There were so many worlds.

So many possibilities.

Now that they were together again in the middle of the Void, her mind started to perceive a higher level of structure in it.

“Hold my hand,” she instructed, and Maggot complied, nervously.

Sarah looked up. The sky was a whirlwind of darkness and color and code, its shape only revealed by the constant switching of abstract patches running up and down the gigantic dome. There was a center, though, a vaguely circular area that was mostly blackness, like a more or less permanent hole inside the hole that was the Void.

She raised her arm, and the Ring of Realms started shining more brightly, the colors moving around at hyperspeed.

Something happened around the hole.

A myriad of curved rectangles centered on the nothingness up there appeared. Each one was a moving image, with some text below. A radial menu.

Sarah examined the rectangles. As her eyes passed over each, they became bigger, standing out over the rest, showing their images larger and making the text readable, although some times that text was abstruse, like it was written in a weird language.

There were hundreds of rectangles. Maybe thousands. Thousands of worlds in the unfinished Anderverse.

I never knew the game was so huge.

A certain method appeared obscurely in that overwhelming multitude, some kind of ability to orientate herself that Sarah wouldn’t have been able to explain. It was as if her brain could search among the realms and locate the ones she knew or could be interested in. They appeared one after the other, popping up as her eyes ran over the menu: the Medieval Village, the Towers, the Dead City, and so many, many others.

But there was that one she wanted now.

The Enchanted Forest.

She kept her arm raised, her eyes focused on the hole as the virtual screen showing the Enchanted Forest glowed against the backdrop of nothingness, while the rest of the dome kept flashing and changing nonstop.

Now what? Sarah thought. How do I get there? Am I supposed to jump a little so I shoot up into the sky?

It turned out to work exactly that way.

* * *

“Hey,” Maggot said as they both walked through the forest, searching for the house beside the lake. “Thank you.”

The Enchanted Forest looked exactly like it had looked when Sarah left it, months ago in game time. She had half expected that everything had changed, since the AI was always working. But this realm being the first one the players visited, it would be the one requiring fewer changes, Sarah thought. Or maybe it was that most changes were subtle, invisible to the senses: minor alterations in mechanics, skill points, health values, task rewards, and so on.

“I’m not doing this for you,” Sarah said, almost as an apology. “I need to find my boyfriend. He’s trapped in this game and I need to get him out safely.”

“Oh.” Maggot stood pensively for a while. “But thanks anyway,” he said finally. “You could just have left me behind, but you still helped me.”

“Oh no, no,” Sarah objected. “I need to take you to the Sorceress. I don’t know why, but I have to do it. I received a message while I was in the zombie apocalypse telling me to do that. Do you understand? I need you, that’s all.”

“But,” Maggot pressed on, “you helped me before you ended up in the zombie world. You didn’t need me then. So thank you. You’re a good person.”

“Whatever, I guess,” Sarah replied. She didn’t know why she was finding it so hard to accept Maggot’s thankfulness. She had helped him, more than once. And yet, she felt she didn’t deserve his gratitude.

Her Perception had improved markedly since the last time she had been in the forest. She could tell at a distance that they were near the creek where the nymphs sang and whistled while bathing and washing their hair in the water. Their outlines appeared in blue, superimposed to the trees and shrubs that hid the creek from view. The nymphs themselves would be invisible to Maggot, surely, but not for her.

“Hey, have you seen the nymphs?” she asked her friend.

“The nymphs? N-no, I don’t think so,” he replied.

“Ah,” Sarah said. “You should work on your Perception then. They are a lovely sight.”

They kept walking. Sarah invoked her Map and realized there was a difference. The whole Enchanted Forest was drawn on it now, instead of just the parts she had treaded at the beginning of the game. Red and golden spots were scattered all over it. She now knew they were sources of mana, and made a mental note to pick some after talking to the Sorceress.

She felt nervous, and now she believed she understood why. Once she had taken Maggot to the Sorceress, she would have to leave him. She would need to speed up her training, not in any realm’s specific scenarios and abilities, but in the art of crossphasing itself, so that she could face the Game Master and rescue Mike. Maggot would be a liability. He just wasn’t ready for such a thing, so he would have to stay behind. She was leaving him to his own devices, and she felt guilty for that. He would probably not last long.

But she needed to get to Mike. And time was running out.

There was the book, for example. She had found the book, or the book had found her, about an hour ago. I was lying on a tree stump, almost as if it were being exhibited. She opened it and saw the new sentence that was there waiting for her:

They are here.

Who they were, the book didn’t say. But here was Sumiko’s home, the place where Sarah’s body was. A sense of dread filled her when she read it and her heart seemed to want to sink into the ground.

How long had it been since she wrote that? And why hadn’t she said anything else?

This uncertainty was brutal. But there was one certainty: there was no time to lose.

And yet, she felt guilty for leaving Maggot. She felt that she was about to use him and then discard him.

A woman’s voice cut her thoughts.

“I see you’ve learned to use it.”

Sarah turned around. There was the Sorceress, as beautiful and imposing as ever, nodding at the Worldjumper.

“I... I got a bit of help,” Sarah confessed.

“And you helped someone as well,” the woman replied.

She made a quick pass and suddenly, all three were inside the house beside the lake, each resting on a floating chair, holding a bowl of tea.

Sarah looked into the beverage. There it was, her real face. It had been so long since she last saw it that she had started to forget what she looked like.

“It’s good to be here,” she said.

“I guess,” the Sorceress replied. “You brought me something.”

“Him.”

“Why?”

“I... I don’t know.” Sarah looked at her puzzled. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Me? Why did you think so?”

“I—” Sarah couldn’t go on. She just didn’t know what to say.

Maggot was about to sip from his drink when he started suddenly. He almost dropped the bowl with its contents.

“Sorry,” he said when he realized that both Sarah and the Sorceress were staring at him. “It’s only... who is that?” he asked the woman, pointing at his tea. Sarah smiled.

“That is you,” the Sorceress explained. “It’s how you look in real life, outside of the game.”

“Wow,” he said. “I’m pretty attractive, then. I wish I would look like that here.”

“Let me see,” Sarah said.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Maggot grinned, clutching his bowl as if he thought Sarah was about to rip it off his hands. “You’d fall in love with me, and then I’d have a problem with that boyfriend you keep talking about.”

His voice sounded playful, for the first time since Sarah met him. She didn’t think she had heard him make a joke ever before. All his fear seemed to have vanished. The effect of the tea? But he hadn’t drank any yet. Maybe it was the revelation that he was actually good looking IRL?

“Oh, come on,” she insisted, playing along.

“Well, if you won’t give up, I guess...” Maggot said, and held the bowl a bit farther away, letting his face reflect on it again. “But you’ll have to show me your real face, too.”

Sarah went to him and looked at the liquid’s surface.

Maggot’s real face was there.

Clear.

Pristine.

Unmistakable.

She dropped her own bowl, splashing tea all over the floor. Her legs trembled, and she felt her stomach turning. For an instant, she was about to faint.

“What... what’s wrong?” Maggot asked, suddenly concerned.

“You are Mike?”

Maggot looked at her, puzzled.

“W-who?”

“Maggot, you are MIKE! You are my boyfriend! The one I was looking for!”

“What?”

“I’ve been looking for you for so long!” Sarah cried out, tears jumping out of her eyes. “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?”

She hugged Maggot so suddenly that he dropped his bowl too. Uncertain, he hugged her back.

“Oh, Mike, Mike!” Sarah said, as tears kept flowing uncontrollably. “I’ve missed you so much! I’ve been looking for you since— you don’t know. Can— can he recover his memories?” she continued, addressing the Sorceress.

“That’s outside of my powers,” the woman replied. “He will remember when he exits the game, though.”

“Oh, Mike!” Sarah started kissing him. His face was ugly and weird, but inside that man was that other man, the one she loved.

* * *

There was love and there was relief and there was release. Sarah cried for hours, before and after leaving the house beside the lake. Mike didn’t remember her, of course; the name Sarah didn’t even ring a bell for him.

Down here, he was only Maggot, a player whose abilities fell short across the whole spectrum, except for the basic skills he had fought very, very hard to master and that one that had come to him by sheer luck out in the tower field.

She had made a decision. And that decision had brought her pain. But that pain had only strengthened her resolve.

She had been wondering whether she should take Mike with her, and help him level up in the different realms, or leave him in a safe place, waiting for her to defeat the Game Master and come back for him.

She chose option B. And now she needed to leave her boyfriend, maybe forever, right after she had finally found him in the most unexpected way.

Of course, there was no safe place in the whole Anderverse; not in any realm that was under Victor Anderen’s control, at least. A wave could reach Maggot anywhere, anytime, sending him to a completely different place, putting him in the way of danger. It had been a miracle that he had survived for so long while being severly nerfed; it was not likely that his luck would keep protecting him for much longer.

So, the only safe place was actually in the place that was no place at all.

The Void.

Specifically, the mage’s dome.

Right in the middle of the chaotic space between the realms, where beasts, weapons and deadly vehicles kept appearing at random, there was the Great González and his safe harbor. Maggot (Mike!) could stay there for a while, while she accrued the necessary skills for the final confrontation.

Tears of joy for having found her loved one; tears of sorrow for parting from him again, maybe forever.

“Will you take care of him?” she asked the magician once the old man revealed himself. Around them, the Void flashed and thundered in a chaotic mess, the myriad of realms floating up high around a tunnel of nothingness. “You helped me before. Please help me now by keeping him safe.”

“That I can do,” the Great González replied. “Remember the gift I gave you.”

“I will certainly remember it,” Sarah said. “I will be stealthy as fuck.”

“For how long will you be gone?” Maggot asked.

“For as long as I need,” Sarah replied. “For as long as it takes to defeat the Game Master.”