Magic Murder Cube Marine

System mumbled something that Francis barely could understand.

The Marine wiggled a finger in his ear. “Say again?”

“I accepted a quest,” said System, “I got in an argument with Bobby about adventurers. She told me that if it was so easy, I should try it for myself.”

Jack pushed his empty plate to the side. “Who exactly is Bobby?”

“You don't know her. Bobby Tables is an Emissary of Chaos,” System said dismissively.

The hound made an expression like he had bitten into a lemon. “That wouldn't happen to be Bobby “Drop” Tables, would it?”

“Yes, though I wouldn't say her name out loud.” System gave Jack a confused look. “How do you know Bobby?”

Mac appeared out of nowhere and hopped onto the table. The demonic feline tried to swat at a glass of juice, but Jack managed to get it out of the way in time.

“She's one of Munroe’s Daemons, from the before times,” Mac said, “And if she's here that means things are going to get interesting.”

“What's the difference between a demon and a daemon?” Francis asked, trying to bribe his familiar with a piece of sausage.

“One is a frustrating creature that never does what you want it to, and the other is a demon,” Mac replied unhelpfully as he devoured the offering.

Jack finished off his glass of juice and set it down far away from the demon. “They were like computer programs, but different. Apparently some of them made their way here. Who else besides Bobby should I be on the lookout for?”

System tried to think. His memory was less than perfect in his current form. “Well, the Emissaries are hard to keep track of. They're always merging and splitting. It's usually best to group them together.”

He rubbed his temples some more. “There's Munroe's Brood, The Mids, The Gems, and a bunch of other smaller fae. Mostly they're tricksters, but sometimes their pranks can get out of hand.”

“Like getting System drunk enough to sign up for a quest,” Francis said, “What's the big deal with that anyway?”

System groaned. “There are a bunch of safety features built into the mechanisms that govern this world. One of them is that nobody with an active quest can access the framework or execute commands.”

Francis wasn't great with computers. When they misbehaved, he hit them with something until the techies brought him a new one. “Why is that important?”

“I have a program that will let me return to my natural state. But I can't use it until I finish the quest.” System shook his head, and immediately regretted it. “The safeguards were put into place to prevent people from gaining access to things they shouldn't.”

Jack nodded his head. “You were afraid of adventurers stumbling across an access point and wanted a way to exclude them.”

“Adventurers are the worst,” System said, “We used to have a secret door that could only be opened by balancing a sheep on your head while yodeling. It took less than a week before someone figured it out.”

The Marine narrowed his eyes at System. “You did the same things to gods too, didn't you?”

System met his gaze. “Look, my job is to make sure everything keeps running smoothly. Ascension is one of the tools I use to prevent outsiders from screwing everything up. That's why things are the way they are, for stability.”

“It's kind of a dick move,” Francis said, “When we come here you make us choose a god to serve, which pretty much means we're screwed if the guy we choose gets in a scrap. Why even let us come here in the first place if you're just going to have us kill each other?”

“I wish I knew,” System replied, “My boss isn't exactly forthcoming when it comes to his plans.”

As System and Francis argued, Jack tried to make sense of this new information. From the way System talked about the world, it almost sounded like he was describing a computer program, or a simulation.

If Vahnis was essentially a giant video game, that would explain a lot. Though it also begged the question of what hardware would be capable of running it.

Jack decided to keep his mouth shut for now. There were probably traps in place to prevent people who knew the secret from exploiting it. If he said the wrong thing there was a chance that he would be eliminated.

However, he had one burning question that needed to be answered. “Hey System, what quest did you take?”

System frowned. “Actually, now that you mention it, I have no idea.”

***

Francis had been meaning to swing by the Adventure Guild to claim his bounties. But whenever he had a spare minute to swing by, something always came up.

The Best of Brexis had done everything they could to help ease the burden of running a city state. Unfortunately, some things needed his direct attention. The Marine was also wary of delegating too much, afraid that one day he would wake up and find out that everything had gone to shit in his absence.

Willow had been calling in favors from the other gods to make sure things went smoothly. Francis suspected that Amanda, Shiv’s mother, was also meddling behind the scenes. The dragon was invested in making sure that Brexis rose to prominence, and took her daughter with it.

Shiv had volunteered to take over as his head of security. She was surprisingly good at finding and neutralizing threats before they became life threatening problems. As a former assassin herself, Shiv had a knack for proactively dealing with threats to her employer.

Julia, her wife, had teamed up with Sir Auldric to whip the city guard into shape. Having a Paladin who could detect lies running things was a mixed blessing.

Auldric was damn efficient at finding criminals, and making sure innocents didn't get locked up for crimes they didn't commit. On the other hand, criminals were already starting to adapt to his truth-reading abilities. They had stopped leaving witnesses behind for him to question.

Francis had a project in the works that would hopefully discourage the criminal element from dropping bodies to cover their tracks. If criminals were stupid enough to think that death would prevent their victims from testifying, then they were in for a rude awakening.

Unfortunately, Francis was still figuring out that particular puzzle. There were ways to contact a willing soul, assuming you could get to their body in time. If Hades hadn’t been acting like such an asshole it would have been simple to set something up. But the god of the dead was still doing his best to sabotage Brexis.

That left them with a much narrower window to contact the spirit in question before it went to Hades’ realm. Hank had offered to make a device that would trap the souls of anyone who died within city limits, which Francis had politely declined.

Hank was great at keeping Brexis running and repairing the damage caused by centuries of neglect. But the kobold still had a disturbing tendency to pick the most evil solution possible if not properly supervised.

Francis had learned to be very careful about how he phrased things when talking to Hank. The little lizard-man was technically evil, and very eager to please his new master. In his mind, building an orphanage meant that there was a surplus of orphans, and Hank wasn't going to turn down cheap labor. Or building supplies.

Thankfully, nobody had died before the Marine realized his mistake. Francis managed to pivot and create a trade school instead, narrowly avoiding the whole child labor issue. It all worked out in the end. The kids got to work a few hours a week to grind some experience, and Francis didn't have to strangle Hank. (An outcome which deeply saddened the kobold, because he was into that shit.)

Francis stepped into the Adventure Guild and went to cash in his quests. As the attendant was transferring the funds to his account they paused.

“Oh, it's a good thing you stopped by,” the man said, tapping away at an interface only he could see, “It seems you have quite a few unread messages. Does the name Graybeard ring any bells?”