Titanframe Re: Genesis

Chapter 106: Risk [300 GT Bonus]

Siluen looked at the message and stiffened for a moment before she slowly stood. Her eight legs softly pressed against the floor, the hairs that jetted out of their ends being delicate and pliable. In that moment, even if you were right next to her, you wouldn’t have been able to hear a single thing.

Despite the fact Caldrin and Gard were not here, she still chose to be cautious.

She slipped out and entered the bathroom. After finally finding a bathroom with a wide enough stall for her hips and cursing the lack of accommodations for the millionth time, she finally slipped inside and activated the privacy functions.

With a WHOOSH, she was pulled out of the bathroom stall and into a larger bathhouse.

With all the various sizes and massive differences between the people, it was impossible for them to have a single uniform style of bathroom for them all. So, instead, they made them modular.

It helped considering not to mention size, there were an innumerable number of differences between how they expelled their waste. That ironically made the bathrooms one of the most secure places in the entire Genesis Games Corporation.

For a business that wasn’t well known for its unions, it was a surprise that there was even this much.

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[Shiikha: My name is not Siluen. Please stop calling me that.]

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[Muskrat: Listen. The organization is pouring a ridiculous amount of money into this human because of your information, but if he doesn’t respond well to it this is all for naught.]

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[Shiikha: I’ve seen your messages. You are not exactly doing a good job.]

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[Muskrat: How else can I act, exactly? If I don’t play up the part of rich, spoiled brat, it will raise too many red flags. I’ve already gotten banned once to help him and it was like he barely registered it.]

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[Shiikha: He is prideful and he is from a Cracked World, Muskrat. He might understand that sponsors are important, but he does not understand. Do you get my meaning?]

—

There wasn’t a message for a long while.

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[Shiikha: If we want to make use of him, then we need to make sure he understands. I understand why you’ve chosen the approach you have, but it’s not working. He would rather die than be the performing monkey for someone he sees as yet another cog in this wheel.]

—

The moment she finished sending the message, Shiikha frowned. Why was she so sure of Grey’s personality?

Sure, she had been observing him, and she had seen his stubbornness.

But she hadn’t seen him melt his flesh into the Last Goblin Swordsman, nor had she seen him choose to burn himself alive for a chance to take Esmeralda with him.

And yet it was like she was sure he would do those things regardless.

Shiikha rubbed at her head, odd bouts of déjà vu without even the memories to follow them up gnawing at her. The extra pairs of eyes on her forehead furiously blinked.

—

[Muskrat: I get it. That is the only reason I haven’t informed the others about how poorly things are going. If he wasn’t like this, it probably wouldn’t be worth it in the first place. But if things keep going like this, he’s going to die and there’s nothing we can do about it. He took on a Legendary Quest, Siluen. A Legendary one.

[I asked him to show the quest, but he ignored me. So I can’t even send him clues and tricks because then it might raise suspicions.]

—

Muskrat only knew that Grey had a Legendary Quest because of Shiikha who was handling a ton of the administrative work. Gard had buried it, but trying to bury something like that in front of an admin was like trying to launder money when your accountant wasn’t in on it.

It was too obvious.

Granted, so long as Shiikha didn’t say anything, they might get away with it. Even she hadn’t known that Gard had such a lever to pull.

But regardless of all of that, because Grey was too stubborn to openly share his Quest with his followers, no one knew he had a Legendary Quest, and Muskrat couldn’t make any comments about it without those overseeing his chats wondering how he could possibly know something they didn’t.

The fact that Grey had asked to see the quest in the first place was already hard toeing the line.

But ironically enough, it was because Muskrat was so unruly and so obviously playing the part of spoiled brat that his asking that question had slid under the radar.

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[Shiikha: I understand, but there’s only so much we can do. I’m watching everything I can through your feed and he’s one of the best Mech Technician talents I’ve ever seen. Such an ability would be a huge boon to him. But he’s made an enemy out of the Producers, out of the Holy Knights, and even of all the other participants in his Zone.

[I think we just need to accept that there’s not much helping that we can do, not like this.]

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[Muskrat: I was thinking.]

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The sudden words made Shiikha frown. Thinking about what exactly? Was he going to mention her name again? She really preferred he didn’t.

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[Muskrat: What about the barkeep?]

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Shiikha’s several pairs of eyes all narrowed.

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[Shiikha: That is a dangerous proposition, Muskrat. You know that those sort of attendants…]

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Her message didn’t finish. There were some things that were too dangerous to say even in their private message channels.

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[Muskrat: He has already taken an interest in Grey.]

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[Shiikha: Those people are consumed by chaos. All they want is carnage. They follow the rules only because it’s what keeps their lives intact, not because they want to.]

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[Muskrat: This is our only choice at this point. As things are now, I can’t change the way I interact with the target without raising suspicion, but I can’t keep acting like this and gain any sort of trust from that hard-headed fool.

[Since we’re already taking this risk, let’s take another.]

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