Chapter 294: Failure Makes Them Prophetic
The world notice reached Martin several minutes after Night Espresso’s guild channel closed. He was still beside Rias in Mountain Risen’s protected licensing hall.
His guild panel had stayed open through the disbanding. The familiar crest and vice-leader rank were gone, along with the territory tab and pages of member names.
Then the world notice spread across the empty panel, carrying Just Die’s new black-bordered emblem.
"Those bastards got another progression path out of this?" Martin asked.
Rias read the alignment details before answering. "They traded every academy service they had for it. Whether they gained more than they lost depends on how many hidden contacts the game gives them and how long they survive the bounties."
Martin looked from Just Die’s black-bordered emblem to the blank space where Night Espresso’s crest had been. His guild had broken apart so its members could keep their academy access. Just Die had chosen exile and turned its punishment into a progression path.
"They kept the formula. I know they did."
"We know what the project was trying to complete. We don’t know whether they finished a usable formula or what Crucible Concord recovered from the room." Rias closed the Dark Side notice and returned to the incident record. "I’ll request an evidence update. Until they answer, don’t turn a reasonable suspicion into a fact."
Rias sent the evidence request while Martin watched. Crucible Concord’s automated reply said the sublevel audit was still underway and that no inventory report would be released until investigators determined which personnel had participated in the project. There was no mention of a formula slate. Martin closed the message before he could mistake the omission for proof.
Rias was right, which only made waiting harder. Raze had killed Martin and still controlled the laboratory when Rias escaped. Now he occupied Victoria’s former place at the top of Just Die’s roster, but the incident record gave Martin nothing he could use.
Martin still wanted to accuse Raze in the evidence claim and forced himself to leave it out. Rias had spent the whole mission teaching him to separate evidence from instinct, and he was not going to throw that lesson away because waiting hurt.
Forest Hidden’s public development board had already marked the project as failed. Crucible Concord also issued a brief notice confirming the discovery of an unlicensed restricted facility beneath Mountain Risen’s public alchemy quarter, but it identified neither the sponsor nor any participating guild.
The public feeds were far less careful.
[Breaking: JUST DIE BECOMES FIRST PLAYER GUILD TO JOIN THE DARK SIDE]
[Night Espresso Disbands After Cassandra Selfmore’s Academy Banishment]
[Cascade Valley Released: Former Night Espresso Territory Now Unclaimed]
[Forest Hidden Development Project Ends in Failure]
Screenshots of Raze’s black-bordered name spread alongside footage from Cascade Valley. Players who had once complained that Just Die behaved like villains now praised the guild for becoming the first to unlock an entirely new side of the game. Recruitment counts, rumored shadow contracts, and maps of possible outlaw shelters appeared within minutes.
Just Die’s new alignment made its earlier attacks look like the buildup to a hidden route instead of a string of failures. Commentators argued over which guild would follow it into exile, while the laboratory became a footnote in stories about Cassandra. A new progression path was easier to celebrate than the intelligent beasts its research could endanger.
Elsewhere, the feeds focused on Night Espresso’s collapse. Maps showed Cascade Valley open for claims, and former members posted screenshots of academy services returning after they dropped the guild tag. Commentators passed those images around as proof that Cassandra had dragged the guild down with her, ignoring that disbanding Night Espresso was what freed those members from the penalty.
The most widely shared image showed Cassandra Selfmore outside Forest Hidden’s sealed gate with [Condemned] beneath her name. The screenshot offered no explanation, so thousands of people supplied their own.
[Guildwatcher77: Cassandra loses the development project, gets banished, and her guild dissolves on the same day Just Die goes Dark. Sure. Totally unrelated.]
[MarketMaw: Dig up the old Cascade Valley threads. People said the same person was controlling Night Espresso and Just Die. Everyone laughed because Cassandra kept winning.]
[CoffeeHater: Businesswoman of the Year couldn’t keep one guild alive.]
[ColdQueenFanNoMore: She used those players for publicity, failed the academy, then made them clean up her mess.]
[MHAWatch: That Condemned tag fits her.]
Old conspiracy posts resurfaced under new titles and reached a much wider audience. None offered proof that Cassandra had ever contacted Just Die. They lined up old footage from the Cascade Valley attack with Victoria’s absence from public battles and Cassandra’s newly condemned character, then treated the timing as evidence. The gaps only gave people more room to invent whatever accusation would spread fastest.
Finance-focused social accounts posted clips from Cassandra’s old interviews beside the [Condemned] screenshot. Since they could not explain the marker, they dug up every old criticism of her companies and listed the rivals who might profit if her reputation collapsed. Smaller channels were already booking guests who knew nothing about the game and letting them guess at what Cassandra had done.
Martin scrolled until the comments stopped saying anything new.
"They suspected a connection before?" he asked.
"There were old posts about it," Rias replied. "Most were guesses, and nobody cared while Cassandra kept winning. Now they can repost the same claims and pretend they knew all along."
Martin reopened the private channel that had gone silent after Cassandra ordered everyone to leave Night Espresso. His earlier question was still waiting for an answer.
[Emperoar: Why are you marked Condemned?]
He added another message.
[Emperoar: Did you control Just Die?]
Martin started typing an accusation, stopped halfway through, and deleted it. Cassandra’s voice came back to him from the night she revealed Kill Clause.
I don’t want there to be a wall between us anymore.
[Emperoar: You promised there wouldn’t be another wall.]
The message was delivered. Cassandra did not answer.
An alert from a national business network appeared among the gaming reports, showing Cassandra’s real face beside Night Espresso’s broken crest.
Rias read the headline and looked at Martin.
"By morning," she said, "this will stop being gaming news."