Author’s Corner: Alright guys, time to get into some more seriousness of the real world! For realsies. Warning, this chapter is quite a bit less lighthearted than most of them so far(or at least, that’s the plan).

When life becomes a game, to what heights can we rise as we play? When the world becomes a lie, how far can we fall? Until now, I had never really considered it. After I had gotten out of the game, Faraday had called me for a consultation. I hadn’t understood why until I got to the scene.

The address he had sent me was a house on the other side of Oakland, and when I got there, I nearly spilled what precious little was in my stomach. Once I got past the police inspection out front, and made my way to the living room where Faraday was waiting for me, I saw a man thrown about in a gory mess. Arms, legs, even individual fingers had been separated. Aside from some police VR games, this was my first crime scene, and it felt like something broke inside me.

Blood was sprayed everywhere, and the only thing worse than the thought of his organs being part of this mess, was seeing that they weren’t. Blood, meat, and bone were all there, but aside from that… “This is the third one in three days.” Faraday said next to me as he looked at the scene. “Normally, we’d never let a civilian within thirty feet of this, but you’ve been in the ‘game’ the longest.”

As he said that, I finally noticed why I was here. Off to the side of the room was a painting in blood on the wall. Two words, written above a series of symbols. “Game Over…”

Celeste… the symbols? I didn’t want to look at anything in this room, so I asked the AI in my head for help.

“Sorry, John, but I don’t recognize any of them. If they’re runes, they’re too misshapen to be discernable.” She spoke up solemnly from behind me.

“If you called me here… they’re using magic or something?” I glanced over to Faraday, if for no other reason than not wanting to look elsewhere at the moment.

“Near as we can tell. Our mages aren’t leveled up enough to be able to identify how it’s done. Hard to level a diviner. But there are no identifiable tool marks, the skin doesn’t appear to be torn, and as you can tell, we can’t find a trace of the organs. It’s like they just fell apart.”

“And… that was at all the scenes..?” I pointed over to the message on the wall, refusing to look.

“That’s right. We call him the Gamer, but the symbols he leaves are different every time. We’ve sent someone into NeoLife and had them copy them over to be examined, but they don’t appear to be runes. Rather, they’re a language, but an alien one. That is the language of the bajra, an alien race inside NeoLife that is capable of altering their appearance at will. No identifying traits, no other unique abilities. What we need from you, is to help us figure out how he did it, and how to stop it from happening again. I’ll tell you what I can, but a lot of the information is confidential, for obvious reasons.”

I nodded, and quickly excused myself from the room. I could examine it without having to look at that, and all I needed to know was if there was a magic I recognized. If not, I could theorize, and maybe come up with an idea or two. After I found the nearest trash can and vacated my stomach.

“You okay, John?” I heard Celeste ask from behind me, but really, if I thought about it she had it even worse than me. I can forget what I saw eventually, but she was built to record, to remember. “Don’t worry about me, okay? I can handle it.”

“Still.. ugh…” And back in the trash can.

After I was certain I had tossed up everything I had eaten in the last week, my stomach finally settled. Closing my eyes, I sent my mana out towards the living room to investigate. Even though I could ‘feel’ it, at least I didn’t have any images to go with it. And right now, I was glad for that. When my mana touched the first body part, I felt an almost overwhelming amount of magic, a dark and dreadful power that made me pull back my senses as if I was afraid it would notice me. Weakly, I called out to Faraday, who came into the room and grimaced as he saw me kneeling next to the trash can.

“Find anything, aside from ‘leftovers’?”

“Not funny… There was magic, alright. And it was dark.” After a moment, Celeste had been able to actually identify the school of magic, thanks to the Identify software. “Blood magic. Able to control an organic body in unspeakable ways. Even with the message on the wall… there’s no guarantee your killer was ever even here…”

Faraday raised a suspicious eyebrow at that. “And how do you know that information?”

Letting out a weak chuckle, I looked back at him. “You know those AI bracelets they give you in the game?” When he nodded, I tapped my head, making his eyes go wide. “Got a little helper. One of the perks of my magic.”

“You know, if you can do that for others, it’d be a huge help, especially to investigative teams.” He thought idly while glancing to me.

“Sure, I’ll get right on it. Who should I perform magical brain surgery on first? I’ll have you know I ended up in the hospital when I did it to myself, by the way, and it was not a total success.” That seemed to dissuade him pretty well from pressing the issue. “I do have another thing for you from the game, though. Not sure if it’s been made public yet, was going to tell you next chance I got.”

“What is it?”

“I know how to stop monsters from spawning.”

As if those words were magic of their own, Faraday rushed me back to the station and away from the gruesome crime scene. On the way, I explained in detail about the three methods that Celeste had found to prevent monster spawns. Faraday had the same thoughts as me about which one was the most easily usable, and planned to make a report to his chief when we arrived.

When we got to the station, he had me sit in the waiting room while he went off to talk to the local chief of police. Every now and then, I heard a loud shout, and gradually got the idea that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be called in the first place. However, it seemed that he was saving the best for last, and eventually a man came out to greet me. He had a strong, athletic build despite the fact that he was visibly gaining in years, some of his dark hair turning grey.

“Carl says that you are able to stop the monster spawns. That true?” I recognized his voice from the brief call when I had been offered the job as the police’s mercenary.

“I’ll assume that’s Faraday, and yeah. I haven’t tried making the items necessary, but if I can manage to do it, shielding a town the size of Oakland is possible.”

I hadn’t gotten the chance to reveal that specific detail to Faraday before we got here, so the reveal made the chief grimace. “What about bigger towns?”

“It takes higher quality materials for bigger towns. At most, I can make the stuff for an Oakland sized city right now.”

He gave a resigned sigh, and nodded his head. “There’s been a rumor that there were methods to stop monster spawns altogether, so we had some officers discretely check in NeoLife. Naturally, we can’t do the priest or mage methods, due to religious and practical reasons. And none of our officers took a druid class.”

“Not surprised. Most of you went diviner, right? Easiest way to do investigations.” When I said that, he nodded his head again.

“Right, but we had heard that doing this required all of the basic elements to have a level of mastery to produce the materials. Even though you are one of the beta testers, it was believed that you wouldn’t be able to help for quite some time.”

I chuckled lightly. “Well… if you can give me a minute to wash my mouth out, I can get started trying to make it at home. It will probably take me a couple days, at least, and interrupting just makes me start over with whatever I’m doing. I’ll also need you to provide a large glass sphere about…” After getting the measurements from Celeste a moment later I continued. “Five feet in diameter. It’ll go in the center of town. Finally, the magic circle needs to be drawn around the entire city before it will work. If you have any enchanters or mages researching spell formations, they should know how to do a magic circle. If not, you’ve got nearly two weeks of NeoLife time to figure it out.”

Again, he grimaced upon hearing the requirements. The glass ball wasn’t that bad, they could get one almost any time with a bit of work. But drawing a circle around the entire city would take time. At worst, it could take them a couple of weeks to lay down a proper circle, assuming they didn’t just have a small ditch dug. Thinking about it, I offered a suggestion. “You can try laying wire around the city underground to act as the circle. That might actually be the easiest way, and then set a length of wire connecting it to the building where the glass ball will be.”

“Right, we can try that. Now, about the other matter you saw today. You naturally cannot tell anyone about it, understood? If I find out you did, I’ll have you arrested for interfering in an investigation.”

I nodded my head, accepting this, before he continued. “Though, you’ve already been involved more than you should. And just knowing that this is blood magic will help. If it were a different alien language, then maybe we could just run around and question anyone of the race. But for it to be a shapeshifting one makes it harder..”

Tilting my head, I asked curiously. “What did the message say, anyways?”

He raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and replied, as if the message itself wasn’t that important. “Just a bunch of ramblings. As far as we can tell, it’s just a song that people sing when they fly in spaceships. Our men have already looked into it, and there doesn’t seem to be any significant connection between it and the crimes.”

“Ah… well… anything else you can tell me?”

“Don’t answer your door for anyone for a while, unless there’s at least two people, even if it’s someone you know. There’s a chance that the killer might have seen you at the scene.”

That realization made me freeze, shivers running down my spine as I imagined that what happened at that house might happen to me. Celeste said that blood magic could be done over a distance. The only thing necessary was a drop of the victim’s blood to serve as a medium. But.. If that was the case… I began to calm down and think about it. If blood leads to blood, it should connect through the aura. I quickly, right in front of the chief of police, shapeshifted into a void elf. Theoretically, if I changed my aura enough by changing races, the connection should be broken.

However, something hadn’t occurred to me between the time that I was fearing for my life and the time that I shifted to present myself a possible solution. When I opened my eyes, I found about six officers all with their weapons drawn pointed at me. “Oh come on… really? You guys already know I can shapeshift.”

“‘Fraid we need you to prove who you are, son.” The chief said strictly, being one of the ones with his gun trained on me. At this distance… even if I changed my skin with Aspect of the Armored Beast, their guns could probably shoot straight through me.

“Okay… well… you guys looked up druids, right?” He nodded his head at my question. “Then you know about groves, right?” Another nod. “Okay… anyone feel like taking a look at mine? Probably easier to send you in there than it would be to summon a tree in the middle of the police station.”

Surprisingly, it was Faraday who nodded to the chief and walked up, though he still had his gun out. I could see how this was a bad situation, especially for him. If I turned out to be the killer, I could just be taking him hostage. In that case, the other five would have to either open fire on me or let me leave with him.

“Okay, I’m going to take you into the grove, but for that to happen, you have to not resist. If you resist, and part of your aura leaks out when I’m pulling you in… pieces could fall off.” No sooner had I said that than a realization dawned on me. “Fuck… he’s a druid.”

“What do you mean?” Faraday looked at me, a bit of hesitation in his voice.

“I just said it. If you resist, pieces go missing. It’s not blood magic I sensed back at the scene, it’s Blood Affinity. He must have tried to pull people into his grove by using their blood as a medium he could control, which is why only their organs were missing. There were no tool marks because he didn’t use any tools, they really did just fall apart.” I’ll admit, the idea of a weaponized grove terrified me. There was no way to see it, and if it hit you’re as good as dead.

“Why didn’t you consider it before, then?” The chief was the one that asked this time, still suspicious.

“Because I’ve never tried to take something into my grove that I wasn’t holding in my hand or on my body. I didn’t even know it was possible. But the mana and control required to do this… He’s got to be a fairly high leveled one, probably specialized in the Blood Affinity.”

“And how do we know you’re not the one with the Blood Affinity?” He asked again, and it was a good question.

“Dammit… well, if we were in the game, your companion could tell you with a certain software. But I’m going to wager that none of you are in the Gallen star system of wood elf space. Or have methods to bring your AI companion over to this side.”

This seemed to make the chief even more suspicious. “I heard that you couldn’t test for druid groves or things like that.”

With a sigh, I tried to explain myself. “You can’t, but you can read strong affinities on their aura if you have the Aura Sight skill and the Identify software on your companion. For instance, I can see a bit of metal affinity on you, so that is likely your strongest secondary affinity. You can get your affinity tested in the game if you want to confirm it.” Celeste had been kind enough to show me his metal affinity, which was surprisingly at 4%. If he were to be a druid, he’d be able to cultivate that pretty easily.

They put me in an interrogation room after that, while the chief went off to confirm the information I had given him. Naturally, as soon as I learned that we were dealing with a shapeshifter druid with Blood Affinity, I had Celeste check for anyone with a Blood Affinity above 5%. Getting an affinity that high is impossible without cultivation, so anyone that had it would be my primary suspect.

Of course, there wasn’t much I could do while locked up. Oh well, guess I can get started on the element seeds…

Author’s Basement: Before anyone starts commenting that this makes the MC suddenly OP, I have a few things to point out. What he is thinking this killer did with his grove, is NOT something he personally can do. The mana control and amount to penetrate another body at range with enough accuracy to pull them into the grove(even if only partially) is well beyond him.

Spoiler :

The only reason that the killer was able to do it was because he only targeted level 1 people. There is generally very little to gain by using such power on such weak people, when with that level difference their weakest spells are lethal.