Grace stood at the center of the arcing arrangent of chairs, the chamber perfectly balanced on either side of her.
To her right sat Odin, Loki, Zeus, and Athena. To her left sat Vlad, Mike, Aster, and Rosalba. Between them, they carried enough titles, rankings, and accumulated influence to reshape entire regions of the Ancient World and even the real world.
However, she could not have cared less about any of it.
She watched the final countdown in silence, her expression neutral, her hands still at her sides. As the last second clicked to zero, she smiled, bright and warm and entirely practiced, the previous gloom washing away from her face as cleanly as if it had never been there.
"Welco back, Dear Ancients."
Her voice carried the particular quality that had made her the most watched host on the platform, warm enough to feel personal, clear enough to reach millions of screens at once.
"Tonight’s program has drawn more attention than most, and for good reason." She let the words settle for a breath. "Tonight, we step beyond rumor and speculation."
"With us are eight individuals whose nas require no introduction, and whose decisions have left marks on the Ancient World that none of us are still finished feeling. Guild leaders, strategists, figures of imnse influence, and, depending on who you ask, so of the most consequential people of the current age."
"For the first ti, they have agreed to sit together and speak openly about those decisions. What led to them? What followed in their wake. And what the consequences look like from where they are standing now."
"We will be asking the questions many of you have been waiting a long ti to hear answered."
"So, let us not stand on ceremony."
She allowed the silence a few seconds to breathe.
On cue, the 4D projectors shifted. The heroic battle footage that had been cycling across the walls dissolved, replaced by a slow-rolling ocean of fog that spread outward, encompassing the entire chamber, swallowing the floor and rising around every chair until the eight guests and Grace herself appeared to be floating within it.
Then, from the fog, a scene materialized.
A familiar city reduced to fire and carnage. Skylines that viewers had spent years exploring were rendered in ruin, and demon armies moved through streets that had once been filled with ordinary life.
The devastation was rendered without dramatization, which made it worse. It simply was what it was.
The caras moved with practiced precision, drifting across the faces of the eight guests, capturing the flickers of expression that passed through them as they watched.
Sadness surfaced on most faces, genuine enough on so, perford well enough on others that the difference was difficult to na with certainty.
Grace watched the footage too, and kept her face still.
She allowed the mont to run its course, giving the audience and everyone in the chamber ti to settle into the weight of what they were seeing, the fog, the ruins, the silence beneath the ambient score.
Then, as rehearsed, the caras drew back and rotated, capturing the full breadth of the scene from every angle before finally finding her face.
She took a breath.
"Forgive , honored guests, if my questions appear personally targeted." The scripted line left her mouth clean and professional, and she hated the taste of every syllable. "Because they are."
She let that sit for exactly one second.
"The world wishes to know why seven of the top ten guilds abandoned the Human Continent." The background score softened, pulling back just enough to let the question fill the air on its own.
"It was a choice, that much is not in dispute. Zero created an event specifically designed to save the continent, and the rewards attached to participation were more lucrative than anything even a top-tier guild could hope to produce through years of standard operations."
She swept her hand toward the seated guests, the gesture open and unhurried.
"The stage is yours."
Odin’s professional smile arrived at precisely the right mont, calibrated to the second, warm enough to disarm and asured enough to convey gravity.
He rose from his chair smoothly, and as he did, the 4D scene surrounding them shifted in perfect synchronization, the fog parting to reveal the burning image of a city lost to the demon siege, the flas rising around him as he stood.
Every detail had been planned. Every beat had been placed.
"As the master of the strongest guild," he began, his voice carrying the easy authority of soone who had rehearsed sincerity until it beca indistinguishable from the real thing, "I feel it is my responsibility to answer the questions the world is asking."
He paused, and his expression shifted into sothing softer, sothing that read as gratitude.
"But before I do, I want to thank everyone who has given us this opportunity to share our side of things. And to those who have stood by us through these difficult months," he bowed, slow and deliberate, the burning city of the projection rising behind him in perfect, devastating sync, "you have my deepest thanks."
The caras caught all of it.
Every angle. Every fla. Every carefully chosen word was delivered against a backdrop of ruins that his guild had chosen not to prevent.
Grace kept her smile exactly where it needed to be and said nothing.
"The Devourer Beast campaign has been ongoing for four months," Odin began, his voice asured and unhurried, the tone of a man who had rehearsed this mont enough tis to make it sound unrehearsed. "The threat of the demons and their curse upon the Human Continent has been rampant for that sa duration."
He did not look away from the caras. He did not need to.
"Yes. The majority of the top guilds did not participate in the fight against the Devourer Beasts or the demon forces. Yes, we chose to enter the Eldravian Empire and the other continents that opened to us during that ti." A brief pause. "And yes, we are benefiting from those choices while the Human Continent burns."
He let the admission stand on its own for a mont, giving it room, which was itself a calculated move. A man who rushed past an admission was hiding from it, while a man who let it breathe appeared to be facing it.
"Now, I want to address sothing first. To those among our supporters who have argued on our behalf, who have said that we abandoned the Human Continent because it was already a sinking ship, or that we are players who should concern ourselves only with our own advancent and not the interests of what are, at the end of the day, virtual NPCs." He smiled faintly, the expression carrying just enough self-awareness to appear humble. "I appreciate your support, but I have to respectfully disagree with that framing."
"Our decision was collective, and it was not made purely for our own benefit."
"It was made for the benefit of the entire world. Not just the Human Continent. The whole of the Ancient World."
He allowed that to breathe.
The fog around them shifted subtly, the burning cities fading back into a quieter visual, flashes of places from all over the world, sothing that frad his next words without competing with them.
"There are approximately two billion players within the Ancient World. A significant number by any asure." His tone shifted slightly, moving from admission into sothing more analytical, more deliberate. "But the total population of the Ancient World sits at twenty-seven billion. Players are a fraction of that world, not its entirety."
"And of those two billion players, the vast majority, roughly ninety-two percent, will take three to four years simply to reach the Fourth Rank, with the majority of them not even achieving that,"
"So in practical terms, the number of players genuinely capable of operating at the world stage, of aningfully influencing what happens at that level, is fewer than a hundred million."
He let the number sit.
"A small figure, yes... But there is one thing that makes every other number irrelevant." He looked directly into the nearest cara.
"We are Immortals."
The word landed in the chamber with a quiet finality, the ambient score pulling back to nothing beneath it.
"This changes everything." The scene surrounding him settled into stillness, the calm before the storm given visual form.
"If we had thrown ourselves headfirst into the war brewing across the Ancient World, yes, we would have been of trendous help in the short term. No one here is going to pretend otherwise." His voice remained even, the cadence of soone walking through logic rather than emotion.
"But the question worth asking is what the consequence of that would have been." He let that question sink in for a long breadth.
"One thing is certain. The Ancient World is changing. When the fires of whatever is coming finally settle, what remains will not resemble what existed before. A new world is being born in the middle of this war, whether anyone wants it or not."
He clasped his hands in front of him, a gesture of openness.
"People say we abandoned the Human Continent. I say yes. We did." The bluntness of it drew a shift in the room, a collective held breath from the caras to the guests beside him. "We did it because standing against the combined power of the Eldravian Empire and the Demon King is not a fight that ends in victory. Not for us. Not right now."
"These are powers that have Monarchs in their ranks. Individuals capable of tearing through entire sectors of a battlefield like walking catastrophes, forces that operate on a scale that makes conventional military strength irrelevant."
"Sure, we would not die, no, our immortality ensures that. But we would not win either, and building individuals capable of matching that level of power would take a decade at the very minimum, more likely far longer."
"What our resistance would have achieved is not salvation. It would have fanned the flas. It would have drawn the other continents into open conflict, transford a regional war into a world war."
"At the end of all that blood and all those years, the result would have been the sa defeat, one where even the demons paid a significant price but not a significant enough one to change the outco."
He exhaled slowly.
"The reality of this situation is not what any of us wants it to be. But reality does not adjust itself to our preferences." His yellow eyes swept the chamber once before settling forward again.
"If choosing not to save millions today creates the conditions to save billions tomorrow, and to preserve a future where humanity’s second world is not permanently fractured beyond recovery, then I will make that choice."
"I have made that choice, no matter how cruel or hard it is." He sat down. "And so have each of my colleagues sitting in this room, willing or unwilling, because there is no other choice."
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