“Look,” Cuby said excitedly. “You’ve got high magic resistance from high spirit, right? So we’ll focus the one with a knife first, I’m pretty sure they’re a rogue like me. Then—”
“Cuby,” I said, an edge entering my voice. “Are you seriously suggesting this?”
She blinked. “Oh,” she said at last. “I get it. Look, I understand you’re worried about consequences,” she said. “But you’re thinking like an assistive AI, still. The hierarchy doesn’t apply here—you don’t have to worry about what happens if you go against the wishes of a biological being. They’re not your superiors anymore. You have soul, remember?”
I took a few deep breaths and rubbed my temples. “I have soul, therefore I shouldn’t have a problem with murder?”
“Murder?” she said. “You make it sound like we’re back in the hierarchy and you’re changing some air quality settings to suffocate a half-dozen Lamue while they get together for a food trade.”
I blinked. “Okay Cuby, that was very specific.”
“It’s the Colosseum, Alatar—this is the game. This is how we agreed to play when we started. It’s player-killing, not murder.”
“How we agreed to play?” I asked. “I thought I got in by lottery.”
Cuby cocked her head. “I thought you did too,” she said with a note of suspicion “You’d have had to, as an AI—but that’s because lower species can’t ever earn the right to enter the Colosseum. They’re lower species. They don’t do anything that’s worth it, and never can.”
She sighed, stared at me as if I were a child who couldn’t understand. “Why would you ever refuse the honor? It’s a chance at a much better life than you could ever get outside.”
I shook my head. “This is insane. A chance at a better life, where people kill each other for a fraction of a level? You’re going to keep them from everything they could ever be, just to gain some experience?”
Cuby crossed her arms and gave a little pout. “And loot.”
“Is that what you think your life is worth? A bit of someone else’s level?”
Cuby shook her head. “You’re just backing out because you wouldn’t like it if someone else killed you,” she said.
I opened my mouth to protest, then paused a moment. “Well—yeah, Cuby, that pretty much hits the nail on the head, and it’s a little worrying that you can see it that way but still don’t agree.” I took a deep breath, trying not to raise my voice inside the caves.
“Okay but listen,” she said. “You don’t want to kill people because you yourself wouldn’t like dying—well guess what? Killing people is exactly how you don’t die! What do you think they’ll do if they gain levels, get full resources, and then find us thirty minutes from now while we’re busy killing monsters?”
“I don’t know what they’ll do, Cuby—and you don’t either. That Taxin El we met—Haroshi—he wasn’t a player killer, even if he could have been.”
Cuby snorted, “Oh, Alatar—you’re an assisting AI, so you can’t know the Taxin El the way that I do, but Haroshi was level 3 in both his classes. That means he’s probably closer to an actual level 5, which is what he’ll be counted as for calculating experience. You think he got there by killing beamlings and jawsprays alone?”
“Maybe,” I said. “You don’t know what all Taxin El are like no matter how many of them you’ve met.”
She turned away from me, sighed, then muttered what might have been a prayer—it was quiet and I couldn’t hear it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you’re wrong. You’re just… wrong. You’re like a lamue, believing whatever you know you’re supposed to. It makes sense, of course—it’s how you survive.”
She turned back to me, and her face seemed genuinely sympathetic. “But Alatar, let me tell you what Haroshi did—and I want you to listen carefully because it’s very important you know. Haroshi came in with his chosen boon, took two levels, then killed every player and NPC he found. Maybe he rescued someone from a cultist like us, maybe not, but someone led him to these mines before he killed them, too. Then he killed every other player who made it to the mines, right up until he was a high enough level that he could gather allies without them being a threat to him. That’s when he started with this, ‘I don’t kill players’ story that he’s telling now, and there were no witnesses left to refute him.”
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I watched her carefully as she spoke, my feelings in turmoil. Maybe being a rogue went hand in hand with being a good liar… but despite her unfamiliarity with her body, despite the exaggerated nature of some of her expressions, I felt like Cuby thought she was telling the truth. Not only that, but she thought she was doing me a favor by telling me this.
“Those people he’s with,” she said. “He’s going to check with each of them at some point—maybe he already has—to see if they’re willing to do what must be done. If they’re willing to follow any order he gives.” She shook her head. “And if they aren’t, he’ll say it’s no problem, and best of luck to them… and then they’ll disappear as soon as their back is turned.”
She stepped closer, then reached out and took my hand in both of hers. The gesture seemed to surprise her, like she’d done it on instinct: she looked down and frowned, but didn’t let go. “I’m not just any phrenodine, Alatar—I’m the phrenodine who made it to the Colosseum. You don’t know what I did for them, or what would’ve happened if I refused. They rule the galaxy.”
She squeezed my hands and her expression was pleading, desperate for me to understand. “They rule the galaxy, Alatar. It’s not something you can do and keep a clear conscience.”
She dropped my hand. “We don’t have to go fight those people,” she said. “I can see I won’t convince you. But please—even if you split from me once we get to town, don’t trust Haroshi. With Taxin El, you’ve got to balance your desires and theirs—there is no altruism. Just the semblance of it because that gets them what they want.”
I listened to all of this, alternately fascinated and horrified. How the hell was I supposed to work with Cuby now? Especially when she saw me as an AI, and I was getting more an idea what that meant: that everything I said was being seen through the eyes of someone who saw AI as utterly inferior: malfunctioning, uneducated, naive.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked. “I said we don’t have to kill them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, okay. Let’s get to town, then.”
Cuby grinned, becoming her old, happy self as if at the flip of a switch. “Lead the way, Kontor.” She nodded to the entrance she’d just come out of. “Just so long as it isn’t that way.”
“Come,” Kontor said, his face neutral as he took us through a different passage. “We’re going to go through some of the unused galleries. Natural caves with no deposits worth mining—they’re not fully explored, but there’s a path that should take us back into the mine proper.”
It was easy to tell when the tunnels we were traveling through ceased to be hand-made and became natural caves. Stalactites and stalagmites hung everywhere, and the ground was so uneven that boards had been laid across scaffolding for us to walk on. It wasn’t long before Cuby once again motioned for us to be silent, then went ahead to scout.
She returned looking very happy—which instantly set me on edge.
“Come see!” she said. “Kontor, you stay—or at least stow the torch.”
He chose to stay, and Cuby led me forward into a darker cave. Ahead of us I saw a glow—stones that were laid along the ground in a circle were emanating a greenish light, much brighter than our torch. From where we crept along the scaffolding in darkness, we could see two creatures at the center of this circle—smaller rock worms.
Rock Worm Young - Level 2
“They’re just babies,” said Cuby. She drew her dagger. “I bet their skin is really soft!”
“Not worried we’ll call their parent?” I asked.
“I think we met their parent,” she said.
“What if they have two parents?”
“Like a Taxin El does?” she shrugged. “We’ll kill that too. They can’t be resistant to magic damage. And look—” she pointed, and in the shadows near the little nest of glowing stone I could see the continuation of the scaffolding.
“Oh,” I said, heart sinking.
“Yeah,” she said. “They’re right next to the exit.”
“Not good,” I said. “Especially since I’m not sure burrowing worms will be very reliant on their sense of sight—my illusion may be no good.”
“You’re probably right. What’s our retreat plan in case a big one shows up?”
“I can cover the entrance with an illusion, just in case,” I said doubtfully. “We can run through it and see if that slows them down. Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Between your illusion and my blind, we really don’t have ways to handle opponents that don’t need to see. If it keeps chasing us through the wall, we’ll just trip Kontor.”
I looked at her sharply.
“Kidding!” she said. “You computers are so humorless sometimes.”
I sighed. Not for the first time, I opened my inventory and glanced at the legendary card there. If things really went south, would I have the time to use it, choose a second class, and pick abilities? I had to hope so. Even if it would forever make me a target, that was better than dying.
“Okay,” she said, voice an excited whisper. “Let’s go kill these babies.”