PART THIRTY-EIGHT

Total Mana: 56,800

Dungeon Tiles: 7,990

MPD: 700

Channel Views: 650,000

Twitter Followers: 300,000

Total BV Income: 620 USD

In-Game Girlfriends: 0

All Publicity Is Good Publicity

To: Bain

From: V

Hi. You won't click thru to a video. Maybe you'll read an article. This guy is out to get you. You deserve a slap but I'd hate for something to happen to the dungeon when this mob descends on it. Think about Lennie if not yourself.

She linked a kotaku.com article entitled 'The Great Bain Robbery - How a Fire-Breathing Rageaholic Became an Unlikely Robin Hood'

It went a little something like this:

A flame war between two previously-unknown BetterVerse content creators has captured the imagination of the game-playing internet, and their forthcoming battle seems set to be one of the pop culture highlights of 2024. Billy-Bob Bain, also known as The Bain Train, also known as He Who Must Not Be Bained, is a card-scaling magician who used bugs introduced by the botched end-of-the-world scenario to glitch his way into a test server and acquire a pistol, which he used to take over an underground casino that happened to have a fun fair attached. (That sentence long enough for ya?) Angus Fergal, also known as Righteous Angus, also known as The Man With No Nickname, is a Demonic Knight who weakens opponents with multiple fear-based debuffs before pulverising them with a two-yard long hammer called 'The Damp Squid No Actually It's Squib'. Both men are single.

But their beef isn't a clash of playing styles, or a question of whether Bain's playing cards could protect him against Angus's gigantic hammer (they couldn't). It's an exemplar of how late stage capitalism pits the working class against each other to distract the masses from seeing that the only people who truly benefit from our squabbles are the fat cats who throw just enough crumbs to keep us fed like the rats we are. Those aren't my words, but the words of Righteous Angus himself. He granted me a rare interview on the proviso that I, quote, "turn it into an article about intersectional feminism or trans rights or something like that" so that his fan base "would get outraged and swarm the comments, adding to the general feeding frenzy around this story which is going to have a sadly short shelf life". To find out more, I strapped myself into a BV headset and met Angus in Bain's amusement park - Austeralia.

Angus, his distinctive voice emerging clearly from inside his monstrous helmet, his red eye slits belching fumes like the depths of hell itself, welcomed me at the entrance. His videos are angry tirades from start to finish, so I was surprised that his off-camera demeanor was so personable. "Claire, I presume? Have you been here before? Let me show you around. You want to ask questions as we go? Fire away!"

Bain seems like a misguided guy, but he's clearly harmless. Why are you so mad at him?

Harmless? Are you kidding? We've seen him gun down about a dozen NPCs in cold blood. He threatens his employees with violence. His Shark Tank clips are beyond grotesque. Have you seen his latest one? He's got an enormous tank with an actual shark in there. By the way, I'll give him props for transporting a shark to the middle of Auster. I'd love to see the video of how that was achieved. Where was I? Yeah, so there's this kid who wants a gold coin to learn to cast a healing spell because his dad's always getting messed up by giant spiders at work. So Bain says, I'll give you TEN gold coins and the kid is deliriously happy. I mean, I nearly had a little tear myself, you know? Seeing his little face like that. Then it gets dark - credit Bain again, his videos are well-made and the music gets to you. I'll give you ten gold, he says, if you get in the shark tank. That's why the show is called Shark Tank. And he laughs. So the kid laughs. But no, Bain isn't joking. The kid has to get in if he wants the cash. So he climbs up this ladder thing on the side of the tank, and he touches the water and the shark goes nuts. And Bain goes nuts, too, laughing. And we're supposed to laugh along with it. It's sick. The guy is sick.

But you were mad at him from before the Shark Tank stuff. Before he started throwing his new riches around.

I guess. Have you seen this game? It's a pinball machine but the flippers are trebuchets and the ball is a boulder and you have to try to smash these castle walls down. It's a masterpiece, and Bain has never even mentioned it on his channel. He has fallen asp-backwards into wealth and he's gone from being cute and cuddly man of the people to vicious, entitled, narcissistic d-bag within seconds. It's truly extraordinary. The guy has no discernible talent but we're supposed to envy him.

You don't envy him?

I almost pity him. He's too dim-witted to realize he's both talentless and unpopular. My videos get 5 times the views his do. Did you bring the poison?

Another condition for the interview was that I bring a rare poison to the amusement park.

Yes.

Give it to this tentacle.

Why?

It will eat it. I'm hoping it kills it, or at least knocks it out.

I place the vial into a box in front of a huge tentacle. The vial is teleported behind the safety glass, and is instantly gobbled up by the slithering beast. Nothing of consequence happens.

Well. That's less than ideal.

You're worried about the casino's defenses?

Not overly. Bain isn't smart enough to be paranoid. As soon as he got the gun he became the most powerful single player in the game. Take one of the top guilds like the Swords of the Scales. Those 20 guys could attack Bain and he'd simply headshot 6 of them. The rest would annihilate him, obviously, but even that huge worm monster they fought in the early days only put 2 or 3 of them out of action. That's why on Heist Day, my crew will have at least 7 members. It only takes one of us to be left standing, and we win.

Ah. The heist. Care to tell our readers what that means?

Sure. Bain has a vault full of cash and treasure. He thinks that makes him special. So we're going to break in and rob him. Clear him out.

Live on TV?

Almost. So far Bain isn't taking us seriously, but that could change. We know he has a full-time job...

Excuse me? How do you know that?

Let's just say that there are people on the inside who want Bain to get taken down.

Someone from ThetanSoft told you when Bain is at work?

I didn't say that. You didn't hear me say that. If your article says that I said that I will LOSE MY MIND.

Got it. You don't need to shout.

Bain has a full-time job. We're going to film the heist when he's at work and then release all the videos. Maybe over the span of a weekend to build the hype. Maybe just on one day. I haven't decided yet. But when the videos start dropping, the heist will have happened. Nothing he can do about it. But that's not the only reason. This way, we can introduce the crew, reveal the plan, and then watch the plan being executed. Just like a heist movie, man. Just like a heist movie. I have to say I'm getting pretty fracking excited!

Even if Bain is offline, it seems impossible. What about the guards? Those heavy fallout shelter doors? The complexity of carrying out your plan and making off with the loot within your one-hour login time?

It's much more complicated than that. You have no idea. When you see the planning video, you'll be desperate to see how it goes down. Tell your readers to like and subscribe if they want to watch something that has never been attempted before. Internet justice done right. Eating the rich, with extra mayo and a side of schadenfreude.

I'll include the link to your channel. But gamers have been hanging out in the amusement park hoping to be there when your heist happens. Are you worried you'll unleash a mob?

If there's a riot, Bain unleashed it, not me. But it won't come to that. This op is going to be so slick, the rest of the world won't even know it's happening. Now come and try this Siege Simulator. You have to climb a castle wall while skeletons at the top fire arrows and pour hot oil onto you. It's incredibly addictive.

To: V

From: Bain

I read it. Thanks. The guy's all talk. And he's an idiot. 386 told me about this incident because now he's got access to this rare poison to use on the traps. The trap traps, not the game traps. We've never been more defended. I would go as far as to say that 386 is virtually impregnable.

We Did It Reddit

Cut to Beaumont Cattington's livestream. Remember him from chapter 2? The one who inspired me to go looking for a golem? He was chatting with his fans, brainstorming possible challenges he could do. Every suggestion was about 386.

[glowing0rb] Break into the vault before Angus. [abbafather] Tickle the tentacle. [seriousmeatbeast] Feed chickens to tentacle. Feed tentacle to NPC. Ask if tastes like chicken.

Cattington responded with good humor and quick wit, showing why he was a rising star in the gaming world. As he read the next message, his easy smile vanished and didn't come back. "What's this? From Musk-Palin-2028: Just bin 2 oster, park gone. Let me run that through an English-English translator. Just joking, Musk-Palin-2028. Remember to like and subscribe. But what do you mean?" There was a tense moment while Cattington waited for the viewer to reply. He bit his nails until the [someone is typing] text changed into an actual message. Cattington read the response aloud. "Nuttin there. Hill on fire. Haist must of gone down. We're all pro-heist on this channel, but it wasn't supposed to wreck the place. Anything on the Angus channel? Let's see. No, no new updates there." He bit his nails again. "You know what? I've got a bad feeling... But the park can't be totally gone. Not totally. Let's get to the bottom of this." He lifted his VR headset and put it on.

Ten seconds later, most of his screen was showing his in-game display, while his upper body and head shrank into the bottom-right corner. He arrived at the fast travel point and sprinted to the hill that should have contained the dungeon. Smoke was rising far into the sky. A faint orange glow was coming from various points in the hill, like it had started to implode.

"Holy crab!" he shouted. "What the Higgs boson happened here?"