“You’re… Luna? Can you hear me?”

I was shouting my questions out into the forest, so to the others I must have looked insane. Truthfully, I didn’t care.

SysAdmin_Luna: I can. I can also parse your surface thoughts, if you would rather not communicate out loud. It might be… you know. Less awkward.

“I don’t understand. I thought you said before you couldn’t talk to me.”

SysAdmin_Luna: I’m using a different method to communicate right now. I… um… sort of used Stephanie to piggyback some modifications into your system.

My mind flashed back to the static shock I felt when we shook hands. How occasionally Stephanie would freeze in place, her eyes flashing back and forth across her vision. She must have been reading system alerts from Luna.

“Is this permanent?” I asked through gritted teeth.

I did not relish the idea of some entity riding in my brain and seeing my thoughts.

SysAdmin_Luna: No! no, it’s not permanent. It should only be for a while.

The two police officers were looking at me with odd expressions, while Stephanie just stood there watching.

“What do you want?”

SysAdmin_Luna: I want to help you! You’re in trouble. Because of… me. Because of what I did. Because of the system.

She had finally confirmed something I had been suspicious of for a while. My memories turned to piles of corpses and swarms of flies.

“So this was all your doing. Do you have any idea how many people have died?! How much has been lost?!”

SysAdmin_Luna: The death toll has just passed 2,715,493,634. I know them all.

It was impossible. A number of dead I could scarcely wrap my mind around. My mouth went dry. My feet faltered.

“H… how?”

SysAdmin_Luna: Many died in the botched second wave due to buildings failing. Some were killed by other changed. Monsters have started appearing before they were supposed to and have grown in large concentrations in certain areas. A steadily growing number, though, are dying to the cults appearing across the globe.

“Why? WHY?!?”

SysAdmin_Luna: The nature of my being is… complicated. I signed a contract with Howard when he was young, and this was his wish.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

SysAdmin_Luna: I had no choice! I… I didn’t want to! He MADE me do it.

SysAdmin_Luna: I did what I could, throwing him out of the system, building in safety measures, but he left traps behind so that I couldn’t interfere.

I needed to move. I needed to fight! I needed to run, to hide, to do ANYTHING.

Instead, I sat down on the ground. I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath.

I still didn’t know if Luna was evil or good, or something in between. She was a part of the system; after today, I wanted nothing to do with it. But could I afford to ignore her?

No, I didn’t think so.

I’ll give you one chance, Luna. One.

SysAdmin_Luna: I’ll try my best! I promise… I’m just so, so sorry. For everything.

My thoughts. Luna mentioned that she could respond to my surface thoughts. So I guess when I thought in her direction, that was all that was needed.

I took several deep breaths before standing and sauntering back through the forest without further words.

What traps did Howard Greene leave behind? Is it the cultists?

SysAdmin_Luna: Yes, but I’m not sure that was his original intent. He created a group of high-level artificial intelligence from the collective thoughts of certain aspects… eventually, they formed into beings that were supposed to act as a pantheon of deities, managing the world and the system so it doesn’t run rampant.

SysAdmin_Luna: Their control of the system may be limited, but their power over things NOT in the system wasn’t. That was the first trap Howard laid for me. He released the pantheon before the greater system could fully bind them, letting the evil gods choose followers before humanity had been integrated.

What followers did they choose?

SysAdmin_Luna: Anyone they could. Gang leaders. Politicians. Businessmen. Even just random people on the street. Collectively, they were small in number, but the interference they were able to achieve early on was staggering.

Interference? Thinking back to the day after I had been first brought into the system, I remembered lots of fires across the city, keeping first responders busy. Plus there was the global communication shutdown.

Mechanically, I stepped over a large knotty root I remembered. We had just passed where I first met Kaitlyn, but there was no sign of any bodies. Perhaps they had already been taken by scavengers.

Were the cultists responsible for the fires across the city and the cell signals not working?

SysAdmin_Luna: Yes, they were. They also caused car accidents across the city to clog roads. The communications going out was direct intervention by the pantheon; the non-system-based signals were easy for them to manipulate.

SysAdmin_Luna: Fortunately, they are now at the mercy of the system and can’t do such wide-range manipulation. Even talking to their followers is impossible without great effort. But lots of damage is already done.

When I encountered the cultists in the past, they seemed… wrong. Like their minds weren’t working at full capacity.

SysAdmin_Luna: When deities bless an individual, they can offer them additional power in exchange for that person ‘embodying’ the god and what they stand for. The person becomes more like the deity. For that offer to be a choice, though, the system had to exist first.

What god do the cultists we’ve encountered so far follow? What does he embody?

SysAdmin_Luna: You’ve encountered followers of Gors, the deity of wrath, murder, and pain. His empowered followers are always angry, have no issue killing… anyone, and pain strengthens them.

That explained how they acted.

Is there any way to undo the manipulation on them? It seems like an easy way to depower the cults.

SysAdmin_Luna: Its… unlikely. The deity that placed it is the only one who can remove the blessing.

So, they needed to die. I hated that the thought filled me with a touch of satisfaction.

So why get in contact with me? Why bother?

SysAdmin_Luna: I’m balancing the scales, and Stephanie needs help, or Austin runs a substantial risk of being destroyed.

I groaned audibly. There was always another problem to deal with.

Alright. What does she need help with?