An hour and a quarter had passed since Viktor Volkov discovered the game menu. In his spartan office in Minsk, the clock ticked relentlessly, a counterpoint to the distant wail of sirens rising from the streets. His attention was focused on one of the main screens, which combined global news feeds and secret surveillance streams. Reports of "unknown entities" were piling up, mixed with the panicked cries of collapsing communication networks. Elton Mace’s public statement from Aether Dynamics warning against useless conventional weapons flashed briefly, registered by Viktor with a hint of disinterest. Western propagandists were always so... direct.

Then he saw it. Not in the distance, not on a surveillance feed, but as a bright, unmistakable light in the distance, above Minsk’s central Independence Square. A glistening crack cut across the evening sky. It pulsed ominously as people below on the square, tiny dots from his elevated perspective, fled in all directions. They crawled out of the crack. The creatures—brown, slimy, insectoid, the size of German shepherds—pounced on the panicked crowd.

Viktor didn’t flinch. His icy, piercing eyes fixed on the scene. He saw the few remaining police officers and soldiers open fire. AK-47 bursts whipped through the air. But the bullets glided through the beasts as if they were shadows. An officer who fired a bazooka at one of the creatures watched in disbelief as the rocket simply whizzed through it and hit a government building. Useless. As expected. The rules of the game were clear. Only the players mattered.

He summoned his mystic perception ability and focused his mind on the portal itself. A transparent text box materialized in his field of vision, which he analyzed with cool precision: Portal: Vermin-Den Lvl 1 (Difficulty: Yellow Mark – Moderate) (Anomaly: Energy flow stable. Location optimal for propagation.) Optimal for propagation. An interesting side note from the system itself. His gaze swept over the crowd, which was now being overrun by the creatures. He saw a few players wearing their Level 1 equipment, some with improvised weapons that seemed to be working. A warrior desperately braced himself against one of the beasts. A healer tried to pull the wounded out of the danger zone. These were the weapon. Humanity was a resource, yes, but one that had to be directed.

Viktor pulled out his small, inconspicuous radio. His voice was calm and emotionless as he fed the first instructions into the encrypted network. "Point all functioning surveillance cameras at Independence Square. Priority is to record player activity. Identify the classes and the effectiveness of their attacks. Find out which players are fighting and which are fleeing. No direct intervention with conventional means – don’t waste resources. Your task is to collect data and secure strategic points. The subway tunnels must be secured, as must the government complexes. Any information about the weaknesses of these creatures is worth its weight in gold right now." The world was a chaotic battlefield, but for Viktor Volkov, it was a chessboard. The monsters were new pawns. The players were the pieces. And he, the mystic, would pull the invisible strings to emerge victorious in the end. Not through brute force, but through the relentless gathering and manipulation of information. The suffering of the masses was irrelevant as long as he remained in control.

Next Chapter: Into the Breach