read my new story : American Fast & Furious NSFW
"You won't take the money, and you won't give me any face. You aren't seriously roleplaying a clean cop, are you, Officer?"
Ghost-Fire-Boy narrowed his eyes, realizing the "Political Commissar" from the Enforcement Squad wasn't going to budge. He immediately switched gears, putting on his business face to command his brothers to clean up the battlefield.
"Gather up all the junk from these savages! Pile the valuable stuff over here! If you see any trash you can use, take it. If not, haul it back to the wagon!" Ghost-Fire-Boy hollered.
The player acting as the monitor from the Enforcement Squad didn't care about Ghost-Fire-Boy's attitude change. Their interests simply didn't align.
The orders from above were clear: for every player caught flagrantly violating military discipline before the war ended, the enforcer would receive 100 Kingdom Coins, five Iron Loot Boxes, and one Bronze Loot Box.
At the same time, Viserys had published the new Military Merit System:
Slay one Armored Soldier: Receive one acre of land and one thrall.
Note: You don't even have to farm the land yourself. The thrall does it. You just pay 10% tax to the crown annually, and the rest is yours.
Slay five Armored Soldiers: Receive a Knighthood, twenty acres of land, and a shop in the city.
Slay twenty Armored Soldiers in a single campaign: Viserys would raise the player to the peerage as a Baron and grant a proper fiefdom.
This system was exactly why the players were tormenting the locals of Ghoyan Drohe in such creative ways. The resistance forces were simply too weak and too few to go around.
After days of fighting, only about two hundred players had earned land, and a measly thirty had achieved Knighthood.
The players complained endlessly that the NPC locals were too cowardly and poor. They kept trying to provoke small factions that had already surrendered, hoping to goad them into a fight so they could "suppress the rebellion" for merit points.
But the results were pathetic. Merit points were only awarded for killing armored soldiers. With the monitors watching, they couldn't exactly dress corpses in armor to scam the system. Consequently, clearing an entire bandit camp often yielded only a handful of armored kills.
Take Ghost-Fire-Boy's battle just now: in the entire village, only four enemies had been wearing armor. That was only enough to reward four brothers in his guild.
Compared to the average player sweating it out for heads on the battlefield, the Enforcement Squad players had it made. Not only did they get loot boxes and currency for catching rule-breakers, but every arrest also counted as the equivalent of "one armored kill" toward their merit rank.
The rewards were so rich that while many players publicly cursed the "Red Armbands," secretly, everyone was jealous of them.
---
While the Dragon Banners were being planted all over the Ghoyan Drohe region, two players preparing to open up a new map had already set foot on the continent across the Narrow Sea.
"Hello, brothers! If you can see me, type '1' in the chat!"
Moon-Fang Strike stood at the harbor, waving at the empty air like a lunatic, ignoring the bizarre looks from the hurrying smallfolk of King's Landing.
"Holy shit, what are you doing?"
Beside him, Iron-Pumping Superman grabbed his arm and hissed, "You trying to get us arrested?"
"I'm livestreaming, bro. What's the problem?" Moon-Fang Strike looked at his companion innocently.
Iron-Pumping Superman, who was about to curse the guy's ancestors, froze. "Say what? Livestreaming?"
"Yeah! I figured it out on the boat. If you click 'Upload Video' on the official forum right before you log in, and then put on the helmet, it automatically triggers a livestream function. It can even relay to the major streaming platforms. It's insane!"
Moon-Fang Strike was beaming with excitement. His viewer count had already broken past 60,000 and was climbing vertically.
To be fair, the guy was a genius. He had managed to unlock a hidden feature that even Viserys didn't know about.
It wasn't that people in the real world hadn't tried to analyze the VR helmets. Plenty of tech channels had made videos, but aside from proving the helmet was impossible to disassemble without destroying it, no one understood how it worked.
Until now, the only known media functions were recording and screenshots—basic tools for saving memories. No one realized the helmet could act as a direct broadcast relay.
But Moon-Fang Strike, a newbie, stumbled upon it.
It made sense, though. Most players were so desperate to play that they logged in the second the connection was established. Who had the patience to fiddle with the launcher settings?
Only Moon-Fang Strike, who had been stuck on a boat with Iron-Pumping Superman with absolutely nothing to do in-game, had the boredom required to poke around every menu option.
CharmanderFan: Pog! He actually got a livestream working!
StinkyTofuEnjoyer: Who is this guy? Where are the big shots like Salted-Egg or Storm? Is this an official dev account?
StillWaitingForBetaKey: I don't care, just let me watch! Damn it, the devs are allergic to money. The waitlist is over a few hundred thousand people, and they're still dripping out access keys like it's water in a desert.
Category8-Hurricane: Exactly. They just now enabled streaming? If I didn't know better, I'd think we were begging them to let us play.
As the viewer count skyrocketed, the bullet-screen comments flew by faster than the eye could read. Moon-Fang Strike had a premonition: I'm going to be famous.
Iron-Pumping Superman finally understood what his little bro was doing. He gave a thumbs up. He always knew this kid was useless at everything except eating and messing around—but apparently, messing around paid off.
"Alright chat, drop some subs and gifts! If we hit the goal, I'll show you guys how we blow up a King in-game!"
Moon-Fang Strike grinned, showing all his teeth, and immediately slipped into "streamer mode," begging for gifts just like the pros he watched.
Although this was the first in-game livestream, the donation infrastructure had been on the official website since day one, managed by the little fire creature.
As soon as Moon-Fang Strike asked, the screen was flooded with gift notifications.
Someone even paid for a banner message across the top of the stream, asking if Moon-Fang Strike was selling his account and helmet.
To that, Moon-Fang Strike could only say: Keep dreaming.
Leaving aside the fact that accounts were soul-bound and couldn't be transferred, this game had just turned him into a major streamer with 100,000 concurrent viewers in a matter of minutes. He wouldn't sell this goose that laid golden eggs for anything.
"Alright, enough begging. If we don't pull off this mission, you're going to get hit with refunds from underage viewers!"
Iron-Pumping Superman saw that his sidekick's shouting was attracting the attention of some Gold Cloaks nearby. He quickly grabbed Moon-Fang's arm and dragged him into the thick of the crowd.