While Dylan was bogged down in the bureaucracy of guild recruitment, the silence of his mansion was broken only by the constant beeping of Syn’s notifications. In the Upper Zone of a nearby planet, in a mansion slightly larger than his own, but one that overflowed with energy, featuring loud music, colorful and distinctive decorations, and filled with state-of-the-art editing equipment, Alice was in a state of frenzied creative flow.
She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by dozens of holographic screens displaying fragments of videos recorded during the raid on the Cave of Whispers.
Alice worked at a speed that would make any ordinary professional editor feel like an amateur.
She selected still images of the Tree Guardian, videos of Lisa the Fox diving into white flames, and close-ups of Halon’s obsidian armor with its imposing appearance, choosing the best angles.
Alice was a master at showing without revealing. She edited the videos so that Lohan and Lisa’s abilities looked impressive and divine, but she cut the frames milliseconds before any technical mechanics or secrets of their races and classes could be discerned by the watchful eyes of rival analysts.
Even Halon’s armor, thanks to her editing, was presented simply as a set of gear that the guild was coordinating.
And considering that the low-level gear players had access to so far was very basic, the menacing black armor Halon crafted seemed like much more incredible end-game gear!
It created a very interesting narrative, transforming Astralis into an incredible group that everyone would want to be a part of.
Ever since the day before, when the systematic posts began on the guild’s profile, the forums and pages focused on Elysium had been talking about nothing else.
Alice posted a short 15-second video showing the Astralis team walking toward the camera after their victory, with the starlight particles from Star Walking glowing around their feet in a very subtle, almost imperceptible way. The video had no sound, just the sound effect of a shooting star at the end.
"One hundred twenty thousand likes in forty minutes..." Alice murmured, wiping a drop of sweat from her forehead. She opened the analytics tab and felt a rush of adrenaline. "Nine hundred thousand followers... we’re going to hit a million before dawn!"
The profile’s growth was becoming exponential to the point of being almost frightening.
The strategy they’d devised, with the bold gamble of securing two global ads in a row, was yielding results so sweet that even they hadn’t been able to predict them.
By ensuring that the entire world heard the guild’s name through the Elysium system, they’d sparked a curiosity that traditional marketing would have taken months to build.
Now, whenever videos and posts about Astralis appeared in people’s feeds, at least among the billions of Elysium players, and the even greater number of people who simply follow the game but lack the money or time to play, the curiosity to find out what this guild was posting kept everyone hooked.
As a result, the algorithm, which was already performing well, became even more active, promoting the videos with even greater intensity, causing the snowball effect to grow stronger and stronger.
With the algorithm favoring the name "Astralis," other content creators also took advantage of the hype to produce videos on the topic, speculating or reporting on things even remotely related to this guild that was dominating the app.
Alice opened the comments on her most recent post, where she showed only the Boss’s arm being torn off by Lisa and Lohan’s combo.
"Is this CGI or real?!" asked a verified player from Upper Zone. "I’m a Level 12 Mage and my flames don’t have half that magical density. Who are these monsters?!"
Another comment, clearly from a rival corporate guild, read: "Astralis Requiem is just luck. Wait until we find them in the Open World, our guild will slaughter those weaklings!"
Alice laughed, her eyes sparkling with playful mischief.
She knew that every threat from rivals only served to boost engagement and make Astralis even more relevant.
She posted another video shortly afterward, this one focused on Dylan performing a spear thrust that purified a black root.
The title was simple: "Elegance is the armor of our elite. Do you have what it takes to shine with us?"
Reading that title, even she felt it was a bit too presumptuous, but she knew that to reach all audiences, even posts like this had to be made from time to time.
In less than fifteen minutes, the video had already surpassed 50,000 likes. The guild’s profile on Syn had become the gravitational center of the entire Elysium community.
Alice paused, staring at the screen showing the steady growth in followers. Nine hundred ten thousand... nine hundred fifteen thousand... Her work was outperforming any advertising campaign they could have hired, which made her even more pleased with herself.
She sent a quick message to the guild’s private group on Syn: "Guys, brace yourselves, by tomorrow morning, we’ll hit the one-million-follower mark!!"
Alice then leaned back in her chair, watching her reflection on the holographic screens.
She was exhausted; her eyes stung from the blue light, but the satisfaction of being the architect of that public image was an inexhaustible source of energy.
She recalled Dylan’s description of how he felt stronger in the real world, how Bella had said she was changing, and how she herself felt her reflexes were sharper and that her slender arms could now lift much more weight.
These changes motivated her even more; even though working this hard was exhausting, with such clear rewards, who wouldn’t work nonstop?!
In Dylan’s dark office, he received Alice’s notification and allowed himself a rare, genuine smile.
He picked up the last piece of meat from his plate, savoring the texture and the vitality it injected into his system.
The plan was working perfectly. They had the money, they had the prestige, and now they were selecting the pieces for the army that would protect the home of the stars.
"Tuesday is going to be a long day..." Dylan murmured into the emptiness of the office, turning off the holographic screens for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the darkness of the mansion.
He stood up and walked to the window, gazing at the distant lights of the Upper Zone that tried, unsuccessfully, to drown out the glow of the stars in the sky.
Dylan felt that, little by little, he had already been drawn away from that cold and lonely world; fortunately, with the emergence of Elysium, he no longer saw this separation as something so terrible.
His true home was in Mythlorien, beneath the leaves of the white tree, and he would do anything, devour any "flesh" and investigate any past, to ensure that sanctuary remained untouched.