With a mixture of relief and disappointment, Azalea didn’t have much of a chance to question Caius and figure out the mystery of his sudden revival. He seemed uncertain about everything himself. But what he did know, he shared freely with them, lowering his voice and explaining all that had passed since Azalea had logged out the previous night.

“I somehow knew I was going to die,” he said, his voice untroubled. He’d clearly come to terms with his death, they thought. Pity the same couldn’t be said for Azalea. “I was laying there in my bed, and I could feel it coming on. So instead of sitting there staring at my ceiling, I logged back into the game.”

He glanced at Azalea then, his eyes heavy with remorse. “I did think of telling you, but I didn’t want you to face the end after what we’d gone through. Plus, I wasn’t sure I could stay composed. I didn’t want to put you through my own anger right before I died.”

“That still begs the question, Caius,” Riley interrupted. For once, his trademark cheeky grin was nowhere to be seen. “How are you here? Even if you die while logged into a game, you can’t control your avatar. At best, you’d wander aimlessly in the last direction you were walking.”

“That’s what I thought would happen,” Caius agreed. “So what I had planned to do was aim my character south. We don’t know what’s down there, right? Well, I’d hoped that at least my avatar could make some achievements on the way.”

He fell silent for a moment, but Azalea knew there was more coming, and didn’t try to interrupt. “That was when he found me.”

“He?” She asked, forgetting her resolution not to interrupt at once. “Who are you talking about?”

Caius didn’t answer at first. He looked each of them in the eyes, Patsy included, to make sure they were paying full attention and couldn’t hear or misunderstand what he said next. “Marcine.”

A shocked silence fell over their table. Even amidst the loud noise of the crowded taproom, the silence was pervasive. It lingered over and around them like a heavy blanket, appearing to dampen the ruckus around them. Oscar was the first to recover his tongue. “Marcine? Do you mean the god that the Terrians worship? That Marcine?”

Caius nodded simply, offering nothing else. He must have known how insane that sounded to the others, but he didn’t attempt to elaborate, embellish the tale, or even to convince them. He let them sit with the answer for a moment, almost as if he’d practiced this conversation several times while waiting upstairs for them to return.

“But…” Azalea couldn’t wrap her mind around this strange new concept. She was still reeling from his sudden reappearance, an event she couldn’t accept so easily as she was still trying to process his death. Combined with everything else they’d witnessed and discovered these past few days, it was all too much. She felt as if one more surprise, even a tiny one, would break her mind and make her go crazy.

“But that’s an NPC,” Oscar said, finishing the thought she couldn’t. “He doesn’t exist outside the game.”

Under the shock and numbness, Azalea felt a flare of annoyance at Oscar’s comment. Was he really trying to imply that Caius would lie about something this serious? But before she could reproach her ally, Caius answered him. “Well, it turns out he does.”

“So he’s a player character after all,” Riley guessed. “He’s the head admin of the game or something? Is that why the Terrians treat him like a god?”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Caius said. But his face hinted at more. “But I was wrong. He’s… not human.”

“Are you saying that a Terrian somehow created this game?” Oscar asked. His tone was deadpan now, and his eyes were narrowed slightly, suspicious. “Come on, Caius. You can’t really expect us to believe that.”

In Oscar’s mind, such a thing was impossible. Operating only on the facts he knew, Caius had died, and now - for some reason he wasn’t being told - his avatar was here, moving and talking as if its owner hadn’t really died. If he hadn’t witnessed Azalea’s grief for himself, he might have thought this was some bizarre, elaborate prank that his guildmates were pulling on him. But he also couldn’t contradict that idea, because he had seen Azalea crying. She hadn’t faked that. So how could this be? Caius’ next words put in the final piece of the puzzle he was missing.

“I think we all suspected who was really behind this game,” he said, sharing a meaningful look with Riley and Oscar. “Or rather what was behind it? It’s too good to be anything else.”

Azalea had no clue what he was talking about, nor had he shared any suspicions about who he thought had made this extraordinary game. Because she did know enough about gaming after living with him for so many years, that she could recognize this game was a rare stroke of genius. But the only time they’d discussed the identity of the game’s developer had been the day before they’d started playing it when those first emails had reached them.

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“Of course,” Oscar said, so quietly that they almost missed it. “It makes perfect sense. It’s the only answer. And of course, they wouldn’t publish the fact that they were doing it.”

Riley nodded slowly. “It’s not like anyone would believe it. Even if they did, they’d hate it.”

“Everything about it has been so contentious,” Caius added. “How many movies and games have all foretold of it?”

“And most of those weren’t exactly positive,” Riley agreed.

Azalea was thoroughly lost, and she didn’t like it one bit. “What in the world are you three talking about?”

“Caius is saying that he thinks an AI created this game,” Oscar told her. “It’s something that we suspected because there aren’t any bugs. There are no imperfections to this game. That’s not just hard to pull off, it’s impossible. There’s no way a human could make a perfect game.”

Caius nodded in reply to everything Oscar stated. “I’m convinced that’s who Marcine really is. He says that’s not even his true name, just what he made for this world..”

“Still,” Oscar said, in an attempt to be reasonable, “There’s no guarantee that what you met actually was a genuinely true AI. We could just be looking at the most gifted programmer ever to exist.”

But at that, Caius shook his head firmly. “He offered to let me live again, in the game, forever. As a Terrian, but with the respawning powers of a player. He didn’t tell me how he did it, but the fact that he did proves it can’t be a human. That technology doesn’t exist.”

“Well, the framework for it does,” Riley was quick to put in. “One of my friends in the real world is a nanite technician. She says that the treatments for healing and maintaining peoples’ mental health could also be used to back up someone’s brain.”

“The amount of storage space you’re taking up must be astronomical,” Oscar said, leaning back. He appeared to have absorbed this strange information rather well, Azalea thought. Certainly better than she had. “So you met the game’s creator, and he offered you a weird sense of immortality.”

“It’s more than my mind,” Caius added. “You know what the weakness of full dive is, right? You’re always aware of your real body, even if the visor paralyzes you. But I don’t have that now. I know that I used to have one, but now, I’m only aware of one body. This one.”

He tapped a hand to the metal plates that covered and protected him, and they all fell silent. All of a sudden, they couldn’t think of anything to say, not in the least because this was a conversation that none of them thought they’d ever had in their wildest dreams. It was all so… anomalous. This was uncharted territory for all of them.

So now they had a new secret. One even heavier than the true knowledge of how to combat - and by extension - everything in this world operated. Strangely, learning the identity of the game’s creator just cemented the rule that this world operated by. If you wanted to do something, you had to put in the effort. Sure, they had skills and magic, but it didn’t change the core fact of this game. It wasn’t really a game, but more a new life, one where each of their actions had a marked impact.

Which, Azalea decided, really boiled down to one thing. If this was going to be a second life for them all, and the only life that Caius could now live, they’d have to make it as good a life as possible. That meant that they had to get back to the original plan, the one that Caius was clearly eager to return to.

“So,” she said, proud of how steady and controlled her voice sounded now. “The raid.”

Caius turned to her and nodded. She could see the pride in his eyes as he looked at her. He approved of how quickly she was able to grasp what he was getting at. This game truly was his life now, so he had a different list of priorities than the others would. Her grief, her shock, her surprise, these things would all have to wait. She could handle them in her own time, she was sure. But for now, Caius needed her. She felt a great deal of comfort in that.

Judging by their next actions, Riley and Oscar were both on board as well. Even Patsy stood up as they did, a resolute sort of determination coming over the baker’s face. Oscar spoke for the trio, as Azalea had expected. “Right then. Let’s get to work on expelling this trumped-up wanna-be dictator.”

Caius and Azalea both stood, determination showing plainly on their faces as well. “Yes. Let’s.”

Around them, several of the other players turned to see the figures standing and noticed their expression. The people in the taproom, those players who’d either first spawned in Silver Village or else moved here because they appreciated the quieter life, they all knew the Progenitors. Despite being the smallest guild in the area, they’d been a huge contributing factor, rivaling, and even surpassing the impact that the others had in the region. To top it off, they’d marched to Dawnbreak City and back, returning with more power and items than when they’d set out. They’d tamed that unruly, lawless city.

Almost without thinking, several of the players rose as well. Gone was the panic, the uncertainty, and the complaining. Something had changed in the air, and in their wavering resolve. Those emotions had only run rampant because there was no hand to control them. They’d had no leader. It was the first and biggest weakness that Matlin and the evil players had taken advantage of. But now Caius and his guild were back, their hands firmly on the reigns.

“We’ll join you in that,” one of the players said. Azalea didn’t recognize the person’s name, but she’d seen them around the village and even at her market stall a few times. He was as much a member of this village as she was. His words were echoed in a general rumbling murmur of agreement from about ninety percent of the taproom. Virtually every player, and even a few Terrians, had stood up in support of them.

“If you’ll have us,” another player said, grinning from ear to ear. “Something tells me you’ll need some help.”