51

An Insincere Apology II

As Rian fled, he managed to glance over at Kat to see how she was fairing. There were multiple clones of her fighting with the other LastWhisper members.

Some of the clones managed to swipe weapons from the other players’ hands, somehow ignoring the rules of item possession. When one of them stole the Duelist’s rapier, the Gunslinger immediately shot the clone, dissipating it into smoke, and the rapier fell to the ground. The Duelist retrieved it.

The clones were just providing Kat more time to fight one-on-one. Somehow, she was pulling it off against three level 40s at once. Rian only had a moment to watch her fight before Ogrot caught up to him and stood in the way. There was the same hazy aura surrounding Ogrot that had been around Kat after breaking a colorless tesseract—a shimmering heat, rising from his body.

Rian straightened up, breathed out, and relaxed.

Fighting here was pointless. He just wasn’t strong enough yet to fight someone like Ogrot.

Sidna’s words echoed in his mind. Like before, there was nothing he could do to win this fight, so it all came down to his mindset.

He was almost guaranteed to lose the Y-Locator item if things kept going this way. But it didn’t mean the opportunity to find Yindra was completely gone. If Ogrot took an interest in the item, which Rian suspected he would, then it was just a matter of following him once he activated it.

Maybe this was really the opportunity Rian had been waiting for.

“You see, Cob,” Ogrot said, still standing there, letting the heat from his sword tick his health down. “I’ve realized a few things. Things I think you should know. I guess I kind of owe it to you for beating my perma-Beginner.”

There was a lull in the fighting with Kat and the other members. Kat was watching Rian and Ogrot. Rian could practically see the gears turning in her mind before she quickly resumed dodging the Duelist’s rapier and the Gunslinger’s bullets—only to run into the lumbering Brawler.

She hesitated for an instant, enough for the Brawler to swing his fist for thousands of damage and send her flying through the air.

Kat’s body sprawled as it hit the ground.

Your party member has died (Kat).

What? No, she—

Rian’s stomach dropped. But then he realized he could use his companionship perk to revive her.

Just as the thought came to him, Kat logged out, not even waiting for the respawn timer to finish.

She logged back in on her wind mage.

Katrin has pinged you. (Distance to player: 23 miles)

What the hell? What is she doing?

He was about to whisper her to ask, and then guild chat lit up.

: DON’T DIE COB!!!

: whoa wtf is going on

: O_O;;??

“Huh,” Ogrot said, watching. The blaze around his sword extinguished. “Did she just…”

The Brawler shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t even bother dodging that one. It’s like she gave up mid-fight.”

While everyone was distracted, Rian cast Heal, downed a health potion, and let his HP gradually replenish. There was still a chance he could escape to the nullshard fragment. If Kat was coming here on her main, then it was because she was still invested in winning the fight. She must’ve caught onto the fact that Ogrot wasn’t going for the kill right away, which meant she had time to switch to her main.

But…she’s 23 miles from here?

“Did you see her log out?” Ogrot asked the others, drawing Rian out of thought.

“Yeah,” the Gunslinger answered. “She logged out right as the respawn timer started.”

Ogrot scoffed. “Thought so. She’s trying to pull something.” He turned back to Rian. “Lemme guess. You’re carrying something important that’ll drop on death.”

As brief as it was, just a twitch of his face, a widening of his eyes, Rian knew his expression betrayed him.

Ogrot chuckled, a grating rumble. “You’re too easy to read. Were, and still are. You’re out of your element, Cob.” Pulling up a window, he announced to the others, “Her wind mage is probably on the way. Katrin #0. Just logged in, it looks like. See, if she’s that concerned about you staying alive but not herself, it makes me kind of suspicious. Let’s finish up here, then.” He nodded sideways at the other members, then closed the window and stepped toward Rian.

All three of the other LastWhisper members got in position to surround Rian, blocking any escape.

Rian raised his fists.

“So let’s see what you’re carrying, Cob,” Ogrot said. “Be a good piñata and stand still for me.” He raised his Bone Sword again. “I’d put a blindfold on but, you know. ‘Zerks and accuracy, am I right?”

Katrin has pinged you. (Distance to player: 15 miles)

Rian’s jaw almost dropped. Whatever Kat was doing, she was approaching their location. Insanely fast.

If she thought they stood a chance with her main character, then Rian had no choice: he had to stay alive somehow. Which was probably a lot harder when Ogrot was actually trying to kill him rather than toy with him.

“Look,” Ogrot said, “I’ll even give you a chance.” With the Bone Sword raised aloft, a meter had appeared above his head. He grinned. “Go on. Show me what you can do.”

Rian blinked. The meter was concerning, though it hadn’t begun to fill yet, and it looked like Ogrot was inviting him to attack while whatever he was doing was charging up.

He’s baiting me into something.

Rian glanced aside as it occurred to him to simply run, but the other members were still blocking his path.

“Come on,” Ogrot said. “There’s no way out and you’re basically dead no matter what. See how hard you can hit me before I finish channeling. You’ve got ten seconds once I start.”

Rian exhaled, closed his eyes, and listened to his breathing for a moment.

In all of his class’s kit, out of all the combinations of his skills, maybe there was a way. A perfect combo that would let him kill Ogrot like this, even with their level differences or the gap in the power of their equipment. But even if there was, there was still no point. Not here. Not yet. The others would just strike him down.

This wouldn’t be the last time they fought, Rian knew. Right now, Ogrot only wanted to make a fool of him. For revenge.

Rian straightened up and let his arms fall to his sides. He opened his eyes and settled his gaze on Ogrot.

Ogrot’s expression turned from smug to mildly frustrated. “No? Fine then.” The meter above his head slowly started filling.

With the sound of distant thunder, the shimmering haze of the tesseract’s energy around Ogrot began to condense and shift onto his sword, still held above his head. A steady gust encompassed his body in a slow-moving vortex.

Something caught Rian’s eye: Corvis, standing out in the plains. Corvis covered his mouth with a fist and cleared his throat.

Then Rian saw it: a tremendous thunderhead had filled the horizon, blanketing the sky with black clouds and intermittent lightning. Coming from the direction of the storm, the wind rolled toward them over the plains, bending the grasses in long waves.

Rian almost stepped back from the energy he could feel in the air, thinking at first that it was stemming from Ogrot, the skill he was charging, but—

Katrin has pinged you. (Distance to player: 9 miles)

No, those storm clouds, Rian thought, awed. That’s Kat’s wind mage.

Even the other members of LastWhisper were beginning to notice the storm as it rapidly approached from a distance. And yet Ogrot seemed entirely focused on Rian.

“Here’s the thing, Cob,” he said. “Here’s what I’ve been meaning to tell you. See, I didn’t quite figure it out the first time we fought—when I was on Torgo. You had those dumb little sunglasses on, and you sounded almost nothing like what I remembered. Different circumstances, I guess. And, come to think of it, it’s been about a year, right? I honestly didn’t know you were still alive.”

What the hell is he talking about?

The meter completed. In place of the haze around the sword, the aura had solidified to crimson glass. Crystal facets slowly revolved in the air as the skill window revealed itself.

Mirage: Armor Break (Level 1 [MAX])

1000 MP

Cooldown: 4 minutes

Activation cost: 1 Colorless Tesseract

After channeling for 10 seconds, the Berserker’s weapon explodes the next piece of equipment it strikes, temporarily destroying the item for 60 seconds. The size and damage of the explosion are determined by the level of the affected item and the Power of the user.

It was complete overkill, but that was probably the point. And then Rian shuddered as he realized that if it hit his torso, it would—

Despite his size, Ogrot moved like lightning. He lunged, thrusting the sword at Rian’s chest. Rian spun aside as the blade came hurtling toward him, the air behind it shifting into fractured glass. But just as he committed to evading, he realized he’d misread Ogrot’s path of attack.

A feint?

Ogrot withdrew the sword as he swung, repositioned the blade to slash vertically.

A double feint.

He rotated his wrist, transferring the momentum of his attack from vertical to horizontal.

Oh come on, a triple—

Rian had no choice. The aim was true, and there was no time to evade the hit. He jumped backward.

The sword struck his leg. A surge of painless fire consumed the world around him, the explosion deafening all sound before echoing across the plains. Rian winced, only to find himself floating in place. He’d become detached from his body, which had lifelessly flailed away a short distance.

Your Wanderer’s Linen Pants have been temporarily destroyed! (Time remaining: 59 seconds)

You have taken 3228 damage! (HP: 0/1574)

You have died.

You have lost possession of “Lootable Y-Locator”! (New owner: Ogrot)

Respawning in 10 seconds…

He could hear laughter.

Floating above his body, Rian looked down and saw everyone laughing—Ogrot, the Brawler, the Gunslinger, and the Duelist. Laughing at the sight of his corpse.

The Armor Break skill hadn’t just unequipped the item when it struck. It had literally destroyed his pants. The game hadn’t even given him the courtesy of auto-equipping the default clothes.

His body was lying sprawled on the grass, pantsless, in his underwear.

Rian face-palmed only to realize his ghost couldn’t seem to interact with itself. Getting humiliated here had been inescapable, though he hadn’t thought it would end like this. But it was at least better than exposing the Mark. He’d been right to dodge the way he did, redirecting the Armor Break away from his torso.

Katrin has pinged you. (Distance to player: 3 miles)

The storm clouds were almost overhead, but Kat wouldn’t make it in time to revive him—if she even thought to prioritize that over fighting Ogrot for the locator. Rian wondered if there was a range to the revive perk’s activation, but it was likely that Kat didn’t even know he’d died; she wasn’t partying with him now, so she wouldn’t know until she saw his corpse. If it was even still here.

Rian tried to whisper to her, but nothing was working. For the ten seconds it took to respawn, he couldn’t interact with the rest of the world. All he could do was observe.

Just a few seconds left. He let his perspective float to the ground.

Ogrot suddenly stopped laughing. “Huh.” He opened his inventory. A smile distorted his face as, Rian assumed, he saw the transferred locator. “Well, look at that. It really is like old times.” He closed the inventory, then stood over Rian’s corpse. “Maybe you realized it by now, maybe not. Sometimes lightning really can strike twice, I guess. So, for the second time—”

As rain began to fall, Ogrot towered over Rian.

“Sorry, Cob.”

He grinned around the tusks protruding from his face, stood up, and laughed as he turned to face the storm.

***

“Are you…all right?” Corvis said.

For once, the concern in his voice was genuine. And yet all Rian could do, sitting in the spot where he’d respawned in Nostdal, was stare at nothing as dozens of feelings swarmed up within him.

Most of all, he felt cold. He was cold in a way that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time, as if a hollow space had opened within him—one that in moments would collapse and explode into anger. The only thing keeping the feeling from devolving was that he was still processing what had just happened. The way it had happened. The words, echoing to him.

That voice.

Sorry, Cob.

That nasally voice. Thinking back to his encounter with Torgo, their voices had been the same. He just hadn’t realized it at the time.

It was really him.

The scrawny nerd from the alleyway. The one responsible for everything that had happened to him.

Rian finally looked at his System feed.

Warning: system instability detected.

Failed to load from player origin.

Loading from Cognitive Mirror…

Load complete.

Cognitive-Mirror 98.09% operational; minimum benchmark achieved.

And there’s one out of four deaths, he thought reluctantly. He looked further down and saw a notification regarding “ganking protection”—basically what Kat was using to avoid LastWhisper, now afforded to him. Beyond that was another notification.

Your companionship with Ogrot has devolved! (Lv. -1→-4 [MAX])

Ogrot is now your Nemesis!

Victory EXP multiplier: 4x

[!] Negative Companionship Levels: Nemeses

Now it’s personal. Defeating a Nemesis in combat will grant bonus EXP upon victory (a dishonorable kill will retain the bonus).

Your Nemeses can be tracked from anywhere in Miracia, giving their exact location; however, they cannot track you in return unless they have also attained Nemesis status with you.

The window and text faded into nothing. Behind it, Kat was rather loudly whispering to him, asking about what had happened, if he was still alive, if he still had the locator item. It seemed that everyone had logged off just as she’d gotten into range to fight them. She’d been just a few seconds short.

When Rian checked his friends list, Ogrot had logged back in and was in Nostdal, somewhere on the other side of it. He wasn’t moving around yet.

Rian closed all the windows, including his conversation with Kat.

“You,” Rian said, nearly a whisper. “Did you set this up?”

Corvis seemed taken aback when he realized Rian was talking to him. “No, but…”

“But Yindra did, I’m guessing.”

Glancing at the ground, Corvis said nothing further.

“What are the odds,” Rian said, “that out of the entire player base, I just happened to run into the one person who did all this to me? It would have to be some kind of astronomical coincidence that I met Torgo at the start of the game. But I know that’s not how it works here. So maybe it wasn’t you, personally, but…. It was intentional, somehow. Yindra had to’ve put me into a path that would cross with him.”

He took a deep breath. Though it didn’t make a physical difference here, his breathing was shallow. He hated the feeling, a sub-surface rage boiling within him.

“That’s how Yindra works, right?” he said. “The past and the future are the same to her. You know, when I had that dream during my coma, she gave me some kind of spiel about getting revenge. But after I woke up and finished recovering, I never really understood what she’d meant. The people who assaulted me were never caught, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I just kind of had to move on with life. But I get it now. She hadn’t meant it then. She meant it now.”

All that stuff Ogrot had been saying about fate and destiny, how things tended to line up in the game—he must’ve felt the same way once he’d realized who Rian was. Both in-game and out.

“Yindra meant for me to find him,” Rian said. “Not in reality, but here. That’s—”

He glanced up as he saw someone walking down the street toward him.

It was Kat’s wind mage, a level-capped Zephyr wearing robes with illusory storm clouds drifting across them. Instead of a wizard hat, there was an ornate, translucent helm keeping her hair secure. In her hand was a metallic staff with a barometer-like device atop it.

When she saw him, she looked down at him with a mix of frustration and disappointment. Rian figured she could tell by the look on his face that he’d lost the locator.

Laying her staff down, she sat beside him and sighed. “Cob,” she said, her voice surprisingly patient, “why didn’t you listen to me before? We could’ve avoided all this if you’d just logged out.”

Rian closed his eyes. Dancing around her questions was the last thing he wanted to do right now, but—

“You said there was something you wanted to tell me,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

He sighed, relaxed a bit. “Not really. It’s some personal trouble.” It was at least the truth, even if it wasn’t the whole picture. “I haven’t been in my right mind for a while now. And, well, losing the locator’s kind of made everything worse.”

She nodded in understanding. “It’s not the end of the world if LastWhisper finds a memory of the Four, but it…complicates things right now.” She opened a window revealing stats on Moonlight—information on every player in the guild. “We’re gonna have to bring everyone into this. If we can’t get the item back personally, we’ll just have to hope someone in Moonlight can. There’s still a shot at counter-ganking Ogrot.”

“Before he goes into the rifts?” Rian said.

“Before or after, really. LastWhisper is notorious for infighting, so we can assume he will not tell anyone else about the item. He’ll probably go into the rifts solo. We’ve got a pretty big advantage because of that if we get the rest of Moonlight in on it, but it might mean that someone else in the guild ends up with the item.”

“That’s fine,” Rian said. “It’s not really like I’m strong enough to go after him by myself right now.”

“You got Nemesis-status with him from that, I’m assuming?” When Rian nodded, she said, “Then that’ll help us a lot in giving a time frame, since you can track how far along he is.”

“So you know what route he’s going to take through the rifts?”

Kat nodded. “There’s multiple worlds to each rift session. Back in Elmguard, you and I only went one-world deep. There’s a few after that you can unlock through special conditions.”

“And the memory of the Four would be in the fourth world, I’m guessing.”

“Most likely, yeah,” Kat said. “I’ve only ever ventured as far as the third world in the Gorgheit rift, and uh—” She leaned back. “It’s not gonna be easy. It’ll give Ogrot some trouble, especially if he’s solo.”

“Okay, well, that gives us some time, right?”

Kat swallowed. “Yeah, about that. We’ve got less time than you think.”

Blinking, Rian said, “What do you mean?”

“The Temporal Rifts. They work a bit differently. I’m sure you’ve seen how the INT stat affects things like perception.”

“Are you telling me…time passes differently there?”

“Sort of,” she said. “It’s more that your perception of time changes.”

“How the hell?” Aside from sounding completely impossible—which was just another thing he needed to add to the list—such a mechanic sounded dangerous enough to clash with the anti-memory-writing law. Even if he was increasingly sure that this was more than a VR game, such things still affected players and the way the system interacted with their physical bodies and minds.

“It’s complicated,” Kat said. “We’ll worry about it when we get there. It’s not that significant in the first or second worlds in the Rift, so you won’t notice it at first. But I have no idea how strong it’ll be in the fourth world, if we make it that far. It could take us anywhere—and anywhen—in Miracia. Past, present, or future. There’s no telling. That locator item isn’t even supposed to exist in the game at this point, so there’s no telling what’ll happen. Hell, it might not even work anymore. The fourth world might’ve been closed off by the devs.”

That was entirely a possibility, but Rian severely doubted that an item from Yindra herself would be faulty.

As Kat opened guild chat and started typing, Rian took the moment to collect himself. Hearing that she was bringing out the big guns for this operation was a relief, at least. Having the whole guild go after Ogrot was bound to work.

But the simmering anger within him remained—as if it had always been there, waiting for something to latch onto. It seemed the past had finally caught up with him.

Maybe it would be pointless to reason with him, but Rian had to try. More than anything right now—more than revenge or throwing himself into training to prepare for what was ahead—he wanted answers.

Opening a conversation channel, Rian whispered Ogrot’s name.