He was the bastard that showed up and ruined his life. It was only fair to ruin his right back.

  Danny felt no remorse for his actions, only that he couldn’t see the look on his stupid face when he realized the sweet sweet truth.

  He had been the one by Desi’s side from the day they came into the world and was supposed to have been the only one forever. It was fated after all.

  No, seriously.

  Both families, previously members of the same hunting party, became neighbors after becoming newly weds and had two children in some weird cosmic pairings that seemed destined. Danny and Desi had been inseparable since birth and Davie and Lily were just the same when they came into the world a few years later. Mary and his dad had instantly hit it off as creative partners and Desi’s dad and his mom instantly hit it off as sexual partners. Although that came much later. Supposedly.

  See? It was fated.

  Then this random raggidy fucker shows up and ruins everything.

  Danny had been sympathetic in the beginning, when a scrawny homeless kid without any parents or education showed up in their perfect lives, needing emotional healing just like them. That was fine. Danny liked showing the poor kid how to be more like him, even though he was never as good.

  And then Desi tells him that she’s going to confess her feelings to the skinny shit stain.

  But Desi has a fickle nature. She’ll lose interest after a while and he’ll be the last winner.

  Danny didn’t expect their relationship to last for so Gates fucking awful long. They were always together too, being cuddly and nauseatingly intimate, all while he acted as the supportive brother. It was maddening.

  So he found a shitty warehouse for Jun to move into so he wouldn’t be so close all the Gates damn time. Then she just started staying there with him.

  Got him to start sculpting more to take his time away, but then she just stayed to watch. Why? How could anyone just sit there for hours, staring at someone else tap away at his stupid rocks? Was she that enamored with the motherless bastard to be contented with just looking at his face for that long?

  He got Jun to start streaming to crush his spirit. The idiot was too annoyingly happy, and it was disgusting. He preferred it when the kid was just being mopey about his dead mom. More people needed to call him out on the dumb shit that he called ‘art.’

  Their families ‘ooooh’ed and ‘aaaaah’ed and he had forced a thousand fake smiles and knew how to look supportive, but he knew how ridiculous it all was. What was the point in trying to accomplish something any modern fabricator could spit out in seconds with such archaic and outdated ‘hand tools.’ Surely the public would finally back him up.

  He had beaten five teammates to the health-pods in a one vs five spar, just to channel his rage into something that wouldn’t shatter his image. Why were there hundreds of idiots that found the little testicle ‘charming’?

  It was suffocating how great Jun’s life was. It wasn’t till the day he found out about his eccentric cousin that he finally saw the light. He knew what plans needed to be made for the perfect ending.

  James Vaults, a typical spoiled, over-privileged, under-skilled member of the younger generation of powerful families, was the eighth and youngest son in the direct line of the powerful S-Ranked Vaults Family.

  His cousin also liked to be called the Last Artist.

  The youngest Eighth Son of the Vaults family prided himself on being unique. He did many strange and outlandish things to prove it every day. A large part of that persona was his declaration that he was the only genuine artist left in the world.

  Loud and colorful in attire, James performed acts of what he called ‘symbolic poetry.’ These usually involved him taking a blunt object to expensive fragile objects, like a luxury rune-car or an expensive rune tech gadget, all while spouting how great he was for doing it because of one reason or another, to a live streaming audience. The first problem of many was that it was never his stuff.

  But hey, he was rich, so it was fine.

  It became a weird thing where thousands of viewers anticipated new colorful forms of property damage and watching the sensibly infuriated parties being parried away with excessive wads of cash. The looks of confusion as rage twisted to surprised joy were always funny. It was a chaotic and controversial form of entertainment.

  The piece of information that made this interesting for Danny was that James genuinely considered himself an artist and believed all his ‘fans’ were there purely for his art and took his moniker of ‘Last’ quite seriously. He wasn’t the most self aware of the Vaults family heritage.

  It didn’t take much to get his remaining contacts in the family to arrange an opportunity to meet his distant cousin. Just like he predicted, the all mighty James Vaults, The Last Artist, the Eighth Son, did not take well to someone else trying to steal his hard earned identity. It took little convincing for the egotistical prick to sign off on Danny’s plans to ruin the upstart in exchange for a social boost.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The key was to bury Jun’s streaming with an army of trolls that used illegal AI to hunt down specific content and just hate on them. These professionals knew how to take care of a budding streamer. Thousands of negative reviews destroyed any hope of any recommendations and made it almost impossible for new viewers to ‘discover’ them.

  Everything was great. It was even greater that Jun’s streaming was strangely making even more merit, because he had set up all of Jun’s accounts. It was wonderful that someone else was making him his spending money, unaware of their imminent demise.

  And then the little dicked marshmallow proposed and Desi said yes. They planned to marry a year later, after graduating.

  That was fine. Danny had his plans.

  By that point in their lives, Danny realized that his prior plots had played some roles as he’d intended. Jun and Desi didn’t spend nearly as much time together, glued at the hips as they once had, especially after Jun got roped up with that professor of his. He had more opportunities now. He wasn’t worried.

  Danny had also noticed early that Desi did in fact find him physically attractive, especially as he’d matured into his larger, more athletic frame that dwarfed her pathetic excuse of a lover’s. He’d catch her staring at his large muscular chest, glistening after a workout or his toned ass as he’d purposely bend over and she’d blush such a cute rosy pink.

  The actual seduction was easy, it was the guilt and the remaining strength of her obsession with Jun that was the true battle.

  His method was to corrode their relationship while being supportive. He wanted to maintain a positive and supportive, honest image in her doubt filled life while he planted seeds indirectly to suggest that true love meant unconditional support.

  Danny would insist on cuddling and watching that Hunter garbage show together after they did the nasty and point out how he admired Hunter A for his selfless sacrifice in protecting his beloved teammates, how Hunter B was a real man for retiring from his thriving career to take care of his ill lover, or how Hunter C was so heroic for standing up to his guild in support of his partner. Gross.

  And she listened.

  Jun’s instant denial of her ‘inexplicable’ desire to be a Hunter, along with her insecurity as to who’s child she was actually carrying had been all the opening he needed. He showed her new options that were very appealing to someone that felt cornered and unsupported.

  It took almost a year, and many times he feared the worst, but he succeeded in the end.

  With a few well-placed lines, she readily disposed of the baggage in her belly at a health pod, and they had crossed the Gate together. At the Vaults Family residence within the Fortress, the city beyond the Gate, they were recognized as newly eloped lovers, as it should have always been.

  It was fated after all.

  And he left a goodbye present to thank Jun for taking such good care of his girl for so many years. He forgot to ask Steeltower to record the look on Jun’s face. For that matter, he should have gotten someone to record his look when he finally got Desi’s breakup message. Ah, so many missed opportunities.

  James didn’t care about the paltry earnings of a streamer that Danny had stolen, but he had great interest in the rights of all the digital scans of all the art that now no longer physically existed. It was part of the deal, after all.

  The day the two left their old lives and eloped, The Last Artist announced The Silent Sculptor and all his art as his personal prompter creations. It had been another form of satirical art where anyone would believe anything, even AI generated garbage.

  Danny wanted Jun to see this along with the news of their elopement to crush the man he loathed, fucking jolly with the truth that there was nothing Jun could do to disprove him legally with the Vaults Family backing him.

  The first snag to his new dream life came on the first day. Desi had been so excited to start practicing the Vaults Outer Family Arts that she locked herself up in her quarters to practice the moment they arrived. For days.

  It seemed she really wanted to get stronger.

  Danny shrugged his shoulders in helplessness when he found her door locked and unresponsive. Again. It had been a week.

  He felt helpless because she was practicing so hard when he never had any intention of letting her go on a real hunt. She’d be killed on the first day. No way.

  Desi was naturally lazy and untalented when it came to body refinement, so he wasn’t too concerned that she’d make any breakthroughs too soon, so it was fine. He just wished she’d let him in.

  Danny really needed someone to help him relieve his stress. And he was stressed.

  Things had been smooth sailing up till the moment that they weren’t. A large part of the deal with the Eighth Son taking them in was contingent on his digital library of Jun’s artworks, being enough for a standard AI to learn and emulate. This was important, otherwise they wouldn’t have anything to sustain the lie. There was a large collection of unseen works from Jun’s collection for Vaults to present as his own, but that would only buy some time.

  James had bragged heavily that the base AI had come from their family’s secret subsidiaries devoted to advanced AI development. Danny had sweat buckets listening to James loudly tell a story about boldly taking a secretly developed AI that was many times more advanced than the ones developed by the New World Alliance. How were they not going to get in trouble about using an experimental military AI to create garbage?

  Did he stage a brilliant covert operation or cast a web of corporate espionage to smuggle the tech out?

  No.

  He just walked in one day, past layers of security, proclaimed himself the Eighth Son, and took it.

  Danny felt the differences in their worlds. It made him hungry.

  It also made him understand the fear and tension of working under an idiot.

  So there it was. Superior AI should handle the rest, his part of the deal complete.

  Except that it didn’t work.

  The AI proclaimed itself incomplete and unable to emulate Jun’s work. Further investigation showed that the AI was stuck at 82% in its understanding of the subject matter. When James screamed at it to be better, the AI paused before requesting access to the rune network for additional research. James didn’t even hesitate.

  Danny knew almost nothing about AI, but he knew enough about AI restrictions to know that James actually knew fucking nothing. There were mandatory classes that went over pages and pages of standard AI restrictions to work as the foundation. Those were the minimum. James didn’t input shit.

  “Um, hey James? I think we should get an expert to maybe look over the operations. I’m fairly certain you need minimum safety guides when it comes to AI development. Like setting up proper restrictions and opper-“

  “Danny.” James blandly interrupted.

  “Yeah?” Danny replied hesitantly.

  “I don’t care.”

  The Eighth Son had no interest in Danny’s petty concerns. He was the Eighth Son. What problems could there possibly be?

  Two days later, there was an explosion in one of the Vault’s Family’s earth side secret labs. James went on a tirade about the unprofessional way lesser people operated and bemoaned the lack of real talent, like himself.

  Danny was sure it had nothing to do with him.

  Shiver.