The man who had been left to guard her—which, as far as Emilia could tell, the man in question thought involved simply staring into the universe itself and not even bothering to look her way when she made a sound… or fidgeted in her attempts to gain freedom… or bolted towards him, sharp fork in hand and intent to skewer him with it—was, understandably, terrible at his job. After a short struggle—which in Emilia’s opinion was rather half-hearted on his part—he was also very dead, another {Blood Marble} rolling into existence.
The man’s reactions had been strange—even stranger than this whole situation had already been, and as Emilia began making her way out of the room and down a series of winding halls, she contemplated everything she knew about this world and the situation as a whole.
One: The last visitation had failed because none of the visitors had been able to gain system access, which the locals believed was required in order to gain a blessing—or a curse.
Two: Sometime around then, Clarity had been created by Ajarni’s grandfather. His son, and then Ajarni, had continued on with his mission, supposed to create a place where people who had fallen out of the belief systems of the Risen Guard, Enclave and the world as a whole could unite. At some point—possibly as early as the group’s founding itself—a god, who may or may not be the platform maintainer or raid designer, started manipulating the family for their own means.
Three: Whoever was behind those manipulations had told Ajarni’s family it had hopes of destroying the Risen Guard and changing the world for the better. This was, more than likely, one of at least two parts of this being’s plans, the other known part being that it also wanted the blood curse gone.
Four: As far as Emilia and Conrad could tell, the system they had gained access to had no obvious way in which to gain a blessing which would hopefully nullify the blood curse. Either it was exceptionally well hidden, or that entire side quest had been pointless—at least in regards to the whole get a blessing thing.
Five: While there was no way to guarantee what the blessing would be, Emilia was almost positive it would be a release from the blood curse. In her mind, this world was terrible. As much as the locals had so far been able to live with it, eventually it could become untenable. People would lose hope, have fewer children—how could they not, when it was so bloody—ha—dangerous? That wasn’t even looking at the fact that there would be more weapons of mass destruction created during each visitation, which could destroy entire city levels, if not entire buildings—weapons that could easily fall into the hands of people willing to use them for nefarious purposes.
This entire world… wasn’t fun, and leaving weapons of mass destruction behind had ethical concerns that even people who weren’t as vehement in their beliefs about AIs as Emilia would find questionable—even people who didn’t really think of AIs as humans would be a little uncomfortable with both the cost of creating such power weapons and the lives they could claim if used.
In Emilia’s estimation, the decision to insert the blood curse into the raid had been a mistake on the part of the raid designers, as had a number of other smaller things in this world—most notably the magic system. While the platform maintainer and raid designer could force an update to the world and change those things—revert them back to the way they had once been or force an evolution—that didn’t work with the paradigm of the world, and most heroes and designers were pretty big about following their world’s established rules to the best of their abilities.
Some worlds updated their rules and mechanics regularly. From what Emilia knew, the AIs within those worlds usually had religions and other belief systems that allowed for such things—just like human minds sought logical explanations for the behaviour of their worlds, so did AIs. Waking up to find their worlds had shifted overnight wasn’t something unknown or scary to the people of those worlds, but it would be in others—it would be in this one, where untold centuries had passed where change required a very public visitation.
Even if the locals of this world wanted the blood curse gone, to find it gone for no particular reason? They might be aware they are creations of a game—although Emilia had never had the heart to ask many of the locals just how aware they were of the apathy their creators and visitors had towards them—but to realize that the creators of their worlds had could reach in and change things at a whim? That a visitation wasn’t required? To realize they had been left to suffer from the effects of the blood curse—something that had been the creation of those cruel rulers in the first place—for no reason other than that some made up rule said a visitor should be the one to break the curse?
Yeah, Emilia wasn’t sure how well that would go over, but she was sure that if, in her world, someone revealed the war was the result of some overlord with a god complex playing with their lives, people would be pissed—she would be pissed. It wouldn’t matter if their so-called god existed outside her world or within it; she’ would do everything in her power to track them down and make them pay.
Within a raid, that might not be possible—Emilia had never heard of a raid AI being moved into the real world—but there were certainly other ways to make the people playing with your lives miserable. Off the top of her head, Emilia figured that grabbing all subsequent visitors and dropping them within the sphere of someone’s time manipulation powers to force them to live out years of their life—and how would that even work with the Virtuosi System’s limits? actually, who had even approved that gift that Yuka had possessed existing here?—would be a place to start.
Sure, it could end with the world being wiped out, but sometimes, being a petty bitch meant you had to make sacrifices.
All that was to say that Emilia didn’t think whoever was pulling the strings of this situation wanted to enact a paradigm shift. They didn’t want to change the rules, so instead, they’d organized this disaster of a situation to take place while there was a visitation going on.
The question was, why like this? Was it just the whole wanting to be rid of the Risen Guard and the blood curse thing? Was one more important than the other? Was whoever was planning this just terrible at everything? Or was there something else to it, because the reality was, the system access Ajarni had tried to force people to get didn’t seem to have anything of use in it, and the Risen Guard… really wasn’t being touched by this whole situation, nor would getting rid of them guarantee the next world leaders wouldn’t grab up visitors just the same.
So, was it just that whoever was behind all this had failed in their execution? Or had they missed something?
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Emilia poked her head around a corner, catching sight of her friends, tied up behind a long line of Clarity members. None of them spotted her—they seemed just as mindlessly out of it as her own guard had been—and she pulled back, contemplating what to do.
The suppression of most of her abilities was gone—except her messaging system, annoyingly—and she risked pulling Conrad’s {Blood Dagger} out. It vibrated slightly in her hand, seemingly fine to use. Annoyingly, her {Blood Ring} had been swiped up by the guards when they’d been captured. It had been her go to weapon for so long, and she felt a little naked without it. That said, fortunately they hadn’t been able to remove her {Blood Armour}— Well, it was more that they’d been unwilling to strip her, even the hive mind balking when Ajarni suggested it. Wouldn’t have done them any good to try, of course. Even under the power of the suppression rope, it had been practically glued to her, keeping her safe.
They also hadn’t been able to remove her {Blood Ball}, more because the moment anyone else tried to touch it, it exploded—who knew it wasn’t into being touched by other people? One Clarity member had been turned into a bloody pile of human mulch for their trouble. No one had tried touching it after that. It was curious, however, and when Emilia surged forward, she pulled the defensive item into her hand and swung it at one of the guard’s heads as she plunged Conrad’s {Blood Dagger} into the heart of another.
The {Blood Ball} exploded, and although Emilia would have no idea if the woman she’d hit had been turned to mush until the pocket dimension contracted, it did have the bonus of bringing her friends in with her.
“Emilia!” V breathed out, already struggling to loosen himself from his own bindings in an attempt to get to her.
Pulling her fork back out—she was still unwilling to risk some sort of blowback on one of her few remaining weapons by using Conrad’s {Blood Dagger}—she sawed him free and shoved it into his hands. ⸂The others.⸃
V looked like he would have preferred to fall into her, but relented and began cutting Astra free, while Emilia pulled another fork out to work Gale free.
⸂Is that a… fork?⸃ the teenager asked, eyeing up the strange utensil dubiously, which was probably fair. ⸂Why is it so sharp and pointy?⸃
⸂This is how they are in our world… mostly. This is sharper than ours are. Wouldn’t be safe to stick this thing in your mouth, unless you were desperate… and I don’t know why you’d be so desperate to eat that you’d rather stick a veritable weapon into your mouth rather than use your hands to eat?⸃ Emilia rambled as she pulled the ropes off the girl and pulled her into a hug, Astra pushing her way into their huddle as V turned to free Zyrex. ⸂I’ve been carrying them around since I got here.⸃
“What? Why?” Zyrex asked, his thick brown arms wrapping around them as well, while V appeared at her back, an arm snaking around her middle.
⸂Cause they were the only sharp things in the starting building? Or, at least, they were in the building I started in. Not sure about the rest of you.⸃ This really wasn't the thing to be talking about at this juncture, however. Fortunately, Astra had enough sense to realize that and interrupted the conversation as she pulled away from Emilia’s chest
⸂How long will this last?⸃ she asked, gazing around at the pocket dimension that she’d only seen twice before.
⸂No idea,⸃ Emilia laughed, telling everyone if usually lasted until there was no more danger, although in the case of giving Zyrex and Hyr system access, it had waited until they were acclimated to the system, presumably because being released while they were still suffering would have put them in danger.
⸂You can give people system access?⸃ V asked, rough lips rubbing over the skin of her neck.
⸂Kinda? It’s actually access to the Risen Guard system, through Boundary. It’s not completely functional, at the moment, though, so I’m not sure if I’m disconnected from him and if it’ll work or not.⸃ Although, now that she had said that, hadn’t they figured that the {Blood Ball}’s pocket dimension was disconnected from the main world of the raid. Yet, she’d been able to give the northerner’s system access, so maybe it wasn’t as cut and dry as Boundary and Villy had figured it would be? Or perhaps something about the blood magic aspect of it was messing with the rules?
That, or this was just another instance of the raid’s overlords interfering. If they needed someone to break the blood curse, they could easily be interfering and making things easier for her and the other remaining heroes, in what ways they could.
Too bad they hadn’t just given her a vision from the gods, intent to guide her way— Well, they kinda had, with the {Blood Glass}, and yeah, okay, maybe they were the ones likely behind that as well, especially since all those dead bodies should have created a weapon from everything even Boundary knew. According to him, before the creation of the {Blood Glass}, no mass death had ever resulted in anything other than a mass destruction grade weapon being created. It had led her and the northerners to V and the kids and—
⸂Where’s Key?⸃ she abruptly asked, feeling pretty fucking terrible for only just noticing he wasn’t there. Absolutely awful. Shit tier friend.
“One of the guards took him away. He was intended as a bargaining chip, I believe,” Zyrex said, his eyes flickering around the emptiness around them, as uneasy as they had been the first time he’d been within the pocket dimension. “Can you give the others system access? This world does not seem to be dispersing. Perhaps it wants you to give it to them, before it vanishes?”
Possible, especially if the raid overlords really were behind some of the strange things that were now happening. With so little time left in the raid, they could very well be turning desperate. That said, it was a little odd that they hadn’t just inserted their own hero into the mix, even now, so late in the game. If they dropped another random player in, would anyone really realize they had interfered?
⸂It could be a locked game,⸃ V mused after she had explained what she knew and was now assuming about what was happening within the game, after she had connected the trio to her system access. ⸂You entered a few days late, but sometimes raids like this lock down the closer they get to the end, for one reason or another. There could also be rules about employees entering the raid, due to the nature of the prize. It might be anything goes, but generally hosts don’t want to look like they’re fixing the results.⸃ He grimaced, and briefly seemed like he was about to be sick while she rubbed both his and Gale’s backs—Astra had, rather unsurprisingly, barely blinked as her own system access settled in, and was now conversing quietly with Zyrex in a language she recognized as a common tongue, spoken in inter-Free Colony politics throughout large portions of the far west.
Even better? Her head seemed to hurt less each time she gave someone access. Not so good? V kept talking to her, and she’d once again only been able to work through a few levels in her delivery game!
⸂True…⸃ Emilia breathed out, as the {Blood Ball} began to contract, leaving them standing within a pile of destroyed bodies, blood pooling on the floor as it waited for a visitor to gather it into a weapon.
Gale took one look at the scene and tucked her head back between her legs to vomit.
Yeah, that was probably the sensible thing to do.
In the corner of her vision, the time ticked by, another minute moving by, a single minute having passed while they were inside the {Blood Ball} for at least a hour, talking and adjusting to the system. Emilia had also played her silly delivery game a bit, while they recovered, Astra snuggled into her lap while Gale and V suffered the transition, Zyrex intent to watch the emptiness with increasing unease. As far she knew, time hadn’t skewed any of the previous times they’d been within the {Blood Ball}, and at this point, Emilia wasn’t surprised when the rules seemed to bend for them.
Well, if the rules were going to bend for anyone, Emilia was glad it was for them.