BXBX NOVEL Chapter 232 - Strike Back
"I can never tell what you\'re thinking Arthur. Do you mind elaborating as to why you\'re laughing and believe that our clan leader made the best decision by deciding to go along with the interview instead of listening to the rest of us and actually just ignoring GNE?" Batol requested, still with a lot on his mind.
"Of course. I have no reason to complain since it\'ll be a favour to you less intellectually capable humans as to what my big plan is," said Arthur with an arrogant smirk.
"Anyway, I\'ll try to take this a bit seriously. Batol, have you ever actually had an instance with GNE where you ignored their request to do an interview with you?" Arthur asked a simple question as he tried to break down what he was getting at to Batol.
"N-Not really. I\'ve only ever had a single interview with them and it ended just like this one! That\'s why I wanted our clan leader to stay back and just turn GNE away. That way, our clan leader along with our clan itself wouldn\'t have to suffer any backlash or negative feedback just because of some random news station that likes to twist the words of other!" Batol replied with a firm and confident tone as he had believed that he had presented his case well. In fact he believed that he had presented his argument so well that Arthur would have no choice but to back down and admit that he was wrong.
"That\'s the problem there.. You see, you\'ve only had one encounter with them. That being the one where you accepted their proposal to have an interview with you. Since you\'ve only had one type encounter out of the two with them, you would have no idea as to what would happen when you refuse their interview request. To them, it\'s like an outright murder. They resort to so many shardy techniques to make sure that they never receive a rejection ever again. Throughout all the time I\'ve spent as the clan leader, there has only been a single time where I\'ve rejected an interview from them and they made me regret it. You wouldn\'t believe the influence they have on this world," said Arthur with a concerned voice as if GNE had traumatized him.
"Come on, it can\'t be that bad. Let alone it be worse than what happened today. I mean what would they be able to do? Make some lies up about you?" Batol asked in a sarcastic tone while Arthur kept his serious face.
"Yes, you\'d be surprised at how many people believe such lies so easily. They eat up that information like it\'s air itself. They don\'t bother to question any information which they gain from a news outlet. As long as the official GNE was the one who published it, they believed it to be the truth and nothing but the truth. It\'s a bit embarrassing to think about it since many people along with myself never questioned the information which was given to the public from news outlets until I was a victim of it myself," said Arthur with a disappointed face.
"In just a couple of days, they had managed to bring my name to shame. The WD clan which was on a massive streak of good luck with new members joining each day and older members completing more quests, it looked like in just a couple of months, we would be able to take over another kingdom and use it for a second base of operations. That was all until GNE wrote a fake article about WD which instantly forced our clan\'s numbers to tank as almost no new members showed up. Instead there was an influx of members of WD leaving the clan instead. No matter how many times we tried to reach out to them so that they could take down the article or just call it a mistake, they never listened. Their reasoning being that if they admitted to making a mistake, it would tremendously decrease their trustability to their readers. Due to that fact, they would rather allow my clan\'s reputation to go down instead of admitting to a clear lie that they told," Arthur continued to explain.
"However, after some time, they agreed to make another interview with me in which my clan would be presented as a good place to be. Of course due to how popular GNE is, our numbers once again shot up which meant that our funds and new members have increased drastically," said Arthur.
"Although it might have gotten rid of the short term problem, GNE is still a very big issue to us. If they were to team up with other clans which sought out our defeat for the sake of money, they could instantly betray us and bring down our numbers as well. Even considering this, there is only one solution to dealing with GNE. We simply have to kill everyone who works there. That way, we\'ll never have to hear from them ever again and we won\'t have to live in fear either. However that plan comes with a slight problem of it\'s own. That being that you can\'t kill anyone, especially someone as influential as GNE, it would be basically impossible to get a successful asssinatoon done against them," Arthur explained to Batol.
"Why can\'t we just send some regular guy there to either poison or simply just kill him right away. That way we wouldn\'t be blamed for the murder and we could still get the job done," Batol argued to Arthur as he proposed a simple idea to take care of their enemy.
"That\'s where you\'re wrong though. I\'ve already tried something like that before. WD sent an assassin which was part of someone\'s ability. That way, just incase he was caught, they wouldn\'t be able to torture him and get information out of him. During that experiment, we learned quite a few things about GNE. The first thing being that their security system is very tight. It\'s basically impossible to get in if you\'re not already a worker there. Each person there has to go through a proper background check along with a full registration if they want to even work there. That was when we were almost caught for the first time," Arthur began to explain.
"However luckily for us, another one of the members of the top 5 members of my clan had just gotten their ability to reset which meant that I could force him to change his ability to specifically just allow the spy we sent in to get through the screening process with little to no trouble. Even so, the following few days of just looking for the top executives without getting caught was a living hell. After all that work, just when we thought we had finally gotten close enough to find them and take care of them, we were found ambushed. For some reason an organization such as theirs which mainly focuses on media coverage had a really strong person on their side which was able to dispose of our spy as if he was nothing. We actually got lucky that the spy was someone\'s ability. If it was a real person, we would have been found out and been exposed for our plotting. Not to mention the extra lies that GNE would spread about us. They\'re truly a terrifying bunch," Arthur explained.
"Basically what I\'m getting at is if you wish to defeat GNE, it can\'t be through an assassination. It would have to be completely around another method. Most likely one which would involve the newly created FFF\'s WD going into an all out war against GNE and personally killing every single one of them there. Of course you would need to prepare for the backlash you would face from everyone. Not to mention that a new news organization would just come to power in a short while," Arthur explained to which finally Yuki made a confused expression.
"What\'s wrong with that? If all it\'s going to take is a simple battle to take them down, let\'s just go ahead with it. I don\'t mind facing any backlash. Do you?" Yuki asked with a simple face as he asked a rhetorical question which was directed at everyone who was with him in the room that he originally resting in after he had battled the red dragon and was placed in an unconscious state due to the level of exhaustion that he suffered.
Everyone shook their heads which meant that not a single one of them minded heading into a war with GNE, especially after what they had done to Yuki.
"I don\'t have any problems with going into a large-scale battle with GNE but I must ask though, what are we going to do if a competitor steps up to take over as the main media reporter? Wouldn\'t that make all our efforts mean less?" Arthur questioned.
"No it wouldn\'t because we\'ll become the main news outlet after we defeat GNE!" Yuki announced with a proud smile.