personal avatar that still wore the cheap plastic guest armor - by then, the pure white pilot suit had already become their signature trait.

There were plenty of players that had used Guest Armor, but none with Twister's tremendous fame and skill. Their identity was a famous mystery. People didn't even know if Twister was male or female.

The handsome man on the poster furthest to the right was vermillionangel, the reigning Overdrive World Champion.

He posed triumphantly in front of the Mech he'd used to win the World Championship, the high-speed Vermillion Draco.

Although the Draco and Jason's Red Minerva were both dragon-type Mechs, the two machines could not be more different.

The Draco was a completely mechanical Paragon, a super robot inspired by series like Gurren Lagann. Meanwhile, Jason's Red Minerva was an actual dragon, albeit one that'd been transformed into a cyborg by mechanical parts.

Of course, the greatest gap between the two Mechs was their growth potential. Vermillionangel's only job was to win. He could upgrade his Mech as much as he wanted.

Jason had to stick to the lowly confines of a One Star Boss. Jason knew that the Red Minerva had tremendous potential, but he couldn't access it.

Wass scowled and pointed at the lonely chair in front of his desk.

Unlike the comfortable office chair behind Wass's desk, Jason's chair was an uncomfortable plastic stool.

Jason sat down, and Wass immediately started towering over him.

It was obvious why Wass had dragged Jason into his office - it made the big man seem all the more intimidating. Technically, Wass was the supervisor of the entire gaming complex, but now his home-court advantage was made even more explicit.

The big man pointed at the posters.

"What do I always say to you. Be what you are advertised! You are just a One Star Boss! You aren't..."

He tilted his head to read the names at the bottom of the posters.

"You aren't DISTINCTIONMAN! You aren't Vile! You have to be a One Star Boss, nothing more and nothing less."

He brought up a single finger.

"Act like an AI, yes. But for a One Star Boss! Just One Star! One Star!"

Bzzt.

Bzzt.

Bzzt.

Wass's phone spasmed around the table as he received several text messages, all in a rapid sequence.

The vibrations sent the phone scurrying slowly across the table until it almost dropped to the floor.

Wass glanced over, and his jaw clenched even more tightly. Jason noticed a small sheen of sweat on Wass's brow and felt a very weird and out-of-place pang of sympathy for the irritating supervisor.

The man suddenly turned very pale.

Jason was unsurprised to see Wass's anger vanish as the big man answered the phone.

When dealing with Jason and the other Discreet Player Killers, Wass was enthusiastically cruel and bombastic. He constantly assigned extra punishments at the slightest provocation and aggressively barged into their rooms to keep them in line.

When dealing with management, Wass was all politics, grinning and smiling as he worked to soothe over hurt feelings.

Wass's hypocrisy and fake friendliness should have made Jason angry, but instead, it made Jason jealous.

At the end of the day, networking skills and the ability to play to a crowd mattered a lot more than actual skill.

Jason took another look at the posters behind the wall. He couldn't say for sure if he was better than those four players, but he knew that piloting ability alone didn't account for their stark gap in fame and income.

Those players made most of their money via streams and sponsorships. They knew how to sell themselves as players. All Jason could do was continue grinding away behind the scenes as a Discreet Player Killer.

Wass smiled at Jason, an expression that looked jarringly fake and oily on his typically angry face. The grin ruffled his mustache, and his flinty eyes turned very wide.

He set his phone aside.

"Alright. You will play the boy's dad, and you will lose, just like a One Star Boss should. That will smooth things over, and we can all go back to work."

Wass's voice turned even more saccharine and coaxing.

"Look. We just need to deal with this little bug of yours - don't try so hard to win! You see what I mean? So just make sure you lose to this guy, and we can pretend nothing happened. How about that?"

Jason blinked.

The man's words were painfully clear.

Wass didn't want Jason to compete.

He wanted Jason to log on, play out his games, and then move on with his day. There was no need to try hard. In fact, depending on his opponent, Jason should sometimes play poorly on purpose. He should forfeit all emotional connection to victory, just like the other One Star Bosses had.

In the past, Wass had only criticized Jason for so-called aberrant behaviors that an AI wouldn't use, stuff like causing an avalanche to win or leaving the boss area early to hunt enemy players as they made their advance through the Twisted Crag.

Every time Wass told Jason to stop doing something, he stopped doing it and began working for another strategy.

But now that Jason had put two and two together, he now understood that Wass's complaints had nothing to do with acting as an AI.

It had everything to do with keeping the right people winning and happily playing Overdrive.

Nobody would care if Jason went all out and beat the crap out of some random new player. However, beating a whale or a kid whose dad worked at the Overdrive Corporation was a very different story.

There was only one problem.

Jason knew, deep in his heart, that he couldn't do that.

No matter what, no matter how much trouble he'd get into with Wass, he couldn't lose on purpose.