Dean materialized back at the spawn point, his vision riddled with white spots, as he glanced around. His first thought was that the sun was in the wrong position. Hadn’t they reached the dungeon in the early evening? So why was it dawn?

His next thought was that there were a lot of players respawning. Not just his group, and definitely not the amount he usually saw spawning in the square. It looked every player was respawning at once.

He heard someone nearby ask, “Did that fix it?”

“Fix what?” Their friend responded.

“Can you log out?”

He watched both players flicked their wrists in the motion to pull up their status pages, and though he couldn’t see the windows, knew they were scrolling down to the logout option. They clicked it and tapped the notification asking if they were sure. Nothing happened.

Dean wondered why they thought it would be fixed, until a woman beside them asked, “So what did the update do?”

“How the hell should I know?”

Something round was shoved into Dean’s hand. He glanced back to see Ben.

“Take it, I don’t want it.” Ben said gruffly. “You died before the update, didn’t you?”

“What update?” Dean asked as he looked down at the orb in his hand. It pulled up as the settlement crystal. He gasped, “You don’t want this? Isn’t this what we were trying to find?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, “It was. And I don’t want it because building cities is boring. I’d much rather be a dungeon master.”

“You can’t be both?” Dean asked.

“No idea,” Ben shrugged, “And I don’t care.”

Dean stuck the item in his inventory as he asked, “What update are you talking about? And why does it matter if I died before it happened?”

Ben visibly shook, “You’re lucky, then. I died right after it happened, and it actually hurt.”

“What hurt?” Dean asked, “The update?”

“No, man,” Ben said, “Dying. Haven’t you heard what everyone else is saying?”

“Kinda,” Dean answered.

Ben shook his head, “Have you tried logging out, or checking out your stats?”

“No, why?” Dean said as he pulled them up without thinking. He gasped.

Dean Adams

Health: 100/100

Stamina: 100/100

Mana: 100/100

Status:

Level: 1

Experience: 0/1,000

Rank: None

Title: None

Class: None

Role: None

Party: Unnamed

Alliances: None

Allegiances: None

Stats

Strength

10

Perception

10

Charisma

10

Endurance

10

Intelligence

10

Poise

10

Agility

10

Wisdom

10

Constitution

10

Dexterity

10

Fortitude

10

Luck

10

Skills: None

Abilities: None

Spells: None

Enchantments: None

Attributes: None

“What the hell?” He muttered under his breath, “How’d I get back to level one?”

“Not just that,” Ben said, “Where’s the pain suppression option? And where’s you’re grear?”

Dean flicked to the options page, scanned it and shook his head, “I don’t see it.” He flipped to his inventory, everything was gone. All he had left was the basic starting gear, the orb, and his cooking gear. “What the hell had happened?”

“It’s gone.” Ben said, “The update deleted it.”

Dean licked his lips as he asked, “Does that mean…”

“I told you,” Ben said, “It hurt when I died. Like a motherfucker.”

Shiro startled them as he ran up and asked, “Did one of you find it?”

Dean glanced at Ben before holding up the orb and saying, “Yeah, We did.”

“This is most good news. Come with me. Come, Come.” Shiro grabbed them both by the wrists, dragging them across the square. He pulled them towards an out of the way corner, where Sarge stood on a bench calling out something to those around him, but Dean couldn’t tell what it was over the sounds of the crowd.

He spotted Will and Ryan already there, along with most of the Rangers. None of the other groups joined them. Dean thought he saw one familiar face walking towards the nearest tavern but couldn’t be sure since he couldn’t get a good look through the crowd.

Shiro pushed him up onto the bench and gestured for him to hold up the orb. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled it out of his inventory and held it aloft. The Rangers let out a cheer that momentarily quieted the crowd, who turned to stare at them.

“Well done,” Sarge said in his ear, “We need to get somewhere quiet to discuss next steps.”

Dean only heard half of that but understood enough to point at the inn his group usually stayed at. Sarge studied it for a second before nodding and gesturing to his men to follow him.

For a first, the tavern was quieter than outside. They shoved a few tables together and grabbed a seat, Sarge waving his men away, before asking Shiro, “What the hell happened? Why did your friends do an update without correcting the problems with the logout button? And why in God’s name did they disable the pain thing?”

“I do not know. Let me see what the other developers are saying.” Shiro said. He pulled up a window and stared at it for several seconds, his eyebrows climbing each time he read a line. “They are calling it a rogue update. Not theirs. They do not know where it came from.” He licked his lips as he continued reading, “They are posting different lines of code. It is…how do you say it does not make sense?”

“Gibberish,” Marie said.

“Yes, thank you. It is gibberish.”

Ben gaped at him, “That means they can’t even read the code.”

Shiro gave a resigned nod. “Exactly.”

“But why would someone do that? It doesn’t make any sense.” Ben downed his drink in frustration.

“Yes, it does,” Dean said, “If someone’s trying to keep us here.”

“Why would someone do that?” Ben asked. Dean could only shrug in reply.

Shiro was intrigued, “Why do you think that?”

Dean swirled his drink idly, set it down and started tracing a finger on the table as he thought aloud, “They were about to fix the logout issue, so someone ran a different update to make sure that doesn’t happen. One that makes it almost impossible for the developers to figure out and fix anything. But the code is still there, it has to be, or the dive gear would trigger the automatic logout sequence. So, there’s got to be some way to leave the game that works.”

Shiro nodded in understanding, “Beating the game.”

Ben whistled through his teeth, “And that’s our only way out?”

“For right now,” Shiro licked his lips. He turned to Dean, “But that doesn’t explain exactly why you think someone is keeping us here.”

“Think about it.” Dean explained, “Now that the developers can’t just program a way out, we’re stuck with trying to beat an almost impossible game.

“That most players don’t know is possible,” Ben pointed out.

“Exactly. But that’s not the only thing. Want to beat the game? Don’t die because you’ll have to start all over if you do. And you’re going to need to level up, but you better be ready to feel every scrape and cut of pain along the way. Then there’s the experience points needed to level up. Didn’t you noticed that we now need a thousand points to level up instead of a hundred??

Shiro had leaned back in his chair, tilted his head back and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling while nodding along with each point. “Beat the game to leave, but it is going to be harder to do and we have been given every reason not to try. What I do not understand is why someone would go to all this trouble.”

Dean shrugged. “That’s what I can’t figure out. I mean, keeping us here for a couple days before logging out would stop a lot of players from logging back in, so the game’s already toast after this.”

“I hope your wrong about that.” Shiro protested half-heartedly, “But I understand what you mean. And you are right, this has hurt any chance for future sales. So sabotage could be a reason, if that was the goal. There’s no need for everything else.”

“Right,” Dean said, “So the only other thing that makes sense is that someone wants us to stay in the game no matter what. I just can’t figure out why.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sarge barked, “It doesn’t change the immediate issue, or did all of you forget about the Orcs? I’m not sure about the rest if you, but I don’t want to respawn in the middle of an Orc camp.”

Shiro said to Dean, “Look on your map for the settlement location. It will have an icon.”

Dean pulled up his status page and flipped to the map. He hadn’t needed it before this, so hadn’t paid attention to it. He found the icon to the south and tried to gauge how far based on the trip to the dungeon for the crystal. “It’s South of here. Maybe a week to ten days to get there?”

“Then we need to get going.” Will said.

“It’s not going to work.” Sarge said, “We only have three weeks before the siege is over and the orcs attack us.”

Shiro said, “That is not true. I must have explained wrong. We will have one month after the orcs arrive here and they will need to travel south to attack us.”

“Are we even certain they will continue south to attack?” Ben asked, “Maybe they’ll just stay here.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Marie said, “Think about it for a second. Dean already explained that the update was all about keeping us from beating the game, and the orc invasion would mean we’re all prisoners, so we can’t level up at all. Do you think whoever is doing this is going to just let us build a new city that we can use instead?”

“She’s right,” Sarge said as he smiled at her, “Tactically, we can’t assume anything. Instead, we need to prepare for war and right now we’re lacking three things. We need to recruit an army, supplies to arm and feed them, and defenses built at the new city.”

“Guess that means I’m in charge of the defenses.” Dean said, “Since I have the Settlement Crystal. I can also make sure we build farms and stuff there for food.”

Shiro volunteered, “And I will stay here to convince players to join the new settlement.”

“What supplies do we need?” Will asked.

“Weapons and armor.” Sarge said, “And as many arrows as we can get. More than that. We’ll also need food, even with farms, to feed a whole army.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Will said.

“Fine, I’ll stay with Will.” Ben said, “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this, or have you already forgotten that we’re going to feel pain through all of this?”

“We haven’t forgotten.” Marie said soothingly, “We just don’t have a choice.”

Ryan said, “Then I’ll go with Dean.”

Sarge nodded approvingly at the others, “At least you’re worth your mettle. I’ll tell my men we’re splitting up.” He stood up and went to talk to his men.