Three days ago…

“You’ll be gone,” GM Dave said. “Forever.”

A dull ringing filled Hirrus’ ears. “What?”

“Yep. It’s what they do to get rid of the affected code that created this situation. It’ll also take out the respawn code, to prevent re-introduction. All above my pay grade and apparently super technical, but the complexity of your AI means that direct editing to snip things directly would be like doing a partial lobotomy in the dark during an earthquake.” GM Dave shrugged, acting as if any of those words meant anything to Hirrus. “The devs decided a long time ago that deletion is less cruel. So, uh, you just won’t come back.”

Hirrus stared at the man in red armor for a long minute.

The weight of the words was sinking in, but they hadn’t quite hit the bottom yet. Instead, the words buzzed, floating on the air like angry wasps, lifted by wings of improbability. Stinging with barbs twisted by the jargon Hirrus did not understand.

It came to him, slowly, however.

GM Dave had just told him, in as roundabout and disrespectful a fashion as possible, that he was in imminent danger of being obliterated.

And he had said it with such a cavalier attitude. As if he’d just informed Hirrus that his bootlaces were undone, not that his very existence was ending.

For some unknown reason, Hirrus had never truly feared death. Given the things he’d learned about this world - that he would perpetually be reanimated by this mythical-sounding reset day - it seemed like a more logical fearlessness than normal mortal denial.

To be suddenly faced now with true death disoriented him greatly.

The realization was sobering and dizzying at the same time.

Alric asked a question, but the words seemed to come from very far away as Hirrus grappled with his sudden mortality. His trustworthy adventurer companion’s contribution to the discussion suddenly seemed less important than the yawning abyss the GM had revealed beneath him.

“It has happened before, actually,” GM Dave answered, turning to address Alric. “There was a thing where someone found out how to reroute certain quests’ rewards a few months ago. Directed every vulnerable quest’s rewards to his guild’s treasury. Me and the boys had to figure out how he did it while the eggheads had no choice but to delete two dozen infected questgivers, reassigning their quests to different NPCs.” He turned back to Hirrus, adding: “There was one in Yenon, so maybe you knew him. Gier Something?”

That was it.

The name was the weight of the problem hitting Hirrus.

“Gier Tyndall,” Hirrus said.

Now even his own voice sounded like it was coming down to his ears from the top of a well, with him at the bottom straining to hear.

Despite the distance between his mind and his body, he turned towards Alric. “You met his wife. Dahlia.”

Alric went as pale as Hirrus felt right now.

There was no need for additional conversation.

They both knew what fate he faced.

If GM Dave’s problem went unchecked, he was going to be deleted, just like Dahlia’s husband had. And that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was Julissa facing the same fate as Dahlia, becoming a neglected widow, reliant on the kindness of others to scrape out a meager survival.

Dahlia had been a hard woman before facing that.

Julissa was strong, but Hirrus feared that hardening herself against the loss would dim the light in her heart that had lit his whole world.

“So you understand,” GM Dave said, looking back and forth between the two of them. “If they’re allowed to unleash whatever they’re doing, you’re just gone, buddy. Out of here forever. Just like Gier what's-his-face.”

Hirrus struggled to force himself mentally back into his body. He felt like he was floating, but he managed to make his mouth ask what needed to be asked. “What do I need to do?”

“Your mission,” GM Dave said, “should you choose to accept it-”

“Accept it?” Hirrus said, his sudden indignance at the implication that he had a choice pushing through the existential terror that gripped him.

“Hush, just let me do the bit,” GM Dave said, throwing his hands up in frustration. “If I don’t lighten the mood here, I’m gonna scream. This is too fucking heavy for me.”

Hirrus blinked at him for a moment, before gesturing for him to continue.

“Your mission,” GM Dave repeated with a grateful smile, “should you choose to accept it, is to head northwest. The town of Shemil has been eradicated, left as empty as Yenon. Find the culprits and stop their operations before their plan comes to fruition and unleashes a scourge so vile that the whole game has to be shut down to fix it!”

“You kind of came apart at the end there, talking about the game shutdown instead of like, saving the country or whatever,” Alric observed. “And you’re missing how failure involves being wiped from fucking existence.”

“Broad strokes,” GM Dave said with a dismissive gesture. “And the less said about that bit, the better. We can’t lose the whole thing to despair of the failure state.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us about what we’re looking for?” Hirrus snapped. “Anything useful and not your adventurer nonsense?”

“Not really,” GM Dave said, offering only a shrug. “I’m guessing it was someone from Last of the Strong. They’re the only ones who know anything about how you were created. Honestly, I’m just assuming that what happened in Shemil is related because of the timing of it.”

“What about how he was created?” Alric asked. “More specifically, I mean. Is there anything we can use to narrow the search, or to make a plan to stop it?”

GM Dave shrugged and looked away anxiously. “To be perfectly honest, you know as much as I do. In order to learn any specifics, I’d need to turn to the dweeb squad who would code in the solution, and once they officially know about the issue, that’s probably the end of it, if you know what I’m saying.” He made a fatalistic gesture, drawing one finger across his throat.

“I thought we weren’t focusing on the failure state,” Alric said with a wince.

“Failure is not important,” Hirrus snapped, interrupting them both. “What is important is that we’re not going to. I am going to go up and do what needs to be done. You have my word.”

“Thank you,” GM Dave said, giving a polite bow of his head. “And godspeed, you crazy bastard.”

“We just have to do one thing first,” Hirrus said, grabbing Alric by the shoulder as he started away from the ruins.

“What?” Alric asked. He stumbled under the sudden pull, but followed. “Where are we going?”

Hirrus looked around, considering his surroundings. The stronghold of Last of the Strong guild was in rubble behind him, and before him the trappings of power that filled the grounds around their manor was disintegrating as well. The front gate was still clogged with their departing mercenaries, but the tall iron fence that encircled the place was turning to dark splinters of metal, and there was enough space for them to leave the grounds through a nearby opening.

“I’ve had the most eventful three days of my life,” Hirrus snapped as he led Alric towards the nearest gap in the fence. “Almost everyone I know is dead. My decision tree is gone and my wife was killed right in front of me, destroying everything that anchored my life and gave me purpose. I took my neighbor and only surviving friend to Inoha by clever misuse of my authority as a guard. I then ripped my way up through anyone I could attach to the massacre of my town, making no headway towards those actually responsible.

“I couldn’t catch anything resembling a break until I stumbled across someone on the wrong end of a beating who happened to be able to direct me to someone still only tangentially involved with what had been done,” Hirrus continued. He glanced over his shoulder as they exited the grounds of the guild stronghold and saw that GM Dave was gone again. Presumably returned to whence he came. “And after that some manner of nonsense-talking demigod started to chase after me, intent on my destruction. Following whatever paper-thin leads I could stumble upon got me an insane runaround that nearly got me killed before I discovered that I can transform into a scaled beast that tears through adventurers like an unsupervised child with a bag of sweets. Using that power, I tore through the remaining ranks and,” he said with a gesture behind at the rubble of the manor, “got my bloody revenge at last.

“And then - just when I thought it was over - I learned that my very existence could be snuffed out permanently if I don’t do it all over again just because some idiot is trying to- what? Duplicate me? And I only have a few days to attempt it.”

“Jesus, dude,” Alric said, shaking off Hirrus' tightening grip on his arm, though he kept up, walking beside him. “Are you feeling alright? That’s more words than I think you’ve ever spoken since we met. I was just asking where we’re going; you don’t need to bite my head off for that.”

“I have to follow the one part of my decision tree I always agreed with,” Hirrus said, gesturing angrily back at the dissolving manor that had once housed Last of the Strong. “I’ve been murdering and dismembering my way through all my problems, and it looks like there’s more of that to come. Let me do just one good thing without needing to reduce someone to a red puddle full of meat.”

He sighed, trying not to imagine Julissa looking down on him and seeing what he’d done in her name.

Let her see instead, he prayed, that I am still a good man. Still the man she loves.

“I need to bring Dahlia some groceries,” Hirrus finished, leading Alric southwest, towards the nearest market.