“Hello? Are you listening?” Matthew asks.

  “Ah yes, sorry I got lost in my thoughts for a while. You were saying something about joining us on expeditions? Yes that sounds perfect! I’ll talk to others about it, and let you know about it,” Adrian says, bringing his senses out of the avatar and back to the table.

  “I’ll also talk to Leah. She has calmed down now, and is much healthier. She’s just… a little shy right now.”

  “I understand. I was at fault too.”

  A momentary lull falls on the table as the waiter brings food for Buren.

  “I heard they found one more?” Adrian says, grabbing a piece of fried chicken from his plate.

  “Hey!” He protests. Matthew takes one too. “Goddammit! Order your own!”

  “Yes. She was an apothecary, I think. She tried to poison the church members when they came for her. But they eventually got her.”

  “What number are we at again?”

  “That’s 29 out of 29. The church said they felt 29 people who were unfaithful, and they took just a mere week to weed them all out. Truly the strength of the church is unimaginable,” Matthew says in between bites.

  “What are they gonna do with them? They haven’t killed them yet, right?”

  “Public execution. Scheduled in 10 days.”

  “Hmm,” Adrian focuses on enjoying the chicken as he asks, “Where do they even bring the chicken from? I didn’t see a farm here?”

  “Imported from outside. It’s a little premium, but not that much. Storage abilities make the process a lot easier. Were it any higher floor, the prices would have skyrocketed.”

  “Anyway, so how have you been?”

  Adrian engages in casual chat with Matthew and Buren for a while as they enjoy dinner, only occasionally checking in with his avatar. A few hours later, he bids them good night, and goes to his room.

  Ever since coming here, he has levelled up a fair ton, and earned quite a bit. At least more than enough to get himself a single room in an inn. It’s a new one, built during the wave of construction after the fire.

  Say anything about climbers, but never insult the productivity of a climber when it really counts. A few hundred climbers can create a whole town in a week if they so wished. With a few more levels and floors, something like this will become almost as easy as a few hours of work. The problem at that level evolves to the type of terrain homes can be built upon.

  In his room, an avatar is practicing continuously with a sword. Another reason why he has asked for a bigger room. While on the bed lies an avatar with many books laying around it, catching up on studies he has missed in the pursuit of becoming a climber.

  Adrian kicks the avatar off the bed, lays on it, and then finally dispels both of them.

  Instantly a wave of conflicting memories hit him. A life of a single day, spent just swinging the sword and practicing constantly, pushing yourself against the bounds of climber anatomy until the very muscles start to cramp from effort.

  And then another life of doing nothing but sitting on the bed solving equations and churning your brain in a never endless loop.

  Adrian spends a few minutes digesting the memories and consolidating his gains and pains before sitting up again, sweat beads trickling down his face.

  Note to self: Don’t dismiss two at once. One at a time.

  Until now he has been making sure that he won’t leave any avatar for longer than a day, mostly from the fear of what would happen to him if he has to go through the memories of a time period of so long. Except one.

  Dismissing that one is going to be a torture.

  Adrian shudders from just thinking about it.

  Looking outside, it seems to still be night, although two days have passed in Adrian’s mind.

  How much time has passed since I dismissed the clones?

  His timer responds. 2 minutes 39 seconds.

  I’m getting faster. It took me almost 4 minutes when I did it for the first time. I might be able to reduce the time required to a few seconds with more Mind and practice.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Mind has become an invaluable stat for him ever since he started inheriting memories of his avatars. The more he took, the more his mind felt cramped. Like he was starting to reach the limit of a tank, and if he keeps adding more into it, it’ll only leak out.

  After a few seconds of catching his breath, Adrian picks up the sword and starts practicing like it was done so by his avatar. He goes through the motions; the memory of them is so vivid and fresh, that he quickly falls into the rhythm of it, stretching his Body and Kinesthetics stats to let his body do as he wishes.

  After an hour of going through the motions, Adrian finally drops the sword in its place, and lays on the ground, sweating and tired. Alone and a bit lonely. He quickly falls asleep.

  #

  The masked avatar has been looking for trails and following anything he can find about the revolutionaries for days now, as he travels through the forest.

  Although the floor isn’t big when you consider the linear distance from one end to another, it becomes a whole lot different when you actually have to search through all of it. Especially in a forest area, where most of the place is hidden under trees and behind bushes, or vines. Some of which are ready to chomp on you anytime.

  The past week or so has been a hell for the avatar. Exhaustion, sleepiness, hunger, thirst, safety. So many things he has been missing about civilization ever since he started living here. Even though he’s an avatar and doesn’t need food or water, his body still remembers, and his mind would still send alarms that he needs to eat!

  A part of the avatar is almost glad that the main body would have to go through it all too, once he’s dismissed.

  But those things can come later. Currently he’s facing a rather disgusting looking swamp at the edges of the floor. The blackened water and the foul smell emanating from the swamp is more than enough to deter any climber should they wanna explore this place.

  He couldn’t believe that such a convincing illusion could exist. Aren’t illusions just supposed to be mortal sleight of hand?

  That is the conventional wisdom, and yet such a thing actually exists here.

  It was only an accident that he had come to this area to run away from a particularly stubborn spider, and had been thinking about taking a dip in the swamp to mask his smell, that he noticed someone suddenly emerging out of the swamp completely clean.

  The image of the swamp had distorted and glitched visibly when the man came, stabilising quickly again.

  The avatar has been staring at the swamp for more than an hour now, waiting for someone else to come out, or for the man to return, but it looks like nothing else is gonna happen.

  “Do or die then,” Adrian mutters and could hear his own scratching voice. A mask stuck to the face was a genius idea when you want something that won’t give away your identity and won’t fall off accidentally.

  It becomes a bad idea when you have to go through with it. Feel your throat slowly die from no use and lack of water, and feel the mask itch at your face, knowing that your whole face is probably infected by now. Thankfully he’s just an avatar, so he’s spared of the infection part, but the itching is a torture in itself.

  At that moment, Adrian descends upon the avatar.

  He looks around and finds no one except the creepy silence of the jungle. He’s not looking forward to inheriting this.

  Quietly, shuttling behind the bushes, he makes his way towards the swamp. His Kinesthetics make sure his footing is even and his body stable even in this uncomfortable position.

  Adrian’s feet dip into the swamp, and the feeling is exactly how he’ll imagine it to be. He scoops some of it, and smells it, but all of it only proves to him that it is but a real swamp. He goes lower, almost covering himself with the swamp to avoid detection, travelling inside. But no matter how deep he went in the swamp, he couldn’t distinguish it from the real thing.

  Panic starts to take over him. Will he not be able to find it at all? The itch on his face intensifies, and the liquid swamp liquid seeps inside. He can taste the swamp in his lips, and feel it crawl inside through his nose.

  Anxiety, disgust, and doubt comes at the same time. An almost shortness of breath in a way he has never felt in a long time. Adrian focuses, his mind suddenly existing in a place far away from his body, and when he looks down again, the illusion breaks like a cracking mirror.

  He looks down at him and finds himself standing crouched on a trap door in the floor.

  Adrian manipulates his body and opens the trap door, before quickly jumping in and closing the trap door.

  Inside is a well lit corridor made of steel, and yet completely white. The white lights seem to integrate into the corridor and as Adrian walks ahead, the lights ahead lit up at his presence.

  There are doors on either side of the corridor, and one at the end, but with no apparent handle A panel is attached beside all the doors, with an ominous red slit. Is he supposed to put money in it for it to open?

  Adrian does not do something so stupid, just in case it leads to a worse situation. The only reason he is doing this is to save his own ass.

  From what he has seen all along, the revolutionaries seem to be the back foot against the church in all cases. In that case, now that he has a straight legal entry to the church as a spy, why wouldn’t he take it? They have never been able to find his unfaithfulness, even here in the presence of a High Ranker.

  So what’s the best way to get in their good shoes? Finding a hideout of the revolutionaries!

  Joining with the revolutionaries would’ve been a nice change of pace from having to tiptoe his way through life, always conscious about what he says, but this is just a small price for what he has to achieve.

  Now stuck in this unknown situation where things don’t make sense as they should, Adrian decides that it is about time he leaves this place.

  Just as he turns and is about to run, a faint noise comes from a door ahead of him, and it slides open, merging with the wall beside it. A figure walks out, dressed in typical climber gear, a mask on her face.

  Her feet stop just outside the door, half turning towards himself. Adrian doesn’t stop to check, dispelling the avatar before he can be caught.

  As soon as he dispelles the avatar, a strong pain erupts on his face, coming from the mask attached to it. Between his magic trying to lose form, and the mask holding onto it, Adrian feels like his own face is being ripped apart from inside out.

  Finally the avatar is gone, and the mask briskly clatters on the metallic floor.

  The woman walks to it, and picks her with her slender fingers, an unknown expression hidden behind her mask.

  #