There wasn’t much to the Village of Steps.

  There was little to sell after the encounter with the strange, bladed merchant. People ignored or went out of their way to avoid me. On the brink of setting out to find Mystal and her ship I noticed a sign tucked in a cavern formed by the haphazard village’s construction coming together at wild angles. The twisting darkened tunnel of wood was lit by a battered iron basket full of stones glowing in the colors of the rainbow.

  The sign swung slowly with the words, “Brilliant Wonders”, hacked into it.

  That strange Error quest had mentioned a place with that name.

  As I started to turn and investigate the strange tunnel my Alertness skill triggered, warning me that several individuals were approaching. Slipping into the shadows, I made my way between two uneven walls and crouched in the shadows. Seconds later one of the small monkey-like humanoids loped into view, occasionally using one of its arms to walk. She had an eyepatch and a nasty scar on her face. Some kind of leather and steel device had been applied to her prehensile tail to turn it into a blade.

  She scanned the dark rainbow-lit alcove and whispered to someone over her shoulder. Her voice was barely audible over the constant howling wind above us, “I saw him come in here. Where did he go?”

  A slender snake woman with emerald green and yellow scales followed after the smaller creature. She was carrying a rudimentary pistol in each hand and answered in a smooth whisper, “Shhh. He has to be here somewhere.”

  A hulking male human peered in after them. He was carrying what I could only call an ‘anchor on a stick’, and from the looks of him utilizing it was probably the extent of his technical knowledge.

  He muttered in a dull basso, “Order said no more visitors.”

  I analyzed my targets. Lydia read them out to me. Each had the same statistics.

  Order Operative Level 35

  HP: 3190/3190

  MP: Unknown

  Weakness: None

  Resistance: Unknown

  New Quest

  Combat Tutorial

  XP: 200

  Reward: Unknown

  Learn your rotations, darlin.

  My pursuers made their way into the alcove with their little scout at the lead. As the giant was passing me and the others were nearing the far end of the tunnel I heard the small creature whisper, “There is a shop here. He has to have gone inside.”

  Scanning my abilities and skills one more time, I slipped up behind the giant man.

  He was oblivious as I activated Surging Blood and struck him with Guillotine Blade, Backstab and Slice with one vicious thrust of my curved blades.

  The silencing effect of Guillotine Blade caused him to gasp, a sound lost under the howling wind and groaning wood around us. His feet tried to garner purchase and keep him upright but he slumped to his knees. He tried to swing at me but his fist only struck the open air. Leaning over his shoulder, I drove my fangs into his neck, draining his Essence until his eyes fluttered closed.

  Leaving him kneeling there, I moved toward the snake woman. She and her little ape comrade were arguing.

  “I know this shop. There’s nothing here. It’s just some Faded Remnant that sits there all day.”

  “He definitely came this way,” the ape woman growled.

  When the small creature turned back toward her I moved using the snake woman to block her seeing my approach.

  The ape woman muttered in a defeated voice, “Gorguk what in the deep silt are you doing? Get up you lazy…”

  Clicking my Blazing Boots together, I lunged forward, consuming a vast amount of Essence to activate my suite of stealth attacks once again and tear through the snake woman’s back. She gasped and fell forward as the little ape woman, finally seeing me, snarled and jumped at me. She had blades in both hands and another strapped to her weaving tail.

  Raising my blades I deflected her strikes as they came in, casually meeting them with my own blades. Still, her ferocity had me backpedaling. I caught sight of the snake woman struggling to rise and grimaced. When I finally managed a slash to draw blood on my opponent’s wrist I grinned and activated Dance of the Rose Hurricane. The Essence pumping forth from the small Slice wasn’t considerable but it was enough to confuse the ape woman as she struggled to deflect the hurtling shards of Essence that gravitated around me and started to tear into her.

  A pair of dull cracking sounds echoed under the howling wind and my avatar staggered as my health dropped considerably. The snake woman was sitting up and had fired two shots into my stomach. Powering through the injury I charged my current adversary. She tried to put up a defense, deflecting a pair of strikes but I slipped past their third blade leaving several deep bleeding gashes in her fur.

  As I rolled past her Rose Hurricane shards tore into the screeching and staggering ape woman throwing her into a fit as she tried to deflect them and save her own life. With her distracted I rushed to meet my next target, the reptilian woman struggling to reload her guns. She managed to raise one pistol at my face hissing in defiance but my blade came across in a particularly brutal chop that hacked off her hand.

  Sensing an attack from behind, I spun, knocking both of the recovered apeling’s blades aside and driving one of the Sisters up to the hilt in her chest. She gasped and sputtered blood onto me. Casually, I kicked the dying ape woman to the wooden planks. Breathing heavily I looked to the last operative. The snake woman had dropped her second gun and was trying to stymie the blood pumping from her stump that was lazily pulsing through the air toward me. Her vision grew glassy as she fell over and her chest stopped rising and falling.

  Breathing heavily back in the dive chair, I took a deep breath to calm myself. Reaching down, I looted the woman and then her two companions. They had nothing on them that indicated who they were. Their character names suggested they were members of the Immolated Order, the group that Magda had warned me of back in L’Chasse. My AI provided a pair of helpful quest prompts:

  Quest Completed

  Combat Tutorial

  XP Gained: 200

  Reward: Item Spike F

  Not bad, Remnant.

  New Quest

  The Unnatural Order

  XP: 1100

  Reward: Unknown

  Discover clues about who sent the Order Operatives to watch the Portal in the Steps Village.

  My blades vanished back into my inventory and I turned back toward the village behind. There was no one in sight and the only sound was the constant howling wind battering the walls of the village. Leaving the bodies where they lay, I made my way to the door, which was far too short for most. Even my avatar had to duck to step inside. The room was just a continuation of the snaking tunnel of poorly constructed wood outside. Sitting at a small desk made of two rocks and an old door was a human-sized skeleton with its bones painted red. It turned and glared at me with silver flames for eyes.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  It was a Remnant like me.

  “What does this shop sell?”

  It cocked its skull to the side, the flames of its eyes narrowing. After a long awkward moment it leveled its single arm toward a hole in the floor of the small chamber behind it and pointed.

  Sensing that the creature wouldn’t speak I just nodded and moved past it.

  As I neared the dark hole in the floor I felt warmth on my avatar’s finger as the platinum ring flickered with light.

  What had been a dark void filled with a swirling violet light. The flowing light resolved into a glowing portal with a skeleton wearing heavy armor at its center curled into the fetal position and bound in chains. I analyzed the strange skeleton:

  Sakurai Megumi Level Unknown

  Tier E

  Status: Deactivated

  Contact Admin for More Info

  Tentatively touching the portal it rippled and flickered, as if glitching.

  With a glance I noted that the red skeleton had turned back to the entrance. Down on my finger the quest ring I started the game with began to glow.

  The question of how something I swore I had seen outside the game surged back to the surface of my perception. There were really only two options.

  Perhaps it was a RIG hallucination?

  Even in the earliest days of neural chip integration, where people were far more concerned about occasional brain bleeds and seizures, the manifestation of items and objects from outside VR were still uncommon.

  Or…

  “Is it possible that Jaime and his techs had seen the ring and modeled it into the game to freak me out?”

  Swaying slightly, I muttered out loud into the dive room, “Lydia?”

  She answered smoothly, “Yes sweetie?”

  Was this really worth confronting Catacomb about?

  Maybe I would just mention it in my bug report for the testing?

  Considering my options I decided to explore the strange anomaly before filing a report with the company.

  Shaking my head I firmed my senses as I said, “It’s nothing.”

  I started to jump into the small violaceous portal and got a prompt:

  Activate Theodora’s Ring of Remembrance?

  Yes / No?

  With a deep breath I jumped into the void, and hit ‘Yes’.

  You are being transferred to a Personalized Punishment Environment!

  Warning: This environment is corrupted!

  Please be careful while traversing this environment!

  It felt as if a massive weight collapse onto my shoulders and I fell to my knees as my vision swam and the whole world went dark.

  –

  Sitting up sharply, I cursed and grabbed at my neck, “Fucking hell.”

  Blinking a few times, I was shocked to find myself in a completely different place. I was behind the wheel of a car, but an anachronistic one to be sure. The wheel itself was massive and entirely made of metal. The dash was a pearl colored ovoid full of circular white gauges that looked more like something you would use to check pressure rather than speed.

  Heavy rain was falling so hard outside that the dull roar blocked out all other sounds.

  To be sure, I reached up and touched the VR goggles on my face. They were in fact still there. When I pulled my hands away I realized that my fantasy style leathers had been replaced by some kind of suit jacket. Flexing my hands and willing them into being The Sanguine Sisters appeared in the style of a pair of long switch blade razors.

  “Weird, but I’m not complaining.”

  Looking to the passenger seat I saw a black fedora with a green band. Lifting it, I found a stack of papers beneath.

  Sitting on top of the stack of papers was a simple envelope with a lipstick mark taking the place of an address in the center. Opening it up I pulled out the thick folded paper from within.

  “Idiot,

  I have no idea how long you’ve been gone, or what has happened in your absence. While I would love nothing more than for you to come find me so that we can resume our journey together, we need one another.

  You are sitting outside of Akiyama Shipping…”

  If there was actual quest text and lore to this little portal that seemed to put a damper on this being a glitch or hallucination.

  Pausing I peered through the sheets of rain outside the windows to only just make out shipping containers beyond a fence and the dulled orange glow of lights from within. With that, I continued reading.

  “... and the person we need to save is inside. You like quests? Get in there and save her. She is being held by a group of Yakuza smugglers. She believes they have kidnapped someone important to her. You have until midnight to find her and get her to follow you back to the Village of Steps…”

  “How am I…,” when I felt at my wrist and pulled it back to see that the platinum ring was gone and had been replaced by a rather intricate watch made of the same material. The hands read 9:32 pm. I scowled and returned to the letter.

  “Once you do, your new associate will see you along to the next one of these diversions. Rebuild your team and continue to the Descent. You’ll get an updated quest and we will be one step closer to finding each other.

  “Eternally Yours,

  Theodora von Achen

  P.S: Don’t screw this up, idiot.”

  New Quest

  Rescue Akechi Kyo

  XP: 1500

  Reward: Detective’s Magnifying Glass

  World famous Detective Akechi Kyo is being held by the Yakuza and other hostile forces. Save her from the Akiyama Shipping yard and take her back to the Dark Spiral! A hero could always use the skills of a great Detective!

  Despite the goading nature of the lettering I carefully folded it closed and put it back in the envelope. My eyes lingered on the lipstick mark and I shook away confused thoughts. Just what the hell had the previous player gotten up to in this game? Why was the game dramatically changing settings like this? I’d played RPGs similar to this before but… something felt off.

  Speaking outloud, I said “It’s a Beta, Mal,” and sifted through the remainder of the papers.

  The person I was looking for appeared to be a young Japanese woman. She was attractive but seemed to lean more toward bookish pursuits than fashion. She had long black hair weaved into a braid and tended toward wearing vests and slacks rather than dresses. She wore thin wire framed glasses and in most of the images carried a book or sheath of papers.

  Her name was… Akechi Kyo…

  I blinked at the name and looked at the images again. After a long moment I chuckled and shook my head, “You have got to be shitting me?”

  Kyo was a pretty famous vTuber with a big agency until… I guess she quit the game six months before all my troubles started? No details, she just ‘graduated’ from her character and vanished into the real world ether. Now that I looked closer this was her exact character.

  The backstory of the character fit the notes to a tee. She was a world traveling investigator and artist and the theme of her streams was that she was broadcasting from a different world location every month or so as she searched for clues to her older brother’s disappearance. Everything was here in the notes.

  Now I got it. This was some kind of promotion with a well-known streaming personality. I had done some strange collabs for sponsorships in the past and this whole thing wasn’t too much of a stretch. Shrugging in my fancy new suit, I smirked as the Sanguine Sisters appeared in my hands once again.

  “No one can blame me for getting kind of bloody here, even with such a wholesome guest star. Let’s go save a globe-trotting detective.”

  Tucking the notes and letter into my inventory I slid the fedora onto my head. Stepping from the car my Blood Cloak ability activated to protect me from the rain. It manifested as a knee trenchcoat the color of dried blood. I walked from the sedan, a 1940s-era vehicle with rounded white fenders and giant headlights, and up to a sign.

  To my surprise the Katakana on the sign rearranged itself into English letters and I could understand it.

  No Trespassing

  After 8 pm

  by

  Municipal Decree

  Beside it pasted to a pole was a sign depicting several men in uniform looking toward the distinctive Japanese rising sun that had a fighter aircraft flying toward it. The scenario seemed to be set sometime around World War II.

  Leaving the sign behind I strode through the rain until I could see a gate ahead with a couple of men in slickers. The bright yellow raincoats were the least distinctive thing about them. Each man wore an elaborate demon mask with yellow horns and faces painted dark blue. Each man had a battered small bat resting on his shoulder.

  “So, Japan in 1940 but I am pretty sure that this whole thing is lacking a certain amount of realism.”

  Scanning the fence and the rugged dark containers beyond I muttered, “A touch of stealth? A little bit of carnage? A nice night out for sure.”