Eli had been sitting on his roof for a full day now, trying to puzzle out how to handle the curveball that the system had thrown at him this time. The lords conference would start shortly after the monster horde event, which was in two days, and he had chosen the rules and the agenda. The bad part was that everyone attending would know that he set the rules and agenda, meaning if any votes are close everyone who lost will blame him. And he had a feeling that a lot of votes would be close, especially since the votes seemed to be mostly geared toward benefitting everyone, or just benefitting those who would be attending.

  To even reach the top 100 strongest list to get the title of lord, you had to be some level of a self-service jack-ass. Kind people who are patient and help others do not climb the ladder of power nearly as fast. Many years from now it won't be a race, it will be an endurance run, because all of the existing lords will already be so powerful it will take decades for new people to catch up, so surviving that long will be the challenge. But for now, the lords are people who got lucky, had simple or easy to master skills, and who could push through the pain and fear to keep going. Eli had been all three, just another reason he didn’t want to be in charge of anything, a part of him felt he didn’t earn it but was born with it.

  However, much to Eli’s dismay, he was in charge, at least of this conference. Everyone attending would know that he was the strongest and they would look to him to fix whatever they felt was wrong with the new world. He had his preferences on how things should go, but that didn’t mean they were the right way or even that they would be beneficial. This was just another curveball thrown at him by the system, and he had a feeling the system was just getting started. He suspected that some of the things they would be voting on were not what they seemed so it was going to be hard to know for sure which way to vote to get what you wanted.

  There were still two days until the monster horde and Eli had decided that he would stay, but wouldn’t enter the fighting until he felt it was necessary. His people could handle the safe zone border on the south side where his town floated in the air above a large pond. And with the highest level monster being level 100, he wouldn’t get much out of the fighting, so better to let them get the experience and rewards. They might even have some recruits by then that he could evaluate for membership to their group. Which brought up another item on his to-do list that he had been putting off, coming up with a name for their group.

  The name for his group of people was far more important than his people realized, and now he was realizing that he should have the name chosen before the lords conference. It would just make things easier for him and for recruitment that way. The names he had been pitched were decent but he didn’t feel like they were right for what he wanted. Some of them were ‘The Justice League’, ‘The Cult of Darkness’, ‘The Magic Guild’, ‘Chaos Crusaders’, etc. For some reason the name with ‘cult’ in it seemed to him to be the closest to what he wanted but he needed it to sound scarier, but more professional. Then he remembered that he was about to talk to Goshen before the system windows stopped him.

  Eli tapped on the rune in his mind that allowed them to talk, “Goshen, what kind of names do groups have in the integrated universe?”

  “Well I don’t know every one of them but there are churches, like the Church of chaos, which are mostly just a collection of Cults with the church covering one type of magic, like chaos, and the cults being a specific part of chaos magic. Then there are guilds below that, I suggest naming your group with a guild name, the cults each have dozens of weaker transcendence in their ranks and I’m not sure you would survive their attention.” Goshen explained.

  “A guild would also draw less attention to us, keeping your family at bay right?” Eli asked in a distrusting tone.

  “It is possible, which is why it was a suggestion, I won’t stop you.”

  “Understood, thanks for the explanation.”

  “Thank you for connecting me with half of that twin soul girl, she is quite the conversationalist. Also, she asked me to pass along a message, she wants to thank you for including her in the sexual encounter you had. Apparently it was her first time and you made it very memorable.”

  Eli blushed, “Tell her I’ll stop in and see her when I can.”

  “She is expecting you.” Goshen said then cut the connection.

  He was happy to have confirmation that his efforts to share that experience with both parts of her soul had worked, even though he hadn’t known it was her first time she seemed to be happy with it. Something with guild in the name was going to be tough to sound serious and carry the weight he wanted it to have. The only thing that came to mind was ‘Gravity Guild’ or maybe he would name it after his transcendent skill, ‘Singularity Annihilation’. Just because it was a guild doesn’t mean it has to have guild in the name, at least he hoped it didn’t. In the spirit of the upcoming conference he sent a message to everyone connected to him asking which one they like letting them vote.

  No one had returned from their search for Gwen yet, he did feel for her but she did try to kill Alora as well as get him killed, so he decided that he wouldn’t let it bother him too much. Next time he would just kill as few as possible and move on, his attempt to try and rehabilitate her had backfired and made his guild look bad. If people think that a crazy person is going to just pop out of his floating town and murder them, it will be hard to recruit or do any good in the nearby area. Eli decided to go for a walk in the forest, just a casual walk at old world speed, he thought it might be a better way to clear his head than just sitting on his roof.

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  Since the world was remade, Eli always had a good handle on how to handle things. When you are only focusing on survival, it becomes easy to get a narrow view of everything around you. When every minute is spent struggling to stay alive, the world exists only as objectives or obstacles. However, that was steadily becoming less of a necessity meaning two things for the short term. One was that people’s lives were going to slow down giving them time to reflect on everything that they did to survive. The other is that more long term thinking is going to start coming into play, politics and public perception will start being more important.

  With Eli’s current level of power, he wasn’t worried about himself, but he was worried about those around him getting caught up in a long term political mess or some brain gamers plot. Something he and his team used to do for a living, trick enemies into doing their work for them, was at the top of his list of worries. If the schemers that got Ghost to abandon his city wanted someone out of the way, they could just make it seem like they hurt one of Eli’s people and use his retribution as a way to get rid of them. That is how he would do it, with something as powerful as him on the safe zones doorstep, everyone with any kind of power in the cities will be trying to figure out how to use him to their advantage.

  His walk in the forest had been going for a couple hours when he came upon a group of three out hunting, they seemed around the 80s in level and were on guard when he walked up to them. They relaxed slightly when they saw it was a person, albeit a rather large person wearing fuzzy underwear with marking on his face. He stopped a few seconds after they noticed him, allowing them the chance to make the first move, he didn’t know how to determine if his running into these people was coincidence or the systems meddling.

  “Hello there,” one of the three middle-aged men said. “Would you happen to have information on this area?”

  “What sort of information?” Eli asked.

  “We are looking for any dungeons or places of interest, we normally hunt to the north but that place has been crawling with people from further north lately.”

  “I tell you what, you tell me what the people are doing in the north and I'll fill you in on what I know about this area.” Eli was trying to sound innocent but he wasn’t sure that was something he could pull off convincingly.

  “We should ask someone else,” one of the others said. He was holding a staff that was more of a bow-staff and less of a magic caster’s staff.

  “He looks like an alright guy to me,” the first guy said.

  “He’s in his underpants and has face tattoos, what does a person have to look like before you think they are not alright?” the staff guy asked.

  “Well he could be holding some kind of weapon, but he isn't, and you tell if someone is bad by his eyes. That guy has kind eyes.” the first guy argued.

  “I don’t like the look of him,” the third man said. He was holding a staff as well but it was clearly magical. “He stands like a villain.”

  “Stands like a villain? And how do villains stand Liam? It looks like a normal way to stand to me.” The first man said, who was still not holding a weapon.

  “Since when are you two experts on standing?” the non-magic stave wielder said.

  “I think everyone is an expert Bill, we all stand everyday,” the first man said.

  “You're too trusting Will, he could be one of those people hunters, we don’t know him.” Bill said.

  “Wait,” Eli interrupted them, “your names are Bill, Will and Liam? Aren’t those all shortened versions of William?”

  “We don’t talk about William,” Liam said, “He was a friend we lost.”

  “Oh,” Eli said but then paused with a bit of confusion, “so there were four Williams to start?”

  “It’s a long story,” Bill said. “Best save that for another time.”

  “Ok…” Eli paused again, “can we trade information then?”

  “You first,” Liam said.

  “Well, I know that the monsters get stronger the closer you get to the volcanoes, but I haven't explored the whole area or found any dungeons.” Eli told them, then he looked at them expectantly waiting for them to respond with what he wanted to know.

  “Should we tell him?” Will asked the other two. Then gave Eli another long look over, he hadn’t moved from where he had stopped, but he was standing in the middle of a monster infested forest in his underwear with so much confidence that he seemed arrogant. They could tell by looking at Eli that he thought the whole place was beneath him and there wasn’t any danger to be found here. The other two just shrugged as a response unable to put into words why they felt off about him.

  “The word is that the northern people are looking for a girl who is missing. Some lord up there put out a large bounty for anyone who finds her.” Will said.

  “What does she look like and how big is the bounty?” Eli asked them.

  “She is in her twenties, with short blonde hair and they said her name was Gwen.” Bill answered. “The bounty is two hundred million credits, which seemed fishy to us so we came down here.”

  “Smart thinking, well I’ll be on my way, have a good one guys.” Eli said with a hint of nervousness in his voice, and then turned around.

  “Wait,” Will yelled, “you never told us your name.”

  “Oh, I’m Ash, most of the people in the south know about me. Feel free to ask around.”

  Eli walked away at his slow pace heading more south-east as he brought his mind back to where his thoughts had been before they had interrupted him. How was he going to manage public perception without going into the safe zones, but more importantly how was he going to act during the conference?