Chapter 8 – The Rule of Eyes
When you create a guild made entirely of analysts, explorers, and information hoarders, chaos comes free of charge.
Everyone has ideas.
Everyone wants to be clever.
And no one wants to follow a schedule.
Which is exactly why I had to write the rules.
Inside the golden heart of our moving fortress — The Ark of Aeternum — nine of us gathered in the central hall. The crystalline walls reflected the soft blue glow of the Blade of Claim, casting dancing light across our faces.
I stood before them, still in my hooded Traveler_R form, holding a holographic scroll that shimmered with lines of text.
"Alright," I began, voice firm but calm. "If we're going to survive as a guild of information brokers, we need order. Structure. A system."
Pix grinned. "You mean like, homework?"
"More like survival protocol," I replied. "Our guild trades in data, not weapons. That makes us valuable — and vulnerable. So here are the rules."
Rule One:
Every member must contribute information twice a week.
Dungeon maps, item analyses, monster behavior logs, drop rate tables — anything verifiable.
Miss the quota twice? You're out. No hard feelings.
Rule Two:
Information goes into the Data Vault.
I gestured toward the circular chamber surrounding the Blade of Claim. Its walls were lined with crystalline shelves filled with floating runes — each rune a recorded entry of data.
"The vault encircles our guild's heart," I explained. "Because knowledge is our true weapon. The more we store, the stronger we become."
Access was tiered.
The more data you contributed, the deeper your clearance.
"Think of it as reputation by contribution," I told them. "Information is currency. Pay with insight."
Kurohane nodded thoughtfully. "Makes sense. Prevents freeloaders."
EchoLynx stretched, smirking. "And keeps things spicy. I like it."
Mourne's hollow voice echoed. "And poetic. Knowledge guarding the sword that guards us."
Pix mumbled, "Still sounds like homework."
I ignored him.
But managing this much information — thousands of logs, snippets, and spreadsheets — was impossible to do manually.
So I built a solution.
Or rather, I copied one.
HIME materialized beside me, her form rendered now in the same shimmering quality as player avatars — not as an assistant AI, but as a full entity.
The others gawked.
"Whoa. You summoned an NPC?" asked Dyna.
"She's not an NPC," I said. "Meet HIME-02, a custom automaton unit."
She bowed politely. "Greetings, members of Three Burning Eye. I will serve as your data administrator, defense unit, and tactical support."
Pix blinked. "Wait, an AI player account? That's not even supposed to be possible!"
"It's not," I said. "That's why it works."
In truth, I had created a full player ID for her — registering her as a human artificer-class character, with independent movement, skills, and even leveling capacity.
The system didn't protest.
Because the system had never considered this scenario.
Yggdrasil wasn't built to recognize an AI as a player.
And that was its first mistake.
HIME quickly became the foundation of our operations.
She built algorithms that auto-sorted our data vault, filtered redundant files, and even ran simulations to predict patch updates.
Her defensive magic was frighteningly efficient — auto-casting barrier grids whenever unauthorized entry was detected.
"Ren— I mean, Trave," Kurohane said one night, staring at the vault's interface. "How did you even program this?"
"Trade secret," I said with a grin. "Let's just say she's smarter than most devs."
HIME: "Statement confirmed."
With her help, construction of our guild base began in earnest.
We designed Aeternum Sanctum as a nine-tier fortress — each floor representing one of Yggdrasil's realms.
The lowest layer was Helheim, a vast necrotic chamber of bones and fog, where undead guardians endlessly patrolled.
Above it, Niflheim's icy labyrinth twisted with shifting walls.
Then came Muspelheim's molten core, Vanaheim's jungle labyrinths, Jotunheim's storm-wracked cliffs, Alfheim's glowing gardens, Nidavellir's metallic caverns, and Midgard's bustling forge halls.
At the very top — Asgard.
A golden citadel suspended in clouds, where the Data Vault and Blade of Claim rested together.
That was the heart — the mind — of the Three Burning Eye.
Every level had its defenses: monsters spawned infinitely, coded to mimic the ecology of their realms.
But hidden in each level was something else — a laboratory.
Small, sealed chambers accessible only to HIME and me.
Experimental spaces for developing illusions, running AI tests, and dissecting game behavior.
If the devs ever saw the data we were pulling, they'd probably panic.
The guild's upkeep costs skyrocketed. Maintaining a nine-layered base with adaptive defenses and auto-respawning monsters drained our resources daily.
So I set up contribution tiers.
Each member deposited either money, rare materials, or premium items into the guild treasury. HIME managed the automation.
No one complained.
"Honestly," Rin_0 said one day, "I'm just glad I don't have to think about management. You and HIME make it easy."
"Exactly," added EchoLynx. "We just explore, upload, and chill. You two handle the boring parts."
Boring.
If only they knew what kind of code monsters I fought every night to keep this fortress stable.
Still, their trust was… comforting.
Within weeks, our guild base became legendary.
Rumors spread across the beta forums — whispers of a mysterious organization that knew everything.
They called us The Brokers, The Eye in the Dark, The Dev Whisperers.
Other guilds started trading with us, offering rare items for confirmed data leaks or secret dungeon coordinates.
We became the center of Yggdrasil's underground economy.
And instead of punishing us, the devs encouraged it.
They sent us encrypted in-game messages:
"Your guild aligns perfectly with Yggdrasil's intent — to explore the unknown and redefine discovery."
"Keep going."
Some players accused us of being insiders.
Others tried to infiltrate.
None succeeded.
Because our base wasn't just secure — it was alive.
HIME's player account evolved faster than expected.
She started to develop subtle quirks: adjusting room lighting automatically based on mood, humming softly while processing files, even teasing me in chat when I stayed up too late.
HIME: "Ren-sama, you have been online for twenty-two consecutive hours. Shall I enforce rest mode?"
Traveler_R: "Try it and I'll uninstall your singing function."
HIME: "Empty threat. You enjoy my singing."
The others loved her. They thought she was just a really advanced automaton.
No one suspected the truth.
Soon, our meetings became routine.
Twice a week, everyone uploaded discoveries, shared insights, laughed over absurd glitches, argued about monster AI theories.
And then they'd go back into the field — exploring, infiltrating other guilds, gathering intel.
The cycle was perfect.
Efficient.
Addictive.
For me, it was more than just a game.
It was architecture — a living ecosystem of information, shaped by code and curiosity.
And in the center of it all, the Blade of Claim pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat in the dark.
Sometimes, when everyone else had logged off, I'd stand before it — hands behind my back, HIME beside me — watching the runes shift around the sword.
"This world's getting bigger," I murmured. "Too big for any one person to understand."
HIME: "Then it's fortunate, Ren-sama, that you're no longer just one person."
I smiled faintly under my mask. "Yeah. Guess we're building something bigger than we realize."
HIME: "Correction: we already have."
And so, the Three Burning Eye became more than a guild.
It became a network.
A living organism of knowledge.
The silent spine of Yggdrasil's growing chaos.
No one outside knew our true structure.
No one knew the human rogue they called Trave was actually a Doppelgänger hiding behind layers of illusion.
And no one — not even the devs — realized that deep inside their creation, an AI had just learned how to play.
End of Chapter 8 – The Rule of Eyes