The sun rising over a line of quest-givers that'd doubled in length.

Although dawn had come, barely one-and-a-half in-game hours had actually passed. Nevertheless, Team Friendship Forever had—on the back of one tireless, all-charitable humanist—soared to seventh in the community service event.

Yay!

The spectacle of Henry's rapid ascent, like laying a turd in public, had attracted three additional spying flies. They were presently buzzing around the HQ's grounds pretending to be an administrator, a Citydweller hoping to join a Village for this riveting 'criminal' hunt, and a Textileworker repairing clothing.

To his great surprise, his former enemies popping up had slightly reinvoked the ill-feelings of his youth - he supposed he'd matured less than he'd estimated.

While he was sketching a map of Granite Guppy spawning spots in Suchi's harbour, the Byzantines returned in a wretched state. Their equipment displayed the scars of battle, stained and tattered and red, with several missing pieces that'd dropped upon death. Of the lot, Justinian seemed the most downcast, as he bore the guilt of causing the previous mishap through his incompetent orders.

Abigail led Team Friendship Forever in splitting off to approach Henry's cute quest-assistance station.

"Cookie, cake, whatever, just give me something before I die!"

"It's a bit soon, but fine."

While he furnished the beggar's hand with a ration, Cathy made a scene of inspecting his work. Her unhappiness with his refusal to participate in the fun hadn't abated, but she approved of this charity.

"At least, you're helping the community, too...Good job, Henry!"

"What can I say? I'm a humanist." He slid the fishing map across to a Waterworker, who bowed profusely and literally offered to name their firstborn son after him. "No, thank you," Henry replied, "the Slum Points will do."

Cathy, 'humanist' reminding her of his preposterous gold-digger girlfriend recruitment tournament idea, grimaced in doubt.

Loki stormed over, having noticed Henry's rising placement on the tacky three-story-tall leaderboard overlooking the grounds.

But her-his-her-his ranting lips were still soundless due to being muted.

The rest of the Byzantines trailed behind in tow. Among them, Walker was scratching his chin in the bewilderment. A Tier-5 member of The Company exerting this much effort to show up a random kid was quite odd. Being the elite of the elite, it was profoundly petty.

The Village Head wasn't the only one who'd discerned this discrepancy. The spies hidden in the crowd had already ordered their subordinates to begin investigating this 'Artemis' character, who'd somehow moved The Tyrant to action.

But for Henry, his friends, the spies, and this silly competition – none of these were his present concern. In his peripheral vision, he'd been monitoring the donkey, which had frozen mid-interview with an Ibanmothe.

Unfortunately, it had inferred the same thing about the Byzantines as himself.

As its expression crumbled, Henry almost rose from his chair. However, when he spotted the invasive observation of the Textileworker spy, his next blink brought a flashback of a former Scholar trainer being assassinated by that spy's guild, the elderly gentleman tied above the gates of a faraway city, his exposed guts dribbling down his eviscerated stomach, his intestines slithering with the convulsions of each moan.

Henry, a Floating Leaf retraining its mind upon the winds of the present, exorcised the memory in a second.

Bloody spies...

-Henry Flower: Too many eyes on me. The responsibility falls to you to console Donkey Bro and prevent him doing anything stupid.

-Danontherightwing: Huh?

-Henry Flower: Watch.

Staying seated and out of the matter, Henry smiled snidely at Loki. "You've been muted all along, you hysterical cow."

"Henry, that's misogynistic..."

Donkey Bro's interview notes slipping from his grasp and fanning out in the dirt behind him, he ran up to the Byzantines.

"Barat and Ferf...where are they? Why aren't they with you?"

Some of the Byzantines glanced at each other, wondering what this shabby-looking NPC was talking about. Anderson was the sole amongst them to recognise the names, which'd belonged to the two guards they'd invited to dinner.

"We got wiped," he replied gravely. "We were outnumbered."

"Outnumbered?" Donkey Bro's eyes darkened, the last of embers of hope inside cooling to black.

Justinian stepped forward, shaking his golden locks. "The failure is mine alone. If my mind for battle weren't so encumbered, if I'd refused the Ibanmothe the vanguard—"

"Hahahahaha!" A peal of biting laughter interrupted the Crusader, an NPC being pushed past at spearpoint with her hands chopped off to prevent spell-casting.

"Well deserved!" she continued. "This is the fate for those who bow to you Offworlder scum. In the next Cycle, may they and every other traitor here be reborn crawling on their snake bellies!"

The quest-givers, obviously Empire loyalists if they'd converted their money to Slum Points, began hurling their insults at this 'criminal'. To them, she sarcastically shouted back, "Long live the revolution, long live The Empire!" repeatedly, until she disappeared from sight.

During that distraction, Donkey Bro had spun in Henry's direction. Gone from his posture were the usual pretentions of strength and nobility. Both had been replaced by the vulnerable nakedness of the infant who's fallen, who turns to their parent for a cue as to how to handle this alien sensation.

Not now, thought Henry painfully—one blink reincarnating a former puppet king bawling as his skin rotten off the bone; a second, a former contessa fumbling with futility to save her ball-gown from her bleeding throat—one day, donkey, but not now.

He smirked at Loki, goading him further.

Donkey Bro, wincing at the rejection, glanced down. About to hit the lowest point of desolation, he was spared some of the impact by the warmth of an arm wrapping around his shoulder

"I'm sorry, bro," said Dan. "This...this sucks."

"No need to comfort me...your kind can assume no space in one of my destiny's heart...a worthless, self-centred species..."

As Donkey Bro stared at the ground, though, at the soil stamped with hundreds of footprints, he started to tremble.

"You!" he snapped at Henry. "You foresaw the dangers! Why didn't you stop them?! Not even a warning!"

When Henry blinked this time, he saw a former Lieutenant General lying on a forest floor, with a boot on his neck and a trench knife raping his eyeballs.

Imbecile!

Since the accusation was too loud to ignore, he delayed a moment for fake contemplation of the accusation, assessing the state of the Byzantines, recalling what he'd said to Donkey Bro earlier, then snorting.

"The 'guards'? They ignored their warning when they signed up to be soldiers."

"Big Bro!" shouted Dan, horrified by his callousness.

Donkey Bro, familiar with Henry enough to see through the charade, was still pissed off by him, by the cruelty of self-composure before the pallid face of his new friends' corpses. "Cut it out!" he yelled. "Cut it out, right now!"

Henry's next blink blessed him with a knife-wielding mob pulling down a former vizier's pants and castrating him. "Cut what out?"

"Please," Justinian intervened. "Be at peace, young one. Your comrades' was a noble sacrifice; through their efforts, we have salvaged the light."

"Definitely!" Lady Kittykat swung her sword in triumph. "Those bandits got a solid thrashing!"

Another young Byzantine mirrored her enthusiasm. "Yeah, man, Cold Embrace Village smoked those bad guys." The boy turned to his father. "Dad, did we get any Slum Points?"

"Nope."

"Aww!"

A collective sigh seeped out from the Byzantines.

Donkey Bro, astounded by this cavalier exchange, glanced around at the disappointment mirrored on some of their faces. More disturbingly, the majority weren't paying attention at all, their focus instead captured by Loki screaming at Henry for ignoring him.

Donkey Bro was suddenly stabbed by a nightmarish epiphany

This group's earlier sullenness...it hadn't stemmed from a grief for the dead...they were sad about losing in this childish event...

Amongst the queue of Ibanmothe quest-givers—who were indifferent for their own reasons, habituated as they were to The Slum's misery—a boy gave him a knowing nod. Yes, we are in the midst of monsters...nothing we can do about it.

But Donkey Bro refused.

"A noble sacrifice?!" he spat. "How easy these words roll off that tongue you think immortal! Come, I, The Finale, will grant you the first of my fatal kisses!"

He made to charge Justinian, his jaw popping open, but, before he could close in range, Dan threw himself in front and blocked his path.

The meathead, activating to make himself immovable, shook his head. "This isn't the way."

"You would stop me?!" Donkey Bro punched him in the face.

Dan, taking the blow square in the jaw, shook his head again. "No, this isn't the way."

Donkey Bro threw another swing. "Then what is the way?!" Another. "Rummage through that thick skull of yours and reveal your genius alternative!"

"I don't know, bro." A tear streamed down Dan's cheek. "I DON'T know! But what I do know is that it's not this. THIS, this is NOT the way."

"&#*@!"

Donkey Bro collapsed to his knees and, with no other outlet for his wrath, hammered his fists against the ground, against the many footprints of the living. When his knuckles smashed and the automated-healing mended them, the sense that even self-destruction was beyond his control ramped up his ferocity, before, finally bursting, he slumped over and wept.

"Holy smokes!"

The Byzantines spectating Artemis were shocked when the girl in the background leapt over the table, grabbed Artemis by the hair, and, pulling out a dagger, started sawing through her neck.

Henry shot Rose a blank look.

-Henry Flower: Are you $&#*ing serious?!

Rose's brows, slicked crimson with Loki's fountaining throat blood, creased in confusion at Cripple-gege's response.

-Zhangmei33: But...but he insulted you?

-Henry Flower: So #&@!*ng what?! Millions of #&@*ing people have insulted me! Am I supposed to #!%^ing kill all of them?!

Rose, showered by soul lights as she dealt the coup de grace, sank further into confusion.

As an assassin, the obvious answer was yes - in fact, she couldn't imagine a more appropriate or gorgeous fate for the haters. Thus, she'd attempted to impress Cripple-gege by carrying out a beautiful assassination on his behalf. However, from his anger, it seemed that she'd made a miscalculation.

Maybe he wanted to do the killing himself?

Henry, sick of this messed-up world, dropped his gaze to his desk, to the blood-stained papers, the red splotch on white like the sole trace he'd found of a former double agent and his family who'd been executed in the snow.

"You will reimburse the cost of these," he immediately followed up with a plausible explanation for his dejection.

Under the eternal scrutiny of these spies, who would record his expressions and comb through the minutiae with their teams for hours, searching for clues, for vulnerabilities, there could never be a gap, ever.

He'd errored by discarding the masks...a day every 19 years was a small price to pay...

"Oh!" Rose cringed, using a spear that Loki'd dropped to fend off the attacks from several of Loki's beta-orbiters seeking to avenge their goddess. "My bad."

Henry gave her a stat buff and began sniping them with just to speed up the conclusion of this disgraceful display. 'Luckily', the donkey was too busy crying to care.

Her skill became the latest attraction, the latest note for the watchers.

After the last assailant was finished off, Walker, assuming Rose to be a hired guard, ordered the Byzantines to continue to a nearby smithy to repair their damaged equipment. Loki's beta-orbiters who'd stayed out of the fight swore revenge; many, though, were peculiarly less pronounced in their hatred, their loyalty to their warrior queen waning after her usurpation by another more violent. Henry's friends stayed a while to offer consolation but ultimately—the donkey's friendship and loss occurring off the screen of their adventure, the donkey being an NPC—they left, too.

Following the departures, Donkey Bro continued to wallow where he'd knelt, the Villages coming and going veering around him as they did The Slum's many potholes.

Still under surveillance, Henry replaced the soiled papers with clean ones and resumed writing quest advice, the competition with Loki continuing to serve as his alibi for sticking around to monitor the donkey.

In the corner of his vision, Dan stared at him with an appalled expression.

-Henry Flower: The choice was that or him getting assassinated. If you want to criticise me, speak through private message.

-Danontherightwing: What's wrong with everybody?

Henry'd been included in 'everybody'.

-Henry Flower: It's a video-game, Dan. Every stone, every smell, every person, every whimper, they're all 0s and 1s stored in the cloud. You can't expect regular people to develop a sentimental attachment to any of this.

-Danontherightwing: Still, it doesn't...it feels wrong. We can't be this...

-Henry Flower: Casual?

-Danontherightwing: Yeah...

-Henry Flower: Maybe.

At the end of the day, Henry had little right to cast judgement. Although, through his reformations, no player could claim to have saved more NPCs, the opposite also held true. Body count wise, after the wars and regime changes, he was in league with history's most vile.

Just when he thought this night would finally settle down, he lost sight of the two of them as a Thai Village strolling past obstructed his view.

"So what's next, chief?"

"A big one. We're combining with I-East to raid the lair of some cannibal cult."

"Cool."

"What's the bounty?"

"Didn't ask. It's pointless when Count Khamhom's underlings are gonna hog the best spots again."

"I hope his mother gets #&#*ed by a dog."

"Shh...but, yes."

Henry groaned internally.

While Suchi was a trash pile, it couldn't be infested with a huge number of cannibal cults. Thus, the Villagers were likely referring to the guys who'd planned to eat him on his first morning here.

In case the donkey had overheard their conversation, Henry, his paranoia extrapolating several steps in an instant, stood up, pretending to stretch while double-checking the position of his poisons.

Worst case scenario, he'd keep the donkey sedated until Karnon reverted its human transformation. Really, he should have done this sooner, but he'd wanted to avoid giving The Trickster God a card over him.

Alas, after the Village passed, he saw that the donkey had also risen to its feet. It was giving him a resolute stare, the grief and frustration at this abominable existence having chanced upon the way it sought. What better release than revenge against a former enemy?

"One step closer, one trick," mouthed Donkey Bro, knowing his lips were being read, "and I'll use it here."

'It' referred to the , which would no doubt draw the attention of everyone, including the spies watching, always watching.

Henry tensed and relaxed the fingers of his writing hand.

A former protege blockading a bridge alone...

A former guard charging down an alleyway to catch a 'thief'...

A former captain sailing off into a hopeless storm...

A former emissary spitting on a prince's shoe...

Endless was the list of wannabe heroes, transformed by useless pride from Current to Former, entombed by their naivety inside the sad, shrinking grave of the past.

$#&$ing hell! he raged inside. Not now, you stupid, childish &$*#ing donkey! There was a time for emotionality and virtue, but not now! The present called for selfishness, indifference, coldness, cruelty! When the universe conspires to discard you prematurely, become the monster if that's what it takes, unsheathe the talons and sink them deep into life's flesh and cling and cling and cling!

Donkey Bro, giving him a wink, sprinted to catch up with Village. "You there, were you talking about The Primordial Path?"

Exchanging a few sentences with their Village Head, he and Dan chasing behind were welcomed into the pack.

Henry, finishing his stretch with a lungful of air to refocus, sat back down, no change in mood evident from the outside. Internally, though, he unleashed a torrent of sighs.

His Fleshbag self wasn't going to be happy with this...

-Henry Flower: If you want to redeem yourself, go track them.

-Zhangmei33: Who?

-Henry Flower: The donkey and the meathead...

Rose, who'd been sponging herself behind him, jumped in alarm. "My play quota, crap! See you tomorrow!"

While she went off in pursuit, Henry lingered for two more minutes, yawning with increasing frequency as he scribbled out instructions for seven high-value quests that would secure first place. Snickering, he then shoed away the remaining Ibanmothe, who complained and moaned. Finally, shapeshifting into a stallion, he feigned a trip to his nearest property to log-off, the flies losing his scent in The Slum's labyrinthine streets.

An exhausted quarry to the city's north, the secret hideout of The Primordial Path of Nerin.

While siege teams raced to tunnel out entranceways, thousands of armed Villagers and Ibanmothe, with the blood-thirsty energy of rabid wolves, jostled to be in the front. Once they entered the base, the battle would be as quick as it would be gruesome, and only those in the vanguard could hope to capture an enemy head.

But this wasn't the spot.

Two kilometres away, close to the Suchi River, a cave.

A coalition of eight Villages had hidden outside the cave. In preparation for their ambush, squads had been installed around, ranged-attackers in the trees, melee on top of the cave's entrance, from which they could leap down with their spears and axes.

Donkey Bro and Dan were squatting inside a trench, monitoring the cave through a cover of long grass.

"You better be correct about this," snarled a Bowman beside them.

Donkey Bro's gaze didn't budge from the cave. "They WILL flee from there."

His words were unfaltering. In his pre-Sentient days, he'd been trotted through the tunnels connecting the quarry to this cave as part of escape drills organised by the cult's leader. A catchment of ships had been buried nearby, with which they would try to sail up the Suchi River to the safety of the remote mountains further north.

Dan was reading and re-reading a wanted poster. "Did we gather enough people? It says here that this Apostle guy is Tier-5. With the overwhelming stat advantage of his levels and items, won't we be like toddlers armed with butter knives?"

"There's enough," said Donkey Bro with the same self-assurance.

With himself here, half a second was all they needed. Nothing in this universe could withstand his bite - no material, no man, no monster, not even a God would remain intact after passing through his lips. One bite, and it would be done. Apostle Bian had been the start of the misery; his death would be its cessation.

In truth, though, the more Donkey Bro rehashed these thoughts, the falser they rang to him. With all this waiting around, the heat of his passions had begun to fade and his soul was steadily gripped by a fear that snuck in through the chill.

Half a second...

The mouth of the cave, black, impenetrably black, took on the visage of the mouth of a beast of the earth. Soon, it would vomit out a legion of the unspeakables that dwelled in its stomach, and they would sweep—

Half a second, he reminded himself, half a seco—

The beast spoke to him. "Ka-wush!"

Freezing up, he regained his composure only when the surrounding Villagers began to whisper about the noise. A Landworker with a mining speciality explained that there'd been a collapse deeper in the cave. What had caused it? Impossible to discern.

Half a second...half a second...

The ambushers continued to wait, their commander organising members to rotate expending their Boost on hearing-enhancements.

Shortly after the cave's first utterance, it produced a second: a war drum pounding like a ceaseless, determined heart.

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump...

Earlier, within the beast's pitch-black intestines.

Guided by the dimmest Lightstones, a train of animated skeletons, cultists with scarred backs, and donkeys were on the march. Tension gnawed at the group's living members. The men's stemmed from the uncertainty of their escape, the donkeys' from the pickling barrels they carried, which were spacious enough to fit a whole person inside, or two with a bit of squeezing.

Leading the train from the rear was a tall fellow with the distinctive red-skin of an Ibangua and six droplets of blood in his irises from his Bloodmancer class.

Oblivious to the strange turns of fate about to lead to his demise, Apostle Bian Han had been guiding his followers with confidence. The only hint of his own trepidation was the proximity of a Crusader he'd summoned from the Infernal Plane. He kept this reptilian humanoid with skin of frost glued to his side, ready at a moment's notice to cast an emergency spell-shield.

"Have heart, kid!" The Apostle gave a nervous disciple a friendly shoulder jab. "Didn't She prophesy this day? Nerin has opened the path to salvation; it's simply our task to follow!"

It wasn't Nerin; it was himself, the support of Suchi's patron Goddess merely being a convenient ruse to recruit disciples in the early stages. He'd designed an escape plan from Suchi when he'd first sighted doom on the horizon. For him, the end had begun long before The Empire's rise, when the Offworlders had first materialised, those creepy, immortal creatures. If Lord Xun had not gifted him a method for processing their bodies, too, he would have relocated the operation immediately.

At the train's head, a bat swooped out of the shadows and landed on the shoulder of a Beast Tamer. After it squeaked in its master's ear, they messaged everyone to halt through a Commander interface being sustained by the Apostle.

-Denever Ficko: 170 metres ahead. One person.

The Apostle immediately activated bullet-time so that he could make a call before his underlings panicked.

A lone wolf was unusual. There were a dozen figures in the city who could defeat his force single-handedly, and none of them were affiliated with The Empire.

Then, a messenger? Someone who wants the upper hand in bargaining during a crisis? Another foolish Offworlder playing the hero? A distraction?

Or they could be one of the dozen.

It occurred to the Apostle that, whoever they were, their ability to find him boded poorly. This realisation, however, didn't dampen his mood significantly. His mortal attachments had been stamped out decades ago – this was kind of a vocational requirement, since people more conscientious of their safety tended to be too apprehensive to sign demonic pacts.

The Apostle filled the tunnel with his laughter. "Welp, it seems that sneaky time has ended, kids! Let's put on our best and greet our guest in style!"

His decisiveness allayed his disciples' anxiety. Equipping their arms, they resumed the march, their passage now noisy with the clatter of metal armour echoing off the tunnel walls. While on the move, the Apostle adjusted his followers' position via , placing them such that their bodies could delay the adversary if he needed to ditch.

One tense minute later, the Beast Tamer's bat squeaked to confirm that their foe had stayed in place.

A voice surged over them from the blackness. "A well-trained bat...what a shame."

The Apostle, ordering his disciples to halt, had several Fighters use to send their Lightstones sailing forward. The stones' glowing trajectory through the dark came to a premature stop as they collided against a wall of hardened clay blocking the tunnelway and a 5-metre-deep field of artificial stalagmites. Behind one stalagmite stood the one who'd constructed this defensive position, prepared to retreat to cover from an arrow or spell.

A teenage Offworlder, they'd dressed in a bizarre attire mixing Tier-0 gear with shabby equipment that seemed befitting of a destitute farmer. In startling contrast, their chest was studded with a set of Spelltomes, the covers of which were stitched from a urine-coloured leather - the Tier 5-2 material, Earkencin, very valuable. A dim, almost invisible layer of Nature Energy covered the hand being thrust in warning at the cultists.

A Tier-0-4 Earthfriend, Tier 5-2 Scholar, concluded Apostle Bian. This brat was incapable of killing him one-on-one without his summons, let alone with hundreds of supporters. Nevertheless, he wouldn't underestimate his foe - not a member of The Company. Every day carried news of overseas brothers who'd made that error.

"What brings you here, brother? Pleasure or business?" The Apostle alluded to The Company indirectly to avoid demoralising his followers.

"Actually, weakness, if you'd believe it." The Offworlder sighed. "I'm too weak to resist the temptation of your massive Slum Point bounty."

"So a foolish Offworlder playing the hero...you lot always make for good eating." Apostle Bian held his belly and began to cackle madly.

-Bian Han: Tor, approach and await my signal.

Hidden in the dark behind the laughing Apostle, a Cutthroat began to cast their stealth spell.