The wind swooshed through the trees, rustling the branches. It was 11:59 and nobody was with her in the woods. She could hear crickets screaming in their long, dramatic trill and could see slimes bobbing through the trees, their shiny bodies casting a glimmer into the forest. But there were no human footsteps around, no twigs snapping.
At midnight, a figure appeared.
They rose from a bush, sputtering and brushing leaves out of their hair. "Nikola Brightdark?" The voice was female, and her voice was as soft as the wind caressing the trees.
"Snootyalligator1?" She began to approach the bush. Had she been hiding in its core this entire time? No wonder she hadn't heard anybody coming; she had already been here.
"Yes. Come with me." The woman disappeared into the bush again, and hesitantly Nikola followed, pushing through the spindly branches. Alligator's hand was beckoning her from beneath a trap door, so she slipped inside and it closed above the both of them.
The room was just a simple den like the one a rodent might dig, but it was big enough for three or four. It had a tiny lamp that cast enough light for her to get a good look at the female. Her hair was curly and lime green, and she was one of the dragonkin she had seen as an option when she was creating Ven. Her skin was scaled with shimmering onyx scales, but otherwise her figure looked quite human-- besides the horns jutting from her skull. They were short and sharp.
"Welcome to my humble hidey hole, and thank you for coming. I would offer you refreshments, but we need to make this quick before anybody realizes you're here." She took a seat on the packed dirt floor, and ushered for Nikola to join her.
Nikola already had to crawl to get in, so she was part way to sitting anyway. She allowed herself to roll backward onto her butt. "What is the purpose of your summons?"
"I'm a part of a secret initiative with some of the Lavish. Basically, I got a message from a Lavish on the outside who asked me to contact you secretly. We think we could be useful to you, and later on, you to us. You're a beacon of hope for a lot of people, Nikola." She moved some of her unruly curls from her face.
"A beacon of hope? I am a Butcher of men." She wiggled uncomfortably in place, curious but eager to leave at the mention of the Lavish.
"You're anything you want to be. You have so much power, Nikola - you just need to tap into it first. That's what I'm here to talk to you about. We think that you might have access to your backend code; some of the Lavish who have been watching have seen you looking at your Butcher class screen, and since you can still do that and it hasn't been fixed, they have reason to believe it can't be fixed. At least not without rebooting the whole game, which would take at least three to six months to set back up again. Anyway, what they wanted me to ask you to do is study it. Really look into it and start reading it."
Nikola listened on, focused but skeptical. Her Butcher class screen? The wall of gibberish Luke had asked her to search for the word 'Butcher' in? "My Butcher class screen means nothing to me. Until the Killing Game, I was unaware I was living inside a game at all. You want me to learn to read that?"
"We think it might be easier for you than you think, once you start seeing the patterns. Code is just a set of rules, and since you're an AI at heart, we think you'll crack it eventually if you just keep looking. The hardest part will just be finding a quiet moment to study it without The Host or any of the Lavish catching on." The pressed her scaled index finger and thumb to her chin thoughtfully. "I think you should only look into it when you would already be opening your Game Menu. Start opening your game menu once when you wake up, once whenever you level up and once before you go to bed. Do that without fail, and sneak some study in each time. That way, they won't suspect anything unusual is happening."
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"So you wish for me to establish a routine and hide my 'study sessions' within that routine. I am finding it difficult to parse why you would wish for me to do such a thing-- what is your end goal? What happens if I do make sense of this 'backend code'?"
"Nikola, I know it might be hard for you to wrap your head around it, but everything you see around you right now is made out of code. I'm made out of code, this den is made out of code, everything is code. If you learn to read your own code, you can rewrite it. You could change your damage numbers, set your opponent's health to 1 and kill them in one hit, even move the entire Copper Citadel into the sky. You would need somewhere to input the text, but if you take time to study, we'll do our part and make sure you get a console."
For the first time in a long time, Nikola felt the power tingles. Beneath her armour, her skin goose-pimpled. She would be able to lift an entire city, set anyone's health to 0? "Would I be able to set the Violet Queen's health to 1?"
"Anyone's. As long as they were in the game, they would be your toy. Your plaything. Our biggest obstacle would be The Host and the Lavish on the outside - we would need you to keep this discreet, a secret, if you ever did learn how to do it. At least until we could ensure your safety if they ever did retaliate. As-is, we're almost certain that The Host would just accept the 3 months of downtime and reboot the game if he noticed you tampering with the game's code. So we need you to do this in secret until we're absolutely sure we could keep you alive if he did shut the game off. In this case, keeping it secret means not telling your friends what you're doing when you're doing it, and not drawing any attention to it. People tend to think The Host and the cameras are all-seeing, but they aren't. The cameras will always focus on the exciting things that are happening, so you can hide by being boring. So just go forth and be boring, Nikola. We'll be in touch." The dragoness grinned.
"I will take your deal. If I am understanding correctly, my duty is to study my code whenever possible, and you will provide me with the means to edit the code later?"
"That's it. That's all we want." She tented her fingers together, holding her gaze with her electric cyan eyes.
"Then I will cooperate. What is this group of yours called?"
"Cyberbloom, and you can call me Alli. I would explain more about us, but our time is up. People will surely start wondering why you took such a long walk soon. For now, I want you to delete our message log on your end. I'll delete it on mine. Then, when you think you've started to crack your code, message me at a time when nothing interesting is happening. Got it?"
"Understood. I will see you again, Alli." Nikola stood as much as the enclosed space would allow her to, waved to Alli and backed out of the den. She emerged from the bush, picking the little green leaves from her hair as she started on her way back to the inn. Innocuously. Steadily.
Like she had just been out for a midnight stroll.
When she got past the main doors of the inn, she swapped back into her pajamas via the quick equip option. She strode up to her room and was delighted to see everyone still tucked away in their beds. She closed the door quietly and slipped into her waiting bed. She had done it. Her partymates hadn't even moved from their spots. As she got in and re-cocooned herself in the luxuriously soft bedding, her mind drifted. Would this be what allowed her to kill the Violet Queen for Ven? Would she be able to somehow use the magical code to visit her father, even though she had 'broken him'? Would she be able to fix him? If she would be able to set her enemy's health to 1, would that mean she could make her party members invincible?
The Butcher wasn't naive. She knew there had to be something in it for Cyberbloom, but for one night she allowed herself to fall asleep soundly, dreaming up new ways to murder and to mend.