"Yo, guys. Wanna mess with them?"

I didn't have a chance to respond, Scria dashed off almost as soon as she spoke. She started running so she could come up behind Marcus and Lily, but after a couple seconds she fell.

Bjorn shook his head, "Scria, is it just me or have you gotten clumsy?"

"Just, shut up." She looked away from us, but I was pretty sure she was blushing, or at least a darker shade of blue.

"You know it's cute when you act shy."

"I said shut up." She almost sounded like she was going to cry.

I was about to say something, but Bjorn winked at me, "Hey, if you ever need a big man to hug, I've been told I'm a great hugger."

"F... you" and Scria disappeared. With the usual slow fade that happens when someone logged out.

"Bjorn, I think you made her mad."

He was laughing too hard to say anything. In fact, he was laughing so hard that Marcus, Lily and Brogan heard him. When they saw Bjorn, Marcus looked surprised and rushed over, Lily and Brogan followed at a normal pace.

"Bjorn, are you really here?" Marcus almost looked like he wanted to touch Bjorn, just to make sure he was real, or virtual, or whatever we were.

"Yeah, what did you get yourselves into?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out."

"It was a seance!" Lily actually jumped into the conversation as she gave Bjorn a hug. Or tried to, her arms barely made it halfway around him. "It was all Marcus' fault, but everything worked out. We even found a guy for Bwyd."

Marcus chuckled, I choked, Lily giggled, Bjorn gave me a thumbs up, and Brogan was thankfully oblivious. Thankfully, Brogan was polite and didn't ask what we were saying. He just kept tapping his MUD. Looking slightly awkward.

I decided to change the subject, "Scria was here earlier, but she logged out. Bjorn was teasing her."

"She logged out?" Marcus was suddenly very serious.

"Yeah? I mean she disappeared like she logged out."

"Did you see the slow vanishing effect, or did she just disappear?" He grabbed both my shoulders, as he continued his questions.

"Um, yeah, she did the slow thing, and now she's offline in my friend list."

"Bwyd. Can you log out?" He almost looked concerned and hopeful at the same time.

I checked my logout button, and couldn't find it. "Uh, no? My logout button is missing."

Bjorn started to look confused, "What are you guys talking about?"

Marcus finally let go of my shoulders, "Me and Bwyd, cannot log out."

Bjorn didn't respond, so I asked, "Lily's fine?"

She looked gulty, "Yes, I even logged out just to be sure."

We kind of stood there in silence for a moment. Just thinking about it, didn't make sense. If Marcus and I couldn't log out, but Lily and Scria could, there wasn't a pattern. Unless there was something wrong with just two of us.

"Are you ok Marcus? Bwyd?" Bjorn sounded concerned.

"Can you log out?" Marcus' voice was quiet, completely different from normal.

"Yeah, I just checked, though if you want me to make sure, I can log out for a moment and get back in."

"No, that's fine. I wish Scria was here though. We need to talk about everything."

Bjorn sighed, "I can send her, uh, cousin a message. I know him in real life. Give me a moment." He then disappeared, slowly, like a normal logout.

"So, while we wait, all 72,337 refugees from Brogan's home made it here safely, and I control this instance." I switched to Brogan's language so he could understand me.

Marcus looked at me and blinked a couple times before speaking, "What?"

"All 72,337 refugees from Brogan's home made it here safely, and I control this instance."

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"Oh, that's what I thought you said..." He started to retreat into his mind.

"Hey! Don't you dare leave again Marcus!" Lily came out of nowhere and slapped him in the face. "We need you to think out loud, and respond, and be here."

"I, uh, need to think." He wasn't really focusing on anything.

"Then I will do unspeakable things to your body." She cracked her knuckles.

For a moment I thought he was still going to do his thinking thing, but then he shuddered and his eyes refocused.

"Good boy! Now listen to everything Bwyd has to say, and talk like a normal person." She sounded like she was talking to a dog.

"Uh, Lily I think he's ok now." I was a little worried about what she might do.

"He better be." She crossed her arms and stared at him.

We ended up talking about all the notifications I'd seen, and the fortress, and all the people, and the notifications the rod guys saw. Marcus was actually pretty good at listening, and responding to my story, though he did keep looking at Lily. She just stared at him the whole time. I was even intimidated, and she wasn't even looking at me. We eventually decided that I should make this the special instance, like I had planned, and that we should set it up before Bjorn got back and we had to talk about more serious stuff.

The moment I decided to make my instance special, not that it wasn't already special, I got a ton of notifications, and a really cool castle sculpting tool. I basically got to decide where the gates went, asign a purpose to different areas and choose an optional entry point. The areas were percentage based, so I got the idea that the castle would changed based on what I picked. I decided to put one gate on the front of the fortress, or where all the people were gathered. By the way, 72,000 people is a lot of people in one place. 

I also put a gate in the inner walls lined up with the outer gate, and because I had to feed all these people I used a lot of the free space for food production. Thankfully the castle building thing was nice and told me how much food production I would need to feed all 72,000 residents. I was kind of happy because it was all the magically created meat from Brogan's world, but it did take 50% of my castle's space.

The last of the space I split between production and research. I didn't need to say what kind of production or research, so I was hoping that at least some of the research area could be used to cure curses. Once I confirmed my choices the fortress seemed to shimmer a bit and then stopped. It looked about the same, except where I wanted the gate there was a cool looking design. It looked like it was etched into the wall, but it was kind of gate shaped, and looked a lot like a celtic knot. It turned out that the design was the gate. I could walk right through the wall there. When I stepped up to it the wall just opened a tunnel in front of me so I could walk through. I was completely surprised by it, but apparently this was a normal thing for Brogan's people.

They couldn't walk through until I gave them authorization, and thankfully I could just send an area invitation. That made them all official residents of my instance, which also gave them full access to the game system, and the nice language translation thing. They all got the world walker title. Apparently they could go to the main part of the game, and it would work just like it did for anyone else, so reviving on death, cool loot, stat points, their real body wasn't actually there but it was different in my instance. They were like NPCs. If they died, they died. They would age, and they needed to eat. They could have children, and those children could have children, but the game system was still active. You could still get stat points, the cool loot could be brought here and still worked at full power, and there could be events that gave more loot, and other rewards.

It was like a mix between the game world and the real world. This was the real world for them, but players could come and treat it like part of the game, which kind of worried me. If players came here and decided to kill everyone, they would actually kill people. So I didn't set up an entry point. I figured we could invite people if we wanted to, but I didn't really remember Marcus, Bjorn, Lily or Scria talking about anyone else they wanted to play the game with.

After setting everything up, Bjorn still hadn't come back, so we took a tour. The walls hadn't changed, except for the gate rune things, but there were now some little phone booth bunker things between the inner and outer walls. The system was nice enough to tell us that they were housing instance teleporters. In other words we could open the door, step in, and choose someone to visit and it would ask them if they wanted visitors. We also had the option to go to our own room, which I chose, because I figured I had a nice room, and I kind of wanted to see it. I was very disapointed. My room was just big enough for a single bed and dresser, with a little open space and a door to a small bathroom with a shower. No bath tub.

When I got over my shock I found out that the rooms were upgradable. I just had to use influence points to upgrade it, and I could get influence points by doing quests for the instance. I was a little annoyed, so we just continued our tour. We went into the inner walls, and there were more teleporter things, but they went to the food processing place, which looked like a huge factory, but with magic crystals instead of machines. The production and research spaces were just a bunch of open space that could be claimed. Basically, there were 125 units for each one, and each resident could claim one unit. You could combine them to make a bigger space, but you had to agree with someone else to do that. There was a tax for the space, so at least people wouldn't just hold on to a unit without some kind of cost. I was also hoping I could evict people if I needed to, though after seeing my room, I wasn't too hopeful.

After I claimed a research space for curse research, we went to the last unexplored part of the castle. The keep had an actual door, though it was a stone sliding door, that opened into a large hall. The moment I stepped in I was given the option to set it up for banquet, ballroom, audience, or empty space. I pick banquet and the whole space was filled with long wooden tables and benches. They looked kind of cheap, and I found out they were also upgradable. There were no other rooms in the keep, so we just sat at a table and waited. Everyone had been fairly quiet for the whole tour, except for little comments, and we continued the silence while we waited for Bjorn and Scria.

After what seemed like hours, Bjorn came back online and Marcus sent him a message to meet in the keep. It didn't take too long for him to get there. The gates opened for him becuase he was my servant, and he could talk to people now so when he arrived he brought a few of the refugees. One of them was the commander of the rod guys that I met before, and the others seemed to be a mix between military and scientists, with one who didn't quite fit either group.

Marcus looked a little upset that other people had come with Bjorn, but he just said, "We have some things to discuss. Let's get started."