“Fifteen minutes until he’s supposed to start—but the diva can’t help showing his mug early,” Rainmaker says. “We should head over if we wanna get a word in.”

“Get a word in?” I ask. The Forum is filling with parties of players who’ve heard about the imminent speech and trickles of others drawn to the building spectacle. The name “igNoble” is audible throughout dozens of conversations in our periphery, but so are speculations about a “GM” or “Mimmirep” appearing.

“Mmm . . .” Prim hums ominously, “depending on what the White Knight has to say, we may have to step in—offer our account of the march, make some suggestions—so that he doesn’t run away with the narrative.”

“Right,” Ad says, her calculating eyes scanning the motley scene. “Everyone’s waiting for some kind of announcement beyond that message. And he and his retinue have taken the initiative to speak.”

“Yup. And most of the players here trust him. Let’s hope a good streamer makes a good crisis counselor,” Rainmaker says.

The players closest to the rostrum are already shouting questions at igNoble, whose friends shield him from questions and sight with a stoic demeanor surprisingly like that of the NPC guards we’ve seen. If anything, they’re a bit more tense—but their faces seem to bear jovial expressions from this distance, and I see a few trading cheerful comments while ignoring the crowd.

“By the way,” I say as the four of us walk into a sparse pocket of this growing audience, “do you two know of a Knights player by the name of Conrad?”

Rainmaker stops in his tracks and looks incredulously at me, his pendulous beard swaying as he does. “Do I know the Necromancer of Lothian?” He shivers slightly.

A couple of nearby players murmur, “What? The Necromancer?”

“Conrad’s speaking too?”

“Remind me who that is and why you’re reacting like that, Rain?” says Prim. “I thought you ‘feared no knight above Elysium.’ Not even igNoble the White.” These guys seem to take their KoTR very seriously.

“These people all sound pretty intimidating,” Ad says, focused on the scene ahead.

Rain continues walking but gestures animatedly as he explains, “Koolaid Cup ‘39? That kid whose guild won? There was a big Europan rally that year—the Templars had just formed from the top smaller guilds—and a sixteen-year-old still pulled it off. Conrad.”

“Ah, Conrad. I remember now,” Prim says. “He’s since done the Carousel some years, I think. But not another grail.”

“He’s . . . fickle,” I say. “He’s also a good friend of mine. And I have reason to believe he’s on this server with us.”

“What a reunion!” Rainmaker says, his spirits lifted by talk of what must be his most frequented medium by far so that a brassy tone breaks through his voice. “Maybe this game is the Knights-killer.” His inadvertent conclusion with “-killer” gives him pause. “Anyway, we’ll look out for him. For now—”

Before us lies a thick wall of players arcing around the rostrum, behind which igNoble’s group waits, and waving their virtual arms, throwing small trinkets and bits of bread, shouting angrily or gleefully—and some performing repetitive, dance-like movements I’ve not yet seen. Does this game have emotes?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Attention!” shouts a tawny-haired woman at the front of igNoble’s bodyguards. She cups her mouth with thick gloves—the same kind Prim now has— to help project her voice, and the white wooly cloak, apparently of goblinskin, over her similarly upgraded leather armor sways stubbornly in the breeze of the flat Forum.

The rampant noise of the audience dies down into murmurs and sparse shouts for igNoble or Mimmisoft. “Log us out!” somebody cries.

“Thank you,” says the armored woman, Bravada - lvl 3, “for showing up today. We know everyone’s had an excruciating twenty-four hours.”

“Let us out!”

“That’s an understatement!”

“igNoble!”

“And we know,” she continues, smiling confidently while her eyes take on a sympathetic solemnity, “that everyone’s wondering when Mimmisoft is going to fix the issue. Never before have so many people been trapped in VR for this long, and without contact from the developers.”

A nervous clamor flares up, dissipating somewhat when Bravada makes a fanning gesture to quiet them.

“What the White Knights can’t offer is an immediate solution. We don’t know how to log out—we don’t know exactly what’s going on—we aren’t in contact with anyone from Mimmisoft. Let’s get that out of the way.”

“Boo!”

“Then what’s the point of this!”

“Hurry it up!”

A small percentage of the audience loses interest, wandering in various directions out of the Forum.

“But what we can offer—what igNoble will bravely share—is a clearer picture of the challenge we must face together.”

She bows lightly at the audience, gestures toward the rostrum, and the cluster of White Knights parts, each making a dignified obeisance after stepping aside, to reveal

igNoble - lvl 4

a statuesque young man like a classical warrior, clad in armor of rough iron plates, dark leather straps, and large swathes of goblinskin bound economically but skillfully together into a doublet. In his left hand, he holds a round leather buckler with a small iron boss already battleworn; in his right shines a polished iron shortsword with crimson cloth wound around its hilt with some excess fluttering in the breeze. His styled mop of flaxen wavy hair sways as he looks down, maybe self-consciously, before gazing into the audience with a wry smirk and then a grin that shows a pristine smile. And then he stands atop the rostrum to address us all.

“igNoble! igNoble! igNoble!” the front of the crowd chants.

“Friends!” he begins in his precociously showman-like, songful voice, which quavers with sorrow today. “My nobility!” He grins and chuckles at some fans in the front row. “Strangers, too—starting today, we’re all friends—we’re all on the same side.”

“Dramatic,” Ad mutters, shaking her head. I stifle a laugh.

“My Knights and I have been hard at work trying to crack this game—but before I go into that further, I have something to admit.” His golden puppy-dog eyes twitch and he swallows anxiously. “I’ve been keeping a secret—for as long as I’ve shared my adventures on Youme. There’s something I want you to know about me. I promise, it’s extremely relevant to our situation here.”

“Tell us!”

“We love you!”

“Don’t worry, igNoble!”

“Call one of your Mimmisoft friends!”

“I’m . . .”—he seems genuinely distraught for a brief moment—“a little older than I look. Thirty-one, to be exact.”

“. . . So!?”

“Still so cute!”

“He's havin' a mid-life crisis!”

“Happy birthday!”

He nods with a good-humored smile before lowering his sword and shield and taking a deep breath.

“And when I was eighteen years old,

I was held hostage in VR for ten months as a participant in the Questdepths beta—a real game, not a mere myth or meme, that led to the deaths of over a hundred gamers.”

The crowd hushes into silence.