1

“Before we move on, we should distribute our armor and weapons more evenly,” Harper told the group, gesturing to the new members.

Damon agreed. “You’re all starting at level 1 and could use the superior equipment we have backed up in our inventories.”

Vlad didn’t waste any time making his demands. “Dat’s good, I want one of dose spiked swords you got.”

The orc general couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re a mage, Vlad. You can’t carry orc items.”

Vlad spat on the ground. “Yebat, I knew I shoulda come over as a pig-face!”

Damon glanced at Zack, who was chuckling. Despite the Russian’s abrasiveness, both veteran orcs got a kick out of his gruff demeanor. “Let’s start with the orcs,” Damon continued, “since you guys will be at the frontlines of battle with Zack and me.”

Armando received Zack’s extra steel battle armor and the pair of steel-plated pants Jordan had been carrying in his inventory. The Alabama orcs got massive hammers. They also received the steel clipeus shields that Angie had stashed away. Damon had an extra hammer he could’ve dispensed to Silo, but he kept it on a hunch, not quite trusting the former British gaming champion. He handed him the spiked steel axe instead, along with the steel clipeus shield Emma had stored in her inventory.

The three veteran hunters handed four steel spurs—weapons that looked like oversized shurikens—to each of the three new hunters. Angie dispersed her nine steel spears evenly among the new hunters while Jordan and Emma handed their nagamarrow swords over to Nevan and Lorenzo.

Harper, the only mage from the original group, gave Kylah her steel bonebase sword. After Vlad said he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a cape, she handed her two extra enchanter capes to Kylah and Sierra. The cape boosted their intelligence and wisdom stats by ten points. Harper gave her two extra enchanter rings to Vlad and Zahra, one of the human healers. It raised their intelligence and wisdom stats by five points.

Finally, the veterans had only seventeen wineskins between them, so every member of the twenty-person team got one except for Thao, Lorenzo, and Emma, who volunteered to be the exceptions.

Afterward, Harper looked at the four healers in the group. “Unfortunately, we have nothing to give you.” She paused. “Our two original healers are no longer with us,” she finished mysteriously.

“There will be more equipment to disperse when we get to the last room of the tower.” Damon said. “We lost two members there.”

The rookies tested their new spells and equipment. Harper approached Kylah and her father, Nevan, to show them how to cast the spell combinations. Kylah shot a Fire Bullet at a nearby tree. Like the week before when Harper first tried the combo, the fireball grew in size and blew a gaping hole into the wood.

Kylah laughed. “Wow, that’s really extra!”

Harper looked at Nevan, perplexed.

He smiled as he put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “That’s kidspeak. I think it’s supposed to mean ‘over the top.’”

2

“The realm fans out in a triangular shape,” Damon told the rookies. “We should spread out to cover more ground until that isn’t practical. At that point, I suggest we break up into two groups. One in the east and one in the west.” He paused to ensure everyone was on board with the idea. “Now, remember, we are looking for any sign of Harris. If you see anything that might contain human DNA, grab it and store it away in your virtual inventory.”

As the sun dipped below the treetops, Harper positioned the teammates strategically to take advantage of their race and class selections, spreading them out in a wide line across the eastern section of the forest. She organized them in a loosely repeating pattern of orc, healer, hunter, and mage. Each member started ten feet apart. Because they had extra hunters and mages, she scattered those players within the formation.

“As we move forward,” Harper shouted to be heard across two hundred feet of forest, “Damon and I will stop the group, and we’ll spread you out further to cover the widening landscape. Got it?” She waited for questions as her shout reverberated through the woods.

Lorenzo, one of the new hunters, called out from the far left, “What about the other side of this river?” He gestured to the river that had cut a southern path through the forest and had filled the lake.

“For now, we’ll stay on this side,” Harper answered. “The realm widens out quickly, so when we do split up, the western group can backtrack.”

A murmur of discontent sounded through the rookies, but no one challenged the veteran mage’s decision.

Damon shouted, “Let’s go!” and the wide line of disparate people marched forward into the woods. Their formation broke down into four units stretched from the western side to the east as:

Damon, Keshon, Lorenzo, and Vlad.

Armando, Rachel, Angie, and Sierra.

Madison, Jordan, Heinrich, Nevan, and Kylah.

Jackson, Zahra, Stephen “Silo” Parker, Emma, Thao, Zack, and Harper.

3

“Search the ground and the trees—you might find traces of him anywhere,” Angie told her group. “Also, keep in mind that you may discover DNA that doesn’t belong to him.”

Sierra stopped. She brushed the enchanter’s cape away from her shoulders. It was cooler in the forest, but not enough for the Grimalkin mage. “What do you mean? Who else would we find?”

Slowly, the rest of the team stopped.

Angie looked at her group and sighed. “Eight years ago, Cloud Nine Systems—and I would guess that our government was involved with this too—abandoned about sixty people in here.”

A collective gasp rippled through the recruits, with the exception of Vladimir, the Cloud Nine engineer.

“What?” Rachel responded. “That can’t be.” Her green eyes were vivid but disbelieving.

Angie was about to say more when Vlad interrupted. “She right. It was pizdets,” he grunted quietly. “Deese glitches start, people mutate and yebat politicians panic.” The muscular mage glanced at the members apologetically. “Day make us shut down system immediately.” He shook his head morosely. “I could not change dare minds.”

“What happened to the people stuck inside?” Sierra asked, looking as shocked as the others.

The Russian peered at her, assessing her. “Collateral damage.”

“He’s right,” Jordan said. “We met the only survivors that were still here.”

Sierra glanced at them disbelievingly. “But these people must’ve had families?”

The recruits looked to Vlad for an answer. He paused, hesitant to say more. “Dis is only what I heard. Company offer money to stay quiet.” He looked down at the forest floor. “Dose who didn’t take da money… day disappear.”

As another murmur of shock swept through the team, Rachel swayed on her feet. Armando grabbed her shoulder. “I feel sick,” she groaned as she leaned against the orc.

“Angie, what happened to the survivors?” Armando asked.

The veteran hunter glanced at Rachel, whose creamy skin was taking on a gray pallor. “Maybe later, Armando. For now, let’s keep going… and searching.”

He nodded and the group started moving north again, advancing further into the forest.

4

They were deep in the woods now. The air grew colder, both from the shade and the trees’ transpiration. Sierra wrapped the cape around her shoulders again while Rachel still didn’t look at one hundred percent.

Angie glanced at Armando. “Nice work back there with Kylah.”

The handsome orc shrugged nonchalantly. “The young girl was in trouble.”

“Nevertheless, you saved her when Harper was being attacked.”

He grunted and slashed his sword through some thick foliage.

Angie smiled at his display of humility. I think I’m going to like you, she thought. And that made her think of Sierra, who strode unusually quietly beside her. Angie wasn’t thin-skinned, and she didn’t mind her share of criticism. But the Grimalkin mage had challenged Harper and Damon far too quickly. They had just pulled themselves out of the lake, for god’s sake. Angie knew that part of her anger came from her protectiveness of Damon, but she felt Sierra had crossed a line.

“Well, if we’re going to succeed,” she said, returning to her conversation with Armando, “we’re going to do it as a team, pulling together, not apart.” She looked pointedly at Sierra, and the former physical trainer stared right back at her.

They continued to hack through the tall grass and ferns, searching the terrain silently as they advanced.

“I still can’t believe they forced that fourteen-year-old girl into here,” Madison said, shaking his head.

“She insurance,” Vlad replied. “So her fadder stay motivated.” The Russian laughed bitterly. “Company tink we gonna find magic elixir and put Epiphany back on paying basis!”

“Well, they’re right,” Sierra commented. “This place used to rake in lots of money.”

Vlad stopped and stared at her. “Shluha vokzal’naja,” he muttered.

Sierra shrugged and didn’t bother asking the mage what he had said. The group moved on as the sun crawled down the trees, casting spears of light onto their bodies. They continued for another fifteen minutes before Harper shouted to them to stop.

5

“So, it’s still there,” Damon mused. The entire team had converged in the center of the forest, peering up at a redwood. The black glitch the veterans had seen days before infested the whole top half of the tree. What was once timber had turned into a malignant mass of ichor and white qubits. The narrow light beams shone down on them in the gathering gloom. And still hanging from one of its limbs were the remains of a human foot. Damon told the rookies they had passed over the find on the first run-through.

“Mate, why didn’t you nab it then?” Silo asked incredulously.

Damon leered at the cocky orc. “Because we were looking for a living and breathing human, and we didn’t know what the hell those black things were.”

Silo scoffed.

Damon glanced at Harper, irritated by the arrogance displayed by some of the recruits. The veteran mage didn’t respond visibly, but her blue eyes told him she was equally frustrated.

“Well, at least we don’t have to climb the tree this time,” Zack commented quietly. “That Boulder spell should do the trick here.” The boisterous orc had been unusually somber since they left the portal, and Damon suspected he was still reeling from Janna’s death the previous day.

Harper pushed past Silo. “Excuse me, Stephen,” she growled, using his given name in a derogatory manner. She launched the spell and guided the marble ball up, jarring the decaying foot from the tree. As the appendage bounced on a patch of dry leaves, the members jumped back with cries of disgust. The foot was in the later stages of decomposition, and pieces of skin flew off it like wet bread.

“Ugh. Are they even going to be able to extract DNA from that thing?” Emma asked.

Heinrich, one of the healers, knelt beside the specimen. “The bone’s still intact, and that’s one of the best sources of DNA.” He looked up at his teammates. The light from the glitch washed his fair complexion in shades of white and gray. “Even after the tissue has decomposed, you could obtain DNA from demineralized bone or hair.” Heinrich stood up and brushed the leaves off the edges of his brigandine armor. “So, who wants it?”

“I ain’t carrying it, mate!” Silo blurted out in his high-pitched voice. His teammates regarded him with similarly annoyed expressions.

“You don’t have to, stupid,” Harper snapped. “That’s what virtual inventories are for.”

The British orc stuck out his lower lip but said no more.

“Regardless of who carries it,” Zack grunted, “I think we should cut off that infected area before doing anything.” He pointed at the decomposed foot. Near the top of the severed ankle, the black-and-white glitch had stayed embedded in the flesh and was slowly spreading. Armando stepped forward and chopped the section off with his battle axe. “I’ll take the damned thing,” he said.

6

The team decided to divide into two ten-person groups as they got stretched out further by the width of the forest. “We proceeded roughly up the center the first time,” Damon told the group after they gathered. “So, anything we may have missed would be along the eastern and western sections of the forest.” He stared at the last remaining traces of sunlight on the horizon, where pink strands of light traced across the sky. “In an hour or two, we should reach the cave where we camped the first night. It would still be a good option.”

Armando grunted. “Then we’d better get moving.”

Damon agreed, and they separated into two teams. Damon gathered together Angie, Vlad, Zahra, Jordan, Armando, Rachel, Lorenzo, Silo, and Keshon, the only Grimalkin healer on the team.

Harper’s team consisted of the Alabama orcs, Zack, Emma, Thao, Heinrich, Sierra, Nevan, and Kylah. “We’ll take the western side of the forest,” the veteran mage said. “The two teams can communicate telepathically. If we need to locate each other visually, get one of the mages on your team to shoot Fire Scorch up into the sky. The spell has a range of thirty meters, and that will clear the trees.”