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LOCATION: MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY, SECTION 17
CITY: BEIJING, CHINA
DATE: APRIL 23, 2026 | TIME: 3:00 PM
Li Wei's literal and figurative decapitation of the element in Chinese leadership who were outright instigating world war achieved several goals at once.
First, the reunification of the Korean Peninsula was a prize nobody had dared to dream of, and yet here it was. Li ensured the Chinese member of the North Korean Transition Council was one of his own System-inducted men.
That way, he could be sure that they understood the larger context of the world that was to come. Achieving peace before the global System rollout was a loftier idea than most could have imagined.
The second goal he achieved was yet another one he hadn't dared to wish for. Because the death of so many members of Chinese leadership in one fell swoop created quite a power vacuum at the top that needed to be filled.
Known for his shrewd competence and unswerving patriotism, Li's stock rose very quickly. While he was on the very outskirts of true power before, he now found himself not only in the room, but at the proverbial table where the biggest decisions were made.
Finally, the toppling of the North Korean government caused a power imbalance on the global political stage, and Russia found itself increasingly alone in its blind, mad pursuit of war in Ukraine.
Ending the Korean War was one thing. But now Li set his sights on a new goal. There were two months left before Vitalyx was to be announced to the world.
Could he and his new allies engineer the end of the war in Ukraine? It would have been considered preposterous just six months ago. But now, with the regime in North Korea toppled 78 years after its founding, anything seemed possible.
Li opened his Peacekeeper commander interface and approved the missions he and Grim had prepared. The clock was ticking, and it was time to make the moves to see if they could sweep the board.
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LOCATION: FORTIFIED SAFE HOUSE BASEMENT
CITY: HOPTIVKA, UKRAINE
DATE: APRIL 24, 2026 | TIME: 0100 HOURS
The first three six-man teams were in place in Hoptivka, a tiny village right on the border with Belgorod, Russia. This region, along with Kharkiv just to the south, was the host of some of the most brutal fighting of the war, tipping back and forth between Russian and Ukrainian control numerous times.
Each six-man Peacekeeper team consisted of one healer, two rogues and three fighters.
Their plan was simple: cross the border under the cover of darkness and sabotage the military and logistics supply chain for the Russian war effort. Ideally with as few casualties as possible.
The town of Zhuravlevka, barely two miles away, contained many of their first targets.
At 0100, the three teams began leaving the safe house.
The first team, Alpha, ran far enough to the east to find an opening in the fortifications to slip through. They waited behind a copse of trees for a surveillance drone to pass overhead, then crossed the border into Russian territory.
They quickly followed their interface maps to an abandoned farmhouse a mile inside and took a breather to ensure they hadn't been spotted. They marked the infil and farmhouse locations for the two other teams.
After receiving the all-clear, Bravo and Charlie teams followed the same path 20 minutes apart to help avoid detection.
Once all were inside Russia, the real fun began.
Both the Bravo and Charlie teams had been training for this mission by leveling in Allovia. Every free point they had went into Endurance, giving all twelve of them massive stamina pools for long-distance running at top speed.
Bravo team headed straight east. They had numerous targets along the border to blind the Russian military, dismantling drones and sabotaging other surveillance measures.
Once Charlie left the farmhouse, they began sticking to the shadows while running north by northeast toward the larger city of Belgorod. It was a 20-mile hike, but with their enhancements, they made it in two hours.
Charlie's mission was going to take weeks, but their first goal was to find a safe spot to hunker down during the daytime.
After some searching, they found a partially bombed warehouse on the outskirts of town. They approached carefully and found that, as expected, it included a sizeable underground bunker for employees in case of an airstrike.
The bunker was stocked with water and dry goods. But what made it the most valuable were the cameras on three corners of the structure above. The fourth one had been destroyed in the bombing, but the other three functioned just fine.
This allowed them to hunker down below ground all day without being blind to what was going on above.
With their primary objective complete for the night, they offloaded their gear and began mapping out a plan.
Alpha team waited a half hour for the other two to clear out before getting started on their mission for the night.
A half mile to the north, an encampment of Russian soldiers slept. Makeshift tents lined the grass fields next to wheat and barley fields.
As Alpha approached from the cover of night, they saw their first target. On the south end of the encampment, a distance from the rest of the troops, was a larger tent.
The officers, of course, camped in luxury as compared to the conscripts. Large portable fuel bladders and crate after crate of ammunition sat with camouflage blankets covering them.
Guards patrolled the rest of the camp, but it appeared the officers didn't want their sleep to be disturbed, so this area was darker and silent.
The three fighters dug a trench leading from the fuel bladders down toward the officer's tent, circling it like a noose.
They stayed ten feet back from the tent, but completely encircled it.
One of the rogues engaged a stealth skill and surveyed the rest of the camp. He found most of the conscripts either sleeping or playing cards near a bonfire.
Most of them were drinking vodka. The guards would take a shot when they passed also. They weren't expecting company, but were doing what they were told.
Finally, with the trench work complete, the second rogue punctured all three of the fuel bladders and watched the clear liquid slowly follow the path opened for it.
An hour after they began all the work, with all Alpha team members back and ready to go, the rogue member lit the fuel and they slipped back into the night.
Minutes later, they were a half mile away and turned to see their work.
A fire blazed five feet tall in a complete circle around the officers tent. The canvas smoldered, and the officers were stuck inside, yelling orders to soldiers.
However, as the guards began rounding up people to help douse the fire, the crates full of munitions finally caught fire and the real chaos began.
Loud popping sounds from the rifle rounds began sounding off in a staccato that had all conscripts scrambling.
It sounded like the camp was under attack.
But when the guards saw the fire moving toward the crates containing mortar shells and grenades, they evacuated the camp quickly.
"Run!" they said, shooing the soldiers away. "Run as far as you can!"
Moments later, the soldiers and guards were hundreds of feet away and a tremendous explosion erupted, showering the entire encampment, the officer's tent and the surrounding radius in shrapnel, fire and smoke.
The scent of cordite, sulfur and charred wood filled the area, with a lingering metallic tang from the vaporized metal fragments.
If anyone had been close enough, they'd also smell burning flesh from the two officers who perished inside the officer's tent.
They'd each been drinking from their own bottle of Beluga Gold Line vodka. The camp had been gifted an entire case of it for their service, but the officers weren't in a sharing mood.
The superheated atmosphere was dangerous enough, but when the explosions began popping around them and the tent caught fire, they had no escape.
When a piece of shrapnel broke one of the bottles and ignited the high proof liquor, it was the glass that killed the men first, although their lives would have been forfeit moments later when the grenades went off.
Alpha watched all of this from a distance.
Soldiers fled in all directions, although Alpha noticed most of them headed south. Trying to escape into Ukraine.
"They're deserting," the Alpha leader said. "We couldn't have planned that any better. Let's move."
They fell into a rhythm over the next week, hitting encampments at night.
The first few were unaware, but as they continued, word spread of the demons in the night, and their work required more stealth and creative solutions.
Within two weeks, Alpha had eliminated dozens of Russian encampments bordering Ukraine. Soldiers fled and deserted. Stockpiles of fuel and munitions were burned off, and Russia found itself increasingly blind to the happenings along the border.
Blind the eyes. Then go for the heart.
That was the plan.