by Sarah Lin
"For fun. Our world is completely transformed for the sake of a... transitory entertainment."
"Well, there's more to it than that, but I'm not going to get into critical information with you just yet. Certainly not before you've made a commitment to work with us."
"Which I cannot do without knowing you and your goals." They seemed to be at a slight impasse, so Bloodwraith considered his options. He wanted to keep the conversation going to acquire more information, so perhaps a different angle was necessary. "Tell me more of Earth. It must be a powerful world, to be able to so dominate others."
"Actually, not as much as you'd hope." Alan's face became more grim and he paused to take a drink. "One difference between our world and yours is that we don't have magic. Well, we do, but we couldn't access it for thousands of years. We developed more advanced technology instead. You would be surprised... even the relatively poor lived like kings do here."
Bloodwraith folded his arms and listened skeptically.
"But the thing is, we did a shitty job taking care of our world. It became obvious we were going to screw things up and our civilization would crash hard. So all of our greatest minds gathered together to find a solution, and in the end we discovered the source of power that you call magic. With it, we were able to build a new united civilization."
"If people in your world are anything like those in ours, I refuse to believe that happened."
Alan laughed loudly and pounded his mug against the table. "I had a feeling I'd like you! No, you're absolutely right. We kept fighting each other and burning our civilization down right until the end. But it's true that we tapped into the power you call magic. In your world it's freely accessible to many, whereas in ours it's difficult to reach... but it runs very deep."
"That I find easier to believe. And you used this power to conquer other worlds and use them as your toys?"
"Not exactly. That is one of the things I'm not going to get into just yet."
Nodding, Bloodwraith considered what to ask next. Though he believed that Earth and its box gods were the greatest threat, he remembered how Gharavi felt about the Aesidh. It was true that they seemed to be working between worlds as well, and so far they'd shown a much more casually destructive attitude. He couldn't say for sure if Earth's games were more cruel, but the Aesidh were clearly dangerous as well.
"What about the Aesidh?" Bloodwraith asked. "From what we overheard, you're working with a group called the Mirror Court?"
"Yes, that mess." Alan took a while to gather his thoughts, eyes wandering around the room. Bloodwraith noticed that the tavern had no windows and wondered if there would be anything outside them, but then focused on the Outsider again. "We weren't the first or the last to gain the power to reach other worlds. I'm not sure who was first, but the dominant group is called the Aesidh."
"That seems to be a race. Are these 'Courts' different political factions?"
"Entire governments, actually. There's a group called the Riding Court that has spread an empire across multiple worlds... but fortunately for you, they're nowhere near Alliandelle. You can't quite think of worlds spatially, but they do have different connections. The Aesidh empire is on the other side of Earth, so to speak, and we have a truce with them."
"Whereas the Mirror Court is on this side?"
"That's right. The Mirror Court is a bit smaller and weaker than some, but their magic is subtle and can mesh with ours. Your world is in their territory, but we... leased part of it from them, you could say. That's why my relationship with Belkarin is a bit awkward." Alan took another drink and shook his head. "If you ask me, the Aesidh are fucking nuts. They live a really long time and after a while they'll do anything to entertain themselves. Believe me, better our games than theirs."
"I don't have the experience to evaluate that." Bloodwraith began to consider his next question, but at that moment he noticed something: Meara was forcing her way across the room.
She was bracing her arms in front of her face and her clothing was pushed back as if she walked into a strong wind, but she was making her way across the long stretched space between them. When Alan saw him looking he glanced over as well and let out a whistle.
"Damn, I've never seen a glitch like that," Alan said. "Somebody must have been pretty sloppy setting things up, then she really ran with it. Hopefully she's just coming over to talk?"
"I believe Meara has questions of her own to ask you. It is necessary for you to answer them if you want any hope of cooperation with us."
"Alright, suit yourself." Alan sat and drank for a little while longer as Meara finally pushed through. She looked tired, but forced herself to stand tall, so Bloodwraith moved to stand with her.
"He's answering your questions?" Meara looked past him to the Outsider suspiciously. "We can't hear very well from our side."
"So far he's answered most of them," Bloodwraith said, "but he wants us to commit to working with him."
Meara looked up into his eyes, the hatred in them making it clear that she was thinking about how long she had been trapped in the Forest of Beginnings. He didn't want to say anything about that directly, but he set a hand on her shoulder and tried to put his thoughts into his eyes. After a moment, Meara nodded and moved with him to sit down opposite the Earthian.
"So, you're Meara? You want anything to eat or drink?"
"I'm fine." Meara spread her hands flat on the table and locked eyes with him. "You want us to work with you? I already spent years working for your kind. Do I get back pay?"
Alan gave a weak smile. "Okay, I can see you're pissed. I'd scan your character history, but your whole model is about as garbled as it can get. I'm guessing that you were some kind of utility NPC and the system wasn't very kind to you?"
"I was used and abused by people like Raigar for years! You stole me from my village, tore away my memory, and condemned me to act as their toy for eternity!"
"Ah, fuck... okay, look, the situation is complicated..."
Bloodwraith sat forward, bringing one gauntlet down hard on the table. "It doesn't seem that complicated to me. Why would you create a game based on such cruelty? I've seen enough to know that your games are based on rampant murder and unlimited freedom to abuse others."
Gritting his teeth, Alan sat forward. "Hey, you're not being fair. Lots of players adopt a good route and just want to save the world or whatever."
Meara shook her head. "But you create the threats for them to save the world from, and the damage from those changes can be worse than any evil. Like Gharavi... you twisted her tribe into monsters just so one of you would have something to kill."
"Dammit." Alan rubbed his eyes roughly, then stared at them. "I didn't do any of this personally, alright? I don't do much design work at all. They just hire me to make sure that the worlds are running smoothly and that our customers are safe."
"How admirable," Bloodwraith said. Alan immediately glared over at him.
"Oh, like you're such an angel? I already read your whole record - you've killed a hell of a lot of people. Even before the Master Lich plot got set up, you were eager to exterminate whole populations because they annoyed you. So stop acting like you're such a Lawful Good type."
"According to my box, my alignment is Good."
Alan stared at him in surprise, then let out a low laugh and the tension faded from his face. "Heh, I suppose. I've always thought these binary good/evil meters were so dumb. Look, if I have to justify everything every person in the AdventureCorp organization has ever done, we'll be here forever, and we don't have forever. Time might be weird here, but it's still going on out there, and if I don't act, Belkarin will fuck up your world."
"So what can you offer?" Meara still spoke with a venom in her tone that suggested there could be no compromise.
"I won't pretend that you can change the entire AdventureCorp organization. But if you agree to work with us, you can gain significant control over our operations in Alliandelle. That would come with a lot of perks and
you could shape things closer to how you see fit."
"Why extend me that offer?" Bloodwraith asked. Alan immediately tapped his chest.
"The system within you and the power you've gained... that's a serious investment. Right now it makes you an obstacle, but it could also make you a valuable asset. Since you're native to this world but you've also become familiar with our system, you're uniquely placed to work for us."
"And I wouldn't become like those puppets?"
"What, like the Keeper? Or the active vectors?" Alan quickly shook his head. "Whoever set things up here didn't want local partners, so they just took people and twisted them. Uh... including you, Meara. Doing things that way is cheap, but in my opinion it's sloppy. You can't count on pure NPCs, and you can't count on the Mirror Court, either. Conscious allies is the way to go as far as I'm concerned."
"I see." Bloodwraith closed his eyes and thought hard, though not about the same things that Alan might suspect. "If I did accept this position, what exactly would be the duties and benefits?"
"Oh, you're considering it? That's good, I was worried for a moment given how your group acted."
In fact, Meara was staring at Bloodwraith. She kept her face controlled, but he could see many conflicted emotions in her eyes. It pained him, but just a part of her wondered if he would really betray her. Though he wanted to reassure her otherwise, he knew that Alan was no fool - casting each other meaningful glances would get them caught.
"As for duties," Alan said, "those would vary. You'd need to find places where people were trying to pierce the veil between worlds and destroy them. If some other faction comes here to interfere, you'd have to fight them. Quite a few different things, but you'd have significant latitude to decide how to do them. The cost of moving between worlds is far too large for us to micromanage, so you'd be in charge most of the time."
"I see. A tempting offer." Bloodwraith saw Meara's gaze but didn't dare reassure her... so instead he went in the opposite direction. "Does the offer extend to the four women with me? I want to keep them."
Alan muttered something under his breath and rubbed his eyes, but then looked up and nodded. "Sure. You keep all your current powers and you can run things here how you want. So long as you don't go start a war with the Mirror Court or something."
"Then I think we can accept your terms." He reached out and put a hand on Meara's waist in a way he never had before. "Stick with me and I won't let anyone else touch you ever again."
For a terrible moment he was afraid that it would all go wrong, then Meara pressed herself into his side. "I'll leave myself in your hands, then." She spoke the words in a flirtatious voice without a hint of joking, which sounded horribly wrong for her, but relief flooded through him. If Meara trusted him, then they still had a shot of getting through this and coming out on top.
Keeping a smile on his face that would have fit Raigar, Bloodwraith looked back to Alan. "Alright, we'll take your offer... if you can fulfill a few conditions."
"Name them and we'll see."
"I don't want Belkarin using that infection any more. There are easier ways to clean up our world."
"I agree with that anyway. Done." Alan shifted forward and frowned slightly. "But this isn't really the time to negotiate all the terms of your contract. I suggest we set up something provisional until we resolve this mess, especially with the Mirror Court acting so suspicious. Then you'll have proved your worth for the permanent agreement."
"Fine." When Meara nudged his ribs with her elbow, Bloodwraith decided to push a little further. "Earlier you wouldn't answer some of my questions, but those will be critical for me doing my job. Why exactly does your world do all this? Is it really just for a bit of profit or amusement?"
Alan's face became even more serious. He drained his mug of beer and pushed it aside slowly before he finally answered. "This is something that even most people in my world don't know. Definitely not the players we send to other worlds. So this information doesn't leave this room, understand?"
"That's reasonable. What is it?"
"The energy you call magic isn't infinite. If we keep using it to power our civilization, we'll run it dry."
Bloodwraith frowned, less for the moral implication than for purely theoretical reasons. "What do you mean? Mana naturally emanates from many different phenomena."
"But not forever and not in unlimited quantities. Furthermore, travel between worlds is extremely expensive relative to the spells you know. To gain sufficient amounts, we need processes that increase our return." Alan jabbed a finger at Bloodwraith's chest. "That's what the system inside you is: a process for creating more mana. We call it a mana fusion engine, though that may not mean anything to you."
"That might explain where the additional power of the boxes comes from, but power isn't leaking out of me. How does it create a net positive?"
"Well, for you it will be a net negative. But normally players reach a high Level, gather a lot of EXP and gear... and then they reincarnate. All that power is recycled into our systems, enough to form a new seed system and have plenty left over to power both our business and the world. Other systems have been tried, but none of them have a return quite like this."
"So the pointlessness of the quests... is the point." Bloodwraith had to pause for a moment as his mind came to grips with that revelation. "You give them a game where they fight a great enemy and save the world but nothing actually changes, because that's the point. You want them to keep going in circles so that the cycle can continue."
"Exactly. Some groups on Earth tried to use real conflicts in the beginning, but we ran out of those and players didn't like them very much anyway. They're looking for a power fantasy, you see, not a messy conflict. Well, we give them their power fantasy... and when that power is sacrificed it fuels everything else."
They sat with that in silence for a while before Meara slowly spoke up. "Then... the system gives back more than you put in? You actually create new power?"
That violated primary laws of magic and Bloodwraith wondered why she was being so foolish before remembering that she was probably acting at less than her full intelligence. In any case, her question pointed at a real issue. Bloodwraith had assumed that the system had negative externalities but hadn't thought about it deeply before then.
"Well, no." Alan sighed and rubbed his eyes. "It would break magical thermodynamics if we just created new mana. The system might be fairly efficient, but it gathers that power from everything else the player comes into contact with and leaves waste behind. So it massively extends our available power, just not forever."
Bloodwraith resisted the urge to snort at such a positive way of framing it. Another way to put it would be that the players tore through worlds, harvesting huge amounts of power from everything there. He assumed the "mana fusion" aspect was enough to make it more effective than collecting directly, but the process was ultimately still destructive. In fact, he doubted that it was all that efficient in truth: just more convenient for people on Earth.
Though she kept it off her face, he could feel Meara seething. Personally, Bloodwraith couldn't find any anger within himself. If people on Alliandelle had been in the same position, they would probably have done the same thing. Consuming all that was before them was what people did.
"Anyway, that's the reason we have to be so efficient." Alan stood up and smoothed down his thin scarf. "It wastes a lot of energy to transfer people and information around. Better to set up systems that can continue independently."
Since he stood, Bloodwraith did as well, letting go of Meara. "What about the Mirror Court? They don't seem reluctant to invest power."
"That's because they're a fatalistic civilization in decline. Their stores of magic are far more depleted than ours and they're actually in a rough situation. They know their days are numbered and instead of fighting back, they just amuse themselves until they die. But I have the feeling that you won't accept that."
"No, not at all."
&nbs
p; "Good. Then hopefully all of the EXP you've gathered will be considered a good investment." Alan smiled at him and extended his hand. "Then do we have a deal?"
"Maybe. One more question." It was far from the most important thing in the world, but Bloodwraith had the feeling that his chance to ask questions was nearing its end and he didn't want the triviality bothering him. "Randall kept saying 'elephant mork'. What in the hells does that mean?"
"Oh, god. You, uh... you'd rather not know. It's not going to be satisfying."
"I insist. He yelled it at me with great force."
"Okay, look. There was this video... and you don't have those here." Alan rubbed his eyes again. "I guess... imagine a puppet show recorded by magic and distributed to an large audience."
"Comprehensible enough." Bloodwraith nodded for him to continue, having no idea where this was going.
"Well, there was one video with a bunch of talking animals, like in a story for children. One animal would try to do something and the elephant would jump in and stop them while yelling 'elephant mork'. As far as I know, it doesn't mean a damn thing. It wasn't even that funny in my opinion, but it got super popular for about a month and certain people started saying it. Then everyone got really sick of it... except people like Randall, apparently."
Meara and Bloodwraith stared at Alan for an extremely long time.
"Hey, look, I said it wasn't going to be satisfying, okay? That's really all there is behind it."
Though Bloodwraith was still fuming, Meara nudged him with a smile. "I guess there's some forbidden knowledge that should have remained forbidden, huh?"
"Anyway, we've already wasted long enough. It's time to get to work." Alan looked completely serious again, raising his hands to invisible boxes. "I'm going to need you to hand over control of the EXP system to me for just a bit. That way I can authenticate you and we can do things officially."
