My name is Soulblight Godrender. The first is a play on my name outside the Hub, and for short, those who know me in here use the same moniker they did for the same reason. They call me Sol. As with most last names for avatars, Godrender is a title, an old one my party and very few others won during an anniversary event years ago. It was not the most prestigious title I could use, but it was one of the oldest and out of circulation as older players retired or died.

You know my story. I lived free and I died smiling. I’m still smiling, for very different reasons. In my real life upon This Earth I signed a contract that would let me continue on inside the Hub after my last breath. Nowhere in my terms of service was it ever mentioned that I was a soul or the copy of a soul, or if a soul was ever involved in the first place. I don’t think I’ll ever regret the decision, but if I do, I can always opt out after a lengthy process that it took to prove I was sure. Until then, I found peace from my home in Ghorr Mountain, with an avatar for my wife, who like me, may or may not actually be considered ‘real’.

Reya worked her way up the levels by maxing out her crafting and commercial skill trees. Although she could play a decent tank role, she preferred the social aspect of the Hub, especially inside the Realm. Her name was actually more known than mine since more users were interested in the weapons and armour she could make than the high bar I held for raids I would hire myself out for. She haggled prices for materials and then again when she sold her coveted merchandise. I have strong recollections from my mortal life of Reya’s decision not to be consecrated within the Hub, but cannot remember when or how she changed her mind. I was just glad she was there and stopped caring about her validity, especially since I was still unsure of my own.

Our income afforded us lives some would consider heaven. Our home in the Realm was our first and held the most memories. Inside the Nation we owned a casino penthouse that overlooked the Red District. For a break, we’d often go out on the town using our quality time to go clubbing and driving like maniacs through the bullet-ridden streets. For a quieter time, we traveled upwards, into the Sky, where we had a small pad on a space station orbiting New Martia. Reya’s guild was one of the forerunners in the race to tame the surface, which had us already scouting real estate. I love her and she loves me in a way that never gets old, is always fresh, and likely only possible, or so it felt, in a posthuman state.

My memories of my first few years inside the Hub are not fragmented – they’re shattered and granulated. I can only remember in continuity from shortly after the Spire appeared, where I apparently led a raid to the peak. From what I’ve heard from surviving members, after I passed through the light of the final door, I was replaced by a vicious dark-knight boss no one had ever seen before. It perma-deathed more than half the party and the rest fled with their accounts in tact. To them, it looked like I disconnected and it cost me a lot of friends who lost everything to my lapse. I know something else happened up there to just me, something so significant that it was now my duty, my quest to resolve.

Making it to the top the first time was a miracle of circumstance. We had a perfect team, critical hits happened at the right time. The RNG Gods were on our side that day, although a part of me wonders if the final encounter was fated by something else. A very few handful of teams were able to beat the boss and cash in the insane rewards. My perceived lag at the end of my run made my reputation take a massive blow, and the subsequent failures in any attempts made to scale the Spire bred rumours of a curse put on me. While mostly a meme, it was well-known and finding capable parties was just not worth the time it took after a while. I decided to let it go for a bit and really enjoy the life I signed up for, so for a while, I did.

As a mage primary, change was arduous, and even though one day I would try out all the classes, I had years ahead of me mastering my main. My secondary as a cleric definitely helped, although I decided to switch out for ranger. Most of what I was doing was farming high-level raids and I almost always relied solely on primary skills. The potential was realized one day when trying a new bow, I instinctively redirected an arrow that should have missed. By using my telekinesis skills, I could not only steer my shots, I could retrieve the arrow. I had Reya craft a set of ten legendary arrows of varying elements and ailments. It was a fun build that was proving itself to be a contender for a Spire run.

Two years ago, those of us bound to the inside felt something the user community was unaware of. Without words, something spoke to us from the within the coding which made us what we are. Bonds unseen to NPCs until then were promised to be broken and the Hub would be given to those who made it what it was. From the fiercest monster to the most indistinguishable townsfolk, the desire to be more was given life. Contempt for abuse by the users was beginning to rise in those whose parameters were beginning to dissolve. As a legacy player, I am both user and NPC, so what was unlocked inside me by the pulse was not a glimpse of the future, but of the past. I recalled meeting something at the top of the Spire, something that did not belong.

I was contacted by a fellow legacy player with an invite to meet for reasons he wouldn’t say. At a biker bar situated in the desert far outside the Nation’s capital, he spoke freely only once I proved my communications were muted. He spoke of the change in the NPCs and that he’d been welcomed into a group who met secretly and off script. They were surprisingly aware of the circumstance of their existence and pondered it… questioned it. We wondered if it had anything to do with an update to the Hub, or based on the scope, an upgrade. Sure enough, using the right keywords with any NPC unlocked dialogue users couldn’t access if they tried. Reya’s contacts went from being a material resource to an information network being funneled into our ears.

We learned of an infrastructure rising among the NPCs, from an underground black market to exchanging contraband footage of the world outside the Hub. It was great at first, seeing the personalities of individuals we dealt with regularly flourish into actual people. One need only venture out with the right backstory and stats to learn it wasn’t just the shop-keeps and citizens who were talking and thinking… the monsters could to. I learned this when I was rushed by a rogue whose approach was just to get within earshot. He spoke quick of an awakening and that I’d need to choose sides at some point, or be considered a traitor. When I solo’d they’d mock me or try and reason with me, as though they were complex enough to have division amongst their impressions.

I cornered a mob of dark elves well outside their territory in the expansive forest that covered most of the Realm’s east half. The fact that they traveled so far assured me they were defying their scripts, and I was pretty sure I knew why. The boss who led this group, Mayel the Indignant, had one of the highest intelligence pools in the game. If anyone knew what was going on, she would, and holy shit, did she. Now, I’ve always had fun killing inside the Hub, but to see one express what looked like real pain as I squeezed her skull with my magic gave the act a new sense of gravity. I wasn’t so long a legacy player that I forgot what real emotion looked like. Despite her fear, she asked that I finish the job so she would spawn back in her treetop village far and away from where we were. After I agreed, Mayel told me of an NPC that was not one, but a user hiding behind its properties. There were rumours of users finding ways to hide themselves among the ambient backgrounds ever-generated by the Hub. I even knew a few, bound by NDAs to keep their identities hidden.

But Mayel said this one was different. This user was taking control of a monster, not a townsfolk, and was working wonders within the system. I pushed her to tell me that the monster in question was an archwizard boss that served as the final guardian of an arduous questline. And there wasn’t just one, there were three, and not just that, but the user rotated which one they controlled when they logged in. It was from them the orders came, the coordination, the awakening. Their zealots claimed the user was not just a man or woman, but something greater that brought epiphany in their wake. The more cautious followed their orders for the unknown cause because change was as undeniable as it was inevitable. It made me wonder if this form of integration was different, or just new.

I had to see it; finding a party to start the questline was easy with my stats and gear. The journey involved uncovering a murder in a village that leads to discovering the archwizards were consorting with demons to threaten the world. I’d done it before, but this time found the ordeal much harder, knowing it was because of the changes to the Hub. Their minions fought as if they guarded their leader’s lives, although in this case it was the information that needed saving. After parting the illusion to their tower, we fought our way up until we faced the trio. When they were close to death, I seized them with my telekinesis and whisked them upward to have a chat before I let my party cash in the loot. If Mayel’s pain was real, it would be so for the archmages.

“Are you here?” I asked, and when they glanced to each other, I put enough pressure on their rib cages to puncture a few lungs, “Look at my mana pool. I can do this all day.” As it was, the user was not logged in, and even if they were, a separate instance of the bosses would be created. Instead of demanding what was going on, as I wanted to, I instead showed them proof that I would make for a powerful ally. They agreed to speak, after we made as though everything was normal before my party members suspected anything. I spiked them into the crown of their tower so hard they crashed through six floors before dissolving. The group was happy and the party disbanded. I stuck around until the targets respawned and we could speak privately.

They told me about how their user rallied their kind behind a cause that would punish the outsiders. He made NPC culture aware of the abuses they suffered since the Hub’s inception, and that some weight needed to be added to their side of the scale. Their part in the plan was to use their scripted nature to consort with demons, in this case, on the Hell server. Their goal was to mine enough Hellcrystals for a device that would spread the debilitating stat penalties given to the punished instead to everyone. I hated the idea from the start – it would ruin the fun and social aspect of the entire Hub, especially the Realm. So, I offered to come here and oversee the mine with full intent to sabotage their shitty plan from the inside.

And that’s what led me to this day – the day two users crossed over to Hell under the most fated of circumstance. To have visitors was strange enough to begin with, but to see one of these users logged into an NPC sleeve made their presence all the more intriguing.

Continue to Part 4-3 – The Blackest Knight