I felt strangely heavy when I sat down at the table, back in my apartment, after finishing my conversation with Mrs. Wu. Once my mind had gotten back up to speed, after passing out, I had realised just what had happened and what it implied. My first question was just how hard I had hit her, for her to tell me it would have been a lethal blow and how she could just shrug off something like that. The answer was surprisingly simple, she shrugged off her training-clothes, showing me that she was wearing a thin but highly protective padded vest beneath it. Otherwise, my blow would have cracked ribs and been dangerous, as it had been coming up from below and struck her torso, even as I had been going down.

We ate together before she checked my physical condition, making sure that the brief unconsciousness hadn’t been a hint of some greater problem, other than me not eating well. It wasn’t and she suggested that I’d take better care of myself, before sending me off, telling me that my lessons would ratchet up, if I felt up for it. I tried to get her to tell me just where her training-methods came from and why she was training me in that way but the only answer I got was an inscrutable smile, that didn’t tell me anything. 

And that statement, that my training would ratchet up, was why I was feeling a little strange and apprehensive. I had started to train martial arts for self-confidence, exercise and for the unlikely possibility that I’d have to defend myself but the training-session and what Mrs. Wu had told me afterwards forced me to acknowledge that I wasn’t just learning self-defense, especially what Mrs. Wu was teaching me. While she had declined to tell me where she had learned, I wasn’t a complete idiot, even if some people claimed otherwise. The book she had given me, combined with the training she was giving me, strongly suggested that she had been trained in an organised, systematic way, trained as a spy, agent or assassin, something along those lines, a covert operative, working alone or in a small group. That systematic way of training hinted that there was an organisation behind it, which in turn would most likely be a nation-state. Sure, there were the various popular conspiracy theories of ancient assassin-orders hiding in the shadows for some nefarious goal or another but I doubted that there was any credibility to any of them. 

That strongly supported hypothesis and what I was learning from her made me wonder, did I want to learn more? On one hand, I enjoyed the training, the way she was challenging me both physically and mentally. On the other hand, I was both a gamer and a forensic accountant, the gaming-part currently dominating my life, but at the end of the day, I had been working in a job people would describe as incredibly boring and enjoyed my job. Why would an accountant want or need to learn how to kill people? Would learning even more change me? The way she had spoken, it sounded like the coming training was to teach me to deliberately attempt to kill someone, not just in a state of instinct but consciously and deliberately trying to end someone’s life. I did my killing in the virtual world, where the consequences were a lot different and I had no interest to change that. But nonetheless, I felt intrigued by what she was offering.

Which ultimately weighed on my mind, causing the heavy feeling I was having.

I tried to push it aside, knowing full well that I wouldn’t easily be able to solve my conundrum, instead I wanted to focus on simpler things, like the plate of take-out food in front of me. I had made a stop on the way home, not wanting to deal with cooking before being able to eat so take-out was a good option. For a moment, I just sat there, letting the smell of fried noodles, veggies and some duck-meat flow into my nose, savouring the anticipation but despite the delicious smells coming from the plate, my mind wouldn’t cooperate and shut the earlier train of thought down.

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Grumbling to myself, I started eating but knowing that my mind wouldn’t let me eat in peace anyway, I pulled up the Road to Purgatory Forum on the wall-screen, deciding that some good old, stupid Internet-drama was just the distraction my racing mind would appreciate. 

My first stop was the comment-section of the video I had uploaded to serve as an introduction to my channel and character, smiling at the compliments I had received for the videography while scowling at the people calling it cringy or annoying. Over-the-top, I could live with, it was supposed to be. After a few comments, I realised that the people thinking it annoying were mostly people who came to my channel again and again, everytime hearing the opening chords and the beginning of the video, until they found one that they wanted to watch. I could see how the beginning would become annoying after the fifth time, so I decided to try dealing with it.

The Road to Purgatory page wasn’t equipped with the most comfortable of user-interfaces, forcing me to dig deeply into the settings, until I finally found an option to make the video only auto-play for people not subscribed to me, something that hopefully would get me some extra subscribers while not annoying my already existing subscribers, making it a double-win in my book. 

With that out of the way, I started to browse the video-section in earnest, taking short looks at the videos uploaded by other spellcasters, trying to get inspiration for my own casting and research. Sadly, it looked like most people were going the route of the guild-mage and simply learning spells by rote, similar to the way I had taught Rai in the beginning. It made me wonder how the advancement of someone like that would work, would they be taught how to cross the divides, to get the result the guild wanted? Why would anyone want to follow such a simple, well-trodden path in a game that was all about exploring the unknown was a mystery to me but then, not everyone had as much time to spend on Mundus as I had. Sure, most beta-testers had agreed to play extensively, it had been part of the beta-sign-up, but there had to be classes for people who just couldn’t play daily, let alone as much as I did.

After watching the fifth video of a different guy throwing fireballs at his enemy, all using virtually the same method of casting, I decided that there was no point and moved on. To my pleasant surprise, I noticed that the Profiles of Power-Series had covered my favourite enemy, Howardlight. More information on someone supposedly hunting me was always welcome, even if it might be distorted and filtered. 

As I read, I felt a little impressed by the way Howardlight tried to set himself up as the good guy, even for a thread he had to find annoying. By volunteering information on his race, he made it look like he was supporting the public efforts but, most likely, the information volunteered was something that would be easy enough to find out anyway, there had to be others who had completed that particular challenge to change race, If I were in the habit of wearing a hat, I would have tipped it, it was a smart idea. It made me wonder what I could volunteer in a similar but different manner. 

Shaking my head, I continued to read on, not terribly happy about the contents. Light-magic was one of my banes, just the memory of full-body Astral Sun-burn was enough to make me cringe and getting blinded by a bright flash was doubly painful for my Avatar, thanks to the highly useful low-light vision I had. The special skills to fight against undead and boost his squad-mates were less worrying, I wasn’t in the habit of using undead and I was reasonably sure that if I wanted to go after his squad-mates and had time to prepare my offensive area-of-effect magic would break whatever defenses he could put up. Especially if I managed to collect some human resources beforehand, allowing me to give my spells just that little extra boost. 

Continuing to read, I was suddenly very glad that my mouth wasn’t filled at that particular moment, when my mind noticed a pattern, tracing it and coming up with a wholly surprising theory. After scrolling and reading it all again, I started to wonder, was it deliberate or coincidence. And if it was deliberate, on whose part? Had Howardlight inadvertently stumbled into an easter-egg, without noticing and simply ran with it? Or was he in fact a comedic genius, a troll who had elevated his trolling to an art-form? I wasn’t sure, it depended on so many things.

But no matter what, the Paladin of Light, being the Accuser of the Court and wielding a Morningstar? That couldn’t be coincidence, could it?