The First To Step Out Of Line

"And that's what crazy clan leader number one talked to me about," I say over the group call between Donna and Thirteen after returning to camp to inform both them and my team about the issue I was presented with.

My people were the first people I talked to about it and after some basic information checks on the guilds in question we decided that it might be worth moving forward with. One of the other clans has a spot on their main page where they list friend or ally clans and among these was Fallen Monochrome. A death warrant was almost issued on the spot.

Despite having been the person to go through with pushing the territory control idea, Mr. Thirteen soon says, "There's a different between forcing people to do what we want and then indiscriminately killing them, especially after making them do what we wanted. Only one clan put up any resistance to begin with, the others behaved themselves."

"A dog that does not bark will bite," I counter easily, more interested in directly making money while it was still available. "The clans that did not resist will probably come together to try and take out one of our alliance members and weaken our grip on the territory."

"Just because you don't like a neighbor's dog doesn't mean you can have it put down," Donna's somewhat cute voice argues over the call using my own morbid reference. "Until the dog attacks someone without reason, it's still a good boy. Don't give them a reason to attack and just wait. Someone is bound to crack under the pressure and lash out or just plain get ahead in the race."

"Ms. Donna is right," Mr. Thirteen agrees. "Besides, what is profitable for you may not be profitable for us. Our three clans already have several enemies from this territory raid while everybody and their grandma is going to have their eyes on you in the videos and information that continue spreading. Keep your head down and your cards in hand, kid."

They were not wrong, especially Little Thirteen. Just the fact that we were giving some of these clans the farming option instead of outright booting them could make us some future friends because others would have simply gone with the boot. Plus, any and every information available was probably being brokered as the others clans sought a way to leverage their own powers against mine.

Keeping my cards in hand was definitely good advice but the money-grubbing part of me just wanted to rake in upwards of half a million gold. The action loving part of me wanted to see how strong these other clans currently were in comparison to my strengths. However, that small conscientious part of my brain knew that I was simply taking advantage of my own strengths.

So, it was with a heavy heart that I sent a friend request to Mistress and then started another in-game call to inform her that I had to at least wait until the situation settled before making more waves. Since we had a separate deal for carrying her and her people to the supposed raid boss, she was not upset by this. However, since I would not be clearing any clans on her order but because of the already existing alliance I would no longer be getting paid for such events even if they took place.

There went my half-mil-minimum!

Since my quick money scheme was no more, I decided to focus on my usual money-making methods and simply return to the forge to kill time by mass producing various steel bars to make different weapons from. The steel was the same alloy we left Sierra while using so it would be safe enough to sell. We had already done two raid attempts and pushed back a siege today so there was little else to actually do.

The rest of my team were divided between the other stations or just lazing around the kitchen enjoying themselves. In the time that I was gone they had all put in quite a bit of effort to raise their profession skills so I was not too bothered by their relaxing. On the other hand, their familiars were all hard at work sparring with one another with magic or weapons or just practicing their archery skills.

By the time my group retired to the command tent for the night we had finally worked through most of our stockpile of materials. I alone had used up all of our iron and alloy components producing ten and twenty-pound bars of steel that could be used for making anything.

The next day was spent in similar fashion as I anxiously awaited updates to know whether or not I would get to have any fun. My morning was spent in the forge hammering out basic and ten-layer weapons while the others continued processing the rest of our alchemy and tailoring goods until there was simply nothing left besides making finished products.

In the afternoon our raid attempt refreshed and we got to work, entering the lane to appear at the tenth outpost in front of the fort. The others fought as hard as ever while Cweeper, Hermes, and I just relaxed by the side like chaperons. Even though my own rewards at the end of the raid attempt would not be much, I was still getting experience from their kills so I was in no rush to take action during what I considered their own training.

After having claimed an entire raid attempt for myself the day before it could have been offensive for me to take the rewards from my own team right now.

Once we had spent an entire hour farming waves of two hundred trolls every three minutes for a total of four thousand trolls, we were automatically transported back outside of the lane where the others promptly returned to work or leisure. I just went back to the forge and instead started working on a series of one-hundred-layer weaponry.

Some people from Duality and Thirteenth Incorporated came by to make reports about the other clans in the early evening while my team was sitting down for supper. Only two of the other four clans had even started approaching their troll forts. While this might not seem like much considering how long these groups had been here it still filled me with a bit of anticipation.

Any of those four clans who tried to go beyond their forts would be breaking the rules that we set for them. Once they shit on our 'good intentions' of letting them farm the raid, their would be nothing to protect them but one another. Since we had formed an alliance to suppress the other clans it was only obvious they were try to band together to resist us.

Since I already spent my day exhausting myself in the forge I spent my evening in the kitchens working on recipes, exercising my alchemical knowledge by combining medicinal and magical plants in regular food dishes to test their effects. The results were usually good but I for the first time made several crafting failures. This was less due to the materials and more from the fact that I was usually making fix or six dishes at once and would leave one untended for too long.

My biggest issue with these foods was pricing them. How much should I actually sell foods for and how much should I price the recipe of such dishes at? Most of the lesser foods I made only used leftover products from the Canfor region so they would, obviously, be cheaper in that area while in others they could be seen as exotic.

Other foods, though, used a combination of ingredients or just plan winter goods from the Winter Wood. For now, since there were only so many groups of players from different places accessing this particular patch of map, these foods could be seen as expensive and hard to come by. If I were to sell them back in Sierra they would be top shelf products.

The next day, anxious and itching to test my abilities, I spent my time out behind camp in the large open ground of the plateau depression practicing magical skills and working out new spells. My first goal was to increase the efficiency of my earthen magic such as raising rock walls and fine tuning the spell to create a bulwark of earthen spikes and spears.

By the end of the first hour I could simply wave a hand while channeling mana to perform a similar stone version of the ice magic trolls used to shoot out a wall of frozen spikes and spears. Then I moved on from one element to the next, developing the same field controlling spell in fire and lightning and air. Ice element, like earth, was only too easy to learn in this environment and I saved it for last.

When noon finally rolled around and it was time to once again head into the lane I led the way happily, excited to put my new magic skills to use. All of these field skills came with a high cost of at least fifty mana per ten yards of wall or spikes but they were also all around level three and only had a few seconds of cooldown because they were self-taught abilities.

The trolls in the raid had no idea what hit them. Their already disorganized rush of bodies were further scattered about by towering walls of flames or arcing tracks of almost stationary lightning bolts that stretched out along the ground. With three minutes in between each wave, I had no reason to hold back my field skills at all so that they others could freely massacre.

Not long after the lane reset and we were sent back to camp the messages that I had been waiting for arrived. Not by call but instead were delivered in person by Donna and Little Thirteen themselves. As expected, the largest of the other four clans who occupied the sixth top clan position had shown their true colors.

They had reached the twelfth outpost in their lanes before the time limit was up.

"Are we making a joint effort as a show of force or do we just hit them with zombies?" Donna asks after a few brief minutes.

"We're the bullies, we'll handle it," I say somewhat cheerfully, reaching to my left and right to rest my hands on the shoulders of my demigods. "You guys just get ready to tell them 'I told you so' when they start bitching and moaning on the forums about us. If they try to put bounties on us, too, then I'll just add them to my future playlist."

Not just Ms. Donna and Mr. Thirteen but even my own team seemed a little surprised by this. Even though they knew I had the power to wipe a clan from the territory it seemed like they were not expecting for Tragedy's Travelers to do the actual heavy lifting.

"Are you sure about that?" Little Thirteen asks with a serious expression that emphasizes the wrinkles on his currently knitted brown. "I can send a party of at least thirty to provide some cover for you when you need it."

Shaking my head, I say, "No, the three of us can handle it. If you want to provide cover, send your spare party here to my camp to provide some cover for my team. They probably would not need it, but if the other clans decide to take advantage of the plague's house when I'm not home then it could be some serious numbers that show up here. Stonewall alone probably counts for thirty or fifty people but there could be several hundred knocking on our door soon enough."

Plus, I was taking my personal boss monsters with me which would be a large chunk of our defense and offense.

"We'll be fine," Go says regardless of the risk despite looking unhappy with a big frown on his half-orc face. "We might be without a monarch but we're still Plagued Commanders. Are YOU going to be okay? These are players who fight as they please, not mobs controlled by artificial intelligence."

Shrugging casually with an uncertain but cheerful smile, I say, "No clue, but that's why I'm doing it. you're the guy who said they wanted a positive alignment so I can't really let you help bully other players to begin with. I'm the bad guy and you're the leader on paper for just that reason. Just relax and watch a villain at work."

I could tell from the way he flatly glared at me that he was less than pleased with this response but there was little he could do about it. While it was true that these players could turn out to be more capable than I thought, beating me was not the only way to protect themselves. If our camp was destroyed then we would be wiped and I needed my team here to make sure that did not happen.

The point of the strongest clan breaking the rule we imposed was probably just for the sake of drawing the strongest forces of one or more groups to a single front while the other clans come together to attack our camps strategically. Of course, if I could wipe the enemy camp before they can wipe ours, it would not be a problem.

My party alone should be capable of at least this much.

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