PART FORTY-ONE

But the Video Still Has 11 Minutes Left

Angus sat up. He stared up at the moon, or a star, or something just generally upwards, and after a moment of contemplation, sighed. He allowed himself to relax and lie back on the shrunken treasure. As his weight returned, coins were pushed aside like he was the sweeper in a coin pusher game.

clonk

He frowned. The noise was weird. He reached down to paw at some coins, and didn't like what he was feeling. He shot to his feet, then knelt. He opened a bag and tipped the loot out. It immediately expanded to normal size, but it was not gold, not silver, not bronze.

"Lead!" he shouted. He scrambled around opening other bags at random. Black, worthless lead, all of it.

"Stop the cart!" he yelled, but the driver couldn't hear him.

Brodon and Trinidad clambered from the passenger seats into the back. "What's wrong?" asked the prince.

"We've been had. It's fake. It's junk."

Trinidad opened a few bags, watched with horror as black lumps of metal clonked onto the pile. "We lost."

Angus nodded. Then shook his head. "No! It ain't over till it's over." He opened the back flap of the cart and looked at the men. Brodon shook his head, but Trinidad moved next to Angus. The two remaining heisters jumped out.

"Friends," said Brodon, tossing them a healing potion each. "If you find my scepter... Fare thee well!"

Pistola de Oro

Angus and Trinidad sprinted back to Austeralia.

There was a new sign outside:

NOW SHOWING

3B THE WISE VS NAUGHTY THEFT BOY

Angus hesitated, but not for long. He ran inside. But the amusement park was gone - the underlying layout seemed like it might have been the same, but it was hard to tell: every surface was covered by a mirror.

"Eet is James Bond," said Trinidad.

"What?" said Angus.

"Ees James Bond. Pistola de oro. Roger Moore fights Saruman in a hall of mirrors. This is no bueno, senor. He's been waiting for you. He has every advantage. Staying to fight... ees mad."

"Mad is my middle name!"

"It ees?"

"No, it's Vincent. But I'm not giving up. I've got a little surprise of my own."

Trinidad grinned. "Jess. Then together."

"Together," agreed Angus, shaking the Spaniard's hand.

The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side

The next two minutes were super creepy. The mirrors showed their reflections, spreading infinitely wide and infinitely deep, but every now and then there would be an extra character visible from one solitary angle. Bain, as still as a waxwork.

There were so many false dawns that they started to ignore the images of Bain as they made their way through the maze, until suddenly a huge report sounded from a gun and Trinidad fell. Angus crouched, turned, saw no threats. He rolled Trinidad over, closed his eyelids, and ostentatiously looted the healing potion while sneakily clipping something else to his belt.

Angus rose to his full height, and paced down the pathway between the mirrors. Sometimes he walked straight into one while soft laughter echoed around. His response? Smash things. He hammered the closest mirrors. It helped! With fewer reflections, things started to make more sense. If that was where he'd come in, then this way must have been where the Pirate Ship had crashed. He jabbed at a couple of nearby mirrors while he calculated. Smash, crack. Which means the fallout door should be this way. No smash, no crack. He looked up, confused. Bain was right in front of him. Angus had actually touched him with the hammer!

"Hi Angus," said Bain. "Big fan." He raised his pistol and fired it twice, at point blank range, into Angus's Death Knight helmet.

He waited for Angus to drop.

Instead, Angus launched an enormous, two-handed overhead attack. Bain threw himself away, just in time, and pushed his legs like Bambi on ice. Angus was starting a follow-up attack when Bain stopped trying to scramble to his feet and pointed the gun at Angus's... most masculine area. Angus flung the hammer towards Bain, who rolled to the side while squeezing the trigger. The shot missed. Bain darted behind a mirror and vanished.

Angus pursued - down the stairs, into the casino area. There was a new section. The corridor was divided into two by a thick, glass wall. Angus tapped on it - it seemed to have insanely high durability. Bain was on the other side.

"It's so we can talk before the final battle," he explained. "This is where I give my big, evil speech. But I didn't prepare one. I didn't think you'd make it this far."

"How did you know we were coming?" said Angus.

"You told me. You told everyone."

"But how did you know when?"

"The woman from New Zealand does online tutoring. Her calendar is visible. A few days ago, she blocked this hour. Five minutes later she blocked the whole day."

"Kate," said Angus.

"I have a question, too. How did you survive two head shots?"

Angus removed his helmet. "Reinforced." He reached inside and pulled out a copy of Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It had two bullets stuck in it. "Absolutely impenetrable."

Bain grinned. "Good gag. Not very mainstream, though. There must be millions watching and almost none will get the joke."

Angus shrugged. "People are smarter than you think. Half my team laughed. If you ever want to hire a team of your own... try SwiftRecruiter. Their matching technology ensures you get a great candidate every time."

Bain's grin vanished. "You got SwiftRecruiter? I reached out and they ghosted me."

"You're the villain, Bain. No-one wants to sponsor the villain. And worst of all, you've only got one bullet left."

"So we're doing the final scene already?"

"I've only got three minutes left, so yes please."

Death Is No Obstacle

His helmet replaced, Angus took a right turn while Bain took a left. Angus sprinted round a curving corridor, which straightened onto an obstacle course. Little ponds to jump over, ropes to swing by, little wheel things you span round to whirr yourself over a spike pit. At the end of it, after a mysterious dark patch, was the vault.

A flash of movement told him that Bain was already ten yards ahead. Angus roared - this was not a challenge he could meet, yet he tried anyway. He daintily plippy-plopped across some stepping stones. He hurled himself across the spike pit, taking massive damage but saving precious seconds. He jumped across a vat of acid with no chance his leap would carry him over. Mid-jump, he swung his hammer and, stupidly, now had enough momentum to make it to the other side. He was catching up! Two yards closer and he'd be able to launch his special hammer attack... close the range...

But Bain ran onto the right-hand side wall, did a flip, and threw dozens of playing cards at Angus. Cards! Everyone knew the damage was minimal. But these cards were magnetic! As they passed the hammer they attracted it left, repelled it right, then finally the Ace of Spades ripped it out of Angus's grip. He had a choice - to press on or waste time retrieving his weapon.

He summoned his stamina and sprinted even harder. "Bain!" he cried, as he flung himself forwards, catching the magician by the heel. Bain tumbled, rolled, and crashed against a wall. He was dangling over the last obstacle - a bottomless pit. He was slipping into it.

Bain tried to pull himself up, but some debuff had stopped his legs working. Would the debuff end in time? He guessed not. He lifted his gun and pointed it at Angus. As he was about to fire, he slipped backwards a few inches. When he stablized, he grinned, and leveled the gun at Angus again.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He flinched as Angus threw something at him. It missed by miles.

"Any last words, bro?"

"Yeah," said Angus, who had collapsed onto his back, panting. He took his helmet off and let it tumble away. "Use offer code Heist for ten percent off your first order. SwiftRecruiter.com slash heist." He looked down at his hand - it was holding a detonator.

Bain's eyes widened. He turned and saw a shoulder-strap full of grenades on the floor of the vault, mere feet below the core. "No, don't!" he shouted. "He's alive! The core. He's alive!" He slipped further backwards, but with one huge effort, pulled himself up just enough to aim the pistol at Angus's undefended head.

"You are my sunshine," croaked Angus. He clicked the detonator just as Bain pulled the trigger.

After-Math

Mana Per Day: -500

Channel Views: 870,000

3B Channel Income: 6,600 USD

Bain Squeezes the Lemon that Life Handed Him

So that was the heist. You probably have a lot of thoughts. I bet one of them is 'that was good, why did we have to watch a little girl play with Lair Hockey for a whole chapter?' Fair point. And maybe you're thinking 'But the video didn't end there, on a cliffhanger'. No, it did. It really did.

It was a pretty big hit. The aunt who bought you this book, she maybe vaguely heard about it from an enthusiastic niece who saw a clip on TikTok. Your uncle who only watches That News Channel? He wouldn't have known me or Angus and probably never even heard of the BetterVerse. But some subreddits were all in, and r/all was febrile with feedback, reaction videos, links to hot takes.

Attention is a currency, and we had a lot of it. We were able to transmute enough into real money to feel the effort had been worth it.

I spent a weekend checking my 'estimated revenues', hitting F5 pretty often. What could four thousand dollars buy? How about five thousand? Six thousand!

I had one more calculation to make. When to release the next video. The last video.

The decision was: exactly one week after the heist video. That felt like enough time for people to catch up, watch the videos a few more times, let me really squeeze every advertising and revenue sharing dollar out of the whole thing. But also enough time for people to sort of emotionally process what they'd seen. People were calling it a masterpiece. Better than Die Hard. They really responded to it as a piece of art, not just as a fun thing that happened. And I wanted to be respectful of that.

To a point.

Oh, Just One More Thing

@BVLeaks

09:14 Um. This is sliiiightly weird. Angus and Bain are both uploading videos right now. The file sizes are identical.

09:24 Could be ThetanSoft uploading the same vid to both channels? I don't have a source on that. Just speculating. It's so weird. They're clearly the same vids. How. Why.

09:29 Both videos are scheduled for 20:00 tonight, EST. What.

The End

The last video went like this:

A haunting rendition of You Are My Sunshine plays. It's just a girl with a guitar. Her voice is soft, imprecise, and her hands are rough on the strings. Goosebumps. It's perfect.

The camera makes its way from the entrance of the dungeon past hundreds of cracked mirrors reflected in thousands of whole ones. We see the blood stain from where Trinidad died. We go down the stairs, past the glass divider, round the corner. We float across and through the various traps. At the end where the vault was, there's nothing but dust and destruction. Just before we hit the vault, the camera pans.

The Death Knight is still there, slumped against the wall. Angus's eyes are closed. He looks almost peaceful. The camera spins away, but there's a cough, and it spins back and zooms into Angus's face. He coughs again and his eyes open. He groans. He coughs again, seems to realize where he is. He clambers to his feet, brushing off dust and debris. He takes a step towards the vault, stumbles, rights himself, presses on. When he gets to the bottomless pit, he peers down. We can't see what he sees. He kneels, reaches down, comes back up holding Bain by the hand. He helps his enemy to the wall.

Now it's Bain's turn to cough himself awake. He blinks. Gathers his bearings. Slaps a ton of dust off his cape. Looks around, locks eyes with Angus. They nod at each other. Bain gets up, clicks his fingers.

A beam appears across the pit. The dust begins to be sucked up into vents. We see that the vault is more or less intact.

The two men approach it. It's empty apart from two mirrors on opposite walls. The men place their hands on the plinth that had been home to the casino core. We see Bain's POV. He's looking at Angus and sees himself in the mirror on the far wall. The view switches. We're Angus now. We see Bain, and Angus in the mirror.

Another switch. We see Bain and Angus in the mirror. Wait, that's not right. Why break the pattern?

Switch. Bain and Angus. Switch. Angus and Bain. Switch. Bain and Bain. Bain and Bain. Bain and Bain.

The mad, dizzying back and forth stops. The camera backs away. We see a wide shot. Bain dressed as a magician is facing Bain dressed as a Death Knight.

There's another cut, and now there's only magician Bain, with Bain the Death Knight behind him in the mirror. The latter image changes - now it's Brodon. He nods at the camera, then rips his own face off, showing that he is now Trevor. Trevor rips his face off and now he's Liv. And so on, through the whole gang. It comes to rest on Angus. He puts his helmet on. The Death Knight salutes the viewer, then turns and puts his arm around two of the heisters, and all 11 walk away into the sunset.

Bain the magician watches them go. He turns to face the camera, summons an apple and takes a bite.

He looks very pleased with himself.

F is for Feedback

To: Bain

From: Charles

Flawless. Incredible. Infuriating. There were so many clues yet I didn't suspect in the slightest. I loved every second of it. I have to tell you, I'm very much in the minority. We watched it together and you are not very popular. Less than before, incredibly. Not many people like being made a fool of. Be careful out there.

And boy, was he right. Reddit turned on me in a flash. There was no longer a healthy rivalry between a very small Team Bain and a very large Team Angus. There was only Team F That Guy. The companies that had sponsored 'Angus' refused to pay, but I told them I'd keep promoting them if they didn't pony up the dough. They paid, but took to Twitter to join the Bain Bashing.

I didn't care. 3B's channel had made over 8,000 dollars, and Angus had raked in almost 40. With 50k in the bank, my life would be radically different. Radically better. I would be able to diversify my diet beyond noodles. I could upgrade to the second cheapest beer. I could keep my BetterVerse gear for a while yet.

And who knew? Maybe when this furore had died down I could create another storyline. I'd need a different face, a different voice, but 386 had countless options. Talking of which, I needed to go and check on him.

I picked up my headset and felt an inexplicable desire to eat potato chips.

Dungeon Rule Number 1: There Must Be a Path from the Dungeon Core to the Outside World

I logged in, snuck around the sidestreets of Auster and arrived at a boulder that jutted out of the still-imploding hill. If you simply walked past you'd be very unlikely to see that there was a path there. You'd be more worried about pockets of molten lava bursting as you walked past. The lava and imploding hill theme were costing 386 quite a bit of mana, but were keeping people away. For now.

Inside the dungeon, someone had left rocks, crates, and fallen beams in the way. It wasn't 386 - he wasn't allowed. Must have been Konstantin. What a star.

I clambered over, through, under. There was a corridor covered with dust and cobwebs. I opened one door and saw that there was a treasure chest with a few gold coins. This was a psychological trick I was optimistic would work - with any luck anyone who got in this far would think they were getting the last of the loot and would clear off without investigating further.

I retraced my steps to a door with a strange sign: Prayer Rooms.

The NPCs had no religion so didn't pray - this space was provided for humans and was, obviously, never used, because what kind of madman would go into a theme park in a video game to pray? Especially when you only had one hour to play Cannonball or Spider Smash or listen to Lennie play Greensleeves. There were four curtains and four more signs: Christian, Mormon, Jewish, Muslim. I went into the Muslim space and pulled the curtain back behind me. The only decoration was a simple prayer mat. It didn't face Mecca because how could it? But I'd done the best I could, just in case some guy actually wanted to pray in there. There was another curtain, which seemed to lead to an empty room. I stepped in and pushed the wall - it rotated easily, like an entrance to a certain kind of hotel. This was very much bending the rules about having a path to the dungeon core, but not quite breaking them.

There were then 70,000 mana points of traps, but I counted as an ally so I wasn't covered in oil, set on fire, sliced, diced, hung, drawn, quartered, tentacled, or any other verb. I got to the core room and stretched out on the floor. "Ah," I said. "What a week."

386, noticeably larger than the last time I'd seen him, was throbbing away. "I'm dreadfully bored."

"You've got Lennie," I said.

"Captain Lennie?" said 386. "Dressing him as a pirate was a terrible mistake. He refuses to change out of the costume. He wants the park to return with a pirate theme. He has me creating pirate videos 24/7. He's obsessed."

"Any of them any good?"

"No. They are all abysmal. He doesn't care about quality." He sighed. "How did we do?"

"We were a smash hit, and now everyone hates us."

"Just as you predicted."

"Yep." I sat in silence for a while, simply staring at the ceiling, enjoying not having to think or plan or act 12 different roles or read endless comments from people who despised me.

"When can we reopen?"

I swallowed. This was going to hurt. "Ahem. The thing is, when I say everyone hates us, I mean like really. They are apoplectic. If you reopen now they'll come in waves until they kill you."

I felt 386 narrow his eyes at me. "That's a little worse than the worst case scenario you presented to me."

I closed my eyes. I couldn't even look at him. "I know. Soz."

"Soz?"

"Mega soz. Look, I know it's a pain but we can get through this. I think... I think we should move you."

"Move me?"

"Yes. I talked to Lord Thomas and he said he'd support us. He's over the moon with the data you've been giving him. We'll find you a nice hill, dig you a nice hole, and chuck you in. LT will send his men in to do their combat training and stuff. 20 men, 2 hours a day, for as long as it takes. We'll get you back up to 70K mana in no time. And we'll cook up some story to explain why you then start turning into a theme park. A story that doesn't connect you with me. You'll be safe."

"I see. And what if I want to stay here?"

I sat up. "Yeah. You'll have to be all-traps for a while until the hourlies get sick of dying in you. But to be honest, they'll work out how to kill you. There's always a way. It'll be like the heist except I won't make any money from it and if they make a video about it there won't even be cool transition effects."

"Did people notice how thematically resonant my transitions were in the heist film?"

"I'm not sure. I'll check r/moviedetails. Comments praising our films are NOT being upvoted right now."

386 vibrated a bit. "This has been my home for a long time. But if you think I should move, I will move. You are my dungeon consultant and I trust you. Ish."

"I wish you didn't have to. I've got the inn and all the land here. It'll be worthless without you. But it's the only solution I can think of."

"What about Konstantin?"

"I'll work something out. You can give him all my earnings, for a start."

"Stand by while I ask the Engine to initiate a dungeon transport quest."

"What does - ?"

"Thank you for your patience. The Engine has denied my request. I am required to stay here. I have two options. One, try to survive what comes. Two, apply for a change in status from dungeon core to theme park core. Benefits: cannot be destroyed by intruders. Drawbacks: cannot kill intruders."

"What are you going to - ?"

"I have already chosen. For maximum dramatic effect, I will not reveal my choice, leaving you in a state of anxious anticipation until the next chapter."

"There is no next chapter. This is the end. It's done. This book is cooked."

"Half-baked, you mean. But surely there will be an epilogue? You can't just end it here."

"Nah," I said. "I hate epilogues. They're kind of lazy. If there's one thing I can guarantee, it's that I will never, ever, write a book with an - "