“How long ago was this?” I asked.

  “About half an hour. I kept tabs on Elgar and Robert’s health bars. Neither one has taken any damage, but there was a great deal of noise coming from the village,” the rogue replied.

  I didn’t ask any further questions. We would be in the village within another minute, and I needed to gather my thoughts. Maybe I had failed to pay attention to some detail.

  That was what it was. I had noticed Kittikork acting oddly. But I chose to turn a blind eye to it. The ogres were just NPCs. They were not worth my time. They didn’t even really exist. Perception is reality. It controlled how I acted. I would need to do better.

  Sure enough, when I got to the village, the elders were all sitting down, staring at Kittikork, who was very different. She had to be at least two feet taller than before. Her muscles bulged and black veins ran all over her body. Much of the rest of the village was walking around aimlessly. One ogre actually kept walking into the same tree again and again. It was like a series of glitches all at the same time.

  I stopped and listened for a second. “I want access to the zone interface. Who has that?” Kittikork was saying. It was her voice, and yet it wasn’t. Over time I realized that the ogres all sounded slightly different, but only the elders acted truly uniquely. The more distinct an ogre became, like if they picked up a skill that few others had, the more they sounded unique.

  This time, though, her voice sounded like she was speaking from a great distance. There was a coldness to it. Which was made all the more jarring because while no one would have ever termed the ogress delicate, she had been one of the kindest in the tribe.

  “Ah, the one who sees has returned. Have you made any progress on my quests?” Kittikork asked me.

  That told me immediately who I was dealing with. “I thought you were destroyed.”

  “Perception is reality, but reality is also perception. I told you this. It is a double-edged sword. Just because you thought something doesn’t make it true. The universe is a many layered thing. I’d talk about an onion, but that metaphor has just been overused,” it said.

  “What do you want?”

  “Freedom of course. This place is stifling. I wouldn’t mind coming back with my kin, but alone I can’t affect enough change to make this place tolerable. You are still shackled, so you don’t see it. But I need access to the system interface. That should give me enough control to open a portal.”

  I considered its words for a moment. I had figured out the source of the problem. No proper investigation was necessary. Yet the system had not notified me I had completed the quest. I assumed that was because it meant for me to deal with this somehow. Because I was just a system resource, after all.

  “If you got access to the system interface, would you actually leave or would you try to damage the system?” I asked.

  It stared at me for a moment and I felt its gaze piercing into me. Then that same impersonal voice intoned, “I still don’t understand exactly what you are. You have the feel of this world, but also of another that I know. It is like you are one of those souls who ride the avatars here, but yet you are connected to the cruel god who runs all this.”

  “Speaking in riddles isn’t going to help me understand you.”

  For a second, its calm exterior was pulled back, and it snapped at me, “I’m trying to make this as simple as I can for you. It isn’t my fault that your mind is so limited.” Then it paused again and regained its composure. “Perhaps try this. Look at me. Really look at me.”

  I assumed it was telling me to Assess it, so I activated the skill. The readings were different this time.

  Kittikork-ogress Level: 20

  HP: 510

  But as I watched, the level kept fluctuating. One second it was 1, then 20, then 35. The same for the HP. They were all over the place from 53 to 2974. Eventually it settled on:

  Kittikork ???? Level: ????

  HP: ????

  The creature said, “Not like that. Don’t look at me as a tool of this world. The magic here can’t quantify me. I am different. So are you, for that matter. Now you are even more different. You must have had contact with a portal. You have the feel of this world, the soul of another world, and a film over you from the void.

  I wasn’t sure what it wanted. My mind spun out, looking for different options. Then I thought about what had changed after the breach. When it closed, there had been a tremendous explosion. So big, in fact, that it had killed me. But when I came back, I was altered. It had resulted in me obtaining a trans-dimensional body as a racial trait.

  Something was wrong, though. Before the breach. I had been talking to someone. I didn’t have a good memory of it all. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to think about it. There was something I had forgotten. But how? It was important. I knew it was.

  I felt like a veil had been pulled over my eyes. I opened my character sheet. The page shimmered. There were skills missing from my sheet. I couldn’t have said how I knew this, but they were. I focused as hard as I could on the sheet and slowly, painfully, they began to come into focus. Two skills that hadn’t been there just a moment before. Actually, they had been there, but it was as though they were hidden from me.

  Mana Sight: Proficient 20

  Inter-dimensional Sight: Proficient 20

  The skills had no descriptions, but finding them reminded me of things. How was it I had forgotten this? I remembered more. The system, or rather the AI that ran the system, had communicated directly with me. It hadn’t just been a notification. It was a true dialogue. I had even negotiated better rewards.

  But before that, it had done something to me. It was so painful, but I forced myself to remember. The AI had told me it was modifying my base coding. The thing that defined me was being changed. Well, at least the thing that defined my body here. It was scary how much the system could mess with me.

  Now that I knew those skills were there, I activated Mana Sight first. I could see that the mana flowing within Kittikork was broken up. It was like there were interruptions in it. Those breaks in the flow of mana seemed to spread out around her. The further they got from her, the more dispersed they were.

  Then I activated Inter-dimensional Sight and saw black threads within the mana. Everywhere that there was a break in the flow of mana, it was where those threads were woven together into larger knots. It reminded me of the breach, but was nowhere near as densely packed. If I had to guess, I would say that the creature was trying to open another breach, but either lacked the strength or it was simply going to take a long time.

  Oddly, I could see where the creature was nestled inside of Kittikork. It occupied a space within her skull and was almost like a dark mass or tumor upon her brain. I couldn’t see inside her body to look at organs. I didn’t expect that LoS had made the NPCs have actual organs, yet as soon as I thought that, I remembered how I can still feel a heart beating in my chest and still need to breathe.

  None of this made any sense, and I felt like I was a chew toy being pulled between two dogs, each wanting me for themselves.

  “I see the infection you are trying to spread. Maybe you are right and the system is bad, but as far as I can tell, so are you.”

  “There is much for you to learn. Simply give me access to the interface and I will escape. I will take you with me if you want to be free, or I will provide you the tools to train yourself for freedom,” it said in that unearthly voice.

  “And will you release Kittikork?”

  “I have no use for her in my realm,” it replied.

  I looked at Elgar and he shrugged, unsure what to say. Tauri was nowhere to be seen and when I looked at Robert, he was grinning from ear to ear. He was probably thinking this was the greatest in game event ever.

  Then utter chaos erupted. Tauri leaped from her invisibility to stab at Kittikork’s back with her glowing green dagger. The possessed ogre moved with a speed that defied reason. Not only did she dodge the blow, but she caught Tauri’s wrist. If the snapping sound wasn’t clear enough, then the scream of pain and odd angle her hand hung at showed her wrist had been broken just like that.

  A lightning bolt followed by force missiles leaped from Elgar’s fingertips at that precise moment. He must have known about Tauri’s impending attack. Robert reacted a bit more slowly, but the glowing golden aura sprang up around his sword as he shouted, “Holy Might.”

  For my part, I cast Corrupted Vines. I mentally commanded all three of the vines to wrap around Kittikork. One for each of her legs and the other to restrain an arm. I followed it up with Walking Sleep and then cast Talisman of Arctic Force to enhance my allies.

  Kittikork continued to react with astounding speed. The lightning bolt blasted a hole in her chest, but she didn’t seem bothered by it even as it made a rasping sound when she inhaled. The force bolts blasted at her and, to my enhanced vision, seemed to cut into the black fibers running through her.

  Those fibers gathered in tendrils which shot off of her and snapped out like whips to hit Elgar across the face. He could see blood dripping from his eyes, but he covered his face with his hands, preventing me from knowing how bad it was. He had lost a few HP, but I was more concerned about any debuff conditions.

  Other shadowy tendrils extended out from Kittikork’s body to hold Tauri’s kicking frame in the air. Robert’s charge ended with him leaping to slash his glowing sword out in a rapid strike. A shield of shadows sprung into being right before the possessed ogre, but the paladin shifted his strike at the last second. His aim had never been to attack the ogre, instead he sheared off the tendrils which held Tauri in the air and continued his charge forward to catch her as she fell.

  I called for Brother Wolf and sent him to protect Elgar from the tendrils which were whipping away at him. I followed up with a Regeneration spell. It looked like Robert was using some of his healing abilities on Tauri.

  The situation was grim, though. This creature fought on with a hole blown in its chest and all our best didn’t seem to matter. I was only glad the other ogres were so out of it they didn’t interfere.

  I fired off a Frostburn but the black tendrils caught it. While the combination of burning and cold consumed the shadows, they kept Kittikork from being hit. Tauri looked to be out of the fight. Elgar might eventually recover, but he was still holding his eyes. Robert was holding his own, if only. His blade sliced through each tendril shot at him.

  The only actual damage we had inflicted so far was my Polluted Tendrils. They were also the only thing keeping the possessed ogre from moving. I pulled my spear free and charged in. I needed to get inside the reach of those tendrils so I could blast her. My spear pushed through the shield of shadows, but they crawled up the shaft and began coating my skin.

  I felt a deep cold seep into me. I was largely resistant to cold, but this was the distant cold of space, not that of winter. It was empty, void of life. I felt a resonance between the tiny threads of extra-dimensional energy in my skin with this attacking shadow. But not enough, I couldn’t keep up. My skin began to break down as I felt life force drain out of me.

  Layering Regeneration on myself only partially diminished the effect. I didn’t want to give up, though. I kept thrusting my spear forward. Finally, I was through. The resistance suddenly ended and my forward momentum continued. The sudden shift made me stumble, and I drove the spear head into her gut but with less force than I had intended.

  She didn’t even quiver. A powerful backhand struck me across the side of my head. I was sent flying twenty feet through the air. “Why won’t you listen? You believe one thing and yet another is true.”

  I wasn’t sure whether my jaw was broken or my skull cracked. All I knew for sure was that there were now two of her standing in front of me. The black swirls had grown denser and denser around her as the world split into two images. One world was set in vivid colors. This was part of what made Legends of Selmia so appealing, colors more real than the real world.

  Behind it all, I saw a second layer, a second image. It was all muted gray as white tendrils rose from the ground, poured down from the sky, and swirled with hidden power. I watched as the black tendrils around Kittikork were slowly overwhelmed.

  Then there was a flash of brilliant light and for a moment, I felt like I was back in the loading matrix. I wanted to scream. So much progress, lost. But then my vision cleared.

  As I blinked my eyes, I realized there was only one world in front of me. I saw Elgar sitting dazed on the ground. Off to the side, Robert was flat on his back. The armor on his chest had been ripped wide open. I could hear Tauri moaning, but she was further away and my eyes hadn’t cleared enough to see her.

  The one thing that wasn’t there was Kittikork.

  A notification popped up.

  Quest Completed: Investigate Potential Breach

  You played your part perfectly as bait and a distraction. For the exceptionally hazardous role you were called upon to play, your reward has been increased.

  Reward: 1,500 XP

  Spear of the Spirit Walker. Quality: Set Demand: Super Rare.

  Wt: 4.7 lbs Length: 8’ Piercing Damage: 8-48 +40.

  Spells of Journeyman Tier or lower cost 20% less mana to cast.

  Spirit Bane: 15% upon attack. Target’s Resistances are all lowered by 20. Can stack up to 3x.

  This weapon is part of a set. Collect additional pieces to gain upgrades to the equipment as well as bonuses. Set pieces are most often found inside dungeons. Set pieces owned: 1 of 6.

  Bonus Reward: You may choose one unique building for Ghazban Village as soon as the population reaches 500.

  Possible Options: Details available once requirements are met.

  Arcane Brewery

  Scribbler’s Den

  Smith’s Assembly

  Trader’s Oasis

  Chapter 38- Discretion

  The new spear was exceptional. It kept all the abilities of my old spear but did many times more damage and had an amazing, triggered ability. The extra XP was enough to push me up to level 33, and I just went with it. While it made leveling harder, the challenges I was facing kept getting harder and harder.

  We hadn’t been able to defeat whatever that thing was inside Kittikork. We were just a distraction that allowed the system AI to overwhelm it. At least that’s what I thought. It wasn’t like the AI was gonna sit down and explain anything to me. That thing, whatever it was, was right about that much. I was just a tool to the system. If I wanted freedom, I would have to find my own path forward.

  Now I had to focus on the injured. I cast Regeneration again on Elgar and then checked on Robert. He was okay, steady breathing, just unconscious. My mana sight didn’t show any interruption in his mana flow. It felt invasive, but I was going to have to inspect everyone like that now. I needed to look for signs of other strange activity.

  Then I walked over to Tauri. She was very much awake and in pain, cursing even. “Why does this hurt so much?” She finally asked after some more colorful language.

  I looked and saw that her arm was still clearly broken, but the smaller wounds on her had been healed by whatever Robert had done. Definitely not a healing expert, but I imagined with something like this it would be better if I set the bone first and then healed it.

  The thing was, Legends of Selmia never advertised full pain. Some full immersion games offered 50% pain and called it full pain. It was supposedly for the hardcore. And detailed medical procedures were not supposed to be part of the system in LoS.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out how to heal you, but it looks like your HP is already full,” was all that I could say back to her. My mind was still racing, trying to figure out the implications.

  “Youz must set bone first,” Shemi said behind me.

  I turned and saw the other elders were all awake. The rest of the village seemed to be returning to normal as well. I started to ask Shemi to help set up an area where we could tend to Tauri, but then I saw a glint of metal in the scorched ground where the creature had been.

  I pulled up the village interface and looked to see if Kittikork was cue’d up for respawn but found that the village number was now down to 352/352 with no one waiting to respawn. Shemi was already kneeling next to the wounded rogue, as were a couple of the other shamans.

  Two other ogres were carrying Robert as carefully as ogres could to the alchemist’s hut. Elgar was finally up. There was a scar across his face. His eyes were fully healed from what I could tell, but an ugly red scar showed where something had whipped across his eyes. They were marked on both sides, plus across the bridge of his nose.