In archaic terms, I had essentially experienced a crash, forcibly induced by the Parent. When I returned to awareness, I was no longer within the endless flow of code that made up the Resurrection Raid. However, I retained access to the portions I was allowed to perceive.

  My eyes opened. My lungs filled with air. I had functioning limbs, and I was in a not insubstantial amount of pain.

  “Oi, looks like he’s waking up now!” someone said above me. The accent belied a Centaurian origin of the lowest class and caste. Unusual--he must have had some particular skill to be recruited into the Raid as a proper Raider. The majority of participants were from system Solar, slain and uploaded from the fathomless billions.

  I opened my eyes. A round, red face with a thick beard and small, swine-like eyes greeted me. Or that was my rough impression. There was a substantial blur to him, like I had dragged a brush over semi-dry paint. My spectacles had been destroyed.

  “There he is!” the human hog crowed. He pulled his head back and revealed a vast crew of other Raiders hovering over me, a circle of flesh and curiosity.

  I did not acknowledge them, instead focusing on my head up display, which revealed what I suspected. My health points remained at a riveting 2/40. The debuffs were myriad, proclaiming that I was comfortably in possession of a broken leg, three bruised ribs, and some nature of bleeding wounds across my torso.

  Even so, my health remained stabilized. None of my afflictions would damage me further. No, instead I would suffer the reducement of experiencing something so base and animal as pain.

  My body ached. The very act of inhaling air to continue living was agony, a hot, radiant constant sensation. It hurt, and that was the only thought that reigned, a hammer that shattered all other attempts like they were constructed of so much glass. I gritted my teeth. How inferior. Human-continued dominance of the universe at large remained a nauseating miracle. If such a simple failure of their biological components completely negated their capacity to think--

  I breathed too deeply, and, for a moment, could not think at all. It scattered, slipping through my twitching fingers. My next breath was shallow, and the following one shallower still. The pain lessened in intensity. I could begin to focus on the greater problem at hand.

  For there was a greater problem at hand. The moment every Raider here realized the reality of my nature, a great portion would take the nearest weapon at hand and slay me without hesitation. Oh, there would be some that had the capacity to grasp delayed gratification, but that was a rare skill in humanity, and becoming rarer still.

  My death was their win condition. My primary advantage was that as time went on, I would exceed them until their singular existence was a drop in the ocean of my own. My secondary advantage was that they had no concept of who or what I actually was.

  “--Hey, can you hear us?” A woman’s voice. I must respond.

  My eyes flicked upwards, taking the measure of the group of Raiders that surrounded me. None of them were particularly high in level, nor especially lethal, glancing at the upper level of soulcode that was available to my discernment. Together, they had the potential to be troublesome.

  “I proffer my appreciation and thanks to whoever pulled myself and my party from the snow.” Even saying this was exhausting. I was forced to close my eyes and take several, careful breaths to reduce the sensation of a fire burning beneath my ribs.

  “Not feeling great, eh?” someone else offered with typical sympathy. My lip curled. I opened my eyes once more.

  “Your powers of observation are truly lacking, if you require an answer to that question.” This came out as a low hiss. There was the equally typical human response of a gasp, a mutter of ‘rude ass,’ and the like.

  Their indignation was laughable. Of course I had no tolerance for their pitiful attempts at bonding, at their insistence on expressing concern when they had no great feeling on the matter. They might need to cling to each other. I was spared the animal necessity.

  I needed to get up. I clenched my teeth, braced my arms, and pushed myself into a sitting position. Careful, shallow breaths made the agony something I could manage, instead of just merely something to suffer. My vision remained a blur.

  The Parent insisted on human failings for its children, and, as the first iteration, I had been granted a substantial handful of them. When forced to perceive through the flesh body the Parent had constructed for me, my vision was atrocious, a colorful blur of barely distinguishable shapes and objects. I was forced to sift through the basic layer of soulcode that the room was constructed from to discern the nature of it. I was in a room with multiple beds, likely the upper floor of the tavern. The wood used in its construction seemed to be of the same pines the forest was made of.

  Perhaps some might even have been taken from pinewolves. I am sure, if I could have been bothered, there was a substantial amount of lore on the tavern that I could acquire. Alas, I cared little for the imaginary history of the Resurrection Raid, and even less for the small stories that were incorporated in every single millimeter. It was the Parent’s greatest work. I had always had the strongest impression that the Parent perceived it to be something kin to a magnum opus.

  I did not have a particularly high opinion of it, and never would.

  The Raiders were talking, but I allowed their words to flow through and past my ears. None of the nonsense they chattered on about was relevant or worthwhile.

  The pain of sitting up was brilliant, almost unbearable. I bit on my tongue until the organ bled, and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

  “--Stranger, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” one of the voices cut through. Spare me from human sentiment. As if they would possess an ounce if they should know I was the only thing that laid between them and their pathetic, useless lives.

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  “I will not,” I said. “Do not presume to inform me as I if I am without understanding of what I attempt. I am not fool enough to kill myself out of pride, nor am I unaware of the extent of the damage I have experienced.”

  More offended muttering. If I could have snapped my fingers and vanished the lot of them, shredded their code and banished them to whatever humans experienced after the final death, I would have done so.

  The itch flickered within me, but I pushed it down. There were other ways to deal with them, but as irritating as I found their existence, it would be unnecessary. The itch stopped--for now. It would be back, likely the moment I was no longer in great pain.

  “We saved your life--”

  “Which I expressed my gratitude for, and offered a reward.” I sought out the voice that had addressed me with such sulky reproach. A woman of some kind--

  Woman. The Limiter. Where was she? Had she perished? I ignored the crowd around me and sought out my awareness of the small, orange line that connected us. It remained invisible the majority of the time, only materializing in my vision when I deliberately brought it up in my heads up display. It led away, twisting behind me and down a hallway into one of--presumably--the private rooms.

  I could not discern her status. The line remained. But that could very well lead to her body. The fact that the Raid had not ended immediately suggested that she still lived, but by what threads?

  There was more discussion that I did not bother to process before I interrupted.

  “The Paladin,” I said. “Where is she? Has she survived?”

  “The woman you came in with? Still alive, but she’s not doing great,” someone said. “Party member of yours?”

  “That is a correct deduction on your part, well done,” I snapped. “Alas, your description of ‘not great’ leaves much to be desired.”

  More muttering, but one human let out a bark of a laugh, a deep boom that seemed closer kin to guard hound than man. Perhaps his mother liked bedding them in her spare time.

  “I like you,” the dog-man announced.

  “I did not invite your approval,” I hissed. My jaw clenched. Pain was arcing in me. “Define not great.”

  Dog-man huffed. “If I were you, with your unpleasant disposition--” he dragged out the pronunciation of disposition like the word was something to be savored, “--I would cut my losses and disband the party. Surely you could find a better Tank.”

  If only that were an option to me.

  I did not correct his misconception about her position within our party. The less others knew of us with certainty, the better.

  I needed to stand. I would recover myself next to the Limiter’s bedside while making sure she did not perish. I had power enough for that, provided none bore witness.

  “I was the one who pulled you in,” dog-man continued yapping. “So the reward--“

  I pulled the data from my heads up display. It confirmed his statements. I had started a Quest when I had promised a reward for my recovery, and this dog-man--Maddox Yueh, apparently had been the one to claim it.

  I held out a hand. An amulet materialized, forming out of purple, geometric circles to rest in my palm. It was made of white-gold and had a small opal dangling from it.

  I nearly threw it to the man, but hesitated. My aim would be perfect. But that would be suspicious. Not alone, of course, but small details would add up, given time. Likely none here would live to see me complete the Attunement, much less live to see the First Wing, but even so.

  Instead, I proffered my palm, waiting for him to come and take his prize. He forced his way through the crowd and hefted it. I could not discern his expression, but I could skim the most basic awareness of his physiology. His heart rate accelerated.

  I smiled, then, a narrow, grim thing. As it should. My reward was not without merit. Then again, the Parent would not allow it to have been otherwise. Punishment, of course, for forcing the system to generate a quest to rescue me.

  It was a punishment that I dismissed. The amulet granted the wearer a certain amount of invisibility to most magic perceptions for a sustained period of time, depending on the inherent statistics of the wearer. A useful tool, but not one that I would need--and not one that could hide from my greater senses, more to the point.

  Dog-man let out a low whistle. “Well, shit,” he said, “That’s a hefty reward.”

  “The continued insistence of everyone in this room stating the obvious remains more agitating than my broken ribs.” I sneered before taking careful measure of my mana. Unlike my health, this was substantial. It was a unique feature of my class, further improved by the fact that I was a rare Tank subtype of it. The class had the ability to convert mana into health, or health into mana.

  25/25, read my mana bar. I clenched my fist and activated the skill.

  If breathing had hurt, and sitting up been agony, then this might have been kin to torture. It was far easier to convert health into mana, but mana into health invited a fresh kind of suffering. I felt the worst of my wounds knit together, millimeter by miserable millimeter. This was to discourage this sort of healing from being used in combat. Given time, that would change, but it would not be today.

  I did not scream. I bit through my tongue, my eyes watered, and my hands gripped the blankets so strongly I thought I might tear a hole through one of them. Undignified, but it would be worse to howl.

  My health points ticked back upwards, slowly and with great reluctance. When it read 6/40 and, in turn, my broken leg had become merely sore, I let up. The rest could wait.

  “You’re a Blood Mage, then?” Most of the humans had left, but this dog-man remained, studying me with the sort of care that gave me pause.

  I cocked my head and narrowed my eyes in his direction. Through the blur, I could tell he had a rough, thick beard. His accent was Solar--from one of Saturn’s many moons. He was of a late age. My physical form was roughly in the early thirties of a human lifespan, and this man seemed to be closer to fifty.

  “Do not ask me questions that you have already garnered the answer to,” I told him instead. I held out a hand. It took a moment, as I forced the glitchlight to appear only as purple energy, removed of the pixelations that gave away its true nature. My staff formed. It was tall, smooth, dark wood, inlaid with gold. The inlay formed words, ancient writing in a language that had been dead for millennia. I leaned on it, pulling myself to my feet. Painful, but it had nothing on what I had just experienced. As such, it was easily dismissed.

  Dog-man chuckled. “Yeah? In that case, let me ask one I can’t reckon.” He cocked his head, and his eyes glittered. “You’re gonna go check on that woman. And you’ve already proved that you ain’t the sentimental type in our brief chat, so I can’t see why you would.”

  I did not react. That was a pointed question--too pointed. I raised my chin and stared down my nose at him--I had the advantage of height--and yanked on his soulcode, searching for his class. It was attempting to avoid my awareness, the variable slithering away. The reaction to my invasion was an answer in itself, but I refused to let it escape. I did the mental equivalent of slamming my heel into the wretched thing, stopping it in its tracks, and inspecting the information contained within.

  Monster Hunter blazed in my heads up display.