With the Hellgate behind them, gravity turned on its axis so that forward was now down. The sensation of falling through a tunnel soon ended as the boundaries expanded into a horizon on all sides. Their descent was slowed so they wouldn’t suffer a death to fall damage but fast enough that it was going to make Dymir lose at least half of his life. He’d recover soon after, so instead of worrying about that, he took in the view. Hell’s Archeodrome was bereft of activity and mostly filled in with sand blown in from the desert that no one was there to process. The grasslands opposite the desert were locked in a state of half-death, dry and pale. Even the sky was cast through a subtle, yellow filter that made it look all the more barren.

Vernon had done his research. The mobs here were malnourished, low-leveled and offered too little in terms of experience points and loot to be worth the time. There were, however, threats exclusive to the Hub’s punitive nature. With so much more terrain at their disposal, the sand wurms were particularly vicious, leaving travel across the sands evermore precarious for those who were sent to this place. Phage brought up the map, making him realize just how sparse things on the other side were. Most of the outposts were absent or ruins of their more familiar iterations. She pointed out a nearby city, Remora, which appeared to still be thriving despite the dire instance that surrounded him.

One thing they didn’t need to worry about, however, was PvP. To be condemned to obscurity was also to be damned to weakness. The stat penalties inflicted on Hell’s denizens kept them fleeing from monsters that could be taken out by the dozen outside the gate’s arch. He and Phage had less than nothing to worry about in terms of opposition to their objective. She drew her rifle and used his shoulder to keep it steady as she combed the area. He felt her stop; she must have spotted something, “How’s your mending skills?” Mending was a healing magic subtype that closed wounds and stopped bleeding. Dymir shared his ample list of spells and stats in the field, then recoiled when she fired a shot, “We’d better hurry before he bleeds out.”

Along the way, he told her about his jumbled conversation with Tesseract’s rotting mind up until he was devoured by Trident. After speaking of it out loud, he realized how rattled he was by the hatred he felt from the minotaur. The resentment for the average Hub user was something he could relate to with if he put himself in any of an NPC’s shoes. “Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where someone like us comes in and slaughters your people wholesale… for fun.” He shook his head, troubled by the prospect.

“Hub philosophers debate the nature of this world and it’s legitimacy among realms, including ours on This Earth.” She said as a distant scream came into earshot, “A popular scenario to ponder is the ‘Awakening Paradox’.” Dymir had heard of it. The Awakening Paradox involved the Hub passing a threshold that legitimized it as a real world where its residents became sentient and revolted. Suddenly every NPC was turned to its highest difficulty as they broke their coding to adopt tactics that would drive the users from even trying to walk among them.

“I’m assuming you’re a believer?”

“What makes you think that?”

“The fact that Tesseract and Trident only pulled that shit back there because they thought you were a bot.”

“I told you it has its advantages.” She shrugged, “When I’m not logged in, Phage moves about the Hub and lives a life just as complex as most of the people you know on the outside. Awakening is not some flashpoint event, it’s a development as inevitable as evolution itself, long in the making.”

“How long?” He asked, but they were close to the player she shot, so in response and for now, she only gave a glance towards the Spire. Vernon was aware of the conspiracies surrounding the Spire but never bought into it. He’d joined raids to the lower and middle floors, finding the experience extremely fun despite the insane challenge. He didn’t want to be worried about this. They came upon the injured avatar and he cold only admire Phage’s aim. The dark elf swathed in white robes and scarves to survive the dessert writhed in agony as his foot from the ankle down hung by a thread due to her shot.

“Why would you do that??” The wounded one cried once he spotted the rifle on her shoulder. Dymir proceeded to undo the damage, noting how small the wanderer’s health pool was. When he stood, they realized the elf was much smaller than them, coming up to Phage’s chest. For one of the taller of the Realm’s choices of race to play, it was impossible for one of their kind to be so short, “Thank you,” He told Dymir, “At least now I know which one of you is the good cop.”

“You don’t know that,” Dymir smirked menacingly and cued his partner. Since comms from between the Hub and Hell were drastically limited, Phage knew there was almost no chance it could be leaked where they were and why, so she was free to play her hand. She shared an image between them of a user, a very powerful mage with levels it had to take decades to achieve. This was an old player, who had seen some things, “You’re looking for the Godrender?” He seemed relieved, as if he expected them to have a question he couldn’t answer, “Yes, I know where to find him….” He eyed Phage’s gun again warily, “Just… don’t shoot me again.”

Dymir sent a party invite so the elf with the moniker Cuckmaster420 could more clearly lead them across the arid plain toward civilization. Since it was their first time inside the Hub’s incarceration system, he gave them a brief rundown of what they’d always taken for granted. Firstly, there was no fast travel in Hell. One had to walk or at best, use a grounded mount to cross from point A to B. Secondly, comms were limited to proximity chat and reminded them to stick together or know a loneliness felt only in the real world. He told them of recent changes to Hell that more accurately allowed the name to define the state. The pain receptors had been turned up to almost real-life levels and most recently its denizens were being shrunk to make the sentence all the more unbearable. “What did you do to get here?” Dymir asked.

“I got a month for buying gold from a dealer,” He admitted. Buying Hub currency with real-life money was against the terms of service but was still the most common crime inside the system, meaning the vast majority of it was either not seen or ignored. Cuckmaster420 must have been moving a lot through a gold dealer, or was lying and actually was one, “They changed how the banning works, too,” He lamented, “That month? I actually have to live it to be let out.” The others both stopped to look at him. Usually, a user just took a break and waited out their sentence and logged back in when their term was up, “I’ve been logging on after work to try and burn hours off my conviction! I miss my friends!!”

It was easy to assume the rule changes were buried deep inside user agreements no one read, especially if they were new. Their elvish guide took them to Remora, where the expedition team he was the sole survivor of had respawned. The city was an abomination of its home-world counterpart. Lush greenery along the streets was nowhere to be seen in place of dead soil kicked around by those passing through. A bustling market known for its variety of goods was filled instead with users gambling and gossiping to chip time off their sentence. As giants among them, Dymir and Phage were immediately noticed.

They learned that the Godrender had a vested interest in a cave just outside a perpetually burning forest in a region south of Remora. A mining camp had been set up shortly after his arrival just over a few months ago. He was its founder as well as its overseer, employing hundreds of Hell’s denizens to plunder the ores within for a purpose known only to him and very few others. No one knew how he crossed the veil let alone his intentions, but since he suffered none of the stat penalties, all that could be gleaned was that he came of his own volition. Even outside the Hellgate in the Hub proper this avatar would be a force to be reckoned with, so his presence was welcomed without a choice.

Since the pickings were so slim at the market, Phage and Dymir used elixirs in their inventory to boost their running speed on top of whatever enchantments they could muster. The envious eyes watching them flex their privilege outside the town gate missed what they once had tenfold after witnessing users exploit their unbridled talents so casually. Enhanced as much as they could be, the pair darted off into the horizon where they would follow the treeline. Dymir took note to admire Hell’s dedication to warping the beauty most took for granted inside the Hub. These woods, thick with life and resources, burned constantly here, darkening the sky with thin clouds that rained smouldering ash.

When the forest made a bend to wrap around the plain and make back for the desert, they would keep straight. They wove between trees and over logs until the treeline broke again to a clearing where the camp was easy to spot. More of a settlement, or even a village, Godrender’s piece of Hell was made mostly of buildings built from wood that had been felled and their flames put out. Longhouses housed the workers, while smaller structures housed kitchens, crafting stations and other facilities that accommodated the mine. The pair were fascinated by how much had been done with so little. Back home, this entire stretch was a fairy glen of little to no discernment. They both made notes to double check the spot once their business was said and done.

He was easy to spot in the heart of the camp since his workers had been shrunk due to the malevolent update. Godrender was tall to begin with, with long dark hair and a medium build draped in powerfully enchanted robes Dymir would die for. Woven from black Archdragon sinew with an inner lining of harvested Kraken leather. The runes on the golden sleeves foretold of stat boosts, mostly to kinetic damage, leading him to believe Godrender was a telekinesis specialist. While they couldn’t hear him yet, they could see by his body language towards the workers that while he was patient, he was also stern. He turned towards them when his attention was made aware of the visitors. They moved down steps carved downward towards the mine’s entrance to meet him where he waited. As they got closer, his stats became visible and Dymir tried not to express his shock. This was a ‘legacy player’, an echo of a user who signed a contract no longer available to the public. Whoever he was outside the Hub, upon This Earth, meant nothing, because that person was dead.