When Elijah had selected the option to play the core’s memories, he’d expected the same feeling as before, when he’d touched the memories of the Reaper Lair core. Instead, it felt more like he was being ripped from his body.

  He tried to fight the feeling; thinking this was some effort by the core to continue to protect itself, but eventually the core won out. Its control of its physical self, which had put up a good struggle against Elijah, was nothing compared to its control of its willpower.

  Elijah found himself standing in an empty room. The walls, ceiling and floor were all white and seemed to glow with an inner light. He could sense his body was still in the library, but his mind was here.

  No, that wasn’t quite right either. The more he felt his new state of being, the more it felt like the split in his mental processing every time he pulled open a menu while still viewing the world behind it. He could sense his body still, could tell that he could move it anytime if he really wanted to, but he was also here in this body and could choose to move it instead.

  It was a trippy feeling.

  He heard a quiet sob from behind him and turned to face the body of a small child, hunched over in the empty room and crying.

  He had to force back a groan as he realized his position. This whole scenario was incredibly cliché. Though whether it was the kind where this kid would suddenly spring up and attack him, or the kind where he would have to console the child was still to be decided.

  He slowly approached, his hands held out to show he didn’t have a weapon. “Are you the dungeon core of this area?” He asked quietly.

  The child, too androgynous to tell if it was meant to be a boy or a girl, turned quickly and put its hands up to protect itself.

  ”Please, please don’t hurt me,” it whimpered.

  Elijah shook his head. “I’m not going to hurt you, but please you have to stop trying to fight me and my friends. You’re causing damage to yourself.”

  He could sense the core was still trying to fight back, and with every attempted spawn in was taking damage to its stability. If it didn’t stop soon, it was going to destroy intensely before Elijah could get answers.

  “Please,” it cried. “Please, just take your friends and go away. I don’t want to die. I’m so scared.”

  Elijah kneeled down just a few meters away from the child; he felt his stomach tighten at the sound of the child’s cry. It hurt him to listen to, and for a moment he thought back to a quieter moment. His high school girlfriend, his first and last, a few months after graduation, her quiet sobs when Elijah showed her the letter.

  Genetic anomalies detected.

  Class-A restriction.

  Reproduction prohibited by the Board of Fertility.

  He cleared those thoughts from his mind. It didn’t matter if this child wasn’t his. They were scared and hurt, and Elijah needed to do something about that.

  ”Listen to me, please. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you keep trying to summon monsters to scare us off it could kill you,” Elijah told the child. He tried to stay calm; acting frightened or worried would only reinforce the child’s—the core’s—own fears. He knew that the only way to put this core out of its misery now would be for it to die, but if it destroyed itself the whole dungeon would collapse, killing him and his friends. They’d respawn, but lose all their items that weren’t soul-bound. Not normally something Elijah would worry about, but money was getting tight, and this dungeon hadn’t rewarded them with any loot yet.

  “The woman said that you were a monster. That you killed another like me,” the child wailed.

  That stopped Elijah in his tracks. Someone had told this Core about what he’d had to do to the Reaper Lair Core.

  “You’re talking about the Hearth Forge Core, right?” he asked quietly. The child’s sobs quieted enough that he could hear Elijah, proving that the Core was willing to pay attention to him.

  “It wasn’t a malicious thing; the Core was damaged and hurting. Someone had abused its power and damaged it.” Elijah moved closer. “I didn’t kill the Core of that dungeon because I wanted to; I did it because it was hurting and damaged and asked me to do it.”

  “She said you were going to kill me. Are you?”

  Elijah sighed and sat down. “Like I said, the only reason I killed the other Core was because it asked me to. It didn’t want to continue to live being used by those that didn’t respect it.”

  The child looked up at him. “Would you kill me?” The child was scared, but there seemed to be a sense of hope in its voice.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  It disturbed Elijah to see this small child asking such a question. He knew this was all a game, and this wasn’t an actual child, but it still felt so real to him.

  “Not if that isn’t what you want me to do. I know you are hurt, but I’m not going to force that decision for you.”

  “She said if I didn’t fight you, didn’t kill you and stop you from ever coming back, that you would rip me from the wall and kill me.”

  Elijah focused on the child’s eyes. They weren’t normal; there were no pupils or sclera, only white orbs that had the faintest glow to them. All the proof that Elijah needed this child was a high-level AI and not just another NPC.

  “Who is the ‘she’ that told you these things?” His mind raced with the possibilities. Bo had said the Dungeon Guardian class had never made it to production. Could it be one of the beta testers who somehow got access to the class in the released game?

  The only other option was much more terrifying.

  “The woman with access, a class but no name. She was here, but I couldn’t see her until she wanted to be seen.”

  His mind went back to the memories he’d seen through the eyes of the Hearth Forge Core. Arturus and an unknown entity. That entity pulled that Core from the wall and forced it to change, with no regard for the inherent need of the Core for a ‘sleep of change’.

  “What class did the woman have?”

  The core opened his mouth to respond but stopped. Frozen in place as if somebody had pressed a pause button.

  “Administrator,” a voice spoke from behind him.

  Elijah jumped to his feed and spun, attempting to call his Batwing Blade to his hand. No shadows sprang forth, no blade formed. He was powerless in this area, or at the very least incapable of activating his offensive skills or inventory.

  In front of him stood a woman in a suit and tie. “I’m a little surprised that you managed to get here. I had assumed that the Core would kill itself before you could get to it.”

  Elijah shook his head. “It tried, and now it’s damaged beyond the ability to repair. Why are you doing this? Are you really an admin?”

  She nodded her head. “I am, like your friend Bo, I work for Shardline.”

  “Bo doesn’t work for Shardline; he was laid off.”

  She grinned at him. “Do you really think you can ever stop belonging to the company, Elijah?”

  The way she said belonging was unsettling to Elijah, as if they were items, not people.

  She laughed. “Oh, what an expression you have on your face. It’s almost adorable.”

  ”If you are an admin, then why don’t you do your job and log everyone out. You have the tools to fix this.”

  Her grin widened, and she looked at him in a way that made him feel tiny, like he was a small fish being sized up by a shark.

  “Because I don’t want to. That’s why,” she told him, the smile never dropping from her lips. “You see? I like the way things are now. Fate may be the goddess of this world, but she isn’t alone in the pantheon anymore.”

  This is what Elijah had feared would happen, though he had expected it would come from Arturus or one of the other Celestial players. He never thought that a developer would crack and try it themselves.

  “You’re only lucky that Fate seems to have taken a liking to you. I can’t interfere with you directly, or she’ll become aware of my presence here, and I can’t have that. At least not yet.”

  She stepped closer to him; her body seemed to put off an aura of power unlike anything Elijah had ever felt.

  “That’s going to change eventually, Elijah. And when it does, I’m going to make sure that you and your little friends are going to be reset back to level one where you belong. Or maybe I’ll drop you all at the bottom of an ocean with a respawn anchor there.”

  Elijah reacted before he thought. This admin was threatening his friends, threatening to do one of the cruelest things you could do to someone. He lunged forward; he couldn’t use his skills or summon his weapon, but he still had his fists and physical skills.

  He jumped, intending to hit her, only realizing in mid-flight how stupid an idea it was to attack someone with access to the full suite of admin tools. She may have told him she wouldn’t interfere with him yet—at least not until Fate could no longer stop her—but pushing her like this was stupid.

  She flinched slightly but didn’t move to stop him. He felt his body freeze in midair. The entire world stuttered, and he found himself standing in a relaxed position back where he had started.

  She smirked at him. “You don’t think I’d be so stupid as to not activate a safe zone around this area?”

  He grimaced at her. “So what happens now?” he growled when he finally checked his anger. “Are you going to keep screwing with me and my friends?”

  Her smirk dropped. “No. Well, maybe. It all depends on what your plans are. If you keep working to free everyone, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop you. But if you just chill out, learn to live in the game and be a good little boy, then maybe I’ll let you and your friends live peacefully.”

  “I can set you up in your own kingdom. A castle, guards, lofty positions for your friends. You can even settle down and start a relationship with that woman if you wanted to. Just stop trying to break my game.”

  Elijah would be lying to himself if that didn’t appeal to him. That was the whole point behind him playing this game, distilled into his base desires. He’d started playing the game to escape the real world, and if this admin could set him up with a kingdom of his own, then he could make a better world for his friends to live in than the real world.

  Would they want that, though?

  No, Elijah very much doubted that they would. They weren’t like him. They all had so much to live for.

  Elijah shook his head. “No,” he told her. “If you could do something to stop me already, you would have. I’m not going to be afraid of you.”

  “And I’m going to get my friends out of this game if it’s the last thing I do.”

  She frowned at him. “I was worried you’d be irrational about this.” Her body shimmered, vanishing before his eyes. “We’ll meet again, Elijah. And you will be sorry when we do.”

  “You’re not the first person to tell me that recently. Still doesn’t change my determination.”

  When she’d disappeared fully, he turned and kneeled back beside the Core child. “I’m so sorry you got wrapped up in all this.”

  The child looked up at him once more, tears flowing down its cheeks. “Will you kill me?”