Chapter 46

Yet another chapter! And a brief interlude to never-ending editing.

Seriously, this is my least favorite part. Maybe right after marketing lol.

Also, I had some fun with Alex's arc in this one. He deserved a win IMO.

Chapter 47 - Convergence

Cerillion Control Room

Robert

Robert’s head hurt.

Actually... everything hurt.

Twenty-four hours. Twenty-four gods damn hours of crisis management, and the chaos just kept escalating. The control room looked like a war zone, the staff constructing a towering pyramid of empty energy drink cans, and the trash piled high with takeout boxes. It almost felt like home—at least, what home looked like before Claire had forced him to clean up his apartment.

Above him, the main screen displayed what could only be described as “controlled insanity.” A woman dressed in gleaming legendary gear—Karen, according to her profile—was modeling her new line of “dungeon-wear” to her viewers while her five-year-old son systematically dismembered skeletal monsters and zombies in the background.

“—and remember, murder mommies, coordinating your dungeon-wear isn’t selfish, it’s self-care!” Karen chirped. As she spoke, a skeletal child lunged at her from behind, its claws scraping across her armor. The air mana gems fused into the metal fired with a pulse of amber energy, and a torrent of wind sent the undead hurtling back across the room.

She smiled broadly, not even reacting to the attack. “It’s just like putting on your own oxygen mask first on an airplane. After all, if you die, who’s going to respawn the kiddos?”

“Mommy, I just hit level 456!” her son Tommy called out from behind her.

The camera panned to reveal a scene of absolute carnage. The boy’s armor had been reduced to tattered rags, and he stood amid a heaping mound of undead. Bones, skulls, and body parts were strewn around him in piles so thick he formed his own macabre crater. The boy held an oversized dagger in each hand—the metal covered in thick white dust.

Not a trace of guilt flickered across Karen’s face. Instead, her lips split into a broad, proud smile. “That’s great, honey! If you hit level 460, I’ll take you for snacks!”

“And remember the most important part about the Farm,” she continued, turning back to the camera. “The less gear your kiddos are carrying, the more mana they’ll have, and the faster they can farm. That leaves extra time to finish up their schoolwork—taking full advantage of the time compression. You need to keep those levels rolling in. For their good... of course.”

“Jesus Christ,” Robert muttered, rubbing his temples. “Parent of the year right here. Surely no one is buying this…” he trailed off as the screen updated with viewership metrics from vermillion, his face going blank.

The stream’s viewer count had just ticked past a million. The donation ticker was spinning so fast the numbers blurred together. Comments flooded the chat, requests for parenting advice, pleas for details about the dungeon’s location, and heated debates about whether letting children farm experience in a dungeon constituted abuse... or a return to traditional parenting values. “A time when children were expected to contribute to the family and used to “play” outside.”

That was a direct quote

“The world is going to hell,” he muttered.

“It sure is, but you still need to eat,” a voice spoke up from his elbow.

Robert nearly jumped out of his skin as a coffee cup materialized on his desk. Claire stood beside him, holding a paper bag that smelled suspiciously like actual food—not the vending machine garbage he’d been surviving on. Robert just gaped at that precious offering, his mouth moving faster than his brain. Which is probably why he said this:

“I love you.”

He froze as he saw the shocked expression on Claire’s face. It took him a full second or two to mentally replay what he’d just said—to figure out his mistake.

“Not exactly how I expected to hear those words, but I guess it’s fitting,” she quipped, a small, amused smile pulling at her lips.

The other technicians in the room had even paused to look over, clearly intrigued by the exchange. Woops. That was the fatigue getting to him. A glare from Robert, and they were all suddenly very interested in their monitors again. Although he noticed the betting board shift, and a new line item appeared there: “Robert’s Love Life: 1 to 10,000.”

“Hilarious,” he muttered. “There goes keeping a low profile.”

“It’s fine,” Claire interjected, taking a seat beside him. “I’m too tired to care. What’s the worst that happens? George fires us, and we finally get a vacation?”

“Oh, poor us,” Robert said dryly, returning her smile.

Now that he was really looking at her, Claire looked as exhausted as he felt. Dark circles under her eyes and her usually impeccable hair in a loose bun, strands escaping and curling around her face. She rubbed her temples, mirroring his own gesture.

“I take it things aren’t going any better on your end?” he asked.

Claire grimaced. “See for yourself,” she offered as she tapped at the console.

The display above the room fractured into several screens showcasing the Mile High Club arena. Promotional banners flashed across the display, all of them announcing the upcoming exhibition match between Finn and Eliza and <Death and Taxes>. They were even accompanied by face-off reels between the participants. Apparently, she was pulling out all the stops.

“They have you doing marketing now?” Robert mumbled around a mouthful of sandwich.

Claire sighed. “Not by choice. Vermillion Live wants to charge premium rates for virtual attendance, streaming directly from the stadium. They’re expecting millions of viewers. People will apparently pay quite a bit for virtual box seats,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“That’s a lot of work for one arena match, even if it involves two avatars,” Robert replied, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What’s the deal?”

“Yeah, well, Vermillion’s under a lot of pressure to deliver something spectacular. George wants a distraction from the PR nightmare and protests here in the real world. If it’s not the crowd calling for the game to shut down, it’s players complaining about being trapped in the elemental cities or having no way to level up. We’re caught between a rock and a bunch of nerds.”

Robert motioned at the digital betting board projected along one wall of the Control Room. “If it helps, the staff have the odds in a dead heat for your match.” He pulled up network traffic on his terminal. “And the views look good. Maybe it’ll work.”

However, Claire’s expression was troubled. “If only it were that simple. This isn’t a permanent fix—it’s just a distraction.”

Her eyes flit to the main screen, where Karen’s stream continued in one of the many panes. Her son Tommy was cutting a swath through the undead horde entirely by himself. Claire’s expression was hard to read. “Do you think Jason’s plan will work? This new dungeon?” she asked quietly, her voice almost hopeful.

Robert chewed his lip. “Maybe. It’s Jason, and he always has a plan. If anyone can pull off something this audacious, it’s him, but…” he trailed off uncertainly.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to pile on, not when Claire already looked stressed.

“But what?” she prompted, her eyes narrowing.

“Well... see for yourself,” he replied, tapping at the console.

The screen above them merged back into a single massive display, one filled with player movement patterns across the game world. Each player was denoted by a color representing their affinity. The result was rainbow rivers flowing roughly south from the Crystal Reach and Twilight Throne, all of them converging on a single point—a dense cluster that glowed bright as the sun.

“Don’t tell me that’s Jason’s dungeon,” Claire said, her eyes widening.

“Wish I could,” Robert grunted, taking another bite. “Jason better have one hell of a plan, because he has a huge number of players heading his way.”

Claire glanced at him in surprise. “Wait, you don’t know what he’s planning? You? Robert Graham? Are you slipping in your old age?” she teased.

“Hey now,” Robert protested, running his fingers self-consciously through the hint of gray along his temples. “I may be getting older, but I’m not that old. I’ve just been busy. There are too many fires—even for me.”

“Never thought I’d see the day,” she replied before her expression sobered, her eyes turning back to that screen. “But what’s causing this migration?” Claire murmured

Robert sighed. “Those fires I was talking about. Jason and Alex are trying to manufacture a war between the Crystal Reach and Twilight Throne and the Originals that control those cities now. Well, technically, it’s mostly Alex handling the war part,” he amended grudgingly.

She shook her head in disbelief. “Alex? Alex Lane? Are we talking about the same person? How is he managing that?”

“Surprisingly well,” Robert admitted. “See for yourself...”

He trailed off as the massive display shifted again.

The screen now showed the tattered remains of what had once been Nephilim villagers. Robert had seen many digital corpses. Many examples of violence. However, this—this was something else altogether... even after watching Jason for weeks.

It wasn’t the death that made his stomach turn.

It was what had been done to the corpses afterward.

The bodies had been crafted into a grotesque shrine that dominated the center of the clearing. Femurs formed twisted spires, ribcages were woven together into archways, and skulls had been carefully positioned to create a foundation that supported a gruesome altar. At its center, a figure that might have once been the goddess of light lay prostrate, her form reconstructed entirely from the remains of her fallen followers.

There was an angry fury behind that construction that went well beyond roleplay or in-game hijinks. Where Jason’s strategies had a certain dramatic flair, this screamed of raw, violent rage. It felt personal, like Alex was trying to send a message to more than just the Nephilim.

“Good lord,” Claire whispered, her hand covering her mouth. Even the techs had gone still—staring up at the horror broadcast on screen.

“Yeah, the Nephilim didn’t take it well either,” Robert continued in a grim tone. “It’s unclear if it was the death of their own or the sacrilege against their goddess that set them off.” He grimaced. “Either way, they... escalated.”

Another tap and the screen showed a crystalline island drifting slowly across the sky, one nearly as large as a city block. The camera was shot from a few miles away, showing the clear boundary between the domains of light and dark—the way thick swaying grass transformed into dry and dusty dirt. At first, Robert had assumed it was a base of operations. Like a floating keep.

He’d, uh, he’d been wrong. The island was different from the others that made up the Crystal Reach. It was composed almost entirely of that murky crystal that was so common among Nephilim architecture. They’d refined the crude gem as best they could, cutting it into a geometric jewel and polishing the normally milky crystal to a mirror sheen. It lacked the pristine quality of the mines below Pax, but what they lacked in quality, they made up for with quantity.

The result was a gleaming gemstone that floated through the sky. Nephilim floated around it and strode across its surface. They’d even built a keep atop the structure—one they used as their base of operations, the other islands in the flotilla arranged around it in a defensive formation.

They called it the “Dawnbreaker.”

It was almost beautiful… until you saw it in action.

The display shifted, the panel splitting into multiple views. In the distance, an undead border village bustled with activity. Skeletal workers tended to bone gardens, ghoulish merchants hawked their wares in the marketplace, and zombie children played in the dusty streets—a picture of macabre domesticity. One perched nearly 50 miles away from that crystalline island.

Meanwhile, that gleaming fortress rotated slowly. It absorbed the sunlight that shone down upon it, that light filtering through its depths, refracting and growing in intensity until the entire structure glowed like a second sun. Then that energy began to gather at the focal point, intensifying rapidly as it was funneled toward a giant telescoping lens operated by the Nephilim.

On the ground, a few undead looked up with hollow eye sockets, sensing something amiss.  A few even pointed or gestured at that bright spot along the horizon.

But it was already too late.

A beam erupted from that island in a sudden flash. There was no travel time. No sound. No time to run. It turned night into day in an instant. And, where it touched, stone and bone alike simply ceased—not destroyed, but transformed into superheated plasma that expanded outward in a shockwave of devastation that briefly blinded the camera like a nuclear blast.

When the light mercifully faded, nothing remained of the undead village but a perfectly circular crater of fused glass and ash. It had been erased in one strike.

A hushed silence filled the Control Room. They hadn’t seen destruction of this scale since... well, since Jason had attacked Sandscrit.

This was the power of the Original avatars.

“They obliterated the entire settlement from their side of the border,” Robert continued, his voice flat. “No warning. No negotiation. Just... complete annihilation.”

A pause and then. “Needless to say, the undead reaction was swift and brutal.”

Claire stared at the screens in horror. “And this is all Alex’s doing?”

“As best we can tell,” Robert replied.

He switched the display back to the migration patterns. “Which is making Jason’s problem worse—all these travelers are also fleeing the full-blown war that is breaking out between the factions. The choice is simple. They either stay in the elemental cities, die, and get locked out of the game during their respawn… or they roll the dice, braving the wilds. And with streams like Karen’s advertising this new dungeon? Well, it’s the only reasonable place for them to flee.”

This time, Robert brought up the betting board on-screen, the odds shifting in real-time. Jason’s chances were tick, tick, ticking downward with each passing second. Apparently, Robert wasn’t alone in his skepticism. Most of the techs didn’t think he could scale his dungeon to accommodate that many players or counter a weapon like that.

“Can you not just see inside the dungeon?” Claire asked, waving at the tiny window showing Karen’s stream. “Why can’t you figure out his plan?”

Robert grimaced. “Jason is blocking our cameras. Best guess is that he’s using an in-game ability. All of our feeds are just filled with these impenetrable black fields. We can’t see anything except the streams.” His eyes shifted to the flickering emerald server stacks in the room nearby. “We’re also getting some… interference. Some parts of his dungeon are completely inaccessible.”

He didn’t need to say what he was thinking aloud: Alfred was involved.

Robert sighed. “Like I said, I really hope the kid has a plan.”

Claire frowned, studying the data onscreen. “Even so, how is this sustainable? I’ve heard rumors that the Originals are viewing player streams. All it takes is one person showing the Originals one of Karen’s videos. One traveler with proof that this is all a setup.”

Robert went quiet, suddenly finding his sandwich extremely interesting.

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Robert... what did you do?”

“Well, about that—”

“Detain him.”

Robert’s head snapped up, his sandwich falling from limp fingers as security personnel emerged from the elevator. George strode into the Control Room flanked by Ryan Vance and a dozen more security officers in black uniforms, their faces obscured by reflective visors. Unfortunately, his finger was pointing straight at Robert.

Before he could react, he was suddenly lifted from his chair by the guards—the men manhandling him like he weighed nothing. His face was smashed down into the desk, and his arms were wrenched behind him, zip ties cinching around his wrists.

“I know I’ve been tied up with work, but this is taking things a little literally, isn’t it?” Robert managed to quip, staring mournfully at his crushed sandwich as he was hauled back to his feet.

“Always with the jokes, but I’m not playing around this time,” George snapped.

He looked furious. This wasn’t just posturing, apparently.

“What is this about?” Robert grumbled, wincing as the ties cut into his wrists.

George’s expression was glacial. “Don’t play dumb. You know exactly what you did. You shut down stream sharing in-game for twenty-four hours? The Vermillion Live director is fucking livid.” Robert’s mind flailed, his eyes going wide. He’d done what now?

The CEO didn’t give him time to respond. His voice cut through the room like a blade. “I’ve put up with a lot of your shit, Robert, but this is the last straw. This company can’t handle this disruption right now. We need the distraction.”

He rounded on Claire, who’d gone pale. “Did you know about this?”

“I—no, I had no idea,” she managed to squeak. She looked terrified.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Robert protested, struggling against the restraints, his own amusement shifting to anger—outrage. “You told me to do this!”

George hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty crossing his features. “I most certainly did not.”

“You did,” Robert snapped back, glaring at him. “And I can prove it. Uncuff me and I’ll show you the email myself.”

A tense moment lingered in the Control Room, the staff all staring, Robert tied up, Claire pale and wide-eyed. George considering. Yet Robert didn’t relent, holding George’s gaze evenly.

The CEO nodded to the guards. “You have one opportunity.”

The zip-ties fell away, and Robert’s ass plopped back down in his chair, his fingers flying across his keyboard. Within moments, the main display showed an email thread from George’s official account, timestamped, with clear directives to disable stream sharing.

“This came from your console at—” Robert checked the timestamp “—3:47 AM.”

“I didn’t send that—” George cut off, turning to Ryan. “Where was I then?”

Ryan consulted the Core on his wrist, cross-referencing personnel logs, his brow furrowed. “Sir, you weren’t in the building. Your keycard shows you left at 11:30 PM the previous evening.”

George’s brow furrowed, his gaze drifting upward to the screens still displaying the carnage along the Twilight Throne-Crystal Reach border. Among the chaos, barely visible in the corner of one feed, a familiar figure moved through the ranks of Nephilim soldiers carrying buckets of water. He was difficult to notice, at first. Not dressed in sparkling armor or grandstanding in front of the troops. Just covered in dirt and keeping his head down.

At least, in one world…

“Which means it had to be Alex,” George said quietly.

A long pause stretched through the room. “He was the only one who could have had access to my keycard and office. He must have memorized my password,” George continued, almost to himself. His gaze rounded on Robert. “Why would he do this?”

Robert’s eyes darted to Claire, then back up to those screens. “Well, uh, I can hazard a guess. He needed to suppress knowledge of Jason’s dungeon among the Originals. He only asked me to disable stream sharing inside the game; everything else is still online.”

“Show me.” That was all George said.

Robert obliged, the screen shifting back through a familiar gruesome montage—showcasing the escalation between the two factions. George barely reacted to the horrific shrine or the aftermath, only a faint twitch of an eyebrow. And when Robert finished, a sudden silence descended upon the Control Room. All eyes were on the CEO.

“I believe Alex is behind the conflict between the Crystal Reach and Twilight Throne,” Robert explained, his tone cautious. “He orchestrated the war to create a diversion, allowing Jason to funnel players toward his dungeon without interference from the Originals.”

A deep breath and then, “He must have impersonated you to buy time. A day here in the real world gives him four days in-game. Enough time to escalate the conflict. By the time the Originals figure it out, it’ll be too late. A huge number of players will have already arrived at the dungeon and begun leveling, and it would take the Originals several more days to respond, even once they discovered the deception. It’s not easy to unwind a war—not with the casualties that have already occurred. It was a clever plan...ruthless really,” he admitted.

Robert shook his head. “Frankly, I’m surprised. I never knew the kid had it in him.” His eyes were locked on that screen. “Lately, it feels like he’s a different person.”

George’s jaw tightened at those words, his piercing blue eyes shifting back to Robert. “No, he’s definitely my son.”

Robert watched George’s face carefully. Something was shifting in the CEO’s expression as he absorbed Alex’s plan. Not anger—something closer to pride maybe?

What the fuck is wrong with this family? Robert wondered, not for the first time.

He almost made a stupid joke, but stopped himself as he saw Claire shaking her head. She didn’t look amused. She looked petrified. This was exactly what she’d been talking about. George was on edge, his company’s future dangling by a thread.

Which meant he was unpredictable.

Obviously. Robert’s sore wrists were proof of that.

So, Robert did something he rarely did: he played it safe.

“Should I bring the stream sharing back online?” he asked uncertainly.

George was quiet for a long moment, studying the screens. The systematic destruction. The calculated chaos. The complexity. The moral depravity. The sheer audacity of the plan.

“No,” he said finally. “Leave it. Give him his twenty-four hours.”

He shared a meaningful look with Ryan, something passing between them that Robert couldn’t interpret. “We’ll just need to have a quick chat with Alex when he gets finished.”

George turned toward the elevator, Ryan and the security team falling into step behind him. “Sorry for falsely accusing you, Robert,” he called back, not even bothering to turn around. “You’re doing a great job!”

As the elevator doors closed, the Control Room fell into stunned silence. The other technicians still sat frozen at their stations. They’d clearly heard every word.

“What are you staring at?” Robert snapped, his voice cracking slightly. “Get back to work!”

They all turned back to their monitors with renewed focus.

Claire leaned closer to Robert, her voice barely a whisper. “What the hell was that?”

Robert just shrugged, trying to regain his calm, cavalier attitude, if only to put her at ease. Yet his trembling fingers gave him away as he reached for his coffee. “Beats me.”

His gaze shifted back to those displays: to the carnage reflected there.

“I guess he liked the kid’s plan,” he muttered.