Chapter 319: Accusation and Denial
"We surrendered half our continents to him," Ignisar said. "He wiped out your invading armies in my desert last month. Nyxara and I pay him tribute every single week just to keep our accounts active."
The Radiant Monarch burst into laughter and slapped his floating hands onto his virtual knees. "You guys actually pay him resources? You fell for a protection racket in a base-building game."
Rubedo sat back in his throne and linked the pieces of information together in his mind. The apocalyptic wars between the continents were merely a group of teenagers attacking each other’s digital bases after school.
Ignisar and Nyxara had surrendered their empires to Rubedo just to survive a raid coordinated by their own classmate on Earth.
Rubedo pressed his hands flat against the crystal console. "You treat this as a simple strategy game on your devices. You launch attacks against each other and buy premium upgrades with your credit cards."
"Because it is a game," Nyxara stated.
"The twenty-nine mercenaries you summoned to invade Ignisar’s desert were real people," Rubedo told the Radiant Monarch.
The laughter stopped entirely across the four-way grid.
"The premium event you purchased pulled an entire high school reunion class from Earth directly into this server," Rubedo continued. "You ripped their souls out of their bodies to use them as elite units. When Ignisar and Nyxara fought them in the savanna, you orchestrated a war between actual human beings."
The Radiant Monarch dropped his floating hands. "You are taking this roleplay way too far. The developers just code the premium units to act realistic to improve the immersion."
"They bleed, they beg, and they scream," Rubedo stated declaratively. "They retain all their memories from Earth. I know this because I was one of them. I was the twenty-ninth summon you received from your event. I was the defective husk you casually synthesized."
Iron-Arbiter gripped his colossal hammer and stared at the screen in absolute horror. Ignisar and Nyxara exchanged panicked glances through their respective cameras. The teenagers suddenly faced the possibility of their digital actions carrying real-world consequences.
"You murdered me for a stat boost in a video game," Rubedo said. "I spent the last five years conquering your map to hunt those mercenaries down."
The Radiant Monarch threw his floating golden hands up in exasperation and laughed loudly. "You guys are actually falling for this. He is not a real person. He is a rogue AI."
Ignisar leaned closer to his camera and narrowed his glowing eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"Look at the server patch notes from last month," Radiant Monarch explained. "The developers added a dynamic endgame antagonist to the game. They probably programmed an advanced AI to generate custom dialogue using the flavor text from our premium events. He is just a boss encounter designed to trigger if a player goes AFK for too long."
Iron-Arbiter gripped his colossal hammer tightly. "An AI does not drop an orbital bombardment to kill a single NPC. An AI does not threaten me with permanent account deletion if I refuse to pay tribute."
"The developers want the game to feel challenging," Radiant Monarch argued. "He is trying to trick us into surrendering our territories through a text prompt."
Nyxara wiped the dark water from her eyes and shook her head. "It is not just a text prompt. Look at your screens."
She pulled up the interface menu and shared a digital document directly into the group call. The heavy, restrictive vassalage contract populated across the four-way grid.
"Read the code on the penalties," Ignisar demanded. "Standard player-to-player trade rules cap resource tribute at twenty percent. His contract completely bypassed the hard-coded mechanics and forced us to surrender fifty percent of our total faith generation. An AI cannot rewrite the fundamental trade code."
The Radiant Monarch scanned the document quickly and crossed his floating arms. "He is not an AI then. He is just using an illegal third-party mod."
"A mod?" Iron-Arbiter asked.
"Obviously," the Radiant Monarch replied. "He downloaded a custom client to cheat the trade system and manipulate the roleplay. You guys surrendered half your empires to a hacker because he used a voice changer and threatened you."
Nyxara slammed her obsidian hand onto her desk. "You were the one who summoned twenty-nine real people into the server. You started this entire mess."
"The mercenaries are just premium NPCs!" The Radiant Monarch yelled back. "You guys are completely paranoid. I am reporting his account to the server moderators right now. They will ban him for cheating."
Rubedo sat silently on his obsidian throne and watched the teenagers bicker over server rules and modded clients. They desperately tried to rationalize his existence to protect their comfortable worldview.
He decided to force them to face the reality of the game engine.
Rubedo tapped his console. He selected the contact names for Sylara and Gorr on his Social Tab and dragged them directly into the active video call.
The console chimed twice. The central monitor split from a four-way grid into a massive six-way grid.
Sylara appeared on the screen shivering beneath her moth-silk hood. Gorr materialized next to her, leaning heavily on her spectral pickaxe. Both vassals stared in complete confusion at the three new deities and the floating halo.
Rubedo gestured toward his commanders. "Tell these players exactly where you came from, and tell them exactly what happens when you die in this game."
Sylara pushed her white moth-silk hood back and looked at the four teenagers on the monitor. Tears streamed down her pale face.
"I was a botany student at a university in London," Sylara whispered. "I left a green bookmark in the middle of my textbook. I used to get terrifying panic attacks every time I had to stand up and speak in front of my seminar class. I had a half-empty cup of chamomile tea sitting on my desk the night I was pulled into the void."
Gorr stepped forward and leaned on her spectral pickaxe. "I framed houses in Chicago for fifteen years. I drove a rusted pickup truck with a broken heater. I drank bitter diner coffee every single morning at five o’clock just to stay awake on the job site."
Radiant Monarch, Ignisar, Nyxara, and Iron-Arbiter stared at their screens in complete silence. The sheer authenticity of the mundane human grief paralyzed them.
The teenagers realized no game developer would ever program a fantasy boss to cry over a college textbook or complain about a broken truck heater.
Even if it was a backstory coded by the developers, it didn’t make sense for them to go with the summoning theme.
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