Arthur’s expression turned complicated at the mention of his eighth brother:
“I had someone pull Roy’s academic records, going all the way back to childhood.”
“Consistently sitting right around 60 points, across the board, biology, physics, math, language arts, all of it.”
“His grades always stayed just above passing.
Never once below it.”
The butler looked confused at first, then his eyes went wide:
“Are you saying, young master…”
“Exactly.
He was controlling his own scores on purpose.”
“Not the worst.
Not the best.
A ghost, sitting dead center the entire time.”
“Never once drawing attention.”
Arthur said through gritted teeth:
“A genuinely capable person, choosing to disappear into the background, fooling every smart person around him.”
“Just imagine the size of his ambition.
How dangerous he really is!”
“If he won’t stand with me, then I absolutely cannot let him live long enough to stand with Second or Sixth Brother instead.”
The butler said, thoroughly convinced:
“Understood, Young Master Arthur!”
Still, the butler couldn’t help but wonder: if Young Master Roy had hidden himself this well, how had the eldest young master ever found out at all?
As if sensing the question, Arthur smiled coldly:
“I didn’t figure it out myself.
It leaked from Father’s side.”
“What?”
“Father must be unhappy Roy keeps refusing to join the fight, and wanted to push him a little.”
“So Father’s own butler quietly leaked it.”
Arthur thought back to his own source.
If he hadn’t planted a man close to the old man himself, he never would’ve caught wind of the connection between them at all.
Something suddenly clicked for him:
“So that’s it!”
“Eighth Brother’s been playing that game nonstop ever since, purely to prove to Father that he has absolutely no interest in any of this.”
“So, Young Master Arthur, we’re waiting out the full month, then?”
“Like hell we are!”
Arthur said with a cold smile:
“Start preparing an assassination.
In ten days, I’ll ask him one more time.
If he hasn’t made up his mind by then, we kill him.
No hesitation.”
“Better dead than letting him join anyone else.”
“Eighth Brother’s no doubt counting on me waiting out the full month.”
“Dream on.”
Big Brother Arthur was, of course, a genuinely ruthless man.
A full month to think it over?
Please.
Who needed that much time?
It was nothing but a total lack of sincerity.
Ten days, and if Roy still refused to pick a side, straight to assassination.
By then, Roy would surely still be assuming he had a full month’s grace period as protection.
“Brilliant, young master!”
The butler couldn’t help but voice his admiration.
Young Master Arthur had never had much patience, but he was ruthlessly decisive, and that was exactly how he’d clawed his way past one brother after another, edging ever closer to the family head’s seat.
“Oh, and have someone look into who he actually knows in-game.”
Price is negotiable.”
…
Roy sat properly on his throne in World City, while the whole city buzzed with activity around him.
The lead designer had given him an on-demand monster-summoning interface.
Naturally, Roy wasn’t about to fight any of it himself.
He just had his NPCs summon monsters nonstop and clean them up directly.
Even a world boss dropped into World City had no choice but to obediently dissolve into experience points and crafting materials.
An army of tens of thousands of NPCs, working in tandem with every trap he’d built, cut down monster after monster, filling the vault to bursting.
Roy just sat quietly on his throne, waiting for the game’s grand finale.
Even with two days still left, he’d sunk into a state of pure, lazy contentment.
Five days of nonstop work.
He’d earned a break.
As for the past few days, Matsuno Hideaki had sent over a report: there were a handful of oddball players out there buying up items.
Which meant that, aside from Roy, a few genuinely strange players really did exist.
According to the company’s investigation, these players had taken out loans specifically to pose as big spenders, trying to buy up items right before shutdown.
The company had frozen a number of transactions over the past few days, and wanted Lord Joshua’s instructions on how to proceed.
To Roy, he was the game company’s own patron.
To ordinary players, the game company itself was the one calling the shots over them.
Trying to pull something right before shutdown?
Not a chance.
“Ban every last one of them.
Flag their ID cards too, log their IPs, and make sure none of them can ever register a new account.”
“Yes, Boss!”
And so, cries of despair suddenly rang out across the world:
“What gives you the right to ban me?!”
“Screw you and your whole damn family, you piece-of-crap designers!!!”
“I’m done for.
I took out a loan shark’s loan just for this.”
They’d all fallen before their campaign even truly began.
What awaited them instead was the police showing up at their door, hauling them off on the spot.
For the next full week, not one of them would get anywhere near a game again.
If someone had gone all-in on a loan, well, Roy could only wish them luck paying it back soon.
Amitabha.
Bless them.
Bless them.
Just as Roy was offering up his little prayer for the desperate gamblers, Surshana sent an urgent message:
“Lord Joshua, something’s wrong.”
“Someone reached out to us, offering money to have us watch your every move.”
“We’re stringing him along for now, but wanted to let you know right away.”
Ah.
Big Brother Arthur must be getting impatient.
None of this surprised Roy in the slightest.
Arthur had far more social resources at his disposal than he did.
The company’s designers and ops staff were all fiercely loyal to Roy, sure, but that didn’t stop someone from digging up an informant or two among them.
Roy said with a smile:
“How much is he offering?”
Surshana answered right away:
“500,000 yen a month.”
“How stingy of him.”
Roy couldn’t help but laugh:
“Not a cent under three million a month. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Anything less isn’t even worth discussing.”
“As for what you tell him about me, anything except the actual work you’re doing for me is fair game.”
“Any game-related intel, sell it if you can, and make sure they pay up front.”
“…Huh?”
“What, you don’t want to make some money?”
Roy said with a smile:
“You feed him information, and that’s exactly how I get to keep tabs on him in return.”
Surshana perked right up:
“Yes, Lord Joshua!”
“Consider it done!”
People who could survive under a surveillance state like this one, out in the resistance, were nobody’s fools.
Roy handed the job over to them without a second thought, happy to let them make a real profit off it.
Last of all, Roy recorded a video.
If his crossing succeeded, it would mean he’d vanished, or, as far as this world was concerned, died.
Once his real-world self disappeared, there had to be a culprit to blame.
That culprit would be Big Brother Arthur.
Otherwise, how could he possibly repay all that warm, brotherly affection?
Given how well Roy knew his brother, the assassination plot was surely already in motion.
After a second refusal, Arthur would send in the killers.
Just another plain, ordinary day in the life of the Sigma family.
Roy handled it without a shred of concern, since he’d been setting Arthur up from the very beginning anyway.
Arthur would likely crack in about ten days, by which point Roy would already be long gone, leaving behind one last bomb for him to deal with.
He’d already paid to have it arranged: the whole world would learn, after the fact, that he’d been murdered by his own eldest brother.
A little scorched-earth farewell gift, so to speak.
Second and Sixth Brother would be thrilled either way, and the rest of the elite families wouldn’t mind kicking a man while he was down either.
If the crossing failed, well, he’d deal with Arthur properly at his own pace.
If it succeeded, then Arthur wouldn’t even be worth talking to anymore.
So Roy paid no real mind to a stray dog like that, even if the stray happened to be his own eldest brother.
Only one thing was left for him to do in the game.
Steal Eve, the strongest AI the mega-corporate world had to offer.
He needed Eve.
Even in the New World, he wanted this monster of an AI still working for him.
“Good God.”
“No, I mean, good Boss.”
“Renting Eve’s full computing power is basically impossible.”
“Eve costs 2.7 billion dollars a day just to run.
That kind of money could drown the entire company.”
Matsuno Hideaki couldn’t help but exclaim.
Roy said with a smile:
“Relax, not full computing power.
Just whatever’s left over.”
“And I only need it for ten minutes.
Twenty million dollars covers it.”
“Practically a bargain.”
Matsuno Hideaki decided he simply could not understand this particular breed of human being.
Roy added:
“Didn’t I just spend 30 billion yen, my whole budget for the next two years, all in one go?”
“Just get me that interface built.”
NPCs needed AI behind them, and that AI had always been supplied by the game company.
Now, Roy was about to build the strongest artificial intelligence in the entire world.
Using the single most special class the game had to offer.
Automaton: Eve!
The moment of crossing was almost here.