Fink drew her swarm of silver swords out of my body. They floated in the air around me, aligned to strike once more.

"What in the world were you doing here…" Fink said, sounding more upset than anything else.

I mustered no reply as I remained curled up on the ground, in a puddle of my own blood. The room spun as I fought to maintain focus.

As discreetly as I could, I reached into Khan's envelope, inside my pocket.

Khan. Please. I'm begging you. Don't leave me here to die.

But the envelope remained empty. Nothing appeared inside.

Fink scoffed. "What's that, a magical item? Keep in mind: If you kill me, you'll never find out where I took Hei. Not that you can kill me, if you tried."

When I collapsed, I had dropped the Seekflower's pot, and it had fallen upon the ground and shattered. The soil spilled out of the broken vessel, and the flower's roots became exposed. But as it laid sideways, the flower still pointed toward the closed wooden door.

"Where is Hei?" I croaked.

The Seekflower turned to point straight up.

Fink approached me. I shuddered with each step she took. But instead of doing anything to me, she merely picked up the Seekflower, then took my crossbow.

"Don't worry about him," Fink said. "The one in trouble right now is you. How did you learn about this place? Who are you working with?"

I checked my stats.

SOPHIA - Level 4 HP: 295/860 MP: 138/650 Arcana Point: 40 (+12)

She was right. I was in trouble. Another barrage of blades or two, and I'd be gone.

I tried to calculate if I had enough Mana left to cast both Cold Grenade and Vortex Shield. But I just couldn't think right now. My mind was drawing blanks.

…Where did we mess up? I thought we had it. I had done so much planning, and came up with so many ways to get an advantage over Fink. Then my plans and contingencies all fell apart. How did the Builder's Guild know to summon Institute guards against me? What did Fink do to Hei? And why hadn't Khan sent me anything through his envelope? He had pretended to be so forthright, so dispassionate and viciously noble. But all he did was coerce me, and my friends, into this suicide mission. And he had left me to die.

"Sophia, allow me to ask again," Fink said. "Who are you working with?"

"It's Khan!" I blurted out.

I couldn't take it anymore. My throat tightened. My eyes stung. And the frustration, the grief, the fear I had held back all flooded over me at once. I broke down into sobs, shaking on the ground as Fink stood over me.

"Why are you doing this?" I spat at her between gasps of air. "Why can't you just leave everyone alone?"

I heard a soft exhale from Fink. With a snap of her fingers, her swords disappeared into thin air. She put the Seekflower and my crossbow aside, on the ground. And she knelt down and stroked my shoulder, and she brushed my hair out of my face. Her touch was gentle, but it still made me shudder.

"Don't worry," she told me. "You're safe now. I'll protect you from Khan, if you promise to cooperate. I will protect Hei, too. And Saber, and Jack, and Atlas. Khan is a jealous man, and he'll spare no one from his ambition. How did he make you come here? What was it that he told you?"

Amidst my uncontrollable sniffles, I tried to give an answer. "You're keeping 6E12 in this cave. You, you use him to win challenges. You let the expeditioners die, so you can stay in Silver."

Fink gave me a nod. She pursed her lips into a sympathetic, not-quite-smile.

"Knowing the wrong truths is more dangerous than knowing nothing," she said. "I will tell you a secret, Sophia." She tenderly placed a hand on my cheek, to turn my face toward her own. And she looked into my eyes.

"This is a zero-sum game," she said. "There is no saving anyone. Nor can you harm others, without helping in equal measure."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"...What?" I asked. That made no sense.

"The difficulty of this game is self-adjusting," she said. "When less people die in challenges, the challenges become harder. When more people die, the challenges become easier. Regardless of how many players you help, or how many lives I sacrifice, the end result is the same. The survival rate of any challenge is between eighty-four and eighty-seven percent."

"So you let your teammates die."

"And in exchange, others will live. The expeditioners know they're risking their lives when they joined. And in exchange for glory, they sacrifice themselves to help others. Not through the knowledge they gather, but by lowering the difficulty of the challenges, through their deaths. Perhaps the robots in Silver would've killed you, or your teammates, had it not been for the deaths of the expeditioners. Does that make sense?"

I wanted to shake my head. Logically, it almost made sense. But…but it still felt so wrong.

"I'll need you to be a bit more open-minded," Fink asked. "I'll guarantee you'll live as long as you'd like here. With 6E12, we can make it happen. I'll just need you to tell Saber, and everyone else in town, that you were mistaken. You have fallen for the conspiracy theory of the Truthseekers. But now, you've become informed. And together we'll bring Khan to justice."

"...What about my teammates?"

"I'll give them all the equipment they'd need to get to Gold, even Diamond. They'll be able to go home. Of course, you can join them too."

Go home.

"And if I refuse?" I asked. "What if I'm not alright with the human sacrifices you're doing?"

Fink sighed. "I already told you. It's not human sacrifice. The number of deaths in challenges is constant –"

"Still though." I eased myself up a little on my elbow. "What if I'm not OK with that? What if I want to free 6E12, so everyone can go home?"

She scoffed. A single silver blade reappeared in her grasp.

"You will not do that," she stated.

Maybe Fink had her points. Just maybe. But to feed everyone a lie and betray countless teammates, to extend my own lifespan season by season…I couldn't stomach it. I didn't care if there was some grand balance, that somehow helped lower the difficulty of the game. Expending human lives like a resource…like livestock…I'd rather die than accept that.

Plus, I wasn't here for Khan's sake. I came to set 6E12 free. To save all the players.

Perhaps I wouldn't make it. But at least let me fall fighting for my convictions.

I launched a Cold Grenade at Fink. As the spell froze her solid, I snatched my crossbow, and the Seekflower, and made a dash for the stairs.

I had to find Hei, then regroup with the others. Selfishly, I wanted to see them just one more time.

A silver sword darted past me, bisecting the Seekflower. I strained to keep running. But Fink's footsteps were already approaching. I turned back, to return fire with my crossbow and Frost Missile. She blocked the projectiles with her forearm, suffering mere bruises.

I made it to the foot of the stairs.

A multitude of swords pierced into my back, ceaselessly.

[HP: 240/860]

[HP:185/860]

[HP:130/860]

I turned around to conjure a Vortex Shield.

[Not enough Mana.]

Oh.

One more sword pierced through my leg.

[HP:75/860]

I fell to my knees. Fink raced toward me, a sword in each hand, poised to run through my chest. Upon her face, only rage remained.

Ah. Guess I shouldn't have expected anything else.

I reached one last time into Khan's envelope.

This time, I felt something.

I took it out. It was a small pill, like a gilded capsule. I had seen it before at the museum.

[Ultima Elixir. Allows the user a single use of their ultimate technique.]

I resigned myself to fate.

As Fink closed in, I crushed the elixir between my teeth and swallowed it. It tasted bitter, like poison.

Almost immediately, my entire body grew stone-cold, and I thought I'd die right there. My vision distorted and darkened. The world turned silent, as though I had gone deaf. And every part of me numbed, until I no longer felt anything. Not pain, not gravity, not even the ground beneath.

Everything around us – the stairs, the floor, the ceiling – faded from my sight. Only the two of us remained, Fink and me.

Time decelerated to a crawl. She inched forward mid-stride in her sprint, weightlessly advancing in slow-motion. But my thoughts sped up. Memories flash through my mind's eye, as vivid as the day they happened.

I saw Hei and myself on the mountain, cornered by wolves. There, I had casted my first spell.

I saw Becky in her last moments, as she faded into motes of light upon her bed.

I saw our team destroying the enemies' base core at the end of our first challenge.

I saw us moving into our house in Silvercreek, and all the time we had spent together.

And then I saw the present once more. Only now, it wasn't just me and Fink. In the air between us floated an ethereal, translucent book, bound in blue leather and shimmering like aurora. It opened itself and showed me its last page. Upon it was an incantation.

With every last ounce of strength, every last ounce of conviction, I recited it.

Oceans, roar. Darkness, mourn.

Solstice of the desolate land, drink the blood of kings.

Do not ask the tide from where it comes.

Do not ask the moon to where it returns.

O creatures of dust,

Heed the supplications of this asymmetrical world

And forfeit your lot among the living.

Final spell,

Maw of Leviathan.

image [https://imgur.com/rMmIhon.png]