The morning after we offed the Scrabblers was… weird.
The air didn't taste like death anymore.
It tasted like breakfast.
Hope, or whatever.
The outcasts weren't moping anymore.
They were looking at me.
Their eyes weren't empty.
They were waiting.
Like they expected me to drop a quest marker on their heads.
Yael was sharpening some scavenged knife on a rock.
The scrape, scrape, scrape sound was setting my teeth on edge.
She looked up, her amethyst eyes unreadable.
"So, what's the next phase of the raid, Commander?" she asked.
That title still sounded like she was trolling me.
"Now," I said, loud enough for the whole pathetic mob to hear.
"Now you get good."
I called it Raid Leader's Training.
They called it hell.
"You are not a bunch of pathetic individuals!" I roared, pacing in front of thirty elves who looked like they were about to pee themselves.
"You are a single, cohesive unit! A raid group!"
"Or you will be, when I'm done with you."
My first drill was simple.
MMO 101: Don't. Stand. In. The. Fire.
I got a few of the beefier elves to stand on a ridge and chuck rocks down into a circle I'd drawn in the dirt.
"The circle is bad," I explained calmly.
"It's an AOE."
"A rock hits you, twenty push-ups."
"You step outside the lines, fifty."
It was a total train wreck.
They bumped into each other like idiots in a crowded auction house.
They tripped over their own feet.
They froze up until a rock bounced off their skull.
The sound of elves groaning through push-ups became my new favorite background music.
"This is pathetic!" I yelled, my voice bouncing off the canyon walls.
"My grandma could dodge better than you, and she's just a pile of ashes!"
"Again!"
Yael's job was different.
She was the PvP instructor.
Her new elf body was a lag-free nightmare to fight.
A silver-haired blur of cheap shots and CC.
She didn't even use her dagger to do damage, just the flat of the blade to stun-lock them and teach them a lesson.
"Too slow," she'd say, tapping some guy on the shoulder before his attack animation even finished.
"You're telegraphing harder than a flashing boss mechanic," she'd sigh, sidestepping a lunge.
"You call that a block?" she'd scoff, tripping someone and sending them face-first into the dirt.
She was basically farming these guys for honor points, and loving every second of it.
All that frustration about her new body was being channeled into making these guys miserable.
It was beautiful, in a really messed-up way.
Amidst all the flailing noobs and bruised egos, one person stood out.
Lianna.
She wasn't just good.
She was hacking.
During the rock drill, she didn't dodge.
She just… wasn't there.
She moved the absolute minimum amount, like she had the hitboxes memorized.
Effortless.
Efficient.
When she sparred with Yael, it wasn't a training session.
It was a high-level duel.
Yael actually had to pop her cooldowns.
Their blades would whisper against each other.
They moved like they were in sync, anticipating, countering, testing.
"She's a smurf," Yael told me that night, her voice low.
"A ringer."
"She's not learning this stuff."
"She's remembering it."
Duh.
My inner gamer-nerd had been screaming that at me for days.
Lianna was a max-level player on a level one alt, and I was going to figure out her main.
The next day, I changed the drills.
I started yelling out more technical stuff.
"Parry stance!" I'd yell.
"Defensive pivot!"
The outcasts would fumble through it.
Lianna executed them like they were macro'd to her hotbar.
Perfect.
Time to set the trap.
We were in the middle of a shield wall drill.
They were tired, sore, and losing focus.
"Valerion Defensive Stance, now!" I roared.
Total bullshit command.
Obscure as hell.
It was an officer-level move from the core military's private server.
The kind of thing you only know if you've put in the hours.
For a second, nothing.
Then, on pure muscle memory, Lianna's body snapped into it.
Feet shifted.
Back straight.
Shield angled perfectly.
Chin tucked.
Eyes forward.
Textbook.
Perfect form.
She held it for a single, frozen moment.
Then her eyes went wide.
Crap.
She realized she'd just leaked alpha test info.
The mask of the broken little outcast shattered.
She dropped the stance, her shield clattering to the ground.
The rest of the camp just looked confused.
But I saw it.
Yael saw it.
The jig was up.
That night, I found her sulking at the edge of camp, staring into the dark.
"The drills are from the Royal Guard's officer academy," I said, skipping the small talk.
"The Valerion Stance was developed by General Kael's personal guard."
"You don't learn that from the tutorial."
"So, who are you?" I said.
Not a question.
A demand.
She was quiet for a long time.
"My name," she finally whispered, her voice rough, "is Lianna."
"Of House Valerion."
My eyebrows shot up.
That was like, old-school server-first guild nobility.
Military nobility.
"I was a cadet," she continued, her voice getting a hard, bitter edge.
"One of the best."
"A tactical prodigy, they called me."
She laughed, a short, nasty sound.
"I was faster, smarter, and a better strategist than any of the boys in my class."
"And they hated me for it."
"Especially one of them."
"A captain with a famous name and a small… ego."
"A man who saw my success as a threat to his own."
I didn't even have to guess.
"Gandalf Reynolds," I said.
Her head whipped around, her eyes blazing with a fire I'd never seen before.
"He was my CO," she spat, the name like poison.
"During our final field exercise."
"A simulation."
"He put me in charge of a scouting party, then fed me fake intel."
"Sent my unit into a canyon he knew was a deathtrap in the simulation."
"He set me up to fail."
"But I didn't," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
"I saw the trap."
"I adapted."
"I flipped the script and turned their ambush back on them."
"My unit not only survived, we 'captured' their command banner."
"We won the whole damn war game."
"I humiliated him."
"I made him look like a total noob."
She looked away, her shoulders slumping.
"So he changed the rules."
"He couldn't frame me for being bad, so he framed me for being a coward."
"During the 'battle,' a real rockslide happened."
"A freak accident."
"It pinned one of my soldiers."
"Gandalf's official report said I abandoned my post."
"Panicked and left a man to die."
Her hands balled into fists.
"It was a lie."
"I was the one who pulled that man out."
"But it was my word against a decorated captain from a powerful family."
"No one believed me."
"There was a hearing."
"A joke."
"They stripped my rank, my honor, even broke my family name, Valerion, into just 'Lianna.'"
"Then they character-deleted me and exiled me here."
"To The Brink."
"To the King's garbage dump."
"To die."
I just stood there, letting it sink in.
Gandalf.
That self-righteous prick.
He wasn't just a bad player; he was toxic.
He saw a rising star on the DPS charts and didn't just try to beat her—he tried to get her account banned.
He threw away a diamond-tier player because he was afraid she'd out-rank him.
My Overwhelming Pride attribute pinged.
Hard.
Not for me.
For her.
The injustice of it was a physical thing, hot and sharp in my chest.
This wasn't about impressing some NPC king anymore.
This was a goddamn grudge match.
Gandalf didn't just give me a bunch of noobs.
He gave me my second-in-command.
A brilliant raid leader with a massive debuff called 'Revenge.'
He handed me the perfect exploit to shove right back down his throat.
"He made a mistake," I said finally, my voice ice cold.
Lianna looked at me, confused.
"He shouldn't have sent me here," I clarified.
A slow, nasty grin spread across my face.
"And he really, really shouldn't have left you in the game."