[Your names are Mark and Sarah.]

[You are trapped in one of our Virtual Reality Simulators.]

[We are trying to rescue you, but our system is under siege from the outside.]

We turned to each other, staring. Ixion’s mouth opened to say something, but closed again. He seemed as lost for words as I was.

[They appear determined to corrupt the system beyond repair.]

[This will prove our technology is unsafe and destroy the company.]

That couldn’t be good for us, I thought.

[We need you to keep the simulation going as long as possible to distract the attackers.]

[The longer it runs, the more resources they will have to devote to it.]

[The more they are focused on you, the less they will be able to hamper our efforts to help you.]

Well, that sounded better.

[You need to keep them focused on you until we can pull you out safely.]

‘Safely?’ I said slowly.

[Normally, if you ‘die’ in the simulation, you respawn nearby, or you get kicked out of VR.]

[Unfortunately the system interface has already been partially corrupted]

[This is why you probably don’t remember anything before entering.]

[This also means that we have no way of knowing what would happen if you were to ‘die’.]

[DON’T DIE.]

“Ha!” I heard Ixion mutter.

[Mark -You were the last tester to enter before we realised the attack was happening and stopped logging people in. This meant we knew you would have to make your way through the System Tutorial to this point. This is the only place we knew we could leave a message you would find, and that would look like it was part of the game.]

[Sarah - You are one of our Developers, and Mark’s contact inside the simulation. Likely that narrative has also been corrupted. It looks like you have been reset to zero-level instead of being able to switch back and forth between that character and your developer one.]

[We have no other guaranteed way of contacting additional players inside, we’re depending on you to spread the word and keep the fight going. We don’t even have a secure way of contacting you beyond this point, although we are working to change that.]

[Time is different inside the simulation. What may have only been a few hours for us, may have been weeks for you getting to this point. Because of the time dilation effect we won’t be able to communicate directly or take direct action, but we will try to assist you where we can. We do know that you hadn’t completed the Apprentice Dungeon when we sent this message, but we won’t know if you are alive until you confirm receiving this message.]

[Confirm? Y/N]

***

“What the heck?” Ixion asked, disbelieving. He sat down heavily on a large mound of coins.

“I guess we need to confirm that and see what else they have to tell us.” I said, joining him after a moment. I seemed to be accepting it more readily than he was, although if I really was a developer, I likely dealt with these sorts of things more often than his real-life counterpart. Maybe that experience coloured my instincts?

It looked like he was still digesting it all. It was one thing to guess that you were in a VR environment, but another to find out you were stuck in a simulator that could hurt you, and that people on the outside were actively trying to do just that.

“Two questions, first.” he asked. “One, do we believe them? Two, does it matter?”

“I’m not sure.” I answered. “...and I guess that works for both questions.” I paused before going on. “Either way, we can play along or not...and either way we don’t know who we are helping or hurting.

“It sounds like we need to rally the locals and repel the invaders...which, if you think about it, is likely what we would do anyways. Protect the towns, motivate the locals, raise an army, repel the evil horde, etc, etc.

If we don’t, eventually the horde overruns wherever we hide anyway. Then we find out if the interface is really corrupted, and maybe we die.”

“True enough.” Ixion said, still pondering the rapid changes to his worldview.

“Either we confirm and maybe get some help, or we don’t and go it alone. Personally, if we’re going to do the same things either way, I’d rather have the help. We can always turn it down later. No one says we have to use whatever they send us.”

“True enough.” he repeated nodding distractedly. My mind was spinning with all the things I had to catch up to.

I pushed the blinking Y.

***

More words appeared on the arcane book.

[We’re relieved to know you’ve survived this far. We can’t observe you directly, so we rely on encounters like this one. ]

[We shifted the Reputation system in your favour, so it will be easier to build or buy loyalty.]

That explained a few things.

[Something is wrong with the Guide system. From what we can tell, the Guides are only functioning within the Apprentice area, rather than following players. In our attempts to get around this problem, we were able to replace Mark/Ixion’s Guide with an artificial intelligence usually used for low-level Boss Characters. It will be more interactive than typical Guides, but there may be complications we cannot foresee.

Once you are in a Party together you will both have access to it from that point onwards. Additional party members will have access as long as they remain in the Party. However, the Guide will likely not be able to manifest visibly from now on. It may be voice only, or it may manifest as an artifact of some sort.]

[We’re working on a Spellskill unique to Sarah’s profile that will help her identify other players.]

[When you identify other players, have them place their hand on the tablet the way you did. We should be able to identify them and eventually connect their previous information. Hopefully this will give you advantages in the system, and eventually help us get you all out.]

[NEXT]

***

“Now what?’ Ixion asked after we had a moment to digest it all.

“Apparently we fight a war.” I answered, climbing to my feet.

“How are we going to do that?”

“We already have a bunch of pissed off Rangers and Druids, plus I think the Militia types might be inclined to help us out.”

“Aren’t we trapped here, in the Apprentice area?”

“No, remember, anyone can leave, but only lower level types can get back in...and maybe not even that, if the Orc and Goblins are any indication. Plus, I wonder if the Arcane Ogre is what we were really supposed to fight. That Boss Room seemed quite a bit more powerful than I expected for an Apprentice Dungeon party.”

“Speaking of which, does the loot reflect what you expected, or is there more of that too?” he asked, pushing himself up from his pile of coins.

“Hadn’t gotten that far yet. Been kind of busy.” I answered, laying in a little sarcasm.

He gave me a playful stink eye, “Let us have a look then. Worst case we have plenty of coin to get an army started, and best case these developers might have been able to drop us some additional useful things.”

“Hey folks!” he yelled across to the Militia. “Let’s get some of your buddies down here and start sorting through this and hauling it out to the main entrance.”

***

The pile in the main entrance was impressive. We set the mundane weapons and equipment to one side, and anything potentially Arcane to the other. Once we recharged our Mana and Chi enough we would go through them in detail. In the middle sat a rather large pile of coins. Gold, Silver, Copper...even a few handfuls of Platinum.

“I hope you folks can get a wagon in here to cart all this back to Springbrook.” Ixion said, with a raised eyebrow.

“I guess your princess is in another castle?” I asked over my shoulder as I picked through potentially the Arcane gear.