King opened the message panel and typed.

[King: I need to talk. Available?]

For someone he hadn’t contacted in a while, the reply came rather quickly.

[Pantheon: I am.]

King typed without preamble, laying out what Hunt had presented in the mountain office, the framing around the Third Woe, the Kingdom Building Phase, the scale of what the Hunter’s Association had already constructed. He kept it factual and direct.

He sent it and waited.

Pantheon’s response arrived in segments, each one following the last after a short pause like he wrote with care rather than impulse.

[Pantheon: I’m aware of Hunt’s plan. I’ve had observation on his organization since the early days.]

[Pantheon: I also know you were at the mountain fortress today. My reach is broader than most players account for.]

King’s focus fixed on the second message. Pantheon had eyes inside Hunt’s territory, or near enough to it that King’s visit had registered without Pantheon being physically present.

The messages kept coming.

[Pantheon: Hunt’s offer isn’t surprising. He’s been building toward this conversation since after your encounter with cain. The Kingdom Building Phase is his natural environment. He has been preparing for it longer than anyone else in the rankings.]

King typed his response.

[King: So what do you want to do about it?]

The pause before Pantheon’s next message was longer than the previous ones. When it came, it arrived in a single heavy block.

[Pantheon: I want to call a summit. A meeting between the top ten players across both the Power and Popular Rankings. I intend to announce it in the World Chat and contact each of them individually with further details and a location link.

The Third Woe is a construction phase, a new world order built from the ground up by the players who survive into it. That process is complicated under the best conditions. If the most significant figures in the game enter it without any shared framework, the system’s penalty for sustained chaos compounds with every unresolved conflict.

A meeting is not idealistic. It is tactical. If the top ten can reach even partial compromise before the Third Woe begins, the entire phase scales more manageably for everyone involved.]

King read it through in half approval. As expected from Pantheon, the logic was sound, himself had understood the Kingdom Building Phase well enough from his playthroughs to know that the penalty system during it was not forgiving.

The game had been designed to reward organized consolidation and punish prolonged fragmentation. If a region had failed to establish a working system or a dominant organization, even if partial, it was punished for it.

Pantheon was right. A summit wasn’t diplomacy for its own sake. It was risk management.

But...

[King: What stops someone from using the meeting as an opportunity? Gathering the top ten in one location hands the most aggressive players a target-rich environment.]

[Pantheon: I’ll build a ceasefire clause into the direct messages. Any player who accepts the meeting invitation is agreeing to the clause’s terms for its duration. Hostile action against any attending player during the summit window ends the clause for the aggressor and grants the remaining players collective justification to respond.

Essentially, if someone breaks it, everyone else puts them down.]

[Pantheon: The clause doesn’t guarantee safety. But it creates a cost for breaking it that most rational players won’t absorb willingly. Hunt included.]

Well that was reasonable.

[King: I agree with the summit. What do you need from me?]

[Pantheon: Your public agreement when I post the announcement. If the rank one and rank two endorse the same initiative in the World Chat, it changes how undecided players read the situation. It will influence decisions that individual outreach alone wouldn’t reach.]

[King: Done.]

A few minutes passed. Then the World Chat announcement notification pulsed.

King opened it.

Pantheon’s announcement sat at the top of the feed, without excess.

[Pantheon: EMERGENCY SUMMIT — TOP 10 PLAYERS (POWER AND POPULAR RANKINGS). The Third Woe approaches. What follows it will define the structure of this world for the next phases of the game.

A meeting between the highest-ranked players is not optional if we intend to navigate the Kingdom Building Phase without triggering destructive system penalties.

I Pantheon, the Rank 2, am calling a summit. Individual message requests with full details and location will follow shortly. Come civil. Come prepared.]

King typed his response directly beneath it and posted.

[King: Agreed. I’ll be there.]

The World Chat held its breath for approximately four seconds.

Then Hunt replied.

[Hunt_Starbuster: Hmmm.]

That was all. One word.

Then, the chat detonated.

[ PANTHEON AND KING ON THE SAME PAGE??? since when???]

[The top 2 just called a summit lmaooo this game keeps giving]

[A call on the top 10 is doing a lot of heavy lifting]

[ If Hunt shows up this just became the most dangerous meeting in the game’s history]

[Isaac_Craig: Who else is in the top 10 that’d actually attend this?]

[Zoro: It’s troublesome, but very valid.]

[Alita80: Couldn’t agree, especially with what comes after.]

[The_Table_Turner: Oh this is going to be WILD, I hope I get an invite lmao]

[If king AND pantheon both show up to the same location I wonder what happens if things go south]

[ Does anyone else feel like the Third Woe is about to break everything open?]

The messages continued stacking, the feed moving. King watched it for a moment, reading the comments he considered important, then closed the World Chat.

His interface pulsed again.

[Pantheon: Individual outreach is done. Location links sent. Now we wait.]

[Pantheon: The summit is in two days. Based on the system’s escalation pattern from the first two woes, the Third Woe should follow within a short window after that. Possibly immediately after, or concurrent.]

[King: Understood.]

Location Link Received

King set the interface down and sat with the quiet of his quarters for a moment. Two days. Forty-eight hours between now and a room containing the most capable and most dangerous players in the game, gathered under a ceasefire clause that was only as strong as the collective willingness to enforce it.

Lady Geladria, who had turned King away from her dragonhold. Cain, his former nemesis. TTT the goofy fan, there was a chance he saw them all again, and in the same room.

After that, the Third Woe.

King stood, opened his interface, and started preparing.