CHAPTER 8

  A New Path

  Bash shouldered through the inn door, stumbling over the threshold. His breathing hitched, caught in a loop.

  Breathe in. Glitch.

  Breathe out. Glitch.

  “Okay,” he whispered to the floorboards. “I am fine. This is fine. Maximus’s pets are strolling around like mall cops with murder bonuses, my soul is ten seconds away from being deleted, and everyone can tell that I belong here as much as a 7-foot purple dinosaur. “

  Bash was in full-on panic mode, somewhere past the part where you drop your phone down a storm drain and right before the part where your parachute fails to open.

  Bash collapsed onto a bench and folded himself into the universal posture of a man auditioning for rock bottom. Elbows on knees. Palms flat against his scalp. The pressure did not produce wisdom. It only produced more pressure.

  He searched for a grand solution and found a junk drawer. Hack the parameters. Tilt the board. Make jokes until memory overflow. The mental menu scrolled, offering nothing but nausea.

  The interface tried to comfort him with math and succeeded in the same way a smoke alarm comforts a house fire. Little green digits fizzed at the edges of his vision. He imagined them saying things like, Great news. You will die soon. Another offered a great tip. Have you tried to just not?

  I did once. It was called life, and that didn’t really work out. Maybe he could just hide? “Oh yeah, great plan,” he scoffed. “Why not just hide in the forest? Blessed are the bushes, for they shield our cowardice.”

  Fight? Bash barked a laugh, hollow and sharp. “Yeah, let’s fight the dude with a million dollars of in-game content. I’d probably get one-shotted so hard I’d be instantly erased from RAM.”

  He scrubbed his face and let his head thump the wall. “Great work, Sebastian. You died once on a cheap linoleum floor, and now you are shopping for a second death in a place with better lighting.”

  Bash waved without looking up. “Do not mind me. Standard meltdown. Comes with the room. If you leave a review, mention the existential crisis.”

  His mind kept racing. Options branched, collapsed. Every path led to Maximus. And it all ended the same way. Dead, deleted, gone. Unless... unless he found a crack in the system. An exploit that not even Mr. Billionaire could buy.

  The whispers pulled faintly in the back of his mind. Possibilities. Low percentages. Crazy odds. His specialty.

  The front door creaked open, and Bash caught the outline of Patrick entering the tavern in his peripheral.

  The older guardsman crossed the room without rushing and stopped in front of Bash's bench.

  “You okay?” Patrick’s voice was calm. No judgment, only the question.

  Bash finally looked up. Patrick stood there in a fresh tunic, spear angled carefully against his shoulder, close enough to reach, far enough not to threaten. His face showed the wear of someone who’d seen this kind of crisis before.

  “Receive any more quests?” Patrick added, for some reason deciding that was a reasonable follow-up.

  Bash blew out a breath. “Oh, I am full of personal growth. Currently, I’m focused on my five-year plan.”

  Patrick’s gaze weighed him carefully. His silence said more than words. No smile. Just a cold assessment.

  Bash stretched his lips into a grin anyway, teeth bared in defiance. It wasn’t joy. It was equal parts courage and madness. “I’ll wing it,” he said, tone way too casual for someone gambling with their life. “Been a proud tradition for idiots and heroes alike.”

  He shut his eyes briefly, squeezing them against the burn of exhaustion. “It’s the classic story, right? Some wannabe protagonist wanders into the dungeon with nothing but bad posture and wins anyway. Plot armor so thick that arrows bounce off.”

  When he opened his eyes again, he could see Patrick was still standing there, patient and silent.

  “Look,” Bash said, and for once the word didn’t wobble out of him. It landed steady, solid. “If I sit here doing nothing, I become a trivia question the system forgets to log. One more bug squashed, one more Friday evening patch.”

  Patrick sat down beside him. The bench groaned from the extra weight. “So what now?”

  Bash felt something shift. The dread was still there, but now it had direction. “There are exploits in this Shard,” he said. “If I can find and stack them, then maybe it’ll break.”

  Rubbing his eyes, Bash kept going. “I do not need to be a god to win, I just need to find a bug large enough that I can stuff myself into it.”

  Patrick folded his arms. His mouth was flat and grim. “Then pick a clean line. Quests keep the mind from eating itself.”

  Bash squinted. “So… back to rat control and making herb salad?”

  “Maybe,” Patrick said. “Or I can assign you something more difficult.”

  Bash looked at Patrick as if he had just discovered fire. “You... you can hand out quests?”

  Patrick blinked slowly, slowing his words like he was talking to a young child, “I am the village’s head guard, so yes.”

  “And if I keep you near me…” Bash grinned as his thoughts trailed off. Standing abruptly, with newfound energy, Bash turned to Patrick, “Congratulations! You are now my favorite user interface.”

  Patrick sighed, the sound similar to grinding on stone.

  Bash wilted. “Oh, of course, ten bandits. Why not? Next, you’ll be telling me to fetch wolf pelts.”

  Patrick’s lips actually curved slightly upwards at that one, “Funny you should say that. I do have one for wolf pelts. Ten of them. Hard work, but it pays decently.”

  Another chime.

  Bash slapped his forehead. “Nope. Cancel it. Cancel it right now. I don’t do fetch quests. You start off hunting fluffy dogs, next thing you know, you've spent three hours trying to find grandma's missing soup ladle. By the time you finish, the whole world has come to an end.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Patrick tilted his head. “Soup ladle?” He took on a face of concentration, thinking it over. “Well, it is traditional.”

  Bash groaned, dragging his hand down his face. “Please, for the love of all things holy and unholy. I hate getting sidetracked. We don’t have time for cliché land. If I ever see that wolf pelt counter pop up again, I’m uninstalling this entire afterlife.”

  “Fine,” Patrick said, with a stern look, “but it builds character.”

  “Yeah,” Bash muttered, “so does dysentery. Doesn’t mean I want it.” Bash looked toward Patrick, his voice uncharacteristically serious. “One quest. That's it. I'm a speedrunner, not a completionist. Please, for the love of the Shard, don't saddle me with a goddamn honey-do list.”

  Patrick simply nodded and offered his hand to shake.

  ***

  It was past midday, as Patrick and Bash were preparing for their ‘holy crusade’ to rid the countryside of the bandit blight, when another private message stopped Bash cold.

  The system carefully stuffed Maximus’s fury into neat little star-shaped bandages, censoring the billionaire’s tantrum. Bash examined the blinking asterisks, then barked out a laugh.

  “Oh, this is priceless. Our almighty Shard overlord can brainwash the masses, but he still can’t say ‘fuck’ without the system turning it into a fireworks show.”

  Patrick just looked over at Bash and grunted, obviously not amused.

  Bash ignored the obvious disinterest and kept on rambling. “Do you think he gets charged per letter? Does each star count as a microtransaction? By the end of the week, he’ll be broke, muttering ‘gosh darn’ while his priest washes his mouth out with soap.”

  Bash’s grin widened, teeth bared to no one. The unease that had dug into his ribs earlier unwound. Annoyance replaced it. Then defiance. If Maximus wanted worship, he would only get blasphemy.

  Bash flicked the message away with a thought. “Keep screaming, pal. I’ll be over here, racking up your swear-tab.”

  Looking over at his new traveling companion. Patrick was being such a good listener, just the perfect ying to his yang… or was it his yang to his ying?

  Walking into the market, there were several piles of mismatched goods everywhere: dented helmets beside stale bread, ropes tangled with rusted swords. Patrick cut straight through the chaos, nodding at some of the vendors as he passed. “Rations and something for you to hit harder with.”

  Bash arched a brow. “Are you saying I’ve been holding back?”

  Patrick only grunted, stopping at a smith’s stall. The man laid out a pair of dull iron bracers, a chipped short sword, and finally... a pair of spiked brass knucklers.

  They looked ugly, something a street brawler would use rather than a proper weapon. Bash picked them up and slid his fingers through the loops, feeling the weight and fitment.

  But unlike with the sword, there was no unnatural heaviness or error message about class restrictions. Curious, Bash mentally flexed and watched the overlay spin around the item. Hidden deep in the items code, stitched some metadata and notes.

  Bash tried to imagine what kind of moron would program this to be ‘unarmed.’ He flexed his fingers, anticipating the gratification of crushing enemies’ skulls. Just the sort of intimate bonding experience he’d been craving. “Street Fighter cosplay, but with stat boosts.”

  Patrick looked at him. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Bash said, pulling the knuckles back off. “Just realizing I’m about to fight people with jazz hands.”

  They stocked up on supplies, including travel rations and bedrolls. Bash’s inventory was starting to resemble an MMO loadout.

  Bash even found a pile of gear scavenged from the bandits, including the skull mask the raid boss wore. Seeing it again made Bash shiver. For a moment, he contemplated taking it as a trophy, but decided it would just haunt his dreams. Besides, without some kind of spatial ring, he’d have to carry that damn thing everywhere.

  “Hey Patrick, are there any bags we can buy that break the laws of physics so we don’t have to carry all this shit around in backpacks?”

  Patrick barely glanced over, shaking his head. “No. None that I have heard of.”

  Sighing, Bash selected a set of vambraces and leggings, and a vest to put on.

  Patrick walked up to Bash, glancing over him. Nodding, he picked out a codpiece from the pile and handed it to him without a word, just a simple grunt.

  Bash smiled while holding the funny-looking armor, “Right, always protect the goods.”

  As a reply, Patrick turned and started walking quickly toward the southern gate as Bash gave chase.

  As the two men walked past the gate, Bash noticed a battered sign pointed in the direction they were going. Londonland, 1 day travel.

  Bash read the sign. “That is not even trying. What, did the developers run out of brain cells that day?”

  Patrick only shrugged in reply.

  The southern road that snaked out of the Old Village was simply packed dirt, with some wagon ruts and the occasional broken fencepost leaning into the weeds. Bash trudged along beside Patrick, his hands shoved into his new trousers.

  Something nagged at Bash as they walked. “Wait. Hold on. How are you able to leave the village?”

  Patrick looked back with a raised eyebrow and a questioning look.

  Bash continued. “When I ran... Err. I mean, when I fought a raider, he got stuck at a certain point. Like an invisible wall.

  Nodding, Patrick returned his focus back to the road. “Quest Boundary.”

  “Wow. Super insightful.”

  Sighing, Patrick clarified, barely. “Doesn't apply here. Or to Uploads.”

  The landscape opened up as they walked. Rolling hills dotted with clusters of trees, fields stretching toward the horizon, the occasional farmhouse sending thin ribbons of smoke into the pale sky. It was almost peaceful, if you ignored the fact that everything here was a simulation designed to exploit dead people.

  Bash found himself staring at a distant field where figures moved in slow, repetitive patterns. Planting, maybe. Or harvesting. Hard to tell from this distance. “So those NPCs are just... farming? All day?”

  “Yes,” Patrick replied in a clipped tone.

  Bash continued to watch. “So the food is actually grown. It doesn’t just magic its way into existence.”

  Patrick nodded.

  Great listener, Patrick. Not a great talker. Bash tried a different subject, “You said you were a construction worker back in the real world. So like, did you build houses? Frame walls, that kind of thing?”

  “Skyscrapers,” Patrick grunted out.

  Bash’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, big time then. What did you do? Let me guess.” He studied Patrick’s stoic profile. “Crane operator. Has to be. Because you never talk. Like, ever. I think the only time you’ve strung more than five words together was when you were scoping me out back in the bar.”

  Patrick looked over, and something flickered in his eyes. “Crane talks more than you’d think.”

  “Really? About what?”

  “Weather, Spotting. Load weights.” Patrick’s gaze returned to the road. “But no. I did safety.” His face, already grim, somehow got grimmer.

  “Safety third, as they always say.”

  Patrick actually scoffed at that. A small sound, barely more than a sharp exhale through his nose, but it was something. Even more Progress, Bash thought.

  “Can I ask how you...?” Bash gestured vaguely. “You know. Ended up here? Your injury, I mean.”

  Patrick’s jaw tightened. “Equipment failure.”

  For a while, Bash waited for the rest of the story, but when nothing else came, he just shrugged and let it drop. It didn’t seem like he’d be getting much more.

  They walked on. The road curved around a low hill, revealing more farmland, more distant figures working the fields. A cart trundled past going the other direction, driven by an NPC who didn’t even glance their way.

  “Three years,” Patrick said suddenly.

  Bash looked over, startled. “What?”

  “I’ve been here three years. First year in Londonland, working the docks. Then guard duty. Then Old Village.”

  It was the most Patrick had said at once since they’d started walking. Bash felt like he’d been handed something fragile.

  “Three years,” Bash repeated. “That’s... a lot of time to be stuck in a place like this.”

  Patrick shrugged. “You adapt.”

  “Do you? Or do you just get better at pretending?”

  Patrick didn’t answer. But something in his silence felt like agreement.

  Bash turned on Investigator again, more out of habit than expectation. The familiar overlay flickered across his vision, cataloging the road ahead, the trees, the distant farms.

  After about two or three more hours of walking, he finally saw something new. A quest marker cut a clean line through the road up ahead.

  Bash’s eyes narrowed as he looked over at his traveling companion. “Heads up. Quest marker up ahead.”

  “Alright,” Patrick replied, and walked a bit off the trail before dropping his pack behind a bush.

  Following his example, Bash did the same, and as one, the two men continued down the road, a bit more slowly than before.

  It didn’t take much longer before Shapes flickered between the trees, and half a dozen men stepped onto the road, weapons glinting.