Therese took a step toward Chloe and placed a hand on her arm. Even she could sense that something was bugging Chloe that she was unable to verbalize. “It’s not your fault, Chloe.”
Chloe looked down at the dwarf.
“Jessie. Tag. It’s not your fault. Nothing could have changed the outcome.”
Ben gave her a sympathetic nod. “It’s true, Chloe. We can’t keep everyone alive and happy just by sticking together. This mission is bigger than the KieraSlayers. Hell, it’s why we have all these people here. If we’re to defeat the darkness, we need to work on strategy, and you can’t stop the tide from rising by planting your roots, being stubborn, and building a wall around yourself. Eventually, it’ll find a way inside.”
Chloe’s breath caught. She hadn’t even realized what she was feeling. Fear of separation. Fear of what might happen if they weren’t all together. She had come so far in Obsidian, found friends who she would—and had—given her life for, and now she had to admit that she was afraid.
But it made sense when she thought about it. She, Gideon, Molly, and Holly could train the magic users and prepare them for what was to come. She wasn’t sure how long the mission would take, and in that time, what would happen?
The disease was spreading. They hadn’t been able to catch all the infected. Even since they had left the Heroes-for-Hire board that morning, they had heard of encounters with infected, and it looked as though there were still cases across the city that needed healing.
Not to mention that the kingdom of Hammersworth stretched far beyond the limits of its walls. Although the onslaught of infected the other night had seen large numbers of farmers and rural workers turned into frenzied beasts, did that account for a quarter of the residents out in the wilds who had the capacity to turn?
Chloe had no idea.
“Very well,” Chloe said, addressing the KieraSlayers. “Veronica, Leonie, Huk, and Talbot, you go with Heather and the band of clerics and find out more about what’s going on. Ben, you’re to lead the party in my absence.”
Ben nodded, his chest puffing out as his face grew resolute.
“Blueballs?” Chloe said, seeing the toffet at the back of the room, sitting on his butt with his back against the wall. “You’ll be with me, pal. I’m not risking you turning again; you’d destroy us all.” She winked.
Chloe turned to the others. “Any willing and able fighters, rangers, tanks, or clerics who wish to travel beyond the city and provide aid, make yourselves known. You’ll be in the safest of hands with my team, I assure you.”
There was a moment’s hesitation before a couple of hands found their way into the air. Before long, several dozen had volunteered to join.
“It is settled, then,” Chloe said. “Therese, can you provide aid for the clerics, calling specifically for healers and protectors?”
“Already on it,” Therese said, eyes glassy once more.
“As for the rest of you, I think we’ve lingered long enough. We’ve had our fun and games; we’ve battled infected and celebrated a wedding.” She shot a quick glance at a smiling Therese. “Now it’s time for the big leagues. Follow me outside, and we’ll begin your training. We’ve got some work to do.”
Half the crowd began to file outside, while the other half came toward Ben and the others. Before Chloe left with Gideon, Therese, and Blueballs, she grabbed Ben by the arm and leaned in.
“Keep them safe. Don’t take risks.”
Ben smiled. “I know.”
Before she knew it, her arms were wrapped around his neck. They would be fine. With them under Ben’s leadership, she didn’t have anything to fear.
Then why was she so sad to part with them all?
When Ben pulled away, he held Chloe’s shoulders and grinned. “I’m going to need a party name for my guys now?”
“Excuse me?” She laughed.
“You know, because they’re my party now,” he mocked, stroking his chin. “You can keep the KieraSlayers. I’ll call mine…the Destructicons.”
Chloe laughed, instantly taken back to their first conversations about party names for their group. Tag’s suggestion of a group named after a bunch of world-destroying robots had not been one she took too kindly to.
“You are KieraSlayers. We are KieraSlayers. End of.”
“Ah, man…”
They hugged once more before Chloe ducked out the door and found her mages waiting patiently outside.
She took a deep breath. The clear sky above allowed the moon and stars to illuminate the world in a ghostly glow.
Chloe channeled power through her hands and summoned an enormous ball of purple flame.
Several mages stared wide-eyed, gasping.
“Okay, team. Let’s start powering up that magic.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The drive to the Praxis offices was a lot more straightforward than Demetri was expecting.
The sun shone brightly, and the daily traffic was moving at a gentle pace. Although he hadn’t anticipated following Mia into work on his day off, there was something about it that set the bees in his stomach to buzzing.
The offices were modest, just several rooms spanning one floor of a fifteen-story tower on the outskirts of the city. It was not one of the sparkling new offices in the city center, but more like an old 1980s tower, with dusty windows and rusted doors.
Despite its outward appearance, Demetri felt the modern vibe of the energy running through the Praxis staff. Most of them were under twenty-five years of age, a few stretching to thirty.
There were dozens of desks around the room. Large double monitors sat on each, with flickering fluorescents above. The corners were stuffed with colorful beanbags.
Mia explained that Praxis existed very much on a “manage your own schedule” regime. There weren’t strict work hours; as long as employees got their work completed on time, it didn’t matter all that much.
So it surprised Demetri to see that the office was nearly full. Only one or two desks were empty.
A man with his hair permed tightly to his scalp walked briskly past the pair, a mug of coffee in his hand. He almost bumped into them, only realizing at the last second that someone was standing in the walkway.
“Oh, sorry, Mia. I didn’t see you there.”
“No worries, Charles. Keep that head up. Big day today.”
That must be the understatement of this company’s career, Demetri thought, following Mia to a glassed-in corner office with her own computer and chair, a plant wilting in the corner of the room.
When Demetri had woken up this morning, he had foreseen a lazy morning, followed by breakfast at Marko’s diner on the next street down and maybe a brisk walk with Mia. Despite his various attempts at trying to help her with her work/life balance, Mia had become hungrier and hungrier to find out what exactly was going on with Praxis’ artificial intelligence.
She hadn’t even needed to say the words when he rolled over and saw her checking her emails on her phone. A simple flicker of her eyes was enough for Demetri to sigh and say, “Where to, then?”
And now, as they entered Mia’s personal office—a space she had yet to visit, having preferred to work remotely until that point—she took her former boss Devlin’s name plaque out of its door holder and shut the door behind her.
“Still feeling okay?” Demetri asked, looking out of the glass and seeing a few pairs of eyes glancing their way.
This was Mia’s first foray into her new office. Since she had taken over from Devlin, she had kept working remotely, since someone who had been in her position would never have gotten promoted to run the development department without a nudge from the Lagardes.
Not only would a junior developer have to spend several years working their way up the ladder, she also had gender working against her. She knew she was more skilled than all these tech-monkeys combined, but that didn’t change a system constructed to hold her back.
Mia nodded. She took a steadying breath and booted up a laptop she
’d brought with her, loading Chloe’s feed for Demetri to keep an eye on.
“It’ll be fine,” she whispered.
“It’ll be fine,” Demetri agreed, giving her his best reassuring smile. “Be confident, bring them together, and lead them. That’s all they need—a strong hand to get them moving.”
Mia glanced at the clock. Thirty seconds until the agreed 11am team meeting. She took another breath, smoothed her clothes, and strode out into the office.
The meeting started off better than Mia could have imagined. She replayed the projects they had been working on over the last few weeks, getting updates from the various groups on developments and offering solutions for support.
She caught up with all the latest patches and upgrades, making sure the team was on track to deliver and improve the gaming experience.
When the discussion segued to AI, Mia turned to the three sitting nearest to her, two guys and a woman. They were her personal AI team, who had been working tirelessly with her to understand what was going on in the game.
They fed their updates to the team. Jonathon was a stocky guy with dark hair and a patch of fuzz on his chin, who looked like he needed more time in the sun. He told Mia and the room how he’d been spending hours trying to find patterns in the code to see if there were ways to slow down what was happening long enough to decipher how the AI was learning.
This elicited a few questions from the rest of the team. Some asked if it was wise to slow it down since they had a functioning AI within the game, which was something that had never been achieved to this level before.
“It’s a fantastic thing,” Mia stated. “Just as long as we know we have a kill switch if we need it. The last thing we want is a lawsuit on our hands if something goes out of balance and causes real-world harm.”
“Are you thinking the pods and headsets are going to come alive?” Damien, a man with dark eyes and a chiseled jaw, chuckled. He had caused Mia problems in the past and was reluctant to accept her leadership now.
The woman on Mia’s team, Lucy, adjusted her glasses. “Yes, very much so.” Her frank response caused Damien’s laughter to cease. “Although it’s a very faint possibility, it’s something that has to be treated with caution. If the program begins to run away from us, who’s to say it won’t suddenly cause mass seizures? That it couldn’t affect the machinery keeping our fully-immersed players alive? It’s all electronics, after all, linked together by wires and cables. We’ve got to keep it in check.”
“We’ve already seen examples of NPCs reacting badly to the blessed,” Jonathon continued. “A member of the KieraSlayers was kidnapped by NPCs only a few weeks ago, and they were just low-grade NPCs.” Jonathon moved around in his chair, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Remember that the gods are NPCs, and we’ve already seen examples of what can happen when they get involved in the game.”
Lucy clicked a button on a remote and a projector turned on. Video footage of Chloe and KieraFreya in battle played, the immense white power taking over before the screen turned to static. This was footage the team had seen a few times, but some of them still didn’t understand its importance.
“If the gods can affect the AV outputs, we need to know what else they can do,” Mia said. “So far, we’ve got four gods actively participating in the game, and we’ve only seen the real power of one of them—KieraFreya.”
“Woo!” someone shouted from the back. Mia craned her neck and saw a large man she knew as Phil sporting a KieraSlayers t-shirt. The desk behind him was littered with tiny statues of Blueballs, Chloe, and the others. “Sorry, big fan.”
“And are we getting anywhere?” Damien asked. “You’re telling us all this stuff, but I don’t see solutions. Didn’t people think of this when the damn thing launched?”
“AI can be unruly,” Mia snapped back. “We still don’t know everything it has to offer. We had a great launch, and this is just a bug in the system. A bug we can squash. We just need to identify it and flush it out. Any more questions?”
Damien didn’t reply.
Mia nodded to Lucy. She stood up, played with the computer connected to the projector, and displayed a screenful of code.
“We’ve created something we’re calling ‘the Muter.’ It’s a program that essentially feasts on the code and pulls it back when it starts to spike or get out of control. Think of how audio software can keep sound from becoming distorted by intelligently adjusting the gain, or how particular weed killers can take out problem plants without damaging the harvest.”
“It’s a really cool piece of code,” the third in Mia’s party, Charlie, said, eyes wide with admiration of their work. “Essentially, it’s programmed with an understanding of the basic functionality and the limits that already exist within modern gaming. We’ve fed it every piece of code we can find from previous MMORPGs and stuck in lines that create the safety restrictions that will ‘mute’ the advancement of the original AI.”
“So, basically it’s AI cancer?” Damien said, face screwed up in disgust. “You’re telling me we’ve pushed the boundaries of technology and created something the world is praising, and now we’re going to cull it? Do we want this or not?”
“It’s not a killer,” Mia replied. “Think of it as a chaperone—a second AI to keep the initial AI in check. The original AI can keep doing what it’s doing, but if it begins to step out of line and does anything that might be deemed dangerous to a player or the environment, it shuts it off.”
“Like an electric switch.” Jonathon smiled.
“Exactly.”
Lucy continued, showing footage of the code in action. “It’s surpassed any and all tests we’ve given it so far. Today it’s ready for implementation.”
Damien nodded as he came to a sudden realization. “Which is why you’ve graced us with your presence, right, boss?”
Mia clenched her teeth, not liking the way he spoke.
“Exactly. Today we need all hands on deck. You have permission to suspend any non-urgent requests for the next eight hours. Please attend to anything pressing, but we need every possible eye on the code. This is your critical project for today.”
Within half an hour, they were all in place. The sequence to launch the code rested on Mia’s computer, and now she sat with Demetri, cursor hovering over the “Execute” icon.
“Ready?” Demetri asked, his attention on Chloe and the others as they trained their magicians and sent magic flying in the dark.
Mia took a breath, nodded, and clicked the icon.
“All systems go,” she said, giving a thumbs-up to Lucy outside her office.
Lucy called out the instruction and the team got to work.
All, that is, except for Damien, who leaned back in his chair and checked messages on his phone, wondering how stupid Mia was to believe he’d help after she had gotten his best buddy fired from the company.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Over the course of the next few days, Chloe and Gideon did nothing but eat, sleep, and train with the others.
Their training went without much incident, aside from a few friendly-fire shots of magic. The majority of the mages who had joined them were newbie players, going fresh-faced into Obsidian, looking for ways to level their skills, which meant that Chloe and Gideon had a lot to provide in the ways of sharing their knowledge on etheric manipulation.
They taught them a variety of spells, happy to pass on what they’d learned. They also kept an eye on the Heroes-for-Hire board, looking for any quests that might be beneficial for mages to complete to level up some of their greener fighters.
One useful thing that came out of the training for Chloe happened after she divided the fighters into groups. As they’d trained more and more, it pleased Chloe to find that new mages were joining every day. Their numbers were now close to the one hundred mark, which meant the group had to be divided into teams for closer instruction.
It was after the groups had been divided and Chloe had assigned Moll
y and Holly to impart wisdom to their teams that she discovered something strange. The students being taught under the two mages were leveling faster than the other groups, despite Chloe and Gideon being higher levels than the sisters.
Chloe checked her stats, looking specifically at the Tutor skill she had acquired after her first pupil had managed to conjure a weak Purple Blaze spell, wondering if she was missing something.
You've unlocked a new skill: Tutor (Lv 1)
You’ve taken that dangerous first step to imparting your wisdom to others. Whether you’re correct or accurate doesn’t matter! People are listening, and you can use this power how you desire.
Remember, though, that every student who learns from you becomes your reflection. Choose wisely how you want to share your knowledge with the world.
Requirements: Impart wisdom to your first student.
Bonuses: +2 intelligence
Nice. I’m an influencer. I must remember to add that to my dating profile.
During the lunch break on the fourth day, Chloe found herself sitting with Gideon, Molly, Holly, and Gelda. Blueballs lay on the grass beside them, eyes closed, basking in the sun. Groups of magic-users milled around them, taking a well-earned break.
“How are you doing it?” Chloe asked, unable to hold back. “How are they learning so fast under you?”
“What do you mean?” Holly asked smugly.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed with my group, but I watched your guys learn shadow and stone magic so quickly, it was like they’d been doing it all their lives.”
Molly gave Holly a knowing look.
“What?” Chloe exclaimed.
“Someone clearly didn’t learn about specializations,” Holly said, finishing the last of the bread she had packed for her lunch. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, your magic is incredibly impressive, and the variety of tricks you’ve got is second to none, but…”
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