image [https://i.imgur.com/m0UHvhm.jpg]

Paranoia and playing out misdirection, doublecross, and alliance scenarios wore me out. I mistrusted everything, but pontifications dominated my thoughts as I plodded along the river.

Having runes that repelled demons didn’t explain why Darkstep had singled me out or why he’d gotten so personal. And he’d contacted me seconds after Yula and I parted ways. Why not send a letter? If Toadkiller’s pets could banish, a rune stopping demons from touching me wouldn’t help. The group chat’s unreliable intel prevented me from knowing if Darkstep stood in league with Toadkiller or if Toadkiller had manipulated Darkstep to manipulate me.

The sleeplessness from a night of mental gymnastics left me unrested the following morning.

Duchess Apache is back on my screen again. I wish I knew how to cloak myself, too. Hey, Goldie, are you coming up north? It looks like you’re joining us.

Audigger I think so. Avoiding Toadkiller is a good way to stay alive, and Darkstep going dark again gives me the creeps. I don’t know who to trust and its exhausting.

Flagboi You can trust me, Audigger!

Audigger Wonderful. Well, that solves that.

Duchess This contest has taught me a lot about myself. I’m glad I did it.

Bircht My biology professor says death is the ultimate teacher.

Audigger Was he talking about evolution?

Bircht Yeah, that’s the analogy.

Duchess For a second, I thought you were saying the Grim Reaper taught your biology class.

Flagboi Josie mentioned evolutionary programming. The first experiment of evolutionary programming involved a reaper bot that killed inefficient strings of code that self-replicated. They rigged it like DNA, so each new string featured randomly changed characters.

Audigger Wouldn’t that make bugs and break the code? Programming has to be precise.

Flagboi It did for 99 percent of them, yes. And the reaper bot swept them away. It also killed the programs with the most lines. They ran zillions of generations in a matter of seconds, and the later generations of programs grew smaller. Even experienced programmers couldn’t figure out how the programs became so efficient.

Bircht I studied that experiment in a bioscience class. The smallest programs borrowed code from other programs, like parasites, and much of the code looked like gobbledygook—exactly like DNA.

Flagboi By killing the dumb programs, the code grew smart. It’s easy to see how The Book of Dungeons reached such complicated AI. In a way, this contest is teaching us to become better players.

Audigger You’re probably right. I’m learning to adapt. I’m going to take a flatboat north while the river is clear. D, check your mail.

Flagboi Oh! Is that another alliance in the mix? Bircht, are you in the inner circle, or is Duch just stringing you along?

Bircht She better not. I’m a secret reaper bot who culls players who backstab their partners.

Duchess Behave, Flag. Being a fifth wheel doesn’t give you the license to stir up drama.

Flagboi I prefer solitude, and knowing you’re far away gives me time to work on my project. The first person coming here is in for a very big surprise.

The contest’s organizers might not have accounted for loneliness when they concocted the battle royale. As rich and convincing as the NPC’s artificial intelligence acted, the world’s natives lacked something. By adopting Hawkhurst as my family, I shared a bond with NPCs—certainly more intimate than Femmeny’s subjugation of the kobolds, but it waned between crises. Maybe I remained a loner, or my devotion to Charitybelle clouded other relationships.

The need for connections wasn’t an issue for normal play in RPGs. Without a contest and prize money, the gameplay offered fewer reasons to fear other players. I would have liked to have played this game under normal circumstances, but that presupposed that I could ever afford it.

Crimson probably envisioned alliances and friendships when they created this contest. Player-player interaction fosters great drama for the reality show, and contestants discussing spells and combat mechanics will whet everyone’s appetite for their game. It’ll create publicity for future customers of The Book of Dungeons.

Before entering a conservatorship, my aunt had a counselor screen me for sociopathic behavior. I learned how sociopaths manipulated and preyed on people and how they didn’t feel connected to others. This contest fostered such behavior, making me wonder if any of the remaining contestants were psychotic. A real psycho doesn’t stare into nothingness or twirl their mustache like a villain—they mimic emotions, but trained professionals can often spot them.

Not only had I passed the counselor’s screening, but I remembered Crimson’s interviews. Perhaps the company weeded out candidates who showed troubling personality traits. Players wreaked enough havoc on Miros. The company wouldn’t want sickos terrorizing the countryside, but some things the other contestants said made me wonder.

On the contest map, Fabulosa’s dot crept closer to mine. I steadily moved north for two full days. The Orga River made traveling easy, aside from crossing mountain streams feeding into it. White water filled most of them, but judicious uses of Slipstream bypassed the worst of it.

The Orga got rougher and narrowed as I gained altitude. It measured only several hundred yards across, but it was shallower, and broad waterfalls segmented the stream, rendering it unnavigable to boats larger than a canoe.

Crags and rocky outcroppings appeared more often. Smooth, round boulders covered the hillsides. I’d never seen rounded stones so high, and I couldn’t imagine how natural forces could polish them. They looked like the mountains had heaved them from the depths, like a shipwreck’s flotsam burbling to the surface. Remembering the landslide on Iremont, I mentally prepared to Dig myself a hole in case something above rolled toward me.

Mineral Communion showed nocturnal goblin patrols and a four-legged dinosaur with a fin on its back. It looked less reptilian than other dinosaurs, although that might be from its size—the creature stood far bigger than dinosaurs down south.

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The forest canopy grew to the river’s edge, limiting my view of the sky and surrounding valley.

My feet crunched through late spring foliage, and the air smelled healthy despite a winter’s worth of decaying leaves blanketing the ground. Squirrels and chipmunks scurried about, making more noise than small animals ought to. It seemed a small wonder that predators never took advantage of the little guys telegraphing themselves everywhere they went. If they had more meat, Beaker would have pounced. He watched but never chased, as if pursuing something so small was beneath him.

The further we traveled north, the louder the Orga River grew. Boulders and rocks protruded from the surface, buffeted by splashing whitewater. My Familiar had never seen rivers behave like this, and the activity intrigued him. As far as I could tell, no fish lived in the tumultuous water, but Beaker dive-bombed the splashes—never low enough to get wet, but close enough for me to know that the water excited him.

After three days of travel, the river bent northeast, and a tributary divided the land into three equal pie wedges. The junction opened up the sky, previewing the terrain ahead. Without trees obstructing my vision, Miros treated me with a vista grander than anything I’d seen, including the roaring waterfalls of Arlington Harbor.

I edged close to the river to improve the view, stepping out from under the canopy. Beaker swooped over my position, happy to see me out in the open. He circled and dove in playful flybys. He enjoyed having a clear line of sight of me and took the opportunity to fly higher.

Ahead, two great mountains ascended into the stratosphere. Their bases measured at least twenty miles each, culminating in summits I doubted held breathable air.

Beyond them towered mighty Grenspur, the world’s highest Mountain. Grenspur looked more like a deformation of the planet than a natural formation. Its base stretched a hundred miles, wider than the twin peaks before it. Its crest disappeared into a faint silhouette as blue as the sky. Under such surreal proportions, it looked to pose a danger of colliding with the four moons passing overhead.

Beaker climbed so high I had to search the skies before spotting the tiny speck of his outstretched wings. It’s a shame he didn’t let me ride on his back. He looked big enough, and it would trivialize traveling the continent.

He flew much higher than I’d ever seen a bird go and had grown nearly as big as his mother when we found her beneath a kobold net. His ability to dive to and effortlessly regain altitude showed great strength and endurance.

Apache Hey Audigger, I can see Grenspur. I’ve had trees and mountains blocking my view for these past few days, and now I’m seeing it for the first practically at its foothills. I can see what you mean when you say people in Siros use it to orient themselves. Isn’t that on the northern coast?

Audigger Siros isn’t on the river. It’s close to the ocean. Can you see the Gray Manors yet?

Apache No, what are they? You mentioned them before.

Audigger It’s a bunch of little plateaus over Blyeheath.

Fabulosa That makes them mesas, not plateaus.

Audigger Is there a difference?

Fabulosa Buttes are like pillars, mesas are fatter, and plateaus are part of a large land mass.

Audigger Well, the Gray Manors are a mix of all three, and in the morning, they look like buildings on the horizon. Hence, Gray Manors.

Fabulosa I can see them. They’re north of me. Grenspur is barely visible at sundown.

Audigger The Gray Manors are gorgeous at sunrise. It was the only time of day when people in Siros could see them.

Duchess I’m looking forward to seeing them myself. Why don’t you wait up for us, Apache? We can see it together.

Apache Heh. Thanks for the invitation, but I already got a date.

Flagboi You see! I told you they were a power couple.

I saw nothing that looked like buildings on the horizon. Across the river, the ground sloped up to the two mountains kneeled before Grenspur. I almost asked if anyone knew their names, but the twins stood on the southeast side of Grenspur’s bulk. Northern settlements wouldn’t have seen them.

I didn’t deliberate which branch to take. The western fork led to Bircht and Duchess, who moved toward me. The other stream pointed in Fabulosa’s direction. Meeting her on the eastern bank, away from the other players, seemed the only sane option.

At first, I hoped the pair would head to Heaven’s Falls, where Flagboi promised his big surprise. I could only interpret their steady advance as hostile—and there seemed no point in raising the issue in the group chat. Even though they lay two days away, they hoped to catch me before Fabulosa and I grouped up. Following the northeastern fork, I would simultaneously move toward my partner and away from them.

I waded into the water and nearly killed myself. Crossing the river proved too treacherous. Amphibious allowed me to ignore currents, but my swimming power wouldn’t work in waist-deep water. I smashed into great rocks that tore apart the stream. The deeper parts spun me around so violently that I couldn’t accurately trigger my Amphibious’s jumping ability, and Slipstream wasn’t available while submerged.

Beaker wasn’t any help, screaming in my mind while the river tossed me around. “Get out of the water! The water sparkles!”

After catching myself in an eddy along the bank, I leaped ashore, panting, wet, and without half my health. Only my Circle of Temperance kept my joints from numbing from the chilly mountain water.

Beaker landed on a nearby rock and squawked to protest my reckless behavior.

“I know. I won’t do it again, pal, but I just had to try.” Overcoming the weight of my wet robe, I stood.

Beaker stayed on his perch until I backed away from the river. If I made any moves to cross it again, it would earn me an earful.

It looked like I couldn’t cross the northeaster fork of the river. It gouged through the mountains, making precipitous waterfalls. The mountain streams feeding it did the same. If I continued north, I would have to head further up the hillside.

Turning around, I scanned the Bluepeaks. I saw no mountains while traveling along the river because trees blocked my view.

Though I’d traveled along goblin country, none objected to my journey. Traveling by day explained the unopposed passage. I passed occasional cairns and totems, but Mineral Communion showed the sites infrequently visited by goblin scouts or hunting parties.

Orcs occupied the eastern banks, leaving the northern lands to bugbears, the largest relatives to goblinkind. Greenie’s teachings hadn’t covered them.

After a quick Rest and Mend, I crossed the river’s northwestern fork, the narrower of the two. It offered enough challenge to make the crossing an hour-long affair. I kept out of the water and waited for Slipstream to cooldown almost a dozen times.

Fabulosa’s cloak might make quick work of the river if the winds favored her. I needed speed if I couldn’t use geography to avoid Bircht and Duchess.

The foothills ahead sloped into open grassland—idyllic vistas like Austria or Switzerland. It seemed improbable undead occupied the northern lands, but I still wanted to maximize my daylight. Open pastures promised longer days ahead.