In the world of high-stakes corporate warfare, there are three types of losses: Market Correction, Hostile Takeover, and Total Asset Liquidation.
I was currently staring at a map that looked like the third option.
"We're losing market share," Seraphina said, her voice unusually quiet. She pointed to the central agricultural belt of the Empire—the Emerald Valley. "But we aren't losing it to the Princes."
"Who then?" I asked, scrolling through the data. "Is the Church pushing back?"
"No," she said. "The customers aren't switching providers, Lucas. They're... disappearing."
The map showed a growing black smudge in the heart of the trade routes. Supply convoys carrying Vayne Corp munitions were vanishing. Villages that had just signed up for the VayneCom network were going silent overnight.
"They aren't looting the trucks," Seraphina added, pulling up a grainy satellite image. "They're burning them. The gold, the weapons, the food... it's all just ash."
I frowned. Bandits stole. Armies requisitioned. Only one kind of person burned perfectly good assets.
"Launch a stealth drone," I ordered, cracking my knuckles. "Let's see who's messing with my supply chain."
Sector: The Emerald Valley Trade Route Source: Vayne Corp Stealth-Drone 'Ghost-7'
I piloted the drone remotely from my office, the VR headset projecting the view directly into my eyes.
The Emerald Valley was supposed to be the breadbasket of the Empire. Lush fields, rolling hills, and safe roads.
Now, it looked like a slaughterhouse.
Below me, the wreckage of a massive merchant caravan smoldered. These weren't military trucks; they were civilian wagons fleeing the war zone. They had been torn apart.
Body parts were scattered across the road like refuse. But there were no soldiers looting the bodies.
Instead, I saw a camp.
It was a ragtag collection of tents made from flayed horse skin and shattered wagons. The "soldiers" weren't wearing uniforms. They were peasants—farmers in roughspun tunics, beggars in rags, deserters in mismatched armor.
But they looked wrong.
I zoomed the camera in.
Their skin was pale and grey, crisscrossed with bulging purple veins. Their eyes were solid black. They sat around fires that burned with an unnatural green flame, gnawing on raw, bloody horse meat with teeth that looked too sharp for humans.
"Void Corruption," I whispered. "It's an outbreak."
Sitting in the center of the camp, perched atop a pile of burning Vayne Corp crates, was a figure.
He wore a tattered cloak that had once been white but was now stained with mud and old blood. His left arm was wrapped in dirty bandages, but beneath the cloth, the limb pulsed with a sickening violet light.
He raised his left hand. The ring finger was missing—severed by my blade months ago.
But where the finger should have been, a phantom digit of green energy flickered like a candle flame.
Kaelen. The Fallen Hero.
He didn't look up. He just reached out with his hand.
WHOOSH.
An invisible force grabbed my drone. The camera shook violently as telekinesis—raw and undisciplined—ripped it from the sky.
The view spun, then stabilized. I was staring directly into Kaelen's face.
He looked gaunt, his eyes sunken, deep purple bags hanging beneath them. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in a year.
"Hello, Lucas," he whispered, his voice raspy, distorted by the static. "Do you like my new party?"
"Kaelen," I said, my voice projected through the drone's speaker. "You look terrible. Have you considered moisturizing?"
He smiled. It was a broken, jagged thing.
"I've never felt better," he rasped. "I finally see the world clearly. It's all just... pain, isn't it? Pain and hunger and greed."
He gestured to the monsters behind him—the twisted peasants eating raw flesh.
"I took their pain away."
"You turned them into ghouls," I countered. "You're bad for business, Kaelen. Burning customers is a poor long-term strategy."
"Business..." Kaelen laughed, a dry, hacking sound. "You and the Princes... you fight for the chair. You fight to rule the ant hill."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of small, glowing black pills. They radiated concentrated Void energy.
"I'm not selling anything, Lucas. I'm giving it away."
He held a pill up to the lens.
"Void Pills. Compressed corruption. One pill cures hunger. It cures fear. It makes a starving peasant strong enough to rip a Knight in half. It turns a slave into a king."
My blood ran cold. He wasn't just leading a bandit group. He was democratizing the apocalypse.
"If you infect the population," I said, my voice losing its sarcastic edge, "there will be no one left to farm the grain. No one to build the houses. The Empire will starve."
"Let it starve!" Kaelen roared, his eyes glowing bright green. "Let the old world die! I will build a new one from the ashes! A world without pain! A world of silence!"
He leaned in close, his corrupted eye filling the screen.
"You want to rule the world, Lucas? I'm going to eat it."
CRUNCH.
He crushed the drone in his hand. The feed went dead.
Location: Vayne City
I ripped the VR headset off, breathing hard.
The office was silent. Seraphina looked at me, concerned.
"Boss? What did you see?"
"The worst-case scenario," I said, standing up and pacing the room.
I had planned for the Princes. I had planned for the Church. I had even planned for the Leviathan. They were rational actors. They wanted power, money, or territory. You could negotiate with them.
Kaelen was different. He was Anarchy.
"He's infecting the peasantry," I explained rapidly. "He's turning the labor force into a Void Horde. If this spreads to the cities... the economy collapses. If everyone is a monster, who buys the phones? Who pays the taxes?"
"What do we do?"
"We put a price on his head that even God couldn't ignore."
I sat back down at my desk and opened the Dark Web portal—the encrypted channel used by the Assassin's Guild and the Underworld.
I typed in the bounty.
[Target: The Broken Hero (Kaelen).]
[Status: Kill on Sight.]
[Reward: 100,000,000 Gold Coins.]
I paused. Gold might not be enough for the top-tier killers. I needed a sweetener.
[Bonus Reward: One (1) Vayne Corp 'Titan' Class Tank (Custom).]
I hit Post.
Instantly, the notification pinged across the underworld. Every assassin, mercenary, and bounty hunter from the Badlands to the Capital just got a notification.
"He wants a war?" I muttered, staring at the blank screen where his face had been. "I'll buy him a war."
[ System Notification: New Enemy Faction Identified. ]
[ Faction: The Void Anarchists. ]
[ Threat Level: Critical. ]
[ Market Stability: -15%. ]
"Seraphina," I called out. "Contact the Alchemists. I need a cure for Void corruption. And I need it yesterday."
"We don't have a cure, Boss."
"Then invent one. Or better yet..." I smiled grimly. "Create a 'Suppressant' that requires a daily dose. If Kaelen is giving them the disease for free, we'll sell them the treatment on a subscription plan."
The war had just changed. It wasn't about territory anymore. It was about biology.
And I intended to own the patent on survival.