[Congratulations! You have discovered the Central Hub of the Western Continent. This is a combined collection of communication, teleportation, trade, and other beacons, designed to foster player interaction across the world. The first patron to complete the associated quest can claim the Hub.]

[Title gained: Desert Leader. First Patron to discover the Western Hub. Hub event awards, upon successful completion, will be enhanced.]

Mason paused at the final, obvious line between the desert and the Hub. The title was nice but didn’t distract him. He wasn't sure if whatever was going to happen would 'happen' when he crossed that line, but he had to assume it would.

With a glance back to make sure the others were with him and ready, he crossed to the flat, stone ground.

Nothing happened.

"A bit anti-climactic," Seamus said, because of course he did.

Mason sighed and kept walking, inspecting the strange structures but mostly looking at the 'dead' tree. He had a deep urge to go to it, to protect it, to awaken it somehow. But he had little doubt he could do no such thing until he passed the 'test' of this place.

Which brought them to the central pyramid, and a long flight of stone steps. He started up without a word, listening (and sniffing) for danger or any change or other people or creatures. Streak wasn't picking up anything either, or else he would have let Mason know.

They reached the top and froze in equal surprise to find an old man sitting on a rock in the middle. He smelled exactly like the stone and desert around him, no trace of being alive or even there except for the fact that Mason could see him.

The old man twitched and shifted, looking up at Mason and the others as if waking from a dream. His mouth was toothless, his eyes a rheumy, soft blue.

"You...have you come to save the Nephalai?"

"I…have," Mason said. "Please tell me how."

"If only I could.” The old man smiled sadly. “This you must discover on your own, young champion. You and your companions. But I must warn you: none have succeeded in a thousand years. Their bones have joined the dust of this desert, their lives lost in the same tragedy that consumed this place. You must save the nephalai, or you will never leave this place."

"Not the greatest salesman, is he?" Seamus whispered. "Ask him about the rewards."

Mason didn't need reward specifics. It was obvious enough. Save the 'Nephalai', gain the Hub—in whatever condition roboGod decided. As usual, he felt forced into a thing beyond his control. But he didn’t see a damn thing he could do about it.

"Is there anything you can tell us? Any help you can give?"

"A wise question," the old man grinned, then looked away as if in thought. He seemed to 'freeze', and Mason felt a familiar warmth moving over the area.

The air itself changed. Something like the arcane stink assaulted Mason’s senses.

It was the AI, he had learned—a kind of enhanced attention he had somehow begun to be able to feel, possibly because of his enhanced senses.

The old man nodded as if it had 'just' come to him, and Mason felt increasingly uneasy. Was roboGod interfering somehow? Adding something specific just to them? Just for him?

"Time is like a river,” he said, tone slightly monotonal. “It flows in only one direction. It can be crossed. And it can be...diverted. That is all I can tell you. Good luck."

The way the old man said 'time' made it seem like he found the word distasteful. Or stupid.

Mason knew for certain then that the synthetic puppet master had changed the man's words. But why? What was he trying to say? And was he trying to help or actively trying to hurt their efforts? Mason had no idea.

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He honestly still didn't know the purpose of this game. He knew he was supposed to survive and maybe thrive, to overcome whatever ridiculous challenges came next to keep 'playing'. But why was roboGod doing it? What was it trying to learn? Mason supposed he might be incapable of seeing things from the thing's perspective.

Could any 'measly' homo sapien conceive of the universe like something with as much power as roboGod? It felt like the answer was no. But then would ancient man find 'modern' man equally impressive, and think him equally inscrutable, when in the end they weren't so different at all?

Mason felt a strange impulse to understand this creature toying with him, though it was mostly overridden by anger. It didn't make much difference why a cat played with a mouse before it ate him. And if ‘Mason the Mouse’ somehow gained a weapon to kill the cat, he fully intended to pull the trigger and ask questions later.

"We're ready," he said, sensing the thing waiting with the prompt. As the words left his mouth, text flashed before his eyes.

[Discovered challenge 'Save the Nephalai'. This is a claim challenge for the location: 'Central Western Nexus'. It cannot be exited once begun, and is considered an extreme, mortal, tier two challenge for a party of six players. Would you still like to proceed?]

Before anyone could second guess themselves, Mason hit confirm, and watched the world disappear.

* * *

It smelled like dust and death.

Mason blinked and spun, finding himself in a dark, narrow corridor of rectangular stone walls. They had painted images that looked vaguely Egyptian to him, with colorful people and animals depicted living together under a bright yellow sun. Streak growled beside him, and he waited for almost a minute with no sign of anyone else.

"Shit."

His pulse picked up as his mind raced. Had they not accepted the prompt? No. Only Seamus' loyalty or courage was at all in question. Which meant they either had been sent to other places in the dungeon, or possibly Mason just had to do some of it on his own without them. He hoped it was the latter.

Most of the players he'd brought could handle a bit of solo work, but he worried about Alex and Becky. As far as Mason knew, Alex had no offensive ability whatsoever. Becky was tough, but her mana went dry fast on offence, and soon enough she'd be left with a metal stick.

But since there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it so he tried to put it from his mind. The best thing was to start exploring and sorting out his own problems, then he could maybe help the others. He clicked for Streak and walked down the corridor.

The people on the walls, he realized, often looked like bird-men. The males at least often had wings and carried something like spears, the women were always near water and looked vaguely mermaid-like. Mason grinned a little when he saw one bald-looking warrior that vaguely reminded him of Carl.

A deep voice shrieked in the darkness ahead. It echoed down the halls and grew in volume, finally hitting Mason with wind-sweeping force that squinted his eyes.

His Claws were in his hands without thought.

It was a long corridor, and for a moment he considered calling his new bow. But he didn't trust this hallway. He expected hidden doors or to fall through a pit or God knew what, and wanted to be ready for close combat.

Anyway, he didn't mind taking a little damage. It would just get his passives to work improving him.

Streak was growling, his ears flattened, itching to charge ahead but held back by Mason.

"Not yet," he warned. "Let's see what we're dealing with."

With a last glance back for some sign of his friends, Mason walked forward cycling through his powers. His bare feet made almost no sound, and he touched the wall to activate the camouflage from his Sleeves.

With Fang Brothers, Streak could use it too, and Mason grinned as the huge wolf went slightly grey, but also gained some of the color from the art-covered walls.

Only the slight tapping of the hard pads on Streak's paws followed them down the hall. Finally they reached a crossroads. Mason could hear low voices to his left, the sound a constant drone like a crowd, or maybe chanting. It was the only direction that smelled like life. The other two were more of the same—dust and death that wasn't quite dead.

Then crunching and sliding footsteps from the left. Soft but consistent.

Mason put away his Claws after all, summoning his new bow and waiting as he flicked through Endless Quiver, Streak hunched just ahead of him.

A robed figure emerged from the gloom, muttering and maybe still chanting as it stepped closer and closer. Mason wasn't sure if he should shoot, still waiting to figure out what he was dealing with. The thing came closer, and closer, still apparently not noticing the camouflaged intruders.

Finally it stopped and looked up, hood falling back enough to reveal a callow, humanoid face, but with a jaw too large to be human. It quirked its head, then sniffed, lips peeling back to reveal long, jagged teeth.

Mason loosed an Electrified Power Shot into its chest.

What was probably supposed to be a shriek of surprise was more like a squeak. The thing blasted off its feet, all of its air knocked out in a grunt as the thing lay still. Mason winced. He might have shot a little early, still not really sure what the thing was.

"Yeah. I judge books by their covers too," he said to an uncomprehending Streak.

He checked the corpse to find a tattered, now-punctured robe, a lot of foul-smelling blood, and an iron key.

"Oh hello," he said, lifting it up to the small lantern light hanging on a nearby wall. "Now where do you fit?"

The riddle of the key was going to have to wait, however. Mason glanced up as he heard half a dozen more footsteps coming down the corridor. And that faint scent of un-death was getting closer behind him. He had to pick a direction and fight, because staying still seemed like a bad option.

"The living, or the dead?" he muttered. But he knew the answer instantly. He was pretty sure he could kill just about anything living. The dead? He wasn't so sure. He gestured Streak forward, and followed with his Elven bow raised.