We need to land, said Cuby, peeling away to the right. I followed, and soon we set down in some grass, hidden from Haroshi’s group by a rocky outcropping. The ground beneath us was like most of the grassy patches one could find on the slope—a small, uneven slice of nature that briefly broke up the steep rocky slopes around it. Not comfortable, but a soft enough place to land quietly.

From there, we abided the instincts that had come with the Sneaking skill and crept quietly onto the nearby outcropping, laying on our bellies and looking out past a distance of about a mile at Haroshi’s camp. I took a look around us with my magic-sensing ability just to be sure there were no demons that might alert them to our presence, or scouts from their camp, and then—finding neither—settled in with Cuby to watch.

She pulled out a little telescoping spyglass, the one that Karrol Stir had said he’d given her, and looked through it before passing it to me.

The light can glare off the lens of the spyglass and make us visible, I said, nonetheless looking through it. So we should only use it if we need to.

Haroshi’s camp had been set low, closer to the base of the mountain where there were larger patches of walkable ground. The shadowed shapes of the tents, haphazardly elevated, told me that the ground was still very uneven, that they were likely packed in and somewhat uncomfortable. The silhouettes of people were moving among the tents, and we could faintly hear their voices carrying. I counted the triangular points of the tent-shapes: thirteen, and there could be more in shadow.

They’re still awake, I said, passing the spyglass back. And still talking.

Bad time for an ambush, she said, echoing my own thoughts. We should wait until they’re mostly asleep—until there’s only a couple of them standing watch. And we need a plan—are we just gliding in so that you can pick someone off with your damage spell?

We do need a plan, I agreed. But for now I’ve got something else to focus on.

What’s that?

The potion is about to wear off.

Oh.

We’re waiting for them right now anyway, I said. Give me a moment.

And slowly, I wiggled backward off the rocky outcrop, then leaned against its steepest face, out of view of Haroshi’s camp.

Then I waited a minute for the potion to wear off, unsure of what to anticipate. The timer wound down, at last counted to zero… and I didn’t feel any different.

Not at first.

I had a few moments where I didn’t know what to think about—don’t think about the bodies, I thought, knowing that it might set me off. Naturally, I thought about the bodies—but I didn’t feel the immediate surge of revulsion that I’d expected. For a time I visited a few thoughts of the night—the crushed body of the caster I’d killed to show Cuby how my combo worked, the scream for help as the elephant-warrior left her ally behind, and then the scream of the dwarf woman who had found her loved one dead….

The last one did it: that scream, grief-stricken, which I’d heard while I was speaking with Kontor. The sound played in my mind, too long, warped, and then it was as if all thought had left me. A rushing feeling had overtaken the inside of my skull and I felt suddenly feverish.

A sick feeling came on me suddenly, in the same way that headrush hits when you stand too fast. It seethed through my body, making my skin feel cold, clammy, an alien surface composed of nothing but unpleasant sensation. I shivered.

I wasn’t even thinking of anything—couldn’t think of anything. My sickness felt completely unhinged, not tied to any real event or happening, just a physical thing that I needed to fight. The rushing kept getting louder, more intense, and I fell forward onto my hands as if to vomit, only to discover that I didn’t really need to, that I’d misread the senses in my own body, that I had no idea what was happening.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I sat like that for an indeterminate amount of time—a few minutes, perhaps. Then I had the sense to push myself back up, sit against the rock behind me, and take deep breaths as I tried to think.

The scream of grief bothered me. Thoughts of the fallen bodies didn’t affect me nearly as much as the scream. And the scream didn’t bother me as much as what it meant to me—everywhere, everywhere in this game world where tens of thousands of callous aliens had just spawned as players was a system that rewarded murdering innocents.

And not just with experience points—with vice points. And once you had a little vice, the sensible thing was to gain more power by leveling your vice rating, not by starting again with virtue rating.

How many people had died today? For the most trivial, banal reason—people wanting to do well in a video game?

Rationally, I understood that these thoughts would lead me nowhere. My own path was right in front of me—stop Haroshi, stop at least some of the killing. I couldn’t solve all of it, not by leaning against a rock and despairing.

Nonetheless, I leaned against the rock and despaired. How couldn’t I?

“Alatar?”

It was Cuby. She’d crawled to the edge of the rock—she was looking down at me, a curious face, white against the darkness. She was whispering so quietly that I could barely hear her. I looked up at her and felt another, new surge of emotion: desperation.

I wanted to do it.

I wanted to tell her everything. I wanted it as much as I think I’d ever wanted anything. Like a man who is dying of thirst wants water, I wanted someone, anyone to actually talk to—just one other person to know the insane, horrible story that had played itself out for me across the last 24 hours.

It didn’t matter that everything was going the way I wanted it to, more or less, and that Cuby knew I was lying to her and was okay with it, at least for now. It had nothing to do with my mysterious objective. I just needed a real friend.

People aren’t even built to take the good times alone, and these were not good times.

Cuby spoke slowly, quietly, and deliberately—as if she was in unfamiliar territory. She hadn’t comforted many people, I guessed.

“You value life, right?” she asked.

Silently, I nodded.

“And so if you had spent money or time to save lives you would only feel good, right? But you killed, instead, and so you feel… unthinkably terrible, right?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, that’s how I feel.”

“Can’t you let the good feelings that come with saving so many people outweigh the bad feelings from killing a few? The people you murdered don’t even share your valuation of life… if that matters. And they’re in Solarius, now… if that matters.”

Ah, yes. Heaven for aliens, or whatever it was. She’d mentioned it when first we met. “It’s not them,” I said. “It’s the NPCs, Cuby. It’s… people are going to kill them everywhere, and for nothing but a game.”

“If it helps… they don’t go to Solarius.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Shh,” she said. “Be quiet or use thought speech. But the NPCs… let the living care about them, but don’t do it yourself. You didn’t know them, so how can you care? They’re nothing now, Alatar. All of them together don’t care about this as much as you do. They’re nothing. Dead things don’t even know that they’re dead.”

I sat numb, stupefied. Cuby was just… so cold, so inhumanly cold. But more than that… I didn’t care now if it made me look suspicious.

“Cuby,” I whispered. “What… what is Solarius?”

She blinked. “It’s the main game,” she said. “The un-laddered one. The one made of a merge of all previous seasons.”

Slowly, my shaking hands came up to clutch at my temples. I could have torn at my hair. “You,” I whispered, my voice laden with fury. “You’re saying… the people we kill. The players. They live? The NPCs really die, but the players just get sent… sent away?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Those are the rules, Alatar.”

I didn’t scream, but I had to do something: I grabbed two wads of earth, clotted with grass, and squeezed, squirming against the rock in discomfort as stones and soil dug into my palms, as my fingers gripped so tightly that they whitened and the joints cracked and popped.

Then I took a few deep breaths. “Okay,” I said. I stood and turned, then quietly started to climb back onto the rock.

“Is it… okay?” Cuby asked tentatively.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve never killed anyone, Cuby. And the fact that they live while their victims die… I think it might make what we’re about to do… even easier.”