The present…

  A bead of sweat fell from Patty’s brow, landing on her blade next to a splatter of red and black blood—Patty’s blood and the monster’s.

  There was more red than black.

  “Keep that sword up!” Hoka snapped. “That thing won’t give you time to catch your breath!”

  Patty raised her sword just in time to block the descent of the Mantodea’s claw. The mantis creature hissed, nearly pushing Patty over as it snapped at her neck with its curved mandibles.

  Blood splattered Patty’s face and the pressure on her sword vanished. She gagged, backing away from the decapitated monster.

  “You couldn’t have let me get out of the way first?” she yelled, wiping the black viscous liquid out of her eyes.

  “You fail to defend yourself, you get a face full of blood,” Hoka said. “Only next time it’ll be yours. That monster was the same level as you. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have been able to handle it.”

  “My Dexterity is only C-2,” Patty said. “The damn bug kept dodging my attacks.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be fighting close range,” Hoka said. “That thing could’ve cut you in two and you’d have bled out before I could even close the wound.”

  “Basic Heal is handling the damage just fine,” Patty pointed out. She stowed her sword in her Inventory before her tendency to talk with her hands resulted in a missing limb.

  “Spells are unreliable,” Hoka said firmly. “You need to get in the habit of avoiding the blows, not just healing them. Trust the System to compensate for your lack of skill, and you will end up face down in the dirt.”

  “The spells are fine,” Patty said. “You’re all just paranoid. Have you seen any of my spells fail in the past week? Or Helga’s? Bob’s?”

  Hoka shook her head. “Luck isn’t a skill, it’s a curse. It leads idiots like you to overconfidence.” She threw Patty a towel. “Go get cleaned up. Afterwards we can do some Dexterity training.”

  “In other words, you’re going to make me run laps and pretend you’re improving my stamina,” Patty translated, already over this warrior training. She was tempted to go into a magic build at the next Ascension just to spite Hoka.

  “System stats enhance what’s already there,” Hoka said. “So does gaining muscle. I don’t care if it changes your C-levels or not, training does help and the sooner you humans stop thinking of this as a game, the more of you we’ll have left when the Great Surge begins.”

  Patty grumbled all the way to the washbasin that was already tinged dark red with her previous failures.

  The Chosen had only been given two weeks to settle in and come to terms with their new reality. A number of them had gone to the wall, hoping to talk their way out of the wastelands, but even with Alathan supervision, not all of them made it back.

  They were well and truly stuck at the moment, and Patty’s group had been spread all across Pillan, along with another thousand people from other groups. They were lucky, some of the groups were split between multiple cities. Patty kept in touch with the rest of the Chosen in Pillan, but the Alathans were fast-tracking the integration process, which meant that training was done the Alathan way with Alathan students. They ate meals with Alathans and they slept in Alathan homes.

  It wasn’t integration, it was assimilation and Patty and the others were resisting in any small way they could; be it throwing puns into the conversation to confuse the translation abilities or throwing around movie references any time there was another human in the room.

  It annoyed Hoka to no end. According to her, an outsider was dead before the first monster spawned in their midst. They worked together or they died.

  And yet, the Alathan’s method of ‘working together’ was more of an attempt to outnumber the attacking hordes than true cooperation. They had all of the traditional party roles, but they didn’t use them efficiently. The closest they got to organized warfare was putting the tanks in front and the healers in the back.

  Patty was taking notes on how not to organize a party, but she had to admit, the Alathan’s individual strength was impressive.

  Hoka was a Level 320. Patty had already thanked her for lying when they first asked. If any of her players heard that number, they would have run away long before their hour of preparation was up. Patty learned the names and levels of several others in the bustling city and she had yet to meet anyone below Level 100.

  Bob was having the time of his life, mostly because the sparring pits had a ‘fight-like-the-lower-player’ rule, meaning he actually won a few of his bouts with Level 150 players. They were so busy figuring out how to nerf themselves that they forgot that their opponent could throw a punch too.

  The fights where the players were the same level were much more interesting, mostly because, similar to how regular sparring worked, a smaller opponent could still outwit a larger opponent. From what Patty could see, the C-levels were almost unnecessary. They were, in most cases, a definition of the player’s physique and thus, easy to guess.

  There were some outliers, like how Linal, the High Leader of Alatha, had a C-5 in Strength despite his size.

  Patty’s C-levels were less than stellar. She was a couch-potato office worker with no magical aptitude. She secretly hoped that Hoka was right, and running would improve her performance because right now, she was getting creamed.

  Once Patty’s hair was back to its usual color, she toweled herself off and went back to face whatever horrors Hoka had in store for her.

  Helga had arrived sometime while Patty was cleaning herself up. She chatted excitedly with Hoka and by the rate at which she was hurling words into the air, Patty could tell something major had happened.

  “Patty! Did you see?” Helga asked.

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  “I was too busy getting my ass kicked by a giant bug,” Patty said. “What did I miss?”

  Helga made her Menu visible, pointing at the new section marked ‘Community’.

  Patty raised her eyebrows. “We’re getting Community Events back?”

  In Ember Online, Community Events were special events that gave increased rewards for clearing an overpopulated area of monsters or completing a task en masse. They were usually related to dungeon breaks, overflowing zones or some need in the community, such as a lack of weapons or food. They were one of the best parts of the game, but they, like many other features, hadn’t been present in Ember Offline so far.

  “Looks like it,” Helga said.

  Hoka shook her head. “I’ve never seen this before, but I don’t think it’ll help us much. The event is for the Aeteraut Forest. You said that was in Helia, right?”

  Helga, who paid the most attention to the forums, spent a large portion of the last week filling the Alathans in on what they missed. Having been cut off from the rest of civilization, with only the Chosen to give them updates, they knew next to nothing about the countries on the other side of the wall.

  Especially since historically, salty Tutorial Leaders refused to share any real information.

  Only this time, the news of the System’s screw up, coupled with Janet Lindale’s insistent and nosy nature, had led the Chosen to know a fair bit about the world beyond the wall. Not only country names, but climates, cultures; they had little tidbits about pretty much every major people group on Ember—with the exception of the Loren, a reclusive Archipelago in the Northwest Sea.

  “I’m assuming the feature was disabled for energy reasons,” Helga said. “This is a good sign, isn’t it? It means the System is doing better.”

  The only event available at the moment was titled, The Closing of the Aeteraut Forest Dungeon and it was just a run of the mill clearing quest to prepare for a System update.

  Closing a dungeon wasn’t a thing in Ember Online, but if there was a way to do so, it made sense that the System would want to do it.

  ‘Anomaly’ was also a word that hadn’t been used in the Ember Online flavor text. The whole thing felt like a new feature being pushed out using an old one to make the transition smoother.

  “Guys, did you hear?!” Bob skidded to a stop just outside the training area.

  “We’re looking at it now,” Patty said. “Doesn’t really affect us, though.”

  “Forget the event! Check out the ranking!” he said, hopping the fence and running over.

  There was ranking?! Patty cursed her luck. Of course, there would be ranking in an event that she couldn’t participate in.

  She pulled up the section and her jaw dropped.

  Contribution Ranking

  1. [Rayna — Lerian] -> 300 points

  2. [Karla Jen — Azuranian] -> 118 points

  3. [Yen Tar Leena — Yndar] -> 112 points

  4. [Kria Iklan — Jin] -> 102 points

  5. [Lowell Kesh — Aroth] -> 100 points

  6. …

  A slow grin spread across Patty’s face. “Well, I’ll be damned. And here I told her to check the top of the leader boards for us.”

  * * *

  “Aeteraut Forest Dungeon…” Shela read aloud. “It’s… a dungeon?”

  “That was unexpected,” Rayna muttered, closing the notification. She would have to talk to Amon about how to prevent this sort of thing in the future, or at least, how she could keep Ronari from figuring out she was involved. She couldn’t just ignore the cracks if they were the monsters to spawn. The world would be a lot safer without monsters in it.

  The look on Shela’s face said she wasn’t taking this news as well as Rayna.

  “Dungeons aren’t real,” she insisted. “They’re—”

  “Look, Shela, I don’t really have time for a mental breakdown—I’ve had enough of them this month myself. Now that the System has proven me right can we save the arguments for another time?”

  The forest was about to be flooded with players trying to capitalize on the events Experience boost. Rayna was trying to remain at least vaguely incognito, and that meant getting the heck out of dodge.

  She had briefly considered taking advantage herself, but that would delay her plans, and she was already two weeks late for this Administrator gig.

  “You just caused a System update,” Shela said. “I’m supposed to just—Brother Lenqu was right, wasn’t he? That first time he came draggin’ you to the temple. You caused the C-level update. Were you involved with the Health Bar update too?”

  Rayna shook her head. How did anyone keep secrets?! Was this why the System had a memory wipe function?

  It didn’t matter. That function was never coming back.

  “The System is doing things, not me,” Rayna said, only somewhat truthfully. “My System updated after I got Essence poisoning and the other version of the System is… proactive.”

  Downright manipulative, she corrected in her head. Ronari was a pain in the ass and she had been behind most of the updates. Rayna wouldn’t be surprised if this was her too.

  Which just increased her need to talk to Amon about this before closing any more cracks.

  “Essence poisonin’?” Shela frowned. “That’s basically a death sentence.”

  “Like crystallized Miasma is toxic?” Rayna muttered. The black crystal buzzed beneath her feet slightly as if emphasizing Rayna’s point.

  “Are you sure you’re even a Lerian?” Shela asked, eyeing the floor with trepidation.

  “You’re the one who assumed,” Rayna pointed out. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just a human masquerading as a Lerian to gain your trust.”

  “Well, as far as I know, Lerians are the only ones who can handle Essence,” Shela said, taking the statement seriously.

  This event must have really off-balanced her if she was acting so clueless. Shela always seemed like she knew more than she was saying.

  “And you evolved,” Shela continued. “Seems pretty clear—”

  “Well then, there you go,” Rayna said. “Stupid questions get stupid answers. Now can we leave? I’ve got plans and the faster I get to them, the better.”

  Rayna moved to leave but Shela blocked her way out of the cavern.

  “Come on, Shela,” Rayna said in a voice that was entirely too petulant for her taste, but this was getting annoying. “I know you have secrets too. This isn’t—”

  “How did you do that?” Shela asked, nodding at the closed anomaly.

  Rayna frowned back at the crack. “I just did. Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” Shela said, her voice resolute. “Not because I’m pryin’ into your business.” She took a deep breath. “The room smells fresher than it did before.”

  Rayna’s brows knit together. Was she supposed to understand what that meant?

  “There’s less Miasma,” Shela clarified. “I sense magic through my nose.”

  “Ah…” Rayna thought all Lerians saw magic.

  That’ll teach me not to make assumptions.

  “Anyway, whatever you did to that portal—”

  “Anomaly,” Rayna corrected.

  “—it helped,” Shela finished. “If you can teach me, I can do it if I find another one. Assuming it isn’t sittin’ in the center of a Miasma cavern like this one.”

  Rayna debated for a moment whether or not she should actually tell Shela how it worked, but a thought occurred to her: if other people could close anomalies too, then it could help Rayna cover her tracks from Ronari. She just had to spread the information as far and wide as possible. Then if Rayna did happen to close an anomaly, she could claim she heard the information while on the road.

  “It’s pretty simple if you know how to weave,” Rayna said.

  She showed Shela her notes, explaining the basics of what anomalies and boundary cracks were. To Shela’s credit, she didn’t make any more comments about Ashen or dungeons being bedtime stories. She was pretty quick on the uptake when she wasn’t being stubborn. Rayna copied her diagrams onto another page and tore it out for Shela.

  “And you got all this from a random book?” Shela asked skeptically.

  “I have an artifact,” Rayna said. “An Artificer’s collection. There are more books in there than I can read in a lifetime.”

  Rayna was almost surprised Phira didn’t come out to correct her. Phira had mentioned once that Arcanic Tinkerer was a few steps below Artificer, albeit not the most common Class path to it. Either Phira took the statement as a compliment or she was too busy following some train of thought and wasn’t paying attention to what was going on outside of her stone.

  She was going to hate that she missed all this.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Shela said in a voice that clearly said she didn’t believe Rayna, but she was letting the matter go for now. “Where are you going next?”

  Rayna put her notebook away. “Lord Emery’s estate, I think. I owe Nali another apology.”

  The Stubborn Light of a Dying Flame!

  Kiera Wulfe, Dyna Jannes