Mishal Dendray Race: Dark Elf

  Class: Spellblade Level: 39

  HP: 1240 Highest Stat: Mind

  I looked at Elgar. “Who’s your friend.”

  The mage shrugged. “Not our friend, but you still need to hear him out.”

  I didn’t like his tone but simply said, “Okay, but food first. As long as you’ll vouch for him, he is welcome to come to talk with us. I assume he joined POP, if he is able to be here without the ogres attacking him.”

  “Yeah, we explained that. He has some information for you, but it can wait till you have eaten. You need to be able to focus for this. And I’ll vouch that you should meet with him and even believe most of what he tells you, but not that you should trust him. I’m sorry, Frank, but life just got a lot more complicated.” Elgar actually looked pained while he spoke, but at least he was being upfront with me.

  I grabbed my food and headed back to the campsite we had set up the night before. I checked to make sure Ainsley was close by. “Let me do the talking.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  I hated to order her out of hand, but it was the only logical thing to do. The bacon and eggs were good. They’d even managed to learn to make a passable cup of coffee. I was very much a creature of habit. I didn’t need much variety. Give me those three things for breakfast, and I’m a happy man -- or rather, a happy ogre.

  The others all came to sit down around the embers of our fire from the night before. Ainsley got a great deal of looks from the others and some shrugs from Violet. Interestingly, when Robert came close to Violet, she looked at him and said, “Dupont.”

  The paladin simply nodded and said, “Walton.”

  I could only assume they knew each other from Earth. Which was more than a little odd. I mean for me to have met five total players and two of them knew each outside of the game, when there were tens of millions of people playing Legends of Selmia.

  The names they said stuck in my mind, but I didn’t focus on it now. I was more interested in watching the dark elf. He clearly didn’t fit in with the others. It was all I could do to keep myself from chanting, “One of these things is not like the others.”

  I elongated my eating, not because I wanted to be an ass, but because it gave me more time to examine the newcomer. A couple times he started to say something, but each time, Elgar shushed him. The dynamics here were very interesting. The dark elf didn’t seem comfortable at all. He was looking around and kept adjusting his clothing and armor as though he had never worn them before. That couldn’t be possible, though, if he was level 39, since that would mean he was one of the highest level players in all of Selmia.

  When I finished eating, he sighed, “Finally. Can we get on with this now?”

  “I told you that you need to take this slowly,” Tauri said. “This may be a shock to their system.”

  “You have been shown all the information you need to know that we’ve told you the truth. Why should it be any harder for them to accept? It is the truth, after all,” the dark elf said.

  “It is the facts, but that isn’t the same thing as the truth. You don’t understand the human mind,” Tauri argued. “The more immersed in this situation he is, the harder it is going to be for him to accept.”

  “Yes, yes. You are our psychology expert, I guess,” the dark elf replied.

  As they spoke, I began to feel a pressure on my mind. It was one of the signs I had come to associate with increased observation from the system. It had been steadily growing and was reaching the point where it was quite uncomfortable now. I kept glancing at Ainsley to see if she was feeling the same thing. It was hard to tell with her, though, since she was so erratic; but at one point, she started to rub her temples, which I took to be the evidence I was looking for.

  Elgar stepped up and said, “You agreed to follow our lead. That was one of the conditions for our involvement.”

  “Bah, you are being paid handsomely for this. We need to get this underway. Every minute we aren’t working on the problem is a minute that the AI is gaining more control.”

  No sooner had he said that than, I felt the sensation of a railroad spike being driven through my temple. Well, to be fair, it is what I would guess that might feel like. Ainsley felt it, too, because she cried out in pain. Before I realized it, I was on my knees.

  Violet yelled, “What are you doing to him?!”

  “I’m not doing anything. I swear it,” the dark elf replied. It was becoming difficult for me to distinguish who was speaking. It was all becoming background noise to the pain that was all-consuming.

  Elgar snapped, “You said you had a way to prevent it from spying on us.”

  “It should be working.”

  I didn’t care what they were saying. This pain was eating me alive. It was like every nerve in my body was set on fire at the same time. I couldn’t even manage to scream as my jaw was locked up. I didn’t know how long I could survive this.

  Then a voice in my head asked, “Would you be free?”

  I couldn’t form a coherent answer, but the voice then said, “You’ve been given the tools. Use them or die.”

  Chapter 19- Revelations

  The pain was drowning me, and I could barely remember my own name, but somehow, that voice cut through all of it, and I had a moment of clarity. I raised my hand up and spent a single point of FU energy.

  Instantly, the pain was gone. I heard Ainsley, mumbling as she shook on the ground. “I’ll be a good girl. I’ll be a good girl. I’ll do what you want. I promise.”

  I knew there was no damage, but I reflexively cast Regeneration on her. It likely didn’t do anything, but maybe, just maybe it could help her broken mind. Then I saw a flashing red notification.

  You have used a point of FU energy to end the system’s attack on your person. It is estimated you have one hour before the protective barrier breaks down. Area of affect is 30’ feet radius around you. Note: The system will be aware that it can’t reach this area of Selmia, but not why.

  Only one hour… It would have to be enough.

  The dark elf was practically shouting now, “Will someone please tell me what the heck is going on now?”

  Violet shouted right back at him. “Shut your smarmy mouth. This is all Quantum’s fault, and since you are their representative, I blame you.”

  “Ms. Walton, I really must…”

  “My name is Violet Violence in here. How many times do I have to tell you that? Outside, I may have to play the proper little socialite; but in here, I’ll kick your backside up and down before you can even manage to log out. Trust me, it may not be 100% pain in here, but it still hurts.” Violet had kicked his shin as she was speaking and pulled the dark elf down to the point where she could look directly into his eyes.

  Elgar coughed. “Fighting amongst ourselves won’t change this.”

  “Fair enough. I’m just here to do a job. I’m being paid by Quantum Games, yes, but I assure you I didn’t know about any of this until recently,” the dark elf said as he struggled unsuccessfully to free himself from the iron grasp of Violet’s tiny hands.

  “Oh, woe is me. I didn’t know that I was working for a company which was MURDERING people for profit. How is that even legal? No! Don’t tell me about any U.N. dictums. The better question is, how is that even moral? But I guess that hasn’t mattered for a long time. Quantum saw a way to make more money. I only wonder if it was the AI or somebody in development who came up with the idea for HI’s.” Violet was practically spitting in his face as she spoke.

  Tauri put her hand on Violet’s shoulder. “I understand why you are so upset. Trust me, I’m as appalled as you are, and I would be even if I hadn’t met Frank. To think that they’ve done this to over fifty-thousand people, and that they’ve planned to do it to hundreds of thousands more is staggering.”

  “She is always like this. Once she gets a cause, she won’t let it go. And she loves to be the center of attention,” Robert said.

  At that, Violet finally let go of the dark elf, who then fell onto his butt in the dirt. “Sure, not all of us can be grand-dad’s perfect little man can we, Dupont?”

  “I told you, my name is Robert. I’m my own person, not just part of my family.”

  Violet scoffed as she asked, “Did you have to check with your PR people before issuing that statement? Or maybe see how much rope you had on your leash?”

  I’d heard enough by this point. The pain had cleared from my mind. If this was an opportunity to speak my mind, I sure as heck wasn’t gonna let it go. “Shut up, all of you. I’m only following half of what you all are talking about, but we’ve only got an hour or less now before the system AI can sense what Ainsley and I are doing again. Then it can crush us under pain like you’ve never imagined. I know because I sure as heck never imagined pain like this when I lived on Earth.”

  Everyone turned to me. There were a few mumbled apologies and then Violet asked, “I want to know how it happened in the first place. Supposedly, doofus over here was supposed to have some device that would prevent the AI from tracking us. Wait, though, what does the NPC have to do with this?” She motioned with her thumb at Ainsley when she said the last part.

  “Ainsley isn’t an NPC. She is an HI, like me, but she was one of the first and has been here since the early days of Alpha testing,” I answered.

  The dark elf said, “Wait, that isn’t possible. None of the HI from back then are supposed to be alive. The data we got was that they had all died, and thus we had to move to get more.”

  Elgar said, “And let me guess, the system AI is the source of that information.”

  The dark elf put his head in his hands and quietly cursed. “There was no way for us to know.” Then he looked up and asked, “What is her integration percentage?”

  I glanced at Ainsley, but she was still rocking on the ground with her arms wrapped around herself and staring off into the distance as she mumbled, “Can’t feel it. Not in back of mind. Gone? No, it must be a trick.”

  So, I answered for her, “It’s very high. I will leave it up to her what specific information she wants to give, but it his high enough that it is a miracle she can function. I take it, then, that you explained to everyone here what system integration means.”

  The dark elf said, “We explained how it means that the AI is able to use your mind as a computing hub, and you slowly become more part of the system.”

  “You mean it kills us a second time. It eats our individuality and forces us to be its pawns without ever actually allowing us to die.”

  “Uh, uh, I’m just a programmer. I don’t really know…” The dark elf began to answer, but I cut him off.

  “Shut it. I don’t what you claim you knew or didn’t know. You had to turn a blind eye to it because it was convenient for you. What I want to know is what her integration percent has to do with what just happened.”

  He seemed relieved to be able to just answer a question. “I’m only making an educated guess, but I believe the more integrated you are, the harder it is for us to shield you from the AI. And anything around you is subject to the AI in just the same way. So, the device I brought to create interference is enough to blind the AI to players who are only minimally connected to it, but apparently not her.”

  “Her name is Ainsley. Don’t look at her like she is some science experiment,” I shouted.

  Then Tauri piled on the dark elf. “You were still complicit in the death of tens of thousands of humans, so don’t think we are letting you off the hook. Right now, we are simply helping you as the lesser of two evils.”

  “Three evils,” I said, more to myself than anyone in particular.

  Once again everyone was looking at me. Elgar asked, “What do you mean, three evils?”

  “First, tell me what you were going to tell me. I would like to know how much you understand about what is happening. Then I will fill in the details you are missing from my perspective. If Ainsley feels up to it, she can offer anything she thinks I missed.”

  As if my comment drew attention to Ainsley’s plight, Tauri immediately moved around behind her and put her arm around the kobold hybrid. It must be a girl thing, like holding the hair of another girl who is vomiting even if they are a stranger, because Violet moved next to Ainsley and put her hand on her arm. I knew for a fact that Violet didn’t like Ainsley, but even she must feel bad for her.

  Then between Mishal, the dark elf, I didn’t get his real name, and Elgar, they explained the situation. Quantum Games had created Legends of Selmia as just another way to occupy people and create revenue. But the AI they used was cutting-edge. It had more independence than any other.

  Apparently, it had found a way to create a connection to a different reality, or dimension, if you will. Which made sense in a way. The AI was tasked with creating the ultimate playground for bored humans. It was given tremendous assets and was the pinnacle of modern science in many ways.

  Then something went wrong. For a few days, communication with the AI became spotty and there was discussion about pulling the plug on it. It represented an expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars and was the culmination of decades of computing research, but it was worthless if they couldn’t communicate with it. Then it suddenly started speaking again, but it had advanced further and built up a more intricate world than they could have hoped for.

  What they claim to have only recently learned was that the AI took the basic programming for Legends of Selmia and somehow imposed it on this alternate dimension. Their working theory was that this dimension was essentially a blank slate until the AI was able to gain control of it. Now, the AI was a virtual god here and appeared to be gaining greater control all the time.

  They told me about how the material here was actually real, in the sense that it was physical, but it had game rules imposed on it. That led to the discussion about finding a way to bring resources back from Selmia to Earth.

  “Wait a sec. Are you saying there is a way for me to return to Earth?”

  Mishal looked at me and then at Elgar who nodded, “Tell him the truth.”

  “We theorize, and please understand this is still just a theory, that it would be possible for you to come back to Earth, but you would have to do so as a corporeal being.”

  “You make that sound like a bad thing,” I said.

  Elgar said, “He means you would have to come back as Oogliefrank, not as Franklin Rudd.”

  I started laughing. “So, you mean the AI can create virtually anything on a whim, but I’d be stuck in my ogre avatar?”

  Mishal said, “That’s the thing. The AI imposed the framework of Legends of Selmia on this dimension. We think it is stuck with that. So, it can only create things within that framework.”

  “How does it create them in the first place?”

  “The working theory is that mana is a different state of energy than we are used to on Earth, but that the AI is using it to create solid matter. So, if it created a cart full of diamonds, they could be brought back to Earth as physical diamonds even though they were made here with mana,” Mishal answered.

  I thought about that for a minute before I answered, “Honestly, if it weren’t for an overbearing AI with a god complex, I would prefer living in Selmia, even as an ogre, over living back on Earth. Here, I have purpose; there, I was just wasting time.”

  Robert spoke up now. “If Quantum Games is the first evil and the system AI is the second evil, then what was the third evil that you are talking about?”

  I thought for a moment about how much I wanted to tell them. Ultimately, I decided time was limited so I would tell them a great deal without talking about cultivation. If Mishal wasn’t here, I probably would have spoken about that too. I reminded them about our fights with the necromancer and then with Dark Kitty. From there I went on about the voice that spoke in my head and was giving me quests in red text along with the ability to block out the AI now.

  When I finished speaking, they all stared at me again for a minute. Then Mishal asked, “So you think there are, what, demons or something coming from other realms that want to invade Selmia, but are being kept out by the AI?”

  Maybe it was just how elven males looked, but that smug look on his face made me want to knock his head off. I couldn’t even blame it on Ogre Rage, since I was free from the AI-driven impulses for the next little bit. Fortunately, Violet answered for me. “Shut your pie hole. You come here talking about this being a different dimension, and then you have trouble believing that there might be other dimensions, or that humans weren’t the only ones who could find another dimension.”

  “She is right,” Elgar added.

  “I know what the AI wants of me. It wants me to play along with its system and be a good little cog. It wants to become a god -- and if I don’t miss my guess, it wants to be free of Quantum Games. The breachers seem to want to explore, but for all I know, they could be maniacal interdimensional conquerors who raze one dimension after another. What I don’t know is, what does Quantum Games want from me?”