Banned (Book 2): A LitRPG Adventure Series by Michael Atamanov

Author:Michael Atamanov [Atamanov, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Magic Dome Books
Published: 2025-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

An Old-School Login Trap

THE “SERIOUS MATTER” that the Pink Foxes were investigating near the ferry crossing turned out to be more serious than we had anticipated. With my years of experience in the game, I was well aware of what Dog of the Forgotten Pack could and couldn’t handle at his current level and with his existing skills. Unlike his first encounter with Misty Uri, who had been over forty levels above him and had left him with virtually no chance of winning, this situation wasn’t entirely hopeless. However, the likelihood of completing the quest offered by the NPC cook was still very close to zero.

When Alice and Miranissa returned with the sedge they had harvested, I explained the situation to the team and suggested that, rather than tackling the complex Raccoons’ Dark Past assignment, we should look for something easier first.

“Commander, I think I know an easier option,” Bashkir remarked, having just re-entered the game after browsing the forum and studying the competing teams. “We could intercept the Just for Fun team before they join forces with the other members of the coalition.”

“The coalition? What’s that?” I asked, as this was the first time I had heard of such a formation.

Our Thief eagerly filled me in.

Apparently, in Shattered Empire Online, where a similar tournament for newbies was taking place, many participants had already teamed up in groups of four or five teams—the so-called coalitions—and were mercilessly targeting individual teams, even those considered favorites. After all, no matter how strong your team was, facing opponents of similar levels who outnumbered you by four or five to one was simply unrealistic.

“Isn’t that prohibited by the tournament rules?!” Miranissa exclaimed indignantly.

Our Thief responded that such restrictions were not explicitly outlined in the game rules and that competing teams could indeed team up to eliminate others from the tournament.

Coalitions were beginning to form in Celestial Blades, though a bit more slowly. The game forum buzzed with negotiations among team leaders: conditions were proposed, territories were mapped out, and severe penalties for breaking military alliances were discussed in the form of official in-game contracts. One such coalition was taking shape in the region of the Wolves Wastelands, where our team was located.

By the fourth day of the tournament, there were eight participating teams in the Wolves Wastelands game region, not including ours. Two had embraced a pirate lifestyle, engaging in sea heists near the southern islands. If the Pink Foxes continued south toward the village of United Bowline, they would soon reach those areas. Three other teams were busy with something in the snowy mountains to the north. All three were made up entirely of Birdmen, as the high-altitude assignments were designed for aerial players. Meanwhile, two more teams—Der letzte Held (The Last Hero, a German team) and 京都からのシンプルな男たち (Simple Guys from Kyoto, a Japanese team)—had formed an alliance and successfully eliminated three teams from the Newbie Contest.

Smelling trouble, I frowned and bared my teeth. Even in protected areas like large cities, a

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