The second day meet of Bloody Rose was happening in one of the backrooms in a posh hotel. Majority of the team members were participating in fashion show. So they came early. They would have a meeting, get glammed up, walk/ sashy the fashion ramp and go home to play. A productive day.
The meeting was underway. The first day response was to monitor the hype and it's effectiveness. If people didn't feel excited even after throwing billions in advertising and marketing, the game would collapse sooner rather than later. The statistics from second day onwards showed how guilds were progressing. The usual batch of data collectors, didn't come forward as they were still collecting details. The players who joined on second day were placed in entirely different villages than before. So they had more areas to collect the data.
After an easy first day, almost all guilds had stumbled and slowed down. Apart from one or two of them making a name after killing named monsters, there was nothing noteworthy. However, the team still decided talk about them.
Stella de Mialo 'Rosini Rose', a dark haired beauty with sexy accent, started with gossip news. " You don't know what I heard while I was coming here. I just couldn't believe it. If they are talking, they should talk about something believable, right?"
Gossip was like lard, unhealthy but so appetizing.
" What unbelievable thing did you hear, Sexy Stella?"
Stella pouted at her nickname. It was genes, that's why she looked sexy. She got maximum advertising deals but not many believed her position in eSports was due to her effort. Ah, who cares! Everyone here knew how good she was in games.
"I heard Baccara had signed a deal worth few millions and even paid more than a million credits as advance. Isn't it hilarious?" She laughed aloud at the most absurd gossip ever.
No one laughed though and it became awkward. Even Stella could see something was wrong. She looked at Baccara. Baccara nodded. The rumour was true. D**n!
That was not the end of it though. Few roses lamented, " Oh! How we wish someone would sign such a deal with us too!!!" It was embarassing.
Felicity Ross, Flix, decided to solve the problem. She showed the presentation in the meeting. The graph there showed projected rate of progress of players in various villages.
" The current guessing is that level 5 would work as watershed. So the available potions or weapons etc won't be of much use after reaching level 5. But the problem is reaching level 5. Apart from the players who got excellent weapons, we can see plateauing in progress of all other players. Without the input of these extra potions, we estimated that we would need minimum 3-4 days to reach level 5 and upgrade the weapons. Don't forget, we spend the credits now, so that we can reach level 5 early enough to rule over the maps of level 5 and beyond, for minimum of three to four days. Guess how much we can gain from that?" Flix gained like a cat ate the cream. She had pushed for the deal. She had data to back her up.
Sun Lord on other hand was grilled even longer. He was a great player, good manager but many wanted that job, so they were all waiting for the chance for him to fail.
This meeting was happening in VR lobby unlike yesterday where all had gathered and taken photos and videos to commorate the occasion.
Even the others knew spending millions of credits was no big deal in this game. If converted to coins, the amount spent was nothing much. But no, they had to bombard him and make him feel fed up. The main content, the breaking factor was not mentioned at all. Probably the informers, the fence sitters didn't think it was a big deal thus didn't focus on it. Sun Lord sneered. That kid was a prick but he was better than these hyenas baying for his blood. He didn't appease them or cajole them or give any explanations. They didn't have that right yet.
Pushing their accusations and paranoid statements into background, he mulled about that kid.
Artha. The kid was noob through and through. But he learnt fast. Apart from the first sale of potions for coins, he has been selling potions to many guilds, that too for credits. Though it was tempting to bring him to guild, the kid would not agree. Maybe he was worried about being turned into puppet after joining? There was no dearth of people painting black picture of guilds. Someone close to him must have been burnt due to some guild, that's why he is so wary of guilds. What trader job secret? It was all hogwash. It was obviously due to his talent. So he would be even more wary of the guilds. But this was good too. Thanks to this deal, he would become privileged customer and enjoy the perks.
Now, how much should he pay to purchase the 200 slot inventory bag? He would love to purchase both but the partner for the deal was Baccara and he could not harm her. The maximum he could help her was to give up the 100 slot bag. What if those harpies were thinking in the same way? How to hedge his way?
Looking at the way Sun Lord was zoning out, the members grumbled, thundered and went away. They still had other things to day, finances to arrange, logistics to plan. The game has just started. How long could he be this arrogant? Aucontraire, he and his band were not leading the pack. They were managing in the middle.
These managers knew their strength. They could not replace the ones in the lead and though replacing the ones in the back would be easy, the position was not safe. If they could replace the middle range ones, they could enjoy the perks and power for long time. Sun Lord was getting older and he had to train his replacement too. The best time would be when the young one is spreading the wings.