Author: Selkin

Translator: Estoriel

Proofreader: ATK-49

Special Thanks to G.S. for supporting us!

---

Survey link

---

It was one of those days when my best friend and I had to decide on some important matters. While I briefly read the papers my secretary prepared beforehand for us, I drank the delicious tea he had prepared.

Until this day I’m not sure how Kyle is able to do it but his tea is truly the best. One of the reason I had to employ him regardless of the sacrifice – not that I had to sacrifice anything aside from a promise to never get bored at work.

Hell, I’m very confident that the work in our company will always be super interesting!

Our employees are all nice people, personally selected by Kaje and myself through many different recruitment tests. We even enjoy coming up with new challenges for our employees and take pride in our fresh way of recruiting!

While other companies solely focus on achievements and the educational level, we focus first and foremost on the employee’s personality.

If he or she doesn’t fit in with the crazy thinking of our company… We won’t accept them.

I still remember someone who proudly presented his curriculum vitae and give us a super arrogant vibe, telling us how great he was and that his prior coworkers were all inferior to him. Of course we made him face one of our wonderful challenges, the “NDC paperchase”, where he had to find clues leading to the “treasure”, which was part of the next recruitment test, in a certain amount of time.

This was only one of the many challenges we had in store for him and dozens of other possible candidates. As we had expected from that guy – he failed (badly).

Too bad but to start working here, you not only have to have a good personality, which he already lacked, but have to be a gamer at heart as well!

That being said, every employee has to pass our job interview, the challenges, a personality check held by us and also has to pass a trial time. Though the personality check is the most important part to us. We want humans, who are nice and not people, who treat others as if they are trash and are arrogant like that one guy back then…

While that one failed, other shone brightly…like Keruna who passed with flying colors!! Literally!!

In one of the tests he managed to slip and fall down in a fashion one only sees in comedy movies. Except for his pride, he was luckily uninjured but the scene burned itself in ones brain – never to be forgotten.

Of course Kaje and I were observing the tests from our monitors inside our office at that time. It was a really funny event~

Luckily we always record the tests for reviewing purposes and safely store the material related to  the recruits who pass. Thus I still have that amazing fall recorded up to this day. I really should make a collection of the best scenes of all employees tests and add his epic stair fall as well.

Keruna probably believed he instantly failed our recruitment challenges because of that event, but he actually earned some extra points that day! He instantly soared to become one of our favourite candidates! Not that I can ever tell him this, he probably won’t take this well.

While I was reminiscing over the past, Kaje finally finished reading her papers and put them away. She instantly went straight to the main topic.

“After reviewing the new design of the ‘chicken’, I think it’s finally perfected for the story line we had prepared. What do you think?”

I only gave a satisfied smile, sipped on my tea again and started to reply.

“The bib looks brilliant right? That little crown image on the bib is just too cute! And fits so good with our plans~ It’s time for the rise of the chicken empire!”

“Chicken empire?”

The question came from my (personal) secretary. It seems like Kyle is also interested in this, seeing that he stopped filling out some papers and looked towards us. As a good friend and also someone I deeply trust, I value his feedback and additional ideas a lot. He often helps us in planning out new events, quests and lore for Mirage of Eternity.

If I didn’t know better, Kyle’s actual job isn’t only being a secretary but also holds the positions of a butler, advisor and personal assistant. If we would be some evil empire, he would be the loyal right-hand man of mine, one of the two rulers, who rules with an iron fist on the subordinates and pushes them to their limits to fulfill the demands of their master – in a merciless and cruel way.

Even his handsome face, which usually is strict and emotionless, is fitting for that kind of job description, even more so his sadistic personality and the villainous smile he often shows when we plan new events. What should I say? He’s a perfect fit for the two evil minds at the top of the company…

Indeed he would be the actual person who’s third in line, but I wonder who’s officially the third in line?? Huh… I already forgot. Well I’ll leave it to Kyle to manage this~

Thus I started to talk about the plan Kaje and I came up with. After all he’s my right-hand man who reports everything happening in the DDF meetings. And until this day our employees believe we superiors wouldn’t find out about their funny meetings…

It’s truly amazing how creative they are in trying to avoid or spoil our plans, so it’s always a challenge to overcome their countermeasures. I’m more amazed at the fact, that they still believe we don’t know about it and that Kyle actually wouldn’t report to us.

But as expected of our loyal right-hand man, he sure can toy around with other people and make them trust him blindly! I wonder if they’ll ever find out the truth?

Good that he’s on our side, he would be an annoying enemy to deal with if he wasn’t.

“Do you remember the incident where Keruna got pecked to death by a chicken?”

Just that question alone…

…made Kyle reveal his sadistic side and he gave us a perfectly villainous smile not betraying my expectations.

“An unforgettable event.”

While replying he instinctively put the papers – he was filling out previously – aside, knowing that we’ll drag him into our plans and demand some additional input on them. Seeing this, I also started to smile, a mischievous smile.

“We really liked that chicken, we decided to readjust its design a bit and give it a story line. There will be a new, though very small, kingdom on one of the continents of Mirage of Eternity in the future – the chicken empire. Ruled by said chicken as its queen, after she married the chicken overlord! And because of their hate against cooks and their allies, the trauma which was caused by Sion and Keruna, it intends to take revenge on every cook and the people who received resentment from chicken kind. Like owners of a certain title~”

Of course Kyle, as my secretary, instantly understood what I meant and his evil grin grew larger.

“Looks like there will be hard times coming for a certain Hidden GM.”

Now it was Kajes’ turn to explain further.

“Not only that. He now owns a castle and is a demon lord.”

“I guess this makes the chicken empires king declare war against Keruna’s territory and guild?”

“Exactly~ And also on the human kingdom’s who is proud of their country’s speciality food.”

The human kingdom in Mirage of Eternity is very proud of their prized chicken dishes. Ranging from deep fried chicken, ancient chicken soup, dragon fire roasted chicken and the high class golden eggs of the giant golden chicken which could give the one eating them an extended life span. The egg shells are sold separately to maximize profit.

Of course the golden chicken eggs are a little cameo for the old story about the goose who laid golden eggs. But a normal goose was too boring so we exchanged it with a giant chicken of five meters height and an iron like beak. A very aggressive creature~ Maybe we should add it as the general of the chicken empire? I discuss this with Kaje later on.

“Meaning this will be a small world event, a war between two countries and one demon lord’s small territory. How do you intend to introduce this event?”

Kyle’s interest grew by the minute and he eagerly waited for Kaje’s reply.

“We first give out an announcement that a new kingdom is being established and start the event with small forces appearing, like chicken empire spies who gather information about the enemy country. The rest…”

“…will be decided by the head AI of Mirage of Eternity and the players~”

I ended the explanation and because Kaje and I were such huge fans of the chicken empire I also revealed some additional information.

“Of course, the poor chickens have a right to establish their country safely and with the players storming their small kingdom together with the human country’s army, they will also need some allies. Thus, Kaje and I have decided to help the poor chickens establish their kingdom and assist them in defending it. Seeing that the chicken empire is a kingdom, it will definitely be possible to be recruited by them as mercenaries. And of course two of these mercenaries will be Kaje and me using some normal characters. Do you want to join us with your Dark Knight character? We’ll be the heroes of chicken kind!”

Even I couldn’t stay serious at the end of the explanation but from his expression it looked like Kyle took the bait. Of course, after all he’s the perfect villain…

“That sounds like a lot of fun. Furthermore, I’m sure Keruna will participate when he sees his castle, territory and himself being threatened by a whole empire. I always wanted to fight against his Twilight Assassin class, not to mention that he came in my way a few times and I have to make this up to him.”

Now even I wondered what Keruna did to make Kyle’s eyes give off a dark glimmer. I have a bad feeling about this… not concerning Keruna’s well being but something else is making me a bit nervous. There is that feeling Kyle gives off like a predator who lost an opportunity to hunt his prey or it getting snatched away in front of his nose. I didn’t feel like asking him any further, my primal instincts – or shall I call it a sixth sense? – told me so but Kaje’s instincts are rather dull so she asked.

“What do you mean by he came in your way?”

Kyle’s eyes wandered towards Kaje and he gave us a smile which could even make the devil run. Poor ‘demon lord’ Keruna, looks like he caught the attention of the true devil king ruling over all of the demon world….

“Oh, he only disturbed my sweet time with the maiden of my heart multiple times and couldn’t read the mood…”

He said this in a veeeeery cold voice…

May Keruna rest in peace! Or would be “rest in pieces” be more accurate?

I just tried to continue pretending that the one he intended to flirt with wasn’t actually me.

Until this day I have successfully avoided Kyle noticing that I know that he’s in love with me.

It’s not that I don’t like him but my mental state is not ready yet to get a confession from the devil king!

And I still want to focus on my company first!

Maybe in a few more years I will consider it but not now…

I sipped my tea and kept up my act of being completely dense over this and tried my hardest to bury the lingering feeling that Kyle actually knows what I think…

I swear that guy is worse than any tapeworm inside ones stomach in regards to knowing my thoughts but I will convince myself until the last moment that I’m just imagining it.

Yep, I’m imagining it, he totally can’t see through my superb acting…

And it’s not that he takes pleasure in seeing me struggle… yep, totally not!

“Ah, I see so he bothered you while flirting? Uh…wait?! You! You’re in love with someone in our company!? Tell me more!!”

Oh no… now Kaje is interested in this topic. Is there any way for me to escape this room? I secretly sneaked a look towards the door and tried coming up with an excuse to leave but sadly there was none which wouldn’t made it obvious that I was trying to escape…

“Hmm~ I fear it could cause more disturbances if I give away any details. I would rather avoid more people coming in my way after all.”

A well played reply from Kyle which lets me off the hook for now.

But he indeed has a point there. If Kaje would find out about this, she would indeed disturb him just for the fun of teasing people a bit, mainly him, not me. Not to mention that she would seriously stick to me to make sure that I don’t slack off myself, not that I would ever do so but I also don’t want to get followed everywhere, I need my private time for myself to relax!

“Awww… Too bad, but I’ll try to find out sooner or later. You help me, right, Fienja?”

I really wanted to say no, but it would destroy my perfect acting of being oblivious towards Kyle’s feelings, so I had to agree with her. If I would have known that it would end up like this, I wouldn’t have asked Kyle to take part in the war alongside us…

“Great~ But back to our previous topic, I’m really looking forward to this event!”

“Same. I’m always looking forward to this. After all, I don’t have the opportunity to play alongside my superiors that often~”

Even now I can only agree with Kaje, but I slowly have the feeling that a part of me will regret it after hearing Kyle’s remark.

Why do I feel that Kyle will actually be the one enjoying this event the most?!!