Hannes avoided Henry's eyes, mumbling through his sealed lips. “There’s only a 0.4% chance of spontaneous brain death.”
“Per session?”
“...per real-life minute.”
In other words, a 6% chance of dying every usage...
“But don’t worry," Hannes assured him. "Feel free to push your prize to its fullest. We can clone your brain, so if your current one gets fried, it’s a simple matter of jetting your body over to headquarters and installing a replacement. Your VR unit can be modified to—”
"Yeah, no, I’ll stick to The Cap's safe rate for now. 232 months. That's enough.”
"Sure? You won’t notice the difference."
"100%."
After that, Henry went through a dry process of signing digitised liability forms.
Those who refused at this point would have their memories of the encounter wiped. This prevented them from spreading the news and creating a global panic that Saana was a front for a malevolent plot like brainwashing the world.
The nefarious possibilities hadn’t escaped Henry himself, but he thought them unlikely. For one, after the A.I. revolution, all human labour, mental and physical, had been surpassed by machines, with most citizens working simply due to governmental restrictions on A.I. access. In this sense, little functional value remained in enslaving humankind. Using transportation as an analogy, it'd be like controlling the world's mule population when freight trains existed - utterly worthless. On top of that, other technological advancements provided much simpler means for world domination.
Plus, overall, Henry was a moral supporter of Hannes’s work. Project Aevitas was merely the beginning. There were further initiatives once this technology was completed, like backing up humanity to repopulate the planet in case of a meteor collision, making real-life immortal humans using clones and brain transplantation, and transforming human-kind into an intergalactic species by loading spaceships with the digitised backups and the tools to create them from scratch.
“Sweet, then," Henry said, finishing signing his soul away, "are we done now?”
Hannes pointed at The Great Black One and Donkey Bro. “Don’t you care about tying up the loose ends?”
Henry shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”
With the sheer number of quests he’d abandoned, he’d have gone insane if he was a completionist.
“You don’t want to know how we predicted your actions?” asked Hannes.
“Nope. Figured it out already.”
It had taken him a while because Hannes and The Great Black One had combined forces.
The prediction method of the Imbahalala’s, from his understanding, was based on forming a digital replica of the player in their brain that they could force to answer questions. For a while, he’d thought The Great Black One, being a king version of the species, might have evolved this ability further to predict a player’s actions fully or, perhaps, all events.
Eventually, though, he would realise that, while it had evolved the first capability, it hadn’t evolved the second. Instead, this was an illusion created by Hannes, working with it, flagrantly violating game rules to alter events, such as deciding his coin flips and obliterating his boat with a lightning bolt.
Hannes doing this was unexpected because Saana was—supposedly—hardcoded to prevent the developers from meddling too much, even in the case of Project Aevitas quests. This was part of the game’s allure, giving players the sense that, at least in this world, their actions mattered. The lawless garbage-fire of Suchi was touted as a testament to this.
“It wasn’t a violation,” answered the developer. “I’ve hijacked a quest you were already doing, The Monster King Trials, and the reason I could do that is because you'd created a global catastrophe.”
Henry couldn't recall any global catastrophes he'd caused lately. "My quest logs don't mention this."
“It’s a completely different Project Aevitas quest.”
These special, time-defying quests were hidden.
“How’d I begin it?" asked Henry. "From bullying the boars? That seems too simple.”
Hannes laughed. “Earlier! You've been at this quest for months!”
At the developer’s command, a giant display materialised showing footage of Henry and his guild’s inner circle partying in his bookstore. It was about eight months ago, on the year anniversary of his mother’s passing away. Everyone had come to cheer him up.
In the background, a drunken Alex was mixing poison into a glass of orange juice. After Henry drank this, he became semi-unconscious, was thrown over his scheming friend's shoulder, and carried out the door.
“Don’t worry, mate," Alex assured him. "Guysh like uss, we’ll never feel alive unlesh...unless..."
The others cheered the two of them off, seeming to know the beaver-head's plans in advance. Alex, catching a rickshaw to the nearest Floppy-Eared Rabbit field, proceeded to tie a sword to Henry’s hand, then, using him like a puppet, made him slaughter the fluffy snowballs.
Unfortunately, since Alex was intoxicated, he did this for an hour straight, butchering hundreds of rabbits. When he passed out, Henry tried to stagger back to his store, tripped on a cowering rabbit, was abducted by an over-sized one with a Jamaican accent, and melted it by throwing a vial of acid in its face, the boss dying easily due to being a 5-man monster.
The drugged-out Henry, anonymising the dungeon completion info, slipped back through the portal, walked over to Alex lying on the grass, kicked him in the ribs, then passed out beside him.
Henry, watching this footage, groaned.
His friends...
But, he supposed it didn’t help that they were unaware of him taking a different course to solve his own boredom problem by hunting down a secret item enabling him to move on and master everything.
Hannes chuckled. “So anyway, that’s how it began.”
“The triggering conditions seem too easy. Bad game design?”
“Before you slew The Rabbit Prince, it was a common starting quest. Most players would get eaten at the first stage, and their digital replica would be deleted.”
"Before?"
“The quest, along with any Monster Kings slain during it, should reset when the player either kills The Redeemer or dies to a Monster King. However, in your unusual case, you took eight months between the first and second boss. The impact of this is visible in the changes to The Floppy-Eared Rabbit Killing Grounds around the globe. Notice how in the footage it was an open area similar to the other tutorial monsters, while the ones today require protection, like Suchi’s Sanctuary being enclosed by water. That’s because you killed their guardian.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
"And that's the global catastrophe that warranted interference, the rabbits being unprotected."
“They're essential for anyone starting off."
“Was this scheme planned out? Or did you improvise it?”
Hannes hesitated a second. "It was intentional."
Improvised, thought Henry. A genius neuroscientist but an awful, awful game designer. He'd relied on The Great Black One's help.
“Whatever,” he said out loud “Night, night.”
“Stop being so impatient! The Cap doesn’t have a 24-hour cooldown; it’s a daily usage.”
Hearing this, Henry relaxed.
If that were the case, it would be better to activate it before going to bed, after he’d made preparations. He should buy-out the in-game store’s music and movies, have his assistant compile recipe lists, visit his family IRL to say farewell for 232 months, etc.
When Hannes was about to resume his lecturing pose, Henry interrupted him. “Still, this briefing is dragging on far too long. Just get the shadow dude to inject the rest into my brain.”
As soon as the recommendation came, a click sounded and his brain pulsed while the information was instantly crammed into it.
So the rabbit, the boar, the wolves, and the monkey were merely the beginning in a long series of Monster Kings. After The Redeemer died and the player had inspected his loot mountain, The Great Black One would jump out of the shadows and steal the goods, telling them they were too pathetic and weak to receive the reward. The player would then gain free access to these zones, where they could level-up by 1v1ing a series of Monster Kings up to Tier-12, with the final showdown being against The Great Black One itself.
That was the main ending. Alternatives included eating the shadow apple and becoming a human-monster hybrid.
Henry wouldn’t get to take any of the other Legendaries in the loot mountain due to receiving assistance, but he could keep Worldpiercer, the wolf's cloak, and Donkey Bro as a consolation prize for the past ‘failures’ to attain The Cap.
Honestly, though, he was indifferent to these rewards. Legendaries - meh. Donkey Bro – despite its one-shot bite, it was functionally a more vulnerable version of his monster army.
“What monster army?” asked Hannes.
“Stop eavesdropping on my thoughts.”
Garbage game. Garbage game. Garbage game.
Hannes turned to the Imbahalaala. “Impy?”
The mouth at the back of The Great Black One’s head curled up malevolently then spilt Henry’s precious secrets. “Now that the human has confirmed Sentient monsters have identical personalities and rationality to humans, he’s going to learn the languages of monsters using
“Bastard," swore Henry. "Do you have to be a snitch?”
“Whatever I choose to be is better than you, Tyrant. Kaith was correct to denounce your ruthless subjugation of nature for your whims. You epitomise the worst of your kind.”
Kaith had been The Redeemer’s name.
Hannes’s forehead wrinkled. “But you can’t produce animal sounds with your vocal cords.”
“The human will be training in the discipline of the Earthfriends.”
Hannes turned to the teen in surprise. “You weren’t going to use a Cutthroat for the bet?”
Henry shrugged. "Not enough abilities to compensate for my reaction speed.”
“Even with The Cap?”
“Well, I wasn’t planning on getting The Cap, was I?”
Still, Earthfriend seemed more fun to him. He was kind of bored of playing with swords and daggers and bows and poisons. Time to throw plants at people and shoot them with star energy. Pew. Pew.
“That aside,” continued Hannes, “monsters are less cost-efficient than humanoids.”
“Tunnel Rats,” said The Great Black One, “the human is going to combine their density with flat stacking damage buffs from supportive monsters like wolves. The primary usage will be for speed-clearing dungeons.”
“But there’s a limit to the number of monsters that can enter a dungeon?”
“Bag of Rats, a quest item. One can use it to carry a swarm of the critters in their inventory.”
Hannes paused to check through the interactions. A moment later, he gave the sneaky teen a look of displeasure.
“So it is viable?” laughed Henry. “Fantastic.”
“Can you stop introducing game-breaking elements? What’s the point?”
“Because I hate you and your videogame, Hannes. You shouldn't have made me waste half my fortune."
The Great Black One snitched again. “The human wants to do a departing favour for his partner, Mayonnaise.”
Mayonnaise was Alex’s username.
“What for?” asked Hannes, in astonishment.
Henry shrugged. “Being a crucial part in my becoming filthy, disgustingly rich.”
“The human equivocates to mask his sentimental weakness. The other one paid his mother’s medical treatment when his family was destitute. Such soft-hearted rulers, if only they would extend their empathy to the monsters suffering under their reign.”
“Come on, shadow dude,” complained Henry, "You should be nicer to me if you want that task carried out.”
The Great Black One had agreed to cooperate with Hannes in order to ask Henry a favour. With its insights, it knew that no one would likely complete these Monster King Trials. Thus, it gave the request it would normally have given to its vanquisher: wipe every last of its brainless monster descendants from the planet because they were a perverse abomination against all things natural. In exchange, it'd given Henry the coordinates for the location of both the secret method to destroy them and the next Syncretist set-piece item. As for the souls, those had been an extra gift, relating to a hidden function of The Ring.
The Great Black One dismissed his threat. “I have been your very being, Tyrant. I have been your madness. I have been the unclimbable mountain. You, I could spit in your face and you would still obsessively investigate.”
Hannes opened his mouth in shock. “Hey, is that true?”
Henry scratched his head at being caught out. "Yeah, I guess it's right."
To be honest, he'd just been reacting how he thought a normal person would when snitched upon by a shadow demon. After all he'd seen and all he'd done, it became hard for these petty insults to invoke any significant ill-feeling. His mind processed them like any other dry piece of information. Been called ‘scum’ – likelihood of attack has increased – pay attention to hands.
It also maybe didn't help that he'd spent the last year and a half without human contact.
“Not that," Hannes said. "I can read your deceptive thoughts. I meant Mayo helping you out.”
Henry practised his shrug again. “Sort of. Shadow dude’s mostly talking smack."
The Great Black One was irritated at having to help him kill its monster buddies - understandably.
As for the Alex favour thing, years ago, Henry’s mother had fallen ill with stomach cancer. Back then, his family had been broke. Despite him dropping out of school to keep their restaurant afloat, they'd been unable to come up with the treatment costs for her end-of-life care. When Alex caught a whiff of this, he went around his back and paid to have his mother transferred to a swanky hospital, where she spent her last few months in comfort and peace. As such, Henry sometimes did things to help the beaver-head out.
If returning that charity had been the full extent of the matter, he would not hesitate to bring it up. There was, however, a further edge that made Alex’s action seem insidious. Ever since then, starting not long after the funeral, his friend had constantly used reminders of paying those bills to blackmail him into doing random stuff, like participating in this tournament or signing an 18-month contract for forming a new guild - what would become The Company.
That was ‘The Card’.
In light of this habit, Alex’s past act of charity might appear like a sociopathic scheme. However, this reading of their relationship would be sorely mistaken. The struggles they'd been through, even if virtual, had made them about as close as bickering siblings. It just happened that those same struggles had also distorted their perspective on certain issues; political dealings trained them to find amusement in creating dumb contracts, while the constant assassinations of their NPC companions had given them a bit of emotional distance from death – real death included. Thus, the passing of a loved one could be used in a joking manner.
Without an understanding of their history, most would miss the subtext to his obnoxious friend’s conniving. Blackmailing him into signing a slave contract to build another guild - trying to cheer up a depressed friend by offering an activity that'd once given him joy. Scheming to thwart his retirement - an appeal to the past, a fear of boredom, and the sadness at the likely weakening of their friendship after they moved off in separate directions. Ambushing him at a restaurant with his schoolfriends and setting up a ridiculous duelling bet in exchange for ‘The Card’ – a last-ditch effort to revive a path Henry'd once loved, an acceptance of him moving on from this game and their own friendship.
Could an outsider, who'd not stood where Henry'd stood, understand any of this? His experience in other matters told him no. A gap stretched between him and normal people that could never be fully bridged, the mind maybe being able to make the leap but never—more critically—the heart. Even his best friend, who had none of the heart either, could only partially relate.
Henry guessed, with this wager deal, they’d think he was suffering Stockholm syndrome.
And if one really understood his history, they'd know 'The Card', this convoluted game with Alex, had not been why he'd agreed at all.
“Insane,” said Hannes. “Please book a therapist appointment.”
Henry, finding even the 'God' of this universe unable to relate to his struggle, contemplated using Heartspeech to transmit the sum-total of his life.
The Great Black One, still facing away from them, answered him. “Yes, Tyrant, that would be unkind. No, it wouldn't change anything.”
Henry shrugged, as one shrugs off their futile burdens. “Well, you heard him, Hannes. Here, take some of my joy instead.” He clicked his tongue in celebration of the time-bending cap, of an eternity of peaceful retirement.