Dungeon King: The Hidden Ruler
Chapter 62: [Thrones in Ruin 11] The Boardroom Decides

Chapter 62: [Thrones in Ruin 11] The Boardroom Decides

The elevator chimed softly as Elara stepped into the executive wing.

She moved quickly down the corridor, passing a small alcove tucked between the offices—a minimalist pantry stocked with coffee machines and a discreet liquor cabinet for "long meetings."

It was empty, humming quietly under the too-bright lights, forgotten for now.

She barely glanced at it. Her focus was ahead, where the double doors to the main conference room loomed like a tribunal gate.

Elara’s shoes clicked against the marble floor, the sound unnaturally loud in the charged silence.

A curved line of executives turned toward her, faces carved in stone. Some wore watches that cost more than her rent. Others tapped gold pens against sleek leather portfolios, the branding of White Mansion etched discreetly on their covers.

No greetings. No handshakes.

Just quiet judgment, weighing her like meat on a butcher’s scale.

She tightened her grip on her datapad, every instinct screaming caution.

This wasn’t a meeting.

It was a performance—and she had just stepped onto the stage without a script.

The room went tense the moment she entered. Eyes flicked toward her: suspicion, desperation, calculation.

At the head of the table, the Marketing Manager, a sleek man with steel-gray hair and a surgically precise smile, raised a hand.

"Elara Whitmore, right? Junior QA Tester? Good. Sit."

She moved quickly, settling into the empty chair opposite him. Her datapad hummed faintly as it synced to the room’s secure network.

The Marketing Manager laced his fingers together and leaned forward.

"Tell me," he said smoothly, "what the hell is happening with the complaints?"

Before she could respond, the QC Manager—her manager—cleared his throat loudly. He was already sweating slightly under the conference room lights.

"Uh, yes. Right. So," he began, "based on preliminary internal reviews, it appears that some recent adjustments to class balance—especially among summoner-type classes—may not have... landed optimally with the player base."

The Marketing Manager raised one thin, unimpressed eyebrow.

The QC Manager pressed on, falsely cheerful.

"Of course," he added, with a chuckle that landed dead in the room, "these things happen in big events. Some growing pains. You know how players get."

He glanced at Elara, almost daring her to contradict him.

"Elara here handled the sponsor complaint directly. Maybe she can clarify."

The implied shove was clumsy. Almost theatrical.

Elara caught the subtle shift immediately. This wasn’t clarification. It was misdirection—a stagehand trying to shove her under the falling set piece before anyone noticed who dropped it.

The rules of the game clicked into place: Smile. Play dumb. Absorb the blame.

Her hands tightened slightly on the datapad. Not today.

If they wanted to paint her as the naive junior who misread the situation, they would have to do it over a wall of hard data—and their own signatures.

Elara didn’t flinch.

She tapped her datapad once, projecting a clean, precise report onto the main screen.

"The issue," she said calmly, "is that the patch disrupted summoner-type classes at a mechanical level. Familiar entities—core to those classes—experienced invocation failures, scaling glitches, and critical skill deactivations."

A beat of silence.

"Summoner classes," Elara continued, voice steady, "historically contribute to large-scale PvP events by providing supplementary bodies and field control—essential for maintaining strategic balance. Their sudden mechanical collapse during the Throne War destabilized factional strength ratios, leaving core roles unsupported."

The QC Manager laughed lightly, raising a hand.

"I think what Ms. Whitmore means," he said smoothly, "is that some players perceived it that way. Metrics-wise, it’s a very vocal minority. These things spiral fast on social media."

Elara met his gaze, unblinking.

"Respectfully," she said, "internal metrics show a 43% participation drop among summoner archetypes during live event windows. That’s not perception. That’s systemic failure."

The Marketing Manager’s expression cooled to something clinical.

"You’re saying the patch crippled a major class archetype during our flagship event."

"Yes," Elara said simply.

The QC Manager jumped in, voice strained.

"We—I mean—it wasn’t projected to impact live event performance at that scale. Internal assessments indicated minimal disruption."

"Minimal disruption?"

The White Mansion representative, who had been silent until now—a tall, sharply dressed woman with the kind of cold efficiency that could gut boardrooms—leaned forward, voice like ice.

"Thousands of players are dragging our sponsor name through the mud. Our branding’s been memed onto literal dumpsters on fire."

The words hung in the air like a knife.

Across the table, a junior PR manager shifted uncomfortably, tapping his pen once against the polished surface before stilling his hand completely. Another executive coughed quietly, the sound sharp in the oppressive silence.

No one volunteered a defense. No one challenged her.

The White Mansion representative’s gaze swept the room like a scalpel.

Titan Corp prided itself on polish, on control—but right now, Elara saw the truth under the veneer: Fear.

The QC Manager visibly paled.

The Marketing Manager drummed his fingers once on the table.

"Mr. Hayes," he said, addressing the QC Manager directly. "Just curious. Did you personally review the escalation logs from the Ebonreach Covenant complaint?"

The QC Manager faltered.

"I—delegated initial reviews—"

"Delegated," the Marketing Manager echoed softly.

He pulled up two reports on the table’s projection—Elara’s clean, technical breakdown—and a vague, sanitized "Sponsor Satisfaction Report" filed by the QC department.

"So," he continued, voice still neutral, "you authorized the patch to move forward without a full technical validation because... sponsors needed to be ’smoothed over’?"

The QC Manager shifted uncomfortably.

"Look, it’s messy, but damage control matters more than—"

The White Mansion rep cut in, her voice razor-sharp.

"You call deleting an entire class a ’messy detail’?"

Silence.

The Marketing Manager leaned back slightly, smiling thinly.

"Ms. Whitmore," he said. "You wrote this report?"

"Yes, sir," Elara said.

"You stand by its contents?"

"I do, sir."

"And you’re prepared to offer a solution."

"I am."

"Proceed."

Elara knew the weight of the moment.

A wrong word wouldn’t just cost her this meeting—it could bury her career in a shallow grave lined with NDAs and polite reassignments.

They didn’t want excuses.

They wanted either a scapegoat or a miracle.

And she had already decided which one she would be.

The word cut through the room like a slow blade.

Elara felt a dozen invisible weights anchor the air around her—waiting, watching, measuring. Across the polished table, executives sat unnaturally still, their eyes sharp and predatory, their silence a demand.

It would have been easy to stumble. To hedge. To soften the reality.

But easy had no place here.

She straightened her datapad without breaking eye contact. She was not here to placate. She was here to tell the truth, even if it tore the walls down.

Elara inhaled slowly.

"First," she said carefully, "a public acknowledgment. Controlled messaging. We frame it as an unintended interaction, prioritize restoring summoner class functionality immediately, and issue compensation packages for impacted players."

The QC Manager’s mouth opened—probably to protest the cost—but the Marketing Manager silenced him with a glance.

"Go on," he said.

"Second," Elara continued, "roll back the patch changes affecting summoner mechanics. Implement a retroactive adjustment to Throne War event results—symbolic recompense, even if logistical rollback is impossible. Players need to feel heard, not dismissed."

The White Mansion rep watched her with a calculating gaze.

"And the sponsor damage?"

Elara met her gaze evenly.

"Aggressively frame our sponsors as allies in player restoration. Position White Mansion not as part of the problem, but as advocates pressuring Titan Corp to fix it."

The room held its breath.

The White Mansion rep smiled—thin, sharp.

"Useful enough," she said, her tone colder than steel. "That’s what we pay for, after all."

The Marketing Manager nodded, tapping his datapad dismissively.

"You’ll prepare the internal report, Ms. Whitmore," he said, tone smooth but hollow. "Senior staff will review and deliver it upward."

Elara blinked once, masking the slight sting.

No promotion.

No credit.

Just more work.

The QC Manager sagged in relief, catching the unspoken message: survival, but at the cost of pride.

The White Mansion rep rose first, snapping her tablet closed.

"We expect results," she said coolly. "Not excuses."

The Marketing Manager offered Elara a bland smile as he gathered his notes.

"Good instincts, Ms. Whitmore. Keep polishing them. Corporations love clean floors."

The meeting tore through her like a silent wrecking ball.

When it ended, the executives filed out first—smooth, polished, indifferent. Even the White Mansion representative disappeared without a word. Elara sat motionless for a moment longer, feeling the weight of the adrenaline only now crash against her chest.

By the time she rose to gather her datapad, the conference room was deserted.

She stepped into the hall—and froze.

From the pantry, voices leaked out, sharp and vicious. It’s the marketing manager and her manager.

Marketing Manager (MM): "You fucking idiot. How the hell does a junior QA step on you like that?"

QA Manager (QM): "Shit, sorry, my bad. I should’ve taken her report and gone in solo..."

MM: "Instead you drag her into the meeting like a goddamn idiot."

QM: "I’m sorry, sir."

MM: "Now I don’t give a shit about her—or you. You made this company look like it’s run by amateurs in front of White Mansion. If the client walks, my end-year bonus goes with her."

QM: "Don’t worry, sir. Players always whine, but they move on. They always do."

MM: "You better make sure your junior cleans this shit up. If White Mansion pulls sponsorship, I’m burning your ass—and hers."

QM: "Yes, sir."

MM: "Fuck. It’s already trending. I gotta make the PR move before it hits the national media by morning."

Elara stiffened as footsteps approached.

The pantry door swung open.

The Marketing Manager and the QC Manager stepped into the hallway, the icy overhead lights catching the hardened lines in their faces.

They saw her.

They knew she had heard.

They simply didn’t care.

The Marketing Manager gave her a thin, mechanical nod.

"Ms. Whitmore," he said lightly, before walking past her without breaking stride.

Her manager didn’t even look at her.

Elara stood frozen for a second longer, then turned away, pulse hammering in her ears.

She couldn’t ride the elevator down with them. She wouldn’t.

She strode straight past the lifts toward the restroom instead.

Inside the restroom, Elara turned on the faucet and splashed cold water over her face. She didn’t care about the mess—didn’t care about the ruined traces of corporate makeup running down her skin.

She leaned against the sink, breathing hard.

When she finally looked up, her reflection stared back at her from the mirror.

For a long moment, she just stood there, studying the face in the glass.

It wasn’t the bright-eyed graduate who had walked into Titan Corp months ago, did her job interview and dreamed of making games better from the inside.

That version of her was gone.

What stared back was someone colder.

Someone who understood that games weren’t built on dreams anymore.

They were built on money, image, and quiet brutality.

And survival meant learning how to walk through it without flinching.

She didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror anymore.

And maybe that was the point.

Elara slowly reached for a paper towel.

Methodically, she dried her face, wiped away the streaks, straightened her jacket.

When she finally stepped back into the hallway, her face was clean.

Expressionless.

Ready for the next fight.