CHAPTER 20: COLLATERAL
Tang Rou's message sat in my inbox like an accusation.
"They asked about you."
I pulled up the PRD's recent player logs, cross-referencing guild tags with timestamp data. The pattern was clear: three hours ago, while I was fighting in the canyon, guild squads had moved through the zones where Lord Grim's known associates leveled.
Systematic targeting.
Hit the support network, isolate the primary target.
Textbook suppression—and knowing it doesn't make it less effective.
I typed: "Who were they?"
[Soft Mist: Excellent Dynasty. First attack was a three-person squad. Second was five. They kept asking where Lord Grim logs in from, who plays him, whether I knew his real identity.]
They're fishing for information through harassment.
Classic Chen Yehui.
Pressure the periphery, gather intelligence, build a profile.
[Soft Mist: I didn't tell them anything. I don't know anything to tell.]
No.
But they don't believe that.
And as long as they don't believe it, they'll keep coming.
I opened a private channel and pinged Steamed Bun. His response came immediately despite the hour—the kid apparently had the same disregard for sleep schedules that I did.
[Steamed Bun Invasion: LORD GRIM! I fought some guild people yesterday! They were VERY RUDE!]
"Did you win?"
[Steamed Bun Invasion: OF COURSE! They tried to corner me but I ran THROUGH them! Like a bowling ball! A punching bowling ball!]
He won a PK encounter against a guild squad.
Through sheer chaos.
Of course he did.
[Steamed Bun Invasion: They asked about you too! I told them Lord Grim was my umbrella friend and they got confused! VICTORY THROUGH CONFUSION!]
Despite everything, I felt my mouth twitch.
"Stay off the main roads for a few days. Use the side zones."
[Steamed Bun Invasion: But the side zones have fewer people to punch!]
"The main roads have people who want to punch you back."
[Steamed Bun Invasion: ...okay that's a good point. STRATEGIC RETREAT!]
I closed the chat and pulled up the full damage report.
The scope was worse than I'd expected.
Tang Rou: PKed twice in four hours. Steamed Bun: PKed once (won). Two casual players who'd partied with Lord Grim for the Boneyard record: harassed until they publicly announced they had no affiliation with the "record-breaking menace."
Four people targeted.
Two driven away entirely.
All because they played with me.
The guilt settled in my chest like a stone. These were real people—not character profiles, not source material, not data points. Tang Rou had been attacked because she'd beaten me in a duel and refused to stop playing with me afterward. Steamed Bun had been hunted because he'd punched skeletons with an umbrella guy who made him laugh.
This isn't their fight.
They didn't ask to be drafted into a war against Excellent Era's guild apparatus.
They just wanted to play a video game.
Party chat pinged again.
[Soft Mist: When's the next record attempt?]
I stared at the message.
"You just got PKed twice. The guilds are specifically targeting anyone associated with me. Maybe you should—"
[Soft Mist: I asked when, not whether.]
"The next dungeon tier requires Level 30. I'm at 26. Give it three or four days."
[Soft Mist: Good. I'll be there.]
"The guilds will—"
[Soft Mist: I know what the guilds will do. I watched what they did to me today. That's why I'm asking.]
I didn't understand.
[Soft Mist: Someone told me I shouldn't play with you. Multiple someones, actually. They were very insistent. Very... threatening.]
"That's exactly why you should consider—"
[Soft Mist: That's exactly why I won't.]
The silence stretched for a long moment.
[Soft Mist: I don't quit because someone tells me to. I don't back down because someone threatens consequences. If Guild players think they can bully me into abandoning a teammate, they're going to learn why that's a bad assumption.]
[SRM Update: Soft Mist (Tang Rou) — Resonance increased. 56% → 58%. Alignment detected: Shared resistance to external pressure.]
Fifty-eight percent.
She's not doing this for competitive reasons.
She's not doing it because she wants to beat records.
She's doing it because someone told her she couldn't.
The source material had said Tang Rou was competitive. Intensely competitive. Driven by the desire to win, to improve, to prove she was the best at whatever she attempted.
But this isn't competition.
This is principle.
The show didn't capture this part of her.
Or maybe it didn't exist until the guilds tried to break it out of her.
[Soft Mist: Also, you still owe me training sessions. I'm not letting you escape through guild drama.]
She's angry.
Genuinely angry.
Not at the PKers.
At the principle being violated.
"Three days. Level to 30. We'll run the next dungeon together."
[Soft Mist: I'll be ready.]
She logged off.
I spent the next four hours mapping.
The PRD's guild data merged with Su Mucheng's Excellent Dynasty intelligence, creating a web of patrol routes, shift changes, and coverage gaps. The guilds operated on schedules—efficient, but predictable. Their scouts rotated every three hours. Their coverage thinned during boss spawn windows when major players redirected to competition zones.
Gap one: Herb Garden's eastern patrol changes at 2 AM and 5 AM. Three-minute window of reduced coverage.
Gap two: Tyrannical Ambition pulls scouts during Wild Boss spawns. Predictable timing, server-wide notification.
Gap three: Excellent Dynasty's northern zone relies on a single scout who takes bathroom breaks every ninety minutes. Human limitations.
I mapped each gap, color-coding the zones by risk level. Red zones: constant coverage, avoid entirely. Yellow zones: intermittent coverage, move quickly. Green zones: coverage gaps exploitable with timing.
If we stick to green zones and use the gaps in yellow, we can level without constant combat.
It's not freedom.
But it's survival.
The map took shape on my screen—a strategic overlay that looked like a military operation rather than a video game. Routes threaded through safe zones. Timing windows marked in precise intervals. Contingency paths for when primary routes became compromised.
This is how we fight guilds without fighting guilds.
Movement and timing instead of combat and attrition.
Let them waste resources hunting shadows.
The café was silent around me. The late-night crowd had gone home. The morning crowd hadn't arrived. Just me, the blue glow of the monitor, and a strategy that might keep my team alive long enough to reach the next record.
My eyes were burning.
When did I last sleep?
Yesterday? The day before?
It doesn't matter. The map matters.
I saved the final version and leaned back in my chair. The wrist brace pressed against my skin. The screen showed green routes threading through a server that had become hostile territory.
Consciousness faded before I could close my eyes properly.
I woke to warmth across my shoulders.
Chen Guo's jacket. The one she kept in the back office for cold nights. She'd draped it over me without waking me, the way she'd done once before when I'd fallen asleep at the counter.
She's kind.
Kinder than I deserve.
The clock showed 6:47 AM. I'd been asleep for less than two hours, but the café was starting to fill with morning customers. My screen still glowed with the patrol map—green routes and timing windows and a strategy that looked insane outside of context.
She saw this.
She saw me sleeping next to a map that looks like a military operation.
Another data point in whatever profile she's building of the strange night manager who turned down fifty thousand yuan.
My inbox had new messages.
[Steamed Bun Invasion: I found a SIDE ZONE! There are CRABS! Big crabs! They pinch but I PINCH BACK!]
[Cleansing Mist (Encrypted): Chen Yehui submitted another report this morning. Tao Xuan is reviewing. Be careful.]
And one message that made me sit up straight.
[Plantago Seed (Herb Garden): Lord Grim. I'd rather hire you than fight you. This is my last offer. Can we talk?]
Plantago Seed.
Herb Garden's guild leader.
The pragmatist.
I stared at the message.
In the source material, he was the first guild leader to break from the suppression pact.
He prioritized resources over politics.
If he's reaching out now...
Maybe the alliance isn't as solid as it appears.
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