Again the group traipsed through the fantasy terrain toward Demonic North, though willing to divert toward anything that promised interest. For instance, Boxer Andit saw a temple which seemed certain to attract the sort of natives who would show kindness to foreigners out of piety or else try to sacrifice all who passed to their dark god. Either result would shake things up.

“And then we consecrate it to a better deity. I left all the red paint in the ice cream truck. How will I draw a red circle to represent Haybren now? The answer is blood.”

“Not so fast, kid. Polsom and Haybra gave us those crocodiles, so we give the temple to them. Right! Left! Polsom! Haybra!”

“Ha ha! I care not whose temple it ends up as, so long as we get a tougher fight over it. I haven't had call to use my S3 yet. It hurts me, you know. Hurts them just as much when they hit me.”

“Does Holy Legend Army give many opportunities for that?”

“Not at all! Players hate me! Ha ha ha!” Reginn slapped the back of Mentor Tendradius Pux, who nodded when he heard the confirmation of his guess.

The temple grew and displayed its splendors. The domed roof, the narrow windows circling the round interior, and the entrance arch all spoke of a civilization that had cleaned too many rooms to put up with corners any longer. The shining white walls and gold ornaments proved its members did not mind cleaning overall, but only wanted to ameliorate the difficulty of the task.

“No external dedications. No way to tell what superstitions hold here.” Mentor Tendradius Pux flourished his sword that resembled a skinny vise holding a laser beam. “Break down the door and investigate the interior.”

“And loot it,” Reginn suggested.

“And desecrate it,” Ulrik added by way of reminder.

They had a lot of time to embellish their plans because the door resisted them, much as when a Tiboleus the Experimenter Priority Spotlight came and never yielded up the man himself no matter how many Imperia Records players hurled at it.

“This is no door. There is no interior. This temple is a ruse. I might even call it a trap.” Tendradius, disgusted, turned away. “Everyone. Stop fighting. Prepare for battle.”

“Make up your mind!”

“No word of mine contradicted any other. They're almost here.”

The other three had already turned, and even Ulrik's stubbornness had a limit. That limit was missing a chance to Nova, since his Skill Star had decided poking a door did not meet the criteria for Nova gain. All five stood and together viewed six who bore signs of characterhood when compared to the demons and crocodiles, which had gathered in groups far larger than six and had maintained a level of design uniformity far above that of the incoming troupe.

They came! A man wearing brigandine and no helmet to hide his feathered black hair led the company, in his hand a sword prodigious in size. A guy followed who boasted a bowl cut and steel armor emblazoned with glowing runes; the height and width of his polearm's blade exceeded those of his own body. Next, an archer of the dark elf persuasion who opted for the gritty brown leather look rather than friendlier, more fairy tale green cloth and hefted a bow taller than he and his little brother stood combined, if he had one. A fellow built thick enough for the Holy Legend Army community to accept as a demon strode, as powerful sorts do, and his gray skin and furs marked him as some kind of orc or orc-esque barbarian while his steel gauntlets destined him to be Andit's enemy, sparring partner, or guy he fights in the first movie but is his friend by the fourth. Behind them walked an armadillo wizard, or so he appeared to be. He possessed a soft green hat with a bit of a point and a glass orb which contained a chunk of rock at the top of a staff, and his skin seemed plated. Bulbous eyes stared from his head though, which armadillo experts considered disqualifying when consulted on the matter much later, when time permitted. If he was a mage, by his side must have been the cleric, exhibiting as he did a tall hat, a scepter, and gold robes over white cloth. Also he was some kind of furry, a bear man maybe.

“Such evidence as this must already make clear what game this is. Though I confess myself ignorant,” said Vampire Lord. Nobody else took up the baton.

“Wa ha ha! Did the Gacha Core send the only five here who would have no idea where they landed? One of us must suspect.”

“My knowledge of other mobile games does not extend far beyond Everyday Pin,” Mentor Tendradius admitted, and Ulrik's silence implied a similar limit to his experience as part of a ploy to conceal the reality that he was pretty shaky even on Everyday Pin. Boxer Andit's silence implied he cared more about punching than figuring out their location, and the implication and reality coincided for that honest officer.

“Hallo!” Vampire Lord attempted diplomacy again, though he needed a moment to remember the hand problem applied to crocodiles alone. He raised his hand and continued. “We are travelers whose way has become uncertain. Might you tell us, kind hosts, what game this is?”

“Whoa! Talking mobs!” The swordsman halted, stumbled closer when the characters behind him failed to respect his halting, halted again, and stumbled some more. “Hold on! Don't you want to talk about this interesting phenomenon? It's not a mundane, everyday occurrence. In fact, I think it's probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened since beta.”

“Maybe it's different for you, big leveler, but I can talk, walk, and fight all at once,” the wizard said, and the grunts of his fellows indicated agreement.

“These villains can do it all, except show some courtesy. Aha ha ha! I'll teach them something about that soon enough,” Reginn declared. Andit pounded his open palm with his glove, Vampire Lord smiled as fangfully as years of face training and being dead permitted him, and Ulrik and Tendradius both punished the air for existing within reach of their blades.

The enemy swordsman, or properly the swordsman belonging to the group of locals who had not yet become enemies but everyone knew where this was going, again cautioned his comrades and drew attention to the joy of discovering new things and admiring the creations of nature, or of the developers, or of bugs the developers never fixed and never would. His fellows disagreed. “Talking XP is still XP,” the archer said, and the justice of his words overcame any lingering hesitation.

Anyone with a broader view, such as the Gacha Core at the time or, later, any character listening to the story later around a campfire or during a long day of New Eclipse Dragon farming, would know the value of hesitation in that situation, but in the moment even the wanderers were surprised at the immediate consequences of its lack. The officers and crusaders did not even get to their second skills, except for Reginn who always led with his, before opponents started dropping.

“20,526 damage! Do you losers even have Defense? Flood Boxer Andit. I hit that guy 20,526.”

“Yeah kid, yeah, I saw it, keep it up.”

“Eclipse Strategist Mentor Tendradius Pux. I have a report. I hit that guy 20,526.”

“Recorded.”

“Vampire Lord. Reginn. Behold? Hark? List ye well.”

“Ha ha ha! We walloped them too!”

Vampire Lord eschewed boasting in favor of addressing other matters. “It seems, friends, that we had no need of worry regarding the interrogation of demons. This game's characters disappear not to respawn elsewhere, but instead lie where they fall. Sometimes they twitch.” He kicked the cleric out of vampiric instinct and started a new craze.

The native-kicking fad died out as quickly as most trends other than mobile gacha games, which will endure forever. The latest thing, interrogation, grabbed all the attention and market share from the old, busted violence scene. Mentor Tendradius Pux crouched down and flipped over the gray one to begin. “Your attacks are the pure strikes of an honest man.”

“He only threw one punch.”

“Your one attack was the pure strike of an honest man.”

“Didn't hurt much either. Under a thousand.”

“Shut up,” Tendradius advised the two other officers in his capacity as a Strategist and as a natural leader, at least compared to the four clowns with him. “Ignore them. Their words, not their threatening presence. We are travelers from a successful and well-regarded game known as Commandment of Hero. Our two companions are from Holy Legend Army.”

“Seen our numbers for the past few months, have you? Ha ha ha! There's often a lull before the anniversary though. Nothing to worry the patient.”

“Tell us what this game is. Is there any reason not to? Tell us that instead if there is one, but I submit there is not.”

“Very well.” The orc rose and crossed his arms, as all impressively muscled people do. “I apologize for attacking you. I never thought you might really be foreign characters, but the calculation I sensed in your fighting has convinced me. No mindless enemy has that. As to your question, certainly I will answer. Why begrudge it, when I am able to dispel my obligation with three words? Always Leveling Titan.”

Always Leveling Titan! That game! Of course! That cleared up everything, but the new arrivals indicated a few more words than three might be welcome. The locals assisted them as a way to regain some of their dignity along with their feet. “Our game is an implementation of the popular Always Leveling Titan property in the mobile space,” the armadillo wizard said. “Titan is the main character and let me tell you, he's always leveling, unlike the rest of us. We're all busy napping near the Placid Shrine after getting thrashed by foreigners.”

“Only one man has ambition in all the world. Got it. I feel that way sometimes.” Ulrik hooked his thumbs into his robes in order to emphasize his costume, but had to give up on subtlety when he realized only Andit and Tendradius would understand the significance. “They gave me a costume. Because I'm great. Now tell me about your dumb story. I want to pretend I always knew about it if anyone asks. Sorry for calling it dumb, by the way.”

“No, it's dumb all right, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun.” The swordsman's enthusiasm for the non-battle aspects of his home game healed him faster than the cleric, who had not bothered doing so. “The idea is that there's this popular online game that everybody's playing. You have to understand that everybody doesn't mean everybody of course, but the story's going to focus on it. Do secondary characters even matter? It's a massively multiplayer online RPG, everybody's playing it, it has classes and races, the whole bit. I'm a Fezarian Slayer. My name's BigGuy30 by the way. And Tasket there,” the mage raised his hand, “is a Zazen World Mage. The Feralian God Priest there is HopingXYZ, and our archer buddy here is an Uskarian Hunter, Dart by name. This other Fezarian, which basically makes him a human, same as me, is willneverpromo, a Novice. You start as a Novice and promote into a real class later, unless you're stubborn.”

“Don't let the story give you the wrong idea. I'm open-minded.”

Ulrik nodded. “I understand. Our story doesn't think I'm important, but I am.”

“Similarly, I have never once been approached by anyone who wished to be mentored,” Tendradius Pux said.

“Our universal experiences comfort me. Saying that, I'm a little disappointed. Are all games the same?” BigGuy30 asked.

“No. Some have bowling. We'll talk more about that later.”

“Great! To continue, the game has six-person parties, as you can see for yourself. This adaptation isn't an MMORPG, though. Within the story, there's a super-elite guild that only has three people: Giant01, Dragon02, and Titan03. They just can't find anyone who's hardcore enough. I can sympathize, because I haven't found party members who don't get me pounded by strangers from other games. I'd better start looking again. The first major plot point is that some of the best guilds are invited to a promotional event held IRL. The head developer has a big announcement. What's the announcement? He's really a demon from another dimension and the game is actually a portal to it! He came to our world on the orders of the demon king to prepare us for conquest.

“Everybody thinks he's kidding, like when you said you were lost and wanted some information, sorry about that by the way, except for our hero. Titan even tries to kill him, but Giant and Dragon stop him. The fantasy dimension swallows us. We jump to years later. All the real people have become fantasy characters and are trying to live in the new world. There are fantasy people too. Notice how I didn't mention Arrarix there before? That's because he's a Demibax Monster, which aren't a playable race and class. In that crazy milieu, Titan wanders the lands looking for Giant and Dragon, because he found out they knowingly betrayed all humanity, and for Klevarth, the demon developer. That's how the first arc starts.”

“Never heard of it,” Reginn said. “My question for you is, why are you so weak?”

“Good question.” Arrarix regained his interest once the story talk ended. “Grant that none of us have yet reached the new level cap. That was still a poor performance for a group of six all around 4,800 or so.”

“4,800! You gain 1 Attack per level or something?” Boxer Andit tapped Arrarix's abs with his glove. “You can't just train for definition. You gotta get some iron in there.”

The locals stammered, blushed, and finally responded. “1 Strength every three levels is good,” Dart said. “For us. Good for us.” He scratched his head through his scraggly, dirty blond hair. “Say. What levels are you guys?”

“150.”

“100.”

“100.”

“150.”

“100.”

The Always Levelers gasped. “Is this the power of other games?” willneverpromo asked. “Have we been doing everything wrong?” He fell to the ground, weeping.

“My immediate conjecture is that your developers planned from the beginning for you to end at 9,999 or an even more ridiculous number. Our level max will not change until revenues start falling and new mechanics to soak the whales are necessary. You will reach our strength in approximately two years as an estimate.” The gratitude that transformed the faces of the comforted locals meant nothing to Mentor Tendradius Pux, whose space goggles displayed all of them as big orange blobs. He ignored their appreciation, thereby proving his theory came from conviction rather than any thought of ingratiating himself as a step toward declaring the foundation of a new worldwide order with him at the apex, and continued. “On to other forms of reaching. We should investigate methods of reaching the options menu to return home. Where does your login calendar appear?”

“I don't know what that is,” BigGuy30 said without any idea of the despair his words might cause, but did not, but definitely might have.

“Has your game had collabs?”

“Sure, once. Prince of Advancement. Good choice there, great, just the best,” HopingXYZ said. “Better IP than ours. Should I have said that?”

“Of course. No reason to lie to us so long as we be not players. Ha ha ha!”

“You're right there! Kuhahaha!”

“Doubtlessly true. Ha.” Tendradius shared the mirth, but also believed in getting things done. “Ahem. Do you know where the collab tube opens?” Some explanations of the mechanics of collaborations and boasts about their adventures as a result of their exploitation clarified things for the natives, who then stated the characters picked to participate in the collab had gone to the Serene Shrine and walked in when the time came.

“Normally these doors don't open,” BigGuy30 explained, knocking on the door, “but I saw Titan head right in that day. It was so fresh I made a journal entry for that by itself.”

“That's swell! But how do we get in, Big Pux? We know the tunnel back home didn't let in any old officer.”

“A UR will always avoid work when there's a choice. So will I! Even so, today we must dig,” Ulrik declared.

“Just five of us, kid?”

“Make them help.” Ulrik and Andit turned and looked at their new acquaintances.

“I would prefer that to leveling,” BigGuy30 said. “We determined I can speak the truth to other characters, right? I want to dig up the Serene Shrine and travel to other games. Nobody else will want to. A couple maybe. The rest want to level, always. It's in the name even if it's supposed to be Titan's thing.” The other natives nodded in confirmation.

“Does 'make' mean something different in this world?” Ulrik drew his scimitar.

“A moment, Ulrik. I ask leave to pose our new friends a question the answer to which may bear meaning beyond what first is supposed.” Vampire Lord addressed the non-BigGuys. “Would you prefer, given a choice, to level always, or always to be leveled?”