Always Watch Your Back (4)

At last, after a bloodbath that carved away seventy percent of Rotten Water's strength and eighty-five percent of Magellan's, the two clans' reinforcements annihilated every last defender of the Level 7 stronghold known as Tunguska Fortress City.

A Level 7 base—long rumored to be prey only for mega-clans boasting ten thousand members or more—had fallen into their hands. The players of Rotten Water, and their clan leader Raksha himself, roared in triumph and turned at once to the final stage: a mass assault to seize the stronghold for good.

But that very moment was the trap Monalisa—leader of the Magellan Clan—had been waiting for.

Under Raksha's orders, Rotten Water was prepping assault-pod launches—and that was the exact instant Magellan's main force, which should have been more than a week away one-way, suddenly appeared.

And right after that—

"This—this is betrayal, you sons of bitches!!!!"

"Commander, you have to get out of here—now!"

One look at the sudden chaos flooding Rotten Water's chat, and at Raksha's reaction aboard his ship, told the whole story. The Magellan main force under Monalisa had opened indiscriminate fire on Rotten Water's remaining fleet, still mid-prep for the assault.

Naturally, a fleet already bled dry fighting the garrison defenses was completely exposed to a rear attack. Capital ships still on the field—and vessels undergoing emergency repairs after taking damage—never even got a chance to return fire. They went up like fireworks, one after another.

By the time Magellan's lightning ambush had erased roughly half of Rotten Water's remaining fleet, a player aboard one of the stealth ships watching the massacre posted to the gallery.

And of course, a "betrayal" like that set the gallery on fire.

Naturally, people tend to feel a real gut-level revulsion toward betrayal. Across the gallery, condemnation of Magellan—who'd "cowardly backstabbed" a Rotten Water that had, through sheer skill, come within a hair of seizing a Level 7 base—only grew louder.

And when Raksha himself, clan leader of Rotten Water, dropped a post seething with raw fury, the mood hit an absolute fever pitch.

Unfortunately, that chorus didn't last long.

The moment a certain player—who'd lately been living more as a journalist than a fighter—dropped that post, every shady stunt Rotten Water had been pulling under the radar surged up into the light.

Of course, gallery users had no real way to know whether any of it was true. But it looked just plausible enough on the surface…

…and public opinion flipped in an instant. This wasn't Rotten Water getting betrayed—it was karma coming home to roost. A full-on "reality check."

And once the narrative had turned that hard, a few more days went by…