Wryyy

"yeahhhhhh baby, now that's what we're talking about!"

Perseus slid on the grass of the river bank pumping his arms in the air. An excited smile covered his face as he thought about the huge responsibility he was just given. Most people would falter under how large it was, but not him, he was excited about it.

He was in charge of NEST, the information hub that would serve as his master, his and his brother's main source of information for most likely the rest of their time in this world, and the person who would be making sure that the information as accurate and on time. The one who would manage the hub was him, Perseus.

Perseus's momentum started to run out and soon he slid to a stop on the river bank. Staring down at the gentle shining river dancing and diligently running in the morning sunlight.

White lilies bloomed around the riverbank and the grass glistened with morning dew.

Perseus turned around to see his master Jason and Arjuna sitting on the top of the riverbank before it slopped down to the river.

Jason was leaning back with his hands behind him, letting his gaze wander up to the cloudy sky. While Arjuna let his eyes roam throughout the peaceful landscape.

Perseus's smile dropped ever so slightly as he looked up at the two, as he sat down at the edge of the river.

Perhaps with this new assignment, he would be worthy enough to stand next to them. To enjoy life just like those two. Ever since he was born, he had always felt this inferiority to them. Like he was never enough, he could never reach their level of prowess and skill. His master kept on increasing in skill and strength, faster than Perseus could ever keep up.

His brother seemed to be able to capture the hearts of anybody and anyone, gaining the favor and skill of many important people, and where was he? Just running a guild that his master had partially helped set up. Spending months on things that his master could finish in just a few days.

Perhaps that was why Perseus had a bit more ambition than the normal person.

Perseus shook his head trying to clear his head.

No, this assignment, this job, maybe if he did it well enough, he could feel like he was worthy enough to stand next to those two.

At that moment a single raindrop hit Perseus's hand. He stood up and looked at the sky, to see the morning sky completely covered in grey clouds.

"dang" he muttered "guess we really should get NEST started up"

Perseus turned to Jason and Arjuna and gave them a little wave while running up to them.

With Perseus's increased stats he easily reached the top within a few leaps and bounds. He had no idea what his new title did, it offered no description, so Perseus could only assume that it would reveal itself later.

Boops asked all of them simultaneously.

'Are you guys ready to launch NEST?'

All three of them looked at each other and nodded.

Boops continued

'I already went over this with you guys, but ill give you a short recap, all three of you, the highest-ranking people in the NEST system, must simultaneously agree to launch NEST, as the highest ranks in the NEST system, you can make any changes to the system, most of which are completely unrestricted, except for major ones like opening NEST which requires all three of you to agree on.'

The three of them looked at the screens displayed in front of them.

[Launch NEST?]

[yes/no]

Arjuna reached out with his finger and gently tapped on the yes button. Jason casually tapped it with the back of his hand, and Perseus swiped the yes button like a cat at a moth.

[All executive ranked admins have accepted the proposition, initiating NEST launch]

The screens in front of the three disappeared and pillars of blue light enclosed and shot up into the sky around the three of them, right as the grey clouds arrived at their location pouring down splatters of rain.

The blue light seemed to reflect off the rain droplets creating a light blue ambiance in the dark grey atmosphere.

Jason received a flux of notifications

[secret mission complete]

[you have launched your first information hub]

[+20,000 points]

[awarding one gatcha roll]

[+1 worldwide fame]

[new subsystems have been unlocked in the shop]

[note: extra rewards will be granted according to the growth of NEST]

Jason looked at Perseus with a grateful expression. If Perseus hadn't given him that idea, then perhaps he would miss out on all of this. With this massive influx of points, he could now invest and perhaps buy a few things to propel their plans for the future.

But the person that Jason was directing his gratitude towards wasn't thinking about how his single idea perhaps could bring his master and brother to exceptional heights. Instead, Perseus was thinking about how NEST could work in WOW.

In reality, it was pretty easy, since they had connections to the golden pig group, which specialized in intelligence, it would be easy to gather information on people in real life. But in-game, it was a whole different story

Huge companies and large mercenary groups which seemed to almost rule the outside world had no in-game power besides their numbers.

Information from geography, political spheres, and even in-game systems was almost completely unknown, with perhaps the most knowledgeable of all players being Jason, Perseus, and Arjuna, and of course, Perseus was going to take advantage of that, obviously, he could make a ton of money from it. But he had a feeling that perhaps they could gain something even more valuable than money from this venture.

Usually from a negotiating standpoint, Perseus would suffer just because of how small their influence was in reality. But in-game, it was quite the exact opposite, the guild master of the first guild, a person with influence in the underworld of Herdita, with dozens of NPCs under his command and many in-game resources in his hand. If WOW really was a second world to humankind, then Perseus needed to be respected and that was how his partnership with the golden pig group was working.

The President of the group, Ritichi, who Perseus had encountered quite a while ago, was only interested in money, willing to take any drastic measure to gain them. Of course, he had a very keen nose on whether it was a legitimate scheme or not, but when Perseus brought up the proposition of investing in the silver wings guild, Perseus could practically see him drooling the moment he proposed it. Already he was receiving copious amounts of support from the golden pig group, whether it be large sums of money to invest into the silver wings guild or the skilled players that they sent his way like the Parthenon party.

But the silver wings guild was much stronger than any company in-game, so the golden pig group could only help so much.

Perseus had to rely only on himself to get NEST set up in-game. He could easily transfer a few members of Jack's group into NEST, since the underworld had deep roots in information gathering, but the problem was the lack of area that they could cover in the game. Currently, they could only gather a large amount of information about Herdita and the City of Twilight where Arjuna was situated.

Perseus needed to think up a way to enable NEST to spread throughout the entire continent, and though most of the players would be satisfied with general information about the world, and how WOW worked. Soon more in-depth information would be required, anything from the political parties in a city to hints of a quest in the sewers, that was the information that was truly valuable and in order to do that, in order to find those out, Perseus needed operatives in each city.

But some of the territories in the Belusian kingdom were in ruin from monsters and bandits, in fact, his master Jason, had a mission to free many of the territories, how could he just hire NPCs and set up an information branch there?

The question was, how? Of course, he could hire people, but players barely had any footing in-game, for now, it was only NPCs that he could rely on.

A sudden spark seemed to light up Perseus's head and with a quick flip of his hand, his inventory opened, reaching in, Perseus felt around for a grey parchment. It cost a few points to take out, but Jason was giving them a portion of the points that they earned for him, so Perseus had plenty.

Raising up the kingdom map, Perseus looked at his location tracing his finger along with each territory, and the sudden empathy that Perseus had, blossomed in front of his eyes. He saw everything connect, the one thing that tied all of the territories together.

"The forest"

Perseus muttered to himself tracing his finger across the large green mass almost in the center of the Belusian kingdom. It crossed through or touched every single territory, it was by far one of the largest forests in the entire kingdom.

Perseus now knew what he needed to do, if he wanted to infiltrate the kingdom with NEST, he needed to rule the forest.