Deactivating Surge, I turn back into a girl for the first time in an hour.

  This all got easier once I realized I could just envision where I wanted to go, and as long as it was in my sightlines, the System would autocorrect my path straight there. Even if I did scare the ever-loving shit out of the dwarven shopkeeper. Again.

  He tries to recover from what looks to have almost been a heart attack. “Really, must you?!”

  “Yes.”

  “Every single damn day?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighs dramatically. “Okay, whatever, I know you’re loaded, so… What do you want this time?”

  “The same thing I want every time, Pinky.”

  “Who the hell is pink-you know what? Doesn’t matter. I know because it’s you. Fine. That’s my entire stock of radar arrows. Again. At $100 apiece, that’ll be $100,000 for all thousand I got in today.”

  I gesture to the sign advertising a free Pillar of Desolation trap with each and every purchase, recently updated from only purchases over $100. “Oh good, I was running out of those.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re not honoring the sale…”

  “Of course I am. It’s just… Those things suck and everybody thinks so. Me included. I’m doing the creator a favor by even getting rid of them for him. The trigger is too unreliable and the payload is too short and narrow to be anything approaching practical. Coupled with the fact you can’t disarm them, and that they basically disintegrate at any hint of damage… I wouldn’t feel right selling them for $1. But they’re inventory. So might as well use them to sweeten the pot of an actual, worthwhile deal, you know?”

  Seeming to finally realize how much money he just made off the fact I didn’t catch onto the new deal first, he makes a face like if an idiot thought he was a guru. “Because nothing should have been that never made a-”

  I nod sagely before interrupting his schpiel. “Sounds good. I’ll take ’em all.”

  The dwarf-ish store owner looks sarcastically greedy. “Oh, wonderful! And what million things’ll you be buying that each of those’ll be coming free with?”

  I make a face like there’s a loophole here, I just have to find it and-Oh! “How much for one basic arrow?”

  “$5 for a thousand.”

  “Okay, I’ll take a thousand.”

  His eyes dart around for a bit, and a single basic arrow with a floating ‘1,000’ next to it appears in his hand. “Alrighty, that’s a pack of a thousand.”

  I meant a thousand packs for a million arrows total… But I’ll just have to pull that rug out later.

  Transferring the money, I grin in victory.

  He hands over a single additional trap with no number floating next to it. “And here you are… Complimentary with the purchase.”

  “What the fuck? That’s bullshit.”

  “How so?”

  I petulantly fold my arms. “I bought a THOUSAND of those shitty arrows. So, by your own rules, that’s a thousand free traps.”

  “They come in packs of one thousand. A pack is one item. Nobody buys, or SELLS, individual Basic Arrows.”

  Wait, I’ve got it! “Well… In that case my first purchase was each of the arrows. And my second was the trap. I paid the asking price, after all. So how about my freebie with that purchase as well?”

  He folds his arms. “That’s stupid.”

  I sigh, having already thought it through for several minutes by this point. “YEAH, BUT… Yeah… I saw red for a second there. It’s just that you were only giving them out with the expensive arrows all this week, and the traps have been REALLY USEFUL, but now it’s like my purchases were all devalued since I spent like half a million on them and…”

  The look on his face makes me realise what a dangerous territory I just rant-stumbled into. “Sorry, random question. I hope this isn’t offensive, but… Are you a dwarf?”

  The hairy little shopkeeper bursts out laughing. Bit of a weird reaction, honestly. I expected feigned anger if anything. But if he actually is a dwarf after all, it would fit… I really hope his name isn’t a reference to something gross…

  After a second, And My Axe wipes his face dry. “Well, not really, no. I’m not a dwarf. On account of dwarves not being real an’ all. But I’m glad you appreciate my aesthetic.”

  Smiling back, I chuckle agreeably. “So how about that loophole-”

  “No.”

  “Awe… Not even a little?”

  But instead of playing along like he has been, And My Axe’s face goes blank. “Doesn’t matter anyway.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He gives me the stink-eye, probably because of the weird phrase I made him memorize. “Q-B, in the henhouse?”

  Bit of a weird pronunciation there… And really, ‘now’ would’ve worked just fine. But it was one of my conditions for doing this their way.

  Smiling right back at the Resistance spy, yes that’s what they call themselves, I take a button out of my inventory. Just a button. And the tiny box it’s attached to. The box isn’t dangerous. It doesn’t do anything but facilitate the button. And a detonation trigger would never work at this distance.

  And My Axe disappears anyway.

  I press it, sending a ‘disarm’ signal to every trap I got for free before this last batch. That’s what makes them faulty, after all. He was right. The trigger is unreliable. And you can’t disarm them. But, as I verified on the first two, the disarm signal is literally perfect. In a very Admin-patched sort of way. Basically, you can mass-disarm a set of bombs so much easier and better than you can ever hope to set them off. System rules and all.

  In precisely the same fraction of a nanosecond, the 600-ish traps I planted in a cluster under the floating island, detonate.

  Pillar of Desolation is a peculiar effect. In shape. That of a vertical spire. In time. That of minor sustained damage over about a minute to anything touching the pillar. In how it powers up when intersecting another pillar of desolation. The pillar is combined, its size and damage per second is increased, and the number of seconds remaining in the effect is averaged, and then proportionally decreased.

  The entire floating island with this, and a couple dozen other stores around the holding facility, and everything above and below for a dozen miles, disappears in an incandescent flash.

  [ YOU DIED — XP DEBT: 262,144 — RESPAWN DELAY: 8 HOURS ]

  I get a lot of other notifications too. Like, a lot a lot. Including way more XP Debt than I care to count. Not that it matters anyway. I gave up on getting out of that years ago. I’ll just get twice as much XP as everyone else to get to level 64. Morals in this place kinda break down when you stop caring about that.

  My only real losses were 7 Uncommon weapons, 16 Rare ones, 32 Epics, and more Legendaries than I care to count. There were some katanas in there too… And it seems like maybe the System itself realizes that I value weapons, but can basically print armor. Still, nothing I had equipped is gone. And my Longinus and Slizardic katanas are still there. I was kinda worried…

  Looks like it really does let you off the hook a bit if you die in the same explosion as everyone you kill. Especially when it results in an instant Admin-level nerf of the effect. Which my Resistance contact said their scientists theorized it would. Probably put a cap on the compounding or some kind of refactor to their earlier patch of the disarm. Not that I’d risk pulling that shit again anyway. The System can be subverted to an extent, but not more than once in the same way by the same person.

  Also a good thing I didn’t wait until the Level-16 milestone to indulge in any mass murder, or else I would’ve lost as many Mythics as I did Legendaries just now. Even if the next person I kill will lose me a Legendary at least… But I’m nitpicking. No regrets. The sixteen True Heroes were in there. I owe them. We all do. I sit in awe of their sacrifice. Or whatever you do by default in the empty void between life and death where nothing exists, not even you.

  My job is done, of course. The Resistance needed someone already notorious, but unconnected to ‘accidentally’ kill everyone in that facility before the True Royal arrived. I agreed when I found out Azileth was redirected to ‘escort’ the ‘criminals’ ‘home’. One of my other conditions was to wait until he was in the facility.

  Thankfully, the actual cells aren’t in the entrance hall. So I just had to be on-call for the half-minute window it would take And My Axe to verify his arrival before Azileth could run there with his slow-ass Movement Blessing. That was all assuming he didn’t stop for tea or whatever. Not a problem since you can set messages from certain people as an alarm. And could pause time.

  And My Axe reluctantly agreed when I demonstrated, as he called it, ‘some absolute bullshit’. He just as reluctantly admitted that those same scientists already proved that the disarm signal is unaffected by dungeon walls.

  I was just lucky to have already been here. That phrase was literally the starting bell. But the real operation happens in eight hours.

  When over 64 people are all about to respawn in Circuit City’s sole spawnpoint at exactly the same time, the hundred-something victims of my ‘accident’ will be blocked by a prompt. They could either redirect to their choice of nearby spawnpoint locations, or participate in a lottery-based line for Circuit City. That’s an Admin-implemented policy to give the illusion of luxury, while actually bottlenecking the people who might consider it while the impatient ones only have themselves to contend with.

  All the prisoners, not just their target, but every prisoner, was told where to go. Which was my final condition. Apparently, they’ll have hundreds of in-range spawnpoints to choose from. This is a rather crowded octagon, after all. The region’s capital, in fact. I’m not even allowed to know which spawnpoint it is. Let alone the identity of their target. Thankfully, of the sixteen people I know in there, five never blocked me, and all five verified they got it before four of those blocked me too.

  That hurt. I’ve even gathered that And My Axe will ‘officially’ join the Resistance along with whichever of the refugees wants to join up. He’ll be standing in the spawnpoint when they all arrive, I’m guessing. They’re cutting their entire contact with the facility after this. That’s just how little they want to do with me.

  In fact, having respawned in Circuit City most of a minute ago, I should already be gone.

  [ AND MY AXE: WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? ]

  [ AND MY AXE / JESSIE: PAYMENT ]

  [ AND MY AXE: THE AGREEMENT WAS FOR WHEN THE OPERATION WAS COMPLETE ]

  [ AND MY AXE / JESSIE: AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, THE OPERATION IS COMPLETE. YOU TOLD ME THAT ]

  [ AND MY AXE: YOU WILL RUIN EVERYTHING STANDING THERE LIKE THAT ]

  [ AND MY AXE / JESSIE: I GUESS YOU BETTER PAY ME THEN ]

  [ AND MY AXE: CRIMSON BITCH INDEED ]

  [ AND MY AXE / JESSIE: A BITCH WOULD DEMAND DOUBLE FOR TRYING TO FUCK HER OVER ]

  [ AND MY AXE: IS THAT YOUR PLAN? ]

  [ AND MY AXE / JESSIE: WHAT? ]

  [ AND MY AXE: YOU’RE GOING TO DEMAND THE SAME PAYMENT AGAIN AS SOON AS I PAY YOU? ]

  [ AND MY AXE / JESSIE: I’M GOING TO LEAVE AS SOON AS YOU PAY ME ]

  I pointlessly fold my arms from within the rising light.

  [ AND MY AXE / JESSIE: AND NOT BEFORE ]

  [ TRADE QUERY: AND MY AXE — OFFERED: $2,345,678 FSD — REQUESTED: $1 USD ]

  [ TRADE ACCEPTED: AND MY AXE ]

  [ FSD GAINED: $2,345,678 ]

  [ USD LOST: $1 ]

  [ PATH QUEST COMPLETED: WEALTH OF THE JOULELANDS ]

  “Go.”

  [ AND MY AXE: NOW LEAVE ]

  [ AND MY AXE: OH. YOU ALREADY DID. FINE THEN ]

  [ MESSAGE UNDERLIVERABLE: PLEASURE DOING BUSINESS WITH YOU — REASON: BLOCKED BY RECIPIENT ]

  Oh, and there was a pie.