A dim screen appeared in the darkness, asking Kyle where he wanted to respawn. There was only one button. He pressed it.

Kyle woke up in a dungeon.

Again.

His equipment was mostly gone. He had his axe. He lacked his armor, but retained his clothes.

Kyle sighed, part in resignation, and part in relief. People talked up how bad dying was, and sure, it was incredibly painful. But being dead wasn’t bad. He has worried for a moment that he’d be trapped in darkness in constant pain for a full day, or something heavy-handed and punitive like that.

It sucked to lose his armor and weapons. And he could only imagine what state the town must be in. The whole thing was probably ransacked, being empty for 24 hours and all. Everybody probably lost their equipment.

Kyle realized the man probably didn’t need all that stuff. How many sets of leather armor could a person wear, after all? One. That’s it. If everybody lost their equipment, it would only be because the guy was a jerk and wanted to grief people who weren’t even competing with him.

Kyle walked over to the wall and felt its cold against his hand. They were back to square one.

He might even need to fight the goblin again.

Kyle walked to the open prison gate, and looked down the hall. The not-trapped door was still open where he left it. Beyond, Kyle saw the goblin, sitting on the ground holding a torch. Kyle idly wondered if it needed to eat or anything, or if it just sat there, waiting to ambush people who respawned. Beyond that, he could see sunlight through the still-open door.

Kyle walked down the hall, retrieving his axe from its inventory. It was second nature to him now, like using a keyboard was in his old life.

His real life.

Memories flooded back to him. His girlfriend. That one professor who disliked him for no good reason. The odd recipe he used on the chicken breasts he bought from that one wholesale place. He ate that meal at least once a week.

Being in this dungeon rekindled some of that indignant outrage he had when he first appeared. He was in a death game. This wasn’t his life. The designers took his real life away from him. He needed to remember that. No amount of idyllic virtual fields should have been able to change that.

As he approached the goblin, it stood, turned, took out its sword, and growled. Kyle checked his skill menu.

Seems like he wasn’t quite back to square one.

The goblin grinned and charged. As it approached, he activated his fire mist, heedless of the mana cost. He just wanted to see the stupid thing burn.

It was that sort of game, right?

The goblin screeched and withdrew. Kyle didn’t bother examining it. He pulled out a ball of flame and threw it. The goblin dodged, and Kyle rolled his eyes, annoyed by his terrible aim. As he considered what to do next, the goblin slowly backed away from the cloud of embers.

Then Mason ran through the open door, grabbed the goblin, ripped its sword out of its hand, and threw the goblin against the wall. The goblin slumped to the ground, obviously dead.

Kyle looked at Mason. His face was blank. Emotionless.

Defeated.

Kyle nodded. He silently looted the goblin. Then left the room.

Beyond, there was a ladder leading out of the room, through the skylight. Kyle wondered when it had appeared there.

Kyle didn’t feel like talking. But he had a question. He took a deep breath and asked “Do we need to wait for Jacob?” He couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with Mason.

Mason shook his head. “He left earlier. Said he needed to see what happened to the town after that maniac killed us.”

“And you stayed here?”

Mason shrugged. “The man bragged. Said he intended to kill you too. I waited for you. It just felt right.”

“You had that much faith in me, eh?”

Mason’s face didn’t change. “He killed us all. If he set a trap for you, I figured you didn’t stand a chance.”

That was a reasonable point. It only stung Kyle a little.

Kyle started climbing the ladder. Mason followed.

They walked in silence towards the crystal. Kyle didn’t know where else to go. Maybe they could try and rebuild someplace more secluded. If so, they would at least need to pick up whatever was left in town.

As they walked, Kyle saw a brown speck on his minimap. He adjusted course to pass by it, and found the cabin Jacob built. Kyle looked at the structure, remembering how excited Jacob was when he felt like he could contribute. Even Kyle thought the system was pretty cool at the time.

Holy crap, were they naive.

The door was missing. Kyle looked inside. It seemed somebody lived there now. The pointless shelves Jacob made held a collection of odds and ends. Bowls. Kreyfa pelts. Cordweed. Berries. Wooden spears and a shield. Some rocks. Junk.

“There’s some food here. We don’t have any. Maybe we should take it,” Kyle said. Mason stared back at him impassively.

What, Kyle thought. It was just that sort of game, right? That’s what the man had said when he was tied up in the library. And he was right. In one random attack, that man had wiped out Kyle’s saccharine attempt at changing the game for the better.

Kyle sighed, opened his inventory, and left the goblin’s three silver on the bed. A subtle hint to the occupant that he really should fix the door. And he left. Mason followed.

As they continued the trek towards Crystopia, Mason finally broke the silence. “So how’d he get you?”

“I distracted him while Avina ran. Got a blast of fire in the face.”

“We should have run,” Mason said. “The moment we saw that fire attack. No amount of karate training could prepare you for that.”

“Think he was a gamejacker?”

“Obviously,” Mason said. “Somebody stabbed him in the gut. He hardly flinched. Just blasted the poor guy with fire and pulled the spear out again.”

“You can fight after taking a spear to the gut?”

“What?” Mason said, shrugging. “It’s just HP damage.”

Kyle remembered the way the man reacted when he was hit in the face with Kyle’s fire. Strange how vulnerable gamejackers were there.

They arrived at Crystopia. He could still see smoke coming from the city. Not nearly as much as before. The ruins of their city must still be smouldering.

He walked through the gate and surveyed the destruction. The library was a scorched ruin. The man must have woken up later and burnt it out of spite. The cabins were heaps of charred timbers. The bloomery was a pile of rubble. The stone apothecary a blackened ruin. The only thing intact were the walls. It was quite literally a hollow shell of a town.

Kyle ambled to the town square, where the crystal was. Bathed in its blue glow, he sat on the ground. Mason sat on a nearby foundation that had been scoured of its wooden building.

As Kyle sat, other people started arriving, one at a time, over the course of several minutes. Little Jacob, face despondent. Aubrey, her smouldering rage carved into her face. Avina. Depressed. Tear streaks down her face. Dvorak. Ears drooping. Kyle didn’t even know they could do that. One by one, they took places around the crystal.

Jacob sighed. “So… what do we do now, man?”