I was on my best behavior on that walk into Alhaitham’s Deep. I had a good idea why the place was called “Deep.” The forest might be temperate, but it was as thick as a jungle. I hadn’t seen this many ferns in my life.

  Hergvor followed me quietly. He said nothing. I imagine if I were in active need of healing, or if we were in battle, some of his voice lines might be triggered.

  He can’t even think for himself, can’t even speak unless spoken to. It was almost ironic that he’d given up his own freedom to have an ID chip, only for it to come around to bite him and ruin his freedom anyway. I kept glancing back, searching his face to see any recognition there, but I didn’t even find sentience. He just stared straight ahead, eyes vacant.

  It made me wonder why I ever wanted an ID chip to begin with, which made me remember the reasons, which made me look forward again. Trading freedom for security. I would not have been the first person to make that exchange, and seeing as how he was still alive and so many Coreless were not, it had worked out all right for him.

  Not for the guards I’d left behind on the wall, though. The other Hunters had finished them off, according to Dave, and it tightened a muscle in my stomach to realize that I hadn’t really thought of them as people. Moran, I had known. They had been strangers.

  But that didn’t mean they hadn’t been people.

  “We’re nearly there,” Feather said after ten minutes or so. I had no idea how she could know that. I hadn’t seen any sort of landmark to orient us, much less a path. It had seemed like no one had ever come this way before.

  “Sounds good,” I replied, just as something flashed in my HUD. I turned my attention to the corner where FATE’s symbol was blinking. Keeping my head still, I tapped it, rather than speak aloud.

  I have news, FATE said. Is this a good time?

  “Yeah,” I replied, keeping my voice low. I didn’t want to spook the damn panther.

  If you can win the level without completing the Tendua quest, then there are steps you can follow to make Hergvor a permanent temporary Conscript. I’ve added these steps to your HUD as a quest titled “Choose an Aspect.” This will be a copy title of another quest you should already have, and it will appear to anyone watching as a duplicate. That’s risky, but it’s the best I can do.

  If you fulfill the steps, Hergvor will become permanent. He won’t be like a normal Conscript, however. You’ll only be able to set him to the same three Tasks, but he will stay with you until he is killed.

  I paused to crawl over an enormous basswood log. It made enough noise to cover me as I said, “What are the steps?”

  Step one: You must gain another Conscript, a legitimate one, who is exactly level 46. Don’t give them orders or interact with them beyond their acceptance of their Conscription.

  Step two: You must immediately go to a vault without interacting with anything else.

  Step three: You must walk in and out of the vault door repeatedly until Hergvor’s icon changes. You may have to do this dozens of times.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  An extra note: This will have the added effect of tripling the amount of whatever item is in your center inventory slot. It has to be a Red item for this bonus to occur, so you won’t be able to gain more high-level items. Even without this, Hergvor will still be Conscripted.

  That didn’t sound legitimate at all. “How did you figure this out?”

  You chose me as your Auxiliary for a reason, she replied cryptically. I didn’t know an AI could be cryptic. From what I’d heard, they were usually straightforward, sometimes pandering.

  I could see open grass ahead. I ducked loudly under the low branch of a wayward pine and said, “You found a loophole?”

  No. I chased down a glitch.

  “How?”

  We were getting close to the clearing, and I could already see a cluster of yellow mob names.

  You really want to know? FATE said.

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  Sorry. Of course. It has to do with the source code. When the Conduit take over a game, they coopt its code, but they make mistakes. They only have the duration of Setup Mode to translate everything to their own operating system. I just found one of their mistakes.

  When you interact with a game character, as in Conscription, the game temporarily translates that person’s designation into the game’s data buffer as readable code. This buffer determines what can be encountered in a given area. Normally, this makes no difference. The game will dispel the code as flawed—so long as you are entering an area.

  However, a vault is currently designated as a non-area. By going in and out of a vault, between what is essentially an area and a non-area, the game keeps inputting information from the compromised data buffer. The code gets more garbled with each translation, until—due to random number generation—you will eventually overflow the designation of the original game character you interacted with, with another character related to you.

  So, if you choose a Conscript for the first interaction, their Conscript status will overflow to another character you are interacting with, who is not in your party. As in, a character in an active quest of yours—meaning Hergvor. This overflow also effects your inventory, but that’s more complicated and not worth explaining.

  My mouth had fallen open.

  “We’re here,” Feather said.

  I zoned back in to my surroundings. We had entered a meadow, in every storybook sense of that word. The clearing was a wide, circular expanse of knee-high grass that shimmered as it moved in a soft wind. In the center was a ten-foot-high tree, some sort of fruit tree judging by the yellow things hanging from it. Twelve people stood in a circle around the tree with panthers at their sides, appearing to be in prayer. The panthers looked as reverent and focused as the people.

  “Stop,” Feather told me when I was about twenty feet from the prayer circle. I stopped.

  Like feather, the people here were heavily suntanned, dirty, and covered in haphazard furs, beads, and feathers that made them look like they’d come out of a racist cartoon. Some of the people had much darker skin, but they were still obviously sun-kissed, meaning they must have all come from a sunny place on real Earth. They radiated a sense of peace, but then again, maybe that was the meadow being all quiet and shit.

  Hergvor stopped beside me, and just to be safe, I Tasked him back to healing me. If he attacked these people because they were mobs, I was definitely dead.

  I turned. “My friend here isn’t going to move now. I’ve set him to healing me,” I told Feather.

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She had bowed her head in prayer.

  I frowned and faced forward as Dave flew by overhead, a mere silhouette against the bright moon. With nothing to do but wait, I stood there, scanning the Tendua’s titles. Of the twelve, three were Tendua Scouts like Feather was. Four were Tendua Warriors, and four were Tendua Lumineers, meaning they could probably use Luminous magic.

  One guy with dreadlocks had the designation PALI PALI, SAGE OF THE TENDUA, in red text. He was the area mini-boss.

  I chewed my lip. All of these people, even the boss and the twelve panthers, were Coreless, with a shield icon under their level. Unfortunately, they were all level 35, the panthers were 45, and the boss was 50.

  According to FATE, I needed to Conscript someone who was level 46 exactly. I was going to have to get creative.