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Well, well, looks like there's enough fruit for everyone to get a bite!"
Just as the two groups stood there in awkward silence, the sound of approaching footsteps echoed from the direction of the barracks.
Then came a lazy, familiar drawl. Every player present knew who it belonged to: Pineapple-Pizza-Lover, Guild Master of the Knights Templar.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Quite the party we have here!"
"Fuck! That eunuch sold the same intel to three parties!"
At this point, Storm-Overlord didn't bother lying. He glared with disgust at Pineapple, who was strolling over with about a hundred players in tow.
"What eunuch? What intel?" Pineapple asked, feigning innocence.
Storm paused. Does he not know? He rolled his eyes, a plan forming in his mind, and his sour expression turned into a grin.
"Nothing much. It's just that Nine-Thousand-Years sold both of us the same info. He said the Boss is planning to set sail across the Narrow Sea soon to reclaim the Iron Throne. The two of us wanted to prepare early, so we secured some ships at the harbor. But since we bumped into you, Brother Pineapple, let's just forget about it!"
"Hah! Don't give me that," Pineapple sneered. "We've worked together before. Why not make it a three-way alliance? We can all sail across the sea together!"
Storm saw that Pineapple wasn't buying it, so he sighed and spilled the beans.
Tempest (Guild Leader of Thunder Hall), standing to the side, finally spoke up.
"Cut the crap. Since we've all bumped into each other, let's just go together. Once we get there, it's every guild for itself. If we keep arguing here, a fourth or fifth guild is bound to show up!"
The other two agreed without objection. Just like that, nearly a thousand players from the three guilds marched grandly out of the city.
Among the three groups, Storm and Tempest had their full forces, but Pineapple had only brought about a hundred men. He kept a poker face, but secretly, he had already sent someone offline to rally the troops in their private guild chat.
The group moved fast. At the city gates, the guards went to the palace to report. Once permission was granted, the players sprinted out of the city, heading straight for Ghoyan Drohe.
They marched swiftly through the night, only stopping to rest when the sun came up.
The next day, the remaining players in the barracks realized something was wrong when they saw how empty the camp was. When news broke that Viserys had ordered the preparation of weapons and supplies for an imminent campaign, the camp exploded into chaos.
Immediately, about eight hundred to a thousand players grabbed their weapons and prepared to charge toward Ghoyan Drohe.
Seeing this, Viserys decided to fuel the fire. He declared that all players would serve as the vanguard. With the Boss's blessing, the players had no more reservations. Cursing and shouting, they grabbed their gear and stormed out of the city, determined to catch up with Storm and the others.
Meanwhile, 1,500 soldiers of the Pentos City Watch were also assembling. For this campaign, Viserys left only 500 soldiers and about a thousand sailors from the Royal Fleet to guard the city, which should be sufficient.
A day later, Viserys personally led the rear guard: 500 players from the Grenadier Corps, 1,000 soldiers from the City Watch, 100 Royal Guards, and 100 members of the Royal Enforcement Squad—a total of 1,700 troops—transporting supplies toward the Ghoyan Drohe region.
The players in the vanguard, desperate to claim the first merit points, marched at breakneck speed, barely resting day or night.
Normally, this kind of grueling, inhumane march would kill a character from exhaustion before they even reached the destination.
But Viserys had just released a "hotfix" update that didn't require logging off. The main feature? An AFK Auto-Pilot System.
From now on, when players logged off, their characters would enter "Auto-Pilot Mode" and could even defend themselves if attacked.
With this overpowered feature, players started abusing their characters. They would put them on auto-pilot for the entire march, only logging in to "feed" their characters when their VR headsets warned them of critical health levels.
Then it was back to auto-pilot, back to marching.
Thanks to this freakish method, the players moved at incredible speeds, covering huge distances in a single day.
As a result, the main force of native soldiers led by Viserys was left far behind, causing the army to become dangerously disjointed.
If an enemy force had managed to divide and surround them, it would have been a total rout.
This made Viserys, leading an army for the first time, reflect on his mistakes with a cold sweat.
But the die was cast. The vanguard—the three guilds led by Storm and the others—had already smashed into Ghoyan Drohe. They were razing every bandit camp and charging into every village they saw.
If a settlement didn't fly the Dragon Banner or surrender immediately, the players descended like hungry tigers, slaughtering until rivers of blood flowed.
Hearing that the frontline players had gone completely off the rails again, Viserys hurriedly dispatched the Enforcement Squad to speed ahead and enforce military law.
Motherfuckers! Those people you're butchering are MY future subjects!
The Enforcement Squad, also marching at supernatural speeds, arrived in Ghoyan Drohe within a few days. Whenever they found players engaging in wanton slaughter, they swarmed them and arrested them. If anyone resisted, the squad captain, The Train, would forcibly disconnect them from the server on the spot.
In just three days, the Enforcement Squad arrested dozens of players who had been killing indiscriminately. For the worst offenders, they reported directly to Viserys, resulting in permanent bans.
Instantaneously, military discipline among the players improved.
At the same time, the official website posted an announcement about the bans and immediately selected a few dozen lucky players from the waiting list to fill the spots.
Seeing this, the remaining players—whatever they might have thought privately—didn't dare to act out in public. After all, getting into the game was hard enough; they didn't want to lose their accounts.
Viserys's crackdown was intentional. He wanted to weed out the players who refused to follow orders and thought they were gods.
The waiting list on the official website had already surpassed several hundred thousand people and was growing daily. Every applicant even had to fill out a 100-question survey to prove their psychological stability.
In short, tons of people were dying to get in. Viserys didn't feel the need to cater to a bunch of entitled brats anymore.
Sending the Enforcement Squad was his way of saying: Listen to me, and everyone wins. Don't listen, and you can get out. There's a line of people stretching to Paris waiting to take your spot.
Of course, the reason Viserys could be so bold wasn't just confidence. He wasn't afraid of players with ill intentions trying to assassinate him because he had recently spent a large chunk of the Kingdom Coins harvested from the players to buy a comprehensive "NPC Protection Shield."
Native characters could still harm Viserys, but any attack from a player—including what they might consider exploiting bugs—would be blocked by the shield.
Faced with the Enforcement Squad, most players chose to behave. To be fair, most of them weren't psychopaths who needed to kill everything in sight. Once Viserys made an example of a few, the rest obediently went back to fighting "monsters."
Besides, having been in the game for this long, many players had learned the ropes. If they encountered a wealthy village that surrendered, they could still trick the locals into resisting. Then, they could swoop in and "legitimately" pillage the place.
Dropping weapons, feigning weakness, flashing wealth—the players were masters of baiting. They played the naive local Rhoynar and Andals like fiddles.