KKG started his streaming career on all the video streaming channels a few years after I had started my own channel. He started as a street interviewer who asked controversial questions in hopes of going viral. Somehow, he managed it. He shifted to prank videos a few years later, and much more recently, politically motivated culture war content.
After a series of threats and extremely concerning comments about underage girls, he was kicked off Sett and had to move to a less reputable platform called Sekh until last year, when he vanished from the platform.
Lestra and Dendo, whose real name was Phil, were friends of his who often joined his streams.
Lestra used to do make-up tutorials and gossip videos until she fell into KKG’s orbit. She had immersed herself into his rhetoric in hopes of gaining a similar politically motivated boost. My best guess was that she served the purpose of showing that the loud political hack didn’t hate ‘ALL’ women. Of the three, given what I had heard about her abilities, she was the most competent VRMMO player.
Dendro was a boot licker who claimed to be KKG’s best friend. He used to play party games on stream with a whole group of up and comers a few years before I even started my channel, but got canceled for grooming a sixteen year old. He was much older than both KKG and Lestra. He had been caught on stream cheating at competitive FPS games, a high crime in gaming circles, and used KKG’s infamy to stay relevant.
KKG chuckled and studied me with rain drops dripping off his macabre face as he said, “You think I don’t know who you are?”
My jaw tightened and my lip curled as he continued, “All that time sending you DMs to get a collab, watching your shit, and cornering you at Sett-Con and you think I’m not smart enough to guess what big time streamer you are?”
Phil chuckled and stuttered, “Who… I mean Whoa… who is this guy Pedro?”
Stepping closer to the giant I managed to morph my expression to an obviously forced smile as I said, “Maybe you should listen to your friend Pedro,” I nodded to Lina as I continued, “you say you know me right?”
The giant chuckled and nodded but I sensed that some of the bravado had gone out of him as I continued, “I don’t think the shit that got me cancelled is the ammunition that you think it is.”
He raised his chin and growled in response, “You threatening me?”
“Maybe…,” my voice trailed off and my darkening expression fell. It dawned on me what I was doing. These people had wronged me and my brain was suddenly whirling through a hundred different ways I could make them regret it.
Letting out a sigh I glanced at the giant’s two very tense allies. They both seemed very ready to strike in defense of their friend. My shoulders dropped and I shook my head as I turned and started to walk away, “Thanks for the group.”
KKG called after me as I turned and made my way further into the necropolis, “Good playing with you killer. Glad we finally got that collab!”
–
Ten minutes later my hands were shaking as I sliced another index finger off of the hand of a near skeletal monster that I had dispatched after leaping from a rooftop, catching it unaware. It had been muttering gibberish to itself and making sounds that sounded like sobs when I found it. This made four fingers.
Dropping them into my inventory, I cursed under my breath as I settled down against the nearby wall. I looked up into the endless night sky through the still misting rain and muttered, “I just can’t seem to get away from it.”
First with the Theodora hack and now KKG and his cronies. I glanced at the condition of my character and the withered debuff that still plagued me. I had tried to drink from these random quest mobs but it seemed the ‘Fade’ removed some element that qualified their Essence for consumption. A damaged character, a hostile environment and… that shade of my former self still lurking and ready to assert itself.
What point was there?
Reaching up to pull my helmet free, I muttered, “Lyd…”
I was cut off when a muted scream echoed from somewhere nearby.
“New Quest
A Cry for Help!
XP Reward: 125
A voice cries for aid in the ancient Remnant Necropolis. Run to their aid! Perhaps there will be a reward?”
Bracing a hand on the ground, I launched myself toward the sound. Taking advantage of my avatar’s growing agility, I bounded over ruined walls and piles of rubble that marked long lost structures.
There was another scream, definitely a woman’s, from somewhere ahead.
I sprinted up a pile of debris leading to a second floor window and into the shattered remains of its upper floors. Holes blasted in the floor showed the lower level and even a cellar far below. Bursting hrough several doorways, I emerged into the open air overlooking a square that was in many ways similar to the one I had emerged into a few hours before.
Below, another pack of mindless beast-like remnants prowled through the square converging on a singular figure. Their target appeared to be a woman, with the rotten visage of a zombie or ghoul, wearing a simple gray dress pasted to their form by the rain.
The beasts around her were not rampaging like the savage creatures I had encountered in the ruins so far. They prowled closer to the her as she knelt and clutched her head but did not seem eager to attack her.
Wasting no time, I leaped from the wall and dug a dagger into its surface to slow my descent. I rolled off the wall and charged the nearest creature, manifesting my second dagger and slicing into the beast as it turned curling its lip with a silent snarl. My Slice ability caused its black blood to splash upon the stones as I rolled past it and attacked the next monster in line.
The pack turned toward the disturbance and charged.
“It may not have been wise to charge in,” I chided as I rolled through the monsters leaving bleeding wounds in my wake.
Weaving my blades like knitting needles, I struck and dodged when I could. The silent monsters were not skilled combatants. They either attempted to grab me, with the threat of their jagged black teeth looming, or flail at me with a rotten fist or claw.
Despite my attempts at defense I was struck several times: clipped in the shoulder, bashed on the head, and had jagged claws dug into the skin of my face. Although I was heavily wounded my enemies came off much worse, with many of them staggering from the loss of their ichorous blood and falling to the stones in my wake. Injured, and barely able to keep my avatar standing I was suddenly standing faced off against the final three of the creatures.
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They were keeping their distance, and two of them were clutching at considerable wounds brought on by previous Slices. One of the creatures charged me staggering with a claw bathed in black blood clutched to its stomach and met a blade as I drove it into it's chest, bearing it to the slick stones below.
A second creature rushed me, trying to take advantage of my distraction. When I kicked out at its knee I received a satisfying crunch for my efforts. It tumbled to the ground, its mouth working soundlessly to howl in pain.
The third creature clacked its teeth at me in warning, stumbling away as it grabbed at a wound on its leg. Flipping my dagger and catching it by the blade I let it fly into the back of the creature. It tumbled to the stones and started to crawl through the rain to escape.
Furious, I stalked over to the crawling beast. It tried to bat me away with a blood stained claw but I knocked it aside. Kneeling on it's back, I yanked out my dagger. It tried to rise, but I pounded the dagger back in, driving it in two more times until it lay still on the black stone path.
Rising to my feet I made my way over to the huddled form of the female undead. Up close I could see that most of what had been long blonde hair had fallen off her head and that her body was in an advanced state of decay. She shuddered as her blackened nails dug into a scalp already running with thick black blood from her stained claws.
She had absolutely no gear and was only wearing a simple roughspun gray dress. Likely not a player then. Who would come here without sufficient gear?
Putting my blades away, I knelt to get a better look at her face as I said, “Can I help?”
She looked up at me. Her eyes were distant and cloudy yellow, similar to the Prelate’s. She stuttered as she regarded me with terror, “Who are you?”
Grimacing, I was growing certain of what I was seeing here, “I’m Florin. I’m a Remnant, like you.”
She shook her head slowly and muttered numbly, “Who… who am I? Where?”
Standing I looked down at the zombie woman with growing pity as I asked softly, “Do you want me to put you out of your misery?”
The gesture would likely not matter if these Remnants could respawn, but… what else could I offer?
She looked off into space and after several long moments of no response I stood and turned to depart.
Feeling a tug at my armor, I looked down into eyes that had a shine of intelligence that had not been there moments before.
“Kill me.”
Considering her for a moment I had a realization. Nodding, I knelt next to the strange woman and said, “If every movie I’ve ever seen is to be believed, this won’t hurt.”
Leaning forward and without waiting for response I grabbed the back of her head and drove my fangs into her neck.
The strange woman rasped and then shuddered beneath me. She clutched at my avatar’s back but couldn’t find purchase on the wet leather. Warmth pulsed through the haptic pads of my divesuit. I pulled my helmet free and found myself in the red glow of the dive room. Wiping away the tears on my cheeks I sat in the red glow as my avatar drained the NPC dry.
As the last of the life left the woman’s body Lydia made a muted announcement:
“Quest Completed
A Cry for Help!
XP Gained: 125
You found a decaying Remnant who was crying for help in the Remnant Necropolis. You put her out of her misery.”
Tucking the last of the fingers into my pouch I looked over at the ashes of the now dead Remnant. I quietly thanked her for removing my avatar’s cursed debuff, and hoped that somehow the NPC wouldn’t respawn.
Closing my eyes, I rolled my shoulders in the dive chair, “It’s only a game, Mal.”
Twenty minutes later I made my way back into the square where I had first emerged. Many of the players that had been present when I first left with my ill fated group were now gone. Only two remained, one who sat with his head resting against the wall behind him with a vacant expression on his zombie face, who I assumed was AFK, and another who was chatting with the small skeletal shop owner. They appeared to be a heavily armored zombie warrior with a two handed weapon.
With a glance back at the darkened alley that led back into the city I sighed.
Centering myself I made my way to Lyvon, who reclined just where I had left him. The one eyed zombie studied me without moving and growled, “Job done?”
I tossed the small pouch of fingers to him, and he caught it out of the air. Lydia updated the quest immediately:
“Quest Completed
Purge Your Forebears!
XP Gained: 175
You gathered 10 index fingers from the wandering mindless creatures that haunt the Remnant Necropolis.”
Lyvon lurched forward and stood looking down at me from his dry perch as he growled, “There are masters of a number of classes here that can help you learn.”
He studied me for a long moment and muttered, “I wouldn’t recommend trying to breach the Immolated Order’s camps without doing so.”
He let out a pained sigh and added, “But, do as you wish.”
“New Quest
Attain a New Class!
XP Reward: 100
Masters of many classes house themselves in the Remnant Necropolis. Find one to train you, or seek out a more rare instructor.”
With that he turned away from me and returned to his place against the wall, looking off into space as if I had already been forgotten.
Considering all of the ‘masters’ around me I weighed my options. Upon closer scrutiny you could certainly tell the types of classes these injured NPCs represented.
A skeletal knight in battered armor with most of their broken bones being held together with scrap wood.
A befuddled zombie with no eyes holding an ancient tome, enraptured with still ‘reading’ the book despite their loss of ocular organs.
And… ah there they were. A lone skeleton skulking in the shadows between two mausoleums lazily running a whetstone across a nicked shortsword’s blade. The rogue trainer.
Did I want to start this game with a common rarity class? There was little doubt that is what I would get seeking help from this NPC. If I wanted to escape that trap there were only two real options. I had to leave the graveyard and look for a rare quest, which seemed foolish without guidance, or to my chagrin, find Theodora.
She had been locked-up down in that dungeon for a long time but she was tied into some other larger plot involving this zone. Years of experience with these games screamed at me that she led to the richest experience I would get in this zone. In addition, while I loathed running into the insane little vampire again, I had promised Larry that I would root out more of her strange behavior. After talking to Catacomb I was far less unnerved by her so-called mind-reading. This was just internet trolling and was as old as the system itself. In addition there was the added boon of catching the little shit who had hacked the system and making sure he didn’t hurt anyone else.
Nodding, I looked toward the gate to the undervault where I saw it screech open and a zombie in a robe similar to Nomura’s emerge from the depths. They surveyed the square and spotted the Prelate, making a bee-line for them.
While the new arrival spoke to the NPCs I slumped down under the awning with the other Remnants and pulled out the bundle of dispatches I had found in the guard station’s chest during the tutorial and started to leaf through them. If I was going to find that asshole Theodora, it couldn’t hurt to know more about her. The pages were ancient but with careful handling they were legible and in some cases illuminating.
Most of the reports had some form of dogmatic introduction and final exclamation exhibiting just how devoted to the Lady of Flame the strange soldiers had been. The relevant details indicated that Theodora had been kept in the dungeon for at least five years before the dispatches stopped.
The Heartrose themselves wasn’t mentioned often but the indication I got was that they had been destroyed and Theodora and her assassins had been the last shreds of their resistance. The vampire had acted as bait for occasional rescue missions. For some reason the Immolated Order recognized that the Heartrose Order would do anything to get her back.
By the time the dispatches ended there had been five attempts to free her, each ending in failure. It was my estimation that the sixth had at least succeeded in some way and that is what led to their eventual deaths… or perhaps they were so devoted they just remained there and starved to death, serving the Lady of Flame until they rose again to serve her after death.
About Theodora herself there was very little. She was listed as being extremely dangerous and manipulative. There were frequent notations that she often mentioned, and I quote:
“I am exactly where I intend to be,” or, “When my liberator gets here, do show him in. It’s entirely possible he doesn’t know he’s here for me at all.”
