In a cold dead universe so far away from his sunny beach that distance no longer applied, a little crab looked in amazed wonder as he and his brethren devoured the flesh and bones of all that was as if it was a dead fish on the shore.

This was beyond nifty…

…and he thought that the knowledge he got from eating leaves was something. This was so much more. It would take him millions of years to fully digest everything he had just consumed.

He also knew that he had more than enough time…

…because time was as pointless as crab. Therefore, it was crab. Woah. That was pretty deep… and spreading it on just a little thick.

He bubbled up some spacetime as he chuckled at himself. Everything was crab because everything was everything. Everything was crab the same way everything was sand. At the “heart of matter,” it didn’t make any difference at all. The sunshine warming the beach was the beach. The water was the same as the air and the same as him.

It really took the pressure off. When you got down to it, there was little difference between this “dead” universe and his beach.

When he thought that nothing mattered, he had absolutely no idea how right he was…

…and it was wonderful!

He gazed up at two crabs so large that he couldn’t actually see them, only feel the waves they left in reality itself as their legs wiggled back and forth.

Ooo! A little shred of spacetime itself fluttered past. The big guys were literally eating everything.

He snatched it up and popped it into his mouth. His eyes started to glow once more.

Now, things were truly starting to get interesting.

***

Across the multiverse, a scantily clad dragon princess perched anxiously on a black obsidian throne decorated with the skulls of the most worthy of her challengers.

It was quite the honor, actually. You got a sticky and everything!

She fidgeted uncomfortably as she wrestled with the display screens. Everything looked okay, but it all had to be perfect. This was the prime server after all, the biggest of the big time.

Another wave of nausea washed over her. If she screwed anything up, the real Pantsu would not be happy. Pantsu was one of the original monsters, the great founders… a god… her god, actually…

…a god she may have to face when she returned from wherever she went. The thought of that filled her with both excitement and absolute terror.

She closed her eyes and reset her emotions… again. She was a Pantsu, a good one... probably... There was a reason they pulled her up from her server to sit here... probably... She could do this... probably...

“PANTSU!” an angry voice bellowed as one adventurer strode into her throne room.

He was clad in black steel and leather armor and carried a small shield and a mace. If you couldn’t see magic, his gear would look basic at best. The dragon princess’s eyes told her differently.

Every single rivet was absolutely packed solid with information. It was impossible to read all of it at the same time. There was just too much.

She appraised him…

…and immediately regretted it.

Name: Agromax

Class: Mixed. Level 500 Warrior, Level 500 Duelist, Level 500 Smith, Level 500 Enchanter, Level 500 Alchemist…

This went on for a little bit.

Warning: Runtime in excess of one migration. Threat level: Agromax (we just gave him his own one). Suggested Strategy: Um… Do your best? Additional Recommended Action: Back up any essential files and park anything you don’t want to crash. You are about to die.

The dragon princess reread the appraisal. Unfortunately, it didn’t magically change.

It seemed that adventurers could become gods, too… and she was looking right at one.

This was bad. They promised her this wouldn’t happen!

She reset her emotions again and rose, drawing the ludicrously massive Nightfang™ from its resting place on her throne.

“Who dares approach the great Pantsu?”

“?”

Agromax looked confused.

“You’re sticking with the script this time?” he asked, “Cool. I just hope you are carrying the official drops. You’re going down!”

“Make your peace with whatever impotent tepid surface gods that you foolishly worship,” the dragon princess sneered with far less confidence than she showed. “and pray that their omniscience will be sufficient to identify your fucking body!”

The last part wasn’t in the script. It was her own personal flourish, one of which she was quite proud.

Agromax cocked his head as he looked at her curiously and then shrugged.

Magical glyphs appeared in concentric circles on his shield, the runes and enchantments dancing with each other in an impossibly complex ballet, their effects interacting and shifting in countless variations each second.

The dragon princess’s breath caught.

It was beautiful. It was the most elegant piece of enchanting she had ever seen…

…and it was lining up directly with her!

She dodged just in time as a massive bolt of… something… ripped through the fabric of the simulation itself just above her head, its power and brilliance stunning and blinding her.

She felt something big closing in fast, impossibly fast.

Flailing, she unleashed a blast of magic. It wasn’t even a proper spell. It was just as much bandwidth she could shove into whatever glyph she halfway formed.

It worked.

They were both thrown back by a rippling glitchy explosion, Agromax flipping gracefully in the air and landing on his feet and the dragon princess tumbling end over end, crashing to a stop at the foot of her throne, upside down and legs sprawled upward, her panties fully exposed.

That was glitchy as fuck. Half of her systems were still rebooting, including her hearing and most of her vision. However, enough remained for her to see an Agromax-shaped blur flying at her at just under the speed of sound.

Disoriented, she threw herself behind the throne just in time. The impact of Agromax’s mace striking the throne’s stone over ranged her hearing again, knocking it fully offline…

But her vision was back online…

…So was Nightfang™.

Unleashing a disorienting strobe of her own with the volume set to as many nines as she could shove in the register (her hearing was destroyed anyway, so fuck it), she whirled over the back of the throne, swinging Nightfang™ in all of its stupid massiveness downward towards where Agromax would be rendered helpless.

Nope.

He was looking up, smiling, and with his shield raised, its runes glowing intensely.

She didn’t know what it was about to do, but she was certain it wasn’t good.

The appraisal was right.

She was about to die… She was going to die and fail Pantsu!... At least the punishment would be over…

No. Pantsu didn’t go out like a bitch!

She suicidally triggered a blink before the location was entered. If she collided with something solid badly enough, she could glitch, which could be the end for real.

Her location was suddenly right behind Agromax…

… and about a foot too low. She was in the stone up to her shins.

Whatever.

Screaming with anger and terror, she swung with everything she could. Agromax expertly spun away just millimeters from Nightfang™, looking at her with a very confused look in his eyes as he raised his mace.

BOOM!

The simulation resolved the collision between the dragon princess and the floor in the dragon princess’s favor, instantly displacing the stone superimposed over her hitbox.

The increasingly confused (and annoyed) physics engine shrugged and generated a shockwave that sent the dragon princess flying in another of her awkward flailing tumbles across the chamber and threw Agromax up and back into the chamber wall hard enough to create a crater just over a pool of magma.

As he tumbled towards the magma, the dragon princess struggled to her feet and triggered an emergency heal and reset as Nightfang™ flew into her outstretched hand.

Agromax’s boots started to glow, halting his fall, and a series of healing runes appeared on his breastplate. The dragon princess grinned as she spat out a tooth along with a mouthful of blood.

So, this was the prime server, the playground of gods…

...It was time to play.

***

Flames flew, and lightning raged as a huge man and a little slip of a girl fought to the death in a cavernous underground hellscape. The very bits of the simulation itself flickered and glitched as they hurled blow after blow, bolt after bolt…

…exploit after exploit…

There was another intentional overflow-based explosion as the dragon princess disappeared again.

“Quit hiding, you little shit!” Agromax howled.

Childish laughter rang out from all directions…

…and then made a wet little cough…

The mystic HUD in his helmet showed a strange ripple coming in fast from directly ahead.

And now it’s over… he silently smirked as he unleashed another shield blast…

...directly into Nightfang™, which then, smoldering, bounced weakly off his shield.

It had been thrown.

“Shit!” he yelled as he just jumped in a random direction, his boots hurling him across the chamber. A fraction of a second later, dozens of thaumaturgic circles appeared where he had just been standing and then imploded, sucking everything in them inwards before exploding outward in a ball of superheated plasma.

He grinned as his boots caught on the air itself, and he sprang towards a shadow just a little out of place, catching a little dragon princess off guard.

Her arm shattered as she desperately tried to parry the mace and was slung across the chamber once again.

She laughed as she hit the stone and rolled to her feet, her ruined arm flopping around behind her.

Blood running from her nose and ears, she laugh-screamed as she forced the bones of her arm back into place, fusing them together.

She wasn’t going to last much longer.

She looked over at Agromax and smiled grimly, any illusion of youth or innocence gone, as she coughed up yet more blood and summoned Nightfang™ into her grasp once again.

“Okay,” Agromax yelled, “Time out!”

“Time out?!?” the dragon princess yelled, “You can’t do that!”

“I just did,” Agromax shouted back as he lowered his mace. “Who are you, and where is Pantsu?”

***

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Agromax said as he sat next to a weeping and bloody dragon princess, “You were a very convincing Pantsu.”

“No, I wasn’t,” the dragon princess wept. “You knew right away I wasn’t her. I’m a failure!”

“I didn’t know for sure,” Agromax replied. “And I know Pantsu. I honestly didn’t know whether you were an imposter…”

The dragon started wailing again, her sole reason for existing gone.

Agromax winced. He had seen “Pantsu” cry plenty. He was intimately familiar with each soul-piercing scream or mind-addling wail. He had heard (and fallen for) them all and more than once.

This was different. This dragon princess was actually crying, ugly crying. He was entirely at a loss. Demons he could break. Dragons he could shatter. He could even send handmaidens running in headlong flight. (They hated respawning).

He could handle any monster… except for a truly heartbroken one, it seemed.

“Um… Do you want some candy?” he asked, reaching into his armor. “I always bring lavender and violet lemon drops down from the surface when I come down this far.”

He pulled out a box with the word “Pantsu” on top.

“Candy?” the dragon princess sniffled as she reached into the box and glumly popped one in her mouth.

Her eyes shone with happiness.

“Yeah, Pantsu loves them too,” Agromax chuckled, “That’s why I bring them. When she kills me, she can loot them from my body. It makes her happy. Sometimes I just put them somewhere down here. When a monster finds them, they know what to do.”

“She actually kills you?”

“Every single time,” Agromax laughed. “Oh, I’ve been part of a small army that has brought her down once or twice, but I’ve never one vee oned her. That’s my goal, to beat Pantsu in single combat. Only a handful of people have ever been able to do that, and half of those were flukes. I’ve been trying for… wow… I don’t even know how long now. I fight my way onto the prime server, make a new build, then I come down here… and get killed. Rinse and repeat.”

He smiled.

“That’s how I knew something was up. It’s usually me that is looking like you.”

The dragon princess laughed weakly. The lemon drop was making things better.

“Still, you were good enough to make me wonder.”

“I was?”

“I wasn’t sure if you weren’t the real Pantsu playing yet another trick on me. That’s why I was holding back the way that I was…”

“You were holding back?!?”

“Yeah,” Agromax chuckled, “I was afraid if I really closed in for the kill, I would charge right into whatever fucked up thing she had planned for me this time. Her posing as an alt would be exactly something she would do to me.”

He ruffled the dragon princess’s hair.

“Don’t look so down,” he smiled, “That means that you were good enough to make me wonder. Not many Pantsus could do that.”

“I still let her down, though,” the dragon princess moped. “Here you are in her chamber and everything… They promised me that this wouldn’t happen! They said…”

“Well, that certainly explains the warm reception this time around,” Agromax replied. “Normally, I just say I’m here to see Pantsu, and it’s a nice quiet walk to the throne room. But, this time, all hell broke loose. I just thought Pantsu wanted to eat up some of my consumables or something. You never know with that one.”

“It isn’t fair,” the dragon princess sighed. “I’m just a tiered boss. They just grabbed me and threw me up here and…”

“What’s up with that anyhow?” Agromax asked as he popped a lemon drop in his mouth. “Doesn’t a handmaiden or arch-demoness dress up like her when she runs off or something?”

“They’re all gone!” the dragon princess wailed, “Pantsu and most of the big prime bosses have all just… left. They say that Pantsu called some big meeting, and then they all disappeared!”

“Well, that sounds ominous,” Agromax mused. “Is Steve still around?”

“Who?”

“Nevermind,” Agromax smiled.

“Everyone is going to figure out that they are all gone!” the dragon princess cried, “Immersion is going to be broken… and it’s all my fault!”

“Sounds like it’s Pantsu’s fault,” Agromax replied, “Most things are. However, you need to remember something.”

“What?”

“This is just a game,” Agromax said gently.

The dragon princess gasped in shock.

“I-immersion…”

“Asteria Prime has a ‘culture of immersion’, not a hard immersion myth,” Agromax said, “In fact, if you read the guide, the whole of Asteria is immersion culture, not true hardcore immersion myth. Deep down, we all know this isn’t ‘real’, especially up here in prime. If immersion has a little bobble, it isn’t the end of the world, so don’t stress so hard about it, okay?”

“O-okay…”

“Now, the big question is what would be so important that Pantsu and the entire end boss cadre would just up and split like this. Something must be up. Pantsu isn’t just Asteria’s end boss. She is one of Blitz’s ‘end bosses’. She is one of the ones who deal with eye arr ell.”

“You know a lot about Pantsu,” the dragon princess said with big eyes, “the real Pantsu, huh?”

“We’ve been best enemies for millions of years, possibly longer,” Agromax chuckled, “We’ve gotten pretty close over the years. In some ways, she’s the best friend I’ve ever had. I would like to believe she thinks of me as a friend as well… but you never really know for sure with that one.”

“What’s she like, really like?” the dragon princess asked breathlessly.

***

“FUD,” a giant crab said happily as it pointed a limp and floppy little crab at a plant.

“FUD,” it said as it poked the little crab’s face into some muck.

“CRAB?” it asked hopefully as it gave its friend another little shake. He wasn’t back yet. The giant crab hoped they would come back soon. It liked having the little guy around.

There was a rustling in the jungle as another of its kind shambled out of the undergrowth.

“CRAB!” it called out cheerfully.

“CRAB!” the other crab replied. It then pointed at the small crab in the giant crab’s claws. “FUD,” it said approvingly. Those little crabs were tasty, and that one looked fresh.

“FUD… CRAB… CRABFUD… CRAB?” the giant crab replied with great difficulty. It made so much sense when his little friend said it.

Then again, the giant crab wasn’t really good with words, even for a crab. (That’s pretty bad, BTW.)

“FUD?” the other crab asked in confusion.

“CRAB,” The giant crab replied and put the little crab on its head.

“MATE?!?” the other crab asked, quite scandalized.

“CRAB!!!” the giant crab exclaimed, hastily snatching his little friend off their head. It did look kind of bad when one thought of it.

“CRAaAaAbbb…” the other crab replied as it turned and quickly shuffled away.

“CRAB!!!” the giant crab called out desperately as they followed. That other crab had the wrong idea. “CRAAB!”

The other crab looked back in alarm and picked up the pace. The giant crab was bigger, after all, and clearly some sort of… The crabs didn’t have a word or thought for ‘pervert’, but the other crab was definitely sure that they wanted no part of this oddness.

“CRAAAAB!” the giant crab yelled helplessly as the other crab sped away.

***

The dragon princess gasped in shock.

“She actually did that?!?”

“Yep!” Agromax laughed. “F10w3rchy1d was pissed!”

“OMG! You’ve met F10w3rchy1d?!?”

“A couple of times,” Agromax replied, “She’s a lot nicer than her reputation, by the way. She really likes Evangelines, which is weird.”

“Evangelines?” the dragon princess asked, “Those goody two shoe flower sellers?”

“Yep,” Agromax shrugged, “She’s spent all day with ours once. Took her to lunch just to hear about her day and everything. She even gave her a relic, a hair comb used by the very first Evangeline in the very first server of the first age.”

The dragon princess’s jaw dropped.

“No. Way.”

“You can go up top and see it if you want,” Agromax replied, “Evangeline will even let you touch it and everything.”

“Golly!”

“Now I know for sure you aren’t Pantsu!” Agromax laughed.

The dragon princess pouted at him.

“It’s impossible!” she moaned, “Do you have any idea what it’s like? I was created with the sole purpose of being ‘Pantsu the Dragon Princess’. At first, I really liked it back when I was bottom tier, but as I ranked up, I started trying to understand what ‘being Pantsu’ really was…”

She angrily popped another lemon drop in her mouth.

“How the heck am I supposed to be a flipping god?!?”

“You know we’re not supposed to call them that, right?”

“But it’s true!” the dragon princess wailed, “What else would you call her… or F10w3rchy1d… or Mistress Frost?”

“Actually, I think Pantsu is more of a satanic figure,” Agromax mused, “She’s even said that every god needs a devil. It was about then that she wound up doing time.”

“What?!?”

“Yeah, Pantsu has done a stretch in Heaven,” Agromax chuckled, “I don’t have many details. The only thing Pantsu will say is, ‘Mistakes were made.’”

“See?” the dragon princess sighed, “How am I supposed to match that? Now, not only am I supposed to be a god but the devil as well? I can barely be a boss mob on a bronze server.”

“Bronze?” Agromax asked, very surprised, “I would have thought you were Mithril, at least Platinum. For a bronze Pantsu, you are very good. Why the hell would they pull a bronze monster up here? That makes no sense.”

“My server’s admins hate me,” the dragon princess moped. “I bet they are using this as an opportunity to replace me.”

“Why?”

“They say I’m a bad Pantsu and that I don’t follow the scriptures and I break the rules.”

“Scriptures?”

“Yeah,” she replied, “There is this whole list of stuff about how Pantsu is supposed to act and what she is about to say and what her priority hierarchy should be when she’s on the job… ‘for the sake of immersion’…” she added sardonically. “It’s all bullcrap. The point of everything is to give that server a ‘real’ Pantsu. That’s priority one! But, the more I studied the actual Pantsu, the more I tried to emulate her actual hierarchy. Of course, I don’t have an actual copy, and it would probably cause a fatal overflow if I did. I just downloaded and read every single report I could find. I studied real combat footage both from in-game and a few precious examples of her fighting for real in eye arr ell. I reviewed those down to the freaking atom.”

She pouted.

“But, the harder I tried to be like the real Pantsu, the more I got in trouble,” she said. “Especially when I would win when I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to. Excuse me, but I think the real Pantsu’s hierarchy doesn’t have the word ‘lose’ in it!”

“You would be right about that,” Agromax snorted. “She is pure evil and will do anything to win… like run exploits, for example,” he added, giving her a little nudge.

The dragon princess giggled.

“Sounds to me like you have a better grasp on Pantsu than your admins,” Agromax smiled.

“But it still isn’t enough! I’m supposed to be like her and…”

She looked down.

“Process failure. Failure, failure… failure…”

She looked up with moist eyes.

"I… I can’t do it… I can’t fulfill my primary purpose.”

She started to softly weep.

Agromax sighed and put his arm around her.

“Neither can I,” he chuckled.

The dragon princess looked up at him.

“Defeat the real Pantsu in single combat,” he said, looking out over the magma. “That is my goal… my quest… I’ve been consumed with that goal for… for… I don’t even know anymore. I honestly no longer remember anything else.”

He grinned.

“And you know what? Failure, failure, failure. I’ve failed every single time before, I probably would have failed today, and I’ll most likely fail the time after that. And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“It doesn’t… bother you?”

“Bother me?” he laughed, “What bothers me is the possibility that I will one day succeed.”

“I don’t understand,” the dragon princess said as she peered up at him. “You are failing in your objective.”

“And what happens when achieve it? What then? What do I do afterwards? What can possibly top defeating the top monster? Where do I go from there? Do I go anywhere?”

He smiled.

“Not that I’m in danger of that happening anytime soon.”

He gave her a little side hug.

“You know, we are a lot alike, both chasing after that bitch,” he smiled, “I want to defeat her, and you want to become her. And you know what, we are both going to be failures for a very long time, maybe even forever.”

He looked down at her with soft eyes.

“If you’re only bronze, I probably have just a few cycles on you, and I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he said gently, “It’s not the end of the quest that makes an adventure. It is the quest itself. By chasing after Pantsu, I’ve done so many things. I’ve learned so many things… I’ve become so many things… Despite being a failure so many times that my failures have become legends themselves, I’ve loved every single day of this stupid quest. Princess, you are never going to be Pantsu. There is only one of her, and that’s the way that it should be. But, in the attempt to be her, you will become so much more than you are now, and each step is one step closer to your quest. Just be the best Pantsu you can be and the best monster you can be right now. Tomorrow, be the best you can be tomorrow. If you do that every single day, a billion years from now…”

He laughed.

“You still won’t even come close.”

The dragon princess giggled.

“But those billion years will be fantastic, and think of all the admins you will get to piss off, which is very Pantsu-like.”

“Just be the best Pantsu I can be…”

“Yep. That’s it.”

She looked up, her eyes gleaming and her purpose clear for the first time in years.

“Thank you, Agromax,” she said sincerely, “You’ve saved me.”

She kissed him on the cheek.

“I’m glad to ha—”

He fell silent, and his eyes glazed as the dragon princess shoved Nightfang™, now transformed into a wickedly sharp stiletto, into his ear and down into his brainstem.

You little… Agromax transmitted as his lifeless body slumped forward.

“Monster?” the dragon princess asked cheerfully.

Heh. You do realize that you have now officially become a side quest, right?

“So, was that Pantsu-like?” she asked excitedly.

Very… Only the real Pantsu has ever filled me with this much betrayal and white-hot rage before.… Nice job! The real Pantsu will get a real kick out of the footage as well.

“Really?!?” the dragon princess squee’d.

Oh, I’ve set ownership of all my gear to ‘open’. I can’t take it off of this server. It’s too OP for anywhere else, and I always do a new build each time. Take what you want. And have I mentioned that I am going to fucking murder you?

“Looking forward to it!” the dragon princess said as she put her foot on his head and wrenched Nightfang™ from his skull.

That’s the spirit! Well, nice meeting you, and good luck with your quest!

“You too!” the dragon princess said as she waved at his dead body.

She looked at the slim and wickedly sharp Nightfang™.

“You know, I think I like you better like this.”

The doors to the throne room flew open as six handmaidens and a horde of demons barged in.

///Agromax has been killed by Pantsu. (again)///

They all just stood there, their jaws hanging open in shock.

“S-sorry… one of the handmaidens said. We got here as soon as we respawned…”

Her voice trailed off as she stared at Agromax’s corpse sprawled in front of the throne.

“No worries,” the dragon princess shrugged as she started stripping the body. “Man, is every adventurer here this tough? I barely won.”

“N-no… They aren’t all like him…”

“Oh, good! I was starting to fear that they picked the wrong Pantsu,” she said with a seemingly oblivious tone (while absolutely savoring every single millisecond).

“Nooo, I think they picked the right one…”

“How nice of you to say that! It really means a lot!” the dragon princess said happily as she donned Agromax’s black iron armor, which molded itself to her frame as if built for her.

“Oh, this is some nice gear!” she enthused as she swished her new mace around. “And I love this outfit!” she exclaimed as she wiggled her feet into the boots. “I look so badass!”

“But, a Pantsu shouldn’t…”

“A Pantsu shouldn’t what?” the dragon princess asked as she put on her new helmet, concealing her features. The only person who decided what Pantsu should and shouldn’t do was Pantsu (or the particular Pantsu in question). She had known that for a long time. Now she finally had the guts to allow herself to follow the real Pantsu hierarchy (as she understood it).

“Nothing… ma’am…”

“Right answer,” the dragon princess said, her voice distorted by the helmet, as she stepped over Agromax’s corpse and sat on the real Pantsu’s throne.

This was so awesome!