Insomniac Player

John looked around the room, then back at Damien. His eyes landed on the restraints again, and his expression went colder still.

"You know who he is."

The Iron Marshal said nothing.

John pointed at Damien. "Didn’t you see his face?"

Nobody answered. John laughed, no humor in it at all. "Two years, and you people haven’t changed a single bit."

Damien watched him carefully. This wasn’t quite the John from his memory. That man had been loud, jolly, a little ridiculous, cracking jokes in the middle of a goblin fight. This version of him was still the same person underneath, sharper now, more dangerous, seasoned by two years Damien hadn’t been there for.

He kept quiet and let John do the talking. Right now, silence felt like the smartest move he had. He wanted to see exactly what kind of man John had become.

John turned toward the President. The young politician swallowed hard.

"You."

The President tried to hold his composure. "Sir John, this is a misunderstanding. As President of Region 21, I have the authority to—"

"No." One word, and it silenced him completely.

"You have authority." John kept walking closer. "You don’t have wisdom."

The President’s face shifted. John kept going. "I know exactly why you did this. You hate people like us."

"Excuse me?"

"Combat players." John’s smile turned dangerous. "You politicians earned your power through schemes, titles, positions. You run systems, control resources, shape information." He pointed at him. "People like us walk into gates. We fight the actual monsters. We’re the ones deciding whether thousands of people live or die."

The President’s jaw tightened. "This isn’t jealousy."

"Isn’t it."

John stepped closer still. "You’re insecure."

The whole room went rigid. His voice sharpened into something almost taunting. "Insecure and incompetent, and you think locking up someone stronger than you makes you safer."

Damien nearly looked away from that, not because it was wrong, but because it was every thought he’d had himself and never once said out loud.

The President stood his ground, barely. "You’re threatening the authority of this region."

"No. I’m fixing your mistake."

The President stepped back, fear finally showing plain on his face.

John kept walking, every step chipping further at whatever confidence the man had left. Everyone in the room understood the same thing at once. This wasn’t a negotiation.

The Iron Marshal moved. "Sir John."

John stopped. "Don’t."

"I understand your anger."

"Do you." John looked at him. "You don’t."

The general had no answer for that. John’s voice dropped lower. "Someone I consider family went missing for two years. He came back and fought through one of the worst gatebreaks this region has seen, saved your players, saved your civilians. And the first thing you people did..." His eyes dropped to the cuffs again. "...was chain him."

The Iron Marshal stayed quiet.

"I respected you." John’s expression didn’t soften. "Don’t make me stop."

He moved again. The President stumbled back and hit his own chair, knocking it over. "No..."

A politician, a leader, one of the highest-ranking men in the entire region, and in front of John Jones he was just another person standing in the wrong place.

The President tried to trigger a skill. Nothing happened. John’s mana had already swallowed the whole room’s output.

He went down hard, back hitting the marble floor. The ministers stayed frozen. Noah couldn’t make himself move.

Damien watched all of it in silence, taking notes without meaning to.

Then John reached out, not toward Damien, toward the President. Mana gathered around his arm hard enough to shake the room.

"Remove the restraints." His voice stayed level. "Now."

The President looked up, pale as the marble under him.

John’s hand shifted slightly. The air itself seemed to compress.

Then a voice cut through everything. "Stop."

It carried enough weight to actually break John’s pressure. White light flooded the room, bright enough that everyone flinched and covered their eyes.

Damien squinted through it. A figure had stepped in between John and the President.

Tall, lean, dressed in a formal military uniform unlike anything the Iron Marshal wore. His presence didn’t crush the room the way John’s did, it was different, quieter, but somehow absolute anyway. Shoulder-length golden hair moved behind a clean-shaven face that looked more suited to a magazine cover than a battlefield. Only the uniform tied him to the military at all.

He had John’s extended wrist held in one hand.

John’s eyes narrowed. For the first time since walking through that door, someone had actually stopped him.

The newcomer looked at him and smiled. "I can’t let you do that."

The room held its breath collectively. John looked down at the hand wrapped around his wrist, then back up at the man’s face. A faint smile crossed his own, not friendly, more like a challenge issued between old rivals. "Still stopping me after all these years."

"Still causing trouble after all these years."

Damien glanced between the two of them and pulled up the newcomer’s profile out of pure reflex.

➤[Name: Martin Fairchild]

➤[Title: Field Marshal of Region 21]

➤[Level: 434]

➤[Class: Son of Light (Legendary)]

He swallowed without meaning to. A Legendary player at Level 434. Out of curiosity, he checked John’s too.

➤[Name: John Jones]

➤[Alias: Mr. John]

➤[Level: 450]

➤[Class: The Dread Bastion (Legendary)]

Two Legendary combat players standing an arm’s length apart, and Damien could feel the strange, layered pressure of both of them at once, pressing in from two directions.

The man tightened his grip. "Sir John."

John’s mana surged again, and the whole building trembled with it.

"Move, Sir Martin."

"No."

Neither of them moved for several long seconds. The shattered meeting hall sat completely silent. John stared the man down, and the man stared right back, pale golden light rolling off him in slow, steady waves, pure light-aligned mana pushing directly against the suffocating pressure John kept pouring into the room.

The Iron Marshal and Noah both breathed easier the moment it started to balance out. The politicians didn’t. If anything, their faces suggested this new arrival had just made everything worse for them, not better.

The Iron Marshal straightened his posture. Noah lifted his head, caught himself, and lowered it again fast.

"Field Marshal," someone whispered.

Damien caught it and turned his attention fully onto the man.

He looked to be somewhere in his thirties, uniform pristine despite everything, decorated with insignias Damien didn’t recognize. His expression stayed remarkably calm for someone physically restraining John Jones by the wrist.

Legendary. Sir Martin. The highest military authority in the entire region, apparently.

Martin let go of John’s wrist slowly. John didn’t retaliate, and that told Damien plenty on its own. Whatever history sat between these two, it ran deep enough that John actually listened to him.

"You’re making a mess," Martin said.

John glanced around at the wrecked doors and cracked walls. "It was already like this when I got here."

Martin just stared at him. Damien almost laughed despite everything, that was the John he actually remembered. The Iron Marshal looked away pointedly, neither confirming nor denying anything.

Footsteps sounded from the corridor outside. Nobody paid much attention at first, not after everything John had already bulldozed through to get here. But the military players in the room reacted instantly, straightening up at once, the ministers following a half-second behind them. The President, still flat on the floor, looked genuinely relieved for the first time since the doors blew open.

Two men walked in. The first looked surprisingly young, barely into his late twenties, dressed in a dark formal suit without much decoration on it at all. Nobody announced him. Nobody needed to.

"Prime Minister," Noah said, snapping straighter.

Damien glanced over.

Prime Minister?