I spent the next three days getting a new set of gear. I even managed to swap my unique purple invisibility bracelet for an even more unique diamond equivalent. Now every item I wore gave me the rarest of bonuses designed to increase my damage and mobility. Also, I once again replaced all of my talismans with unique spells available to level 14 players. Last time, I could only rely on the strength of my pet to get resources for my talismans. Now I could fight unimaginably strong opponents with priceless treasures dropping from them.

After upgrading all of my gears, I could hide under invisibility, along with a forty-meter-long scorpendra, while keeping the standard 'see invisible' spell out of my sight. Six of my eight talismans were designed to inflict damage. I even turned down one of the control spells to increase the damage. After all, I don't need to try to stop my opponents, because they can't do anything to me, and I can catch up with them and attack at any moment.

Tactically, my new spell was 'Steppeless Field'. It grew a 'glade' of grass or flowers around me with a radius of fifty meters. Along with this talisman I used a seed of Blue Mac, which constantly poisoned everyone around me with its sap, at the same time plunging them into a state of confusion. It was my first truly massive spell, capable of destroying crowds of enemies. But the glade only lasted 20 seconds, and I couldn't use it more than once a minute.

Finally, having fully assembled 'my dream build', I began to systematically set records. Even with all my infinitely cool abilities, I could not pass many of the dungeons that gave just huge bonuses. True, it's worth mentioning that no one has been able to pass them yet. But in those dungeons that I could clear, all of the records became mine. The strongest guilds on the server were literally furious at this turn of fate, but they couldn't do anything to me.

After making sure I had control of every possible perk, I moved on to the next step in my plan: creating a guild. My strongest opponents developed their guilds by going to extraordinary effort to gather the best players, give them the best equipment and spells, teach them how to use them effectively, and develop cohesion and high morale. Each guild member considered himself to be the center of the world, towering above mere mortals like a tree above the grass. Ordinary players were forced to honor even the most insignificant members of these guilds, because otherwise they might suffer terrible revenge from a force they could not resist.

I took the opposite path. When the Lotus of Fire Phoenix Guild cursed my pet, they called me an Jackanape. All the ''great players'' perceived me as a jackanape. That's why I named my guild 'Jackanapes'. I created it using the cheapest Bronze Glory Crystals, so there could only be 100 members. Guild members could have different ranks for which different 'access rights' and privileges could be set up. My guild had only two ranks: guild leader and guild member. But at the same time, the members could access all of my bonuses collected in thousands of dungeons. And if a player became the leader of a raid, those bonuses also applied to all of his subordinates.

The next important thing about my strategy was that my guild had no elemental restrictions, plus any guild member could invite anyone to join the guild. In fact, I gave players the freedom to use their bonuses and give them to everyone.

And the final 'touch' in the guild's settings was that its ordinary members could not see me in the list of co-guild members. Moreover, they could not even notice that the guild had a leader, because the position of 'master' was also hidden. As a result, the guild just looked like a homogeneous group of people to ordinary players. Also, I disabled the ability to create a guild castle, so there was no way for the guild to be destroyed from within.

The first victim of my advanced recruiting policy was my only friend. Straight Black Iron Sword, whom I'd given the purple staff as a gift, was still my friend, even though we'd never written a word to each other in all that time. Now I wrote him a private message and immediately sent him an invitation to the Jackanapes guild.

'Look what I got. A guild that has collected bonuses for completing all of the dungeons and killing all of the bosses in the game.'

Strangely enough, up until now Straight Black Iron Sword wasn't a member of any guild, so he might as well accept my invitation. But he was careful enough to write back first.

‘And what are the conditions for joining?’

‘None. Just accept the invitation and have a look. If you don't like something, you leave.’

A second later, a first member appeared in my guild. He looked with surprise to the empty list of guild members, where only he was currently listed.

‘Aren't you the guild leader?’ - Immediately he texted me.

‘Use it. Membership is free, no taxes, no restrictions, only bonuses. Invite friends and just acquaintances.’

At this point I stopped talking and stopped answering any questions. As I expected, the Sword could not resist the temptation, and ten minutes later another player joined the guild. And then another. And another. The bonuses given by my guild were too insane to ignore. They increased a player's damage and life reserves several times over, and raised his defense and damage resistance. And such an absurd characteristic as 'damage absorption' reached a value of 53%. In other words, all attacks with less than half their health would simply be ignored.

Thanks to those bonuses, my chain, originally rated at 1,600,000 damage, was actually taking almost 4,000,000 damage per hit. In fact, by evening, all of my guild slots were already occupied. Furthermore, an hour after the players themselves found and used the Silver Crystal of Glory to raise the level of the guild and get free spaces. By morning all 250 spaces were occupied again, so I 'surreptitiously' used my Diamond Crystal of Fame that I had received as a gift at the beginning of the game. Now my Jackanapes guild was officially one of the strongest guilds on the server.

The next day, an explosion of fecal masses in the game turned into a sky-high fountain of shit and bile. The leaders of the strongest guilds literally puked blood when they found out that some jackanapes had gotten some completely insane bonuses for free. The guilds started sending spies to me while they could, but quickly all the spots were taken.

There were millions of people who wanted to get in, but there were only a thousand slots. Some enterprising players started trying to sell their slots, but found that as soon as they left the guild, a hundred people tried to take their place, so that not a split second passed between leaving the guild and inviting another player to join, preventing anyone who had paid for the opportunity from being invited to join.

Membership in the Jackanapes Guild immediately became a requirement for the position of raid leader in all dungeons. Even if a player was a complete idiot, he was assigned to the honorable position of leader and prayed that he would not leave. Because of the bonuses, passing the most difficult dungeons turned into an easy walk. I even had a couple dozen records taken away from me after that, but since all of them remained within the guild, only passed on to other players, I didn't even think about being upset.

Suddenly, the whole hierarchy of power in the game was overturned, and the strongest guilds already had to think of inviting an 'overseas king to rule' to help them pass the dungeons. It was so humiliating for the Earth Adepts that they felt an overwhelming urge to start banging their heads against the wall, but they couldn't refuse the humiliation.

I watched the whole circus with my psionics and literally laughed when I saw the faces my opponents, including the other game figures. They were trying, working hard, developing, and then some jackanape came along and took everything away from them, making them feel like worthless idiots. And most importantly, all those guilds couldn't do anything to stop me in any way. No one knew where I was or what I was doing. And it was too expensive to 'press' the usual members of the guild, because they could simply refuse to give their bonuses 'for rent' because of it.

In general, practically all the players on the server were standing around, trying to grasp the new realities of the world order. I wasn't worried that 'handing out bonuses' would hit me, because capturing the Tower of the Dark Lord required that absolutely everyone in the raid belonged to the same guild. But nevertheless, I'd set an 'alert sensor' in my mind that was supposed to be triggered when someone reached the 16th floor of the tower. That was the threshold that signaled a threat to my plans.

There was also the possibility that my own guild would try to capture the tower, but I wasn't worried. It would be enough to exclude a few players from the guild at a critical moment, and they would be immediately kicked out of the raid, and then they simply die without guild bonuses. It might have been a little unfair to my subordinates, but my plans were far more important than the feelings of mere mortals.

While the whole world was buzzing with shit, I tried to figure out how else I could increase my damage. If I had a team of reliable people, I could train them quickly, assemble a raid, and take over the tower tomorrow. But that would make me vulnerable to enemies. I wouldn't get the perks of clearing the tower on my own, I'd have to organize players to defend it, and there's the possibility that the guilds might interfere with my plans through the agents infiltrated into the guild. Anyway, as long as there was any chance of my plan succeeding, I didn't want to sink to the level of the 'mere mortals' who used the power of the guild rather than their own to win.

Nothing good came into my head. I didn't know how to become strong enough. And even psionics couldn't answer that question. More likely, it was that I could not ask the right question, and the answers to the wrong questions did not suit me.

To 'push the limits of my perception', I decided to slowly and carefully clear all the difficult dungeons, kill all the strong monsters and visit all the shards of elemental worlds, carefully observing the world around me in search of clues.

And so, while I was in one of the elemental worlds, my 'alarm sensor' triggered, telling me that someone had infiltrated the 16th floor of the Dark Lord's Tower. I immediately finished off another boss in a hurry, after which I moved to the main world and headed towards the tower. There I watched the events inside it, frowning more and more with each passing second.

An unexpected threat was the Age of Glory guild and Zinovia Reinhardt herself. Despite the lack of bonuses, she was able to assemble a team of 25 people, each of whom was comparable to me in strength. That's if you count without bonuses. But there were 25 of them, and I was alone. As I watched how they passed through the floors of the tower, I realized that there was a real chance that today the Dark Lord's Tower would get a new owner.

There was no way I could let that happen, so I had to stop them from killing the monsters at all costs. I couldn't interfere in the fight personally, because the dungeon was personal, and only those who had entered at the beginning could be present in that copy of the dungeon. But I immediately thought of destroying some Evil Seed to raise the characteristics of the monsters. When I destroyed the First Seed of Evil, all of the monsters immediately became twice as 'thick', so a lot of players going through the dungeons at that time had problems.

I figured out all the information about the Evil Seeds a long time ago, using not only psionics, but also quite legitimate ways in the form of reading books, completing quests, and talking to the right NPCs. As a result, my knowledge of the location of the Seeds of Evil was quite well logged in front of the game's artificial intelligence.

I immediately rushed to the location of the Fourth Evil Seed. Destroying it was supposed to double the damage done by the monsters. I made sure to bring the golden Spear of the First Dwarf, because it was the only weapon that had the necessary qualities to destroy the quest crystals. There were other weapons that could be used, but I only had the spear.

While I was going through the right quest and making my way through the dungeon, the raid, led by Zinovia, had nearly cleared the 18th floor. Like a meteor, I rushed through the elite bosses, brutally broke down the doors, which were supposed to be easier to open by solving the puzzle, and leaped to the fourth Evil Seed. Then I found that I couldn't change my weapon to a spear until I was out of the fight, and there was a whole mob of bloodthirsty bosses chasing me from behind. I had to spend another five minutes clearing that crowd with all my might. A normal raid wouldn't even be able to survive against such a crowd of enemies, but I managed to kill them all pretty quickly.

Finally, I grabbed my spear and struck the blood-red ruby with it. The stone shattered into tiny shards, and I immediately received a message in the chat room that another Evil Seed had been destroyed, and the damage of all monsters was now doubled.

I turned my attention hopefully to the Age of Glory raid. They had just started beating a level 18 boss, and his unexpected reinforcement immediately sent two tanks to the afterlife, but... The raid immediately changed tactics, and instead of 'tanking' the boss, they started suppressing it with control skills, plus dodging the blows as much as possible. It didn't look like their opponent's reinforcement was hurting them much.

I swore loudly and rushed off on the quest to destroy another Evil Seed. For me, doubling my damage didn't really change anything, because I was immortal. But destroying the Second Evil Seed was already causing some problems. Fortunately, the quest to access this item was pretty quick.

I teleported to one of my beacons and rushed forward, throwing my enemies aside. It was pretty easy. I didn't even have to change the spear back to a chain. I just brazenly dashed past the enemies and bosses, reached the Seed of Evil, and shattered it instantly. A second later, all of the monsters had reduced the cooldown time for all of their skills by half. At this time, the Age of Glory raid was already moving through Floor 19. Their progress slowed, but... it didn't stop. God damn it!

Wasting no time, I rushed to the next Evil Seed, which could be destroyed quickly enough. Cthulhu sees, I didn't want to do that. But it was the only way to prevent the tower from being captured. Besides, it was creating even more problems for me to win.

The sixth Evil Seed granted high regeneration of health to all monsters, plus quadrupled their ability to heal themselves. By the time I got to it, the raid was already beating the last boss of the 19th floor. But as soon as the crystal shattered into shards, the flow of the battle changed immediately. In just a few seconds the boss' half life was fully restored, and it never dropped below 95%. The raid strained, the players used all their accumulated reserves, the best elixirs and disposable artifacts, applied their strongest skills, but still could not even scratch the enemy.

After that, the fervor of the raid faded, and in ten minutes the group had completely dissolved, heading for rebirth. I mentally exhaled and began to think about how I was going to live my life.

But before I could relax, I received a personal message from Zinovia Reinhardt. More precisely, it was a worldwide message, which cost fabulous money and could be sent by players of one guild no more than once a day. But the message was meant for me. Since we were not 'friends', it was the only way that Zinovia Reinhardt could convey her threat to me.

***CHEATER!!! I WILL DESTROY YOU!!! WHEREVER YOU ARE!!! MY WHOLE GUILD WILL HUNT YOU DOWN ALL DAY AND NIGHT!!!!!!'***

Yeah, a cry from the soul, as they call it. I pulled out a similar item from my stash and wrote back a world message.

***Your arms are short to get me. And if you pester me, I'll destroy the rest of the Seeds of Evil, too. That'll make the other guilds happy to hear about it. And by the way, you're the only reason I had to destroy those three Evil Seeds today. You naughty girl!***

Yes, it was a failure. I was only going to destroy all the seeds of evil after I captured the tower. That would have strengthened its defenders enough that I wouldn't have to worry about capturing it. But because of this upstart, I had to use my trump card early, and now I myself doubted that anyone would be able to capture the tower at all. The phrase comes to mind: 'Well, nobody gains you!' If I don't win this game, nobody wins it.

My only consolation was the scene of Zinovia Reinhardt banging his head against the wall in anger, because she feels powerless in front of me. Ha-ha!

My malignant complicity with the Dark Powers caused players now to sit at home and chug vodka in an effort to drown out their sadness and grief. Because of the unexpected bonuses, all monsters had become so powerful that it was pointless to fight them.

Against this backdrop, the guilds squabbled over the control of dungeons and locations inhabited not by monsters but by creatures of a different class. The 'historical chronicles' I read explained that monsters were the living creatures that inhabited this world before the Elemental Gods came into it. They were a variety of monsters, as well as native intelligent races like gremlins, goblins or trolls. By the way, the same troll that took part in the murder of the Dark Lord was a 'traitor’.

But after the invasion of the gods, all sorts of elves, dwarves, werewolves, humans, and other evil things appeared in this world. Over the millennia, humans became the dominant race, and all players were human. After the destruction of the Seeds of Evil, all non-human races suddenly became outcasts. Countless crowds of players rushed to kill them in every way possible, because they were the only ones they had the power to kill.

Although people' hatred made me the most wanted criminal in the world, my guild only went even higher in the glory rankings. After all, all the players in it got huge bonuses from destroying the Seeds of Evil, which pretty much negated the monsters' amplification. Now having a raid leader from my guild was not just desirable, but the only way to enter normal dungeons.

I thought about my options and came to the clear conclusion that I can' t get more out of it with honest methods of gameplay. The only thing left to do was to 'crack' the game itself and the AI that controlling it. Of course, the whole system was protected many times over, but... These protections were meant for mere mortals. I have a psionics.