Fuck my life.

Carey eyed his quick-access menu, spotted a Major Nectar potion, and made it appear in his hand. Ruckus has already dropped into a charging position, and by the time Carey managed to uncork the flask—a motion that seemed useless and unnecessary now, considering this was a friggin’ game and potions should just absorb instantly—Ruckus was in full swing, barreling toward him like a blood-red avalanche.

Carey would have thought to jump, but it was all happening so fast, and all he could think about was the potion in his hand—which he needed; he absolutely had to drink it right away—but it was too late.

A dead man…

Instantly, Ruckus was thrown off to the side by some invisible force, and Carey found himself blinking in utter shock, mouth gaping open in surprise, as the Torg boss slid across the cracked floor, apparently too injured to get up.

The boss’s HP bar slid down, down, down even further—until it was completely empty.

Ruckus died with a ragged gasp, one clawed hand reaching up as if to some deity he hoped might resurrect him for one more fight.

“What the hell happened?” Carey checked to see if the other members of his party had seen what he’d seen. “Guys? Was that you?”

Beatrice walked over, holding Min-joon’s hand. She let go of the boy and began to loot the body. Will approached from the opposite direction, looking as confused as Carey felt.

“No idea,” Will said and scratched his scalp. “But did you notice we didn’t get any XP from this fight?”

“Someone helped us?” Carey asked.

Beatrice gasped. “A Resurrection Elixir.”

She held up a small, teardrop-shaped crystal bottle. The liquid inside resembled water infused with white light. Grinning, Beatrice brought it to her chest, disappearing it into her inventory.

“Someone very high-level might have helped us,” Will said, “which would explain why we didn’t get any XP. Whoever it was must still be here.”

Spinning around suddenly, Will and Carey scanned the entire room. There was no one there—that they could see, anyway.

They inspected Ruckus and found an inch-thick arrow embedded in his side. The shaft sported a colorful, banded array of colors that seemed to shift in the light, like one of those ornamental stones you see in gift shops, or light across a puddle of gasoline.

“It’s…” Carey began, yanking out the weapon while stepping aside to avoid a splash of the Torg lieutenant’s blood and guts. “It’s effin’ huge, man!”

“And made of…” Will rubbed his fingers down its multicolored length. “Stone?”

Beatrice and Min-joon marveled at it, the boy-thief whistling his appreciation.

Item: Agate Arrow of Holy Purification

Type: Stone Arrow

Attack DMG: 72

Weight: 0.01

Value: 15S, 500C

Traits: Bow attack damage +45 percent with +65 percent chance of critical strike against Demonic monsters.

“This dude’s critical-hit damage must be off the charts,” Will said. “Ruckus had over 1,000 HP left. But he took him down with one hit.”

“Who?” Carey asked. “That’s the question we should be answering here.”

Carey glanced over his shoulder in the direction from which the arrow had been shot. He could see, hear, and smell absolutely nothing that indicated someone else was in the chamber with them.

A man’s voice called from the upper level, beyond the top of the staircases.

“I’ll be getting that arrow back, right?”

A British accent. Was it another player?

“Show yourself first,” Carey said. “What are you, a coward?”

They heard only a snickering sound, followed by footsteps. That smooth, trickster’s voice filled the chamber once more. “I wanted to see how the lot of you would react to that fine piece of equipment. Gaping like a bunch of wankers. As if you’d never seen something so beautiful in all your wretched lives.”

When he appeared on the ledge above them, Carey nearly dropped the arrow in stunned admiration.

“Heyo,” the guy said with a wave.

He sparkled like a diamond in the chamber’s yellow torchlight, which made sense since he appeared to be wearing…

“Diamond armor,” Will said. “Hot damn, I never thought I’d see…”

“Okay, okay,” Carey said. “Let’s not blow up his already sizeable ego.”

“What was that, mate?”

“I said you have an oversized ego.” Carey lifted his voice, even cupped his hands around his mouth. “Cute diamond armor. Did your husband give it to you when he proposed to you back in London?”

The guy frowned. “I’m from Sydney, dumbass.”

“That’s in Australia,” Beatrice whispered over to Carey.

“I know that.”

Carey should have realized the guy was Australian. The douchebag’s username, which floated above his head, was AussieWannaWank1. (So, the system was fine with a username about wanking but totally not cool with the number 69? Figures.)

Then Carey saw the guy’s level.

His jaw dropped.

“Wow. Cool!” Beatrice said. “I love Australian… um, food.”

“Oh, really?” The idiot saw fit to challenge her about it. “What’s your favorite?”

“That’s easy,” she said. “Meat pie.”

“Kangaroo meat pie,” Min-joon said and started chuckling.

Diamond-wanker frowned in disgust. Carey patted the boy’s back.

“Nice one, MJ.”

But what was up with Beatrice? She was gazing at the diamond-encrusted warrior like she might stick a straw into him and slurp him up.

He looked like he was probably her type—or any girl’s type, for that matter. Tall, broad-shouldered, square-chinned, the guy leaned on a massive, elaborate, silvery sword, the point of which he’d planted against the ground.

To make matters worse, diamond-wanker was smiling down at Beatrice like one of those alpha-male Chads at a bar, eyeing his next prey. Carey had always hated guys like that.

“My name is Beatrice, but everyone calls me Bea. The Sorcerer is Will. This little guy is Min-joon. And the guy with the mouth is Carey.”

Will waved, chuckling like a nervous kid approaching his favorite action-movie star for an autograph. Min-joon could only gape in fascination at the diamond armor.

“KimJongFun,” diamond-wanker said, nodding at Min-joon. “Dope username.”

“Thanks,” Min-joon chirped.

“That’s enough, everybody,” Carey said. “We don’t have all day. You, with the sparkly armor—Mr. Want-to-Wank, or whatever—are you gonna tell us your name or what?”

“Tyler,” the guy said. “Tyler Durden.”

“That’s funny,” Carey said, the Fight Club reference not lost on him. “And people back home tell me I look like Brad Pitt. I guess I’ll just call you Diamond-Wanker then.”

“You do that.” Diamond-Wanker jumped off the top level, landing with a heavy whump as air was expelled from beneath his armor and all his layers of clothes. “If,” he added, “you’re okay with having your balls chopped off and shoved down your throat, mate.”

Clearly a Sargonaut, he was about six-and-a-half feet tall and grinned condescendingly at Carey, which seemed like something a Sargonaut would do. His Strength and Constitution attributes were probably ten times higher than anyone else’s here.

“You didn’t give us your name,” Carey said. “What else did you expect?”

“My name’s Walter, mate. But everyone calls me Wally.”

He reached out to shake Carey’s hand. Carey grudgingly accepted.

Will, Beatrice, and Min-joon approached Wally—what a dumb name, seriously—and took turns shaking his diamond gauntlets.

“Will you be in our party?” Min-joon asked.

Wally got down on one knee, so his face was level with the boy-thief’s. “I wish I could, little guy. But you already have four people. Plus, at my level, if I join your party or help you in any way with battles, you’ll pay a penalty.”

“What kind of penalty?” Carey asked.

Getting up again, Wally ran a hand through his hair, which was long enough to land in silky, auburn waves around his ears. Beatrice was smiling at him in admiration, eyes riveted on his handsome face. Carey wanted to elbow her but restrained himself.

“You won’t receive any XP if I’m around,” Wally explained. “Or loot, for that matter. You might have noticed you got nothing for beating Ruckus. Even if I hang back and only pop up now and then to save your life—like I just did—the game will punish you for it one way or another.”

“You seem to know a lot,” Carey said. “At your level, how long exactly—”

“I was the first,” Wally cut him off, having lost his grin, now dead serious.

Beatrice spoke in a voice thick with pity. “You were the first… player? The first one to get dropped into this experiment… all alone?”

“The first one to survive past the first few days, anyway.” Wally broke out a piece of bread and a golden goblet of wine. He offered some to Carey, who shrugged, accepting, and took a deep drink. “There were a few players before me, but they didn’t exactly take, if you know what I mean. Didn’t accept the simulation. Didn’t get past Level 2. Died almost on purpose because they thought this was all a trick. Like a dream they could wake up from. That’s when the makers started focusing on gamers—people with experience playing MMORPGs.”

“MMO-what?” Beatrice asked.

Will was the one who answered. “Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. Come on, Bea. You didn’t know that? Big, open, multiplayer games with dozens, or sometimes hundreds, of players? All leveling up, fighting enemies, playing as certain classes of warrior? Joining up in clans and guilds?”

“Oh, that,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I never played games back home. Unless you count Stardew Valley on my boyfriend’s Nintendo Switch. My ex-boyfriend.”

Wally smiled approvingly at that last bit. “Ex, huh?”

“I love Stardew Valley,” Min-joon said.

Bea mussed up his hair and hugged the boy. They both seemed to be in tremendously good moods now that someone so high-level was around to protect them. It wouldn’t last. Carey knew Wally’s type.

He was a lone wolf.

Will grabbed the goblet and finished the wine. Carey’s appetite had ballooned thanks to the alcohol. It was time to get out of this godforsaken place, set up camp somewhere, and relax around a pot of beef stew.

“You know how to get out of here?” Carey asked Wally.

“Sure do, mate. The level designers made it easy for us. Down that corridor is a rope ladder, so you don’t have to retrace all your steps. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Within five minutes, they were outside again. The sky was purple in the east, dark orange in the west. Carey checked the clock. 8:15. He also checked how much gold he’d managed to swipe before that earthquake erased all of it.

(3) Gold Nuggets.

Each nugget stored a quantity of 5 gold in case one wished to use it as a crafting item, which meant the value of each nugget was exactly 5 gold or equivalent to 500 silver.

Carey felt pretty good about that. They had managed to earn a bunch of gold and a bunch of levels, and now here they were, still standing.

Of course, it was all thanks to that wanker, Wally, who had rescued them at the last minute. What was he doing in a starter dungeon, anyway?

~SIDE QUEST COMPLETE~

TREASURE OF THE DROWNED ACOLYTE

720 XP. Not bad. Carey checked his notifications and saw that he was only about 9,000 points away from his next level.

They followed Wally—their de facto leader now, it seemed—into the woods until they came across a clearing. A stream burbled nearby.

“Let’s build a shelter, shall we?” Wally asked the group, and suddenly a pile of wooden logs appeared in his arms.

He dropped them on the ground with a loud clatter. Carey studied the items.

(500) Wood Logs

“Jesus,” Carey said. “You were walking around with all that in your inventory?”

“My Strength is 82, mate. Carry weight is over 600, thanks to a Sargonaut perk. What’s yours?”

“Uh… 55?”

Wally shrugged. “Typical for a low-level Feral. You’re better served putting all your points into Agility and Perception.”

Carey relaxed a little. He’d been certain the guy was going to make fun of him.

“My thoughts exactly,” Carey said. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have more wine, would you.”

“Nope,” the guy said, with a cutting motion of both arms. “All out, mate.”

“Whatever.”

“Just this wooden cask of frothy ale”—he made the cask appear on one shoulder, supported by one of his burly arms—“but you wouldn’t be interested in that, would you, mate?”

Carey almost hugged the guy. “I think you’re my hero.”

“I get that a lot,” Wally said.

They broke out the cask, five mugs of ale (even Min-joon got one) and got to work gathering wooden logs and building different components of their shelter. Carey and Wally started a log cabin, while Will made a stone campfire with a roasting spit. Beatrice and Min-joon crafted sleeping bags and refilled everyone’s water sacks.

“What’s your deal, mate?” Wally asked Carey, as they added logs to the cabin’s glowing, semi-transparent placeholder frame.

“What do you mean?”

“I get why you’re here. I was a bully, too. But why the constant attitude? We’re both trapped in here, aren’t we?”

“Question for you first,” Carey said, grabbing his mug off the floor and draining it. “What were you doing in such a low-level dungeon? I mean, come on, Torgs? You must have fought dragons by now.”

“I have taken down Cebrons all by myself.”

“Good for you. I’ll get you a cookie, one sec.”

Wally chuckled. “You’re a funny one, mate. Choco chip, if you got ’em.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Wally shrugged. “In my instances of the dungeon, Ruckus is Level 80. All his minions are between 60 and 75. Piece of piss.”

“But why out here? In the middle of nowhere? Shouldn’t you be battling Low Mages off at their academy as part of some high-level clan? I mean, why aren’t you in a party? Why haven’t you won yet?”

Wally gave an easy shrug as he continued placing logs. “Being in a party is overrated. Did that once. They were a bunch of wankers.”

“So, you’re a lone wolf,” Carey said, nodding as he picked up his logs again. “I get it. Sometimes, I think I should go on my own, too—forge my own path, not let anyone slow me down. But you’re Level 79. You could’ve left already. Gone home a winner.”

Wally paused, apparently in deep thought. He opened his mouth as if to answer Carey’s question, then snapped it shut and shrugged instead.

The final log fell into place, automatically assembled by the game’s crafting system, and they heard a click-chime that told them it was finished. Carey grabbed one of the standing torches they had placed around the clearing, pushed open the door, and peeked inside.

“It has a floor and everything,” Carey said. “Not much in the way of protection, though.”

“If I stay with you guys,” Wally said, “you’ll have Level 70 critters up the arse all night long. I gotta leave, mate.”

“But wait!” Carey felt desperate to make him stay. A Level 79 player was a wealth of knowledge. He had to learn what he could. “Don’t go yet.”

“I get it,” Wally said. “You hope I’ll give you some of my extra gear. Maybe teach you some ropes, eh, mate?”

Carey’s eyebrows shot up. “Would you?”

“Nah, I don’t carry extra stuff. Just what I need.”

“Plus extra casks of beer, right?”

“Like I said, only what I need.” He winked at Carey.

“But…”

“Look, mate. Your friend Beatrice is a hottie and all, but I have enough gold coins in my mansion in Tyrathon that I could buy all the NPC women I want from the city’s whorehouses. Believe me, they’re much better than the real thing.”

Whorehouses? Carey made a mental note to confirm Wally’s observation later.

“Give me one good reason,” Wally said, crossing his arms, which made his diamond bracers sparkle in the torchlight. “One reason why I should keep helping you guys out. Do you know how many players have asked for my help?”

Carey bit his lower lip in contemplation. It only took two seconds for the lie to enter his brain, fully formed. He’d always been a good liar, ever since childhood when he convinced his mother he had mono so he could stay home from school for two days before she finally brought him to the doctor and realized he had invented all his symptoms.

“Because we’re not headed to Tyrathon to join the Forge,” Carey said. “We’re headed there to exploit a game-breaking glitch. I doubt you’ve ever done that before, mate.”

One of Wally’s eyebrows rose, the other descending—an almost comical look of suspicion mixed with curiosity. “Glitch?”

“Oh yeah. We came across another player who had gear like yours, but his level was around a third as high.”

Wally snorted at that. But he was listening.

“We knew the guy couldn’t have earned it by grinding, the way you did. So, we got him drunk at a tavern and asked him where he got it. He told us about a glitch in Tyrathon you can exploit to enter what’s known as the ‘developer’s room.’”

“And what’s that? All the developers hangin’ out, playing cards in VR?”

Carey shook his head. “It’s a room with tables and shelves containing every item in the game. For quick access by developers who need to test them out. There are chests with infinite gold, magic scrolls that can light the sky on fire, potions that give you unfinished perks, and abilities that were never actually placed inside the game…”

Wally leaned forward slightly. Carey had him, like a fish caught on a hook. “And you know how to exploit this glitch? Tell me how. How did you find out?”

“Yeah right, like we’re going to tell you,” Carey said. “You’d just go do it by yourself and leave us in your dust. I know how you lone wolves operate.”

Wally considered this for a moment. “If you’re lying, you’re dead meat. Seriously, I will erase you, mate.”

He can’t resist. He’s in this for fun, and I’ve just dangled the most fun thing in front of him.

“Not lying,” Carey said. “But the only way you’ll find out is by helping us.”

There was silence, and for several moments Carey was sure Wally would decline and tell them to piss off in his annoying accent.

Instead, he reached out to shake Carey’s hand.

“It’s a deal,” he said.