It felt kind of strange, being the only swordsman among the group of hulking, muscular avatars that had been allocated to construction. But I could tell that manual labor wasn’t the worst option available to me. Not by a long shot. Had I still possessed a decent-sized blade, I’d be on carvery duty like the rest of the swords-noobs. And given the foul stench that was emanating from the carcass, the smell of sweat from the weary builders was by far the lesser of two evils.

The half-orcs and barbarians pretty much ignored me as I wandered amongst them. Each one was completely focused on partitioning off their gloomy corner of the boss chamber, all to create what was destined to be a multitude of pokey cells, just like my own. Above us hung a deep balcony that (I could only assume) would soon be repurposed into yet another floor of grim-yet-functional accommodation. And to the left of me, a colossal metallic statue lay on its side, thoughtlessly toppled to give the builders better access to their workspace.

Crouching to stare into the idol’s expertly sculpted face, I felt sorry for the now fallen deity. Once upon a time, he was probably worshiped by the NPCs, his golden skin a mark of the value their society had placed upon him. And now? Now the poor bastard was truly forsaken, demoted from divine spirit to little more than scrap metal. I was beginning to understand how this dungeon worked, and it gave me a fair idea of his destiny. He would be skinned, the shavings melted down to make gold coins. The base-metal underneath would be used to forge tools or weapons. His new owners would burn him away until all that remained was the spirit behind the veneer. And if the skeletons in the cavern were anything to go by, then I doubted that there was even a soul left to remember him. The shadow stallion had wiped them out, just as we’d destroyed it. Without his worshipers, had the forsaken god ever really existed? Once his body was burned away and his spirit forgotten, how would anyone even know that he’d been a part of their world at all?

“You and I have a lot in common, buddy,” I morosely stated.

Of course, there was another much less defeatist way of interpreting the deity’s plight. The world had made the nameless god into little more than a resource, one that would now be put to purpose by those who had assumed control. It was the perfect metaphor for the dungeon in general: the same thing was happening to the prisoners everywhere I looked. For every party who found themselves being treated as little more than a resource, there was another who was benefiting from their toil, and if necessary, their fall. And I knew what side I wanted to be on. I was done letting the bastards use me to get what they wanted: I needed to be the one using them. Hell, I’d even gained the perfect trait for the job: slaveowner. And I already had my first soul in my grasp.

Just a resource for me to use, I thought to myself, darkly. That’s all anyone who dares to cross me is going to be, from now on.

A satisfied smirk found its way to my face as everything fell into place. But just as suddenly, I pulled myself back from the brink.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I slapped myself in the face, drawing a few puzzled looks from my fellow workers. How did my thoughts end up on that dark path? I’d begun to revel in the notion of taking more slaves, a thought that would have disgusted me only this morning. Was my dubious new trait corrupting my vulnerable code? Yes, I’ll admit, I have a dark side buried within me, a side of me that I’m still fighting to be free of. I wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t. But this was something new. Something darker. And the timing couldn’t be a coincidence. Perhaps this was the difference between a ‘trait’ and a ‘skill’. Was the dark attribute rewriting my personaware on a digital level, and pushing me toward a much shadier destiny?

I’d just about come to terms with that worrying theory when an even more horrifying thought occurred to me.

But hang on. What if my new trait isn’t what’s manipulating my thoughts? What if this is who I really was, to begin with?

I recalled the declaration by the ghoul Norahc, back when I’d only just been ‘reborn’. ‘The digital transfer of your consciousness from your meat media into personaware was an 82% success,’ he’d claimed. And I’d been furious. A part of my very soul had been stripped away, leaving my ‘file’ incomplete. The memory rebuild was supposed to be putting back my lost data, and I’d been more than happy to let it run in the background, doing just that. But what if that code was damaged in more ways than one? What if they’d cut away the worst part of me, and it was slowly returning? If that was driving the darkness that now welled within me, what the hell sort of man was I, to begin with?

Clicking my status panel’s ‘diagnostic’ icon, I learned that my memory rebuild was currently sitting at 38%. There wasn’t a ‘pause’ button, a potential reprieve until I figured things out. And that worried me. If my latter theory was correct, how long would it be until some dark aspect of my personality kicked in, and overwrote the man I now thought I was? At its current rate, I’d be ‘whole’ again in a matter of days.

Disturbed by the entire train of thought, I pushed the theories as deep down inside me as I could manage, resolving to do my damnedest to cling to the man who I believed myself to be at all costs. Of course, that would probably be a lot easier said, than done: I’d also resolved to do whatever it takes to complete Siriso’s quest, and there was no way in hell that I’d reach that goal without getting my hands dirty.

Needing a distraction from the creeping realization that I was totally fucked, I continued on and quickly learned that the statue of the fallen god was not the only figure sprawled out before me. A dead barbarian also lay nearby, his body sprawled out next to a pile of building materials. His head had been callously bashed open with one of the smaller bricks, allowing his avatar’s crimson contents to spill out onto the grey rubble. It made for a gruesome sight, and was a harsh reminder of the hardness of the world I now resided in.

I’d seen such sights before, of course, back in my old life. One of my former bosses had not been averse to making a mess of his own during ah… interrogations. His brutality had far surpassed my own, and this was much more like his handiwork. But what made it all the more chilling, was the way the other prisoners simply ignored the body, stepping over the headless corpse with nary a second thought or glance. It seemed that if anything, our ‘immortality’ only encouraged further violence. Death was a devalued currency here, thanks to our inherent ability to respawn. What was once an escape from prison, albeit in a cramped pine box, was now merely an extended sentence for all involved.

I leaned in for a closer look. There wasn’t anything left of the hulking brute’s face for me to recognize, but I knew the body, well enough. It had been kicking the shit out of me only yesterday. It was TinyTheTankEngine.

“Good riddance,” I declared, spitting on his lifeless corpse. As I checked his inventory for items (like the thief that I now apparently was) I savored the possibility that he might respawn as a level 1, a precarious position from which to pick further fights. Then I cursed under my breath as I learned that the slightly unorthodox loot crate had already been picked clean by the other prisoners, leaving him with little more than the armor-plated clothing on his back. I shamelessly attempted to unfasten his bracers, hoping to replace my own ‘purely cosmetic’ arm-straps, when a status message suddenly took me by surprise.

-[ Thievery attempt failed. This armor is soul-bound. Soul-bound items may only change hands with the owner’s consent. ]-

Shit! Oh well, at least I’d learned something new in the attempt. Evidently, there was a way to protect items from potential thieves. I’d be picking Samusk’s brain about that one when I next got the chance. Just one more question in a long line of enquiries that I needed to run by my (now considerably more cooperative) employer. Then a thought struck me: player’s bodies usually disappeared after about five minutes or so, thanks to the game’s inbuilt clean-up engine. And that meant that whoever did this to the dumb fuck was probably still close. And if he or she could take down Tiny so easily, that scared the shit out of me.