New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

On their way home, Alex finally got the intel he wanted inside his head, and he cursed mentally.

'Are you sure this is accurate, Sangis?' he asked, since Sangis was the only one who could communicate directly with him.

'It seems to be the truth, master,' Sangis' grating voice replied in his head.

'And who found out?' he asked, curious what had worked on the soul.

'Paimon. It seems the man was especially talkative when she showed him images of him having intercourse with his weapon. She was disappointed that it was an inanimate object that got him to speak,' Sangis' replied, seemingly enjoying her misery.

Alex shivered at the thought.

'What a fucking freak…' he thought.

Alex brought his thoughts back to reality, texting David. He had already lied about the situation to Kary, so he could hardly take care of this on his own.

David was the safest option.

**

'Damien is arriving at the hotel to see the hitman in less than an hour. I can't deal with it right now. Can you take care of it?'

**

It took a while before he got a reply, and he almost cursed at the reply.

**

'I got other stuff to do. Handle this yourself. And what took you so long? I thought you could get answers faster than this?'

**

Alex was half tempted to teleport to David's shelter and slap him across the face. But he refrained from doing so.

It would rouse suspicion from Kary if he suddenly said he had something to do and teleported away.

Instead, he had to think of a way to fix this on his own.

So he did what he always did when he couldn't think of a solution—he texted Mr. Gu.

He explained the situation as briefly as he could and asked him to ensure the American wouldn't bother them.

Of course, Mr. Gu wasn't thrilled that Alex suddenly asked him to deal with his issues again. He told him again that he didn't work for him, but Alex said he could go through Jack, if that was what the man wanted.

It calmed down the Chinese man almost instantly. There was no use arguing.

If the young man asked him a favour, Mr. Gu knew that Jack would make him deal with it, anyway.

So he told Alex he'd deal with it, without asking if he wanted it dealt with in a peaceful manner or not.

Alex brushed the concern aside, knowing that Gu Fang was intelligent and competent enough to handle the tenacious fucker that was Damien Grimm. There were other matters on his plate, after all.

"Hey, I was thinking about something," Alex said, turning his head to Kary.

Kary turned to look at him, making a fake surprised face.

"You can think?" she asked, acting impressed.

Alex clicked his tongue, knowing she was just teasing him.

"Since we chose to go to Korea as our first issue, I thought we could ask Athena for her help. She's from Korea, right?" he said, ignoring her snarky comment.

Kary put a finger to her chin, thinking about his proposal.

"I mean, we could ask her, but I don't know if she'll want to help. The last time I talked to her, she was having trouble at home and was focusing on that. Now that the game is down, I wonder what happened with the situation in her house…"

Alex wasn't in contact with a lot of people. Hell, the one he talked to the most often, aside from Kary, who lived with him, was David. And even then, that was rare.

He was the type of guy who thought, 'No news, good news.'

So, he wasn't aware of most of their living situations. But Kary was a little more social than he was.

She kept in touch with the guild officers regularly, especially the female ones.

"Could you reach out to her, then? Ask her if she's interested in helping with at least this one task. Having a local with us would help us a whole lot, don't you think?" he asked, trying to convince her.

Kary giggled.

"I can ask her, sure. But I won't force her. If she tells me she's busy, or that she doesn't want to, I won't push her."

Alex nodded.

"Of course. I wouldn't want you to force her hand, either. We are friends. Not boss and employee," he said, smiling.

"Well, technically, since we are the guild masters, we are both. But I don't want to force any of the officers to do anything. Guild members, sure. But not the officers. They deserve at least our respect for their private lives," Kary said, looking serious.

"Speaking of guild members," Alex said, pausing.

"Since the game is down, do we even have a way to contact them if we need them?" he asked.

Now that the game was offline, this was a critical point. If they needed more muscle than they could muster rapidly, their guild members might be a good option if they could reach out to them quickly.

But he hadn't added any of them to his friends' list, so he didn't have their contact information.

But Kary laughed lightly at him.

"You really haven't checked anything since you've returned, have you?"

Alex looked at her, confused.

"Huh?"

"If you had opened the guild interface once, since you came back, you would have noticed an addition in our guild page," she said, shaking her head disappointingly.

"What addition?"

"I already made sure we could stay in touch with all our guild members," Kary said, smiling at him.

Alex frowned.

"You did? How?"

Kary looked at him like he was dumb.

*Sigh*

"You really are a terrible guild leader… It's a good thing I'm at the helm with you, or this guild would have burned from inside already…"

Alex didn't know what to reply to that. He firmly believed it was true.

"Can you tell me, instead of mocking me?" he asked, giving her puppy eyes.

She giggled at his antics and nodded.

"I made a forum page for Paragon, and they need a valid player ID of one of our guild members to log into it. However, they needed to enter valid contact info to create their profile. I have all the info I need on them to know who to reach and where," Kary proudly declared.

"How detailed are we talking about?" Alex asked, curious.

"Phone number, country, state or province, and city. With this, wherever we go, we can reach out to the members near us if we need to. Of course, all this information is only available to the page's administrators, which are me, you, and the officers."

Alex's face went blank.

"That is… quite the detailed info. Weren't you scared they wouldn't want to sign up with those requirements?" he asked.

"At first, I thought so, too. But I realized a lot of the other guilds were doing the same. And it seems the players are more than willing to share this info, if they get to chat with their peers at any moment, without filling in their friends list.

"Many players prefer to play only with their close friends. But having quick access to knowledge in the form of a guild forum is still an exciting prospect.

"Plus, this makes it easier for the guild leaders and officers to reach them if a sudden event happens, which makes it all the more enticing. Who would want to miss a sudden event because they didn't fill in their info, right?" Kary said, smiling at him.

Alex was stumped.

"That is quite the elaborate scheme to get your players' personal info…" he muttered.

But Kary giggled.

"I don't see it as a scheme. It's more like a rewarding incentive. In my opinion, the rewards far outweigh the costs. And in the players' opinions, as well," she said confidently.

Alex had been part of guilds before, back on ToB. But none of them had been a big guild, and none of them ever asked for his personal information.

And the one guild that he joined, that did? Well, he instantly left it.

He valued his privacy too much to give just anyone his info.

But in this case, he was the one with access to all this information, and it felt like a massive invasion of privacy.

Kary could see his face change as the thoughts succeeded each other in his mind.

"Alex. This is the way that big guilds function. You need this to stay at the top. If something happens, you want to be able to get as many players online as possible, as fast as possible. This is how," she said.

"And no one forced them to give their information. If they don't want to join the forum, they don't have to. It locks them to an outer member position, since they don't trust us enough, but they lose nothing else," she added.

Alex sighed.

"It's not my place to complain about it. I left you alone to deal with the guild for a month; I guess that's what I get. In any case, it's going to be a massive help, now that we need it… So… I guess it's not as bad as I make it out to be…" he mumbled.

While they talked, they had finally reached the condo building, and were about to go inside when someone stopped them at the door.

"Mr. Leduc! Mr Leduc! Please wait a moment!"