“I completely deserved that,” admitted the hobgoblin, lying prone on the floor.

“Fuck you, you deserve more,” cried the orc.

A few cried out his in support, “You’re kind got us into this mess. Who told you to steal those counters?”

“My kind? As though I’m responsible for every hobgoblin.”

This riled up the crowd even more.

“SILENCE!!” cried the fairy, her voice reverberating from every corner of the vault.

Corn covered his ears, the vibrations threatened to crack his ear drums.

When everyone recovered their hearing, the soul eater walked to the centre and addressed them all, “I want you all to listen to me very carefully. WarCode is our don and the only one with the connections to keep this gang afloat. As long as he’s captured by the Guard, we are all in trouble. AltShift is our second in command and I want you all to listen-”

This was met by a loud chorus of dissent.

The fairy rose to the air and must have put out a very convincing illusion because everyone shut up instantly.

“Yes, he’s a hobgoblin and hobgoblins are all thieves. But we’re all thieves as well. None of the hobgoblins in our gang were responsible for the mass theft of Freedom counters. None of them.

He might be bad business to you, but without his help in rescuing WarCode, this gang will die. I’m sure your contacts and other gangs are slowly ignoring you. If the gang breaks up, no other gang is going to accept you because of the sheer severity of this ‘issue’.

So we work with him, for now. We have no other choice.”

The hobgoblin walked up to the soul eater and looked at everyone, “We need to get lawyers.”

“Why don’t we just bust him out?” probed Corn.

“WarCode is a vampire. The Vitality cage, they have him imprisoned in, must be strong enough to prevent him from dying and reaching a resurrection altar. Unless anyone here thinks they are better at Vitality than WarCode?” asked the soul eater.

“Good, how much credit do we have in our accounts?” asked Alt, taking charge of the conversation.

“10 million credits currently and another 5 million in progress,” replied the fairy.

“We need another 10 million. Yes, I understand we can’t get it immediately but it needs to be there eventually, for the lawyers.”

“Would that be enough?” asked Corn. “Especially for a case like this. Wouldn’t a Device of some sort sweeten the deal?” A Device was a mana made object that had Stats in them. Like the Mauled dummies with the Core in them. Unfortunately, they were inedible.

The fairy crossed her arms, “We have nothing of the sort in the vault.”

“Not that vault,” smiled Corn.

“Bug boy, our glorious leader himself ensured that a 3rd circle mage created his personal vault. Do tell, how exactly are we going to take it out? Besides how did you even find out about his personal vault?” cried the fairy in a shrill voice.

The hobgoblin nodded, “It is added incentive. Lawyers are Endurance users: they’re greedy as fuck. We get Care to ask him via the Abyss.”

And so the plan was set. Most of the gang members cleaned up the remains of the food fight while the soul eater tried contacting their don.

He was experimenting when he noticed Care and Alt approach him.

“We need your help. The secret vault that WarCode created can only be opened by a mage,” said the soul eater. Corn tried not to smile.

“WarCode was also a mage? I though he was a vampire. How many Stats does he have?”

“Five,” said the soul eater grudgingly.

Corn’s mind was blown away. Each Stat after the first free one was progressively more expensive, to have five Stats meant riches beyond comprehension.

“Was he nobility? A Program or Servant rank?”

“He is a Servant, but do not publicise it, please. He had a falling out with his family and from what I know it is the only reason the Guard has not taken all his lives.”

A Servant rank? He was only one Freedom counter away from being a Player. And he was Corn’s boss. Wow!

“Apparently, he ruined a large batch of Purpose Slaves,” added the hobgoblin.

Corn’s mind reeled. Fuck him! Fuck them! How could they be so callous? As though all slaves were just objects.

“An overreaction,” said Care, waving her hands in dismissal. “Conceptually all Servants own slaves, so it was inevitable.”

Fuck! Why should he help the bastard?

Then he recollected Wall and BlueEyes. No, he needed something from them. He filed away the knowledge that all nobility owned slavery. He already knew that some of the nobility owned slaves, but all of them did? If Servants were so rotten, maybe that’s why there were so few Players.

But, Alt and Care came together, as one. Were they lovers? Why were they being so friendly to him?

“Sure I’ll help as long as Care helps me with my problem first.”

“But your problem is so indeterminate. Surely there must Devices or mana made objects we can offer in exchange for you services?” asked Care.

And so they began bargaining. The soul eater tried her very best to not commit to rescuing Wall’s ghost. But Corn was adamant not to accept a single thing until they helped him.

Two hours later, the fairy butted into their conversation holding sheaves of paper twice as long as she was. “Listen up you mutant animals, I will be officiating an oath between the three of you so we can rescue your mutant boss.”

“Honorable fairy of the-” began the weary hobgoblin.

“Shut up,” cried the fairy, “Bug boy place your thumb on this oath paper, next you black eyed bitch and you too Alt. “

When they had all done so, she said solemnly, “ I officiate this oath: PopCorn will try to open WarCode’s vault and retrieve the treasured do da and in return AltShift and CareFull will help reunite PopCorn’s ghost wife. Do you all agree?”

“I agree,” said Alt.

“My name’s not PopCorn and she’s not my ghost wife.”

“Well from hence forth you will be called PopCorn,” said the fairy.

“What? How?” spluttered Corn.

“Oh stop whining, the names don’t matter. Only that that you say I agree.”

“What happens if you don’t fulfill the oath?”

“Nothing too serious, you lose a Race counter. Say ‘I agreeeeee’” sang the fairy.

Corn left his mouth open. Just a Race counter?

When Corn heard that he insisted the oath was drawn up more formally and that his name was changed from PopCorn to Corn. Annoyingly, the name PopCorn started to stick. Corn sighed, maybe he could use it as an alias. At least it wasn’t something worse.

He swore the oath.

Thus, the four of them headed down to WarCode’s secret vault.

It was at the bottom of the pool of water and too far to see with second or third vision. Corn had figured out the location by wandering around the passageways beneath the pool of water where their HQ was based on.

No, there was no secret elevator shaft or passage way. They just jumped in and swum to the bottom. So much for water purity.

Corn’s vision was not impeded in the slightest by the water. If it weren’t for the freezing currents of water flowing all around him and the lack of air, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

At the bottom, he noticed a squat rectangular building. It wasn’t visible in his second vision and if it was mana made, it certainly wasn’t edible for him. They swum to the entrance.

[Well, begin] cried the fairy, inside his head.

Corn looked at her in a daze. Was she skilled enough to read his thoughts? All the secrets he’d been hiding were open to her. He tried not to think about his escape from the slavers or him disconnecting from the System.

Wait, by not thinking about it was he thinking about it? Think about something else, like the second dagger in the folds of his armour. His stomach grumbled at the thought of food.

[Hurry up, bug boy, I’m running out of breath.]

‘Can you hear my thoughts?’ thought Corn.

There was no reply.

Either she was faking or she knew. Either way, the oaths he made left him with one option. He turned to the side of the entrance where WarCode said the lock would be. The keypad was cleverly built, using his second vision he could only see the ambient mana leaking out of the keypad. He had to use his third vision to see the keys themselves.

He tried using his tongue to drink the ambient mana, but failed and drunk in water. Abandoning the thought, he brought his left stump close and pushed ice mana into one of the 21 keys. The key lit up in his second vision. Similarly, he began to press the remaining keys. The password consisted of 13 characters. By the time he got to the sixth one, his mana ran out. He did have the remaining dagger, but they didn’t know that.

‘I’ve run out of mana,’ he thought looking at the fairy. ‘I need to recharge.’

When there was no reply, he tried signing to the others that his mana supply was out. They swam up and sucked in breaths of air at the surface. Then, they climbed up to the steel runways.

“Didn’t you hear me?” asked Corn, testing the fairy.

Her heartbeat remained constant as she said, “If I was good enough at Wisdom to read minds, do you think I would be working for gangsters? I can only project my thoughts to someone.” He had to believe her for now. But now that he knew the risk, he would investigate countermeasures later.

“I need more mana to key in the whole password,” he said.

“What do you need?” asked the fairy, nodding in comprehension.

“Pure mana made objects of any kind, but not Devices.”

The fairy flew away. The three of them stood silently dripping water on the steel runway.

“What’s Desire?” asked Corn.

Silence.

“It’s important isn’t it?”

“Yep,” smirked the hobgoblin.

“I’ve worked for Blood Falls for three week and personally-”

“It’s not about loyalty, it’s a secret you learn as you use your Stat. It’s not something you reveal to any ass… I mean anyone who asks,” Alt shook his head, spraying water on Corn and Care.

Corn took out the dagger he’d been saving and asked, “What’s Desire?”

Alt inspected the dagger and nicked it out of Corn’s hand, “It’s well made, whoever owned it is not going to be happy. But, uhm, to answer your question it’s basically power.”

Care sighed and wrung out water from her hair, “Let me answer your question with another question. When you use a Stat, where do you think the power comes from?”

Did Care just answer a question for Alt? Ok, the two had to be boning.

“From within? The more you practice, the stronger it grows right?”

“Wrong. Two things influence a Stat: power and control. The control comes from practice, while the power comes from Desire. The points you can see in your Screen, your power, is inexorably linked to your Desire.”

“More power, more Desire. More Desire, more power,” added Alt.

Ok, this was very cryptic.

“Do you understand what the word desire means? It’s something you feel strongly. It could be love or hatred or anger. It could be something that you want. It could also be horniness or hunger. That’s exactly what Desire is.

Except the more Desire you have the more power for your Stat and the more power you have the more Desire you have. It’s cyclical.

But Desire can be very Stat specific.”

“Hunger is eternal,” said the soul eater all of a sudden. Alt and Corn replied with the same phrase.

“But what is Hunger? Hunger is a cheat. It applies only to Chaotic Races and fills part of their Desire,” finished the soul eater.

“So the more you eat, the more Hunger you feel, the stronger your Desire and the more power you have. Did I get it right?” asked Corn.

“It’s the main reason why people who know these secrets become crazies. It’s easy power,” said Alt shrugging his shoulders. “You practice Magic, one of the Higher Stats right? Then you need to have a blood bank.”

“What’s a blood bank?” asked Corn.

The hobgoblin grinned horrendously, “You wouldn’t happen to have another dagger?”

Corn shook his head.

“Then I don’t know,” Alt shrugged his shoulders. Care stood silently.

“Are you two-” began Corn, but the fairy arrived followed by an orc. The orc dumped a sack of mana made weapons, from daggers to pole-axes onto the runway.

Corn and Alt’s eyes gleamed.

“No one touches a thing without my permission. You hear me bug boy and Alt. Not a thing.”