"Damage report?"

"Stable and projected to make a full recovery. However, we received several very… aggressive questions from certain groups…"

The man at the head of the table spent a few moments tapping his finger on the desk as several other people, some in suits, some in white coats, and one person with several empty coffee cups in front of them.

TAP

TAP

TAP

The man at the head of the table was visibly making a lot of effort not to look at the other man.

"Reactions?"

The woman reporting adjusted her glasses, then nervously looked down at her tablet before continuing.

"They were not unhappy with the patch, and some of them raised worries about the security, sir."

"Loud?"

"No, sir. For now, they were all private."

"Good. Try to collect all their worries and see if we can reassure them. Is that workable?" the man at the head of the table asked, looking one by one at the other people in the room, skipping the man with the coffee.

Another person slightly raised a hand, as if wanting to signal he wanted to speak – not unlike a school child – before he realized where he was and lowered the hand and began to speak. "Some of the requests are valid, and most of them are in the queue to be implemented slowly over time. We can rush deploy several of them if required."

"Good. Start the process. I don't want any repeat of…this," the man stated, half disgusted and half scandalized, shivering a little. It wasn't clear if it was because of disgust, fear, or some other emotion.

"Yes, sir."

"Now," the man continued, instantly enveloping the room with a heavy feeling as he finally turned toward the man, who was looking up at a cup in his hand, watching as the last drop of coffee dripped on his tongue. "Tell me why you decided to risk everything we worked on, for some additional data."

The man didn't speak loudly, nor angrily, but people sitting between him and the coffee guy could all feel the edge in his voice. And the voice, ready to cut anyone who got in the way, suggested that if the man received an answer he wasn't satisfied with, there would be consequences.

What those consequences were, nobody was clear, but they all knew, deep in their soul, that it would be the opposite of happy and nice.

The coffee cup was placed on the table with a slight clink before the man leaned forward, interlaced his fingers, and looked directly into the other man's eyes.

"Director, the data we got has improved several distinct systems by a large percentage. Large enough that without it, we projected such an increase in five years. The sheer breadth of improvement is impressive enough that we can expect at least a ten percent decrease in energy consumption."

Upon that statement, there were several exclamations around the room. At the level their company operated, the cost of energy was one of the biggest expenses to contend with. A ten percent decrease was very significant.

The director blinked in surprise. "That much?"

"Yeah… with the new safety protocols, limiters and connectors, we have to spend much less on keeping people from exploding their brains."

The director leaned back, clearly taken aback and visibly calculating the gains from that ten percent decrease.

"Ten percent, you say?" he asked idly as he began to tap on the table again.

"At least…"

"That sounds nice. But you're still not off the hook. You endangered an important company asset. That will require some punishment," the director exclaimed softly, a cruel smile on his face.

The other man looked back, clearly angry. "But it's the fucker! He was made for this! I'm pretty sure he planned all of this!"

"He planned to give himself a stroke?"

The other man crossed his arms in front of him like a petulant child. "I wouldn't put it past him…"

"Haa…Well, that leaves me no choice. You're going to have to take the ethics course. Again."

"Again? But it's so boring!"

Another person sitting in the middle of the table spoke up suddenly. "Don't worry, boss! I heard they updated the animation!"

Everybody in the room watched as the man slammed his head into the table, causing the empty cups to scatter everywhere.

"Haaaa…I hate doing those stupid HR courses…" he grumbled as he swung around in his chair in his private office. One of the screens in front of him was taken up by Selene's avatar, who was looking at him weirdly.

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"It seems a little weird to receive such a little punishment for something like that," she mentioned idly.

"Bahh… that was just to satisfy the paper pushers. They will find other ways to punish me," the man grumbled. Then he lazily reached over, opened a few documents, and spent a few moments scrolling through them. "Still…it was totally worth it!"

Selene glared at him, but he ignored it with experience.

"He survived, didn't he? I'm sure the company is already throwing buckets of cash at him…"

Selene let out a small huff before speaking.

"Yes. A general compensation with NDA, a few more shares, priority on new pods and upgrades, and naturally, we're paying for his hospital stay."

"See! Already taken care of…" The man waved his hand, his eyes still on the data.

However, he was broken out of his focused state when he heard a cheerful alert go off.

"Selene, what was that?" he asked, dread pooling in his stomach.

Selene looked back at him, a smile stretching unnaturally wide.

"Good news! You were ordered to interview him. Personally."

The man looked back at the sweetly smiling AI, then let out a bunch of curse words.

The AI just began to laugh at him.

Selene watched as one of the most important people at the company entered his office, threw away their coat, grabbed the nearest cold cup of coffee, chugged it, then dropped into his chair, almost melting into a stressful goo.

"That good?" she asked, still feeling a little cross with the man for putting one of her favorite humans in danger. Maybe she should play with the thermostat?

"I hate that fucker…" the man grumbled, and she just cheerfully projected a counter that increased by one before vanishing again.

"Anything else?"

"Nothing we already didn't know," the man grumbled again, finally sitting up and connecting his tablet to the computer.

Selene spent a few seconds copying the data, forwarding it to the relevant teams, then dissection and analyzing every bit of it.

She couldn't help but emulate a giggle.

"What is it, you annoying code gremlin?"

"He clearly clocked you the moment you stepped in the room…"

The man just shrugged, "It's not my fault I was sent there. It was a miracle I didn't punch that smug fucker in the face…"

"Clearly, your restraint is legendary…" she answered before an alert distracted her for a moment. "Oh…"

The man just let out a bone-deep sigh. "What the fuck did he do now? Develop superpowers?"

Selene just usurped control over one of the screens and began to play a video of a person in a lab coat being jumped by several rather muscly men.

"Somebody tried to sneak into his room and get some information out of him," she gleefully reported it as she was simultaneously creating several GIFs and memes out of the video for the company intranet.

"Somehow, I have a feeling, somebody is going to blame me for that…"

"How is your little friend?"

"Really, grandfather? Really?" Lara glared at the older man as he sat there, slurping his tea.

"What? Can't an old man worry?" he asked, looking like the personification of innocence. Lara didn't buy it for a second.

"You hate the guy. Pull the other one!"

"Hate is a strong word. I dislike his…effect on the universe," he replied with a small grimace. Lara just grinned. She wasn't really in the running to inherit anything substantial, but she still saw more data than some of those people who were in the running. Knowing Sam and asking some questions to Lucy, she could pinpoint several situations where the company lost money due to something her friend did. Not enough to cause issues, but it was still visible.

"To answer your question, he is alright. A little shaken, but soon fully recovered," she reported happily. It was horrible to see Sam just lying there… and not doing anything to annoy her. It was almost unnatural.

"Security? I heard there were some unwanted… people there…" her grandfather asked.

Lara looked back at him before shrugging. "He is dealing with them. It took all of five seconds to recognize the infiltrator. I'm not worried…"

"Mhm," came the response from her grandfather. "I made some inquiries. Do you want me to deal with them?" he asked.

Lara shot him a suspicious look. "You? Helping Sam? What is your angle?"

"What? Can't a grandpa help his adorable granddaughter's friend?" he asked with a sly grin on his face.

She just sighed.

"Please don't think I'm stupid…" she said while looking at her grandfather.

The older man spent a moment maintaining eye contact before he let out a small chuckle. "Fine. I simply wish to discover his secrets first and not let some arrogant upstarts do it before me!"

Lara eyed him for a moment. "Then do it. Sam needs to rest a little more." If that came out a little more bloodthirsty than usual, then Lara didn't really care.

Somebody tried to hurt her friend, and they were going to pay for it.

Two people sat next to each other at two desks as they went through the reports and information gathered by their guild.

"Do we attack now?" one of them asked as he opened a specific letter.

"Are you stupid?" the other replied with a tired face.

"Not generally, why?"

"Because that question was rather stupid."

"I think it was logical. You heard the news. Solar is out of commission because of some medical issues," the man pointed out, as he brought up another letter as evidence.

"And you believed that news? Are you stupid? It's clearly a trap!" The other person simply waved away the words on the screen.

"Now, who is the stupid one?"

"You!"

"Well, I have contacts! And they said he is out of commission!"

"Your contacts are shit!"

"Say that to my face!"

"Yes, well, I fucked your mom!"

For a moment, the two of them stared at each other before both lunged forward, fists raised, ready to strike down at the other.

A few seconds later, only the sound of their fight could be heard. While on the screen, the heavily redacted copy of a hospital record sat there, glitched for a moment, then returned to sitting there innocently.

If one were to look closer with incredible visual memories, they would notice some discrepancies between this one and the one that was first opened. Alas, the one who could notice that was currently being violently attacked by a throw pillow.

"Are we going to move on Chrysalis territory?"

"Don't be naïve. Just because Solar is out for a while, doesn't mean the rest of those monsters are not there."

"Ugh… I thought it would be a good opportunity."

"It would have been, if it wasn't about Chrysalis or AFK. There are guilds and there are guilds. If you catch my drift…"

"I still don't understand how they did that…"

"It's simple, really. Solar went around and found the best goddamn players, administrators, security experts, and whatnot and built a guild around them. Anybody could do that!" There was a pause before he continued. "That was sarcasm by the way."

"You're so mean sometimes…"

"Yes, well, it's important that the information sinks into your tiny brain. Anyway, anything interesting on the auction list?"

"Ohohoh! Boy, do I have some good news for you about that!"

"Really! I checked, and all of them are some kind of weird containers. According to the Auction House, all of them contain either magic, artifacts, or spirits."

"Spirits?"

"Heh, I knew you would notice that. Take a look at this picture?"

"Wait, isn't that the symbol I was looking for?"

"I accept praise in money or artifacts."

"We still have to buy it."

"Already sent out everybody to gather money. Don't worry, we'll have enough to outbid everybody!"

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