The Fragrant Bamboo Inn was filled with contented sighs and nods of approval. I sat quite still, trying to process. Ms. Hungry spoke with a steady cadence, not quite flat, but calm. As though she was revealing the most ordinary truths to her listeners. It made those moments where she stressed a word, when she changed the cadence, hit like a thrown brick.

I could imagine that degree of starvation and desperation. Something I had never known, never even came close to knowing, but I could imagine it. All those hungry villagers. Nowhere to go. Nothing to eat. Trying to climb the mountain and find some way to survive, but is it that easy to live off the land?

Hungry Ghosts. That was a Buddhist thing. Or it was back on earth. Gaki, or Pretas. Sometimes they were literal demons from Hell, sometimes they were ghosts stuck between Hell and earth. Constantly trying to sate their desires, usually food. I’m sure I’d seen them in some Anime or game, but I couldn’t think of one off the top of my head.

Could this be a world where they truly existed? Gradden March had actual magic and we were fighting actual monsters with the actual embodied spirits of the heroic dead, so Hungry Ghosts wasn’t impossible. But my gamer senses were tingling. Heartless Clearing. That’s the real clue. There is a spot on this mountain that is a natural ritual site.

It wasn’t exactly subtle, but that’s the meta these days. Gotta make the next step obvious, or gamers get frustrated and quit.

I leaned over towards Miyuki. “Do you know where the Heartless Clearing is?” I kept my voice low. It was probably a useless effort, given this crowd.

Miyuki hesitated, then half nodded and half shook her head. “Miyuki has never seen it, but has heard things.”

I smiled a little and sat back on the crummy wooden chair. Time to see how the rest of the evening went.

Which was the exact moment I was yeeted straight back to my Throne Room.

“Oh what the Hell!”

My Throne Room was unchanged. The golden Dachshund statue was as cute as ever. The reclining throne was as comfy. Really, nothing had changed.

“Rache, Rikka, report!”

Rache roared up the steps on her motorcycle. Rikka took a minute longer. “Rikka?”

There was silence. Then an awkward cough from behind me. “Rikka struggled to find a shadow in this brightly lit room.”

She was in the shadow cast by the reclining back of my armchair. She was devastatingly cute, crouched down like she was drawing circles on the floor.

“Do you have to appear in a shadow?”

“Yes.”

“Do you teleport from shadow to shadow? That is, move instantly between them?”

“No.”

“So…”

“I should appear emerging from a shadow, if there are any shadows.” She sounded stubborn. I swear I saw her fingers twitch towards the ground. Rikka really was about to start drawing circles. Adorable.

“So… how did you get there?”

“I hid behind Rache and used the blind spots in your vision to make my way to the only shadow I could see.”

I blinked. That was genuinely impressive.

“Well. I know you are here, now, so why don’t you come out and stand with Rache as you report. Also, do you have any idea why we are back from the Relic Site so quickly?”

“We completed the task.” Rikka made it sound obvious.

“What do you mean?”

“We completed the task.”

“Elaborate. Please.”

Rikka nodded. “The bamboo forest has a number of small streams, a wide variety of hidden monsters, a few huts used by recuses and criminals, and some spots that I think might be quarriable. I don’t know much about stones, but I think that is what they were. Also, that bamboo is a harvestable resource. It is very strong, and regrows quickly. You can even eat the shoots in spring.”

“All good stuff.” I nodded encouragingly. “But was there anything particularly special? For example, a clearing full of hungry ghosts? Or similar?”

She shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Anything like that would be past the bamboo forests up on the mountain. The bamboo forest are…” She reached around for the right words. “They are the boundary. Where you travel from the normal world into the true darkness of Hidden Moon Mountain.”

Ahah. Promising. Good to know.

“Rache?”

“Bad country for a good ride, boss, and lots of banditos hidn’ out in the bushes. Can’t say there was much to see.”

“Did you find the Old Temple?”

“Nosir, I did not.” She shook her head slowly, cowboy had shading her thin face.

“It’s on the mountain proper. About half way up.” Rikka volunteered.

“So you scouted around, found everything of interest, then I’m guessing you found Fragrant Bamboo Inn?”

They both nodded.

I leaned back in my throne. The math wasn’t mathing. I had designated that we were spending one order-time on exploring the mountain. My goal was to see if we could knock the whole thing out in a day, but I wanted to make sure we could regroup and plan after getting the lay of the land. Which we achieved, but when we were clearing Gradden Marche, we did an entire mini-dungeon per order. I took a walk through the forest and listened to a couple of creepy stories. Not at all the same.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The scouting job Rikka and Rache did was roughly equivalent to a one-order job. But then, what did my trip to the Inn count as?

I sat bolt upright. Was it that simple? Each time I had investigated Gradden March, we completed a mini-dungeon then we voluntarily exited. One order complete. We stuck together as a unit, because I was always anticipating getting jumped. Correctly, as it happened. This time, I split the party, then we got booted from the relic site.

The Devs, damn their eyes, by accident or on purpose, managed to set up a situation where order-time could be expended within another order. I shook my head. That wasn’t right. It was more like a money jar. You said to the game system “I’m going to spend five dollars on this expedition,” and you could spend up to five dollars during the course of the expedition. You could put as much money as you wanted in the jar, so long as you had the orders to cover it.

I think I lost control of the metaphor there. No matter! Pressing on.

You ordered the expedition. One, two, three, however many orders you wanted in there, were invested at the setup screen. But the “orders” only got used up when I split up the party or left the site.

But why? I needed to puzzle it out now, lest it bite me in the once-ample-posterior later.

The danger level of a relic site probably wasn’t proportional to the power of the Awakened Souls under a Tower Master’s command. My personal bet was that they were fixed at world creation, and the ‘players’ could see roughly how difficult they would be to conquer. This gave them some easy ones to satisfyingly crush, as well as some hard ones as goals to work towards.

(Or spend a crapload of IRL money, draw a hojillion six stars, overlevel and overgear them with resource packs you bought for yet more IRL money, and then steamroll the whole game. But since that wasn’t an option for me, I’ll ignore it.)

But it did mean that the relic sites were an interesting problem for the devs, mechanically. The Tower Master could do whatever they wanted, and it didn’t use up an order. This was because Tower Masters generally couldn’t do anything useful, and had to work through orders to their Awakened Souls. So presumably you would have to send them to get things done, but then, why not treat it like a beast den? Why let the Tower Master come along at all?

I started working it out, drawing the pieces of the puzzle on the arm of my microfiber recliner. It was about attention, and irritation, management. Or at least, it was on the game design side.

The pieces were clicking together. If the Tower Master accompanied his summons, all his summons, on the expedition, no order time passed because no “orders” were given. BUT it meant that the player had to work through the whole relic site on their own. Which took non-order time. I could imagine how tedious it would be if I had to personally search an entire mountain looking for hidden chests or whatever.

So you got a lot of story content. A lot of potential new summons, a lot of unique interactions, got to scope out the new addition to your territory. All great stuff for some gamers. But others would just want to burn through it. “Gimmie the loot, Gimmie the loot,” as noted urban historian Christopher Wallace once said of life in Brooklyn. For those guys, you let them invest orders. You let them turn their summons loose on the relic site. And spend the money necessary to get the summons and gear necessary to auto-farm the sites.

A tiny handful of whales pay for everyone else’s free game. I’d bet this set up was designed to exploit exactly that demographic.

I nodded. It all clicked. Gradden March had been a very specific type of dungeon crawler, one that I hypothetically could have cleared by turning loose my summons. Even something like Jim’s fighting pit could have been cleared if I had rolled in with five overleveled Six Stars. And since “time” in this game is basically a joke, I could have stood in the hub area, ordered them in, and a few seconds later they would pile out with the next clue or quest item.

So… can I exploit this? I wasn’t sure how, but where there is a rule, there is an exploit.

So… what had we learned from our two scouts? There were farmable resources on the Mountain, but I didn’t care about that for now. Lots of time to harvest them once the site was conquered. Lots of potential combat opportunities on the foothill with the bamboo, but I didn’t care about that either.

The game was pointing at the Heartless Clearing, saying “Go check this out!” So we would. And that meant moving up into the mountain proper. I stroked my chin again, then hunted around in my storage bag for the crummy Miyuki costume I got a while back.

We CANNOT WAIT to show you how it turned out. Now you can enjoy Rikka, Miyuki, Yoko, and Mrs. Hungry…

We had met the charming Mrs. Hungry. Not sure how to recruit her yet, but something would come up. We had yet to meet someone named Yoko, so that was something to look forward to. And the expansion was apparently named “Darkness Falls on Hidden Moon Mountain,” which implies something bad is going to happen there.

On what planet could you have the elegant beauty Miyuki, the fiery Rikka and then that ancient Sadako looking Mrs. Hungry? No, sidetracking again. Time to relaunch the expedition. This time, I’d invest… mmm. Three orders. I’ll keep one in reserve. Just in case.

We returned to Hidden Moon standing directly outside of Fragrant Moon Inn. Which was interesting. Did the game mark our progress through the mountain? Were there fixed checkpoints that we could save at by entering? It made a degree of sense, given the apparent size of the map. On the other hand, it reflected a degree of competence and usability I didn’t really associate with the Devs.

I stuck my head in and asked if Mrs. Hungry was around. Apparently not. Check in later, or try to find her on the mountain. The bird-boned innkeeper kept bobbing his head and hopping around. I didn’t linger.

“Rikka, Miyuki, lead us to the Old Temple please.”

They made their respective barks and quickly led us up the mountain. I kept my scouts close by for the moment, as “Scout the mountain” sounded like a multi-order job.

The bamboo forest quickly gave way to pine. With the change in vegetation came a change in smells. The sweet grassy bamboo gave way to the spice of balsam and the warmth of pine. I’d never been camping in my life, but somehow that smell made me think of campfires in the autumn.

The pine needles were thick on the ground, forming an orange outline to the brown path we were trudging. The forest wasn’t nearly as dense or solid as the bamboo. I could see the stars through the trees, and see the patches of darkness where the clouds covered them up.

“Does the sun ever shine here?” I wondered. Rikka and Miyuki slammed to a halt. I must have said that out loud, huh?

“Yes. Yes it does. But Rikka can only remember dusk, night, and the twilight before the dawn.” Rikka’s voice sounded distant. Miyuki couldn’t seem to bring herself to say anything at all. NPC moment. I sighed and waved them on.

“Never mind, never mind. When we bring it into my Sky Realm, there will be plenty of sun for everyone.”

Versai grinned humorlessly when she heard that, but didn’t feel the need to but in. She kept sweeping her gaze through the trees, lingering on the shadows. An unpleasant thought occurred.

“Rikka, can you jump from tree to tree in a stealthy way? Like, keeping concealed as you move?”

“Of course. Rikka hunts her prey in these woods.”

“Could you do that and keep up with our walking pace?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent! Up you go. If you see anything nasty, counter-ambush it or alert us.”

“Yes.”

I looked over and I swear Miyuki was looking sulky. She was fiddling with her home made grappling hook, deliberately staring into the forest.

“Miyuki… you can go too.”

“Miyuki is as still as the forest, as swift as the wind!” I swear she had grappled a tree branch and was out of sight before I heard the back half of the sentence. She really loved that hook. Bringing her here was like returning a tiger to its mountain.

Cool breezes stirred the air. Dancing on the wind were little flickers of light caught in the corner of my eye. They were never there when I turned to look at them. It probably should have been spookier than it was. I was more haunted by the story Mrs. Hungry.

Those starving farmers and their hunt. It was unfathomable to me. Rationally, I knew awful things happened in times of famine. Rational or not, my heart was unwilling to accept that they couldn’t just Door-Dash something. Walk to a convenience store if it was really desperate.

It seemed to be the recurring theme of this place- there are hidden monsters, and humans that are as bad as monsters, and they all hang about here because they have a dreadful hunger.

Hard to imagine. Hard to put myself in their shoes. Or sandals or whatever.

“Miyuki, why do you hunt on Hidden Moon Mountain?” Two stars, and her home map. She might answer.

“Miyuki hunts here because this is where her prey live.” Her voice came whispering down from the the trees above.

“And what is your prey?”

There was a rustling sound from above, then I saw a tree branch sway a few yards ahead of us.

“The Hollow People.”

We walked a little way further. I tried to think of who she could be referring to, and drew a blank.

“Who are the Hollow People?”

There was another shift through the trees, then- “The Hollow People are the people who look like humans, but aren't. On the inside, they are demons. They are hungry ghosts and animal spirits. But they are not the worst of the Hollow People. The worst are the empty.”

“The Empty?”

“Yes. They look like humans and act like demons but inside there is nothing at all. They are without the six desires or the nine virtues.”

I got the feeling she wanted to say more, but didn’t know how.

I let the silence pool for a while, then asked “How long until we reach the Old Temple?”

“Not long.”

We kept trudging. I suppose it’s relative. When you have a body that can’t get tired, nowhere is a long way away.

We walked a bit further still.

No, I don’t believe that. This is, in fact, a long way away. It seems the temple is high up on the mountain.

“Here. The Old Temple.”

The temple was a little bigger than I imagined for a run-down place like Hungry… err… Hidden Moon Mountain. It looked like it would keep two or three monks busy full time. Black tile roof that swept out far past the door, plaster walls, with thick wooden beams holding up the corners and giving shape to the whole thing. There was a wrap around porch, varnished but not painted, that invited guests in.

The door wasn’t even closed.

“Is it courtesy to take off your shoes when visiting temples here?”

“No.” Rikka’s voice came from the depths of a shadow.

Huh. But that porch looks polished to a fine shine. Well. This isn’t actually Japan, I suppose. We walked into the empty temple. There was a stone jar to one side of the room, with a heap of incense sticks next to it. There were a few cushions, and a bronze bowl full of clean sand to hold incense.

All of which was ignored in favor of staring at the giant statue in the middle of the room. Sitting cross legged with his hands resting on his knees was Black Robe. It was a statue of the damned necromancer who snatched me up and sent me to the Tower!