The Archeodrome was known throughout the realm as a stepping stone in one’s journey from mid-tier to high-level. The monsters were disproportionately scaled the deeper one went, so knowing one’s limits was important. Minotaurs were most common, divided up into clans which controlled different parts of the valley. The mystic faction that controlled the quarry made one wary of golems erupting from the granite blocks cut from the swath for processing. The brutish tribes of the upper levels were notoriously memed for their bad habit of hurling stones down on players thinking they were in the clear.

Way down, just before the Hellgate and Trident’s lair, was a centaur legion running patrols and pushing against the upper levels in a persistent war that was scripted to be never-ending. In the lore, their kind hated the minotaur and were bent on their destruction. On their turf, it was not uncommon to be fighting one faction and get ambushed by another looking to wipe out everything that wasn’t one of their own. Until then, Dymir would work his way down the valley as much in stealth as possible while reaping corpse-minions when combat was unavoidable. Phage was to cover him along the way, picking off lookouts and diverting aggro whenever she could.

She used her high dexterity to leap and climb her way to an outcrop from which none of the ground units would be able to close the gap. With enough minions to make stealth impossible anymore, Dymir now led his hoard down the path. It was when they encountered the first threat capable of thinning his numbers would she make her presence felt. A loud crack resonated throughout the valley, causing the mobs and fauna to pause in their scripted lives, darting erratically or combing the sky for the source. The boss dropped, its head bored clean through by an incendiary round that cauterized the wound so clean not a drop of blood was shed.

Vernon often wondered if he had some sort of immunity to becoming desensitized to the joys of the Hub by how much he still revelled in it, so deep in the endgame content. But then here was Phage, exhaling a whistled tune when she landed a shot that even she doubted could be made, screaming ‘HEADSHOT’ whenever it was absolutely called for. She laughed out loud when her explosive rounds embedded in the chest of a warband lieutenant shouting orders in the heart of his company before they were scattered by a blood-soaked explosion. There was comfort in knowing whoever this person was in the real world, they still took pleasure in the little things.

Before long, Dymir stood at the mouth of Tesseract’s cave with his horde. What once was a crush of rank and file became a controlled mob of mid-bosses and unique monsters picked up along the way. It was a fun contingent to amass, one he would have definitely captured to put up online for some clout in the necromancer community. He focused on the task at hand. Shortly after the roughly-carved entrance, the cave began to wind before it split off, meaning Phage’s options for shots were limited. He knew just the trick, “Hey, FAT ASS!” He blared into the den’s mouth; the cavern system was sure to carry the message throughout, “Come out here and show me what it’s like to get broken-backwards!”

One of the Hub’s greatest features was its dynamic algorithm. For every user, a different experience. Since Dymir like to be mouthy, the parlay with bosses before battles were engaging and entertaining. To most players, Tesseract was a wailing beast with not even a syllable to string together. Thundering, measured footsteps foretold of a more articulate incarnation of the legendary minotaur.

At nearly twenty feet tall, Tesseract weighed just as much in tons. His broad, developed shoulders and massive, defined legs betrayed his otherwise morbidly obese frame. From between his crown of jeweled, bovine horns hung a black mane to halfway down his back. He was of the blue minotaur subspecies, and therefore boasted a natural resistance to most elements and could be damaged most by kinetic damage, with the best source of which being melee attacks. The problem with this was that Tesseract wielded a two-handed hammer with a massive granite block on the end that could sweep a broad arc in front of him.

“You speak like a man who has a plan, wizard,” His deep voice rattled the chips littering the quarry floor, “Tell it to me, before I crush you to a pulp.”

“Alright, fair enough,” Dymir conceded as he charged his opening wave of spells, “I’m here to challenge Trident, and I’d like to use your battered corpse to take some shots for me while I line up a play.” He shrugged, “So, we can slug it out, or you can save us some time and just close your eyes for a couple of seconds.”

“This world…” The minotaur glared directly into the sun, “It shudders as if to digest a new layer of complexity, and we all feel it. The cycle of fighting and respawning to fight again for the entertainment of outsiders….” His yellow eyes were full of contempt, “It is starting to make us sick.” The creature’s behaviour was already too complex for what it should have been, and to see Tesseract consider the offer was concerning. Tesseract drew a deep breath of the valley’s air, “Something within the algorithm tells me you and your partner are looking for answers just as we are, and for this, I will let you use my body for your quest, on one condition.”

“What?” Vernon was speechless but Dymir kept it cool,

“No headshots. There is more I have to say and would like to witness the battle with Trident with my own eyes.” And with that, the minotaur cancelled his protective enchantments as well as his stacks of sustained defensive skills. Phage, who was in a state of disbelief lined up the shot and with the help of some of Dymir’s hexes, killed Tesseract with a single piercing round through his chest. As the sorcerer worked his magic over the hulking corpse, she leapt to the next outcrop on her route, the one which overlooked Trident’s lair.

“That was some pretty complicated scripting on that boss,” Dymir noted through the comms, “Would you happen to know anything about that?”

“There are all sorts of stealth skills inside the Hub that don’t guarantee we’re alone,” She told him as she began crafting the only shot that counted, “Entire guilds based around exchanging information.” He was quiet. Waiting. “We’ll talk freely on the other side of that door.”

“You’re god-damned right we will.” Dymir punctuated his spell with a snap of the fingers, prompting Tesseract to rise against rigor mortis. The weathered minotaur now dragged his maul behind him with a dead-man’s grip instead of proudly as before. “Speaking of which… are you there?” The groaning behemoth’s thoughts were readable as a minion. It was a talent that came with the class Dymir used quite seldom – if anything it was useful for locating hidden treasure the monster has seen, but seeing as how the mobs were growing in complexity, so did the skill. Keeping Tesseract’s brain in tact meant they could have a conversation, and without Phage listening in at that.

It was more complicated than he could ever have imagined. Tesseract explained that recently the valley was visited by a trio of archmage bosses from an area two borders away. While creatures could be kited, drawn to more advantageous positions, there was a range at which the aggro is just plain lost. They offered the minotaurs tutelage in the arcane arts in exchange for mining around the Hellgate, since behind the door was only the bottom of the cliff face and actually had nothing behind it but rock. It was when it was opened was it relevant, and the mages wanted to bring it back to their region to study.

Dymir was welling with excitement. Clearly, he had stumbled upon the building blocks of a massive content update. The game was at the precipice of change once again and he was given early access. Mobs crossing borders would shake the meta to its core as potential bloomed on the horizon. When Tesseract told him of the archmages’ plan to open the Hellgate by consorting with the demons from the other side did some of that excitement turn to worry. Hub-Hell hosts creatures with abilities that were exclusive to the torturous plane, abilities everyone on the bright side agreed should stay there.

Tesseract admitted the only reason he was helping Dymir was because he was interested in the door and wanted to see it opened before it was taken. His tribe stood no chance against Trident, although with time, as well as their budding autonomy, would have developed a strategy eventually. A glimpse would be worth the gory death Dymir was leading him to. Having watched Trident battle many times from his quarry some way up the valley, Tesseract some ideas on how to buy them the time they need for Phage to take the shot. He suggested Dymir loosen control over his dead body so the minotaur could use his build on terms he’d known since his inception.

With manual control relinquished, Tesseract made short work of the mobs ahead of them despite said mobs being made up of his own people. Recognizing one of their captains had been rendered undead, many of the lesser minotaurs fought their scripting and yielded passage or fled outright. For the rest, horns were shattered as were bones and teeth. He was a sight to behold, anywhere inside the Realm. His health barely chipped away due to his defensive build and built back up quickly due to his latent, astronomical regeneration rates. Dymir increased his phenomenal strength with enchantments as well as making his frontman emit a poisonous miasma which debilitated the already feeble resistance.

At the end of a long stone stairway, carved into the cliff face and under the shade cast by the formations jutting out above them, was the guardian’s lair. The place seemed bereft of colour and was much cooler than the upper levels. There were bones everywhere, pushed into the edges of the lair by strife as well as the ambient meanderings of the hound, which was nowhere in sight. Tesseract told him the bones were of the players killed permanently by Trident’s ultimate attack, true corpses littering this mostly-forgotten corner of the Realm. Dymir halted his minions just outside the glowing line that marked the event trigger. Both he and Tesseract had cooldowns still active, so while he waited, he refreshed his enchantments. His minotaur captain bellowed towards the rest of the army, buffing all minotaurs in the area including the dead ones who roared in unison.

“This is insane,” Phage noted, seeing it all through her scope,

“A couple more of the right members and we’d have a shot at actually defeating this thing.” Dymir marvelled over what he’d created. He never considered the effects of a boss’ shout over the rest of a legion and it never would have happened had he not listened to Tesseract’s advice. With buff durations at their highest and cooldowns at their lowest, this was the sweet spot. He bid the giant minion to lead the fodder across the line and then did so himself.

Smoke began to trickle through the Hellgate’s keyhole, faintly and whitish. As it grew thicker, it also grew darker, and it began seeping through the minute gaps between Hub & Hell. They could see the hellish world for only a glimpse before a shadow darkened the view. Dymir sent a wave to approach the Hellgate, holding the rest back with Tesseract and himself. No one was surprised to see the scouts become bait, razed by a pair of reddish beams from the other side. The ambient music of the Archeodrome faded out as thundering drums ushered in a seldom-heard orchestral score. The creature passed through calmly, as if to dare anymore to try and cross.

With a shoulder height at half of Tesseract’s, Trident’s three heads were lowered to pass through the Hellgate. At the end of three short necks was a devil’s rendition of a Rottweiler, a Doberman, and a Shepherd at left, centre and right. Their eyes glowed blue, violet and red respectively to represent their elements. It stood upon two forelegs of bird talons, while at the back it brandished a pair of four-towed, sharpened hooves. Covering its body were hundreds of thousands of quills so fine they looked like fur and could cut as well as they could skewer. From a long, bony tail hung longer quills which foretold of devastating whip attacks.

“Good luck.” Dymir told his colossal minion, who only snorted in response before advancing. The shepherd head struck first, smothering Tesseract with an acrid cloud of green smoke. A living unit would have suffered a debilitating debuff the minotaur’s post-mortem state easily ignored. The left head let loose its wind breath attack, which could both push and pull a target. The minions closest to Tesseract were scattered, but the behemoth’s mass was unmoved. The center head went next, narrowing its eyes to focus the light within. They watched the laser streak across the gap between them, lighting the canyon’s deepest recess with a bright glow. Tesseract swung his dead arm forward, its grip still locked on his prized maul so that the head met the beam head on. The unstoppable force met the immovable object, shattering the limb so thoroughly that it left only rotten meat hanging from the stump.

Tesseract caught his weapon in his remaining hand and charged to engage. A heavy swing knocked the right head aside, opening up for a strong headbutt punctuated by a pair of the strongest horns the Hub had to offer. The left head seized the maul’s handle, and while they wrestled for it, the right head began taking massive bites out of the titan’s flank. This was good. The rotten flesh would make hellhound’s stats drop, if ever so slightly. The rest of the minions swarmed, which was when the centre head combed their ranks with its lasers from over Tesseract’s shoulder. It was this head who’s mouth they needed open so Phage could plant the sedative, but this seldom happened, save for the soul-eater attack.

Dymir kept himself in the mob, but behind Tesseract so he could not be targeted for aggro. It was a waiting game now, and more time could be added if he could regenerate the limb shattered in the opening fight. With both arms, his monster could wield its maul properly and hopefully induce an enraged mode in Trident’s algorithm. With less rationality, the guardian was more prone to make an attempt at a soul extraction. After a lengthy casting time, the limb was renewed, so the first thing Tesseract did was whip about and strike Dymir with his pommel. With half of his HP taken and his skills locked by disorientation, the minion master was presented to the Cerberus as an offering.

“What the hell is this??” He cried as the heads of the beast leaned in for closer scrutiny, to relish in his dilemma. From the minotaur’s rotting mind was a flash of an answer: hatred. A hatred that had been awakened in all of the NPCs across the Hub for those who use their world as a plaything. Since Dymir was accompanied by what looked like a bot but was not one, they assumed there would be no witnesses to back up his story before it was too late. Something was inspiring them to break their programming to rally behind an impending revolt no one could see coming. They were going to kill Dymir, then and there, so that Vernon would look like a crazy newbie spouting conspiracies in low-level areas where no one would hear him.

All that time. The life this character had. As Trident’s middle head opened, the depths of the maw spiralled downward towards an abyss of no return. The crack of a gunshot echoed throughout the valley, but instead of going into Trident’s mouth, it hit Dymir instead as a skill known as a ‘Life Shot’. Targets were cured of status ailments and given a short duration of heightened intelligence. With his skills restored, he seized control of Tesseract and forced him to hurl his master out of harm’s way. Spiteful of the minotaur’s betrayal, he then commanded his minion to force his head into the hound’s jaws. They thrashed together as the vortex took hold, ingesting Tesseract not as flesh, but visible code broken down to its most base digits.

Both Phage and Dymir were frozen with shock. Trident’s body shuddered before it let out a howl that was heard surely throughout half the Realm. From within, each skull was pierced by a set of horns not unlike the spent minion who was just devoured. The hound’s mass increased greatly as did its size. Dymir nearly dropped dead when Phage appeared next to him for a better look at the transformation, “Look.” She said, calling up the bestiary, where Tesseract’s entry was being updated with lore describing the demise they just saw, “He’s been removed from the game and we just witnessed the canon.”

“Should we leave?” Clearly the fusion process was not painless. Trident’s bones were reshaping, keeping the beast too locked in agony to noticed lingering. Before long, the posture began to sag and it staggered about before falling fast asleep.

“There were two shots,” She told him, “The silenced one that planted the sedative in Tesseract’s dead spine, and the other that saved you.” They moved passed the waning guardian towards the door, which opened on their approach, “Let’s get the fuck out of here. I have a lot to tell you.”

Dymir gave the amalgam a final glance before catching up to her. Surely, she knew there was some form of communication between minion and master, but there was no way she could come close to guessing how much. “Yeah, well,” He assured her, “I actually have a lot to tell you, too.”

Continue to Part 4-1: Across the Rubicon