The Professor lived in an abandoned well house. Kafrim wasn’t sure what role those wells played in the game’s storyline, except that there seemed to be a total of four scattered around the world. There were more functional ones - eight, last Kafrim heard. Those served as the conduit between the two levels of the game: the fantasy world on the surface and the futuristic high-tech one below. Apparently, the main aim of the game was to somehow bring them into contact, which would then transform both worlds utterly.

Kafrim had never tried to play through the game of this world, and was quite content using it as comfortable home-like spot to rest and recover. So did many others - there was an unusual amount of humans in this world. It was so popular that there were several businesses catering to it, transporting people in and out with the help of the weird little shift bunnies.

Then there was the Professor, who was human but not quite like the others.

Kafrim didn’t know where the Professor had come from, or who he really was, but he didn’t know anyone else who knew as much about the scattered worlds of their post-Event universe. The man was weird but insatiably curious and he knew more about what was going on than anyone else Kafrim had met. Which made him an invaluable ally. If frustrating.

Kafrim stopped in front of the tilting door and gathered himself. There was no telling what might be inside today. The Professor collected beasts and animals and built strange machines, all three of which were often dangerous.

He knocked on the door, his trademark tap-tap-tap-taptap---tap.

“Come in!” the Professor shouted. “Door’s open!”

Well, yes, Kafrim thought, since it couldn’t be closed. Still, he figured it was better to be polite with the Professor. As soon as he stepped in, the Professor called out again.

“Mind your head, there’s a knife-copter flying around a bit loosely.”

Kafrim ducked quickly and looked around but saw nothing flying near him. He walked into the house in a crouch, listening for any kind of whirring sound. The Professor was in his workroom just beyond the hallway, working on his computer.

“What’s a knife-copter?” Kafrim said as he stepped inside.

“Oh, hi Kafrim,” the Professor said. “Are you... no, you’re still just you, right?” The Professor cocked his head and peered at him.

“Yeah,” Kafrim said. “Just me.”

“Oh. Good. I mean, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. When are you planning to do it? You haven’t given up, have you?”

“No,” Kafrim said and slowly stood. “What’s a knife-copter, and what can it do to my head?”

The Professor tore himself from the computer screen and turned towards him. The man was dressed, as always, in a white lab coat, and his grey-brown hair floated messily about his head.

“It’s a test,” he said. “It’s like a small helicopter, but it has knives for blades. I thought of it when you mentioned those birds you’d been having trouble with. A knife-copter should clear them out quite effectively. I haven’t gotten the magic controller fine-tuned yet, so it’s a bit erratic.”

“Sounds like a good weapon,” Kafrim said. “Outdoors, rather than indoors.”

“Yeah yeah,” the Professor said, waving it away. “Why are you here already? I thought you were going off on your raid.”

“I am. I just want to see if you’ve come up with anything else that could be useful. I can use every scrap of information I can get.”

“Nooo...” the Professor said, furrowing his brow thoughtfully. “I’ve told you everything I know. There isn’t very much, you know.”

“I know,” Kafrim said, looking around for a chair. He found one, and sat.

“Any sightings?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. I haven’t really looked. I have other important things to do as well, as you’re very well aware.”

“Mm.” Kafrim wrinkled his nose.

“If he’s not there, you’ll just have to wait. You say you can speed up time - it shouldn’t feel like very long however long it is.”

“Anything more on those black holes?”

The Professor shook his head and turned back to the computer. “I’ve read everything I’ve found. There isn’t much about that either.” He glanced at Kafrim. “If you succeed, you know what I want you to do.”

“Oh, I know. Just figure out a way to connect a cable to the old world, so you can access the real Internet.” He shrugged. “I have absolutely no idea how that would work, but – sure.”

“There’s just so much missing in these worlds,” the Professor complained. “Those authors and game designers were scatter-brained like chickens. Why couldn’t they put some real effort into world-building?”

“Actually,” Kafrim said, in an attempt to stave off this familiar lecture, “I was wondering if I could crash here tonight. I’ll be gone early tomorrow, I just need to borrow your guest bed.”

The Professor squinted at him. “You keep saying you’re such a mighty thief. Don’t you have any other place you could stay? Some empty mansion where you could borrow a bedroom.”

“Of course I could. But I have a big thing coming up, and I need some quiet and calm to prepare.”

“Eh,” the Professor said. “Suit yourself. But I’ve already had dinner.”

“No problem. I’ve got some sandwiches. Thanks, prof.”

The Professor waved at him and then pointedly turned his attention back to the computer screen. Kafrim rose and headed towards the guest bedroom. He’d probably need to empty the bed of all the junk the Professor kept storing on it. As he exited the room, he heard a soft whirr and ducked quickly, just before the knife-copter glided through the air where his head had been.

He caught a glimpse of it - it was small and light-weight, more suited to battle butterflies than birds, but it could make an interesting pattern of bloody scars on his forehead if it hit him. And worse, if it hit his eyes. He made a mental note to close the door carefully, so the thing didn’t fly in during the night.

The night turned out to be uneventful, and Kafrim got up early. Which for him meant around eight. He felt well rested, and decided to skip breakfast. He made some coffee, and whistled tunelessly to himself as he drank it.

So, this was it. The morning of the great heist. By evening, he’d either be powerful beyond belief, or dead. Or worse than dead, if the myths were true. It was a momentous occasion, but it felt like any old morning.

They always did, Kafrim knew. The world didn’t care about his momentous occasions. It just kept spinning, or whatever the strange post-Event worlds did.

Kafrim downed his coffee, and then got ready to do battle. The Hollow God’s world was a game world, so he’d have his inventory. The only consideration was what he’d do afterwards. His plan was to shift to his familiar retreat place, which was a book world, without inventory. He didn’t really want to carry a backpack, and there wouldn’t be time to put it on in the fight.

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After some deliberation, he decided to wear his combat leather jacket and trousers, along with dark sunglasses. The glasses were mostly for show, although they had +500 protection. The jacket and trousers also had protective powers, and would be fine against most ordinary enemies.

They looked casual, but thanks to the enchantments and all the level-raising he’d done while wearing them, they allowed him to go up against both high-tech soldiers with guns and low-tech knights with swords or bows and arrows.

They probably wouldn’t protect him against a being who could rip him apart by tearing up spacetime itself, if that was really what the Hollow God did. The Professor said so, and Kafrim knew the Hollow God came from a science fiction game - but it still felt like, well, science fiction.

Kafrim stuffed some healing sandwiches and his most powerful potions in the inner pockets of the jacket. The flasks weren’t in the way, but the slight bulge made him look less stylish. Better alive than stylish, though.

He didn’t expect a real serious fight with the Hollow God himself - subterfuge, and the surprise of beating him at his own game would be his main tool, but the god had underlings who might well try to engage him. Some of them might even be competent, so he chose his preferred high-tech weapon - the light saber he’d stolen in one of the Star Wars games.

Thus armed and armored, Kafrim stepped out into the bright morning light, found a nook just around the corner, closed his eyes and shifted.

----------------------------------------

Kafrim opened his eyes in a dark cave, with the opening as a circle of bright light straight ahead. It was the same place he’d appeared last time he’d shifted in; he suspected it was the game’s starting point. He walked out of the cave and looked out over the flat landscape ahead.

The cave was up on a hill, which sloped down towards a thick jungle, and beyond it he could see the grasslands which faded into desert, and beyond that, as a faint glimmer in the horizon: the tall spire of the Hollow God’s lair.

He hadn’t played this game very much, not with the hollow guy around. It was a game world, and so he should respawn if he got killed - but not if he got eaten by the god. That’s what they said, and he’d had exactly zero interest in testing that theory.

So, now he had to get through a mostly unknown game. At least he had two things going for him, in that he was actively looking for the big boss and not trying to avoid him, and that he could shift up.

He did just that, a little at first, to check that it worked, and then a lot. He began jogging down the hill towards the path leading into the jungle. Just before he plunged beneath the thick canopy, he pulled his light saber and flicked it on. It should be more than enough to deal with anything the game threw at him, at his speed.

The jungle flowed past as a mix of sharp, flickering detail and soft, flowing shadow, and Kafrim kept himself fully alert. Nothing attacked him, though. He was almost disappointed.

The path widened to a road, and he ran past the first branch, which lead to a small town where the game began in a normal run. He ignored it this time, and kept running.

It didn’t take him long to move through the jungle, and he wondered at the lack of opponents. Last time he’d been here there had been a lot of mostly minor jungle animals and monsters, but also natives, and colonists from Earth who had crash landed in a clearing. It had gotten pretty involved for a while. This time, nothing.

He paused for a moment as he reached the grassland and leapt up on a large rock to get an overview. The grass stretched out before him, motionless in his accelerated state, and he saw gray animal backs rising out of it here and there.

And there, on the horizon, the spire glinted in the sunshine. So, onward.

He hadn’t run for more than a minute of his time when something leapt onto the path in front of him. He didn’t stop, he just leapt into the air and swung the light saber. It cut cleanly straight through the head of the monster, or animal - no, monster, he decided, as he saw the bright yellow light in its eyes fade as it crumpled.

He landed on the other side of the carcass and stopped, waiting to see if anything else would happen. The thing had been weirdly quick, to jump out in front of him. Except... he frowned as he looked at it. It had still been in the air when he struck it, and now it was lying in a strange angle.

He turned slowly to scan the tall grass around him. He could just barely make out a dark shape a few meters in - one of the monster’s buddies. Moving as slowly as you’d expect from an in-game creature. Which meant... the one he’d killed hadn’t jumped him on its own.

Kafrim considered this for a moment, then shrugged and began running again. There could be several explanations, and he didn’t really care. He had a mission to complete, not a mystery to solve.

There were other monsters on the path, but even the fastest ones moved like slugs as he approached them. He simply leapt over them. They didn’t even notice he was there until he was gone.

And then, suddenly, his time sense went berserk. He tried to stop, but before he could, a small black sphere appeared right in front of him. It hung there for an instant, and then expanded, impossibly fast, and became a circular window to - a space station?

Not a window, Kafrim realized as he ran straight into it, a hole – a hole in space-time. He very nearly threw up as he found himself tumbling through the air in zero-g, in the middle of a large hall with steel walls.

What the heck, he thought, as he began to shift down, to literally slow himself down. He kept an eye on the far wall, approaching at high speed, but as he slowed down, he began falling towards the floor.

It was a good thing he was reasonably flexible, and another good thing that he managed to remember to turn off the light saber just before he landed on the floor and half-ran, half-stumbled several steps before he could recover. As it was, he hit his leg with the saber, hard, but didn’t cut it off.

As he regained his balance and looked around, he realized where he was. It was indeed a large hall with steel floor, walls and ceiling, and a long red carpet stretching from what looked like hangar doors to a raised dais, with a black throne.

As he watched, the wall behind the throne split down the middle and slid apart, revealing the star-scape beyond. And then the Hollow God stepped out from behind the throne.

“Who are you?” he said, in a deep, echoing voice. It was probably supposed to be impressive, especially if you played the game with some kind of surround sound, but Kafrim found it annoying. The guy sounded like he was in three different places at the same time.

“I’m Kafrim,” he said, “the greatest thief in all the worlds.”

“So I thought,” the Hollow God said, and stepped down from the dais with his cloak billowing around him.

The cloak. Kafrim stared at it hungrily. The magical cloak. His cloak. Well, soon, anyway.

“I know your plans,” the Hollow God went on, and Kafrim raised his eyebrows. “You remember old Rimpley, of course.”

Kafrim simply nodded, without speaking. Old Rimpley, yes, one of the regulars at the Daft Craftsman, who usually sat at the end of the bar.

“He is in me now,” the Hollow God said. “What he knew, I know.”

Kafrim nodded again, more slowly. This made sense, in a semi-horrible way. Not really horrible - Rimpley had been a game character, and so it didn’t matter all that much if he’d been eaten by the hungry god, but still. It also confirmed one of the main theories for just why the Hollow God knew so much he shouldn’t.

Unfortunately for Kafrim, it was the theory he disliked the most. Rats, he thought, and then put it aside.

“If you know my plans,” he said instead, “we don’t have much to talk about. Let’s fight!”

He flicked the light saber on, shifted up a bit, and ran towards the Hollow God. Who just stepped to the side - and appeared three meters away. Without going through the space in between, but caused an almighty twist to Kafrim's time sense.

Kafrim leapt into the air as the Hollow God sent a ripple towards him, and just barely dodged it. He shifted up further, and landed unsteadily as the floor seemed to be swaying beneath him. It wasn’t just the floor, he realized - his time sense was wobbling, making him nauseous. He ignored it.

Ripple on, my friend, Kafrim thought as he regarded his foe. The Hollow God was imposing, at almost three meters tall and clad in all black, except for the stars glittering on his cloak. It was deceptive, he knew - the cloak could make him look like anything.

There was absolutely no good in waiting. Whether or not the guy knew what Kafrim could do, he was way too dangerous on his own. Another one of those ripples, and Kafrim would be shredded into small pieces that the god could consume at his leisure.

Kafrim screamed, more to vent his own excitement than anything else, pressed the extra button the Professor had installed on the light saber, and threw it towards the Hollow God. The guy looked surprised as the saber shot stabs of light in all directions, and as he bent to dodge it, Kafrim shifted up as far as he could, and launched himself at the Hollow God.

He would get one chance, he knew, one chance only. He ignored the Hollow God himself and kept his gaze fixed on the nearest edge of the cloak. The god was still twisting away from the light saber, but Kafrim felt his time sense warping again and realized the guy was getting ready to ripple, or perhaps to step away.

No, Kafrim thought, no - you - won’t!

The Hollow God seemed to realize that, suddenly, and Kafrim grinned to himself as he heard a distant, warped roar. The guy was screaming in rage, and trying to both ripple and step out, but he was too slow. He was too slow - Kafrim was faster!

The cloak swirled behind the Hollow God as Kafrim took the last step and stretched out his fingers. He was ready to shift out, any moment now, and as his fingers touched the cloak, he did.