Chapter 74: Are You Threatening Me?

"Go on," Kael said, mild interest in his voice.

"What’s this about?"

"You founded the first guild on the server last night." Marcus Webb didn’t dance around it, meeting his eyes directly.

"No recruitment opened since. What’s the actual plan there?"

"If you’re not planning to run it would you consider transferring it to the official team instead?"

"Name a price. We’ll make it work."

Of course. Kael had half-expected this the moment Webb mentioned a second matter.

Same request Alexis had made, just dressed in government letterhead this time. He shook his head without hesitation.

"I’ve already got plans for the Ascendant Concord. It’s not changing hands."

He was already working up to the actual compromise no, the guild itself wasn’t for sale, but there was a second founding token sitting in his inventory with no particular attachment to it. That, he’d have happily sold.

He never got the chance to offer it.

The third man standing with Webb and Doyle the mage who’d been trailing Doyle all morning with that ingratiating smile cut in first, voice cold and dripping with condescension.

"Now that the merge is official, the whole world’s about to change, and the official team is mobilizing every resource it has to respond."

He drew himself up, looking down his nose at Kael like the statement alone should have settled things. "As a citizen, at a moment like this, you have an obligation to cooperate with official direction."

"You should be honored the organization even noticed your guild."

"Hand it over freely, and the proper authorities will recognize that contribution appropriately."

"But if you think sitting at the top of the Ascendant Rankings buys you leverage to negotiate terms with us understand that overreaching here only costs you in the long run."

Kael’s frown deepened with every word, less at the content than at the sheer, almost impressive confidence behind something this poorly judged.

He’d met plenty of men like this one in his first life people who mistook a title for leverage, convinced that whatever institution they represented automatically entitled them to deference they’d never actually earned.

He gave the man a flat, unimpressed look, then turned back to Webb, voice level.

"Is this the official position now?"

"Should I take that as a threat?"

"No absolutely not!" Webb’s expression cracked into visible alarm.

"Boss, ignore him completely, please. He’s not speaking for anyone but himself right now."

"The leadership values this partnership. Nobody authorized anything close to what he just said."

Doyle rounded on the man with real fury, jaw tight. "Derek! I told you to keep your mouth shut the entire meeting!"

"You agreed to that before we even left the office. What exactly are you doing right now?"

Kael watched the three of them with cool detachment, filing the exchange away without comment.

Whether Derek had said that on his own initiative or at someone else’s direction didn’t actually matter much. Either answer told him something useful.

Organizations past a certain size always split into factions eventually competing voices, competing instincts, no single unified will behind the name on the letterhead.

Kael didn’t doubt most of the people he’d dealt with so far genuinely valued this arrangement, treated it as something built on mutual respect rather than obligation.

But a holdout faction always existed somewhere. People who hadn’t updated their worldview to match the one currently reshaping itself around them who still assumed authority meant obedience by default, that players existed to be directed rather than negotiated with.

Derek Lang was clearly one of them. Or, more usefully, a mouthpiece someone further up the chain had sent to test exactly how far that attitude could push before it broke something.

Kael quietly shelved the plan to sell the second token here. No reason to reward that kind of posturing with anything, and no reason to hand a win to whoever had sent Derek in the first place, if anyone had.

He gave Webb and Doyle a short nod. "Transaction’s done. I’m heading out."

He turned and left without a backward glance.

"Tch." Derek’s lip curled as he watched Kael’s back recede into the crowd. "Jumped-up nobody who got lucky with a hidden class.

What’s with the attitude?"

Both Webb and Doyle turned on him in the same instant, expressions thunderous.

"Derek!" Doyle’s voice cracked like a whip.

"Shut your mouth!"

"Do you have any idea how much weight leadership puts on this specific relationship?"

"If this falls apart because of something you said, are you prepared to own that?"

"So it falls apart." Derek waved the concern off, unbothered. "Since when does the official team answer to one player’s mood? We represent the government out here. We don’t grovel to maintain that."

"Otherwise what’s the point of the position at all?"A deep chime rolled across the sky before anyone could respond further.

"Server-Wide Announcement: Congratulations to player TidalBlade for founding the server’s second player guild Evertide Studios. Rewards: Reputation +1500, Luck +2, and the Wyrmdrum (Legendary)."

"Server-Wide Announcement: As the second guild established server-wide, Evertide Studios has unlocked the epic guild talent Crimson Covenant. Every member receives a permanent +12% to attack and spell power."

Noise erupted through the square almost immediately.

"Second guild’s up. Evertide Studios."

"The Ascendant Concord’s been sitting dead quiet since launch maybe Evertide actually starts taking members."

"Twelve percent to attack and spell power across the whole roster? That’s going to wreck every leveling curve on the server."

"Everybody move sign-ups open any minute, I guarantee it."

A second chime followed almost on its heels.

"Server-Wide Announcement: Attention all players a fresh Guild-Founding Token has been listed at the Frostwatch Auction House. Opening bid: 300,000 gold.

All players welcome to bid."

The square erupted a second time.

"Wait, another token? Didn’t Evertide just get one this morning?"

"That’s not a coincidence. Has to be the same source."

"Word is Unrivaled’s been running with Evertide’s core roster all morning. Grinding together, probably."

"Explains how a brand-new studio leapfrogged half the established guilds overnight."

"Guess we know exactly whose coattails they rode in on."Webb’s face went pale listening to the chatter rolling past. Doyle rounded on Derek again, teeth gritted hard enough to ache.

"Hear that?"

"He was going to sell us that second token outright. Simple, clean, done."

"And then you opened your mouth, and now it’s sitting in a public auction instead."

Derek had the decency to look briefly uncertain, though not quite uncertain enough to apologize.

By the time he opened his mouth to defend himself a second time, both Webb and Doyle had already turned away, leaving him talking to nobody in the middle of a square that was about to spend the rest of the day arguing over a token he’d personally handed to the open market.

And a server that would spend considerably longer than a day remembering exactly whose fault that had been, word for word, every single time the story got retold around a guild hall fire somewhere down the line.

Long after Derek Lang had stopped being anyone worth remembering at all, which, given the day he’d just had, was likely to arrive sooner than he thought.