Chapter 75: The First Stronghold Ebonreach

Derek’s expression soured at the scolding, but nothing about his posture suggested he thought he’d done anything wrong. He gave a short, dismissive snort.

"So what if it goes to auction? Name one force on this server with deeper pockets than the official team."

"It ends up in our hands either way. What’s the actual difference?"

"The difference," Marcus Webb said, grim, "is how much gold it costs us to get there instead."

"Every coin the government spends in this game came from somewhere officers, support staff, people putting in real hours.

That’s not a resource you get to burn carelessly just to save yourself an uncomfortable conversation."

"And that’s not even the real problem. Over eighty percent of the top-tier equipment on this entire server has moved through Unrivaled’s hands alone.

If this relationship sours, we lose that pipeline completely along with every plan built around using it to field real combat strength."

Derek’s mouth curved into something thin and unpleasant. "Simple fix for that."

"Everyone has a pressure point. Find his real-world identity, find his location, and cooperation stops being optional."

Webb and Doyle both went quiet at that, expressions tightening.

Neither of them agreed with the instinct behind it. Both knew, uncomfortably well, that plenty of people several ranks above them probably shared it.

The investigation into Unrivaled’s real identity had been running quietly since the merge first hit, and from what filtered down to their level, it had made more progress than either of them were fully comfortable with.

What happened once that identity got confirmed sat well above their pay grade to guess at, let alone influence.

All either of them could do was hope whoever made that call upstairs still had the sense to make it carefully and that Derek, for all his bluster, never actually got close enough to the decision to make it himself.

Elsewhere, having wrapped up at the auction house, Kael made straight for the royal palace.

Derek’s threat had landed with more weight than the man’s obvious shallowness should have warranted.

Clearly not someone operating with much subtlety or sense probably someone who’d talked his way into a government seat on connections rather than competence.

But sloppy and dangerous weren’t mutually exclusive. When the stakes ran this high, even a poorly aimed shot could land.

Kael knew exactly how thin the surface calm sat over this particular stretch of history he’d lived through it once already, watched exactly how quickly things could curdle once the game and reality finished tangling together.

Being untouchable in Ascension meant nothing if the body sitting in a capsule back home turned out to be reachable after all.

Securing a real-world stronghold had already been on his list.

Derek’s little display just moved it to the top, and reminded him exactly how little margin there was for comfortable timelines once people with real institutional reach decided patience wasn’t worth their trouble anymore.

There was only one real problem standing in the way: the monsters guarding that stronghold ran well above anything Kael could currently handle solo in a reasonable window.

In his first life, it had taken the server’s strongest guild thousands of coordinated members, full resources, an entire month of buildup to finally crack that location open.

Even with everything he currently had working in his favor, trying to solo that same clear right now would be closer to suicide than ambition.

The original plan had been patience. Wait a few more days for Elara to formally take up her military posting, then borrow a real fighting force from her new command to clear the way.

Derek’s threat erased that patience entirely.

Kael laid the situation out for Elara the moment he reached the palace, and she offered her full backing without a second’s hesitation ordering her personal guard assembled and placed directly under his command, full compliance expected from every member.

Technically, his standing as her guard captain already carried the authority to issue that order.

In practice, he’d met this unit exactly once since taking the title, carrying none of the earned trust that normally came with real command.

Pulling the entire guard away from the one person they existed to protect, for a mission with no connection to her safety, needed her explicit sign-off regardless of rank.

With that sign-off secured, the whole unit mobilized. One hundred and two riders in total, Kael included silver-armored warriors and silver-robed mages astride pale, gleaming horses, hooves thundering down the palace’s main avenue as they rode for the city gates.

Players scattered to clear the road as the column passed, more than a few stopping outright to stare.

"What was that? NPC army, full silver kit, riding white horses that’s incredible."

"Royal guard colors, judging by the banners. No wonder they look that sharp way above standard garrison troops."

"Wait, is that Unrivaled riding point?"

"How does he end up commanding an NPC army? Where’s he taking them?"

"No idea. Must be a mission."

"Whatever it is, that’s a hell of a sight."

"Someone screenshot that before it disappears or whatever it’s about to do.

Nobody’s going to believe this otherwise."

Most of the guard lacked any means of flight, which meant Thunder Roc stayed grounded for this trip, Kael keeping pace with the column on horseback instead of taking the faster route alone.

Two hours of hard riding brought them deep into untouched old-growth forest, the trees eventually thinning into open ground.

And there, rising out of a stretch of land that should have held nothing at all, stood a city.

Compact, built entirely from dense black stone, radiating a weight and presence that had nothing to do with its actual size the kind of place that looked carved out of the landscape’s own bad memories rather than built by anyone’s hands.

Hovering. The whole structure floated several feet clear of the ground, suspended in open air with no visible support holding it there, the surrounding atmosphere itself charged with something heavy and strange, the way the air gets right before a storm that never quite breaks.

"How how is a city just floating out here?!"

The guard’s composure cracked for the first time all ride, open astonishment breaking across faces trained to stay disciplined through far stranger sights than most people ever encountered in a lifetime of service.

Kael felt something kindle behind his own eyes, sharp and bright.

This place carried history neither the guard nor anyone else on the server currently understood.

Given time, it would become the single most contested piece of real estate the server had ever seen the stronghold that would define whichever guild finally held it, fought over in wars that hadn’t even started yet in this version of events.

Ebonreach.

He said the name out loud, quiet, almost reverent, and felt the weight of everything that name would eventually mean settle into place a little early this time around not a prize some other guild would spend a month bleeding for, but one already within reach, waiting on nothing but the will to take it first.