48 We have a problem

After Lewis left, Michael and Jennifer remained quiet for a while. Michael turned to Jennifer.

" What do you think they will do?" He asked. She had much more experience dealing with big mega-corporations than him.

" You do not have to worry Michael. Honestly, do not have too many options since we are an independent private company. Normally they try to manipulate the shareholders or the companies that we have deals with, but that will not work in our case. They might pressure the city government to make things harder for us. However, since we have Cindy there should not be any big problems." Jennifer explained.

She was finally understanding why Michael chose to start a gaming company. There really was a lot of freedom and independence.

Michael listened to Jennifer's response and calmed down. " Whatever happens, we will get through it." he assured Jennifer.

They parted ways and resumed work. Michael ended up going home early since it was Friday. He wanted to focus more on his training because his breakthrough was coming up. Michael arrived home and decided to spend most of the weekend training and meditating.

Two days later, Michael was still in deep meditation.

"Ring Ring Ring"

Michael scrunched his eyebrows in anger and checked his phone. It was Arjun Kapoor. He had given all the team leads his personal numbers to call in case of an emergency. Michael had a bad premonition; why would his server team lead call him on a Sunday night?

"Hello"

"Boss sorry to disturb you, but we have a problem!" Arjun replied over the phone. He was clearly very agitated.

" Its okay, take a deep breath and tell me what the issue is after you calm down." Michael replied.

" Our servers got attacked and are offline now. It looks like a DDoS attack." Arjun replied.

Although Michael was not a cybersecurity expert, he knew what a DDoS attack was. It was an attack where hackers would flood servers to overload the servers and try to crash them. The servers would not be able to tell the fake users apart from the real users. Somebody that was well organized was attacking his servers.

" Well, What do you recommend we do?" Michael asked Arjun. After all, it was better to let professionals solve these kinds of problems.

" Well, I can go into office now and restart the servers and make a quick fix. I can only perform a long-term solution once my team is gathered tomorrow morning." Arjun suggested.

" If that is the best option then go ahead and do it. I will let the security know that you are coming." Michael gave approval.

" Alright boss, I can have the servers back up in 30 minutes." Arjun replied.

" By the way Arjun, How did you know the servers were down?" Michael asked.

" Boss, I always check the servers to make sure that they are working properly. Even when I am home and off-duty. " Arjun replied while scratching his head. He felt responsible to make sure that Capos was working fine. He was motivated by the development team at Eminence Gaming. He wanted to make sure that the company grows and did well. He was slowly starting to identify himself with this rising company.

Michael smiled at Arjun's response. It seemed like his investment in talents was starting show results. He hung up the phone and thought about the server attack. Perhaps, it was because he was still in a meditative state, but he was not worried about the attack.

Michael was more worried about his breakthrough. He could tell that it would be more challenging than all the other times. As long as he could break through to supreme tier, all others problems would be insignificant. Once his stats are nine times that of an average human, who did he have to fear? Not to mention, he would have access to new skills and goods in the store.

Even if he lost capos he could make another game faster because of his increased intelligence and experience. Michael resumed his meditation and let all his problems float away.

The next morning

A middle-aged man was sleeping in the office of Eminence Gaming. Arjun did not even go home. He had stayed up all night fighting the hackers and doing his best to make sure that the server stayed online.

Arjun was astonished at the expertise of the attackers. The attackers were clearly a large group that was part of a professional organization. He had never experienced an attack of this scale at a gaming company. These sort of organizations usually went after banks and government websites. He wondered why they were targeting Eminence gaming?

The employees started arriving and were nervous when they found out about the attack. Michael also arrived and immediately had a meeting with the server team.

" So what is the situation?" Michael asked Arjun.

" I have bought us a couple of hours but the attacks will probably resume soon. These hackers are clearly part of a professional group." Arjun replied in a despondent tone.

" So what suggestions do you guys have?" Michael asked the Team.

They all looked at each other and turned to Arjun.

Arjun sighed, he knew what they wanted to say. " The best option right now is to migrate the servers and rent servers from a company like Koogle. It will be expensive but they have the best servers."Arjun explained. He felt his pride as a server engineer fade away. Now the company would have to rely on a third party tech firm.

Michael furrowed his eyebrows. " How much do you think it will cost to rent servers from Koogle?"

" It will vary depending on the number of users and other factors. However, I would expect our costs to rise by about 10%. But that is the cost of paying for the best servers on earth." Arjun explained.

Michael did not want to give up 10% of his profits to Koogle but he did not really have another option right now. Eminence gaming did not have the capital to build their own secure server farm right now. Therefore, they could only rent servers from others.

Michael gave Arjun the permission to rent servers from Koogle. The server team did not waste any time. They immediately got started on the migration. Arjun was on the phone trying to negotiate a deal with Koogle.

Rachel approached Michael. This time he could already tell why she was here.

" Tell them that we will fix the issue soon and give them another free month." Michael replied before she could even get started.

Rachel nodded and went back to deal with the flood of player complaints.

Right now the office of Eminence gaming looked like it went through a hurricane. Every department was slammed with work; those that were not busy were helping deal with player complaints. Jennifer and Cindy were helping Arjun negotiate with Koogle.

Michael treated this incident like a trial for his company. If they could overcome it then they would come out stronger.