The man in red armor took a step towards Hirrus.

Despite himself, Hirrus took a step back in turn. It wasn’t just the man. The way his attack did nothing.

Instead, he was retreating before that strange hammer.

“Hold,” Hirrus said. He returned his axe to the loop on his belt and held his empty hands up. He didn’t know why, exactly, he bothered. It was an empty gesture. He was no more threatening with the axe in hand as he would be if he was naked with the nearest weapon in a locked crate a half-mile away. “We don’t have to be enemies.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re a hacker, ruining things for everyone and making more work for me,” GM Dave said, taking another step forward. “If you’re making me work, you are by definition my enemy.”

In the back of his mind, Hirrus’ decision tree was shouting. It told him to prostrate himself. To fear the might-made-man before him. “This may be just a misunderstanding,” Hirrus said. He fought his instincts and stopped retreating, instead holding his ground. “You don’t know what happened.”

GM Dave chuckled under his helm. “I have near enough a guess. Somehow, you got control of this guard, and decided the best way to take advantage of that was to start killing people in the biggest city you could find.”

“I am a guard.”

“Then act like one,” the man in red armor said. He gestured with his free hand, wiggling his fingers in the open air. “Because you’re not fooling anyone like this.”

At the gesture, Hirrus felt his decision tree grow slightly louder at the back of his mind. It urged him to return to Yenon, but it didn’t override his will.

He shook his head and pushed the voice away. “No.”

“Right then. It’s not my job to understand how you got control of a guard,” GM Dave said, stepping forward with the hammer. “It’s my job to ban your IP so hard everyone in a six block radius loses their internet.”

Hirrus didn’t know what that meant, but the sadism in the threat was obvious. He found himself on the retreat again as the man advanced. Behind him, Alric was struggling with the bookshelf that he’d barricaded the door with. It had become wedged into the entryway awkwardly, and the adventurer was starting to visibly panic at his inability to escape.

“Stop running,” the man in red armor said, making a gesture with his empty hand.

Hirrus found himself sliding across the floor into the striking range of that hammer.

Whatever the man had done - whether Arcana or something else - was drawing Hirrus in. Even as he tried to step back, it was like standing on slanted ice.

For every foot he stepped back, he slid two feet closer.

The hammer swept in from the left. It was a clumsy, one-handed swing from a heavy, two-handed weapon. This didn’t surprise Hirrus. Why would GM Dave be a good fighter? He had proven immune to damage. An immortal person didn’t have to be good to win a fight.

Just the same, Hirrus was a good fighter. He was able to duck under the attack with one smooth motion.

“You’re just wasting both of our time,” GM Dave said. “This only ends one way.”

GM Dave lashed out again, this time around in a backhand. Hirrus was barely able to hurl himself backwards far enough to let it pass in front of him.

The irresistible force pulled him back into melee range. He couldn’t resist it. Or move fast enough to get away.

Another swing and Hirrus activated his Split Second Arcana.

The world blurred as he was gifted with sudden speed. As the next swing of the GM’s hammer came out, it went right through his body as the Split Second effect rendered him immune. The effect also allowed him to move freely again, untethered by whatever GM Dave had done to him to pull him in. It meant that in the time it would have taken him to take one step back, he was able to get halfway across the room to GM Dave’s left.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Hirrus said quickly. From his new location, he could see Alric starting to make progress with the bookshelf. He also made the man in red armor turn away from the door, meaning he wasn’t trying to stop Alric. “I don’t understand what you’re doing or why. Make me understand, and this doesn’t have to be a fight.”

“Describing this as a fight seems awfully optimistic of you,” the GM said, advancing on Hirrus again. His free hand hovered in the air, fingers wiggling in another of those strange gestures.

Hirrus suddenly found himself rooted to the spot.

His feet refused to move.

It was as if he was up to his ankles in solid stone.

The man in red armor advanced on him with agonizing slowness. Hirrus wasn’t sure if he was enjoying the inevitability of his victory, or if he was that unfamiliar with moving in heavy armor. Without a clear view of GM Dave’s face, it could have been either.

Hirrus did the only thing he could think of. He reached for another Arcana. This time, the TK Bullet effect the man in the breastplate had used against him.

He held out his hands and purple pellets of energy flew from his palms, pelting GM Dave with a hail of them.

No effect. Hirrus had expected that the damage wouldn’t go through, but he’d hoped the knockback might still push him away, stalling his advance. But no. He wasn’t just immune to damage, he was immune to everything.

Nothing Hirrus could do could affect him.

Hirrus felt his spirit slump. This was it. There was nothing else he could do. “I can answer whatever questions you have, but I don’t know what you want me to say unless you ask.”

“Whatever you did doesn’t matter. It’s above my pay grade. I’m not here to find a long-term solution. I’m here to find a short-term solution that keeps everyone paying their sub next month.”

Hirrus tried to raise his axe defensively, but another finger-wiggle and his hands snapped down to his sides as if by weighted chains.

He was nearly immobilized where he stood, and could only watch as the man in red armor approached, hammer raised.

The weapon came down on the plate armor over his chest with a metallic ring.

Hirrus' vision faded to black.

Yellow text ripped across his vision.

BanHammer Override: Running…

Account Identification Function: Running…

ERROR: Account Identification Function Failed: No account found.

External Connection Identifier: Running…

ERROR: External Connection Identifier Failed: No connection found.

PC Reset Function: Running…

ERROR: NPC/PC Mismatch.

NPC Reset Function: Running…

ERROR: NPC/PC Mismatch.

MOB Reset Function: Running…

ERROR: MOB Reset Function Failed: Unexpected Target

Non-Stationary Furniture Coordinate Warp: Running…

ERROR: Non-Stationary Furniture Coordinate Warp Failed: Unexpected Target

BanHammer Override Complete. 0 actions taken on this target.

“Z-zero… Zero actions?” GM Dave’s voice floated in that black void, somehow both lost and angry.

Hirrus' vision faded back in.

He was still in the foyer of Juri’s home.

The man in red armor was staring at the hammer in his hands with utter disbelief.

“How did it not do anything?” GM Dave asked, seeming to address the hammer itself. “It does something to everything.”

“Hirrus!” Alric called from across the room. “Door! Shelf! Run!”

He looked over and saw that Alric had the bookshelf halfway clear of the doorway - clear enough to open the door a handful of inches. The adventurer was squeezing through the gap.

Hirrus knew an opportunity when he saw it.

The man in red armor was still distracted by whatever the hammer had done - or hadn’t done - to him. It meant he could get free.

Circling around the confused GM, he bolted for the door. Alric was wedged in the gap still trying to wiggle through, and so Hirrus grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved. There was a yelp and a scraping sound as the man cleared the door.

Hirrus had a broader chest compared to the adventurer, and so needed to force the door open another inch before he could get through. It took a moment before he could fit himself through, and just as he did, he saw the man in red armor turn to watch him leave.

“He can’t get through, right?” Alric asked. “His armor was way bigger and bulkier. He’s stuck, right?”

“Shut up and run,” Hirrus snapped, grabbing Alric and shoving him forward. They broke into a run in tandem. “I don’t know what that man was, but I wouldn’t count on anything slowing him down.”

“He’s a GM,” Alric said. He matched Hirrus' speed, keeping pace as they fled southeast towards the river.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Uh, I don’t know how to explain it,” Alric said. “At least, not without explaining like twelve other things first. He’s just… Kind of a god, I guess? Or a representative of god? Little ‘g’, not big ‘g’. I don’t know how to frame this without a thirty-minute lecture on the history of MMOs and what a TOS is. But he has effectively supernatural power to do basically whatever he wants.”

“So we can’t fight him,” Hirrus said. “Hm. I gathered that from what just happened. But it would have been nice to know ahead of time.”

The pair reached the river, and Hirrus led the way over the nearest narrow bridge across. Once they were across, Hirrus grabbed Alric by the collar and yanked him into a narrow space between what looked like a toolshed and the low wall around the grounds of a larger house that was not quite a mansion.

Forcing the adventurer to keep low, they blended as best as they could into the shadowy space there.

The bright red armor was unmistakable, emerging from the same street they’d just run from. But hidden as they were, GM Dave’s eyes scanned up and down the river fruitlessly, before he grimaced. The man reached up and tugged at his beard with visible frustration. Hirrus expected him to engage in a thorough search of the area, forcing them to find an opportunity to slip out of the area before they emerged.

Instead, he vanished.

It wasn’t like he left. He didn’t walk away, or use some Arcana, or anything else.

He simply wiggled one finger and ceased to be.

“Hm,” Hirrus said.

“T-that’s probably fine,” Alric stammered. “If he could just delete us from outside the game, he wouldn’t have showed up in the first place. We just have to stay under his radar. Lay low for a while and try and minimize player reports.”

“Nobody knows you’re with me, right?”

“Maybe the GM does,” Alric admitted with a frown. “But no player has seen me with you yet, besides the guys who were beating me up in that alley.”

“Then you’re still my next lead, aren’t you?” Hirrus emerged from the hiding spot, grabbing Alric by the arm and hefting him to his feet. “I have to check in on Dahlia, but after that we have work to do.”

“Yeah, of course,” Alric said with a grin, falling in step behind Hirrus as they headed east towards the nearest gate out of the inner wall of the city. “Wait, who’s Dahlia?”