Meanwhile, at the Under the Stellar Sky studio.
The cheers had gradually faded, replaced by a tighter, more focused rhythm of work.
Backend data kept climbing, community feedback needed to be addressed one by one.
Bug reports had to be sorted and categorized, and development on the next update had to accelerate.
Kiana lay slumped over her desk, eyes fixed on the game on her phone screen, her expression unreadable.
"I'll be honest," she muttered. "I'm actually... kind of happy."
Mei smiled softly and reached over to ruffle her hair.
Bronya was still staring at the data on her screen, but her brow furrowed, just slightly.
"Arthur." She spoke up suddenly.
Arthur looked up from a pile of newly arrived partnership emails. "Yeah?"
Bronya's gaze settled on one of the monitoring panels, a sharp glint flickering in her eyes.
"Someone's probing us."
The office went quiet for a moment.
Dan Heng immediately pulled up the firewall logs. Stelle and March 7th leaned in to look.
Kiana sat bolt upright. The smile disappeared from Mei's face.
Arthur said nothing.
He simply watched Bronya, waiting.
"The trace points to..."
Bronya's fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard, tracking those carefully concealed signals that were quietly testing the studio's modest firewall, looking for a way through.
"Interastral Peace Corporation. Market Development Division."
The name landed like a stone, heavy and cold, settling into everyone's chest.
It wasn't the first time Under the Stellar Sky had heard that name.
There were those games that had been driven into the ground. The waves of coordinated negative reviews. The baffling legal notices. The operator who always stayed hidden in the shadows.
Arthur set down the email he'd been holding, stood, and walked to the window.
"What has to come will come." His voice was calm.
He turned and looked at his team.
"Our game blew up, and someone's getting restless. What comes next might be a real fight."
Bronya's fingertips flew across the keyboard, moving twice as fast as usual. Code, logs, and tracking commands responded beneath her hands like trained hounds, zeroing in on the hidden sources of those probing signals.
No one in the office spoke.
Even Kiana was unusually quiet, her eyes fixed on Bronya's back, fingers unconsciously curling into the hem of her jacket.
"Got them."
Bronya's voice was steady, but in that moment, everyone felt the temperature around her drop by a few degrees.
She projected her findings onto the large display in the conference area.
A name. A photograph. And a dense, scrolling record of activity.
Scott. Specialist, Market Development Division, Interastral Peace Corporation.
The man in the photo wore a tailored suit and a easy smile.
"This is his activity log from the past seventy-two hours." Bronya pulled up the timeline.
"On the day the game launched, he pulled our business registration records, our project history, and background information on key team members.
He contacted at least four online influence-manipulation outfits and issued instructions for a coordinated attack. The first wave of content is already being deployed."
She paused, then switched to the next screen.
On the display were backend screenshots from several social media platforms: unpublished posts, unsent comments, prewritten video scripts.
The titles were designed to shock: "Honkai Impact 3rd's 'Free-to-Play' Lie: What's Really Behind the So-Called Goodwill?" "The Lead Developers' Dirty History: The Projects and Players They Destroyed." "Kiana Kaslana? Just a Rich Girl Playing Games with Daddy's Money."
And more. Worse. Crueler. Every single one aimed with precision at their most vulnerable points: the trust deficit around the free model, their history of failures, and things Kiana and the others had no power to change about who they were.
The color drained from Kiana's face.
Not because she was the one being attacked. She'd long since grown used to that kind of snide commentary.
It was because those headlines dragged in Mei's name. Bronya's name. Everyone's names, all of them deliberately and viciously bound together.
"They want to bury us." Kiana's voice came out shaking, her teeth clenched.
Mei took her hand and held it without a word, but her grip was tight.
Dan Heng adjusted his glasses, his eyes behind the lenses as cold as ice. "This is a standard corporate reputation-demolition playbook. First, throw mud. Then steer the narrative.
The moment we feel pressured to respond, they use anything in that response as ammunition for the next attack. They keep going until our reputation is completely destroyed, users start leaving, and then..."
"Then they move in and buy us out for next to nothing." Arthur finished the sentence for him.
Silence fell over the office.
Stelle and March 7th stared at those unposted, vicious headlines, their faces pale. They ran community operations. They knew better than anyone what kind of storm those posts would unleash once they went live.
"So what do we do?" March 7th's voice was unsteady. "Do we deny it? Put out a statement? Explain that none of it is true?"
"No." Arthur's voice was firm.
Everyone looked at him.
"If we come out and deny it, we're implying the accusations are worth responding to. In a public narrative battle, going on the defensive reads as weakness. It tells everyone we have something to hide, which is exactly why we felt the need to explain ourselves."
He paused. "And more than that, a response is exactly what Scott wants. The harder we push back, the more he can work with. He'll stir the water until no one can see the bottom."
"So we just do nothing?" Kiana's voice rose. "We just sit here and let them dump all over us? Let them drag everyone through the mud?"
"Not nothing." Arthur turned to face the room, his gaze moving from person to person. "We do what they won't see coming."
"Bronya, starting now: pull everything you can on Scott and the influence teams he's working with.
Communications, task records, their full track history. This isn't his first time. Every studio he's taken down before is evidence. I want the entire operation mapped out, from source to endpoint."
Bronya gave a single nod, her fingers already poised over the keyboard.
"This isn't business competition. This is organized cyberbullying, defamation, and malicious attack.
We follow the law exactly as it's written. Every piece of evidence gets documented into a complete chain and submitted to the cybersecurity authorities.
Scott likes playing dirty in the shadows? We'll show him what it looks like to settle things out in the open."
Dan Heng pushed his glasses up. "Legal processes take time. Public opinion won't wait for us."
"I know." Arthur nodded, then said the last part.
"The streamers who are live with our game right now, and the ones who already went live or are about to: they're taking the worst of it. They're getting hit hardest."
He looked at Stelle and March 7th.
"The two of you, start reaching out to them one by one. Not to ask them to speak up for us.
Just to tell them the truth: someone is running an operation behind the scenes, and they're caught in the crossfire. We have evidence and we're working through official channels. Ask them to hold steady.
Keep streaming if they're streaming, keep engaging if they're engaging. And if they're comfortable with it, they can mention to their audience, casually, that someone's been flooding the game with fake negative reviews. Frame it as something interesting that happened."
Stelle blinked, catching on. "Not taking sides, not running cover for us. Just letting more people know that someone's pulling strings?"
"Exactly. Make the black PR campaign itself the story."
Arthur's hand came down firmly on the table.
"Scott thinks throwing mud will break us. But he's forgotten something: in this era, bad press is still press. As long as we hold our ground, everything he throws at us will become attention, and that attention will push more people straight into our game."
He turned to look at Kiana.
"The things they're going to say about everyone's past will be vicious. They will hurt. But keep one thing in mind: players aren't fools.
They've played our game. They've felt what we put into it. Those attacks might shake some people. But the ones who genuinely love what we built? They'll figure it out for themselves."
Kiana pressed her lips together and said nothing. Mei quietly pulled her close.
Arthur's gaze swept across the room.
"We're not fighting this with noise. We're fighting with evidence, with the law, with timing, and with people's judgment.
Scott thinks we're just like every other studio he's ground into the dirt before, that we'll cry and beg him to stop. Let him think that. He'll find out soon enough."
At that same moment, Scott was leaned back in his wide leather chair, a glass of red wine in hand.
The first wave of attack content had already gone live.
He swirled the glass gently, watching the wine trace smooth arcs along the inside.
"Under the Stellar Sky." He said the name aloud, the corner of his mouth curving into a smile. "Let's see how long you last this time."
He raised his glass in a small, unhurried toast.
"To the losers."