Demonic Pornstar System novel Chapter 909

Chapter 909: Making Big Moves

Figuring out how to proceed took Kaiden’s leadership circle less than an hour, because for all the bickering packed around those two plastic tables, the people sitting at them were frighteningly efficient once their collective future entered the discussion.

By the time the construction crews rotated shifts outside, the plan had three legs.

"Sponsors first," Nyx said, turning her laptop so the table could see the shortlist she’d distilled from four hundred messages. Three names survived her initial culling. "I sent out feelers earlier. All three replied within minutes, which tells you everything about our current market value."

"Second," Aria took over. "We need consistent revenue for the guild. That’s a time-demanding move, but what we can do is make use of the twenty dungeons the Association owes us. Our people can clear some of them to harvest materials and train, and anything we don’t have the staff to run ourselves can be leased to smaller guilds for recurring income."

"Twenty dungeons..." Alexandra repeated faintly, still not used to the scale of anything anymore.

"Which brings us to the problem." Luna spun her phone on the table and caught it. "We have a scary roster of high-tier awakeneds now, but absolutely nothing under it. Vespera’s people run the offices, Talia’s smiths make swords, and no offense to Tessa’s crew, but if we send them into anything above a C-gate, we’re doing a funeral, not a dungeon clear."

"None taken by anyone present," Nyx noted.

"We need bodies. Fighters, a lot of them, but also the boring stuff. Accountants. Logistics nerds. People who know what a permit is."

"That’s not a high bar. Even I know what a permit is," Calypso said, mildly wounded.

"You learned yesterday."

"And now I know."

"Knowing what a term refers to isn’t the same as..." Bastet couldn’t even be bothered to finish her own sentence, giving up halfway.

"So we announce we’re hiring," Aria said. "Every guild does it. There’s a board for it on the Association network."

"There is, but that’s the basic bitch move. So boring..." Luna said, and then the grin arrived, the specific one she wore before ruining a ranked lobby’s evening. "Kai..."

"Hm?"

"We haven’t posted anything since we left the facility. Do you have any idea what the internet looks like right now? Are we hiding in our dungeon? Under Vespera’s skirt? Or are we celebrating? Are we high on our new tiers? What are we doing?" She let the thought dangle. "So many people are simply waiting for us to post an update..."

Kaiden looked at her, and the shape of the idea assembled itself in his head. "Instead of going for the bland forum posts normal guilds use... What if we post the recruitment call ourselves, huh?"

"The entire planet reads our job listing within the hour, for free, and no sponsor on Earth could buy us that reach." Nyx’s smile went wicked. "Gremlin Bestie might have a truly foul mouth on her, and her brain is filled with obscene thoughts that should never see the light of day-"

"Oi. Fatty." Luna was not amused.

But Nyx ignored her, save for a smug little twitch of her lips as she finished, "-but on rare occasions, a coherent thought does form..."

"...Someone wants a beating..." The Storm Valkyrie growled under her breath.

"It also answers the question whether Kai is scared of what just happened, as many must suspect," Alexandra spoke up. "A man hiding from cosmic horrors does not post job ads."

"Then it can’t read like a job ad," Aria said. "No corporate voice. We tell the truth. The headquarters is a tent. The dog broke a walkway."

Luna cackled. "Oh, that’s good. Put that in."

"The role for Kai’s personal chef must be listed as taken," Alice chimed from the dark halo above his head, the ring pulsing once with grave importance. "Permanently. I refuse to interview replacements."

"Noted," Kaiden said dryly.

They built it together in just a few minutes, Nyx trimming Luna’s memes down to the two that were actually funny, Alexandra discreetly fixing the formatting, Vespera vetoing exactly one sentence about the guild’s finances and allowing the joke that replaced it.

When it was done, Kaiden read it through one last time and looked up at his girls, at the tent, at the two plastic tables holding up the entire administrative weight of America’s most watched guild.

"There’s no time to waste," he said, and clicked the upload button.

...

The group line had been open in Sarah’s mind for the third hour straight, which had become standard procedure this week, because nobody on Valhalla’s Sinners’ support staff wanted to face the world alone right now.

At the edge of her vision, the awakened channel’s ban queue refilled itself the moment she cleared it. The fandom had not handled hours of silence well after what had just happened.

"Banned," Leia declared from her end of the line, with the weary grandeur of an executioner working a double shift. "Another doomsday prophet. This one had a graphic. That’s four hundred today."

"The sentiment numbers of what the viewers think Kai must feel are really bad," Emily reported in a small voice. "Fear is outrunning excitement three to one."

The feeds had been like this since the weird creature appeared above Earth, which was instantly followed up by Kaiden’s new designation...

Every talking head in the country had aged a decade on air, and panels of experts were debating whether the Anomaly-tier designation came with a legal obligation to live on a military base.

The Sinners’ pages, Kaiden’s verified Association channel, and Eclipse’s brand-new official guild account had all gone silent.

The most powerful man alive had watched the sky open above him, walked out of the Association building, driven away in a van, and gone completely quiet.

The world did not know what to do with that, so it had chosen collective psychosis.

"You do all realize he’s doing it on purpose, right?" Leia said, savoring her own theory syllable by syllable. "The man has the best dramatic instincts of anyone alive. Every hour of silence makes the eventual post hit harder. We are witnessing showmanship, ladies. I would bet my salary on it."

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