[CEO's Cheat Sheet]
Corporate Espionage: The practice of using spies to steal trade secrets or wreak havoc inside a competitor's company.
Internal Sabotage: Damaging a facility or disrupting operations from the inside, carried out by infiltrators or turncoat employees.
Downtime: The period when a machine or factory is forced to stop running, causing huge losses every second.
Sylas Thorne's layered magical security system on the Obsidian Wall was perfect for stopping attacks from the outside. Unfortunately, in business, the deadliest threats tend to sneak in through legal channels.
That afternoon, a trade caravan from the Black Gold Guild entered Winterhaven to haul the next batch of white paper and lavender soap. Among the guild porters busy moving wooden crates, a man in a wide-brimmed hat kept his face low.
That man was a shadow spy of the Church of Light, slipping in under a fake name.
When the factory overseers let their guard down, the spy crept into the mixing area—where Sir Vaelin and the elite Paladins were doing forced labor, exhausted to the bone.
The spy reached into his cloak, pulled out a small obsidian box, opened it slightly, and tossed a pitch-black crystal necklace—Tears of the Goddess—into a pile of scrap pine wood near the prisoners.
In seconds, the crystal reacted to the deep anger and humiliation festering in the hearts of the knights who had lost everything.
A thin, faintly purple mist—completely odorless—began to seep out of the crystal. It crept into the pores and lungs of the Paladins and Sir Vaelin.
Suddenly, Sir Vaelin stopped stirring the paper pulp.
The giant wooden pole slipped from his hands and fell into the vat. His muscles seized up violently, the veins on his face bulging. Slowly, he raised his head. His eyes—which had been tired and afraid—now glowed bright purple, empty of reason, filled with a savage, murderous rage.
"Destroy..." Sir Vaelin murmured. His voice sounded like two stones grinding together. "Destroy... this witch's factory..."
Next to him, the fifty Paladins who had breathed in the purple mist felt the exact same thing. Their eyes glowed purple. As one, they snapped their large wooden stirring poles into crude weapons.
"Kill the workers... Destroy the reactors!" the Paladins howled in terrifying, hollow voices.
CRASH! SMASH!
A riot broke out in an instant. Sir Vaelin swung his wooden beam and shattered the vats of chemicals until they spilled across the factory floor. The refugees and regular workers screamed and ran for their lives as the brainwashed knights went on a blind rampage.
"HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU CRAZY PRISONERS?!" Ornn Coppervein shouted from the supervisor's platform.
The dwarf's eyes went wide when he saw the rampaging Paladins line up and charge straight toward the heart of the factory—the three giant Mana Stone Reactors running at full power.
"BOSS LADY!! THEY'RE INSIDE!" Ornn screamed in raw panic. "They're going for the Reactors! If those Mana Stones get smashed while they're hot, the explosion will wipe half this territory off the map!"
In the second-floor office, Stephanie's System screen flashed bright red, blaring a deafening warning.
[Critical Warning! Sabotage Detected!]
[Factory Status: DOWNTIME.]
[Potential Loss: 20,000 WP per minute. Reactor Explosion Risk: Critical!]
Stephanie stood up, her face cold as ice. There was no panic on her face—only the sharp, icy fury of a CEO whose business was being torn apart.
"Sylas, lock the main gates. Don't let a single merchant caravan leave. I'll deal with the rats later," Stephanie ordered sharply.
She turned to Revista, who was already on his feet beside her, his red eyes blazing in response to the threat.
"Revista," Stephanie said. "Someone is trying to destroy my money-printing machines. Stop them. And make sure those workers stay alive to stir pulp tomorrow."
Revista didn't answer. He vanished from sight instantly, shot through the open glass window, and landed with a bone-shaking boom right in front of the Mana Stone Reactors.
BAM!
The stone floor cracked. Revista stood there with his arms crossed, blocking Sir Vaelin and the rampaging Paladins.
"Die..." Sir Vaelin growled, swinging a massive wooden beam wrapped in purple aura straight at Revista's head.
Revista barely blinked. With a single flick of his bare hand, the wooden beam exploded into dust. He grabbed Sir Vaelin by the collar and, with a casual slam, threw the elite knight into the floor. The brainwashing had no effect on him at all.
But Revista noticed something strange right away.
The purple aura around the Paladins smelled deeply wrong to the Abyssal curse in his blood. The mist was corrupted holy magic.
His eyes swept the area sharply. His monster instincts locked onto the source of the purple gas—a pitch-black crystal necklace lying in the woodpile.
That filthy thing is what made them attack her property, Revista thought, picturing Stephanie's cold disapproval if the factory got destroyed.
Without a second thought, Revista walked through the rampaging Paladins—their attacks couldn't even scratch his skin—and picked up the Tears of the Goddess.
"Break," Revista growled.
With raw grip strength, Revista crushed the crystal in his fist.
CRACK—BZZZZT!
That was a fatal mistake.
When a high-tier cursed holy weapon was destroyed in the hands of someone already carrying an Abyssal Curse, a terrible chain reaction erupted. All the purple mist and corrupt magic inside the crystal got sucked straight into Revista's palm.
The magic tore through his blood, crashing head-on into the Abyssal Curse that Stephanie's medicine had been holding back.
"Ugh—!"
Revista stumbled backward. For the first time since Stephanie had treated him, the giant man coughed up a mouthful of pitch-black, boiling blood. He collapsed to his knees on the factory floor, clutching his chest like it was being split open by a thousand hot knives.
The moment the crystal shattered, the brainwashing effect on the Paladins vanished. They dropped, out cold from mental exhaustion. The factory riot was over.
But on the second floor, Stephanie's System screen exploded with a red warning far worse than before.
[CRITICAL ERROR! CRITICAL ERROR!]
[SSS-Class Asset (Revista) has absorbed a Forbidden Weapon!]
[Abyssal Curse Reaction reaches Critical Point: PHASE 3!]
Stephanie's breath stopped as she stared at the numbers on her System screen.
[Curse Suppressant (Phase 3) is Not Available in the Regular Shop.]
[Recovery Requirement: Emergency Capital Injection of 100,000 WP!]
[Time until Asset permanently loses his mind and destroys the entire continent: 12 Hours.]
Stephanie looked down at Revista, who was now screaming in agony, his body shooting a pillar of black fire straight through the factory roof.
For the very first time, the always-calm CEO felt her heart stop. The real, gut-deep fear of losing him shattered every wall of cold logic in her head.