He scowled at the pitiful collection of gray-blue components. “At this rate, it would take forever to build a usable set.”
So he drove his training mech, the ancient ET model, into a remote workshop. Instead of upgrading, he hit Modify. He ripped off all redundant armor and heavy cannons, shaved every kilo of dead weight, and jammed in the best transmission parts he had scavenged.
Ten minutes later, the server had a new monster:
ID: Loki.
Spec: Naked sprinter mech with absurd speed.
Behavior: swoop in right after others fought hard to kill bandits, snatch three out of ten drops in a blur of metal claws, and vanish.
“Loki” became public enemy number one.
Alliance players—especially cadets and soldiers—loved and hated him in equal measure. Loki was the undefeated legend of the military Crucible. Now the same legend had descended into the civilian game. Yes, he was a rat. But he was their rat.
Other factions weren’t amused. Within three days, they formed the Anti-Loki Alliance, uniting thousands of guilds and millions of players. They didn’t just curse him in chat—they put him on the bounty board.
[WANTED: LOKI]
- Track his sprint path three times: +3,000 Credits (Daily)
- Intercept one of his stolen items: +12,000 Credits (Weekly)
- Complete a full raid against him and submit footage: 500,000 Credits + Limited Skin (Seasonal)
Streamer channels ran “Hunt Loki Challenges.” The bounty list refreshed hourly. Everywhere he went, screenshots of his mech were plastered like wanted posters.
Jack didn’t care. He already had the parts he needed. He shut the door to the system’s workshop and turned to his real purpose: using Crucible’s physics engine to run zero-cost R&D tests for his real-world Thor mech.
Virtual war had room for mischief. Real war did not.
Cadian Gorge.
The situation grew grimmer by the day. The Federation clung to a canyon defense line while the Empire hammered forward. Garrow Hill had become a death word.
Jack, parsing battle reports, could read the carnage in unit rotations. Ten armored divisions and sixteen mechanized infantry divisions had been fed into that hill. Which meant at least eight divisions and twelve brigades had been shattered or annihilated.
The numbers made him cold.
A knock on the door. Colonel Parker handed him a personnel file. “The new intern you asked about. The kid’s file.”
Jack skimmed.
Personnel File — Leo Arkwright
- Rank: Auxiliary intern / accelerated-track data intelligence cadet.
- Family: father — accountant at Treasury; mother — archivist at Central Records Bureau.
- Academy Note: “Gravekeeper of Data.” Voluntarily sorted “worthless” old reports, cold ledgers, and dead databases. Pinned corrections on bulletin boards, mocked as the “archive freak.”
- Disciplinary record: none major.
- Awards: two academy thesis prizes (“Statistical Bias and the War Fog Effect” / “Throughput Bottlenecks as Tactical Constraints”).
- Health: normal; iris-overlay lenses (private device) for displaying data streams directly across cornea.
- Miscellaneous: once confessed to thirteen girls; rejected by all.
- Overall evaluation: Unconventional potential. Poor grip on reality. Handle with caution.
Jack snorted. Thirteen times. Figures. I ran thirteen times from death. He ran thirteen times into rejection. Guess neither of us can shake the number.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Another thought crossed his mind: Thirteen escapes, thirteen heartbreaks. Call it symmetry. Call it fate being an asshole.
“Lieutenant,” a voice said behind him, eager, nervous, yet bright, “your calculation once again proves the futility of saturation fire tactics.”
Jack turned.
A lanky young man stood at the door, neat to the point of rigidity. His eyes gleamed faintly—the iris lenses at work.
Leo.
“I… I reviewed all three hundred of your Crucible military sims!” Leo burst out. His words came in torrents. “Your defense at Anvil City—you exploited server refresh delays, drew the Tigers into a minefield by manipulating information fog—that was textbook psychological warfare! And your min-max refit of the Beast III frame, redefining obsolete hardware while everyone else chased Paladin meta builds—masterful! Sir, how did you calculate the commander’s emotional decay variables in real time?”
Jack blinked. He hadn’t expected his civilian alias “Loki” to have groupies.
Leo kept firing. His mouth was a machinegun of simulator slang. His eyes glowed like he was watching an idol in flesh.
For the first time, Jack felt like someone in this office full of bureaucrats and academy elites actually spoke his bird language.
“I even drafted a plan.” Leo threw up a tactical map.
Jack studied it. It was insane. But not sloppy. Every move built on a rigorous system:
- forward corridors baiting the enemy,
- second-line projections throttling fire density,
- lateral moves timed to throughput limits.
The risk: razor-thin. If detected, collapse. If not, triumph beyond imagining.
“This plan,” Jack said slowly, “is good. But you ignored the casualty rate. Units running it have less than a ten percent survival chance.”
Leo frowned. “But… mathematically, it is the optimal exchange—minimal cost, maximum strategic gain.”
Jack studied him like a mirror from another world. Same monsterhood, different soil.
Jack: scarred cynic who had crawled through death.
Leo: ivory-tower savant who still thought war was a game.
Jack sighed. He balled a fist and thumped Leo lightly in the chest.
“Welcome to the real world, kid. Here, every cost comes with names.”
Leo hesitated. His iris-glow dimmed. Then he reworked the sim into two branches: low-casualty tolerance and high-risk reward. “Then you pick, sir.”
Jack nodded once. “Push supply throughput and road limits down two percent. Add a non-rational retreat variable. Model human panic. Bake it in.”
“Yes, sir.” Leo’s fingers danced, pulling invisible keys in the air. His eyes flickered with new light, then cleared.
Colonel Parker strolled by, peered in, and chuckled. “Two geniuses in one room. Twice the risk. Put results on my desk.”
“Yes, sir,” Leo answered crisply.
Jack grabbed his coat. “I’ll be in the hangar with Thor. When it finishes, bring me the casualty curves.”
“Yes, Lieutenant!”
Jack paused at the door, not turning back. “That plan… I like it. Don’t let it stay on a screen.”
The door shut.
Leo exhaled. He marked the sims, queued both branches into Crucible’s military sandbox.
CRUCIBLE//JANUS-CORE//MIL-ALPHA.
The interface blinked like an eye, then closed.
A tiny log scrolled in the corner, invisible to him:
[Session Queued // Human Factor: injected // Archive on complete]
Leo never saw it.
He only saw arrows and numbers climbing, step by step, toward the slope of hell.
From the doorway, Nova’s voice drifted in—cool, edged with amusement:
“Careful, boys. One monster is trouble enough. Two in the same room? That’s a recipe for disaster.”