Rayna pulled her cloak tighter around her. Even with the cold resistance that she gained from her encounter with the Fire Sprite, the mountain air stung any bit of exposed skin. As soon as she couldn’t see the System Hub anymore, she went to her settings and turned off her name tag. She wanted to stay anonymous for as long as she could.
She pulled up the map to make sure she was going the right way. The mountain she stood on was fully revealed, showing the terrain and some information about the area, including information on the local monsters. Rayna found that she could toggle the tracking system on and off, but unlike the map that she got in the Obsidian Forest, there was a limited range in which she could see the monster’s markers.
Luckily, the mountain wasn’t a hot spot for monster activity. The cold had likely driven most of them off. She scrolled over on the map to find the City Hub that Amon had marked.
It was outside of her revealed map and labeled, ‘Ellis’, but if the gray world and Ember were mirrors of each other—which had so far proven true with the forest and the mountain—then it was right where the Helian capital should be.
Focusing on the hub gave Rayna a notification.
Enable navigation?
Rayna accepted the prompt, and a white line appeared on the ground, stretching down the mountain.
Rayna closed her map and followed the line, keeping her senses peeled for monsters. A few times she had to diverge from the indicated path, but the white line recalculated after a few minutes, reminding Rayna of a GPS.
Most of the monsters ignored Rayna’s presence, which was a relief. The few that attacked her looked more desperate than hostile. The only thing that made them difficult to deal with was their lack of pattern.
It only reinforced what Rayna had seen within the dungeon: inside the dungeon the monsters followed a pattern, outside, they acted like regular animals.
Had Ronari been lying when she said that dungeons were natural phenomena? Or did she really not know? Rayna was questioning everything that Ronari told her up to this point.
Which meant she was back to knowing almost nothing about Ember and the System.
“One step forward, two steps back,” Rayna muttered.
Nothing answered her on the icy mountain path.
It was mid-afternoon when Rayna finally made it to the base of the mountain. It was still a long way to the city, but if she ran, she would probably make it by nightfall.
Rayna heard crunching snow and the sound of a bowstring being pulled tight.
“Turn around, nice and slow,” said a quivering voice from behind her.
Rayna froze, raising her hands in the air as her heart sped up. Slowly, she turned to face her attacker.
He stood about five yards away, bow in hand. His face was covered with a cloth mask, and he wore a scarf over his head like a hood.
It didn’t take a genius to see that he had no experience with this. His stance was uneasy, and his hands shook with the strain of holding his bow.
“Where am I?” he asked, his teeth chattering slightly. “And how do I get to the nearest town?”
Something about the situation seemed out of place, but Rayna couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She pushed the feeling aside, focusing on the threat instead.
She did her best to look relaxed, since looking nervous might exacerbate the problem. “There’s a city to the South of here,” she said. “Ellis, I think. The capital of Helia.”
It occurred to Rayna that no one had actually told her the name of the capital. She had just been calling it ‘the capital’ up to this point.
The man swallowed hard. “Do they accept System coins there?”
Rayna shook her head. “No… I think the currency is drakas. But I don’t have any of those, if this is a robbery.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Oh, no! Shit, umm…” He lowered his bow. “Sorry, I just…” He trailed off.
The man was obviously lost. Judging from the growing frostbite on his hands, he’d been wandering around there for a while.
“I’m actually traveling to Ellis,” Rayna said. “If you want to go together…?”
The man’s demeanor changed. He hung his bow over his shoulder and nodded, looking embarrassed. “You wouldn’t have anything to eat, would you?”
The question was so quiet that Rayna almost didn’t catch it from this distance.
She paused as the realization hit her. Her telepathy didn’t work for more than ten feet or so, which meant her translation didn’t either.
The man was speaking English.
Rayna closed the distance between them, startling the man so much that he exclaimed and took a step back. “What are you—?”
Rayna was only interested in the man’s name tag.
[Corban Wells — Level 10]
[Human]
“You’re human!” Rayna said, gawking at his name tag. “Like, from-Earth-human?”
“What? That’s not—I mean—I’m from…” He gave up, pulling his hood and face covering off. “How did you know?”
Rayna took a step back to give him some space. “It’s on your name tag.”
“Shit, really?” He glanced at his name tag, his shoulders drooping. “So much for the disguise. Wait, hang on. How do you know about Earth?”
Rayna thought about coming up with a lie, but she didn’t think it mattered if people knew she was from Earth, as long as she wasn’t widely known.
“I’m from Chicago,” she said.
Corban eyed her skeptically. “You don’t look like you’re from Chicago…”
“It’s a long story,” Rayna said. “Did the trial finish early?”
Or have I been in that dungeon longer than I thought? Rayna added privately.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Corban shook his head. “All I know is one minute I was taking a leak, the next I’m freezing my ass off on this piece-of-shit mountain. I’m assuming there was some kind of warning, but my System’s been bugged since day one. Can’t open it. I only know it’s working because my level keeps going up.”
Rayna grimaced. “I did a few days without Inventory. That sucks.”
“You can say that again!” Corban agreed. “So, how did someone from Chicago end up… looking like you?”
Rayna shook her head. “Your Menu was bugged, my race was.”
It was a major oversimplification of the problem, but Rayna was trying to be more discreet than she had been in the past. A stranger didn’t need to know the particulars of her predicament.
“Damn. Someone really needs to fire that Administrator,” Corban said. “This game needs a few maintenance updates.”
The wildest idea occurred to Rayna.
She was the Administrator now, wasn’t she? If she understood the conversation between Amon and Ronari, that is. Was there something she could do to fix it?
“Why don’t we start walking?” Rayna suggested. “The city is still a good way off and I don’t know about you, but I’d like to sleep in a real bed.”
Corban didn’t need much convincing.
As they walked, Rayna healed his frostbite while she consulted with her System.
Hey, System, can I access the personal profile of Corban Wells?
There are five players on Ember that are registered under the name Corban Wells.
The one right next to me…
There was a moment before the System responded.
His profile is unresponsive. Would you like to run a diagnostic?
Yes, please.
Corban, free of pain and in a much better mood after eating three bowls of stew from Rayna’s nearly empty stash, was in the middle of explaining how he got into Ember Online in the first place. Apparently, he was getting his Master’s degree in Computer Science and the game had been the subject of his thesis.
“I wanted to prove that the weak link in cyber security is user interaction. I figured since AR was a relatively new technology, there would be plenty of weaknesses I could exploit.”
Rayna raised an eyebrow. “You were going to admit to hacking in an academic paper?”
“I wasn’t going to do anything harmful,” Corban said defensively. “My goal was just to get the credentials of one of the employees and use that to get into the System. I would leave some harmless message in an official description like ‘Corban was here’ and then write about how effective security requires effective employee training.”
“So, did you do it?” Rayna asked.
“That’s the thing,” Corban said. “I couldn’t actually find a way to contact the employees. Even in game, every interaction was with an AI, so I changed tactics. I convinced the AI Administrator that there was an error with my System; told him I was supposed to be Level 45, but it wiped all of my information. I even spun some stories about what I did to earn those levels, piggy backing on some achievements from a guild I was familiar with.
“The scary part was, the AI bought it, hook, line and sinker. I ended up rewriting my paper to talk about AI being a nightmare for cyber security, because it didn’t have the reasoning capabilities of a normal person.”
He shook his head. “I was supposed to defend my thesis a week after the opening, but I got sucked here instead. Totally wasted two years of my life on that project.”
Hey System, you got anything yet?
Please be more specific with your question.
Are there any detectable problems with Corban Wells’ profile?
It appears that Corban Wells was not properly integrated because he did not receive an invitation to Ember.
What?
He was teleported here due to his proximity to one of the locations on the night of the initiation, but he is not one of the Chosen.
So, Rayna wasn’t the only one who snuck into the opening?
Can you fix it?
Please wait until the diagnostic test has been completed.
“So, you cheated your way into the opening?” Rayna asked. “Only high rankers got invited.”
“I didn’t really cheat—okay, yeah, I cheated, but it was just to test a theory. I wasn’t trying to sneak in—I’m not that interested in the game, to be honest—I just wanted—” He was starting to ramble.
Rayna laughed. “Dude, chill. I’m not supposed to be here either.”
Corban raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
Rayna sighed. “Yeah, my friend dragged me to the opening using her sister’s username as my ticket.”
Corban frowned for a moment before realization dawned on his face. “Wait, you’re that player! Roberta… Rayla…”
“Rayna,” she corrected him.
“Yeah, that’s it! The one who got out of the tutorial early! Tutorial group… 384, I think. Your friend plastered your name and description all over the forum, just in case you were placed with another group.” Corban looked at her with a newfound respect. “You’re a legend! Some of us tried everything to glitch ourselves out of the tutorial.” He glanced back at the slowly shrinking mountain. “In retrospect, that was probably a terrible idea. You’re not dead, though, so that says something positive about the survivability out here.”
“I didn’t get out of the tutorial early, I was kicked out,” Rayna said, uncomfortable with this sudden shift in topic.
“Po-tay-to, Po-tah-to,” Corban said. “What are the Emberians like? I’ve only heard descriptions, since our Tutorial Leader was a human and I ended up in overflow during the restructure on account of my broken System, I’m guessing.”
“I actually haven’t met many,” Rayna admitted. “I keep getting stuck places, so I spent the majority of the last couple weeks alone.”
Corban looked disappointed. “Well, I guess I’ll get to see soon enough.”
The conversation moved on to other things—mostly Corban’s love of computers, since he seemed to be more inclined to talk than Rayna—and she politely listened while she waited for the System to complete its test.
An hour or so later, she finally got a response.
Diagnostic complete. The test found 14 errors within Corban Wells’ profile along with the aforementioned lack of invitation. Would you like to repair his profile?
Yes, please.
Warning: this will require reinitializing Corban Wells. All of his progress will be lost. Are you sure you wish to proceed?
Rayna frowned. Could she do that to him? It would fix the problem, but ten levels was significant, especially now that he was out of the tutorial. That was nearly halfway to the First Ascension.
She tried to come up with a subtle way to suggest it to him, without letting on that she could control things.
“About your bugged Menu,” Rayna said when there was a pause in Corban’s monologue. “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
Corban laughed. “That would require a Menu or a power button. Or a plug, I suppose…” he mused. “Either way, not something I have access to. But I appreciate you trying to help.”
“Have you tried asking the System for assistance?” Rayna asked.
Corban shook his head. “My Tutorial Leader asked the Liaisons, but they’re basically brain-dead chat bots that end every conversation with ‘would you like me to contact the Administrator on your behalf?’”
Rayna nodded. “Yeah, the Liaisons are pretty badly designed…”
Hey System, can you send a prompt to Corban’s screen?
What would you like the prompt to say?
Rayna told the System what she wanted and held her breath.
Corban stopped walking, his Menu popping up in front of him. To Rayna’s surprise, she could see it.
A routine diagnostic test found an error with your personal profile. Would you like to run a repair sequence? You will lose all of your progress up to this point.
Corban didn’t even hesitate. “Yes! Run the repair!”
“What’s going on?” Rayna asked, trying not to sound too obvious.
“The System asked me if I wanted to run a repair program to fix my profile!” Corban said, grinning from ear to ear.
“Will you lose anything?” Rayna asked. “I had to reinitialize too, and the System lost all of my notifications.”
“I won’t lose anything that I can’t get back,” Corban said dismissively. “I can’t make any progress without my Menu. If this has even a small chance of working I’ll do it!”
Run the repair, Rayna told the System.
Corban’s screen changed.
Running the repair tool. Please stand by…
They stood in silence, Corban watching his screen with tense anticipation.
Welcome to the Essence System! Please input your name…
Rayna’s heart skipped a beat.
Not the Essence System! Corban can’t use Essence!
Rayna’s screen popped up.
The two Systems have been merged. There is only the Essence System now. Players who are unable to use Essence will be given an Essence-disabled profile, while players who are able to use it will be given an Essence-enabled profile.
By the time Rayna finished reading her prompt, Corban had already made it through most of the initialization process.
Are you able to manipulate Essence?
Corban frowned, repeating the question aloud.
“Just put no,” Rayna said. “Essence is an energy thing on Ember, the ability is specific to certain species.”
“Are you sure humans aren’t one of them?” Corban asked.
Rayna nodded. “A hundred percent.”
Corban sighed. “Oh well.”
He answered the prompt.
Activating your Essence-enabled profile.