Bart had felt satisfaction in Gregorvich’s death, but it had been fleeting. While all of the other villagers hunted the now infamous man in the days following the assassination, Bart retrieved Soul Sunder from the woods where Brent had deposited it, and began focusing his attention on defeating Mike. He now had a tool that merely had to prick the Zone Boss, but having seen his prowess in battle, he knew he wouldn’t be able to accomplish it.

After several days of ripping up unusable plans, he decided to go check in on his stand at the Arena. A new fan favorite was trying to defeat the Arena, but being much weaker than Gregorvich, he died on stage 8, shredded by a flock of lizard-like birds. The blood thirsty crowd cheered in delight at his unsightly demise, and Bart couldn’t help but join in as he stood next to his stand. Nothing quite satiated his need for superiority like violence. A familiar face caught his eye as he watched the entertainment, and his mood instantly soured. Grawl. The pea-brained man who had first refused to pay up on his wager.

How could Bart find any happiness when there were still many who would mock him? What was power if it only commanded respect to his face, but allowed for slights behind his back? Was death even a good punishment? How was it fair that those who would mock him simply ceased to exist, when he had to continue dealing with the stain they had put upon his reputation?

These thoughts plagued him the whole of the night, causing him to spiral back to the depressed state he had found himself in before Gregorvich’s death. Sometime near morning, a plan began to form, a way he could abuse the System to gain loyal followers as well as prestige.

He chose his next targets carefully, 3 siblings that had formed a party together. The two brothers were overly fond of the Arena, and were eager to accept his invitation to the mob fights. Using an accelerated timetable, he soon had the now very soul-bound brothers brought to his offices to discuss payment. His ask was simple, he wanted Grawl publicly eviscerated, with enough pain to make him scared to respawn.

The brothers had gawked at him then, as if seeing for the first time the calculating evil that encompassed his very being, and the last vestiges of their human nature emboldened them to accept the 1000 year punishment of being destroyed by the System rather than giving into one so disgusting. Clearly, he had not made them as desperate as Brent had been, but he had come prepared for that.

Extracting Soul Sunder, he allowed them to Analyze it before he proceeded to tell them, in great detail, how their default of payment would also force him to target the third member of their family, their sister. While the brothers had gotten caught up in the hubbub of gambling and bloodshed, their sister had focused on improving her skills, and they were both excessively proud of her. With her welfare now in question, they had no choice but to accede to Bart’s wishes.

The assault happened the next day at the Arena, when the jumped Grawl upon his entry. The boisterous crowd was shocked to silence, but had failed to step in and help before the two brothers had completed their task and fled. Since Grawl hadn’t been permanently killed, the brothers bounty was quite a bit smaller than Brent’s, and no large arrow appeared to direct others to their location. Rather, anyone who saw them would get a notification that they were sanctioned kills and were worth a substantial reward.

The two days following their assault on Grawl, the brothers had become increasingly uneasy, the constant need to hide out in one of Bart’s larger storage units was taking its toll on them. Whenever they neared their breaking point, Bart was able to point back to their contracts and the consequences that would happen to them and their sister if they defied him. Over the course of 48 hours, Bart forced them to forget the System bounty on their heads and emboldened them sufficiently to execute Grawl as soon as he respawned. The System had responded in kind, doubling the reward set for their execution, and only Bart’s continued threats were enough to keep them in line.

It was amazing the power a Soul Contract had over a person. Despite the hatred with which they initially viewed Bart, they were impotent to do anything to him. He was invincible to them, and he watched as their anger changed to fear and then subservience in only a few days. When Grawl respawned, they were there waiting. Their mission went less unchecked the second time, having occurred at the point of respawn and not at the Arena. The two brothers had barely made it safely back to the warehouse, after fighting through a few adventurers that tried to claim their bounty, and their fear once again mounted.

Bart did his best to assuage them with continual assurances that more hands would soon join their brotherhood. His words proved prophetic. Bart rapidly increased those bound to him in a similar manner as the brothers, focusing his efforts on the more delinquent villagers, those that had sought to cope with the new world by distracting themselves with the gambling and bloodshed that the Arena offered. Two turned into twenty, twenty became fifty, until over the course of a few weeks, Bart was able to gain more than three hundred followers. At first, most had joined unwillingly, each devoted to the cause to avoid the harm that would come from breaking their Soul Contracts, and the looming threat of Soul Sunder destroying those closest to them. But before long, there were others who willingly joined the brotherhood, seeking the protection and belonging that came from belonging to a group. This core of strength became his Observers.

With their swelling numbers, the Observers no longer had to hide, but were able to roam in packs throughout the village, cowing any smaller group of adventurers from tangling with them. Under Bart’s direction, they had looted and destroyed all of Bart’s competitors, making his stores the only way to buy goods from the System.

Six weeks after Gregorvich’s death, a group of adventurers had risen against the Observers, but they had been butchered, due in large part to the number of people who were slowly being forced to pay for Bart’s goods with Soul Contracts. Bart hadn’t required them to fight for him yet, but he did forbid them from fighting against him.

After the battle, his control became complete, and his focus turned towards taking down Mike. He had been somewhat surprised by the ease with which he had taken over the village, but it turned out that most adventurers wanted to claim the reward for killing the Zone Boss, and were much more willing to join in on the campaign than do any of Bart’s dirty work. With every single villager behind him, Bart had much more confidence in the success of his plan.

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Twelve weeks after Gregorvich’s death, Bart marched with the entirety of Noobtown towards the hobgoblin valley, and his heart swelled with pride as he gazed upon the length of the marching bodies. Each and every one of them had signed a Soul Contract to follow his orders in defeating the ex Navy Seal.

His finger slipped into his tunic and found the top of Soul Sunder and the comfort that the blade’s presence brought him. The dagger's existence was unknown to all but his Observers, and Bart was counting on it and the innocuous ring on his right pointer finger to ensure that he alone claimed Mike’s bounty. The ring had been his most expensive purchase from the System interface, and had only become available in the past two weeks. Not even his Observers knew it was anything more than a generic Ring of Strength, a fairly common ring that many used to augment their stats.

His impending victory was enough to lessen the hatred he usually felt. This was the end of his time in the Noob Zone. He had put in place enough Soul Contracts to ensure the continued support of his employees, and after the invasion and claiming the bounty, he would be expanding his business ventures in the wider world.

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Junior Administrator had watched with pride as Bart slowly took over the town. They were unsure why the shopkeeper hadn’t used the blade they had given him again, but they were grateful for it. Only the crew of the ship truly knew how tenuous the mere existence of the blade was. If even one more assimilant was killed with it, System Administrator would be forced to step in and extract the weapon, even if it meant giving away their existence.

Junior Administrator had also been very busy over the last few iterations. Whenever the majority of the crew was around, they carried out their duty to uncover the truth of Soul Sunder with feigned zeal, but when the crew was dispersed, they had slowly been making friends with all who opposed the System Leader’s captaincy.

Soon the anomaly would be dealt with, and they could reveal their insight in making it come to pass. The final piece was to ensure their own protection should the plan go awry, and to do so, they had one more crew-member to ingratiate themselves with. The Keeper of the Logs.