Eileen knew that some of the misdeeds of those imbeciles (another enjoyable word for loser•) were not in proportion to the punishment she had planned for them, yet she would have no mercy. Especially since she had so far failed to punish her wrongdoers. Worse, she was even no closer to it—her academic success and brilliant grades made an impression, but they were insufficient in the real world. Eileen’s dissertation on the subject of community hierarchies in the modern age caused no furor, and the title of Ph.D added just one level to her citizenship category. “Interesting, but of little significancewere the five words of a certain academic, a puffed-up cockerel with ideas of station who put a cross next to several years of industrious labor and life plans.
She knew that high status in society couldn’t be achieved through effort alone. Something else was required. But what? That same cockerel had dropped some entirely transparent hints. Eileen wrote his name down in her little black book in large letters with a whole page to themselves.
The need of that something disappeared when Eileen started to get attention in Disgardium. As it turned out, you could achieve a great deal there, and effort was the primary ingredient. Eileen felt childish excitement when she realized the whole point of the game: her beloved graded numbers of success! And most of all, game achievements could influence citizenship category!
A couple of weeks later, disappointment replaced her excitement. It would have cost Eileen ten years at modern level rates to catch up to the leaders. But they’d be leveling up all that time too! No, that would never do. She deleted her first character, a cute level three night elf, then sat down to study the mechanisms of Disgardium.
Like the real world, Dis revolved around money. Don’t want to have to farm experience? Hire some powerlevelers and follow them around in instances above their levels, and voila! Buy an Ultima scroll, portal to the frontier and… Boom! Aggressed mobs that fall within a five-yard radius explode in a fountain of blood, and you get the same experience in three seconds that you’d normally get in years of farming like a loser. The spell was once considered the most powerful in the game. And all for a bargain price of two to three million phoenixes. Although really, you needed to do that far more than once to really get results.
Glyph the elf dragonfighter, who came up with it and found money to make it a reality, got a ton of achievements. That was when his Azure Dragons clan got to page one of the leaderboard, by buying up all the rarest ingredients for the Ultima scrolls and raising the average level of its members by over one hundred. Ultima was still used to this day, although its scrolls fell dramatically in price after the recent invention of Armageddon.
Eileen had no money, but she did have something else. Along with her intellect, nature had gifted her a beautiful body. She didn’t bloom right away, stayed an ugly duckling in school, but by college, she was starting to get glances from boys. That academic, the puffed-up cockerel, wasn’t the first to offer her access to society’s plenty in exchange for certain choice services. Maybe that was what helped Eileen stick to her chosen path so long—certainty that if extremely necessary, she had a secret weapon.
It became extremely necessary when she found herself two years into Disgardium and not a step closer to her target. Some of the bastards from her sacred black book had already died without her! And her best years were behind her… In a world where youth and an ideal body could be bought, natural beauty had become far more valuable. And if it came along with intellect…
She opened another notebook, the one in which she wrote the names of those who offered her success and riches in exchange for something. And she chose the biggest name she could, the name of a man she met during her research. Joshua Gallagher, leader of the Children of Kratos.
Eileen wrote to him. And, to her limitless surprise, he not only remembered her name, but he even invited her to his family residence, sending a luxury personal flyer to pick her up. Both Joshua and Vivian Gallagher met her, and that was the first surprise for the girl, who had been expecting something entirely different. Not knowing what to think, she sat in stunned silence and listened to the aristocrats’ offer.
Vivian did most of the talking, but judging by how she looked at her husband, Eileen knew who ruled in this partnership. Vivian spoke in innuendo, but Eileen quickly got the point.
“Risks to reputation, do you understand, Miss Waters?” Vivian asked, cracking her fingers. “Delicate operations… Non-standard methods…”
To put it simply, the Children of Kratos didn’t like to get their hands dirty. Their puppet clan Heroes trained fighters, but couldn’t participate in operations where the name of both clans was at stake. And their reputation—both in real life and among the game factions. A potential enemy could have a perfect relationship with King Bastian the First, or take advantage of the patronage of one of the gods, or control one of the Gallaghers’ numerous ’friends.’ If the Children of Kratos or the Heroes fought against them, it meant risking their reputation. That word emerged a few more times in the conversation.
“Reputation is the most important thing in everyone’s life. After death, all that remains of a person is memory.”
There, Vivian fell silent.
Eileen could have argued; right now, the most important thing in her life was to pay the rent on her apartment. But all in all, Vivian was right. When power and money get involved, some people start to think about what they’ll leave behind,—and that streets and monuments
