At first, the laser beam missed the dragon by about a foot—this gun veers left, some distant thought whispered in my head—so I whipped the laser pistol to one side while the beam was still active. The beam jerked right, leaving a harsh, burning line across the dragon’s mouth and head—but it didn’t cut her head off.

  Instead, it drew the dragon’s attention.

  “Well, shit,” I said, aiming a second time as the dragon turned its head toward me, its body following suit seconds later. If I hadn’t played this part of the game in virtual reality dozens of times before—every time I made a new character, I had to start here—then I might have taken a couple of seconds to lose my gods-damned mind.

  There was a dragon. Coming at me. A dragon. It was the size of a house, pine-green, with head spikes and back spines that seemed to be made out of twisted wood, and eyes as vivid as tree sap in sunlight. It was a hundred feet away and rapidly closing, its front talons extended.

  At least it had stopped with the flame breath. I must have hurt the inside of its mouth with that laser blast.

  I fired for its barrel chest next, once again swiping the beam to one side to try to cleave it like one of the buildings back in the City. I left a smoldering straight line and managed to cut through one wing.

  The dragon roared, the sound tight and broken, a cry of pain. I wouldn’t have time to fire again.

  I lowered the gun and bolted left along the tree line. Without warning, the ground shook, making me stumble. I stopped and looked back to see the dragon on the ground, dirt clods and stones still flying from its crash site, a piece of its wing fluttering to the stony earth behind it.

  That was me. I cut through that wing. It must have been enough to drop it from the sky, but the mark across its chest had already stopped smoking. The massive beast was getting to its feet already, so I hadn’t killed it, not in the least.

  I hung there, torn between choices. I needed to get ahead in the level if I wanted to reach Radix like my quest said to. But I’d just served this dragon up on a silver platter for anyone that exited those caves, and all the other Hunters would know how to kill it far better than I did.

  Did I want to hand over all that loot—and presumably experience points—to my enemies?

  Nope. Let’s not do that.

  I raised the laser gun again, but I didn’t know where to aim. The flutter of wings reminded me that I had one resource to use.

  I calculated my words for a precious few seconds, then said to Dave, “Am I crazy, or did they downgrade my gun after Setup Mode?”

  Dave had landed in a wayward pine to my left, so I heard him clearly as he replied, “I think this particular dragon isn’t intended to be beaten in the game this is modeled after. It’s overpowered. Players are supposed to run, not fight it. Your quest says so.”

  I measured his words. He was trying to give me hints without making me look like I wasn’t Remnant.

  “So Basic weapons can’t work against it,” I said finally. “Even though they took down entire buildings during Setup?”

  “They were at real-life power levels then. Now they’re qued.”

  Cued? I almost asked what that meant, but Remnant wouldn’t have asked. My eyes darted. Were cameras watching? Probably. This was opening night on their stupid game show.

  “So no, I don’t think you can take it,” Dave went on.

  But I had damaged it. Not a lot, but the wing came off.

  “What about if I use a lot of charges on the same spot without moving the beam?”

  He cocked his head. “Are you a good enough shot?”

  I almost said yes, but he narrowed his eyes and twitched his head, a barely imperceptible don’t. He was trying to hold me back from saying… what?

  From acting like myself. I have to act like Remnant.

  Which means….

  “Fuck you, Dave,” I said.

  The parrot visibly relaxed. “Only if you’re buying.”

  To play Remnant, I just had to be a dick.

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  I considered my gun again. Maybe the beam is weaker when it’s used as a slash attack. But if I focus the entire energy of a charge on one spot… then add more charges on top of that one….

  I tilted the gun to the side. Where once nine little violet lights had glittered along the barrel, there was now only six. Six charges remaining.Could I even get more? Would they let us equip lasers in a fantasy-style world?

  Even if the loss of the charges was permanent, killing this dragon had to be worth it. It must be worth a stupid amount of experience.

  Lore would have known exactly how many, I thought ruefully. My brother had come back to kill this dragon a hundred times, after he’d leveled his characters high enough to beat it.

  He’d said it was an easy boss. If only that could be true in real life.

  While I stood there, torn, the dragon swiveled its head. It narrowed its eyes, and it started to run at me.

  Welp. Decision made.

  The dragon’s every step made a thunderous noise, each pound crashing through my ears, drowning out all other thought. A name appeared above the dragon, and a number, but I couldn’t read it.

  No matter what its level was, I had to fight it. It was me or it.

  I broke into another feverish run, cutting into the forest, toward the path I knew would be there. The dragon angled its bulk to meet me, and now the forest exploded into sound. Snapping trees, quaking earth, and crushed branches closed in rapidly to my left.

  This is stupid, so stupid, what am I thinking, I’m going to die—

  The trees ended, the forest opening up to reveal a shadowy, well-trodden path. I sped down the center of it, away from the mountain, toward Radix. An NPC approached on my left, just standing there, a guy in a shabby coat who opened his mouth when I got close.

  I ignored him, running past as the dragon roared, trees cracking by the dozens behind me. I heard its footfalls even out. The path was too small for the enormous creature, but there were fewer trees thanks to the path. That made the dragon speed up.

  I glimpsed other names and numbers hovering in violet light to either side of me, just inside the woods. Those would be the starting monsters, gorgos, little sentient piles of stones that sometimes disguised themselves as cairns.

  Without warning, one attacked me, spinning out of the woods like a pair of bolas. I tried to dodge, and only partly succeeded; it landed a glancing blow to my shoulder. I didn’t engage it, leaving the rock monster in the dust as my shoulder pulsed.

  It hit me—a tad late—that this wouldn’t be like Seven Keys. There would be pain here, real pain, not the buzzing of feedback from a Leap suit. I could die here. I could die.

  That’s nothing new, I told myself.

  The final corner drew close, and I groaned as I pushed myself to my limit, using every hard-earned muscle for this last stretch. The road curved sharply, revealing a tall wooden gate and an even taller wooden watch tower next to it.

  Thanks to the curve in the road, I wouldn’t be in the dragon’s line of sight for maybe a minute.

  “Running isn’t a plan, Remnant,” Dave said, somewhere above. His voice always seemed to come through clearly, no matter how many branches and things separated us, provided he was within a certain range of me.

  “Shut up, or I’ll make you try it,” I huffed between breaths, reaching out to tap the inventory menu on my helmet screen. It expanded, showing the eight measly items I had, my ten coppers’ worth of money included in the center.

  I reached in and grabbed one item, then tossed it ahead of me. I retrieved and dropped the second item just as I reached the first one. I leapt over the pile and finished the rest of the distance toward the gate.

  Two guards stood there, NPCs in chipped red armor. I recognized them from the game. These were Graylings, one of the three playable races in Seven Keys. They looked human, but their skin was monochromatic, and they could sprout wings to fly if they wanted.

  I wondered who or what these NPCs really were. Holograms, maybe? Were they solid?

  They hailed me, but I ignored them, aiming my laser pistol at the wall at the base of the watch tower. I fired, holding down the trigger as I made a rapid arc with the beam.

  Five charges left, I thought as I slammed into the wall a second later. The arc shape—like a door cutout—caved under my weight, and I stumbled inside as the guards shouted behind me.

  The dragon roared again, the sound thicker than before, a great bellow of rage as it turned the same corner where I’d dropped all those items. I got my feet under me and seized hold of the ladder inside the town wall, out of sight of the dragon once more.

  I climbed toward the watchtower. One guard shouted at me, then cursed, using a real swearword. Normally, NPCs only cursed using game lingo.

  I guess the Conduit really did add curse words to their dialogue.

  As I scaled the ladder, the other guard yelled something about the dragon, and I heard an arrow twang above me. The NPCs had given up on refusing me entrance, focusing instead on the dragon’s attack.

  I scrambled over the edge of the watchtower platform, kept low, and crawled up to the low wall facing the forest. A third red-armored NPC stood next to me, drawing and firing arrows at a much faster pace than they did in the game, but he paid me no mind. Kind of hard to care about a human attacker when there was a dragon bearing down on you.

  Then again, the NPCs in the game were not this smart. The Conduit had changed more than their curse words.

  The watch tower rattled, wooden shingles falling from its pointed roof as the dragon got within snapping distance.

  Suddenly, the creature stopped.

  I sprang to my feet, hoisting myself onto the low wall. The dragon had come to a halt only fifteen feet away, its head gone still as it stared down at the items I’d dropped: one dragon hatchling skin, and one dragon hatchling horn. I’d looted them off the baby dragon.

  The dragaon gave a wild, earsplitting keen. When it ended, the air began to vibrate with building fury. It was a physical sensation, a quivering, an intensifying heat.

  The dragon was calling its fire.

  I’d read enough books to know that I wouldn’t survive that fire if it got to me. The dragon started to raise its head, and I knew it would open its jaws and burn through the town of Radix, and everyone in it.

  But right now, in this moment, it didn’t see me. It had seen me enter the gate, but it hadn’t seen me climb above it.

  This new vantage wasn’t good enough, though. Damn it. I’d hoped I could kill it from here, but I had to be closer. You always had to get close, to defeat a powerful enemy. You had to sidle up close and slip the blade in yourself.

  I jabbed my laser gun into the inside pocket of my suit jacket—just as the dragon opened its mouth.