“No, no, no,” Dave said when I suggested allocating my Stat points and going through my leveling before opening the drops. “What if you find spell scrolls and so on? Ones that require you to meet certain stat thresholds? No, you’ll want to know what’s in your drops before you level.”

  It was sound advice, and it came from years of experience, so I agreed. “How do we open the drops?”

  “That’s what she’s for,” he said, tilting his head at the Arcanum bank teller. “Open a dialogue with her, and she should hand them over.”

  I leaned over the counter and said, “Hey there, gorgeous,” to the teller. The name floating above her head in NPC blue was Katerina, but I figured Remnant wouldn’t bother.

  She brightened instantly, her glowing indigo eyes widening as if she were coming awake. “Hello, adventurer! How can I help you today?”

  “I have some drops I’d like to open. I’m told you have them?”

  “Of course! Please follow me to enter your personal safe deposit vault.”

  With that, the woman gave a little wave, and the crystal wall and golden counter turned into blue Oneiric lines, then vanished from her teller window. I stumbled as the thing I’d been leaning on disappeared.

  She didn’t notice. “Right this way!”

  As I righted myself, she pivoted on her heel and clicked away toward the vault. I followed her, eyeing the empty teller windows to either side. You couldn’t move past this point in the real game.

  At the vault door, Katerina input a code into a string of metal rings where the vault handle should have been. Then she waved a hand, casting another Oneiric spell on the vault door, which turned to blue lines and then vanished again. Oneiric magic was all about summoning objects, and I was pretty familiar with it. When Lore had left on his mission, he’d had to start a new character to play on board his spaceship’s private servers, and he’d chosen Oneiric for his main avatar. That power was in almost all the vids I had from him.

  Katerina stepped aside and held a hand out. “Your treasure awaits,” she said. “Simple exist the vault when you are done.”

  Frowning, I stepped through into what appeared to be an empty vault. However, as soon as I passed the threshold, the small square space filled up with loot boxes. They were stacked along the far wall, in varying colors and shapes, all with names hovering in front of them. Dave had already perched atop the largest one, which looked like a first aid kit. Its name was You’re Not Gonna Last Long, Are You? (Green Grade).

  I jumped at the loud clunk of the vault door closing behind me. I whirled, heart already pumping.

  “They lock us in?” I said.

  “Until all the boxes are opened, yeah. But you can gradually update this space, outfitting it with a bed and kitchen and all kinds of things. No one can get in or out while you’re in here, and as long as all your drops are opened, you can leave anytime.”

  I looked around. The space was very enclosed, and I saw no sign of air vents. “Won’t we suffocate?”

  “Oh, sure. But the time limit is pretty long. Check your HUD. It should give you a countdown.”

  I did check.It took me a few seconds to find it; my health orb was grayed out and replaced with a timer. Apparently, I was immortal in this room, so long as I left within two hours.

  “Two hours? That’s not enough time to sleep,” I said. “Also, I’m pretty sure a person can last days in an enclosed room.”

  “Well, normally, yeah. But you’re in a game now. The game is boring if people just sleep through it.”

  “How do we rest then?”

  “By winning,” Dave said. “But especially by not winning last. There’s a Rest Mode between all game levels, and as soon as an instance is won, the winner gets to go to their vault for Rest Mode. The faster you win, the more time you get to rest. It’s a double-edged butter knife, though.”

  I wandered over to the largest box, which looked like an oversized cement cinder block, at least two feet long and one foot high. It was labeled Brutal Box (Green Grade), and it teetered above a tower of smaller cinder blocks.

  “You mean there’s a reason you might want want to slow down your win?” I asked, gesturing to loot the box. It expanded into a menu, listing out the items contained in it. I could have just hit Loot All, but I wanted to get a look at what all these things contained first.

  As I scanned the contents, Dave said, “Well, winning too fast is boring. And a boring Hunter doesn’t get sponsorships or fan drops. Sponsorships get you one drop per sponsor per level; they show up during Rest Mode. But you have to skin your items with their logo to open them… so it can suck if you get a lame company offering.

  “And then there are fan boxes. These are crowd sourced. Your biggest fans can donate to funds listing specific items that could be dropped to you. The funds are huge, so it doesn’t usually happen quickly, but any drop is a good drop. Every little bit helps.”

  I sighed. One of these days, I’d need to learn about the whole “television” side of this thing. Right now, I cared only about survival, but Remnant had been a force to contend with before I’d killed him. I’d need to start acting more like him, especially if I wanted sponsors and fans.

  I didn’t care about fame, but I did care about getting to the Conduit. I would take every advantage I could get.

  “Well, this green box had 10 Basic Health Vials in it,” I said. “Worth about 20HP apiece. Plus it had 3 Basic Health Regen Vials. That’ll be nice against my Bleeder skill.”

  “You don’t have to tell me what you’re looking at. I can see it,” Dave said. “And forget the potions. That box has a Well-Aimed Rock in it. That sounds awesome.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  I expanded the info box on the item.

  Well-Aimed Rock (Green Grade).

  Throwable Item.

  This rock will hit anything you throw it at, regardless of your Dexterity. It will hit that thing at double the impact your current Strength would cause.

  I smiled. I could already think of more applications for this.

  I moved on from there to the box underneath, opening at random, since they seemed to have populated the vault room that way. I quickly began to parse the new ranking system. In Seven Keys, items were ranked by gemstone names—Glass being the worst, Spinel the second-to-worst, Amber the next best, and so on. Each stone had been a specific color, starting at white for the weakest items, then to red, then all the way up the rainbow to violet for the best.

  It appeared that the Conduit had been confused by the use of Earthen minerals, so they had simplified the ranking system down to the colors. White being terrible, then red, then orange, then yellow. I had gotten a little of every color drop, except for light blue, dark blue, and violet. I’d somehow received a couple of Green boxes, which seemed promising this early on in the game.

  Among the red drops, I’d gained two daggers, a Red stone hammer and mace, a fancy Blackheart Mace (Orange Grade), which had the shitty effect of preventing all healing on the user. That was probably why it was an Orange-grade item in a Red box. It always landed a critical hit, though, so that was nice—but it said it would miss half the time. It also required 25 Strength to wield it, just like my fancy pike did.

  The first few red boxes also contained four more health vials, and several items with “Upgrade” in the title. There was one called Upgrade Vial: Strength and one called Upgrade Orb: Sneak. I dutifully read their descriptions, now that I didn’t have another Hunter breathing down my neck:

  Upgrade Vial: Strength

  Consumable Item

  Upgrades your Strength stat by 1 point.

  Upgrade Orb: Sneak

  Consumable Item

  Upgrades your Sneak skill by 1 level.

  The Strength improvement item I used immediately, but I expanded on the word “skill” on the orb. The original Seven Keys didn’t have skills like Bleeder, but it had basic skills like Sneak, so I wanted to read up on it.

  Skill.

  A latent ability which can be leveled up to 10. Each skill improves by a listed percentage with each level up. Upon reaching level 10, a skill can be upgraded to a similar, but generally stronger, skill. This new skill will begin at level 1. Skills are always active and can only be removed with a Skill Removal Sphere.

  “It’s neat that you can upgrade them,” Dave said. “I wonder how long it takes to get them to level 10?”

  “Hard to say. Sneak skill goes up to 99 in the original game. Same with other basic stuff, like cooking, harvesting, mining. Jumping couldn’t be upgraded at all. The game had flight, so jumping was a little obsolete.”

  I found a Skills tab, and checked. All of those basic skills were listed, each one at level 1, except jumping. That was at 2. Dismantling had also been converted to a skill, and that sat at level 2 as well. Then my Bleeder and You’re Bigger Than I Thought You Were skills had both upgraded to level 2 as well.

  I checked them, and their percentages had improved upon leveling. Bigger now reflected 55% of damage instead of 50%, and Bleeder now worked when I went under 95% health instead of the full 100%, while increasing my Strength by 30% instead of the original 25%.

  All in all, I was getting kinda buff, even without allocating stats. But with Dave at a Strength of 90 and my Strength already sitting pretty, I wanted to choose some other stat to center on after this. I was leaning heavily toward Constitution at the moment, but I’d see what the other boxes had to offer.

  I checked the the Red Super-Spy Box next. It was skinned to look like some sort of code-breaking machine, like a typwriter but with reels and a lot of weird symbols on it. It contained only one item: something called an Oversized Storage Orb. I expanded:

  Oversized Storage Orb.

  Throwable item.

  Will convert any nonliving object it strikes into an inventory item, ignoring all inventory size constraints.

  “Wow. That sounds fun,” I said, pulling it into my inventory. “Like, could I pick up a building or something?”

  “I would be careful not to overdo it,” Dave said. “You could waste the thing. I’d hate to see you throw that at a building and only get to keep the door. Also, imagine pulling a house out of your inventory. It could crush you. The Conduit love playing games like that… it’s in a Red box, after all. You can’t trust it.”

  I nodded and moved on. I didn’t even know yet what the size constraints were, when it came to my inventory. Earlier. I had been able to inventory the gargoyle on top of the vaults, and that thing had only been a little smaller than me, and a lot heavier.

  I found a white box, the worst kind, and inside it had only two bullets for me. The Red Good Guy drop was the last of the Reds, and it hilariously took the form of a to-go box of food, in styrofoam, with a plastic bag around it and a handwritten note on top that read, The guy at table six covered this for you! He says thank you for your service! with a smiley face.

  Instead of food, the styrofoam box contained two White-Grade items, a sword and buckler. White grade items were essentially made of glass and easy to break, or they were very basic craftable ingredients. I doubted I could even sell those for much—if I could sell things at all.

  That wasn’t the only Good Guy box, though. There was both an Orange and a much better Green drop, skipping the Yellow category entirely. All the Good Guy drops took the form of to-go food, but the notes were different. The Orange note read I got this for you, boo. Here’s my number: XED-98Q-J44L and the green note read Happy Birthday from management! All paid up!

  At least the Conduit were creative with their designs. Both boxes combined gave me 3 total health vials, and the Orange box contained a Valiant Plate chest item, Red grade, while the Green one contained something called an Amulet of the Beloved (Yellow Grade).

  I already had an amulet that was Orange grade, but I checked the new one anyway:

  Amulet of the Beloved (Yellow Grade).

  Trinket

  Gain +3 reputation when speaking to members of any Riftguard faction.

  That was niche, but I’d take it. It could probably be useful in select situations. I went looking for my remaining Orange drops next, and found the Orange Daddy Drop, in the form of a diaper bag. It contained 2 Nutritious Milk items which each granted 10 Satiety, whatever that was. I drank one.

  Immediately, I was no longer hungry. Apparently 10 Satiety was enough to subsist on.

  “Want one?” I asked Dave, offering him the other Milk.

  He waved it off—or perhaps flapped it off might be the better term for it. “Ah, no, you keep it. As a Game Guide, I don’t get hungry. I’m not technically a player.”

  I frowned. Those qubin things could slow your perception of time and convince you that you weren’t hungry?

  “How do you survive without eating?” I ask. “Hungry or not, don’t you need food to live?”

  “It’s the qubins again. It’s always the qubins,” Dave said, hunkering down into the depression on top of the Green Smite Box, which took the form of an old school claymore mine. Odd choice of a place to roost, but who was I to judge?

  “Okay, but how does that work?”

  Dave lowered his head and closed his eyes. “They manifest nutrients inside you. Then you digest them. Then you live another day.”

  “They have that kind of control over your life?”

  He cracked one eye, and just looked at me. I felt a chill go through me.

  I looked away. “And I thought the Synths were bad,” I muttered. The more I learned about what I was up against, the less chance I thought I had. Did I really believe I could help Earth by winning this thing? When the creatures in charge could literally feed me from space?

  It’s not like there’s anything else I can do, except die.

  It wasn’t a comforting thought.