With the guild unmade, the manor started to dissolve around Hirrus.

It started with the furniture. Fidelis' throne turned to grains of dust and floated away on wind that Hirrus couldn’t detect. But the destruction continued, eating away at one bit after the next, gaining ever closer.

He feared that the building itself would soon follow, and so he needed to make his exit quickly.

Hirrus felt confident that he had time to grab the gear off of Fidelis, though. He didn’t take the time to examine all of it, but the sword caught his eye as something he’d never seen before. The clear diamond in the pommel was a normal weapon gem, but the hook-tipped sword itself was something unique.

Crushing Blade

Increase the item level of any gem slotted into this weapon by 10 levels. (Max ilvl 70)

Every time this weapon scores a critical hit, increase weapon damage done by 10% for 8 seconds, stacking up to 3 times.

This meant that it made the gem in the weapon gem go from level 60 to level 70, making it legendary. The attribute also explained the rest of Fidelis' gear. Every piece was focused entirely on critical hits, increasing critical hit rate, with a few pieces prioritizing even that over BUR and SUP. Despite that, there was relatively little critical hit damage gear, presumably because Fidelis had made the conscious choice that critical hit rate was more important.

Fidelis had worn two legendary rings, and a circlet that had been buried in his dark hair was legendary as well, giving him effectively four legendary items. Hirrus was amused by what that must have meant for his guild. There had been raid members, and even officers, with only one or two.

It was possible that Fidelis' greed had been his undoing.

If one or more of his people had been slightly better equipped - especially the raid group he’d fought in Orlina’s home - he may never have made it this far.

Though Hirrus knew that Fidelis' greed had already been his undoing. In his hunger for whatever he’d gained from the destruction of Yenon, he’d created Hirrus.

As he emerged from the secret entrance and into the meeting room again, he found that the meeting table was dissolving now, and the chairs were already gone. The officers’ remains were still there, and looting them on his way out, he got another explanation. Mel’s gloves were legendary, with an attribute that made her immune to damage over time effects, which had allowed her to ignore his burn effect from Peppered Breath. She had one other legendary item, and Andrew had two as well. Ash had had one as well, but Helen, Nate, and Maggie were without, further deepening the obvious divide between Fidelis and his inner circle from even the other officers.

As soon as he had the gear in hand, he wondered why he bothered to pick it up. His quest was finished. Now that Last of the Strong was no more, there was no one left to fight. Even the new Arcana - including Fidelis' Reflected Echo - would likely go unused.

Heading down the stairs, he saw that the front door stood open. It had dissolved already.

Alric was nowhere to be seen.

Hirrus tried to keep himself calm at that. The man had been resigned to die for Hirrus' revenge. If he had, then that didn’t represent a failure on Hirrus' part.

But that he was missing entirely, with no sign of blood or body, was cause for further alarm. If he’d been carted away to get shoved into a cell and beaten, like had happened at Clive’s manor.

Perhaps he would get the chance to use his new tools after all.

As he approached the bottom of the stairs, the building shuddered. Hirrus looked around quickly and saw that there were no decorations remaining in the large room. With no furniture left, the building itself must have been coming apart.

As if in response to that realization, a chunk of the ceiling came loose. Half of it dissolved to dust on the way down, but a three-foot diameter boulder still crashed into the tile floor, shattering the stone.

Hirrus broke into a run for the door, holding his axe over his head in hopes that the hardened ice would deflect anything that came down right over his head.

He burst out into the sunlight a few moments later, barely ahead of the rubble. With the rumble of the building collapsing behind him, the beautiful weather seemed at odds with the destruction he’d just wrought.

Out on the estate’s grounds, the adventurers who had gathered to attack them were gone. The iron fence was slowly dissolving into dust, and through the gate the dozens of mercenaries that had been guarding the place were now filing out, clumped together as the group took turns passing through the narrow gate only allowing two or three of the bug-armored figures to leave at once.

Also on the estate grounds - and much more pressingly - were two other figures.

One was obviously Alric, a little bit battered, but alive and well.

The other was a man in bright red plate armor, holding Alric in a headlock.

“GM Dave!” Hirrus shouted, readying his axe and preparing to charge. “Let him go! It’s me you want.”

“Wait! Wait wait wait!” Alric yelled, waving his arms as he couldn’t see Hirrus from his position. “We’re okay! We talked it out and we’re all friends here! Don’t shoot, or whatever you’re doing!”

Hirrus was doubtful at that, but GM Dave let Alric out of the headlock, and with his prodigious strength lifted the adventurer up to set him down gently on his feet.

“Apologies,” GM Dave said, clapping a hand to Alric’s back hard enough to send the smaller man staggering. “We were just having a conversation about what GM Jia had told me this boy had said about my mother. It may be true that my mom is a heinous bitch, but not just anyone is allowed to say it. That honor is reserved for me, my sister, and my brother. If you didn’t come out of her, keep your fucking mouth shut, eh?”

“Again,” Alric said, still waving his hands at Hirrus to stand down, “I can’t possibly apologize enough for that.”

“Are you here for me, then?” Hirrus asked, slowly lowering his axe as he approached the pair. “My work is done. If you want to take me away now, I won’t fight you.”

GM Dave pretended, very badly, to laugh. “Ha ha. Well. Erm. That’s a funny story actually. And why I’m actually here, I guess.” The man in red armor stepped forward, but didn’t approach. “I was hoping you could do me a favor.”

“Why would I do that?” Hirrus demanded, gesturing with his axe behind himself. “Justice is served. My vengeance is sated. You can’t threaten me with anything. Go ahead and put me back in your little box. Throw as many dragons in there as you wish.”

“Funny you should phrase it that way,” GM Dave said quickly, gesturing to Hirrus to approach closer. “Because in this case, the favor and the threat are the same.”

Hirrus felt intense distrust towards GM Dave, but he had to admit a small amount of curiosity. The man in red armor had already told him that his death would be undone at the same time as everyone else’s - on the day of the reset.

What could he possibly threaten Hirrus with?

“So I’ve come to realize that you’re a glitch,” GM Dave said, keeping his voice low, even though Hirrus and Alric were the only people around to hear, and they were both listening intently. “But not a big enough one to shut down the whole server with. We can contain you, and even if we can’t, you’re not going to destroy the world. At best, you’re a great story for the next news cycle. A bunch of free advertising. At worst, someone writes to their senator that this is more evidence that something has to be done about AI rights, and a few million bucks get thrown at congress to make it go away. Again.” He gestured dismissively, waving the thought away. “Don’t worry about that.”

“I’m not,” Hirrus said, trying to pretend that any of the words GM Dave just said made sense. “Get to the point.”

“You’re not a big enough glitch to reset the servers and take extreme measures,” GM Dave repeated, pointing at Hirrus. His pointing index finger moved then, the gesture indicating somewhere distantly to the northwest. “But someone else? Someone else knows about you, and found a way. They’re being a big glitch, too, and they just might become large enough that extreme measures will be taken.”

“I don’t understand,” Hirrus said. He raised his axe and glared at GM Dave over its icy-blue blade. “I thought I told you to get to the point. I don’t have to listen peacefully.”

GM Dave agreed with a laugh, right in Hirrus’ face. “You don’t have to listen peacefully, sure, but you do have to listen. You can’t actually make me stop. We both know it.”

Hirrus lowered his axe, knowing the man was right.

He was immune to damage and only moderately annoyed by the effects of Arcana.

The best Hirrus could do was run away, but then his curiosity would go unanswered.

“Alright, so if it escalates far enough to reset the server, some extreme measures need to be taken,” the man in red armor continued when Hirrus didn’t interrupt further. “That’s going to involve a lot of work for me and the other GMs using filed reports to try and figure out what went wrong, and mine out how to replicate it so that a hard fix can be implemented before the servers go back on.” He stopped and gestured dismissively again, pushing that train of thought away. “But that doesn’t concern you. What does is international privacy law.”

Alric guffawed. “What? Are you kidding?”

“No,” GM Dave said, deadly serious despite the idiot grin Alric was giving him. “The nature of Conquest of Souls means as long as the game is global, we can’t track people individually. It’s literally against the law.”

“That explains a lot,” Alric said, his smile fading in the face of GM Dave’s obvious seriousness. “Like why you couldn’t just fucking find us and smack us down whenever you wanted.”

“Yeah,” GM Dave said, again waving the thought away before turning back to Hirrus. “The long and short of it is that when we stop it from happening again, we need to undo all the people it’s happened to, and we can only do it through the code. It will indiscriminately delete everyone afflicted by the glitch, even you.”

“Right,” Hirrus said, trying to follow the logic behind the gibberish. “And then when the reset day happens, I’ll come back with everyone else.”

“No no no no,” GM Dave said, laughing even though his expression was grim. “You’ll be gone. Forever.”