"Has the assassination squad reached its destination already?"
That night, Chris took a moment out of his busy schedule to log onto the player forum. A glance at Ye Ao Nai He's live mission thread told him what they were up to.
Honestly, the players' habit of sharing their progress on the forums whenever they landed a major mission was a godsend for Chris. He no longer had to painstakingly pore over their activity logs. All he needed to do was open the forum and search for their usernames to learn what they had done and what they planned to do next.
"Hmm... with Valentin's help... they've found jobs as castle guards and are getting ready to infiltrate... oh, they're pretty resourceful."
Chris praised them, then kept reading, only to discover that things had taken a complete turn.
"...Day three: got into a brawl with the other mercenaries and punched someone to death, so we were fired... yikes..."
Chris could only shake his head as he read. He really had no idea how to comment on Ye Ao Nai He and his companions' behavior. All he could say was that it was very typical of players.
What would they do next?
Curious, Chris wanted to keep reading, but that was as far as their updates went for now. He could only leave it at that and wait.
"Will the Kingdom of Bagnia really slip out of our control?"
Albert III, the old king of Minisia, stood before an arched window in the tower. The gilded wine cup trembled faintly in his white-knuckled grip, while dusk stretched the castle's shadow over the gardens below.
"Twenty-three years... will the peace that has lasted twenty-three years vanish between our two kingdoms?"
He murmured into the cold wind. The old general beside him