New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

After eating, Alex was already feeling his eyelids becoming heavy. The consumption of the paltry amount of mana for the testing and the rest of the day had drained him.

Although he wanted to log in to New Eden, Kary insisted he go to bed and get some proper rest. He couldn't win an argument with her, so he did as she asked.

He crashed into bed, falling asleep almost instantly. Kary giggled to herself.

She sat near him, browsing some forums a bit before she would follow him to bed. She found a post on New Eden's most popular forum, and her eyes narrowed.

The poster's username was Khalor. She looked at the post and it specifically asked all the players to not get to level fifty for as long as possible.

He reasoned that something big would happen at level fifty and that they should wait for as many players to be near that limit as possible. Kary doubted the man's intelligence for a moment.

'Does he not know he will just be riling them to get there faster?'

The rest of the posts were info she mostly knew, so she stopped browsing shortly after. When she lay next to Alexander's sleeping body, she dragged her hand across his face.

A smile formed on her lips as she closed her eyes.

***New York City, a penthouse in Upper East Side, Manhattan***

Damien Grimm was also browsing through the forums, sitting comfortably in his luxurious office. Damien liked to surround himself with objects that reflected his wealth.

The chair he was sitting in had been in a mafia movie in the past, and was worth well over one hundred thousand dollars. His desk was also the desk of a once important man, costing a ludicrous amount of money.

He was browsing the forums through a brand new laptop, with an escort sitting at his side. The woman was currently licking his neck while caressing his body.

When he saw the post and the name tied to it, he grinned manically.

"What a dumbass! He just gave a valuable piece of information for everyone to grasp. How stupid can this guy be?"

The woman, seeing he was smiling, decided to be more forward. She grabbed his belt, undoing it.

Damien smiled at her.

"Splendid! Good news and some good times? What could I ask more?"

The escort giggled as she dropped his pants down. But she wasn't expecting the man to get rougher with her.

Damien slapped her across the face, still grinning.

"Suck me. And you better make it the best blowjob you ever did."

The woman looked at him, surprised, as she held her hand to her face.

"Come on, bitch! I don't pay you to just look at me!"

"Sir—"

"Shut up, Louis! Go take a walk or something."

"Please don't rough the lady up, sir. The company is already reluctant to send us women anymore."

*Bang!*

Louis, Damien's attendant, was standing still, his face pale. Next to his head, a bullet hole was still fuming.

Damien was looking at him like a crazed animal, the gun in his hand still smoking. The escort lady was on the ground, frozen in terror.

"Remember your place, you trash! Don't talk back to me. Piss off and come back in an hour!"

"Y… Yes, sir."

The attendant bowed low before fleeing the room, closing the door behind him.

He gritted his teeth while standing in the corridor.

Inside the room, Damien put the gun back inside the desk drawer he had grabbed it from. He looked down, his eyes still bloodshot.

"Now. Where were we? Ahh, yes. You were going to give me your best blowjob. C'mon. Get to it."

The woman furiously nodded her head before grabbing his junk and getting to work. Damien lay back in his chair, sighing in contentment.

When Louis came back an hour later, the woman had mascara smears on her face, obvious signs of her previously crying. Her face was slightly puffy at her left cheek, where a visible hand mark was present.

The attendant shook his head slightly, seeing Damien was already back inside his gaming pod.

"Come with me, darling. Let's get you cleaned up before I call your handler up."

The woman nodded weakly. The attendant helped her wash up, cleaning her slight cuts caused by Damien's rings, and applying unguent to her bruises.

His practiced movements betrayed the number of times he had to do this. He treated the woman with respect as he patched her up and called her handler.

The handler wasn't pleased to see his worker in this state, and Louis had to fork out a hefty compensation sum. Since Louis had already expected this to happen, the money was ready and in a suitcase.

The handler smiled before he grabbed the woman by the arm and left.

Louis was once again left alone to his thoughts, in this place he hated so much. Since he knew his master would be inside New Eden for many hours, he took care of cleaning and went to catch some rest.

Nightmares haunted his night as he shivered and whined in his sleep.

Inside New Eden, Azamus was already planning his next moves. Since Khalor had so nicely indicated that a big event was going to happen when people reached level fifty, he was getting ready.

He was calling his most trusted aides and setting up their course of action for the next few weeks.

He planned on having his guild be the one to breach the level fifty mark, with as many players as possible. To do that, he was planning something that Khalor would later qualify as 'The reason so many died.'

He was planning on taking the levels off players. Azamus was planning to raid all the small guild headquarters, wiping out as many players as they could.

This would be a power move to establish his dominance, but it would also gather many resources. Some players were unlocking higher levels in crafting classes, and Crafter was already becoming a respected class in itself.

So gathering all those materials, stealing gold reserves, and gaining levels by bucket loads were all excellent results of his plan. He grinned as they arranged the details.

This would cement his place as the best player in the world, for sure, he thought.

'That'll show those worthless bastards whose best!' he thought, grinning manically.