There is a meeting in London where the managers of the investment group that are trying to take over Unicorn has gathered. One of them reported that the attempt to take over Unicorn has failed, with them only managing to hold 4% of the stake in Unicorn. The leaders lamented how Unicorn is starting to dominate the economy, not only in the VR field but also in chemical, pharmaceuticals, robotics, etc. Another speaks out about how they should learn from the mistakes of the JKI investment group. A year back, JKI held 20% of the shares of Unicorn, putting Unicorn into what seemed to be a serious crisis. However, Unicorn then went into a full-scale counterattack, with JKI’s accounting irregularities and backroom dealings exposed to the public. Under the attack of the media and the dwindling investments (and combined with the internal losses on the real estate and business market), JKI, a company with 105 years of history, fell apart. After some further investigation, the managers of this investment group were shocked to find out that many financial institutions were indirectly owned by Unicorn. Instead of trying to take over Unicorn in the real world, the managers have decided to change their plan to investing in the Hermes Guild. That way, they’ll essentially be able to “control” Royal Road without risking retaliation.
Scene switches to the Geomchis, who are looking at the Haven’s Pato Castle. Although the Haven empire conquered this territory not long before, the castle has already been quickly built thanks to slave labor (? Not sure if the castle is built or is uncompleted). The 505 people begin their charge at the castle and is immediately met with met with nearly 2,000 archers waiting for them. Among these archers were those of the Sniper class, a secondary class promotion of archer. In order to counter this torrent of arrows, all of the Geomchis use Sword Doppleganger, with Geomchi (?) creating 40 dopplegangers and the other instructors+trainees creating 15 to 30 dopplegangers. This temporarily creates a huge army of Geomchis which shock the archers. Despite of the archer’s constant barrage, the Geomchis carry on, forcing the Haven forces to sortie 3,000 of Haven’s elite knights. The Geomchis pull out bows and shoot the knights. Although the knights were mostly unharmed the normal arrows, there were sometimes magical arrows. The knights bring up their shields, but are then shocked when the Geomchis start assaulting them with throwing axes and javelins as well. The 2 groups collide and the Geomchis start doing large amount of damage to the knights. It mentions how the Geomchis were similar to the desert warriors, relying on agility and skill to keep them safe unlike the heavily armored knights. Seeing that his knights were in danger, General Rommel orders his troops to attack as well, and tells the snipers to pick off any of the intruders they can. One by one, the practitioners eventually fall, unable to block both the knights in front of them and the snipers from behind. In the end, only one of the Geomchis was still remaining (he was the oldest trainee. Not sure about his number. Maybe “ochi” is his number?) By that time, over 6,000 of Haven’s finest troops were slaughtered. Rommel tells the trainee that he’s the last one remaining and asks if he has any last words. He simply laughs out and says that was a good fight and he’s looking forward to the next one.
Scene switches to a banquet/party the Hermes guild is throwing to celebrate the defeat of Van Hawke (only City lords or lvl 440+ people can attend). A group talks about their progress at conquering the continent (the South and the East are also showing some resistance, but the biggest problem is the North). The group then concludes that Weed will be beaten despite of his strategies and skills because no matter how you throw an egg (Arpen Kingdom’s forces) you can’t destroy an impregnable fortress.
Scene goes back to the Northern Army who is marching towards the Arpen Palace. They manage to reach the Pesil river and are impressed by the sight of the enormous Alcazar bridge. The commanders make plans to rest the soldiers for the night after crossing the bridge and assault the palace in the morning. The scouts come back and report that they see no enemies along the rivers, so they start moving their forces across the bridge. A group of players in the Army imagine all of the profit they can make from controlling all of the amazing works of architecture in the North while they are marching through the bridge and are pleasantly surprised by the effects of the bridge (gain reputation, fatigue disappears, increase temporary stamina, reduces movement speed reduction by rugged terrain, etc). While they cross the bridge, they discuss how it was nice to control an 8.5 million gold structure that they didn’t even have to work for. One of the players mention how it would suck if the bridge will collapse in the future though, because they would be losing the benefits of the bridge. His friends points out how that’s stupid because the bridge is a Great Building. Suddenly a grating sound cuts through the air and the bridge shakes. One of the players asks what it was but another says it’s probably just some idiot breaking a carriage. They continue walking across the bride, but then cracks spiderweb across the supporting pillars and the steel wires holding the bridge up all snap, sending the bridge (and a part of the army) all tumbling into the river. The commanders survey the damage from the back (some of the users wonder if they went over the bridge’s carrying capacity or if the construction was bad lol) and they received a report that 38,000 troops and several wagons of combat materials was lost in the collapse. Although this damage was bad, it was still manageable because the Haven army consisted of an almost ridiculous 200 million troops (? Not sure if google fail or if they really have that much). However, the biggest problem was probably the 150,000 NPCS and the 2,000 Hermes guildmembers that were trapped on enemy territory when the bridge collapsed behind them. The NPCs all suffer an enormous blow to their performance (reduce by 22%) and morale (reduced by 45%). This is when the Porridge Cult army charges in attacking the stranded troops. At first the Haven players were confident because they had defeated the Porridge army many times. However, as the battle dragged on, they started to see that loss was inevitable and many of them started slowly sneaking to the river. Unknown to them, there was the Seaweed porridge and Kkomak (?) porridge divisions waiting for them in the water. And those who managed to escape downstream found another group of players waiting for them: the Dark Gamers. Every day, there are many informative posts created on the Dark Gamers website. Among all of them was a post by Gold Bugs, a person famous for posting informative information about expensive weapons and jewelry (?). This post said how there was a great hunting ground (and something about pottery). Although it seems like an ordinary post on the outside, only those among the top 10% of the Dark Gamers were able to decode the post and see the true message: that there was a good “Haven hunting ground” downstream of the Alcazar. That is why there were around 600 high leveled Dark Gamers just waiting for the fleeing Haven deserters.