I dropped into the crevice, ducked into the cave, and found Cuby lying on her bedroll in her tent, staring up at nothing much as she’d done when we’d killed Ryxariel. She blinked, then looked over at me, her face aglow with the light of the Hardlight Tether she’d wound around a stalactite.
“I need to win the season,” I said.
She sat up. Nodded. “Okay.”
“No objections?” I asked. “No reservations?”
“Nope!” she said, smiling. She glanced at Brandon as he flew from my shoulder to perch on a nearby stalagmite, but otherwise paid him no mind.
“Good,” I said. I thought about telling her that I could essentially do anything for her if I won—that I would have untold control of the simulation, but also the human technology outside. But if she didn’t need to be convinced, there was no point in telling her anything she didn’t need to know. Instead I said: “I have a plan. I want you to help me figure it out—you know the Hierarchy a lot better than I do.”
I moved and pulled my bedroll out from my tent’s entrance, enough so that I could sit down on it. “I’ll bet that the environment we landed in is repeated almost everywhere in the world—a few small settlements surrounding a dungeon, a few chosen spawned around them that can rally the other players into large groups.”
“Three chosen,” said Cuby. “Two at Oromar’s Bastion and one at Veleth’s Rest—I think you might have been completely anomalous. The system might not have counted you as chosen when it distributed them—and I don’t even know if their distribution was random. Still, I think something’s wrong.”
“What?”
She frowned and worked her mouth. “It’s just, I didn’t think they would be this dense. Even just two in this small an area. I don’t know how many players there were around Oromar’s Bastion to begin with, but even one chosen for the three towns feels… out of proportion.”
“Your assumptions about how many chosen there are—what were they based on?”
Cuby shrugged. “Just stories, I suppose. There never were any exact figures. But the thing is, people get sent here when they retire—that’s what happened with me, right? Councillor Ortica reached a position where it was more worth it to get rid of me than to keep me around when I knew so much.”
“Sounds cold.”
“It’s the game,” she said, shrugging again. “This was my reward. I knew it was coming. But that’s what I’m worried about—the Council would be doing a lot of restructuring after Ortica got into power. She might dismiss a lot of underlings, and have a lot of them dismiss underlings. The Executors especially will be in upheaval. There might be triple the number of ranked taxin el that a normal season has just on account of that.”
“Good,” I said. “We’ll be sending them to Solarius and taking their boon cards. The more the better.”
“Mm,” Cuby said dubiously. “Enthusiasm is good! But they’re your only real competition. The fewer the better.”
“First time dungeons grant boons, too,” I said. “This one gave five. There’ll be a lot of them floating around—but it’s a guarantee that the groups that finish dungeons will acquire the most power, which means territory and potentially clashes with neighboring groups over boon cards and resources.”
“Potentially?” Cuby said, grinning. “It’s not maybe—trust me, whoever took the neighboring dungeons will be looking at us fairly soon.”
“Vice points mean that players can gain powers from massacres,” I said. “Nerien and Haroshi had two teleports each, and who knows what else that they used on us. If experience wasn’t already a motivator to liquidate towns, vice is moreso.”
“Six points each for the players we killed on the mountain tonight,” said Cuby.
I blinked. “What?”
“Vice,” she said. “We got six points each. I guess you were busy getting attacked by their entire team—we gained some vice points when you killed those people.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I guess that makes sense.”
I still felt a little unsettled. Sure, they were going to Solarius—but they hadn’t actually done anything wrong, had they? Just followed Nerien.
And it was probably going to be that way often, now—killing players who hadn’t committed any crime other than joining the wrong side. “The NPCs will have a good reason to need protection,” I said. “They don’t start with any chosen. None at all. Which means they won’t have protection against other chosen. The headman in Aranar had them level their guards, which might have spared them an attack, but you know how strong we are compared to equal-experience players. The base power difference, the precision and defense rating—a lot of combat is still about who gets the element of surprise, but a town can’t surprise a group of attackers who can strike whenever and however they like. If we can get lines of communication open, then a settlement that comes under attack can call to us for help.”
“Protecting the NPCs?” Cuby asked. She shrugged. “It could work. They’re definitely going to be prey.”
“Not just protecting the NPCs when they get attacked,” I said. “Proactively hunting other players. PvE doesn’t stand to give nearly the experience that killing players does—this whole dungeon gave more than Nerien and Haroshi along with half their group, but not by much. Killing players is faster, gives better loot, and gives us a chance to take their boon cards. PvE doesn’t seem to compare—it’s the grass that the antelope eat before we eat the antelope.”
“One second,” Cuby said, furrowing her brow in thought. “That was… ah, I think I get it. A predator analogy.”
“It’s the circle of life,” I said. “We grow our territory, win NPCs over to our side, hopefully vassalize their towns so that we have the extra warp to take us there—”
“I don’t have the warp,” Cuby said pointedly. “Actually, here, one second.”
Cuby has asked to become your subject.
“Ah,” I said. I accepted this and a moment later a new button appeared on the ui. It was for subjects, and I opened it, curious. It was mostly for divvying up treasure, it looked like—I could assign Cuby a rank, assign her territory, and assign her a portion of the tribute I received from Mirrakatetz, which was zero.
I opened up the territory button that I’d gotten when I took Mirrakatetz. It was the first time I’d looked at it—there’d been so much to go through that I’d left this and skills for later. But there was only one option in the whole pane, and that was setting restrictions and tribute for use of the dungeon gate.
“Oh,” I said. I showed Cuby. “We get treasure, if I ask for it.”
“That’s… interesting,” said Cuby. “But different. I don’t think the game has been done this way for at least a few seasons. It’s like the system wants to split us up into factions.”
“Maybe it does,” I said. “But whatever it wants, it’s going to happen. And we need to take this seriously. We need to win. So the NPCs in our territory get protected, and the players in our territory get an ultimatum: they become subjects, leave, or die. Nobody gets the chance to out-do me.”
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“That’s about the plan I would come up with, I think,” said Cuby. “But we’ve got to keep our virtue—the boons are strong, and switching means we’ll be lagging behind everyone with vice already. Especially since we’re not killing NPCs.”
Ah, Cuby. “We need to figure out how the whole virtue system works,” I said. “If we gained vice, then why are we still at Pure Virtue Rank 5? Why use the word ‘pure’?”
She shrugged.
“And it might not work,” I said. “That’s the thing. I’m not a military man, and if this doesn’t go well I’m not sure I’ll know how to adapt. Which just brings us to allies. We should get as many as we can—but we can’t trust them with my secret.”
“Naturally.”
“And chosen boons are much more effective when spread across multiple characters,” I said. “Three people with one boon each are much stronger than one person with three. We need trained people who can work as teams—and my first thought is to choose NPCs.”
“Huh?” Cuby asked, cocking her head. “Does that even work?”
“You don’t know?” I asked in disbelief. “I mean, surely someone like Haroshi has died in their attempt to wipe out a town before—surely an NPC has picked up a card or two in prior seasons?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Cuby said. “But I suppose it could work. They’re not different from us in any other way.”
“That’s the thing,” I said. “They have homes to protect, and knowledge of the system that they’ve lived with their whole lives. Those things should make them more motivated to fight well, but when it comes to death, I’m uncertain. They die a true death—does that make them more or less likely to fight well? What I do know is that this system was designed for human sensibilities, and the NPCs have those more than most members of the Hierarchy.”
“I have them,” Cuby said, almost sounding hurt. “At least a little, now.”
“I know,” I said. “But you’ve had to get used to them. How many other phrenodine are struggling with self-mastery and not doing nearly as well as you have about it?”
“Huh,” Cuby said. “Probably all of them.”
“Some higher-level NPCs who have seen more classes, more abilities—maybe the guards in higher level areas—they could make optimal chosen. But this brings up my last point. Something I definitely need your help with, if it’s even possible at all.”
“What is it?” Cuby asked, sounding uncertain—it almost felt like she knew what I was going to ask.
“The Hierarchy is done here,” I said. “But only technically. The chosen boons mean that the taxin el are taking top positions, and I bet a lot of the old ranking is holding in other places—at the very least because the taxin el enforce it.”
“Yeah.”
“I want to redefine the Hierarchy,” I said.
Cuby took this in for a moment, then laughed. “Good luck. Unless you tell people that you’re human….” She made a gesture, an open hand that she tilted to side as if letting something fall to the ground.
“NPCs are the closest thing to humans your people have ever met,” I said. “Maybe you think of true humans differently—more like the victors who come out of Colosseum at the end of the seasons. But NPCs are like me. We need to fit them in, probably below the taxin el, so that the other people we recruit can feel comfortable with our purpose.”
Cuby was frowning. “The telorians would hate you for all of time,” she said.
“They’re second?”
She nodded. “Though… I can’t say I’m altogether against anything that makes a telorian angry.”
I gave Cuby a flat look. “Phrenodine are third?”
She nodded. Then she glanced up at me as realizing, only as an afterthought, what I’d implied. “It’s not… look, Alatar, being second makes telorians… different. A taxin el is secure in their power, comfortable with it. And they have the right to ignore certain parts of the Hierarchy, relax it. There are good taxin el. But telorians… it’s like they have to use and abuse every scrap of power they can get their pincers on. When I was with Ortica, there were taxin el who would respect me, treat me as an equal in some cases—out of respect for her, mostly, but also just….” she gesticulated. “They respected me interpersonally. There are good taxin el, there really are. But telorians? Never. Every one of them had to disrespect me as much as they could get away with, treat me like I was a kind of—” she looked up at me and grinned. “Like I worked in waste management.”
I sighed. I had no idea how much of what Cuby had said was well-founded or just the prejudice ingrained in the Hierarchy, but if everyone else thought in the way she did about these things….
“I want to give our people some amount of comfort,” I said. “A familiarity with what they’re doing. If the NPCs are just AIs, my thinking is that members of the Hierarchy will struggle to see them as viable chosen, struggle to follow their orders and to protect them. Our mission, our methods, will be alien.”
“Yes.”
“But in this place, everyone is digital. And everyone has a soul. The NPCs are the closest thing to humans that the Hierarchy has seen—apart from the taxin el. So I need you to help me pretend to be a taxin el, take their authority. Maybe you pretend, too. And we proselytize. Spread the belief.”
Cuby was shaking her head. “I’ll help you try,” she said. “The Karox might go for it. And if I’m not pretending to be a taxin el, then I can bridge the canopy with the other phrenodine.” She let out a breath. “Your framing makes sense, too, even if it’s just what you came up with to get people to play along. But the lamue, they hate change. Even small things. The AI will love it, of course, but there’s almost none of them anyway.”
Then an idea seemed to come to her. Slowly, Cuby smiled. “Although,” she said. “NPCs, well… there’s a lot of them. If we can convince them that a place in the Hierarchy is a good idea—that’s a lot of people to join your army.”
“I’m counting on it whether we convince them or not,” I said. “If we’re the best option to keep their children safe, they can stomach the story that they’re second only to the taxin el—as long as there’s no better option.”
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll try it. Grab territory, recruit subjects, hunt players, give boons to NPCs… and redefine the Hierarchy.” She shrugged. “Why not?”
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll have to re-evaluate,” I said. “Maybe this is all just wishful thinking. Maybe I just want being the good guy to be the most effective way to win. If you think we’re going about it wrong, I’m all ears.”
“All ears,” she said, frowning.
“It means—”
“I got it,” she said, laughing. “I was just picturing it, is all. You’d be grotesque!”
“Uh, right.”
“So what do you want to do now?” Cuby asked. “Go back to the other settlements and ask if they want to be vassalized? Look for some long-distance communication spells? We definitely need them.”
“Actually,” I said. “We might have rushed this dungeon, compared to other groups. I want to find the closest nearby dungeon, get there as fast as possible, and ambush the group of players that we find there.”
Cuby blinked. Took this in. Grinned. “Alatar!” she said, almost as if praising a toddler. “I didn’t expect that from you!”
“Sending nice people to Solarius doesn’t bother me so much,” I said. “If losing our virtue boons takes even a quarter of the virtue we’ve gained this fare as vice, we’ve got room for some murders. But we can always just kill their chosen and leave the rest. I don’t know if we did this place faster than the average group is doing dungeons, but it felt like we pushed pretty hard. We ate a lot of players to out-level this place, and if the groups at other dungeons are coming out at lower levels—twelve, thirteen….” I gestured, letting the thought finish itself.
“They’ll have new classes,” she said warningly. “And a lot of boons. We might not be able to take them.”
“We’ll stop in a settlement, briefly—gather some information. But they’ll only have boons if they’re finished, and we can get very far, very fast in these mountains—I have a double-target triple-strength haste spell, we can both glide, we’re both fast climbers.”
“We can always just not engage if it’s not a good idea,” she said. “And with you—they might not even be able to see us. And even if they can see us, we might be able to just pick off the one person that has the true sight, or grants the true sight buffs.”
I smiled. “That was the plan when I picked up Master of Deception, wasn’t it? So: if we do this, we go now. We pick a direction and hope the next dungeon is as obvious as this one was—or that we can get directions on the way. We stop in a town only to charge our adventuring clocks if we think we need it.” I nodded, more to myself than anything. Though doing the dungeon had felt like ages, my clock still had almost four hours on it. It might be enough time, if we were fast. “No breaks, no negotiating with the settlements, no cashing out the loot, no finding a third fighter to load with boons. We double down now, attack now, because having twice as many boons as every other group that finishes a dungeon is the best possible way to enter the next phase of the game and win.”
Cuby laughed and stood. “Then why’d we have to figure out all that other stuff, first?” she asked. “Let’s hide our loot and go!”
“Yeah,” I said, standing. “Let’s go.”
- End of Book 1 -