“I have an idea on where we’ll find Captain Moon,” I say to Sherbie. “Let’s head back for the Everglen.”

  “But that scary lady was guarding the woods next to it.”

  “We’ll take the long way around, avoid Lieutenant Brockduk and her soldiers. Let’s find the source of these cultists’ newfound powers. I have a feeling if we find that, we’ll find our friend the captain.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well…call it a hunch,” I say. “For now, let’s head back. Even if I’m wrong, we’ll still finish the Root of Evil quest.”

  “Fair enough,” Sherbie says, putting on a brave face. “But if we cross that scary lady again…”

  “We’ll be fine, even if they attack us,” I say confidently. Sherbie looks at me wide-eyed. I laugh. “Did you forget who I am? Everything dies in my aura. Even the meanest half orc,” I assure him.

  “I guess…”

  “Just be ready with your support. Remember if I die, they’ll come for you next.”

  “R-right.”

  Sherbie and I make our way around the area where Lieutenant Brockduk was patrolling, careful to be as silent as possible. Of course that’s easier said than done when you’re a defender in full plate armor, but somehow we manage.

  On the way I notice a few other players moving in a similar way to us. Thinking back this was an interesting quest that required a bit of cunning—it’s impossible every player would have handled it the same way I did. I wonder if they’re playing the same game I am now, aiming for the same goal, playing by the same set of rules. I wonder if they all got the Find Captain Moon quest. Somehow, I get the feeling even if they did not, they’re all about to.

  As we step onto the edge of Everglen, we get an unexpected notification.

  [Loading instance

  Exit condition: Defeat all cultists]

  Ah. The game wants us to do this part on our own. And I guess now we know how we’re meant to be dealing with the bad guys. I’m glad. I really wasn’t looking forward to dressing up in a bear hide and grass skirt.

  We fought plenty of cultists on our way to this point, so I already know their attack methods. Some shoot nature spells, always a problem for poor Revelator. Others summon monstrous creatures, or elemental trees who fight with physical damage—much easier to deal with.

  These are the same, a whole village of cultists that we end up clearing out, one grass hut at a time. It always feels a bit wrong, killing actual people in this way. Not like fighting goblins or other monsters, the fact that I’m killing human shaped NPCs is a bit…

  But it’s not like I’m killing them with axes or a sword—that would feel way worse. At least this way I’m just killing them in my aura. Besides, they’re not even real, I tell myself when I start to feel a bit weird about it. They’re just bits of code, covered over in a well rendered skin. The writer and the graphic designer that built these characters might just as easily have made them trolls, or some other monster, without changing a single letter of the code that animates them.

  These people are nothing, I tell myself, numb to their dying screams. I am nothing, just another chain of code in this vast matrix. And this place, this whole world—it’s not even real.

  It’s all just…code…

  I can tell at a glance Sherbie isn’t thinking about any of this as hard as I am. He’s covering me the same way he always does, though not well, if he’d forgive the observation. I’ll be much happier with my companion once we teach him some better healing spells.

  Good thing I have these potions I bought from Mad Wim. Without them, I wouldn’t survive such an intense exchange.

  But my aura does its work, killing everything within a 19 foot radius in 1 minute and 15 seconds.

  [Tremor Aura has leveled up]

  Yes, I have more than one aura. All of them working together to disorient and disintegrate my enemies. Meanwhile I stand at the epicenter of destruction, siphoning their health from the damage I inflict like some kind of energy vampire.

  Just what kind of monster am I making here?

  After about twenty minutes of fighting, we reach the end of the glen. A trail of bodies lie in our wake, but Sherbie is only excited for what comes next. Up ahead, there’s a huge tent. Inside, I’m sure, we’ll find it. The source of their power, the Root of Evil.

  “I am so ready for this,” Sherbie says. “Whatever is behind this door, you and I are gonna crush it.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  I snort. I’m glad for his clueless enthusiasm. “Guess we’re doing this,” I say, reaching out to grasp the tent flap. And the whole world goes dark.

  [Loading single player instance

  Exit condition: Make your choice]

  What the? Single player?

  Light fades back in barely, and Sherbie is not by my side. I panic at first, worried how he’ll get through it on his own, then I remember his dinosaur form. Right. He still has that. He’ll manage.

  Realizing I’m already inside the tent, I peer through the gloom, eyes straining to see anything at all.

  The air is filled with smoke, as though a campfire has been freshly doused. Only the faintest glow of embers is left around the edges, providing just the smallest amount of light to illuminate the tent.

  The space is larger in here than it seemed on the outside. On the floor is sketched a large magic circle, glowing faintly with the same color as the embers. At the center of it on his knees sits a shirtless man, bound, head lowered in defeat. Without even seeing his face, my gut tells me his identity.

  So it was like this after all…

  A second magic circle appears then, smaller, just off to the side from the first. It glows much brighter, and a figure materializes within it, summoned. A demon, I know with a kind of certainty.

  My eyes have adjusted some, so that I see clearly, though it is difficult to process, much less describe what I am looking at.

  The demon has long, hairless human legs that taper into goat’s hooves. Its pale flesh is scaly, with long needle-like fingers and claws. Its face is unsettlingly female, slender and deceptively beautiful, with long hair that drapes and catches around the naked, genderless body.

  It looks around the room. Looks down at the bound captive, then to me, then beyond, as though seeing through the walls of the tent. The scene of carnage I left outside.

  “Blood—” it says, its voice as deep as the lowest note on the piano. And with just a single syllable, I swear the temperature in the room has dropped by twenty degrees. “—is the price.”

  I wait for it to say more, but am met with only silence.

  “The price for what?”

  It looks to me sharply, scans me up and down with unblinking eyes. That face, did I say it was female? It’s not, I decide. It’s something else entirely.

  “A little blood, a little power. A small sacrifice, a small gift in exchange. Is it difficult to understand? Human?”

  “So you trade. Blood for power. That is the secret to the occultists' newfound magic.” Just as Sherbie suspected. He warned me about this, that demons would prove to be behind it all. I should have warned him too, of what I suspected. That they’d have captured Captain Moon, and held him like this, for just such a scene. That guy will definitely be traumatized, I think, if he has to watch Captain Moon die in a place like this…

  “You want the power, you pay the price,” the demon says as it gestures to the bound man, its impossibly deep voice fairly rattling my chest.

  “I don’t think you have anything I want, devil.”

  The demon’s mouth splits in a smile. Mocking and cruel, its teeth are needly and stained by tar and ash.

  “No? But I am Jezol, Sixth Prince of Hell. You think what you desire is beyond my ability to grant?”

  It waits for my answer, but I do not give it. It smirks.

  “I like you. You reek of blood,” it says, and I shiver unconsciously. “Because of the blood on your hands, I shall deal with you. The bodies that fall in your wake, tell me, what use are they to you? Why waste their blood? Give it to me, and I will give you power. I shall send my workers in your footsteps to gather it. You’ll never see them, you won’t have to do a thing. Only pledge it to me. Bind yourself to me. And in exchange—power.”

  I don’t know what it is about this moment that has me feeling I’m dealing with the actual devil. I’m still in a game—I know that. And yet, here in this dark, smoky place, illuminated by the faintest red lights as I stare down a thing I couldn’t dream up even in my worst nightmares, a thing that urges me to sell my soul in exchange for everything I could ever want…somehow it all feels just a bit too meta.

  “If I do this thing, what will you give me, exactly?”

  It likes this question, and it smiles again. I wish it wouldn’t.

  “You are very proud of your constitution; you can withstand many blows. But I could make your constitution legendary, so you could withstand even more.”

  So it’s free stat points. Doubtless it picked constitution because that is my highest stat. If I’d been a mage, it would have offered me intelligence; a fighter, strength.

  “How much more constitution?” I press the thing.

  “Hm. That depends on you, doesn’t it? Here, your sacrifice is already bound. Offer him up to me, and receive my blessing. Chosen one.”

  Ari’s name for me. Did it use it deliberately? Or is that what it tells all the adventurers that cross its path? Make them feel special, make them feel seen. Like this demon is the only one in the world that sees their true potential, and has the power to unlock it…

  “You are very cynical, I can see.”

  “You can read my mind?”

  “Just like your little friend.”

  It knows about Ari too. I see Jezol is another of Tetra Chronicle’s seemingly god-like characters. I wonder how much this thing could really offer me, if I ally myself with it, and pay its price.

  So cheap. Just the blood of monsters I’m going to kill anyway. Blood that isn’t even real…

  “One thing,” I ask it as I seriously consider its offer. “Why can’t you take it yourself? This man’s blood.”

  It is angered by my question. Insulted. A third, vertical eye in the middle of it’s forehead opens suddenly, fairly paralyzing me with the ferocity of its gaze. But I stand firm.

  “You’re not really in this room, are you? You can’t come to this plane, is that it? Something is keeping you bound down there, isn’t it? In hell, or whatever.”

  “I will bear no more of your insults. Take the knife,” it indicates to a ceremonial dagger laid out on a nearby stump. “Pour his blood for an oblation on my feet, and I shall overlook your offense.”

  I walk over to the stump. Pick up the dagger. I look to Jezol, who watches me with quivering nostrils. I look down to Captain Moon who looks unconscious even as he kneels bound, beaten senseless by the cultists, so he no longer resembles a Kpop star, but Rocky at the end of his fight with Apollo Creed.

  Will he even feel it, I wonder? And if he does, does it even matter? Is it any different from when I destroyed the cockatrice eggs?

  A bit, I think, still watching him swaying before me, drooling blood from a comically swollen lip. Because those were monster eggs, and Captain Moon is a human. A friend, isn’t that what I called him when I spoke with Drayer?

  Even if he is an NPC, just another jumble of code and AI without anything resembling a pulse or a soul…can I really sacrifice his blood for my own gain?

  “It’s time.” Jezol’s abyssal voice interjects itself into my thoughts.

  “Make your choice.”