Meanwhile…

Rumi Chatham struggled to avoid being distracted by the music that surrounded him. It was a challenge. But Rumi spent day in and day out trying to put on a dispassionate face to avoid social stigma, which meant that he was ready to tune it out when his needs were based in more professional demands.

Unfortunately, that meant that when the music ended, he didn’t immediately notice.

He didn’t know how long he kept working in silence, but once he realized, his lip curled up in disgust. Without warning the blood on his hands was disgusting, and the body beneath his blade was just a lump of flesh.

With a groan of revulsion, he pulled his hands away from his work.

“I don’t know how you do this kind of thing,” someone said from behind him. “It seems like a lot of time and trouble for not a lot of payoff.”

Rumi managed not to whirl on the intruder immediately. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and his hands flexed involuntarily. He turned, calm and detached, to fix them with a glare.

“What?” they said, the smile that didn’t show through their mask coming across clearly in their tone. “Is the disproportionate effort part of the point?”

Rumi didn’t answer right away. He took his time, counting to an arbitrary number in his head first. “I can’t believe I’m working with scum like you,” he said at last. Another pause. “That’s all.” He wiped his hands on the corpse’s shirt, trying to hide that it made his skin crawl. “But another failure. Have you and yours had any progress?”

The figure in the door shook their head. Over their face they wore a mask, which hid their expression. It obscured their meaning beyond the simple negative.

Rumi hadn’t known much about them before today, and spending hours employing them and their organization hadn’t changed matters much. They called themselves Fire, and never removed their mask, which hid their features. From what Rumi could tell, they seemed to delight in cloaking themselves with secrecy. Questioning them or even just peering curiously at them only made them express smug delight. Their androgynous voice meant that he couldn’t even tell what gender they were.

The only way to keep them from becoming infuriating was to focus on the job and ignore their mystique.

“Nothing yet,” Fire said. “They do everything else. They scream. They beg. They bleed. They die.” They gestured at the body before Rumi. “As you have surely noticed. But they don’t do anything else.”

Rumi moved to tap a finger against his chin, and then noticed his hand was still covered in blood. He put it back down at his side in disgust. “Are you asking about free will? Their… What did they call it? Decision tree?”

“Oh yes,” Fire said, nodding emphatically. “They refuse to acknowledge it for a while, but once they’re close, they’ll own up to it.”

“But they can’t break it?” Rumi leaned towards Fire, unable to keep the hunger out of his voice. “They can’t do anything about it?”

“Not to the death,” Fire said. “Not even for a second.” They leaned towards him, tilting their head. The pinholes in the mask expressed no emotion. “Though hasn’t it occurred to you that if they do, you might not be all that happy with you?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

Fire didn’t answer verbally, and just gestured at the blood all over his hands.

Then at the knife.

And then at the corpse on the table.

“I can’t believe I’m working with scum like you,” Rumi repeated. “Of course you don’t understand.”

Fire laughed, a humorless thing that made Rumi’s skin crawl. “Then make me understand.” They twirled a hand through the air. “I have an exit strategy, so explain to me why you don’t need one.”

Once more, Rumi counted in his head. He could feel the anger boiling. Murdering his new friend wouldn’t give him what he wanted.

Instead, he focused on the corpse in front of him. “I’m giving them something they need,” Rumi said, speaking slowly and enunciating. If Fire decided to educate themselves, he wasn’t going to stand in the way of that. “Imagine if you spent your whole life without free will. A slave to the entertainment of unknown invaders to your home from another world. If someone freed you from that hell, would you care so much if you went through a little pain to get there?” He gestured out at the world at large. “That’s what these people suffer. If we can find whatever glitch the Yenon incident caused to set that one guard free, we can do it again.”

“Of course, he’s the poster boy for this whole venture,” Fire said, mirth clear in their voice. “And that’s going so well for you and your friends, right?”

Rumi sneered. “That was an obvious result.” Fire snorted behind him and it took everything Rumi had not to snap. “The Darkwater Monarch exploit required us to destroy his home,” he said, keeping that detached tone. “All his friends and family, dead at our hands for the sake of an achievement. Wouldn't you want revenge for that?” Rumi gestured down at the corpse. “This is being done explicitly for the sake of liberating them. Once we give one of them free will, they’ll surely understand why it was all necessary.”

Fire said nothing, and Rumi couldn’t decide if that meant they agreed or not.

Or even if they understood.

It may have been irrelevant either way. Fire and their compatriots were degenerates, anyway. Griefers and trolls on the highest scale. They’d do almost anything if they thought it was funny, and absolutely anything if they were being paid.

They were MPKers. In a game like Conquest of Souls, where monsters acted as a source of abilities for every player character, there were numerous mechanics for capturing, transporting, housing, and even breeding monsters in order to fuel training exercises where abilities could be honed, learned, and even sold.

Fire and their friends used these mechanics for devious purposes.

They would grief other players - often killing them - by releasing high level monsters in low level areas to let them rampage for hours, or by finding even high level people leveling or farming Arcana in isolated areas and unleashing upon them more enemies than they could handle, miles away from help.

It was a rotten tactic, but undeniably effective.

Fire and their ilk were so reviled that they couldn’t form or join guilds, or else they’d face retribution from anyone who had ever fallen victim to such tactics.

When he’d realized what was happening, Rumi thought to employ them in case some of the mechanics for handling monsters might be applied to an “awakened” NPC.

It made him feel dirty to work with them, but they had proven shockingly useful. The tactics and precision involved in MPKing had instilled in the group a brutal efficiency that let them turn the hamlet of Enathona into a bloodbath in only hours. Fire even had an underling who was sprinting about with a clipboard, making notes and turning the dozens of instances of brutal torture happening at any given moment into useable experimental data.

If they could actually make this work, Rumi might even come to respect them, as far-fetched as the idea had seemed when he opened his purse to them.

“As long as I’m being paid, you do you, buddy,” Fire said at last, interrupting Rumi’s reverie. “We’re running out of people here, though. I’m thinking about moving some resources into scouting so that we can find our next target and do some logistical optimization. We need to hit somewhere far away from here or else the guards might come down on us. But the best options are Thordal or Shemil. Thordal is a bit large for this sort of thing, and Shemil has a fully-manned citadel.” They held up their hand, examining their fingernails absently. “I’m not afraid to hit either one, but it might mean an increase in our fee. We have six or seven Reputable Monsters in the bank, and any two of them could overwhelm the defense of any city in Hari, shy of Inoha herself. But fielding them is an investment.”

“If it must be done, then it must,” Rumi said, absently checking his menu to find how much money he had on hand. He grimaced, although the emotion was a careful lie. He looked over at Fire, keeping a bored look on his face. “I have a few hundred thousand for a down payment.” Before they could speak, Rumi continued. “I can go cash out some resources for up to three million, if that’s what it comes to.”

“Three- Three million.” Even through the mask, Rumi could sense the surprise in Fire. And then, after that initial shock wore off, the greed. “As you say, milord, it will be done, and at once.” They made an exaggerated bow, and despite the mockery in the gesture, there was excitement in their motions as they turned back towards the door.

“You don’t ask questions.”

“MPKing is an expensive business,” Fire said, pausing in the doorway. “Asking questions doesn’t pay the upkeep on room and board for seven Reputable Monsters.”

Rumi let a ghost of a smile cross his lips. “Good. That gives me time to work on my monologue.” He gestured dismissively. “I’ve got half a metaphor formed about making an investment in conquest, and business being good. I hope to have the particulars worked out before my plans come to fruition.”

“Investment in conquest,” Fire said with a chuckle. “Interesting motivation.”

“Just one man,” Rumi said, feeling a fire in his gut as his plans unfurled in his mind. “Just one man has brought Last of the Strong to its knees. Think what could be done if I had a dozen like him? A hundred?” He made a sweeping gesture. “Three million now for every coin on Rizath when it’s done?” He clenched his fist. “I will hold the world in my palm, and all it takes to close my grip around it is the answer to one riddle: how did it happen? The answer to that question is worth every cent I can spend on it.”

Fire gave an unreadable nod. “If you’re open to constructive criticism, you should lean into one metaphor. The investment thing was weak, but the bit about closing your grip around the world was good imagery. Focus on that bit, if you can.”

Rumi turned, fire in his belly. He snarled, a biting insult readied to spew at the faceless figure in the door.

But then he stopped.

Something else crossed his awareness.

His attention was stolen away from Fire, and instead focused on guild chat.

[Cloti Amukta]: The Merciless Plague. He’s got it. He’s turned into a Merciless and is killing us with it.

The rest of the guild chat was an explosion of questions, but Cloti never replied.

Rumi’s attention went to the guild status window, ripping it open to confirm.

Cloti had been killed.

He was suddenly shocked to also see the others who had fallen, grayed out on the guild member list. Oskar? Tanner? Clive? Rumi had stopped paying attention when Juri had been slain and everyone started panicking, but the entire raid team, besides Orlina? It was absurd.

Terrifying.

This one-man army was more powerful than Rumi could have hoped.

And Cloti had just handed him the answer. She had told them all why he was so strong.

And, most importantly, she had provided a possible answer to his riddle.

“Fire,” Rumi snapped, “stop.” Rumi motioned sharply with one hand. “Stop everyone right now. Anyone being worked on, keep them alive.”

“What?” Fire asked, pausing for a moment and standing silently - the telltale sign of subvocating a message to another chat channel. “What’s wrong?”

“We were missing a factor,” Rumi said, feeling a giddy sense of elation so powerful that he couldn’t help but to pace back and forth impatiently. “And of course we are. It’s so obvious! I was an idiot - a total moron - for not seeing it!”

“Perhaps milord would care to share this with the class?”

Rumi ignored the question. “Do your people have the Darkwater Monarch fight unlocked?” Before they could answer, Rumi shook his head. “Not even cleared. Just unlocked?”

“Maybe,” Fire said, confusion and uncertainty - maybe even distrust - leaking into their tone. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to give you a gift worth a dozen Reputable Monsters,” Rumi said, “one monster that can destroy an entire town and bring questing in an entire region to a grinding halt. And all you have to do for me is figure out how it makes an NPC break his AI.”

He couldn’t stop the broad grin that was still spreading over his face. “We’re going to get the Merciless Plague.”