Shin blinked, the delayed realization that the room had fallen into complete silence snapping him out of his preoccupations. “Hm? Sorry, what were we talking about?”

Hanbun flicked her ears sideways, flipping over her writing brush in a pique. “Dammit Shin; you couldn’t stay blanked out for ten more seconds?”

“Eh?” The Schemer folded his own ears, glancing at the bemused faces around the council table. “What do you mean?”

“She means she thought you’d keep staring off into the distance for a full minute,” Gero crowed, puffed up in triumph. “She lost. I won.”

The rest of the Shinki Itten council broke down into scattered conversation, resolving their own various side bets as Shin tilted his head at Gero. “The council stopped its business to gamble on how long I’d continue to daydream?”

“Yes,” the big warrior confirmed. “Now Hanbun owes me a whole roast pig.”

Shin drew himself as straight as possible in an attempt to salvage a scrap of his lost dignity. “Okay, well, I’m claiming half of that pig.”

Hanbun gasped, ink splattering onto the table as she snatched up her writing brush and jabbed it in accusation towards the other two kobolds. “Collusion! You were in cahoots the entire time! The truth comes out!”

Gero scoffed. “Please. As if I would stoop so low.” Then she whirled on Shin, her aura of good-natured teasing swept away in a tidal wave of barely-controlled aggression. “It’s my pig. You can have one bite.”

“I want sixty-five bites.”

The woman pounded her hand down onto the table, teeth dangerously close to bared. “I’ve seen what you call ‘bites’; that’s more than half! Ten bites.”

But the Schemer wouldn’t back down. “Thirty.” When the first deadly white hints of Gero’s fangs began to reveal themselves, however, Shin remembered that discretion was the better part of valor. “...And you have supervision and veto rights over each bite.”

Gero glowered, her ears ramrod straight as the kobolds locked gazes. The negotiations were over now, everything on the table as the two stared at one another hard eyed and tails thrashing. The question left unspoken was clear: were thirty bites of roast pork worth throwing themselves over the council table at one another teeth-first?

Eventually, Gero begrudgingly decided that no, they weren’t. But it wasn’t an easy decision “...Fine,” she groused, “But you better believe I’m gonna have an eye on each and every one of those bites.”

“Deal.” Shin leaned over the table to clasp Gero’s paw, both kobolds’ tails still wagging but every other ounce of body language as solemn and sober as if they’d just brokered a life-changing peace accord. “You’ve got a deal.”

“Just once,” Bittercup sighed, the elf’s face burrowing even further back into the shade of her drawn hood as she slumped in her chair, “Just once I want to get through an entire council meeting without a life or death staredown over food breaking out.” She shot a glance at Hilde, seated to her left. “Is it just me?”

The hobgoblin captain shrugged. “You get used to it.”

The Wild Son council member growled. “Those are the only parts of these house dog meetings I do like. Goddess, I’ve been in this city for months and I haven’t gotten to see one throat ripped out since. Don’t you dare take this from me, too.”

Bittercup threw up her hands in defeat. “Fine, whatever. Is that it? Are we done?”

“One last thing.” Hilde flicked through a stack of official-looking papers, double checking a figure before giving the Wild Son her focus. “What sort of traffic have your people been seeing from Red Players? Increased at all?”

The scruffy kobold shook his head. “Not yet. The Respawn’s still a week or so out, after all.”

The council murmured at the mention of ‘The Respawn’, an event that had come to loom large in their collective concerns. It was a cruel fact of their world that dead Players didn’t stay that way, instead being reborn at safe zones of their choosing. Kill a Player today, and tomorrow he’d be riding into town with his head regrown and filled with lust for revenge.

But in a concession towards the citizens of Magica of the sort that the System so meagerly doled out, Red Players didn’t have it quite so easy.

A Red Player, a Player who had committed crimes that the System Itself considered beyond the pale, did not have free reign over where they might be reborn. Branded as kill on sight in every civilized corner of Magica, a Red Player only had one option when it came to miraculous rejuvenation: the Red Wastes, a desolate stretch of land that the rumors claimed were just as vicious and unpleasant as the peoples who respawned there.

But putting aside its inhospitable nature, it was another feature of the Red Wastes that was most important to the citizens of Shinki Itten: Location. Because while the city that Shin and his brethren called home was on one far end of Magica, the Red Wastes were found on the complete opposite side. And without access to collective transit or freedom of movement through cities, that was a very long way for even the pettiest of Red Players to walk.

And yet they would. Everyone at the council table knew it. It would take days, closing in on weeks, but some amount of the Red Players waylaid by Wild Children or captured by Banken were going to walk across the entire world to one day bedevil Shinki Itten yet again. And that day was coming soon.

Hilde drummed her fingers across the table, chewing lightly on her bottom lip as she considered the timeline. “If even one out of every five of the Red Players we’ve stopped comes back, it’s going to be a problem. We’ve held against them so far, but they’ll have a better measure of us the second time around.”

The Wild Son shrugged. “Our forests have teeth. Let them come.”

That was as close to a definitive answer as one could expect from the Wild Children, as the council was by now well aware. As the rest of the participants began to gather their things and leave, Mimasu tugged at Shin’s sleeve. “That was the least I’ve ever heard you speak during a council meeting,” the Scribe pondered, shuffling his copious notes under his arm. “Is everything alright?”

“Sure, sure,” Shin insisted, waving off the inquisitive little kobold. “I’m just a bit…distracted. You don’t need to worry about it, Mimi.”

The scribe seemed unconvinced. But Shin’s thoughts had already drifted back to the issue that had consumed him throughout the meeting, had consumed him all of the day before and all through the night.

T-Shirts.

At first it had mostly been a distraction, a little problem to pick at in an attempt to occupy his haunted mind. But even more, it was an opportunity to further ingratiate Shinki Itten to one of the few Players that was on their side. After all, every Red Player taken down by a Player was one that a Shinki Itten guard or Wild Son or Daughter didn’t have to risk their life against. Surely that was worthy of the fruits of Shin’s devious little mind, right?

But the more he considered the problem, the more he worked through the possibilities, the more an entirely new possibility began to reveal itself. Maybe there was more to this than just a means of pleasing a single Player. So Shin studied, and Shin questioned, and Shin schemed, and Shin came up with a plan.

He was so preoccupied with his new project that, for the first time in weeks, Shin was thankful for his slumber to be interrupted by the rude summons of the ModChat. While the Sky Voice and Empty Voice prattled on, Shin was able to continue his machinations unencumbered by the demands of sleep.

He was so engrossed with his shiny new plans that he almost missed the dull, throbbing lure of another one of those symbols deep within the nothingness between Magica and the ModChat. Another one of those black-ringed circles that he couldn’t stop himself from identifying as The Leash, waiting for him to come find it.

To come touch it.

To come and lose himself in another vision of something he should never see.

Shin knew that eventually he’d be unable to resist that call. Eventually he would seek out the next Leash, and eventually he would subject himself to whatever was hidden within it. But not today.

Today, Shin was busy.

So get in line and wait, Existential Horror. Today, there are T-Shirts to make.

————————————————————————————

Bex took a moment to enjoy the heady bouquet of the shrine’s incense, luxuriating in the fragrance of sharply sweet plom blossom and gentle vanilla as she stretched out in the cool dusk of the offering hall. “Ugh, Enhanced Senses are the best.”

“Hm.” Shin considered that, doing his best to conceal his impatience as the two of them waited. “What’s it like, having to go back to your normal life and normal nose?”

The girl tilted her head, thoughtfully taking in another sniff of the spiced air. “I don’t really notice it? It does feel like my nose is sort of stuffed up nowadays, when I’m away from Magica.”

“Oh really that’s–” the Schemer changed course on a dime as a drained-looking hobgoblin Priestess emerged from the inner sanctum of the shrine, clutching a large basket. “Did you finish?” Shin demanded, his tail whipping in wild anticipation. “Did it work?”

The Priestess nodded weakly, pressing the basket into Shin’s eager arms. “Yes, it’s done. It’s–” She interrupted herself with a massive yawn, flashing her small tusks before groggily reaching up to push her hair out of her eyes. “S’done. I’m gonna go pray now, and then nap. Mostly naps. Lotta–” She yawned again. “–Lotta naps.”

Shin cackled in delight, offering the exhausted cleric a grateful bow as she hobbled away. “Alright,” the kobold enthused, reaching a hand into the basket as he turned back to Bex. “Are you ready?”

The girl nodded, her tail wobbling in amiable intrigue. “I guess so? Ready for what, though? Is this that thing you were talking about with Blackmire?”

“Let’s call it a proof of concept.” Shin pulled a ball of tightly packed cloth from the basket. “Ready to give it a try?”

Bex flashed a thumbs-up. “Deffo.”

“Perfect. Now, your friend’s design links via blood, and it seems his preferred method of obtaining that is to blast a hole clean through his target. Seems a bit excessive for our little test, though.” Shin pointed a finger towards one of Bex’s hands. “ Could you give yourself a shallow cut across the palm, please?”

The girl shrugged, pulling a knife from her belt. A moment later she’d drawn it across her hand, leaving behind a streak of bright red. “How’s that?”

“That’ll do.” The Schemer tossed Bex the wad of cloth. “Catch.”

Bex deftly snagged the ball with her sliced hand, only for it to vanish no sooner than she’d wrapped her fingers around it. She snorted out a laugh as it popped back into existence over her armor, reaching down to stretch out the bottom so she could read what was written across her new t-shirt’s chest.

“‘My Guild Came to Shinki Itten and All We Got Was Killed by These Lousy T-Shirts’,” she intoned, her tail spinning in glee as she flashed a wide grin at Shin. “That’s pretty damn good. Does it work like you thought?”

“Almost exactly,” Shin confided. “The trick I had to figure out with the enchanters is that most cosmetic shirts are intrinsically Item Level Two, for some reason. And Auto-Equip will only replace an already-equipped item with a higher level one. So these–” he pulled another t-shirt ball from the basket, ”–Are enchanted to be Item Level Three.”

Bex attempted to pull the shirt off, snorting again when the Auto-Equip enchantment blinked the garment back onto her the moment she’d pulled her head through the bottom. “Which enchantments?”

Shin gave an airy wave of his paw. “That part doesn’t matter so much. Though it does make the shirts Gear, not Cosmetic, which has its own issues. But yeah, we just made a combination of whatever the cheapest and least-useful enchantments the shrine enchanters knew.” He shrugged. “We’re happy to share the recipe, but your friend can probably come up with a more efficient one of his own.”

“Right.” Bex grunted as her second attempt to remove the shirt failed, folding an ear in Shin’s direction. “So how do I get this off? Because, sure, funny shirt and all, but I don’t want to wear it forever.”

“That part’s easy; take it to an Enchantment Recycler and have it destroyed. There’s one in every decent-sized city in the world.” Shin considered one of the t-shirt balls. “That does make all of these one-use, though. And while making them isn’t that expensive, I imagine they’d start adding up quickly if you want to use them for ammunition.”

“Don’t worry about that. Blackmire certainly won’t, after all.” Bex paused, brow furrowed as she plucked at the hem of her shirt. “And actually, shouldn’t he have been here for this demo? Why did you just call me?”

“Ahha~, now she asks the right question!” Shin couldn’t restrain his impish smile as he reached into the basket once more. “I’ve got another new concept, you see. The shirts I’m happy to share with your friend, but the details of this one are best kept in the pack.”

“Aww!” Bex grinned widely. “And that’s me? You absolute flatterer.”

“Guilty as charged.” Shin drew a stiffened length of white cloth from the basket, tiny symbols of traditional kobold writing inked across its length. “Now Bex: would you please pretend to be a Red Player for me?”

“Oh absolutely; I’ve been practicing this.” Bex rolled her shoulders, drew in a deep breath, and then scrunched her face into the most hideous expression she could manage. “You’re cringe! More boba! Ethics in Gaming!”

“Perfect.” Shin reached out and smartly smacked the hardened cloth against the girl’s neck, the sharp stud at its end drawing a droplet of blood. “Welcome to Shinki Itten, Red Player.”

“Quiet you bot I don’t ghk!” Bex clutched at her neck as the cloth wrapped around her choker-tight, forming a collar that, while loose enough to breathe and speak, was too-snug to fit a finger behind. “Jesus Shin, what’s the idea with…” She trailed off as the armored plating fell off of her arms and shoulders in a clatter, rings popping off of her fingers as her halberd shimmied off of her shoulder and collapsed onto the ground.

And then, in a final grand gesture, her t-shirt blinked off of her and fluttered down gently atop her pile of items. “...What the fuck.”

Shin shrugged, his tail a hurricane of ersatz innocence. “I dunno, Bex. It sure looks like all of your magic items unequipped themselves, though.”

The girl stared blankly at Shin. “All my magic…” She bent down and attempted to pick up her halberd, only for it to skitter away as if repulsed by a magnetic field. “How the fuck, Shin?”

At one point, Shin had fully planned to stretch this out a little longer. To indulge in it, to savor this victory. But when push came to shove, he simply couldn’t resist the opportunity to reveal his fiendish plot. “So, there’s a limit to the total Item Level of gear Players can equip at once. Right?”

Bex nodded, chasing her halberd in a slow circle around her pile of gear. “Based on Class Level, yeah. But I’m not even close to cap?”

“You are now.” Shin pointed towards the collar around Bex’s neck. “You are currently the proud owner of an Item Level Six Thousand dog collar, courtesy of Tasan Okaa and Shinki Itten.” The Schemer couldn’t resist a small bow. “And, of course, Yours Truly.”

“Item Level Six–” Bex boggled at the other kobold. “But that’s way too high of a level for me to equip?”

Shin held up a hand. “Not quite. There’s one type of item you can always equip, no matter what your level is.”

Bex hesitantly reached up to paw at her collar once again. “...Are you telling me that this is an iLevel Six Thousand cosmetic item?” When Shin nodded in unrestrained glee, she shook her head. “Wait, no; that makes no sense. Didn’t getting Blackmire’s shirts just to iLevel Three turn them into Gear? How did you get this–” She waggled the choker as best she could, “–Two thousand times stronger while still staying as a vanity item?”

“Because we used a different enchantment,” Shin confessed, his expression stiffening as his tone turned serious. “And this is why I only brought you for this test. The exact method we’re using here is, shall we say, unsafe waters. It’d be best if that knowledge didn’t leave the safety of this shrine.”

“I…yeah, wow. I totally understand.” Bex kissed her fingertips and knelt down, attempting to press them against her Goddess Icon in a solemn oath. When the pendant rolled away from her touch, driven back by her overcharged collar, she couldn’t resist another snort of laughter. “Okay, uh, let’s just call it Girl Scout’s Oath then.” She flashed a quick sign with her fingers, then shot Shin an expectant look. “Now spill it.”

“So!” Shin adopted a professorial tone, folding his arms smartly behind his back. “There are two primary issues. Issue One!” He snapped up a finger. “How do we raise an item’s Item Level while leaving it as a powerless cosmetic item? After all, Cosmetic Enchantments are Level Zero, and no”

Bex cut in.” And that leads to Two, how do you afford to enchant a single item that much? Because I doubt there are more than a half-dozen people in all of Magica who could afford to put six thousand Level One enchantments on an item.”

“Exactly. And there is a single answer to both questions.” Shin turned towards the shrine, bowing his head in reverence. “In short? Because Tasan Okaa is the best.”

Bex immediately reached out and flicked Shin in the back of the head. “Try again, significantly less short this time.”

Shin laughed, fighting off the girl’s faux-furious assault. “It’s really not much more complicated than that, honestly. You’ve got to know that Tasan Okaa has some unique qualities, right?” Bex nodded, and Shin continued. “Well, one of those qualities is a Triple Plus Productive Purview.”

“I’ve seen that in my Blessings Screen,” Bex slowly offered, “But I never knew what it meant. It’s listed with, like, thirty other things. I assumed it was just another weird thing about my Unique Class.”

“Well, assume no longer. It gives us a lot of little crafting bonuses attached to the shrine, and one of them happens to be that Level Zero enchantments woven by Her clergy become Level One enchantments. Still cosmetic, still functionally powerless, but the difference between Zero and One is hard to overstate where addition is concerned.”

“Huh. Wow.” A thought struck her. “Which cosmetic enchantment is it?”

“It’s the Keep Clean Enchantment; apparently it’s got the lowest mana cost of all the lot. There’s no material cost to any of them, but you saw the state the Priestess was in. Six thousand is a lot of times to do anything.”

“Six thousand Keep Clean Enchantments. Huh.” She sniffed at the air. “I guess that’s why I suddenly smell so fresh.”

“Magica is going to have the best smelling Red Players ever thanks to me.”

Bex let that all sink in, thoughtfully plucking at the innocuous collar around her neck. “...This is dangerous, Shin. I know you want to use this to protect the city, but if other Players figured out how this works…”

“Again: that’s why you’re the only one I’m explaining it to. Let the rest of the world just see it as some divine punishment.”

Bex shook her head. “Someone could take it apart and figure out the way it works. They’ll try to make more on their own.”

“They’re welcome to try, but they’ll need to become devout followers of the Great Mother to swing it.” Shin reached out, giving the railing around the shrine’s altar an affectionate pat. “Somehow, I don’t imagine they’ll manage that.”

Even then, Bex was insistent. “Still Shin, I don’t think the Mods are going to be happy about a faction having an item that can freeze any Player out from being able to ever equip another magic item. They’ll be worried you’ll just use it on every Player.” Genuine concern flashed across the girl’s face. “Aren’t you worried that this will get everybody deleted?”

“I worry about that all the time, about everything,” Shin admitted. “But I think that maybe you’re overestimating the power of the collar. After all,” the kobold pointed towards the t-shirt strewn out across the floor, “It’s ultimately no different than that. A Player could just go to any Disenchanter in any town and get their collar destroyed.”

“Oh!” Bex’s ears perked up, the worry fading from her expression. “That’s right! That’s actually really easy to take care of. It’s barely a short-term punishment, let alone a long-term one.”

“Very true. Well unless~,” Shin hummed, wicked humor seeping into his voice. “You happened to be a Red Player.”

Bex nearly tilted her head, only for her tail to go stiff as realization crashed into her. “Omigosh Red Players can’t go into cities! They don’t have access to Disenchanters!”

“You’re damn right they don’t. And when the Respawning finally comes, I’m going to make sure I send as many of those monsters back to the Red Wastes completely neutered.” Shin drew another collar from the basket, offering Bex a black-hearted “I asked the Banken to bring the first troublemaker they came across here. Want to see if they found someone?”

“Oh absolutely.”

Shin helpfully gathered up Bex’s gear into the basket, and then the two of them marched out of the Shinki Itten shrine in search of a first victim. And to Shin’s deep satisfaction, three Banken already had a squirming Player adorned with a floating eye trussed up in the shrine’s entryway garden.

Huh. Shin had never been happy to see a Red Player before. Gross.

Brushing aside those sickening thoughts, Shin twirled the collar between his fingers as he inspected the outraged Player. “Hm. He can’t be higher than Level Three? He probably doesn’t have any magic items yet.”

One of the Banken nodded. “We captured him without much trouble, but he’d already–

Shin waved away the rest of that thought. “Good, good; it’s fine.” He offered the Red Player a saccharine sweet smile. “This will just be a fun surprise for you down the line, then.”

The Player, for his part, stopped swearing long enough to try and work through the meaning of that. “...Fuck you you fucking bot I don’t have to listen to–”

Shin sneered. “Bad Dog.” And then he slapped the collar onto the Red Player’s neck, the No One’s tirade of obscenities melting into a squeal of pain as it bit into his flesh, then enveloped him in a snug collar. “There,” Shin grandly offered, making a show of dusting off his hands. “Everything worked just as I–”

The kobold trailed off as the bag tied to the Red Player’s back popped open, a small charm flying out as it fled the intense enchantment around his neck. Oh, so he did have…huh. Shin’s ears began to twitch as a dozen more charms poured from the Red Player’s bag, shooting off sparks as they piled up on the ground.

Those charms looked familiar.

Shin drew in a breath, his ears shooting up his inhale brought a new revelation. The Red Player must have been wearing some sort of musk before or something, but even the most powerful of masking odors couldn’t resist the effects of six thousand Keep Clean Enchantments.

Shin leaned in close, the Red Player swallowing in sudden nerves as the kobold took a deep sniff. There was simply no mistaking it. The kobold locked eyes with the sweating Player, his gaze unflinchingly hard. “How are you here?”

The Red Player took a weak pass at adopting a defiant expression, but with the murderous stare of a kobold burning straight into his eyes found himself unequal to the task. “I-I, um, y-you don’t, uh–”

Shin’s eyes didn’t leave the Player’s, but his voice called out to the Banken. “Where did you catch him? What did he do.”

The brief shuffle of awkward feet answered Shin’s question before the guards could vocally respond. “He went to the–”

Shin had already stalked off, storming down the plom blossom strewn pathway from the shrine to the Shinki Itten’s central tower. He could hear the Banken and Bex following behind, dragging the protesting Red Player all the way, but he paid them no mind. He had only one focus, only one thought, and he knew that the crowd that was gathered in the Garden Plaza could only mean one thing.

The Schemer shouldered his way through the Banken that had formed a protecting ring around one of the center-most koi ponds, the guards clearly thinking better of trying to stop him. Shin stared silently down into the pond, still sparking with the energy of scores of Lightning Charms, his claws digging bloody divots into his own palms as his eyes were filled with the sight of a dozen still, golden yellow bodies floating forlornly at the surface of the water.

Through the torrent of blood and fury pumping through his ears, Shin barely made out the embarrassed cough of one of the Banken who had followed him. “We didn’t reach him in time; this was entirely my–”

Shin slowly turned, his eyes finding the Red Player’s once more. Maybe it was a final wellspring of bravado, maybe it was the sight of his gristly handiwork giving him fresh courage; Shin had no way of knowing.

But somehow, the Red Player managed to smirk.“Guess they really weren’t Lightning Charm Brand Fish Health glk!!”

The Red Player’s shriek suffocated in his chest as Shin leapt upon him, his teeth sinking deep into the man’s soft throat. The man desperately struggled against his bonds but could manage no escape as the kobold thrashed his head back and forth, a hot spray of crimson gushing across Shin’s face.

Shin wrenched his head back once, twice, and then with the unmistakable sound of tearing meat ripped the Red Player’s throat messily out of his neck, allowing his victim to collapse limply to the ground in a weakly gurgling pile.

He stared down at the twitching, choking Player for a moment longer, his eyes drawn to the white band of cloth that remained snugly fastened to the human’s otherwise ruined neck.

Huh. The collar stayed together. That’s another test cleared.

Shin turned back towards the Banken and Bex, spitting out the lump of flesh that had been the Red Player’s throat before speaking. “Summon the council,” he demanded, his face still soaked with the lifeblood of the fading Player. “Summon them right now.”

Bex gave a shallow nod, stricken a bit pale from the barbaric display yet still holding herself together. “Why?”

“Because that–” he pointed a finger towards the already de-spawning Red Player, “–Was killed by Blackmire yesterday. And yet somehow, he’s already back today.”

Either the location of the Red Wastes had been moved overnight, or they had all fundamentally misunderstood something about Red Players.

And if they didn’t figure out what precisely that was, no amount of intricately plotted schemes or savagely ripped throats would be able to save them.