Second World Online

Three days. The time granted by the system before the war drums of the Castle Siege sounded globally felt as if it passed so quickly, yet at the same time felt extremely slow for an opportunist aiming for absolute profit.

For the past seventy-two hours, I had completely locked myself inside the "Waterwheel." I only left the workshop to take in some virtual fresh air, check on Yuuki and Yuna who were training hard under the guidance of fellow players from the Knights of the Round faction, and perform the final fitting with Kitsuna for my new Epic military uniform. The rest of my time was purely spent in front of the melting furnace and the alchemy mixing table.

My economic strategy was extremely simple, yet extremely lethal: Monopoly from upstream to downstream.

In Second World Online at this stage, there was still not a single NPC merchant or player selling finished "Gunpowder." No crafter had yet realized that destructive chemical composition, and the system did not provide it instantly on the market. If I wanted to create hundreds of bombs, I had to synthesize the explosive material purely from scratch.

Utilizing the Remote Auction House feature and my VIP status, I hired several low-level players to secretly buy up the entire supply of raw materials. I swept clean the stock of [High-Grade Charcoal], [Saltpeter Crystal], and [Pure Sulfur] from the market. At the same time, I bought thousands of copper bars.

The moment those tons of raw materials entered my inventory, my alchemy workshop transformed into an extremely dangerous gunpowder factory.

I ground charcoal and potassium nitrate crystals into an extremely fine microscopic powder, then mixed them with swamp sulfur using absolute precision ratios. One error in ratio or room temperature, and this entire shop could explode and send me to the respawn point. However, thanks to my Advanced Alchemy level, my hands moved with perfect rhythm. Hundreds of kilograms of high-grade gunpowder were successfully created by my own hands.

Once the gunpowder was ready, I processed it together with molten copper into [Sulfuric Shrapnel Bombs] on an industrial scale. I deliberately held back all of my production results, not throwing a single bomb onto the market during the first two days. This triggered extreme panic among the combat squads of giant Guilds such as Ouroboros and Black Wolf. They saw the power of my area explosions on the forums, yet they had no access to similar weapons, and the raw materials on the market had been completely bought up by me without remainder.

And now, exactly five minutes before the digital clock in the sky of Second World Online showed eight o'clock at night, the official start time of the Castle Siege invasion, I stood inside my workshop, staring at the masterpiece of my production. Three hundred copper bombs were neatly arranged inside wooden crates. The gold balance on my interface was itching to skyrocket.

"Time to open the dam," my grin widened behind my bangs.

I opened the Auction House panel. With extremely fast finger movements, I uploaded 300 Sulfuric Shrapnel Bombs in stacks of ten, setting an outrageously arrogant Buyout price: 75 Gold Coins per stack!

The moment I pressed the upload button, my auction screen was immediately assaulted by a barrage of golden notifications.

Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting!

In less than ten seconds, the first one hundred and fifty bombs were completely sold out. The Guild treasurers who had already grown desperate searching for formation-breaking weapons had clearly been using bots or manually refreshing every millisecond. Gold coins flowed into my balance like a flood. Hundreds of gold increased to a thousand, then touched the figure of one thousand one hundred and twenty-five pure gold coins in a single breath!

However, exactly at the fifteenth second, when my sales reached half of the total stock, the auction interface suddenly froze.

The continuous ringing of gold coin sounds was unnaturally cut off. My screen flashed bright red, and a giant warning window with a crossed sledgehammer logo appeared, covering my entire view.

[Administrator System Warning (Game Master): Auction Activity Temporarily Suspended!]

[Player 'Syl', your account has been detected performing extreme market manipulation from raw materials to finished products, as well as exploiting the circulation of area-destruction (AoE) weapons in an unnatural timeframe. Your remaining 150 auction items have been TEMPORARILY FROZEN to maintain server economic stability ahead of the Castle Siege!]

[This is a Level 1 Warning. The economic system is left to the players, but absolute monopoly by a single party that threatens global gold circulation must be restricted. Please comply with fair trade guidelines.]

"What the hell is this?!" I shouted in annoyance, slamming my wooden worktable until it cracked slightly. "Market manipulation my ass! I crafted these items from scratch with my own sweat and stat points! Didn't you GMs say this game has absolute freedom?!"

I snorted roughly, crossing my arms while staring at the remaining one hundred and fifty bombs in my inventory that now bore a red lock icon. Their status had been temporarily locked (Account Locked Item) by the GM.

The Game Masters (GMs) in Second World Online were indeed known for rarely intervening in player affairs, allowing PvP and scams to occur as part of realism. However, it seemed that controlling 100% of a server's explosive material supply and sucking up thousands of gold coins five minutes before the largest war was something that made the system AI algorithms and the human moderators at the Chronos Tech office in the real world panic. They feared I would cause instant inflation.

"Damn it. Only managed to sell half of them," I grumbled softly, even though in the corner of my eye my total balance had now surpassed 1,500 Gold Coins.

"Well, no problem. They can block my auctions, but they can't stop me from joining the war with these remaining bombs," my smile returned, this time radiating a far colder predatory aura. Because the GMs had ruined my business plan, I had to vent this frustration on the battlefield.

I opened the interaction menu and searched for Arthur's name in the friend list. I immediately initiated a voice call.

It took only one second before Arthur's baritone voice was heard, accompanied by the uproar of thousands of players, the neighing of horses, and the clanging of steel plates in the background.

"Syl! Perfect timing! Have you seen that damn red announcement?! The GMs just blocked your mass bomb sales on the market!" Arthur shouted, his voice filled with a mixture of laughter and disbelief.

"Yes, I just saw it and I'm extremely annoyed," I answered while opening my wooden cabinet. "Useless algorithms. They panicked because their server economy was controlled by a single Elf. Where is your position right now?"

"The main forces of the Knights of the Round have already gathered at the Ironhold Canyon Rally Point," Arthur reported firmly. "We're bringing two thousand active players. Ouroboros and Black Wolf can be seen massing on the eastern and western sides. We'll be marching toward the castle valley shortly."

"Two thousand people? Quite impressive," I remarked while taking out my new clothing set from the Epic storage box. "Listen, Art. Considering I can't sell my remaining one hundred and fifty bombs on the market… and I need an outlet for my frustration with the GMs…"

I paused for a moment, stroking the high collar of my pure white military coat. The Arachne silk felt extremely cold and soft in my hands, contrasting with its durability that refused to break.

"I will join the Knights of the Round," I decided.

On the other end of the call, an instant silence occurred, interrupting the noise in Arthur's background.

"Y-you… what? Wait. Officially joining us?!" Arthur's voice trembled from shock. He knew me extremely well in the real world. He knew how much I hated being bound to organizational structures, obeying commanders' orders, or blending into crowds.

"Only temporarily. Freelance contract," I corrected quickly, not allowing him to hope too far. "Only for the duration of tonight's Castle Siege. I will throw these remaining locked bombs directly into the faces of your enemies. Just consider that I only want to have some fun and see how far my Breaching Charge masterpiece can breach that castle gate. After the Castle Siege ends, I will immediately leave and return to being a Solo Player. Understood?"

"Hahaha! Of course I understand! Having you in our front lines even for just one night is a blessing for me and a nightmare for Ouroboros!" Arthur's laughter exploded with victory. "With you joining the Guild Party, the Friendly Fire system will be disabled, so your explosions won't kill our own troops. I'll send you a temporary Guild invitation right now!"

A golden confirmation window bearing the Excalibur Sword emblem appeared before me.

[Guild Master 'Arthur' (Knights of the Round) invites you to join with status: Elite Mercenary (Temporary Contract).]

[Accept / Decline]

I pressed the Accept button.

Instantly, above my name 'Syl', an additional silver-colored title appeared: [Elite Mercenary - Knights of the Round].

"I'm in," I said, finishing the system settings. "I'll teleport to the nearest post and catch up with you. Give me the coordinates of Ironhold Castle's main gate."

"Coordinates X:782, Y:1050. We're waiting for you, Alchemist Commander," Arthur replied with a respectful tone before ending the call.

I put down the system communicator and began putting on my new armor set, the grand masterpiece from Kitsuna's hands.

First, I put on the short white cargo pants protected by a matching white pleated mini skirt, secured with a black leather belt with a gold buckle at the waist. Along that belt were many secret compartments where I pinned bottles of Empress's Malice poison and injector arrow tubes. To cover my exposed legs, I pulled on white thigh-high stockings with gold embroidery at the edges. The Broodmother spinneret woven into them provided absolute resistance against sword slashes. White low-heeled combat boots completed the mobility of my feet.

Next, I put on the top an extremely elegant white military crop jacket. The jacket fit perfectly on my upper torso, with a sharp high collar and double gold buttons on the front. A small red ribbon was neatly pinned under the collar as a deadly contrasting accent.

Finally, I pinned the long white cape onto my left shoulder. The cape draped gracefully down to the back of my knees, decorated with gold-tasseled military rank insignia attached only on the left shoulder, leaving my right shoulder and arm completely free of any fabric for drawing the bowstring.

I stared at my reflection in the workshop's crystal mirror. The silver-haired Albino Elf girl who usually hid in a shabby gray cloak had metamorphosed. Standing there now was a tactical commander clad in pure snow-white uniform, radiating the aura of an elegant, captivating, yet terror-inducing war general.

"Showtime," I whispered.

I reached for the mechanical bow [Titan's Ironbark Compound Bow] from the table, slinging it onto my back together with the black leather quiver. At the back of my waist, I attached three steel cylinders [Titan's Roar: Breaching Charge]. The primary gate-breaching weapon.

I turned off the workshop lights, stepped outside, and locked the door of the "Waterwheel."

The time in the corner of my vision showed 19:59. One minute before the invasion. I walked firmly toward the Waypoint of Silvergrass Village.

"Teleport: Central Plains Canyon."

Blue light swallowed my body. When the teleportation darkness faded, the cold night air immediately swept over me. The sight that greeted me was a sea of steel and the blaze of torch flames stretching to the horizon.

I arrived on a high rocky cliff that faced directly toward a giant valley. At the end of that valley stood magnificently a giant dark-gray stone fortress with walls twenty meters high and a solid steel gate that looked impregnable. Ironhold Castle, the strongest strategic fortress on this server.

On the wide plain below my cliff, tens of thousands of players had lined up forming siege formations.

On the left wing of the valley, a sea of black-armored formations bearing the coiled serpent emblem Ouroboros. On the right wing, troops bearing the wolf-head emblem bared their fangs Black Wolf.

And right in the center of the valley, leading the ranks with a greatsword raised into the air, was Arthur in his silver armor, standing in front of thousands of Knights of the Round members.

The global war trumpet sounded across the sky. Glowing red text appeared.

[CASTLE SIEGE: IRONHOLD CASTLE BEGINS!]

[The invasion gates have been opened. May the gods of war bless your steel.]

This three-way war was the absolute chaos that players had long awaited. Fire arrows began shooting into the air from the Ouroboros side. Magic detonations began exploding from the Black Wolf ranks. Battle cries thundered, making the rocky cliff beneath my feet tremble violently.

I stood tall at the peak of the cliff, the night wind blowing my long white cape and silver hair until they fluttered aggressively in the air. My ruby-red eyes stared coldly toward the raging battlefield below. The remaining hundreds of bombs in my inventory seemed to pulse, begging to be released.

"Let's have some fun, gentlemen," I whispered as I chanted Wind Walk.

I leaped freely from the edge of the cliff, gliding down through the night wind like a snow-white angel of death ready to carve absolute destruction into the history books of Second World Online.