Without any sort of provocation, Threr walked over to me.

To preserve my privacy, I shut off my viewer before he had an angle to see it.

That didn't deter his advance, so I turned my seat to look at him. "Hello Threr, what seems to be the issue?"

"I don't get how to be a [Hazard Shaper] and I want to be better at it."

"Presumably to get revenge on The Unorthodox yes?"

Threr shrunk a little. "Well..."

"Don't worry, it's intentionally part of the game, it allows for more interesting developments like upsets."

Threr grew again, puffing out his chest. "I'll rip his eyes out and feed them to him!"

I blinked... or at least did something roughly equivalent. "Okay, let's not go overboard here... besides that will be hard to get to work anyway." I expressed suspicion. "Why are you asking me and not Seliel? She's much better than I am at it." I omitted the 'because she has so much more experience', I was trying to be nicer to her after all.

He ruffled the tuft of hair on his head annoyedly. "I tried, but her instructions didn't make any sense."

I stifled a chuckle, she could certainly improve in that aspect.

I stood and locked my viewer off so that nobody could sneak a peak when I wasn't there. "Let's go see what you have so far."

We walked across the way, navigating around the many other viewers nearby mine.

You see, our setup is kinda like a bunch of squares and triangles that circle the [Worldbinder]'s station, mostly because connectivity would suffer in any other configuration.

This creates lots of odd paths that conjoin in awkward locations and in awkward ways, such as the climbing wall next to one group of gamemasters that serves as a step for the incredibly tall, and as a walkway for the incredibly compact.

Even though I had a perfect map of our game room implanted into my mind whenever I needed it, it still confused me... it always felt like the software needed to be updated every single time I accessed it.

In either case, getting to Threr's viewer group was relatively simple considering how close ours were together.

It only took a single catwalk and an elevator, nothing too bad.

"Ah, the so the truant son returns, here to learn more from the master?" Jyn asked, smiling his 'I'm a vapid idiot' smile.

"No, and you can chafe for implying I was your student." I shot back.

"What else would you call looking over my shoulder all the time?"

"Trying to get an advantage over you, but that's neither here nor there, I'm here to help Threr with learning how to be a [Hazard Shape]."

Jyn stopped smiling. "Wait, what was that first part?"

Vindicost tried to hold back a snicker very badly, so Jyn looked over at him incredulously. "Wait! YOU WERE IN ON IT?!"

As Jyn chased Vindicost around the catwalks above us, I walked over to Threr's viewer.

On it was the [Hazard Shaper] interface as usual, he was currently looking at a random plot of land a little outside the forest that The Unorthodox is usually in.

"Alright, so what do you already know about [Hazard Shaping]?"

"I know how to move the view and zoom out, I haven't been able to figure out how to do anything else yet." He demonstrated as he spoke.

I used my claw to poke a button on his keyboard, causing the view to scroll rapidly. His keyboard wasn't exactly configured for my biology, but I could do that much easily.

"Firstly, it's a lot easier to navigate with a specific grouping of appendages and place [Anomalies] with another set... in your case one and one."

He made a weird noise, which was his species' method of affirmation. "Oh, that's much easier."

I nodded. "Next what you do is determine what kind of [Anomaly] you'd like to create. Your budget increases the longer that you've spend as a [Hazard Shaper], so with your limited points, let's do something simple. Any ideas?"

He made a defeated click, a negative response. "No, not really, I don't really get what an [Anomaly] is."

I looked t him in confusion. "Didn't you read the tutorial?"

Another click. "I accidentally pressed 'I understand' out of reflex and haven't been able to find it again."

I had to give it to him, the interface was quizblech for new gamemasters. "Alright, we'll start with the basics then. An [Anomaly] is any event created by a [Hazard Shaper] using the built-in stimuli, keep in mind that the [Worldbinder] has to process all requests as soon as you press the 'execute' button, so don't be a moron and send a bunch one after another alright?"

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

He affirmed. "That seems fair."

I nodded and pressed a few buttons, causing an interface to appear. "This right here is your [Anomaly Board], it will save you a lot of time to save completed [Anomalies] here. That way, you can create them on a whim instead of having to make a new one each time." I pressed and held a couple keys. "You can even keybind certain [Anomalies] if you want for that extra second or two."

"Oh wow, that's super cool!"

"Right? So let's make a simple [Anomaly] from scratch." I pointed out the [Tectonic Crack] painter and then the [Summon Creature] menu.

Over the next few minutes, I showed him how to make the classic 'swarm of creatures rise from a hole in the ground'.

The creature he picked was really weird... it looked like a small insect with wings and a stinger.

I wasn't going to judge, it was his first one after all.

"I have to get back to my viewer before someone tries to draw genitalia on it or something, see you later Threr." I said as I began to leave.

"Thanks so much for explaining everything!" He called after me.

I gestured my people's gesture that meant 'my pleasure'.

----------------------------------------

Andrew

"What?! What the hell?! WHY ARE PURPLE BEES COMING OUT OF THE GROUND?!" I yelled, trying to swat them away from my face.

Sydui ran out of the house to see what was going on and looked on in horror. "What the hell are those things?!"

"Purple bees?! I don't know! WHY ARE THERE SO MANY BEES?!"

I took out Shreddy and started trying to kill as many as possible.

...Which only made them all focus on me...

I ended up running all the way to the nearest river and jumping in to get rid of them, which did work, but caused me to be bitten by teeth fish again.

When I got back to the village, I saw everyone gathered outside of it, and the massive swarm of purple bees buzzing around the buildings.

"Well, what do we do now?" Polyu asked.

"Any ideas Andrew?" Hund asked.

"Uh... I dunno, we could wait until they're asleep or something?"

"It's better than my idea." Polyu agreed.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Leave and build a house somewhere else."

As we waited for the bees to fall asleep... or something... we all sat around and talked.

At some point the topic of the Fifskae not being champions came up again.

"Oh yeah! I've been meaning to ask about that!" I interjected. "If you're not champions, what are you?"

After regaining his composure, Hund answered. "When we were first offered the choice, they told us that we could become something known as 'inhabitants'."

"Which choice? And why?"

He looked at me with wide eyes. "Didn't they tell you what was happening here before they took you?"

I looked at him sheepishly. "I kinda just told them to take me before they finished."

Everyone looked at me in complete shock.

Sydui was the first to speak. "You're so reckless!"

"...Yeah..." I replied.

When Hund had regained his composure again, he answered my questions. "They offered us a place in this game where we had a high chance of death, in exchange they would give us a completely new life."

"And you took that deal?"

"If you were an exile, wouldn't you?"

I was about to say no, but I realized that that was basically what I signed up for without any hesitation, not even allowing them to finish their first sentence.

Even if my situation wasn't as extreme, one could call me an exile of a sort.

"I guess I would..."

"There you have it." Hund replied.

"Well, do you know anything else about the game?"

"From what I remember it's a 'last man standing' deathmatch, the winner getting some sort of prize... though they wouldn't tell me what it was."

"Oh really? I mean that makes a lot of sense now that you mention it." I said, thinking about it.

"What? Why did you kill all of those champions if not for that reason?"

I shrugged. "They were trying to kill me, what do you want?"

Hund took a turn to shrug. "Fair enough I suppose."

It was about then when the sun started to set.

The purple bees started slowing down and became less numerous.

I stood quietly and gestured for everyone else to do the same. "It's just about showtime."

After I made sure that everyone understood the plan, we moved in, which wasn't hard because we only had half a wall so far.

It seemed like the bees had managed to build a massive hive against the centermost building of the village, it was even about the same size as the building.

Speedy dickheads.

The first part was simple, look to see if the hole was still producing bees.

The answer was no, and that the hole wasn't even there anymore curiously.

Either way, we needed to see what was here and what wasn't.

We just had the hive, not even any patrol bees.

The first phase was a resounding success.

Next, we dug a trench as close-knit as we dared to get to the hive.

We weren't feeling particularly ballsy that day, so we gave it ample space, even if that would make the next parts harder.

After that, we took some of the left-over lumber and stood it up in the trench, building a small wall around the bees.

The next part was the hard part, so we got ourselves ready.

We gathered some of the planks and nails and brought them out of the village, there we built a roof for our new enclosure.

After we made sure that we hadn't awakened the bees, we carefully approached the hive with the roof.

I went first, making sure to watch out for any sort of loose branches or large stones that could ruin our stealth.

At some point I had missed one, we barely managed to stop fast enough to warn the villager in the back before they stepped on a very dry branch.

The next step was the riskiest.

I boosted about half of the Fifskae up onto our wall.

We then handed them the roof from down below, and they grabbed it.

At the last second, one of the Fifskae's hands slipped and caused the roof to slam against the wall.

Luckily it didn't break or anything, but unluckily we had a different issue.

The roof was too short and the bees were waking up.

"Someone get more planks and hand them to the roof team! We're going to do a bit of a urgent patch-job!" I ordered as I pulled out Shreddy.

'Oh yeah, bring on the cutting!'

The purple bees weren't exactly smart, so it took them a minute to figure out which way was out.

I used this opportunity to my advantage. "Slide the roof to the other side to keep the bees confused until the planks get here!"

The villagers did as ordered, allowing us to stall for a little more time.

It didn't last though, as the bees just started waiting for the hole to open where they waited.

The villagers started to lose their nerve after the bees started coming out.

"Keep going! If you don't, they'll overwhelm us in seconds!" I yelled as I started splashing them with Shreddy.

"Andrew! We have the planks!" Juohen called out from below.

"Throw them up!"

Juohen proceeded to caber toss the planks up to me.

I caught them, almost losing my balance in the process. "Alright! Stop the motion and prepare to close the hole!"

We shoved the roof to one end and covered the hole with planks as best as we could.

As soon as we were sure no more purple bees were coming out, we nailed the planks down and got rid of the rest of the bees that had escaped.

Thanks to the villagers' efforts, we had trapped most of the tiny beasts inside of our brand-new purple bee enclosure.

The next part was easy, even if it would take a long time.

We were going to get a bunch of water and drown the bees once we had collected it all.

But that was a job for later, right now we needed to make sure there were no leaks or holes and then to get some sleep.