A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 291: Chapter 282 — Guild Zero II

”Which brings us to the third one,” Maeve said. ”Hires.”

”Done.” Kavanagh did not put a slide up, which James appreciated. ”You have an operations manager who started three weeks ago, which is why the building has a barrier and a phone system. Company secretary structure is in place, as required. Legal and accounting are retained through my firm for now. You have four security officers, two of whom you walked past. And you have five operations and facilities staff.”

”That’s twelve people,” said Ronan.

”That’s twelve people who mean the five of you are not doing payroll at midnight.” Kavanagh closed the folder. ”Analysts, equipment staff, medical support, trainers, media, recruitment — that’s the next wave, and that wave is why we’re having this conversation.”

Maeve looked round the table.

”Right. So the real question. Are we announcing that Guild Zero exists — or are we announcing that Guild Zero is hiring?”

James did not answer.

He had been about to. He caught it and let it go instead, and let the table have it.

Finn went first.

”We have to open recruitment eventually. An actual guild that’s one raid team forever isn’t a guild, it’s a company with a hobby. And every week we don’t, somebody good signs somewhere else.”

”And who assesses them?” Ronan said.

”You do. That’s—”

”With what.” Ronan turned his hand over. ”There’s no test. There’s no standard. There’s no pass mark and no way to fail somebody without it being my opinion on the day. You put a hundred Challengers in front of me tomorrow and I’ll pick the ones who remind me of us, and that’s exactly the thing we started this to get away from.”

Cillian raised a finger.

”He’s right and it’s my problem too. Combat trials and applicant evaluation — that’s on my page in the founders’ agreement, I’ve read it, it’s the only page I’ve read. I’d need six weeks and a proper room to build that. Which we now have. But I don’t have it *today*.”

Maeve was already writing.

”Then applications open today. Acceptance doesn’t.”

The table stopped.

”We announce, we open the doors, we take applications for Challengers and every professional role on the list. Nobody gets accepted until Ronan and Cillian and the staff have built a selection process that survives being written down. We say that publicly, so nobody’s waiting by the phone.” She looked up. ”It also means the first thing our new recruitment people do is sort applications instead of sitting in an empty office.”

”Yes,” said James.

”That’s it?”

”That’s it. That’s the answer. Do that.”

---

”One more,” Maeve said, ”and then I need all of you standing at the front door in twenty minutes.”

She turned the tablet round.

Two lines on it.

**GUILD ZERO — the organisation.**

**TEAM ZERO — James Ganner, Finn Hale, Maeve Callahan, Ronan Cleary, Cillian Ward.**

”We’re not reopening it,” she said, before anybody’s mouth was fully open. ”It’s in the constitution, it takes all five signatures to change, it’s settled. I’m putting it up because in about half an hour somebody with a microphone is going to ask, and if we give five slightly different answers, by tonight there’ll be a story about a split.”

”So what’s the answer,” said Ronan.

”Joining Guild Zero does not put you on Team Zero. Guild Zero can build other raid teams. Team Zero is the founding five and the roster doesn’t change.” Maeve looked at each of them in turn. ”Word for word if you can manage it.”

”Word for word,” said Finn.

---

The press had been outside since one o’clock.

James watched it from the second-floor window while Maeve straightened Cillian’s collar with the expression of a woman defusing a device.

Barriers had gone up across the front of the car park. Behind them there were cameras on tripods and cameras on shoulders and about forty people with phones who were not press at all, and two Bureau liaison officers standing at the edge looking mildly overwhelmed, and a satellite van from RTÉ parked half on the kerb.

Every one of them was facing a building that eleven weeks ago had a dead camera hanging off the corner of it by its cable.

”I’m not doing a speech,” James said.

”You’re not doing a speech.”

”Because I’ll be honest with you, Maeve, I’d rather do Floor 27 again—”

”So would I,” said Ronan, from the wall.

”—I’d rather do Floor 27 again *twice*—”

”I’d rather do Floor 25,” said Ronan.

Cillian was watching all of them with undisguised joy.

”I love this,” he said. ”You lot fought a *prince*. There’s a woman out there from the *Herald*.”

”You’re going out first, so,” said Finn.

”I am absolutely not.”

---

They went out together.

Maeve made sure of it — five abreast through the doors and down the three front steps, nobody ahead and nobody trailing, because she had spent a week looking at how photographs of guilds get taken and she was not having a picture of James Ganner walking out of a building with four people behind him.

The noise went up in a wall. James had heard worse on a battlefield and it still put his shoulders up.

Maeve stepped to the microphones.

”Good afternoon. My name is Maeve Callahan, and I’m Commercial Director of Guild Zero.”

She let it settle.

”As of today, Guild Zero Limited is a licensed guild, operating from this building, which is our headquarters. We’re not renting it and we’re not sharing it. It’s ours.”

She did not pause for applause and did not get any, which was how she had wanted it.

”The founders. James Ganner, Guild Master and Managing Director. Finn Hale, Deputy Guild Master and Raid Captain. Myself, Commercial Director. Ronan Cleary and Cillian Ward, founding shareholders and senior Challengers of this guild.”

A camera shutter went off about nine hundred times.

”And the announcement. From this afternoon, Guild Zero is accepting applications.”

The noise changed shape.

”I want to be precise about that, because it’s going to be misreported inside the hour.” Maeve leaned in slightly. ”We are accepting applications. We are not accepting members. Nobody is being admitted today, this week, or this month. We’re building a selection process first and we’d rather say that out loud than pretend. Applications are open for Challengers, and for medical, analytical, equipment, security, training and operations roles — the full list goes up on our site in an hour.”

She straightened.

”And we are not announcing an expansion of Team Zero. We’re building an organisation around the five people standing here. Questions.”

---

Every question at once, for about three seconds, and then one voice got through.

”Maeve — will Team Zero stay as the same five?”

”James,” said Maeve, and stepped back half a pace.

James took the mic.

”Yes.”

He waited. It was apparently not enough.

”Same five,” he said. ”That’s in our founding documents and it takes all five of our signatures to change. Nobody’s getting added and nobody’s getting swapped out.”

”Then can Guild Zero Challengers earn a place on Team Zero?”

Finn answered that one, and did not need to be asked to.

”No. Team Zero’s the founding raid team, it’s not a promotion.” He shrugged. ”Guild Zero can build other raid teams and I’d expect it to. If you’re good, you’ll climb with us — you won’t climb *in* us.”

Then a woman near the front, third row, who had clearly been waiting the entire time.

”James — after Floor 25, viewers saw Alice fighting alongside Team Zero, and she’s been with you on 26 and 27. Is Alice Guild Zero’s sixth founding Challenger?”

”No.”

”Can you—”

”She’s not a Challenger. She doesn’t hold a Team Zero roster position and she doesn’t hold a Guild Zero one.” James kept it flat. ”The Tower doesn’t register her as a Challenger and neither do we.”

”Then is she part of Guild Zero at all?”

And James, who six weeks ago would have answered that in about a second and a half, closed his mouth.

”That’s not mine to answer.”

Which is when about two hundred people worked out that the woman standing just inside the doors at the top of the steps, in a charcoal coat, with nothing at all remarkable about her, had been there the whole time.

The cameras came round like a shoal turning.

Alice came down two steps and stopped, which put her above everybody, which James suspected was not an accident.

”I go where I choose to go,” she said. ”I have no arrangement with this guild. I have not been employed by it, I am not paid by it, and I do not take instruction from it.”

”But you fight with Team Zero—”

”I go where I choose to go,” Alice repeated, in exactly the same tone, and went back inside.

**[GalwayGoblin]:** SHE WAS ON THE STEPS THE WHOLE TIME

**[ShieldMainSiobhan]:** ”i go where i choose to go” MA’AM

**[user88317]:** HE DIDNT ANSWER FOR HER. HE ACTUALLY DIDNT ANSWER FOR HER

**[CorkClimber]:** the way 40 cameras turned at once 💀

**[FrontierWife]:** she said it twice the exact same way. iconic behaviour

---

”Finn — is Guild Zero being set up to compete with Emerald Spire?”

Everybody got very quiet, and about six lenses moved off Maeve and onto Finn, and one of them zoomed audibly.

Finn did not take the microphone off the stand. He just leaned toward it.

”No.”

He let that sit for a second.

”We didn’t build this to beat an Irish guild. There’s a tower in the middle of this city with twenty-eight floors we haven’t cleared, and everything above Floor 20 has killed somebody. That’s the competition.” A small shrug. ”Emerald Spire can do what it likes.”

Nothing about his father. Nothing about the eleven names on Floor 20. Nothing anybody could cut into a forty-second clip and title *FINN HALE HITS BACK*.

James watched three reporters visibly not get the story they had come for.

”James — what are Guild Zero’s ambitions in the Tower?”

James looked at the microphone for a second.

There was a version of this. He had heard other people give it. *We intend to become the leading guild in Europe. We intend to reach the top of the Tower. We intend to make Ireland—*

”Keep climbing,” he said.

”...That’s it?”

”That’s it. Twenty-seven’s done. Twenty-eight’s next. That’s the whole plan and it’s the same plan we had on Floor 1.”

Maeve was at his shoulder before anyone could follow up.

”That’s everything for today. The role list and the application portal go live within the hour, and we’ll have a media contact by the end of the week. Thank you all for coming.”

---

The applications started before they got back to the third floor.

Cillian had it up on the big screen inside four minutes, because of course he did, and he stood in front of it with his arms folded and a grin all over his face.

”Two hundred and forty.”

Ninety seconds later he said, ”Eight hundred.”

Then he stopped announcing them and just watched the counter, and the counter did not stop.

Challenger applications came fastest — thousands of them, and they kept coming, and about a fifth of them turned out to have no Challenger registration at all when the system checked. Then medical. Then analysts, a whole flood of analysts. Equipment specialists. Security, mostly ex-Defence Forces. Operations people from three other Irish guilds who had presumably filled the form in from their desks.

Some of them were not Irish. A cluster from Britain, then a scatter across Europe, then one from Seoul that made Maeve raise both eyebrows and screenshot it.

Ronan watched the number climb for about a minute.

Then the smile went off him entirely.

”I have to assess these.”

”You have to build the *thing* that assesses these,” said Cillian. ”Then eleven other people assess them. Then we assess about forty.”

”How many is it now?”

Cillian checked.

”...Don’t.”

”How many.”

”It’s fine.”

Finn had already pulled a second screen round and was filtering — registration tier, floor history, verified clears, party experience — because Finn’s brain went to raid capability the way water goes downhill, and he had a shortlist of nine before anybody could stop him.

”Finn.”

”I’m not accepting anyone, I’m *looking*—”

”You’re looking at people we’ve publicly said we’re not accepting yet,” said Maeve, without heat, already three steps past all of them and writing. ”Which is fine, keep going, I want to know what the top of that pile looks like. What I actually need is four screeners by Monday, because if this is still climbing tomorrow there is nobody in this building who can read them.”

James did not say anything for a while.

He sat down at the end of the table where he could see the whole screen and watched the number change.

It had gone past a figure he did not want to say out loud. Every one of those was a person who had opened a laptop this afternoon and typed out what they had done and what they could do and why they wanted to work for a company with his name on the first line of it.

On Floor 1 there had been five of them in a corridor. Finn had a training sword. Maeve had cried afterwards in the stairwell and told nobody for a year. James had a knife he had taken off a goblin and forty-one mana.

The counter changed again.

He was still looking at it four minutes later when Finn dropped into the chair beside him.

---

”Right,” Finn said. ”Business.”

”Go on.”

”Floor 28.”

Somewhere two floors below them, a contractor dropped something metal and swore, and the sound came up the stairwell. The residential wing was three weeks off at best. There were still four crates of unassembled chairs stacked in the corner of this room and somebody’s lunch on top of them.

James pulled up the interface.

`[FLOOR 28 AVAILABLE]`

The five of them looked at it — Maeve leaning in over Ronan’s shoulder, Cillian abandoning his counter, Finn with his boots up on a table that had cost more than James’s mother’s car.

Finn looked around the room once.

At the screens on the north wall, and the clear log with five names on the first line, and the crates, and the window with the last of the press packing up outside it.

Then back at the prompt.

”Twenty-seven floors,” he said, ”and this is the first one we’ve ever planned from our own gaff.”