The trio were now hard at work building the one-of-a-kind War Suit for Revelry Admiral DiVeto, and the mech was coming along nicely. The entire process would likely have needed an entire crew of NPCs to make it in any reasonable amount of time, but the addition of two Players cut the time and effort needed by quite a fair amount. NPCs had to do things either by hand or with the aid of in-game machines; Players, on the other hand, could set some things up as ‘work orders’ and have them run in the background while they themselves did other things.

Capitalizing on this, the two Players were able to finish modifying a decent number of parts and even begin assembling some of them while still working on more complex parts of the construction. This wasn’t a War Suit that was as small, ‘simple’, and lightweight as Franken I had been, so it was a task that took more hands. Thankfully, the extra Player that was Thomas and the NPC that was Sally allowed the trio to reach the later stages of assembly in roughly the same amount of time that it had taken Axton to build Franken I’s initial build.

A few in-game days after that, and the War Suit was ready for testing. It lacked a paint scheme, but that was due to the Admiral expressly requesting (or, more appropriately, ordering) that the Suit be bare and, in his words, ‘naked’, so that he could see it as it truly was before any extra detail work could be done to ‘hide any flaws or rust’.

While Axton, Thomas, and Sally had been working on the new Suit for the Admiral, the other NPC SuitMakers had not been lazing around. They had, rather rudely, been watching Axton and the other two people work and had, in their foolish hubris, decided that if they couldn’t learn the secrets of making a custom War Suit from Axton (as their pride forbade them from taking Axton offered lessons), then they would autopsy Franken II without Axton’s approval.

After all, in their eyes, it was unnecessary to seek forgiveness or approval from an Outworlder. If they could learn the secrets of construction from that hunk of junk and then build something better than Axton, Thomas, and Sally the Traitor could, sure they would be able to make the Admiral cast the trio out, or worse.

The two Players, Axton and Thomas, however, were not utter fools, and neither was Sally, the ‘traitorous’ NPC SuitMaker. They were not dense enough to not notice Franken II being gradually dismantled without its maker’s approval, and as the other team of SuitMakers would wander off for a break, lunch, or to study their ill-gotten gains, Axton and the others would engage in a bit of non-violent booby-trapping. It was a simple bit of spite at first, and nothing Axton couldn’t easily undo. A few precise fires set here and there in certain parts of the Suit, a few connectors and ports stripped of the special colored and shaped parts, and of course the act of turning the once perfectly ordered wiring system into a mess of epic proportions.

However, that eventually changed into sheer industrial sabotage. Axton wasn’t sure how far along the opposition’s project was, and the more that Franken II was dismantled the more Axton began to worry that the ‘secrets’ had gotten out. As such, eventually, Axton had felt that he had let the game go on long enough and pulled the nearly completely dismantled mech over to an Assembly Frame, repaired the damage using a cash-shop item, and then stored the mech away for safekeeping. When the opposition returned from their break and saw that ‘their’ tool had vanished, they of course knew exactly who was at fault for all the setbacks up till now.

And, predictably, they wanted to have some choice words with the one who stopped their attempts to learn something that even a toddler would have learned eventually. The SuitMakers kept quiet for a while, but eventually, they approached the trio with some very angry expressions on their faces and a few energy cutters in their hands.

…

“You can’t be serious.”

Donovan sat on a makeshift throne made of the mangled bodies of around seventy-odd NPCs. All of them had either been very young, beautiful, or just downright decent people before he had gotten his hands on them. Now? Now they were all dead; people who, had he not gotten involved, would have eventually made quite an impact in the game were now dead and their ‘fates’ had to be assigned to others by the GMs. But even then, he would simply have those people gathered so he could end them as well.

He wasn’t interested in the story, nor was he here in this game for loot or anything a normal Player would be interested in. This game was only on his schedule because it was a rare instance of a near-realistic simulated existence that would allow him to dive into his true passions. He was forbidden from engaging in his urges while in the real world, but here he could indulge his baser nature to its fullest. Add in his family’s fortune, and he could rule as a master of monsters just like him, a secret society that was equally unable to have their fun due to the strict rules that kept the oligarchs from enraging the multitudes that they ultimately feared so much.

His prior quotation was borne of his irritation. Not of the fact that he could no longer play with his targets immediately, but because his original target had slipped his grasp once again. He was vexed enough that the Beta had not broken him, and he was angered greatly that the idiot devs could not manage a simple task such as forcing that pleb to spawn where he had wished for him to.

Still, he had to be content that the dirty pleb could not hide his name or face. For him to be unable to change his form I the slightest made him far easier to track, and with his identification being equally unchanged, anyone who saw his name above his head would be able to target him freely.

“Unfortunately, Guild Master, we are not able to directly attack the area where that filthy pleb is located. We did, however, arrange for a few copies of our bounty to be circulated among the people there. It was beyond difficult, but we have confidence that we can PK him until he quits using the high-leveled NPCs there.”

“I don’t want him to quit.” Donovan growled. “I want him brought to me so I can break him. Once he is in my hands, the hidden programming of the game will forbid him, or any pleb Player for that matter, from logging out unless I give my explicit approval. I want to break him in this game so that he is broken outside of it as well!”

Donovan grabbed a goblet he had made on his own, the flesh of the victim’s head and their vacant, dead eyes still gazing upside down as the monster that had killed it took a swig of wine from the hollowed-out skull. He finished the last drops before dropping the goblet on the ground and letting it roll down the pile of victims he had amassed in his short time in-game.

“If that Rhodes bastard won’t let me send a hitman to end him in reality, I wonder how he’ll like it when his little pleb friend is broken by my hand and he and his family can’t do shit about it!”