Bromy rubbed his wrist with his other palm, "My hand were starting to get stiff."

"Yeah, I have... add or take twenty minutes before Crown wakes up and kills me, so I might as well untie you all."

"So, John, while you're still alive...-" Bromy began.

"If you're asking about the whole 'taking the world over' thing, it's just to help the NPCs."

Bromy planted a hand to his face as he let out a sigh.

"For god's sake, John - It's painfully clear to us all that you're not in the least concerned with the fucking NPCs!" Bromy called out.

"What do you mean!?" He demanded.

"I mean you're just using the NPCs as an excuse to take over the fucking world!" he complained.

"Bullshit! I legitimately helped out a tonne of NPCs!"

"Yeah, as a side-effect! You didn't try to get some fucking 'NPC-rights' agreement worked out, you didn't try to get them someplace safe, I mean for god's sake you didn't even consider asking the NPCs if they wanted help! You just exploited their weakness!"

The room fell silent.

"And I don't care about your morality, for fuck's sake that one guy is still bleeding out outside! But you're being so fake it's painful!"

"..." JohnWillStab couldn't reply.

"What's with the fucking persona of yours, the retarded corpse I know didn't concern himself with world domination, he wanted to explore the zones ten times his level." Bromy continued.

"..." JohnWillStab was at a loss for words, he wanted to argue but no words he could put together in his defence seemed genuine.

"Is that what Kwispii meant? ... and I was such an asshole to him..."

"That's not even why we came here, We wanted to let you know you have three days to live," Bromy explained.

"Three days?! Why!? Did Olivionion finally decide to kill me!?" He asked looking out the window seeing only the normal amount of bloodshed.

"Why didn't you /whisper me?!" He asked looking back to Bromy.

"..." Bromy wasn't sure.

"I guess I just wanted a road-trip." he shrugged.

Slowly Bonifacius opened his eyes and saw the Bromy was already awake and talking to JohnWillStab.

"Bromy? What happened?" he asked placing a hand over his head to soothe the headache remaining from the delinquent's pipes and bats.

"Oh, you're up - I was just explaining to JohnWillStab that he's going to die."

"...Bonifacius really looks like Bonifacius in real life..." John said looking at him.

"I know right?" Bromy asked lighting a cigarette.

"Don't smoke indoors! You could set off the fire smoke detector!" Bonifacius scolded him.

"Relax, I removed them because they kept beeping," John explained cracking open a can of energy drink.

"Wait, JohnWillStab?!" he asked looking over to John who waved his hand.

"Yep."

"We found you at last! We bring you dire news, thou hast but three days to live!" he exclaimed.

"Why does he talk like that?" asked the thief.

"He's roleplaying." Bromy and John replied in unison.

"Ah. Ok." the thief was still confused but didn't want to know more.

"Anyway - what's going to kill me?" John asked.

"Well, this one NPC told us we'll become our in-game character..." Bonifacius stopped himself.

"And you believed him?" John asked after some silence.

"I mean... and you're an undead... and you'd like... become a corpse in real life?" Bonifacius explained.

"..."

"...

"Tell you what, if you /whispered me this, I would have assumed you're just high as fuck, but since you tracked my house and assaulted my neighbour, I guess I'll believe you." John relented.

A few moments later JohnWillStab heard another scream outside.

"HELP!"

JohnWillStab, Bromy and Bony rushed out seeing Pedecree choking the old man.

"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO MY FRIENDS!?" he demanded smashing his head on the ground below.

The group looked at the bloody scene before them before JohnWillStab cleared his throat loudly.

"Ahem..."

Pedecree looked up and looked back to the old man.

"Oh... you guys..."

"Let's hurry inside before the delinquents show up!" Bromy exclaimed.

"Don't worry about it, they won't come this late." John shurgged before heading back inside.

He suddenly passed out as he felt a sharp pain in his gut, Crown was standing there with an over-clocked taser pressed into his gut.

"WAIT! STOP! THAT'S JOHN!" Bonifacius called out.

"I know!" She replied lifting the taser off his gut and pressing it to his forehead.

"Damn, you got some energetic friends." laughed the thief.

Crown reached for a small glass bowl that stood on a nearby table and tossed it at the thief who dodged it without even looking up from the laptop.

"Yo John, I got 'XPs' - how many do I need?" she asked.

Crown grabbed another item off the table and tossed it his way.

The thief dodged each one flawlessly.

The thief proceeded to catch the spoon Crown threw at her and tossed it back, the spoon digging into her hand such that blood seeped out and Crown let out a pained cry.

"FUCK!"

"That's what you get for being annoying." retorted the thief.

The now crispy John stood up and stumbled up to his room before closing the door.

"Come back here coward!" Crown called out as John put his entire body-weight against the door.

"Screw that! I may have three days to live but I don't intend to die at your hands!" He replied, his speech still slightly slurred from the brain-frying.

"Whatever! I still came here exclusively to kick your ass for leaving the guild!" Crown called out.

Why Crown raged-on on the other side of the door JohnWillStab sat there staring off into space blankly.

"Why did I leave the guild?...." He wondered.

"I guess they're right... I really did feel bad for the NPCs... but... I don't think that's all..."

"I wanted to show off... I didn't want to be the weakling."

"When Foxly and Bony gave me the cool items I felt like they were just trying to make me less useless."

"The way Bonifacius wasted his time helping me level..."

"The way they let me be the leader of their guild, even though I was the weakest."

"The way my first reaction of seeing the clearly paranormal sense of smell and taste in the game was to party..."

"I guess I thought that if I'd be taking care of the NPCs I wouldn't be as much of a loser."

"We saw your videos by the way! Mister JohnWillNotStab!" Bonifacius called out.

"OH SHIT!" JohnWillStab thought as he flung the door open.

"Nevermind, kill me the fuck now!" He exclaimed.

"Why?! You sounded so adorable!" Bonifacius exclaimed.

Bromy put on a high pitch voice where he cracked his voice on purpose: "HeY GuYs, It'S jOhNwIlLnOtStAb!"

"Fucking cringe..." Crown sighed.

"Just fucking stab me now!" He demanded.

"ChEcK oUt mY wOrMcRaFt StRaTeGy!"

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" JohnWillStab was enduring levels of cringe unknown to him before.

"Alright, I feel a bit better now." Crown sighed before returning to the living room and taking a few more potshots at the thief with different household items.

"You guys are right, I guess I was acting a bit retarded..." JohnWillStab sighed.

"Don't worry about it, I can't go around bullying dead-men." Bromy laughed.

"What about-" John began but was cut-off.

"If you're going to bring up the neighbour, I will take that back and stab you." He warned.

"Alright, alright!"

The home went silent aside from noise in the living room.

"So... I'm going to die in three days?" He asked.

"No, you might die in three days," Lorb exclaimed from Bonifacius' phone.

"That's a weird ringtone," JohnWillStab commented.

"Don't call me a ringtone, also, I'll have you know I am an expert!"

"This is Lorb, he's one of the programmers of the game," Bromy explained.

"Wait, they're still alive!?"

"Oh, no - I'm just a primitive AI-like thing, but I have a good bit of his memories," he explained.

"Basically I have no idea if when the animus shift takes place you'll die," he explained.

"The animus-what?"

Lorb let out a sigh.

"We shift the frequency of your soul such that it never existed in this timeline, and instead we put it into the other one," he explained.

"And you?" he asked.

"I'll stop existing, duh," Lorb replied.

"...are you alright?" John asked.

"That's a weird question, It's not like I'm really alive," he explained.

"It's like asking a ro*mba if he's feeling alright about vacuuming your carpet."

"That's depressing," he replied.

"Well, the same could be said for the NPCs," Lorb replied.

"What do you mean? They'll die too!?"

"No, they're not alive to begin with, simply put, we can't make an artificial consciousness, the NPCs can feel and talk and can think... but they aren't there if you know what I mean."

"..." This filled JohnWillStab with a certain degree of sadness, not because he spends the last week taking the world over for nothing but because it was all futile.

"Thinking positively they'll never realise it's the end. They'll just go from one arrangement of ones and zeros to another."

"Is there really nothing we can do?" JohnWillStab asked.

"Nope, even if you bring the body of an NPC over somehow, the mind will at best be new and at worst completely missing."

"That's just how the system was designed!" Lorb explained.

"Well, can't you re-design it!?" JohnWillStab demanded.

"Well, I'm not the one running the server, so no... maybe for one PC - but that'd take months for a normal coder."

"Then you're lucking I'm not an ordinary coder," Crown exclaimed walking into the room, several spoons and forks sticking out of her arms and torso, as a result, she was dripping with blood.

"I seriously doubt you'd be able to-" he was cut off by Crown.

"Lorb, guide me through this." she said opening her laptop.

"You'll have to use JohnWillStab's PC, the system is designed to only run on mycrowsoft systems."

Crown let out a sigh as she grabbed some cables from her computer bag, she plugged her laptop into John's PC and started working.

"Alright, step one, I'm going to need you to write a decompiler for the resources folder."

"Right, tell me the code."

JohnWillStab, Bonifacius, Bromy and Pedecree backout out of the room and returned to the living room where they saw all of John's plates and cutlery was strewn across the floor as a result of Crown's previous attempt to hit the thief with something nay anything.