My former supervisor cocked his bearded head. “Sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

  “Careful,” Dave said quietly from the shadows of the woods. Once again, his voice projected as if he were much closer than he was. None of the NPCs reacted to it.

  I snapped my mouth closed, thought fast, and then tried again.

  “I said ‘what a moron,’” I replied to the guardsman, throwing a thumb back over my shoulder to indicate the spot where the other Hunter had gone down. “That guy wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, if he thought he could defeat someone as implacable as yourself.”

  The NPC wearing Moran’s face regarded me without any recognition, then hooked his crossbow onto his back and held out his hand. I stepped closer and shook it.

  “Well met, stranger,” Hergvor said in a thick, vaguely Scottish accent. “I am General Hergvor of Radix, and I am indeed known as The Implacable. Tell me, what might I call you?”

  In the original game, a query like this would prompt several options to the player, but that didn’t happen for me.

  “Call me Remnant,” I said, letting go.

  “Remnant. That is a good name. A hero’s name,” Hergvor said. This, too, I recognized; it seemed like the Conduit had co-opted some of the game’s voice lines.

  Hergvor took a step back and bowed at the waist. “Sir Remnant, Hero of the Gates, in honor of your defense of the outpost at Radix, I offer you the keys to my city and the goodwill of my men. Wherever the Infernal arm of the Riftguard may tread, so too may you tread there, unimpeded.”

  The moment he stopped speaking, the AI started in on a new diatribe.

  You have gained the title HERO OF THE GATES!

  Cycle Achievement: Skipped a Year!

  You have beaten a quest that was not even available yet. You will gain all the rewards of that quest, plus an additional bonus reward. I always did like a man with brains. Or brawn. Or a pulse.

  Rewards: You have received +10 Reputation with all Infernal Riftguard, the vital item Infernal Riftguard Key, x1 Riftguard Plate, and 10,000 gold.

  Bonus: You receive a Rift Mirror, an additional +5 Reputation with all Infernal Riftguard, an an additional 5,000 gold.

  Whoa. They’re still including Rift Mirrors? I thought as I glanced back at the forest to scan for more Hunters. Rift Mirrors were pretty much the most valuable item in the game, but not one I was going to want to sell.

  These must be the rewards for the dragon-slaying quest. 10,000 gold was insane for this early in the game, too, and here I was getting bonuses on top of it.

  This announcement was followed immediately by another one, again with the term “cycle achievement.” I supposed that meant it was repeatable. Both achievements were only partially horny, as if the Game Host were reading from a booklet before sliding into unregulated debauchery.

  Cycle Achievement: Okay, Now You’re Just Showing Off.

  You have skipped multiple sub-quests within a quest line, and still completed the quest line. You will gain all the rewards of the quest and its sub-quests, plus an additional bonus reward. I always did like a man with money. You don’t even need a pulse if you’ve got money.

  Rewards: You receive nothing (rewards already distributed).

  Bonus: You receive +9 Reputation with all Infernal Riftguard, x1 Riftguard Boots, x1 Riftguard Gauntlets, x1 Riftguard Helm, and 6,000 gold.

  Bonus: You receive x1 Riftguard Amulet.

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  Damn. This was everything I would have earned from all the quests it normally took to gain the trust of this dude. I had only gained a couple of these items in my real-life play, so I didn’t even know all of the quests I had skipped, or how many of them there even were.

  While the Host spoke, I studied Hergvor. He stared at me, his expression vacant and unchanging. He clearly didn’t mind my silence, as he was running on a program.

  But why does he have Moran’s face? Is it Moran? Is he trapped inside this NPC, or is the NPC just a hologram modeled to look like a random human?

  I shook myself. I couldn’t sit here and listen to the Host talk all day, any more than I could sit and unravel every mystery I was looking at. More Hunters would be coming, and I needed to get to a vault thing, so that I could level up, and talk to my supposed Game Guide in private.

  “Thank you,” I said to Hergvor, triggering his next voice line.

  “It is I who should be thanking you,” he replied. “To that end, if it please you, Sir Remnant, I would request the honor of your company for a hearty meal. My home is close by, and safe inside these walls. Within, you shall find rest and nourishment, and we might speak of your future work alongside the Riftguard.” He smiled. “With plenty of compensation, of course.”

  I considered his request. I knew where this particular quest line led, because Lore had told me about it after he’d beaten the dragon himself, in the real game. Hergvor would take me to his home, heal me, give me a healing item, and offer up a quest that would allow me to complete the Riftguard armor set. I now had five out of seven pieces of the set, thanks to all the skipped quest lines, and it would be far and ahead of anything I got in the game this early on.

  But I needed a vault, and I suspected the one for this area would be in another part of town. If I didn’t get to it before the other Hunters, then my plans—rudimentary as they were—would go to shit. I also couldn’t even equip my new stuff without entering the vault first.

  Normally, in Seven Keys, you could deny any quest and come back to it later. But would it work the same way in the alien-altered version?

  I opened my mouth to decline, then closed it again. Hergvor continued to watch me, expectant and inhumanly silent, just like his guards.

  There was a third option here.

  I walked away.

  No one shouted after me, and no one gave chase. I just strode up to the door in the gate to Radix—the real gate, not the hole I’d made—and stopped in front of it.

  The wall shimmered violet, and I walked through.

  Good to see that the Faction Keys work the same, I thought, allowing myself a small grin. A Faction Key allowed someone to get through any door owned by a specific group of people, in this case any Riftguards who used Infernal magic, without having to pick the door’s lock or find its key. This would help me even more than the armor would.

  I made straight for the bank in the center of town. As a former player of this game, I knew exactly where it is. When I reached it, I found a Riftguard standing on the wide stone steps, arguing with a commoner in simple robes. A quest icon appeared above the commoner’s head.

  This would lead to yet another quest. The bank wasn’t open, because the head banker had disappeared in the woods. The commoner needed money right away, and she would pay me to find the head banker so that she could access her money. In the game, the quest would also give me access to the Auction House, where players could sell game items to other players.

  I ignored it for now, instead looking at the door. The words Vault of Radix hovered there beneath a house symbol, the words in blue, indicated that the vault was accessible. I suspected it would turn red when someone walked into it, since Dave said we were all safe in vaults. That had to mean only one party could be in any given vault at one time.

  So the bank was the vault, then. Good. That’s what I needed to know.

  Instead of ascending the steps, I walked right past them, rounding the side of the stone building. I climbed atop a hay cart, then clambered onto a window ledge. After scaling a decorative statue, I reached the roof of the two-story building. It was the second-largest building in town, after the mansion owned by the mayor. I could find General Hergvor there later.

  At the pinnacle of the bank’s front facade, a giant gargoyle perched with a pair of balancing scales in his hands. He was modeled after a Scael, one of the three main races in the game. These were basically half-man, half-dragon demon types, with curling horns, lizardlike tails, talons for fingernails, and long, clawed feet. They could manifest batlike wings, and their color scheme ran the gamut of reds and greens.

  In the game, the color choice mattered, but it was functionally the same upon character creation. Now, I couldn’t choose anything about my appearance. I was just me. That is to say, just Remnant.

  If I’d been playing Seven Keys for real, I would have had a choice between one of the three game races. Maybe that would still happen later on, but for now, I was stuck in my own human body, all while pretending to be a shape-shifter.

  As Dave flapped in for a landing atop the gargoyle’s left horn, I settled in behind the statue, out of sight of anyone that didn’t have some sort of vision enhancement or seeking spell, none of which were easy to pick up this early in the game. Then, finally, I opened my inventory.

  “What are you doing? The vault is right there!” Dave hissed.

  “I’m gonna need a lot of time in there,” I told him. “And I don’t want to deal with other Hunters spawn-camping the exit when I leave.”

  Dave fluffed his feathers out, then wisely hopped down beside me in the shadow of the gargoyle, where any approaching Hunters couldn’t see us. I glanced at the counter under my quest icon, where it listed stats for up to three quests. For the main quest line, it read, Targets Remaining: 6/11.

  We’d gone from 11 enemies to six, just like that. Half of us dead already—and I had killed one of them.

  “So, you’re setting a trap, then. That works,” Dave said. “ Remnant was a pro with traps. Especially the maiming kind. He was almost surgical with it. Uncanny stuff. But viewers do love a good maiming.”

  I ignored him and expanded my Inventory screen.

  “All right, mama dragon,” I said under my breath. “Please tell me you gave me something explosive.”