Slumping to the ground, I looked up at Sakurai with a weak smile.

  She knelt and looked at my wound, asking with concern, “Are you ok? Did your bleeding debuff end?”

  I offered her a confident smile and gave a thumbs up with my remaining hand, “I guess so. I just can’t seem to stop losing limbs in this damn game.”

  “I’ve lost a few. Zombies and Skeletons use their racials to find another limb to replace the ones they lose,” she said with a wince.

  Blinking in surprise, I looked down at my arm and cursed, “Fuck me, I got stealth nerfed!”

  “How is that?”

  Waving my ichor covered stump around, I said, “I can’t just stitch a new arm on. I have regeneration, which means I get health and stamina back faster if I have blood to drink but, without the graft ability I have to… I just have to let it grow back on its own.”

  “That is unfortunate,” she said with a note that implied she was smiling.

  “Maybe it would just be better to die and respawn? I don’t want to wait as long as I did last time,” I grumbled as I studied the bloody but sealed wound.

  She held up her hands and shook them back and forth, “No, don’t do that!”

  “Why not? Is the debuff super bad?”

  She seemed uncertain and ultimately shook her head, “I’ve heard stories from other players about some kind of bug with respawning. Some of them have struggled to log back in.”

  Sighing I extended my hand to her and she helped me up.

  “I’ll take your word for it,” I studied her for a moment and then asked, “if you don’t mind me asking what happened with Nomura?”

  She studied me with her flaming eyes as she considered what to say.

  We both moved to loot the two massive creatures as she said, “Nomura and I had a fight.”

  I furrowed my brow and prompted a description of the strange amulet I pulled from the creature that took my arm.

  “Eternal Hunter’s Heart

  A tumor from the heart of an Elite Hunter. Malignant but fortifying.

  Type: Neck

  Minimum Requirement: Level 26

  Rarity: Epic

  Tier: F

  Vitality +12, Spirit +8, +5% Resist to Dark Magic”

  “You want this,” and when she shook her head 'No' I continued, “was the fight about something serious?”

  “We have discussed before that I was a vtuber and that Nomura was an idol?”

  Taking off my fire amulet, I threw the new one on looking down with concern as the tumor hanging around the vine snapped out tendrils and dug into my chest.

  Holy shit this game is weird.

  Nodding, I looked at her with concern, “I remember something about that…”

  She sighed and looked out over the hamlet, “The reason that I had to graduate was that our fans found out that he and I were dating. I left myself unmuted when he came in to wish me goodnight and my fans lost their minds. In idol culture it is taboo for the idol to make themselves unavailable to their fans. That is part of the experience. Unfortunately they also recognized his voice.”

  “That all happened what… six months ago? Why did it come up again?”

  “I told him the truth,” she said with obvious pain in her voice that implied she was crying.

  “The truth?”

  She sniffed and lowered her eyes as she said, “That I left myself unmuted on purpose.”

  “Sakurai…,” I said with a grimace.

  Sudden anger filled her voice as she said, “He complained about being an idol ALL the time. He hated it. I knew he was afraid to step away and turn to producing. He was too comfortable. I,” she paused and when she spoke again her voice was more controlled, “I just wanted to help him but,” she sighed and shook her head, “Nomura, like me, is prone to going to a dark place in tough times. The stronger his anger the more fierce his ultimate melancholy. I know he is in pain but I fear angering him more.”

  “I… always got the sense that Nomura was a pretty happy guy, if a bit of a smartass,” I said in a whisper.

  She gave me a flat look and said, “It’s often the most charismatic and energetic who suffer the most from depression. They are just more skilled at hiding it.”

  Nodding, I fought the urge to wince at a statement striking so close to home.

  Ultimately I said, “you should talk to him.”

  She looked at me and started to speak but I cut her off, “No, if you don’t you will regret it for the rest of your life. Tell him why you did it and beg for forgiveness.”

  She thought for a long moment and nodded before bowing, “I will do so.”

  “Alright, let’s go purge this ruin and find the others at the chapel,” I said as I put a hand on her massive plate shoulder and smiled.

  Raising my hand to open my menus I realized at the last moment that my arm was gone. Glancing at Sakurai to see if she had noticed I saw no indication that she had. Of course, she was a skeleton, her expression was pretty unreadable. Smiling grimly at my predicament I sighed. A faint blue outline of my actual arm appeared to aid with accessing the menu and I studied them. There were few significant upgrades. Expert skills did seem much slower to level after all.

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  “I hope there isn’t another boss. The negatives of pumping tons of work into the Dual Wield skill are becoming apparent,” I said as I poked at my destroyed shoulder.

  She studied me as we made our way up the hill and said in a meek voice, “You mentioned when we first met that you watched my streams?”

  Nodding, I shrugged, “I think I mentioned I watched your stuff while I was doing editing for my own videos.”

  “You mentioned you watched my art streams,” she said with her head cocked.

  Giving her a warm smile I chuckled as I said, “Yeah. I hope you aren’t offended but they had a very ‘Bob Ross’ quality to them. I needed that calm. I am shit at editing.”

  “No, it’s definitely a compliment. Thank you so much,” she said with in an ecstatic tone.

  We paused on the switchback stairs up to the structure while I tried to get my gear in order and she asked, “Do you mind if I ask who you are? I know you mentioned that you would rather not say…”

  “As long as you don’t mind being disappointed I’ll tell you,” smirking and glancing at her I added, “or you could guess.”

  She tapped her chin with the tip of her boney finger and thought for a long moment before saying, “You aren’t Tanfo are you?”

  “Well, if you are not running for your life thinking I am that guy maybe you won’t be too weirded out when you find out who I really am,” I guffawed as I shook my head and laughed.

  “Tanfo, really?,” I said with a chuckle and a half grin.

  Eugene Michaelson, aka Tanfo, was a competitive first person shooter streamer. He wasn’t a scumbag on the level of KKG but he had a reputation for absolutely losing his shit at his audience. The guy was actually popular BECAUSE of his frequent outbursts. Sydney had often suggested in brainstorming sessions that we wanted to eventually be making ‘Tanfo’ money. The association had never sat well with me.

  “I don’t truly judge anyone until I know them. I always assumed that Tanfo intentionally lost his temper to get views,” she said, her armor clanking as she shrugged.

  Running my fingers through my avatar’s thick curls I agreed, “You know, you’re right. I shouldn’t judge that guy. We even spoke a few times and he seemed pretty chill.”

  Sighing, I gave her a weak and guilty smile as I shook my head, “I’m not Tanfo. Hell, given what cleaned my career’s clock I wish I had Tanfo’s anger management problem. Also, I am one hundred percent guilty.”

  She seemed uncomfortable at that.

  “You played EO right?”

  She nodded.

  Turning off my voice modulator I put on my best announcer voice, “What’s going on out there VossHall. It’s your boy the Vox here for another stream.”

  She put her hands over her mouth and I was once again at a loss to discern her expression but she finally said, “You’re Malcom Voss?!,” with genuine wonder.

  Nodding I reached to rub the back of my neck but hissed when I tried to do so with my missing arm.

  “I.. I didn’t hear anything about you being canceled,” she whispered as she cocked her head to the side.

  I raised an eyebrow and started to voice my incredulity but quickly curbed it and said, “I guess maybe I was thinking a little too highly of how much drama I generated.”

  “Nomura and I live in Tokyo and we have been somewhat wrapped up in our own issues,” she said with a shake of her head.

  After a moment I said, “Well, I’ll tell you everything then…”

  And I did. I chose not to sugar coat the situation that had led to my exile. To the best of my ability I also tried not to demonize myself. I gave a rundown of all the events including Sydney and Cameron Lake’s involvement. I left out the pain of losing Sydney and finally just ended by saying, “and, I just got the invite to work on the QA on this game and here I am.”

  To my shock she stood and moved to me wrapping me in a big hug. I blinked with surprise and did nothing for a solid five seconds.

  She finally said, “I’m so sorry all that happened to you.”

  “I… um…,” I tried to think of what to say and finally managed, “I appreciate that, but I kind of deserve…”

  She leaned away and gave me a baleful look that I was somehow able to recognize as a threat and she said, “No good will come from thinking like that.”

  Giving her a broad smile I realized that we had switched roles from our previous conversation.

  “I will try not to dwell on it. I’m honestly glad you didn’t just tell me to go to hell,” I said with a nod.

  She sighed and continued up the slope as she said, “We all have our demons.”

  She paused halfway up the slope and looked down at me with the tiny flames that were her eyes and threw my own advice back at me, “You should talk to her.”

  “That’s what my therapist says but…,” I said with a nervous chuckle.

  She cut me off and I could hear a smile in her voice, “You should talk to her,” and then just turned and continued up the slope.

  I considered her suggestion. Maybe I was being childish? The hurt part of me recoiled from that idea and reminded me just how monumental the betrayal had been.

  She had done the right thing though.

  Yeah, because I had deserved it.

  Sydney didn’t need me rolling back into her life again.

  I sighed and shook my head.

  For some reason, a brief flash of Valerie’s simmering golden eyes and her look of surprise flashed in my mind. Chiding myself I thought, “Come on, man. This is a game.”

  Syd. Sydney is real. This is real life.

  A text message couldn’t hurt. Sydney and I had to settle things or I was going to go mad. Not to mention how unfair this had to be to her. Some might construe what I’d been doing as torture or at least extremely selfish.

  Watching the giant skeleton go I took a deep breath and followed her. My mind drifted back to Mystal and I wondered where she had gone.

  I worried about her. She seemed very young and innocent in a lot of ways. I hoped that her stories of surviving against horrible beasts with her Carer meant that she would find a way to survive wherever she had ended up. She was just an NPC but…

  We ascended a set of broken and rubble strewn stairs and found ourselves standing at what must have been the entrance to the tavern. The surprisingly resilient wooden arch that had been the doorway still stood and an unreadable wooden sign hung from a post above it swinging in the breeze.

  We paused in the doorway, looking inside at a bizarre scene.

  Along with the remnant of the door a lot of the walls of the first floor of the old town hall remained. The walls were decorated with tattered and illegible tapestries and a small empty bar stood up against one wall. There were several still standing tables in the dark chamber. The center of the floor, however, seemed to have exploded at some point.

  The most striking thing in the old room was the small gathering of forlorn shades. Unlike the ones we had found huddling in the cellar earlier, these did not seem to take notice of our presence. They floated in mid air in the center of the room, moving in jerky motions as they stood in a circle above the open hole in the floor. Each of the figures' faces was a flat, empty space with no mouth, nose, or eyes. Some were skeletal and others had flesh.

  As I stepped through the door toward the gathered figures I heard a raspy female voice say, “...there is something strange going on here.”

  “It’s an alpha test, Echo. Things are going to be pretty damned weird,” a male voice answered smoothly

  Another female voice, barely a whisper, answered, “Not this strange. I don’t know about you guys but I have a lot of stuff going on in real life, I don’t need to be haunted by a game.”

  A male voice answered. He sounded young but very confident, “I for one am keen to investigate a cool mystery. Come on guys, it's not often that you get to be the person in on the ground floor to all the mysteries one of these games hold.”

  I mean, it’s not EO but,” he paused and shook his head, “I’m just glad we have all this to ourselves. Even if it is a little weird.”

  An older man scoffed, “A LITTLE weird, he says…”

  So the game was trying to make us think that these were the real Alpha testers? Were these echoes of things that actually happened recorded during the first test?

  Were the Heartrose and Lady of Flame characters homages to the original players? If these guys signed off on it I guess that’s all good.

  Some general chatter broke out and finally the voice of the whispering woman broke through the din much louder and forcefully than before, “I’ll give Heartrose, and this game a chance. I owe him that much.”

  All of the ghostly figures turned their heads towards me in unison. After a moment, I realized they were reacting to something that happened when they were last here. After a moment they all drifted away into gray smoke. Looking over my shoulder at Sakurai we shared a nod and made our way inside.