Chapter 49 - No Matter What It Took In one of the tall high-rise buildings on the streets of New York, two women walked out of a board room into the elevator. One had long curly blonde hair while the other was a redhead. "Mia, are you alright?" Alex gently patted her. It hurt to see her best friend in so much pain. Mia lightly nodded with a bitter smile. "They are trying to take advantage of me because of my age, aren't they?" Alex sighed. "Fucking selfish assholes. If uncle and aunt were alive…" "But they are not alive anymore, Alex." Mia cut her short. Alex didn't say anything after that as the two of them walked in silence for a long time. When they reached the gates of the tall building, Mia silently waved her hand for a cab. "Mia, just come home with me. I don't want you to stay alone." Alex caught her hand and insisted. "No. I need some time and space to think. I will call you tomorrow." Seeing the worried look on her friend's face, she added with a sad smile. "Don't worry. I won't do anything rash." Her words didn't comfort Alex even one bit, but she forced a smile and waved her hand as the cab took away. She in fact did not plan to leave her alone. "I will wait for a couple of hours and then go visit her with dinner." Alex took out her phone and scrolled through her emails as she flagged for another cab. The past few weeks had unexpectedly changed all of their lives. Mia's parents died in an accident, leaving her as the sole successor for all of their properties and shares. In the beginning, no one noticed anything as they were overcome with grief, but the business partner and Mia's parents' close friend Walter backstabbed the young girl while she was at her lowest point. He made the shares crash further, which were already low because of the unexpected accident of the CEO, Mia's father. And now in the name of a hostile takeover, he was trying to swallow the whole company by joining hands with their competitor. Unless Mia somehow managed to gather a lot of financial support in a small time, it was extremely impossible for her to stop this. But how could a young girl gather that much support? That too she had barely stepped into her undergraduate college and knew very little about business. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮 Irrespective of her intellectual capabilities, she was still far from managing this storm without any help. Alex knew that Mia was ready to do anything and sell everything that they owned. This company was her father's big dream. He had worked hard to bring himself here, so she didn't want to lose that as well in the same year she lost her father. Alex also didn't want to see that happen, but unlike Mia, she wasn't that rich. She had a healthy trust fund but the two of them were in different categories. If she gave her everything she owned, it wouldn't even make a dent in the number that she needed. She was also completely helpless. But she didn't want to desert her friend and her sister when she needed help the most. She wanted to do something. Alex sighed and got out of the cab, reaching back to her apartment. Several thoughts swirled in her mind as she walked in absentmindedly. "Alex! Alex! Did you see this? This game is totally blowing up! Do you know how many players have already joined? And it has only been a day since the game launched?!" "This is crazy insane! This is totally going to be the next big thing!" Rey shouted in excitement, his eyes still glued to the esports news channel. However, in contrast to his cheerful mood, the person slouching on the couch next to him said and did nothing as she blankly stared at the television. "Is this really growing so much?" She muttered in a daze. "Yes. Do you even know what is the gold to dollar ratio now?" Alex shook her head, a few strands of her red hair falling on the side. "By the way, our names on the leaderboard are already gone. People are grinding day and night and the…" Rey continued excitedly chatting about the new developments both in-game and outside the game, but the woman was clearly no longer paying any attention to him. She had zoned out completely with several thoughts running in her mind. Several popular video games had come and gone. They all typically had a high game currency to real world currency exchange rate but this inevitably dropped in a few months. So even though this new game was shrouded in mystery and no one knew what exactly was happening, this hype as well probably wouldn't last long. But still… if she was a gambler, she would surely bet on the hype at least lasting for a year… This gave Alex several ideas. If she perhaps could somehow become extremely powerful and strong in a short period of time, then maybe… just maybe she could gather all the resources they need to keep the company afloat and stop the hostile takeover. So while Mia was busy dealing with all the company related issues, she could potentially help her out by gaining resources in this manner. And by some chance, if the game somehow managed to last longer, then their company could even gain a lot by being an official sponsor of the in-game guild or esports team. The possibilities were truly limitless! All in all, this was a wonderful opportunity. Sure she could probably work hard on some other route and achieve this same result, but the fastest, high risk high reward route was this one. And call it intuition or gut feeling, for some reason, she knew that this was the way to go! Something told her that she needed to follow her instincts and invest more time and effort into this game. Alex closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Now that she had made this decision, her brain already started calculating what she needed to do to achieve her goals. How could she possibly rise head and shoulders above the herd of professional gamers and skilled players? She took a few deep breaths and thought about it from different angles, but no matter how hard she racked her brain, only a single person's image flashed in front of her again and again and the obvious shortcut stared right at her face. If she could somehow use him... Alex gritted her teeth. She was determined to take things as far as it was needed. She was going to put everything on the line, so how could she hesitate about something like this? After all, it was just a game right… just how realistic could it be? Something like that couldn't possibly matter as long as it didn't happen in real life! She bit her lips and turned to look at her brother who was back to watching the news. "Do you still have that jerk on your friend list?"