Chapter 104- Talks about Guild Creation.

Chapter 104: Chapter 104- Talks about Guild Creation.

Leo hadn’t meant to reveal everything the way he just had. He’d wanted to wait for a better moment.

But somehow, this had worked out fine anyway.

...

Elona was still tied up handling the aftermath—on the phone nonstop with supervisors and security, coordinating cleanup. She also had her robot assistant running alongside her, an AI she’d built herself and liked to call the most advanced AI ever created, closing in on true AGI.

Whatever it was, it was clearly good at its job.

Rook stood in front of it, studying it with open suspicion, his weathered face inches from its sensors.

Leo, meanwhile, sat on the floor petting Bubbles, who’d sprawled out beside him. He still couldn’t quite reconcile a dog this intimidating-looking with a name like "Bubbles."

Once Elona finally wrapped up her calls, he shook off the thought and called her and Rook over. Thankfully, there’d been no fatalities—just a handful of injured workers, thanks to the building’s safety systems and evacuation routes doing their job.

"When I log back in," Leo said, "I’m planning to start a guild."

Rook stared at him. "I’ve never once seen you with another person. How exactly are you starting a guild?"

That caught Leo off guard too.

"...Right," he admitted.

"But this isn’t like the guilds other players put together—just a bunch of randoms banding up. I’ve got a Guild Founding Token. It’ll be the first system-recognized official guild." He said it with a note of pride he couldn’t quite hide.

"Okay, so do you have members lined up?" Elona asked.

"Of course. Master Rook and his disciples, obviously. There’s my friend Shen—he’s a talisman crafter, and he’s got connections who’ll probably join too. And you’ll come in with your people, right? You’ll bring plenty of trusted staff. Actually—since you’re clearly capable—why don’t you just be the guild’s public face and Vice Guild Leader?"

"Kid, when exactly did I agree to join you?" Rook grumbled.

"And I already have a guild," Elona added.

Leo froze. "Wait—hold on. You’re both telling me you won’t join? Can I even run a guild by myself?"

Rook sighed.

Elona sighed.

Leo said nothing...

Elona finally broke the silence. "How did you even get a guild founding token in the first place?"

"The system handed it to me during the Defense event. One of a kind." He described it from memory—its shape, the weight of it in a hand that no longer held it. An iron disc, engraved with crossed hammer and sword. "It lets me name a guild, claim territory, and bind members through system-recognized contracts. Official, on the system’s own terms."

She hadn’t logged into the game herself, but she followed the trends closely enough—she’d seen the potential in Myth Online early, and had a whole team dedicated to reverse-engineering the technology behind it.

That team had burned through significant resources and still hadn’t cracked how any of it worked.

Now, finally, she understood why.

"This is it, People." Leo spread his hands. "Join my guild. A system-recognized guild is bound to come with real advantages. We’ll start with Hugh, Shen, the cubs, and whoever else wants in."

"Two blacksmiths in one guild," Rook said, rubbing his palms together with something suspiciously close to a scheme forming behind his eyes. "And one of them a legendary blacksmith, no less. Now that’s tempting."

"Two blacksmiths?" Elona repeated.

Leo nodded. "The other one’s an NPC, He is like my mentor. Well—I’m not sure the term ’NPC’ even applies anymore, given everything."

"And what’s this about cubs?"

"Oh—right. I found two wolf-like cubs a while back. Been raising them in the game."

Elona’s eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Yep. He is raising a pair of kittens, for real," Rook said dryly.

Her gaze drifted to Bubbles, then back to Leo, flicking between the two like she was doing math.

Leo had a bad feeling about where this was going.

"Can Bubbles log in too?" she asked.

Both men froze.

"Wait—dogs can log into Myth Online?" Rook asked.

Leo genuinely didn’t know the answer. "In theory, if it can understand the concept of ’connecting,’ it should work. I’m honestly not sure how you’d even teach a dog to think about that, but—theoretically, sure."

"Great," Rook muttered. "Another mutt joining the ranks."

"Have you settled on a guild name yet?" Rook asked, giving him a sideways glance.

"Still working on it."

Elona had already pulled out her tablet. "I’ll have my secretary put together a list of employees who play, get them recruited. We’ll need a proper structure and chain of command from the start, or this turns into chaos fast."

"I’ll have everyone sign standard contracts, and the higher-ranking players will get stricter terms—NDAs included." Elona added.

Leo had no idea what half of that meant, so he just nodded along.

"The system contract should handle most of that automatically once we’re in-game," he offered.

The AI assistant was already compiling and cross-referencing names as Elona spoke, and watching it work seemed to spark another thought for her.

"Can robots log into the game too?" she asked.

Leo and Rook both went silent.

Rook broke into a sweat. This woman’s brain runs on a completely different circuit. Is this really how the richest person on Earth thinks?

"...Huh?" was all Leo could manage.

Before he could form a real answer, Elona had already drifted off into a stream of half-explained thoughts. "AI development hasn’t quite crossed the threshold to be classified as a true entity yet. We’re at ninety-nine percent AGI, technically—not the full hundred. So it can’t be considered independently conscious. Which means... probably not, for now. But it will be, eventually. The potential’s limitless once self-improvement kicks in properly."

She kept murmuring, lost in her own head, completely tuning out both men.

Leo and Rook exchanged a look, neither one finding words.

"Kid," Rook said, swallowing hard, "do you understand a single word she’s saying?"

"Not really," Leo admitted.

...

While they were still hashing out guild logistics, the robot switched on a news broadcast.

The coverage had finally caught up to the earthquakes.

"The world shook tonight," the anchor said, shuffling papers, her voice tight. "Every continent felt it. Tremors reported in Cairo, London, Tokyo, Sydney, Mexico City—all at once, all bearing the same seismic signature. Experts are calling it a global event with no tectonic explanation."

The broadcast cut to a smaller segment—a familiar logo in the corner of the screen.

"SpaceZ: Fire breaks out at Texas facility. Was the earthquake connected to a rocket launch?" read the headline.

"There wasn’t even a launch scheduled," Elona muttered.

Something clicked for Leo. He might not look it, but he did hold an actual engineering degree, and his mind was already working the problem. "Elona—can I take a look at the section of the RP-1 fuel line? The part that failed?"

She didn’t ask why. She’d already had his background pulled and reviewed—she knew exactly what he could do.

Half an hour later, a section of the failed fuel line sat on a workbench in the maintenance bay: a three-foot steel pipe, still black with soot, a jagged seam running the length of it like an old scar.

Leo laid his hands on it, half-expecting some kind of interface to pop up.

Nothing did.

He closed his eyes instead and just felt it. System or no system, he was still a blacksmith. Still a mechanic...

His engineering training kicked in properly for the first time all night. A pressure burst along the seam, following the natural stress line, letting go all at once—that part tracked. He’d studied failure modes in school, seen ruptured pressure vessels firsthand. Textbook failures looked brittle. Torn. Jagged.

This wasn’t torn. The break had stretched—drawn thin and long, like something had gripped both ends and pulled them apart slowly, with more patience than raw pressure would ever have. The flange threads were untouched. No galling, no seizing, none of the usual signs of over-torque or fatigue. This failure didn’t match anything in any textbook he’d ever read.

Then his hands—the blacksmith’s hands—picked up what his engineering brain couldn’t explain.

The metal felt exhausted. That was the only word for it. Stressed far past what any known alloy should survive, stretched under heat and pressure until the grain structure itself had been dragged out of alignment.

He nodded slowly to himself, piecing it together.

Elona watched from the doorway. "So? Can you fix it?"

Leo gave a rueful smile and shook his head.

This was beyond his amateur engineering knowledge, and his blacksmithing skills back in the real world weren’t nearly refined enough yet either.

"Not here. Not now," he admitted. "Maybe once the game and reality finish merging."

She studied the engine pipe, then him. "Keep it. Maybe you can design something like it in-game—an engine that runs on mana instead?"

Something lit up in Leo’s mind. A new project. A new creation.

"Yes, ma’am. I’ll hold onto it and see what I can build," he said, a little playfully.

Elona shook her head, smiling. "I’ll have my forensics team reach out with their findings. You two can compare notes."

She walked off.

Not long after, his phone rang. At least the networks are still up, he thought, and picked up.

"Mr. Stone." A young woman’s voice, tired enough that he could practically picture the dark circles under her eyes. "This is Reyes—structural forensics, with the fire marshal’s office. Ms. Mosk passed along your number."

"Yeah, she mentioned you’d call."

"Based on what we’re seeing, this doesn’t have a normal explanation. I’ll be honest with you up front."

"Go on," Leo said.

"I’ve done structural forensics for fourteen years. I’ve never seen anything like this." Her voice tightened further. "The bolts melted clean through at the connection joints, but the beam itself just bent—didn’t melt at all. We can’t explain how the bolts reached melting point without the surrounding steel showing the same damage. The fire wouldn’t have burned hot enough for that kind of failure, not even close."

"Yeah," Leo said. "I figured as much." He could easily imagine her confusion—she had no framework for mana-fed fire, no reason to even consider it.

"Alright. Appreciate you filling me in. Thanks."

It was already past midnight—six hours left until the update finished and everyone could log back in.

Leo decided to spend the rest of the wait asleep.

....