Second World

Scarface scanned the crowd before uttering, ”we offer you this information, in the hope that we can work together. We have sent scouts to the wilderness, as I believe some of you have as well. The farther it is from the capital, the stronger the monsters are, and the more dangerous are the terrains. As mentioned by Manager Steelhand before, the risk is higher here as we will lose all our belongings and levels if we die in the wilderness. Hence, it is a top priority for us to become strong in as short a time as possible.”

Scarface looked at the group of Wicked Witches behind him, ”I will hand over the explanation regarding our plan to Queen Magenta.”

He went back to his seat as Queen Magenta took over his place.

”Ladies and Gentlemen,” Queen Magenta began, ”thank you for your presence on this great day. This day will be marked as the day where our kind will start on the journey to dominate this world. Outworlders, they called us. Such arrogance! To us, they are nothing but NPCs. They were made to serve our purpose, and that was how it should be. We will show them whether in the real world or this world, we are the undisputed rulers!”

As expected of that presumptuous bitch, even her speech was considerably haughty, Jack thought.

”To do that,” Queen Magenta continued. ”Not only would we need numbers, but we also have to be stronger! To do that, we need to level up quickly. As all of us experienced gamers know, the most common way to level up is by grinding monsters. Unfortunately, the areas with suitable monster levels are limited, while the numbers of players existing are massive. Most of us had already experienced these limited resources. Our guild members were crowding in an area where the numbers of players are too high. The respawning monsters are not enough to keep pace with the speed we are killing them. This competition hampered our leveling speed.”

Jack saw many from the audience nodded their heads. Was it really that bad? Jack thought about it. He didnʼt really feel that much competition, the only time he saw these so-called competitions was when he was doing the hunting quests for Death Associates. But after thinking about it, he realized he didnʼt really do much grinding. Even when doing his own hunting quests, he had gone to an area where the monsters were stronger, like the Misty Swamp.

Most of the players here arrived at the same time, so their range of levels was not that far apart. Considering everyone was looking for the same monster difficulty, it made sense that fierce competition would happen. It was not apparent at first as everyone spent most of their time in the safety of the city, doing quests and familiarize themselves with this strange new world.

But now, everyone had decided to put a step on the gas for leveling, more and more of the players had started to brave the wilderness, doing out-of-city quests, and killing monsters for experiences. Thus creating an overpopulation in the areas most suitable for current standard players.

Queen Magenta never stopped with her speech as Jack was having his thought, ”many compete for the same resources, but why do we have to waste them on the lowly players who contribute nothing to our society? Those so-called independent players and small-scale guilds only do what they like, without any real achievement and purpose. If this is just some games as in the past, then fine, let them satisfy their ego and do whatever they want. But this is no game anymore, this is our life, whether we like it or not. How can we let them leech the resources while we can use them to advance our society as a whole? We should learn from real life. We should form a governing party to regulate the available resources. So that we can allocate these resources for those that are more likely to benefit our society as a whole...”

A hand lifted up amongst the audience, cutting Queen Magentaʼs speech. Queen Magenta looked at the person annoyingly. Jack was amused when he saw that it was John who had interrupted.

John made a lurch back as if he felt guilty after seeing Queen Magentaʼs hostile gaze, ”Iʼm… Iʼm sorry, am I not allowed to ask a question?”

Due to the manʼs reaction, Queen Magenta which was just about to ask the guy to hold his opinion until she was done, became unable to utter out the strict words. She looked at the other audiences, if she was to rebuke the man now, she would appear like a dictator who could not accept critics. She said unwillingly, ”what do you want to ask?”

Jack was struggling to hold his chuckle. If he didnʼt know John, he would have also thought that the guy was genuinely feeling guilty.

”I thank you, elder maʼam,” John spoke sincerely. Queen Magentaʼs mouth twitched. Was this guy trying to pick a fight? Calling maʼam was already sufficient, why did he have to add an elder? Was he saying that she was old? She was only thirty-eight years old! Even if such age was considered old among gamers, but thirty-eight in real life could still be considered young!

”I only have one question, who decides on the ones to be allocated the resource or not?”

”That will be the responsibility of the governing party,” Queen Magenta answered briefly, as she wanted to continue her speech, she was halted again.

John was now standing up with his hand raised.

What now? Didnʼt you say you only have one question? Queen Magenta wanted to scream out, but she just glared at John with an unfriendly gaze.

John did not even pretend to show a guilty face anymore, he simply asked away, ”who will be sitting in this governing party position?”

Queen Magenta paused for a bit before answering, ”it will obviously be the strongest guilds.”

John continued firing, ”do these strongest guilds happened to be Death Associates, Corporate United, and Wicked Witches?”

Queen Magenta narrowed her eyes. Even a fool could see now that John was trying to stir up troubles. However, his remark did point out the crux of the problem. No one would want to give themselves freely to be commanded by others. The three large guilds were initially planning to rephrase the audiencesʼ perspectives through their speech to persuade the other guilds to submit to them. They planned to also give promises and incentives in exchange for accepting them as the ruling body. But with Johnʼs blunt remark on the issue, it had put the perspective out in the open, making it appeared as if the three guilds were trying to subjugate them.

”Iʼm sorry, please continue,” John said, but before Queen Magenta could utter a word, he blurted out again, ”how are you going to regulate the monster grinding of an area? Are you going to form a patrolling unit that will hunt down and chase away any that enter the area?”

Queen Magentaʼs face was red with anger. She was never good at concealing her emotion. She was trying her best not to holler at this annoying prick.

Manager Steelhand could see that she was having a problem. He had known from the start that the woman was not a suitable candidate to be put on stage, but since this is a joint cooperation between their three guilds, he had to give each representative sufficient time to be in the spotlight. He quickly came up to alleviate the pressure from Queen Magenta.

”Thank you for your questions, my good fellow,” he said with an amiable smile. ”However, please refrain from further questions until after we are finished with our presentation, we…”

”Are you already ruling us now?” John cut him off.

”What?” Manager Steelhand didnʼt expect the man to be so crude.

”I am asking, do you already consider us as your subjects that we donʼt even have the right to ask questions?”

”You know thatʼs not what I mean,” Manager Steelhand used a steely tone that was bordering on aggression. ”If this friend here is trying to cause trouble, Iʼm afraid we would have to remove you from this place.”

”Yeah, just throw this nobody troublemaker out!” The Real Man chimed in from his seat. He had expressed his support to the organizing guilds with this statement.

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