To say that Juri’s equipment represented an upgrade for Hirrus was a dramatic understatement.

If this is what a “dungeon boss” was supposed to have access to, Hirrus wanted to be a dungeon boss.

Each piece had an item level of 60, giving him a 300-point bonus to two stats, as well as two 600-point increases to secondary stats. These were mostly focused on cooldown reduction, but with a mixture of others.

He also acquired two new Arcana upon her death.

Split Second

+5 RES +40 Cast Speed Rating

Utility

Cast time: Instant

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Effect: Increase move speed by 300% for 0.25 seconds. During this time you are untargetable by effects and immune to damage.

Slow Toxin

+5 ATT +70 Cast Time Reduction Rating

Damage: 3x ATT + 3x RES

Cast time: 0.25 seconds

Cooldown: 30 seconds

Added Effect: Deals 0 damage on impact. Full damage is dealt slowly over 30 seconds as a Poison effect.

Looking at his character sheet, his statistics had increased dramatically, thanks primarily to Juri’s gear.

It was almost enough to make him take off his wedding band.

Almost.

Level 3

HP: 66000

BUR: 2018

SUP: 1519

TEN: 2016

ATT: 370

RES: 375

GLE: 1715

The secondary stats that followed were now immensely inflated. They were listed in ratings, and for a moment Hirrus didn’t know what they meant. Looking at them closely, some unknown part of his brain processed the ratings and turned them into something functional.

His total “critical rating” gave him a 20% chance to perform a critical hit. That seemed incredibly low, but there also wasn’t much critical rating on Juri’s gear. His total “critical damage rating” meant that those critical strikes would do 115% bonus damage. Attack speed rating was only increasing his attack speed by 10%, but his cast speed was being increased by 25%.

Hirrus noted that he didn’t have any double strike rating, so his natural double strike chance was 0%. That suited him just fine. He had Iron Typhoon for that.

The cleave attribute seemed to be somewhat convoluted. Especially considering he had a skill called Cleave as a guard. His chance of a cleave was a fixed 20%, which was unaffected by cleave rating. What his cleave rating did was increase the damage dealt on a cleave, which he discerned to be 19% at his current stat level.

Hirrus’ highest rating now was cooldown reduction. Juri’s focus on it meant that while the rest of his ratings were between one and two thousand, his cooldown reduction rating was at thirty-six hundred and seventy, which gave him a total of 27% reduction to his cooldowns.

The gear fit perfectly. Snug but not restrictive. As expected.

Hirrus left Juri’s body dead on the floor. He was glad she was wearing underthings so he left her with some sort of dignity. Hirrus thought about rearranging her corpse or throwing something over her, but he came to a very sobering realization.

The gear he wore came from somewhere. Alric had made it seem like it wasn’t from other players, since he couldn’t touch the items. Did that mean Juri stole it off some creature she’d murdered? If so, he doubted she gave their corpse any respect.

Hirrus walked away, leaving Juri in the middle of her bedroom floor.

He returned to the main hall of the house. There was a scratching sound, followed by a lot of panting and grunting. Hirrus readied his axe and walked to the stairwell.

From the balcony, he could see Alric dragging heavy furniture items around to block the door.

“Are we under siege?” Hirrus asked, curious.

Alric jolted, startled, and whirled with his dagger held out defensively. He looked at Hirrus for a long moment. “Oh,” he said, sagging with relief. “It’s just you.”

“What’s the problem?” Hirrus asked again as he descended the stairs.

“Oh, nothing,” Alric said, shoving the short dresser he’d been dragging in front of the door. He propped it up against the large chair and heavy bookcase already there. “I just felt a bit superfluous staying out of danger like that. I wanted to be sure I contributed something.”

“So you barricaded the door?”

“Yup. Smart, right?”

“Why?”

Alright opened his mouth to answer, but then closed it again. His brow furrowed, and he was silent for a long moment.

“Don’t worry about it.” Hirrus flipped Juri’s other ring across the room towards Alric. The adventurer snapped his hand out to catch it, fumbled for a moment, and snatched it right before it hit the ground. “Juri has been dealt with.”

“Fuckin’ sweet,” Alric said. He quickly wiggled one of the rings off his other fingers, and then slid Juri’s on. “Um, hey. Now that you’ve gotten your revenge and all, I don’t suppose I could bother you to take a look at these two?” He gestured down at the man in the ornate plate armor, and the woman in the brigandine.

Hirrus sighed and started to peel their gear off, tossing it to the greedy adventurer. Alric had delivered Juri to him. Hirrus was a man of his word, and so would keep up his end of the bargain.

Neither of these adventurers had gear anywhere near a match for Juri’s, and so Alric had his pick of all of it.

“This is great,” Alric said as his gear flipped around before he settled on a mixture of equipment - presumably all the items with the highest stats on them. “This is the first thing that’s gone well for me since I started playing.”

Hirrus smiled the barest, briefest smile. “There is more where that came from, if you can continue to help me.” The smile faded and Hirrus looked at the barricaded door. “With Juri dead, I’m at a loss for where to go next. She wasn’t interested in telling all that she knew.”

“Well, I don’t have anything right now,” Alric admitted. “But watching this from the outside might give me something to feed you. LocalDefense chat is going fucking haywire right now, but it’s all memeing on people saying there’s a dungeon boss loose in town.”

Talking to Alric was, sometimes, like trying to talk to a dog. Some of its howls might sound like words, but they were meaningless. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Care to explain?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Alric gestured dismissively. “Not nearly important enough. But if Last of the Strong doesn’t want to suspend recruitment entirely, they’ll have to do something, especially somewhere where people outside the guild can see to find them. I can pose as an interested recruit and see what I can learn.”

“I’m in no position to turn down your help. Last of the Strong can’t be allowed to go unpunished.”

“Alright, well-”

“I’m not entirely clear,” a voice said behind him. “What am I looking at here?”

Hirrus whirled on the source of the voice. It was a strange man he’d never seen before.

His appearance was just a little unnatural. The man had piercing silver eyes with pupils that were a little too small. His brow ridge was just a little too angular to be natural, and Hirrus suspected that the same would be true of his cheekbones, if they weren’t concealed by a thick, dark brown beard.

The man was wearing heavy red armor, with silver reinforcing strips across the chest and pauldrons, evoking imagery of an iron cage.

“Holy shit,” Alric whispered. He found his voice after a bare moment. “Uh. I’m- I’m not with him. I’m just…”

“Do you know what happened?” the strange man asked, peering intently at Hirrus with a mixture of curiosity and consternation. “How did this get made?”

“I don’t know anything,” Alric said quickly, backing away until he was pressed up against the barricade on the door. “I just got here and wanted to see what was up.”

The man fixed Alric with a scowl. “Yeah, the kid wearing gear with item levels six times his player level has to be blameless. Right. You don’t have to tell me anything. I’ll figure it all out in a few minutes.”

“What’s going on?” Hirrus asked, tension drawing his shoulders tight. “Do you know this man?”

“N-no… but… The armor,” Alric said. He scrambled to move the dresser out of the way of the door, but was unable to tear his eyes away from the man in red armor. His fingers just uselessly tore at the surface. “That’s a GM. Someone called a GM on you, man. I can’t get banned. I’ve only put like two hours into the game! I can’t get hosed out of my whole sub for this!”

“What’s a GM?” Hirrus asked, turning back to the man. “Who are you?”

“I’m GM Dave,” the man said, “And we’ve gotten a ton of reports about something unusual in Inoha. Some people say that someone hacked a guard, and other people say that there’s a dungeon boss loose in the city. I’m not sure who’s right.” He looked Hirrus up and down again. “I’m leaning towards a hacked guard.”

Hirrus reached for his axe slowly. “What do you want?”

“You’re an aberration,” GM Dave said, “some kind of ghost in the machine getting a little too poltergeist-y for my taste. I want to understand how you came to be, so I can pitch a report up the pipe to stop you from happening again. But strictly speaking, what I need to do is make you go away so that we don’t receive any more complaints.”

“You’re welcome to try,” Hirrus said, drawing his weapon and raising it defensively. “I won’t let you stand in the way of justice.”

“Funny that you think you’d be letting me do anything.” GM Dave emitted a single bark of a laugh.

Hirrus lunged. The time for talk was over. This man seemed to think he was more than a common adventurer, but he was acting just like everyone he’d met since he came to Inoha.

His axe arced around, aimed at the man’s shoulder. Arrogance made the man not even move before Hirrus' charge.

He didn’t even have a weapon.

The axe slammed into its intended target with bone-breaking force, enhanced by Juri’s velvet-accented gear. As well as the amethyst gem set into the head of the weapon. The strike landed true and solid, edge-on in between the pauldron and the joint in the plate chestpiece.

Nothing happened.

It was like striking solid steel.

And more than that, immovable steel.

There was no damage readout, and the impact of the blow ran up his arm. From his elbow to his wrist went tingly-numb at the reverberation of the abrupt halt of the strike. His axe nearly tumbled from his grip.

Hirrus staggered back from his foe, holding his axe-wielding arm steady with his other hand. He looked up at the silver-eyed creature, aghast. “What are you?” he demanded.

Alric barked out a nervous laugh, prompting Hirrus to look back at him.

“Sorry, that’s like… That’s like the thing the recruiters were saying to you. But, uh.” He glanced back at the furniture he’d half-moved out of the way of the door. “Nevermind. Ignore me.”

“Do you understand now?” GM Dave asked, putting his hands on his hips. “I’m not some obstacle you can fight. You can’t batter me down and make me go away.” He reached out to his left and when he closed his fist, a hammer formed from the thin air.

It was not a weapon.

That was a tool, like what would be used in construction rather than combat.

But the man handled it with a severe expression that made it appear to be the most threatening object in the world.

Hirrus' arm was still tingling after throwing his entire body into a strike that did absolutely nothing. He got the impression that if that hammer struck him, what it would do to him was the exact opposite. And he didn’t anticipate it being a pleasant experience.