As I went to login, I noticed something odd. I was now able to get a clearer impression of the game functions, or at least the login function. The way I had been using it was just the lever sticking out: easy to grasp and manipulate, but it was merely an interface to a greater machine. And now, now that I had been shown, I could make out the most basic features of the underlying function. There were two inputs, but there was something confusing going on. Both seemed to point back to me.

With a mental shrug, I activated the login, trying to pay attention to what was going on as I did. The first input seemed to refer to me in a vague or general way. The second pointed somewhere specific, but it was somewhere inside the game function area, specifically an area that I hadn’t seen before and thus was still veiled.

As I blinked, standing next to the big pink crystal, I put it out of my mind. I had a bigger problem. As I inspected my body, ensuring that there were no unforeseen issues, I discovered that there was one.

I was missing my magic pants. I was stuck in starter greys, thinner and more flimsy than the jeans, but simultaneously less comfortable than the arcology wear that my real body had on. My other body, I suppose. Damn it, what did it even mean if my avatar was somehow real? Even more so now that I had sold one…

I put those thoughts out of my mind for the moment. I needed to go find Joe. If The Painter was still with him, I could get my pants back, and then have a chat with Joe, maybe figure out what he was inclined to do once everything inevitably came crashing down.

First, I turned and went up the nearby stairs. If I could get a look at which barrier was here, I’d know which floor I was on. I should be bound to the eleventh floor, but you never know. I caught sight of the black bars and magical tiles, and froze. There were two guards posted, thankfully both facing away from me. One was quite short, probably one of that white skinned race whose name I had probably been told but hadn’t bothered to remember. The other looked like maybe an elf? I couldn’t tell from this angle, and was not all that interested in getting any closer. I crept back down the stairs, quietly as I could.

Well, this was definitely the eleventh floor. I set off down the stairs. There had to be some kind of fast travel between crystals, I probably just needed to push a bit further down the storyline to unlock it.

My thoughts shuddered to a halt. This wasn’t a game. There might not be fast travel. Why would there be? Why had this place been built to be like a game? But there was this ‘magic’ here… and it was built to resemble a game… so maybe there would be fast travel? Was that how we got here? And where was here, anyway?

No.

I shook my head vigorously. Nope nope nope. Big questions later. Get pants back now.

I reached the vestibule at the twentieth floor, having spent as much mental energy focusing on the texture of the concrete walls as I could while I descended. The pile of junk was still there, but I should have the mark I needed to cross it. That was the last thing I remember in my last session. If for some reason I didn’t, well, I guess I could just go demand another key from The Painter’s main body.

As I stepped into the pile of junk, the objects composing it seemed to shift away from me, parting so that I could pass. It was uncanny to walk through a hall totally filled with objects and yet have not one touch me.

On the next landing, there was another identical pink crystal. I reached out for it with my power, instead of my body. These things all worked on the same magic, as far as I could tell, so why would I need to interact with it with my body? As soon as my power made contact with it, the expected message appeared.

[Would you like to bind yourself to location: Earth-Human-MidCheckpoint-11?]

Yes. Yes, definitely. The farther I was from whatever the hell was going on in those upper floors, the better. As soon as I gave my answer, a delicate tendril of magic reached out and into my game function area. In fact, it was close or possibly the same area as the second spot referenced in the login function. Not being able to see the area directly, the only reason I noticed was that I had been examining the function so recently. Could I mess with my login location? Did you log in to someplace that wasn’t actually virtual?

A sound from the stairs down startled me, my power simmering just under the surface as I spun to look in that direction. Much to my relief, I saw Joe’s scaly head as he came up the stairs. Following shortly behind, was me. The Painter’s spiritual presence loomed, coming into focus as it piloted my avatar up the stairs. It was remarkable how it managed to move my body about in the exact same way that it moved its magical shell.

It was also still wearing my pants.

“You!” I declared, pointing at The Painter, “Those pants were not part of our deal!”

“What?” Joe sputtered, coughing and hissing, “That’s the first thing you say?”

“What can I say?” I shrugged, “That seems to be the only issue with our arrangement.”

And it was. The Painter had been right. I could just create a new avatar. And now I could potentially tinker with that ability. Could I make and control more than one? Could I tinker with other game functions?

Other… ‘game’ functions. Who would even assemble a system like this? Fuck. That little town. Their fucking prophetic sorceress that they kept trying to tell us about. Could she be a representative of that Orion Arm something-or-other group that gave us the key crystals in the first place? Hold on… did that mean that the crazy shit that The Painter told me when we talked… was that stuff real too?

“Will, are you alright?”

I blinked. Fuck, this was really messing with my head. I shook my head.

“I’m… alright. I need something to occupy my mind for a bit.”

For some reason, Joe was looking away from me and The Painter. I turned to The Painter, to find it standing next to me, pants in hand held out to me. I glanced down, and closed my eyes.

Quickly shucking my starter greys, I took the jeans and put them on as swiftly as I could. I handed the grey pants to The Painter and, without even needing to be told, it put them on. Well, whatever. I had my pants back. Problem solved.

“Right,” I said, “pants sorted, need something to do. What are you even still doing logged in? Shouldn’t your timer have run out?”

“Yeah, it seems to have bugged out. My timer disappeared, and it hasn’t kicked me out yet. Might as well exploit it while we can, we’ve got a lot of work to do this week.”

He said it with a toothy smile. I did my best to smile back. Yesterday, I’d have been all over a bug like that. Today I just dreaded what it might mean.

“I was actually just clearing the twenty-first floor. It’s a big open space, cartoon-y forest with a little town and an evil castle on the hill, and seems to have its own self-contained storyline. Just beat a miniboss type encounter when I saw you had logged on, we should all go finish it up and see if there is anything good at the end.”

That sounded…

“That sounds good,” I said. The three of us descended the stairs, entering the first door we found. True to his word, it was a weird representation of a forest. It was as if everything on this floor was just a little bit unreal, and deliberately so. There was some kind of background magic going on, more than any other floor I had seen so far. There was even an actual soundtrack for this floor.

Yeah, this was probably what I needed right now. Continuing to overthink things would just send me into some kind of weird manic spiral. I was already feeling off balance, the eldritch sunshine in my veins making me feel jittery and unfocused. I looked inward, thinking that I might see if I could further throttle the essence available to my sun, but I didn’t get that far.

The pen. It stood out above all things, echoing its… intensity? That didn’t quite seem right. Whatever it was, it crowded everything else out of my perception. I tore my metaphorical gaze away.

“You sure you’re alright?”

Joe was pretty perceptive. Joe was also still recording, so I wasn’t about to bring up my terrible realization. Though I supposed that I didn’t care too much if I left more evidence that I was planning to leave. Might as well talk as we walked - it looked like a long way to go, if we were headed to the castle on the hill.

“What would you do if you knew the world was ending?” I asked as we made our way down the path. I could see some signs of Joe’s previous passing, in the form of scorched plant life.

“The world is ending.”

Joe and I both turned to look at The Painter.

“Yes, everything is ending,” I said. “Incrementally. Eventually. My question was for Joe, and the implicit context is of a more imminent societal collapse.”

It didn’t say anything more. Neither did Joe for a while. We walked on. I had almost forgotten what I’d asked when he finally did speak up.

“Probably nothing.”

“What?” I asked, half out of confusion, as I thought back on what I’d asked.

“I’m an old man, Will. What do you think an old man’s chances are if everything goes to hell? No, I’d just do whatever was in my power not to be a burden on my daughter, and try to give her the best chances to be ok in whatever new order came next.”

That wasn’t really what I was looking for. Let’s try again.

“What if you knew things were going to get bad ahead of time?” I asked, “You’d just spend the time to prepare her and not do anything for yourself?”

“I mean, that’s literally what I have been doing since I got my key. Been bugging her constantly about prepping and other stuff that only us older folks can get away with talking about without being questioned. I think she’s taking it seriously, probably because everyone’s a bit on edge since the alien message. Well, that and she’s got serious suspicions about my job ever since I told her I couldn’t tell her about it, then moved into the arcology proper.”

That… I had spent the entire week or so since I got my key just messing around and settling into the arcology. I had even realized that things might get bad, but then just blithely went about my business. What had I been thinking? Before I could continue to berate myself, Joe continued.

“What? You thought you were the only one to realize that literal alien technology would destabilize the world?” he laughed, “If we’re very lucky, the arcologies will weather the storm. I don’t know about you, Will, but I’ve never felt particularly lucky.”

Joe flexed his massive scaly arm. As he did, I spotted a blue metal ring on one of his fingers, embedded with some of the densest and most complex tangles of magic I had yet seen.

“I think I used up what luck I do have getting pulled into this job. Now I’ve got a young, strong body to retreat to for at least a third of what remaining time I have.”

“Don’t forget the magic,” I added.

“And the magic,” he said, smiling again. He looked around. We had just passed a little clearing with a wooden hut without a door. “This was where I got before you came. We should be on guard, I haven’t cleared the path ahead.”

Wolves. Big ones. They were notably bigger and more dangerous than the trash mobs from earlier floors, but they still were totally ineffective. Between my absolute defense ripping any attackers apart, and Joe’s ability to indirectly peek into the near future, we moved ever further down the trail leading to the distant town. Cautious at first, then more relaxed as nothing worse than the wolves showed up. Were we unusually powerful and above the level expected here? Was this a particularly easy floor?

Another unique feature of this floor, the bodies of the fallen seemed to instantly convert into golden experience shards and some sort of smoke. There seemed to be something in the background magic of this floor that had something to do with that, but I wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, and it was too faint for me to glean any details without stopping and taking the time to look closer.

The Painter, though maybe not quite an ally, was something of an asset. If one of the wolves so much turned its attention toward the avatar it was driving, it simply ceased to exist. No experience, no smoke, nothing. Just… gone. We’d need to have a chat with it about not erasing the boss when we got to that point, but for now it was fine.

[Those shards will assist in finalizing our new assistant.]

Nico, you’ve been quiet.

[I am occupied with staffing concerns.]

Makes sense. I made sure to snap up what portions I could of subsequent clouds of the golden bits, before they could fly off to be absorbed by Joe. I felt a surge of satisfaction from Nico as I did. In hindsight, it was sort of obvious that the things that dead monsters broke down into would be useful in building my own monsters.

All too soon, we emerged from the path. The town was some kind of medieval stereotype, with the same gloomy shader as the wolf-infested forest. There were buildings here, but I suspected that if we tried to open any of the doors we’d discover them to be just solid objects. The townsfolk too were background objects and nothing more. Things which looked mostly like a feudal peasant might look, but which had no substance to them. Even monsters were more concrete than these things, which seemed to exist purely to cringe away from us and duck into fake buildings, vanishing in the process. There would be nothing for us here, or if there was it was beyond my ability to casually detect.

“Nothing here,” I said, “let’s go ahead and hit the castle.”

Joe nodded, and we were off. The gloomy filter and music remained as we started our ascent. The path here was somewhat steep, and was composed of several switchbacks, heading up a steep incline. The woods turned bleak, trees barren of leaves, branches like twisted claws, gnarled bark which looked, in some cases, like snarling faces. There was nothing to the trees, though. I could see no animating force, no magic trap, nothing. They were just creepy trees.

There were also no more wolves. The climb up was tense, the entire trip spent waiting for the other shoe to drop. When we finally reached the castle gate, there was a loud bang, and the door began to swing open. As we stepped inside, I saw a massive wooden beam on the ground just behind the door.

“Terrible security, to just unbar the door for whoever walks up,” I said.

“This floor seems to run on tropes more than sense,” Joe said with a shrug.

We advanced into the courtyard, probably once a garden but now just an overgrown field. I was just about to take a closer look at some of what may have been topiary animals when there was an enormous crash behind me.

I spun to find that the doors were now closed and the immense wooden bar was once more in place. I turned back to find a witch. Physically, she was the perfect instance of the classic witch. Magically speaking, she was a complex boss monster and also integrated into the odd magical background which permeated this level. She spoke, and the game interface translated.

[Ah, I see you have brought me another-]

[Incinerate!] Joe roared, his magic roaring with him. This, apparently, was personal.

I turned to The Painter and informed it not to erase the boss, that the entire point here was to struggle, and then get the rewards afterwards. It did not respond to me, but neither did the witch vanish without a trace. Good enough.

As Joe lunged and lashed out, I readied myself to defend. She was a witch, so surely she would try to hit us with some kind of evil magic at some point. I was prepared to rip the magic to shreds before she could poison us or turn us into newts or whatever else.

She stood more or less still, but had a black cloud which absorbed any flames Joe directed her way. She lashed out with a combination of lightning from her cloud, which seemed to do nothing to Joe, and with clouds of conjured insects, which he mostly cleared out with blasts of flame which scorched everything around him.

I closed the distance, fending off bolts of lightning mainly because she needed to gesture before each strike, and absorbing any insects that made contact. I was really feeling the heat as I made it within arms reach, as Joe never let up his assault, calling on his powers as soon as either essence reserves or cooldown allowed. I still wasn’t entirely clear how his skills worked, or what the limits of their use were, but he certainly seemed to be sparing no effort here.

She made one final motion to call on her lightning, and I swiped my hand through the gathered mass of black clouds. I ripped away parts of the magic at random, having had no chance to examine it and figure out what parts were important. Hopefully all the parts were important.

The next time Joe’s beam struck her, the black clouds evaporated instead of absorbing the beam. Her dark clothing burst into flames, an ugly red burn appearing where the cloth had been scoured away, rapidly turning black.

She staggered back, clutching her side. The background magic came alive, warping and twisting the witch. It was fascinating, seeing magic at work that was actively changing a monster, especially one as complex as a boss monster. I was so fixated on the magic that I nearly missed what she was transforming into. Nearly, but not quite. How could one miss a great black dragon, after all.

[Ebonscale Dragon]

Ah, there was the boss label.

[You’ll pay for this!] the dragon shrieked. How original.

The transformation had taken the witch off the ground, and now in dragon form it soared through the sky, only landing on the walls encircling the courtyard. Each time it attacked, it would launch itself high into the air before winging over us and spouting a torrent of orange and blue and purple fire. Every now and again, it would spit globs of liquid fire laden with magical energy, splashing over and sticking to the ground whatever it hit. I pulled back to the wall and absorbed any magic or flame which came near.

I seemed to be safe for the moment, but there was nothing much I could do against this boss. Joe was similarly disadvantaged. The first time the dragon strafed his position with its wave of flame, I was worried Joe wouldn’t be able to get out of the way. That had proven to be a silly thought. Apparently Joe could make use of his elemental teleport using only the passive form of his Stoke Flames skill, without needing to call it out at all. One moment he was being overwhelmed with fire, the next he was across the courtyard.

The dragon roared its displeasure at his defiance, and changed course for his new location, drawing in a great breath. A ball of blue and purple flame appeared in Joe’s hand, more and more flames appearing and being drawn in. He cast it aside a moment later. As the dragon dove towards him, it spat a stream of fire, only for the fire to be drawn away into the past, the attack impotent.

Though he and I both had the tools we needed to stand against its attacks, the dragon similarly was beyond either of our ability to harm. It didn’t seem to care about Joe’s flames at all, not even bothering to dodge. My solar energy might work, but I didn’t actually have any means to project it at any real range. I considered trying to bait it closer somehow, when Joe solved the problem first.

There was a rush of essence, black and tar-like, forming an aura around Joe. The next time the dragon dove, he invoked Incinerate. As the flames touched the black aura, the entire mass of fell essence was drawn into the beam of fire, turning his flames black.

The dragon made no attempt to avoid his flames, but this time they did not wash over its scales harmlessly. This time, the magic seemed to burrow into it, wreaking all sorts of havoc. The boss screeched and thrashed, nearly dropping out of the air as it struggled. The black flames clung to it, withering scales and turning flesh to dust. It roared and thrashed, and retreated from the battlefield, perching on the tallest tower of the keep. I couldn’t see clearly, nor did my mystic sense extend that far, but it looked like the black flames had finally died down, leaving the dragon injured, but not yet slain. It sat there, leering at us, but making no move to re-engage.

“I guess that’s it for the second phase,” I said.

“Looks like we’re going to have to go through the castle and climb on the roof to finish it off,” he rumbled, looking rather annoyed that the dragon had escaped.

An explosion rocked my world. I looked around the courtyard to try to spot the source of the attack. Joe was giving me a strange look. Another one went off. I could see the flames flickering outside of my window. I took a step forward and nearly fell from the vertigo. I was in two places at once. That clued me in.

“Joe, we need to log out right now,” I said, “there is some sort of attack.”

A moment passed.

“I can’t,” he said, sounding confused.

“What?”

“I can’t log out. It didn’t-”

Another blast, this one closer. I could hear bits of debris rain down outside my window. I was fully awake now, my connection to wherever my avatar had been was cut completely.