Alex giggled as he stepped off of the Virtualization Mat.

"Castle go boom," he said to himself with a grin.

Alex stumbled down the halls and out of the building, wincing at the sight of daylight.

“My sleep schedule is going to be fucked,” he muttered.

Alex walked to one of the bedrooms in which he often stayed, letting himself in.  He pulled most of his clothes off, got under the blankets, wiggled his arm under Aria’s neck to put himself in a comfortable position, and drifted off to sleep.  Aria, for her part, rolled over and happily snuggled into Alex’s chest.

A few hours later Alex woke to somebody pushing at him.

“Alex, wake up,” a familiar voice said.

Alex groaned.  “Five more minutes, Aria,” he complained groggily.

A blast of cold water hit Alex in the face.

“Augh!”  he yelled. “I’m up, I’m up!”

Jason stood in front of him, the blue glow of mana around his hands rapidly fading.

Alex wiped his face off.  “Well, that’s one way to wake me,” he said.  “Wait, where’s Aria?”

“Who?" Jason asked.  "Oh, right.  She already left for classes.  Remember, that thing that most of us have?”

“Please tell me you didn’t wake me up just to drag me to class,” Alex complained.  “The Headmaster already said I don’t need to attend.”

The Headmaster had said that with a sword-point at his throat, but Jason didn’t need to know that.

“No, it’s not that." Jason replied. Then Jason groaned and sighed heavily before sitting down next to Alex.  "Okay, how much do you know about the politics of the Northern Continent?" Jason asked.

"Not much," Alex replied.  "It has four major schools, and Radia Academy is one of them."

"Right, right.  Okay, well it gets a bit complicated, but basically the virtual realm is heavily tied to the real world.  If something big happens there it affects the people living here in all sorts of ways."

"Okay... so what's your point?"

"I'm getting there.  Arcturus Academy has strong connections to the Royal Family of Freemont.  Their firstborn son and heir to the throne, Prince Khaled, has created a stronghold and army in the virtual realm.  The call themselves the Red Dragons, and they rule the territory with an iron fist."

"Bunch of wankers," Alex muttered. 

"Maybe, but they're *powerful* wankers," Jason said, having no idea what a wanker was.  Alex snickered.

"Shut up, this is important!" Jason exclaimed.  "As of last night, the Red Dragons were utterly destroyed."

Alex shrugged and said, "It's their own fault for not being immune to explosives."

"Alex!  I'm being serious!"

"So am I," Alex replied.  "Are we done here?  I really want to get a few more hours of sleep."

Jason stared at Alex with slowly mounting horror.  "What did you do, Alex?"

"Now, in my defense, none of this would have happened if they weren't such assholes."

"What.  Did.  You.  Do."

So Alex told him.

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

Let's talk about monster cores in Glitch Festival. 

Monster cores were small colored orbs that monsters occasionally dropped when they died.  Monsters would occasionally spawn on the overworld, but overworld monsters had a low drop rate for monster cores and the cores were never of a very high quality.

Underground dungeons, on the other hand, spawned vicious monsters that had a higher drop rate and dropped cores that were more valuable.  The tradeoff was that the monsters were stronger and more aggressive.

Dungeons were generally found underground, automatically generated when the world was created.  This was rather well-known among the Glitch Festival userbase.  What was less well-known was that an enterprising player could create their own dungeon, which would then start generating underground monsters. 

Not every cleared-out underground space could be a dungeon, though.  There were certain arcane and complicated requirements that had to be followed exactly or the game wouldn't recognize the space as a dungeon.  The first player to create a dungeon did so purely out of chance, and it had taken a long time for the userbase to figure out exactly what requirements must be satisfied, but eventually the requirements had been reduced to a series of mnemonics that virtually guaranteed a player could create a dungeon and be certain it would start spawning monsters.

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Alex dug out rooms to certain proportions.  He created hallways in certain places, going in certain directions.  He placed items in certain locations, and on more than one occasion he dug out a block of dirt, only to replace it with a different type of dirt.

Eventually, Alex decided that the dungeon was finished and headed back to the surface.  Dungeons took a while to start generating monsters once they were created, so while he waited for his monsters to spawn Alex started building for fun.

Two hours later Alex noticed two men approaching the castle walls. 

Alex yelled from the ramparts, "Hello!"

One of the men, a short fat man, looked around, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from.  The other man, a tall skinny man, smacked the fat man on the arm and pointed to Alex.

"He-hello!" shouted the fat man, somewhat nervously.

"Hang on, I'll be right down!" Alex yelled.  He climbed down a ladder, lowered the drawbridge, and approached the two men.

"Right, what can I do for you?" Alex asked.

The fat man stared, open-mouthed, at the castle.  It was at least four times an average human height, and it menaced with spikes made of stone.  On either side of the drawbridge was a giant human skull that appeared to weep lava into the lava moat below.

"What's that you're wearing?" asked the tall man.

"What, this?" Alex asked, looking at himself.  "Oh, just some emerald armor."

"Oh, emerald armor," said the tall man.  He nodded and looked at his companion.  "Emerald armor," he said again, still nodding.  His companion nodded back.  Then both of them realized what Alex said.

"EMERALD ARMOR?!" they yelled at him in unison.

"Yeah, why?" Alex asked.

The tall man looked at his companion and they came to an unspoken agreement.  The fat man raised his hands in the air, particle effects appearing around his hands.  A book appeared in the air in front of him.  Suddenly, Alex was paralyzed and surrounded with a reddish glow.  The tall, thin man drew a dagger and circled around to behind Alex before burying it in his back.  Alex's health dropped to zero and he suddenly saw himself from a third-person perspective, collapsing to the ground and then disappearing.  Then his entire vision went black, except for buttons that represented two options: respawn or quit.

Alex glared.  He was pissed.  Those men attacking him for his equipment chafed against his sense of right and wrong.  They killed him for their own greed.  Unfortunately, taking them on directly was out of the question.  One was the men was a spellcaster and the other was an assassin.  Their combat roles worked together very well, and they doubtless had plenty of PvP combat experience.  Without levelling up, Alex had no way of matching them in direct combat.

Of course, nobody said he had to match them in direct combat.

Alex respawned in a nearby forest.  He found his castle again, and the two men were standing at the entrance of the drawbridge, deciding whether or not they should enter the large, forbidding building.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Alex said in a conversational way.

The two men jumped and readied themselves for violence.  One pulled out a dagger, ready to throw, while the other kept his hand on his spellbook, ready to cast another spell.

"Yeah," the thin man said with a sneer, "that's not really your call to make."

"I'm just saying," Alex said with a shrug.  "If you don't activate the key before you cross the threshold, the curse will activate and kill you."  Alex pulled a red cube from his inventory.  "And I'm the only one with the-"

A dagger tore into Alex's throat before he could even finish the sentence.  Alex watched himself die again, the red cube toppling from his hand.

"Okay, now you're on my shit list," Alex said.

Alex respawned again and watched as the two men argued over the red cube.  He couldn't make out what they were saying from that distance, but the body language was pretty clear.  Eventually the tall, thin man strode confidently to the drawbridge, the red cube in his outstretched hand, held ahead of himself as if to ward off a curse.  The cube must have been activated by the man then, because it glowed for three seconds.

On the fourth second, the man exploded.

The fat man seemed astonished at what had happened, while Alex laughed his ass off.

Alex stopped laughing when he realized the man was quickly creating a fargate.  Within seconds he had created an upright portal of stones, inside of which was a fluid rippling curtain of blue energy that stretched from edge to edge of the portal.  Within a minute a line of troops wearing black armor with red trim emerged.  Rank after rank of troops smartly marched out from the fargate, assembling themselves into proper formation.  After the hundredth trooper emerged and completed the square a man mounted on horseback emerged, wearing an exceptionally fancy black and red uniform.  The fat man ran over to this captain and gestured animatedly.  In response the captain summoned an ornate spellbook.  The fat man cringed away.  The spellbook glowed and an anti-curse spell raced outwards from the spellbook in all directions, spreading through the castle, disabling any magical protections.  Then the captain rode to the front of the lines and gave a shouted order before proudly riding into the castle.  The army rearranged itself into 8-man rows and rode through the entrance after him.  Soon the entire army disappeared from view.

Alex giggled like a madman.

Alex reached into his inventory.

Alex pulled out a small black cylinder with a red button sticking out of the top.

Alex pushed the button.

The entire castle detonated in a massive explosion. Alex was destroyed.  The army was destroyed.  The captain, with his exceptionally fine uniform, was destroyed, as was any items the characters had equipped.

Alex giggled like a madman as his view turned black.

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

"You... blew up your own castle." Jason said faintly.

"I like blowing stuff up," Alex said dreamily.  "I build castles, set explosive cubes in the foundations, then blow it up and watch that mother burn.  Those assholes in the Red Ribbon Army just pushed my timetable forward, that's all."

"Prince Khaled was taking his army on military exercises," Jason said, in a faint voice.  "He heard reports of a potential treasure.  Standard procedure for the Red Dragons is to seize any treasures for the use of the Red Dragon army, crushing any resistance. Khaled and his army were wearing gear worth hundreds of thousands of gold coins.  Now, thanks to you, they're destroyed and their power base has been crippled."

"What can I say?" Alex asked flippantly.  "When I go boom, I go boom.  Can I go to bed now?"

Jason mumbled incoherently.