Chapter 49: Protect the King

The four contracted professional gamers on Team Apex were foaming at the mouth.

The promise of splitting forty million dollars in liquid cash had altered their brain chemistry.

"Ten million a piece..." the star Top-Laner muttered, his hands actually shaking as he gripped his mouse. "Boss, I will literally die for you in this match!"

"If anyone on their squad even looks at your character model, I’m disconnecting their router," the Support player laughed manically. "This is the greatest buyout in the history of e-sports!"

Across the aisle, the rival athletes of Team Vanguard watched this ecstatic celebration with burning envy.

They were salaried professionals too, but their boss had never offered them anything close to a life-changing payout for a simple afternoon exhibition...

Sensing the morale of his own squad actively fracturing, Preston Vanguard gritted his teeth.

He couldn’t let Jude Lawson dominate the warfare before the keyboards even started clicking.

"Don’t let this Wall Street suit buy your confidence!" Preston shouted to his own players, his face flushed. "If we secure this win today, I’ll authorize a twenty-million-dollar bonus pool! Ten million for the starting roster, and ten million for the coaching staff!"

Preston puffed out his chest, waiting for the rapturous applause from his squad.

Instead, the Apex athletes immediately burst into laughter.

"Are you serious right now, Preston?" the Apex Jungler sneered. "Your family’s conglomerate is allegedly worth billions, and you’re penny-pinching a twenty-million-dollar pool? Mr. Lawson just threw down fifty million without even blinking!"

Preston’s face turned an ugly shade of crimson.

Sensing the collapse of Preston’s authority, Jude decided to drive the final nail into the coffin.

"Let me be perfectly clear," Jude said. "Regardless of whether we actually win or lose this digital exhibition, every single staff member in this room will receive a one-million-dollar performance bonus by the end of the day."

Jude checked his watch. "Furthermore, I’ve already instructed my assistant to rent out the entirety of Le Bernardin tonight. The afterparty is fully covered."

The Apex coaching staff gasped in disbelief.

The Vanguard players stared across the room, looking miserable.

A few of them looked like they wanted to tear off their Vanguard jerseys and defect to Apex on the spot.

Comparing their cheap trust-fund heir to this endlessly generous Wall Street titan was just depressing...

"Mr. Lawson, you have my loyalty," the Apex Support player swore, his voice deadly serious. "If we somehow manage to lose this game after what you just did for us, I will retire from the professional circuit in shame."

"We are going to rip them apart," the Top-Laner promise. "They aren’t leaving this server alive."

Preston Vanguard felt sweat break out across his neck.

Unlike Jude, who viewed the hundred-million-dollar wager as mere pocket change compared to his system’s impending rewards, Preston had everything on the line.

"Listen to me!" Preston barked at his roster. "My money is on the line here! You do not screw this up, do you hear me?! You play perfectly!"

His screaming only served to stress his players out further, leaving them tense and miserable as they settled into their gaming chairs.

***

The game of choice was *Aetheria*, the globe’s premier competitive multiplayer battle arena...

Both CEOs sat at their keyboards, flanked by their world-class teammates.

Preston cracked his knuckles, pulling up the client login screen.

He typed in his credentials, a smirk returning to his face. "Let me show you how actual gaming royalty logs in, Lawson."

The moment Preston authenticated his account, a server-wide notification flashed across the lobby in brilliant gold text, visible to everyone in the custom spectator room.

[GLOBAL VIP ALERT: Preston_Vanguard]

[The $10,000,000 Lifetime Whale Account has entered the lobby!]

The Vanguard coaching staff offered golf-clap applause.

"A ten-million-dollar account," Preston boasted proudly. "I bought the exclusive developer tier five years ago. It comes with custom entrance animations and priority server routing. This kind of digital real estate is strictly invite-only. A hundred million in cash can’t buy you this kind of verified clout."

It was a blatant display of wealth in the gaming community.

Jude reached out and tapped his enter key, authenticating the custom account his holding company had prepared for him earlier that morning.

The screens across the facility flashed a blinding crimson.

A server-wide alert overrode everything, accompanied by a deafening horn.

[Shareholder Prime — The $1,000,000,000 Lifetime Valuation Account has entered the lobby!]

[All servers bow to the Board of Directors!]

"What... what the hell is that?!" a Vanguard player whispered.

"A one-billion-dollar valuation account?!"

Preston’s jaw unhinged. He stared at Jude’s avatar in shock.

Humiliated before the match had even loaded, Preston remained dead silent, grinding his teeth in bitter rage.

He angrily locked in his character: an intense assassin designed for the Core DPS role.

*I’ll just have to murder him in the lane,* Preston thought viciously.

Jude selected his own champion... a late-game marksman designed for heavy DPS output.

He didn’t issue a single instruction to his team. He didn’t need to...

The moment Jude locked in his character, the four world-champion Apex players instantly adapted.

Abandoning their usual aggressive tournament strategies, they drafted the ultimate "Protect the King" composition.

The Top-Laner locked in a frontline tank with immense shielding capabilities.

The Jungler locked in a heavy-control vanguard designed exclusively to peel enemies away.

Both the Support and the secondary Bot-Laner locked in dedicated enchanter-healers, specialized in providing endless health regeneration, movement speed buffs, and defensive barriers.

These four masters of their craft were willingly throwing away all of their offensive pride, dedicating their skillsets to acting as Jude Lawson’s personal bodyguards.

The moment the loading screen vanished and the champions spawned into the fountain, a collective gasp echoed through the Vanguard training area.

Jude’s avatar was entirely unlike anything available in the standard client...

Instead of standard walking animations, Jude’s character levitated on a throne.

As the minions clashed in the center of the map, the laning phase began.

Preston’s fingers flew across his keyboard, dodging Jude’s slower projectiles and whittling down the billionaire’s health bar.

Smelling blood in the water, Preston saw his window of opportunity.

Jude was low on health and lingering close to the edge of his defensive turret.

Executing a lightning-fast combination of spells, Preston’s assassin dashed past the turret’s boundary, closing the gap to deliver the strike.

Suddenly, a champion leaped out of the nearby brush. It was the Apex Jungler!