Looking at my Yurt was a waste of time — I couldn’t make it through one full message before another couple hundred flew by, sabotaging any attempt to reply.

Late into the night, there was a knock at the back door. I got up from the dinner table and looked through the peephole, expecting an overzealous reporter who’d decided that trespassing was the best way to snag an article.

It was Annette.

“Oh shoot, come in! Haven’t they worked out the back door yet?”

“Apparently not. Quiet as a mouse out there.”

I poked my head outside, inspecting the street that our yard backed on to. Sure enough, not a single car was parked out there, and no cameras flashed in my face.

Annette came in and sat at the table, saying hello to Mom and Dale. We were all still gathered there in shock, dissecting the Government’s report.

“Did you do something to piss them off?” Annette asked. “Unpaid parking tickets or something? Sent some hate-mail?”

We all shook our heads.

“Cos this is ridiculous! They’ve practically turned you into a scapegoat and plastered your name all over the place. And calling you an ‘Insurgent’? Makes it sound like you’re in the wrong.”

“I’m confused by that too,” I agreed. “The Asterian Invasion was supposed to be the Six-Month Event, and there would’ve been a hundred of us with the quest, not just me. It’s like they’re switching everything around because more players happen to have sided with the Asterians.”

“Did they have any choice?” Mom asked.

“Not really. Most of the Yard players aren’t fully equipped yet, and the Asterians are strong. I don’t think people hate me or anything, they just had no better option.”

Dale pushed his chair back from the table and went to the kitchen, pulling out an assortment of baking implements.

“Preparing a midnight snack?”

“Nope. Doing some meal prep. It’s going to be a busy few days for you, and you shouldn’t waste your time making food.”

He pulled out oats, sugar, cooking apples, butter, and some other ingredients.

“If you think about it, this is an amazing opportunity — there are two kinds of people who love underdogs. First is just the general population, but the second kind is big, big guilds. If you can prove to them that you’re more than just a random player who lucked out with his fancy spear, there’ll be more recruiters outside than there are reporters.”

Annette looked at me across the table and shrugged. After recent events involving her acute judgement, I was inclined to trust whatever path she sent me down.

For now, I’d be the underdog the world wanted.

I considered logging on and playing through the night, hoping to get some ‘liberating’ done while the bulk of the players would be asleep. Chances were, the Asterian players who really wanted to win would be syncing to my time zone — sleeping when I slept and immersing when I immersed. It wouldn’t hurt to vary my hours a little — throw them off the scent.

For now, however, I was both physically and mentally exhausted. I didn’t even get to show Mom or Annette my new practice spear. I could do that later, when the rest of the world wasn’t watching.

I crashed onto my pillow like a bag of bricks, and that was that.

Luckily, I hadn’t planned out a relaxing weekend for myself. This early in the B&B race, Saturday or Sunday were the exact same as any other day. Wake up, do whatever few things I had to do, then hop in the Pod.

Dale had prepared an apple crumble, so I wolfed that down straight out of the fridge with some cream. It mightn’t have been a nutritionist’s first choice, but it got me a lot more excited than cereal with banana, or plain old honey on toast.

Annette had stayed over in the spare room, deciding that going home late at night wasn’t worth it. She grabbed a spoon and stole a scoop of my dessert-breakfast straight from the bowl.

“I helped Dale after you went to bed. You owe me.”

“There’s like, two pans of it in the fridge. Five meters away.”

She grinned and took another spoonful.

“Consider it a tax, then. No one likes tax, but you still pay it.”

I was full anyway. Facing down an army brought on butterflies like you wouldn’t imagine.

The Pod beckoned, and I set up with practiced, smooth movements. Mom’s old machine stood proud in the corner. I couldn’t imagine spending hours strung up in that thing — on a hot day, the boots and arm sockets would be…yergh.

--Immersing, please don’t disconnect--

Otto’s Pub materialised around me. It looked the same as yesterday, but the patrons had switched around a bit. Young Barney wasn’t there, and to my chagrin, neither was Marge’s son. Brayden? Brian?

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Braith.

I’d told him to stay put until I got back, but I guess a solid twelve-hour stint at the bar would be too much for anyone. Plus, he probably had NPC things to do, and I could only manipulate his AI so much.

I went to the basement. The placed smelled different than usual, like lemon and lavender mixed with…roadkill. A rustling noise came from The Safe House, and the secret door whirled open. It stretched out far larger this time, more than wide enough to accommodate even the most well-fed members of Bill’s Yard.

Or well-drank. A beer belly was a lot more common than a food belly in these parts.

Out popped Otto, flinching when he saw a pair of legs in front of the door.

“Blimey! Care to announce yaself? Nearly crapped myself there, thought you were an Asterian.”

“Sorry Otto. Might need a peephole or something so you can see who’s outside?”

He scratched at a spot on his face that could have been a chin, contemplating.

“Not a bad idea.”

“Yeah. Do you happen to know where Braith went? I kind of really need to find him and squeeze some information from his brain.”

Otto looked at me like he couldn’t decide if I meant that literally. He’d probably seen some strange things in his time as a bartender, of which brain squeezing wouldn’t top the list.

“A horn sounded just a couple streets away, sometime this morning. He went to the call because he was worried that he would be seen here, and someone would ask him why he didn’t rush over.”

“Thanks. East or west?”

“East. But it was still a couple hours ago — I doubt he’d still be there.”

“All good, thanks Otto. How’s the potion-making going?”

He produced a small vial from his pocket. To my relief, this one didn’t have a swirling purple tornado inside.

“She’s alright. Check this one out. Drink it if you’ve got an ability on cooldown that you really need. Should refresh all your cooldowns.”

I pocketed the vial, thinking of its use cases. The obvious one was if I wanted to escape quickly and needed a second [Dash], but I could also put on quite a show if I used all my abilities at once, downed the potion, then let it rip with the same barrage. Could probably frighten a lot of players into thinking I was unbeatable.

[Yo man.]

A message from Duri.

[Yo, what’s up?]

[Just hopped on to tell you about a weird article I read. Asterian players from the Yard are killing themselves to get out of the event. They say they’re too bored of walking around the streets all day achieving nothing. They’re taking the hit to their stats just so they can continue grinding somewhere else.]

[Hell. Yes. Thanks, Duri.]

That was phenomenal news. People were deserting. Like any army, if the soldiers aren’t paid their krad or rewarded in some other way, they wouldn’t hang around. I knew a few had been outfitted with Asterian armour and equipment — not including Claire who’d practically been gifted a different armour set for each day of the week — but a lot had decided to pull up stakes and move on with their lives.

Less names for me to cross off the list.

Out of curiosity, I opened my Message Requests. I was lucky there was a requirement for me to Accept or Reject people before I received notifications, because my in-game inbox was just as full as my Yurt.

And a lot of it wasn’t pleasant.

It turns out that being an ‘enemy’ to the thousands upon thousands of players in your region isn’t the best for one’s social standing. Like Duri said, a huge number of players were simply dropping out of the event, spending their time more productively, but there were still a lot of diehards ready to make a name for themselves by being the first to plunge a sword into my mostly unarmoured body.

I scrolled through a couple pages of Requests, checking the preview of the message in case there was anything of use.

[Hope you die IRL], said one.

[Cheating bastard, come out and give up], said another.

Reading them all made Esko’s concerns a lot more believable. A lot of these would be ‘keyboard warriors’, but still, I’d be checking the locks on the doors tonight. The Government’s crime statistics painted a lovely picture of a frictionless society, but reading these, I wasn’t so confident.

All I could do for now was try to get my name out of the limelight. The easiest method would be going out and letting a random Asterian hit me right where it hurts, but I wasn’t so keen on sprinting down that path.

The better way was to destroy the Asterians, avoid the surge of reporters, then disappear for a while until some super-couple broke up and my little foray became a little blip in B&B history.

Not exactly ‘escaping’ the limelight, but it was a plan.

I left Otto’s via the rooftop access, scanning every porch, alley and street in the vicinity. The streets were the most heavily patrolled, the densest packs of soldiers focused around the meagre housing assembled near Bill’s Barn. The barn still smouldered, the thick upright beams taking the longest to burn through and collapse.

With time, they’d go too.

My only clue was that Braith had gone east a couple hours ago. I could hear some kind of commotion over that way, so I vaulted off the Pub and landed lightly on my feet, booking it out over the dry dirt.

The source of the noise was an Asterian supply delivery. At least ten horse-and-carts drew their teetering burdens into the town, stopping just inside the perimeter to unpack. Soldiers stood behind thin benches, sorting the food from the wine, the salted meat from the fruit. They were setting up for the long haul.

I thought of the starving people at Otto’s, subsisting on ale and whatever they’d had in their larders before their livelihoods were ripped apart. An idea sprang to mind.

Ripping a beam from a dilapidated porch, I covered it in a thin cloth that was left flapping on wire, thoroughly dried by the burning air. I wrapped it loosely around the beam, tying it onto itself.

Finding a fire to light the thing was no issue, and in moments, I had my very own torch. I made my way south, cutting around to the last bench in the line.

The soldier wore full armour, his long cape nearly brushing the dirt. He was organising a box of wine, no doubt going straight to the barracks.

The blue tassels at the bottom of his cape didn’t stand a chance. Neither did his friend’s next to him.

I lit the tassels, escaping back through an alley before the commotion began. I’d dart in at times, lighting someone up from further down the line, before the shouts of anxious soldiers permeated the street.

“Fire!” they’d yell.

“Pack up your benches! Move them forward!” another would order.

By this time, I was behind the final cart, trying to find something that would burn. The carts were tightly packed, and the waxed rope refused to light.

Then I saw the crate of my dreams. At least twelve bottles, all filled with a brown liquid that could only have been rum or whiskey.

I snagged it off the cart while the horse and its driver trundled along, focusing on the mess in front of them.

My torch was falling apart, the cloth falling in strips and the beam burnt through. I stamped on the torn cloth, bundling it up and stuffing it into the bottles, improvising something I’d used in a videogame.

A ‘Molotov cocktail.’