37. Drama pt. 2

  “No, it’s nothing like that at all, Peotre,” I objected. We had decided when we split that whoever ended up closer to the door would be Hail, and I had been closer to the far wall. That made me Hagi, so I had cast [Illusion Magic: Disguise] to help the others keep it straight as well. “Right now I have no idea what Hail is thinking at all.”

  Hail nodded. “And I have no idea what Hagi is thinking. We’re basically two completely different people until we sync up again tonight. We just have all of the same memories leading up to the point where the split happened.”

  “Except that tomorrow we’ll remember being both of us during this conversation,” I clarified. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know how to explain it very well.”

  “I don’t think that’s your fault, Hail,” Daemon said. “I actually think you’ve done an excellent job of explaining it. Peotre is just a bit dense.”

  “Hey!” Peotre objected.

  “Thank you for trusting us with this information. Both of you.” Ulasha said.

  I shook my head. “You’re not getting it. I made the decision before I split. When I’m one person, I’m one person. When I’m five people, I’m still only one person. There’s just five of us. We both came out of the split carrying the conviction to explain this new ability to you. Hagi is an alias I’ve been using, not a completely different personality or anything like that.”

  “It sounds very convenient,” Dimple commented.

  “It is,” I agreed.

  “I’m curious. Do you know whether this is an ability which will continue to grow as you use it, or will it’s current limitations never change?” Daemon asked.

  I considered the question. “I think it will level up the more I use it,” I said. “At first I thought it was linked to my [Placeholder] class, but I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Instead I think that I have to keep using it in order to stretch its limitations.”

  “So it’s like a muscle you have to build up?” he clarified.

  “I suppose.”

  “Thank you for this information, Hail. Hagi.” Tarisha said. “I can understand why you were keeping it to yourself, but you should know that nobody in this room would even think of betraying your trust in them. In fact, I’m quite certain that our only thoughts at the moment are ways in which we can help you exploit this new ability to its maximum potential.”

  I glanced at Peotre and Ulasha, the two Travelers in the room whom I knew the least, but they simply nodded along with Tarisha’s sentiment. I shrugged. “Honestly, I can’t really think of any way you could help me aside from maybe sowing some disinformation. Right now my primary goal is to get all of my classes to level forty-nine before the battlegrounds begin. I’m not quite certain that I’ll manage, since [Acolyte] is so far behind the others.”

  “We can help you with that,” Dimple pointed out. “We have plenty of people who would be thrilled to power level you, whether or not you decided to destroy lairs or bust dungeons along the way.”

  “I’m not certain we want to be power leveled,” Hail objected.

  I nodded. “I think we’d rather keep pugging.”

  “Here’s a question,” Daemon said. “Are you both aware of guild chat right now?”

  “I am,” Hail said.

  “I’m not,” I answered. “The system only considers me in when I sign in as Hail. Hagi and my randomly chosen names are all unguilded. I’ve actually had to turn down quite a few random invites. It’s a little annoying.”

  Daemon nodded. “Hail, would you consider joining the Mavericks as Hagi as well?”

  I exchanged glances with myself.

  “What would we tell the others?” I asked.

  “If you don’t want to tell them the truth, then we tell them that Hagi is Hail 2.0,” Peotre suggested.

  I frowned. “I’m not sure I like that idea.”

  “Do you have a better one?” Peotre asked. “I mean, I don’t mean to say that Hagi is better than Hail or anything, it’s just a way of phrasing things that the others will understand and believe.”

  I looked at Hail again, who scratched his chin in thought. “Why do we have to tell them anything?” he asked. “You’re not explaining everything about the purge, why do I have to explain Hagi to people I barely know?”

  The others exchanged glances. “It will draw quite a bit of chatter in the guild chat,” Daemon pointed out. “Everyone is already pretty sure that Hagi is an AI after all. Having two resident Native Player Characters in one guild will draw a ton of attention from everyone both inside the guild and out.”

  Ulasha chuckled. “We’re already under a microscope. I don’t see a problem with it.”

  I considered the proposition for several moments, because it was a complex matter. On the one hand, associating Hagi with the Mavericks would increase the likelihood that my secrets would come out sooner rather than later. While they had tried to purge the majority of the spies that had sneaked their way through the application process into the guild since I joined, that didn’t mean that they had gotten all of them. I knew at that endgame was ruthless, and the big guilds would think nothing of paying one of their retainers to keep an eye on me through the Mavericks.

  On the other hand, it would make it much easier to use my abilities in regards to lairs and dungeons with the support of The Hagi alias was already blown, but if I wanted to operate incognito all I needed to do was tell the system to apply a random name to my current session and it would. The only downside to that was the confusion it could cause when the strangers I partied with called me by that random name.

  “Let’s do it,” Hail said, coming to the same conclusion as me at the same moment that I had, but voicing it sooner.

  “I agree. But not just one Hagi. Let’s join as [Mage], [Duelist], [Archer], and [Acolyte].”

  “Are you sure?” Hail asked.

  “I am. Unless the system doesn’t let us for some reason.” <>

  <> the system answered.

  I glanced at Hail, who nodded at me. I think he’d gotten the same message that I had. “Split yourself further, Hagi,” he said, just to confirm that we were on the same page.

  I nodded. <>

  A moment later, the room had gotten significantly more crowded. The four of me that were Hagi selected our classes at random. I got [Duelist].

  “Okay, we’re ready,” I said once the class selection was concluded. “Invite us all to the guild.”

  I watched as others also expressed their surprise and interest in the new guild members, of which I was only one. The various guild chat channels were streaming by just as fast as they had been during the purge, and while there was still some lingering resentment, the majority of the guild seemed to be excited by this sudden turn of events. I turned back to the others in the room.

  “Well, then, now that the cat is out of the bag, I guess we should figure out what the party line is going to be, shouldn’t we?”

  Several hours later, I took a break from grinding a lair with my guildmates to read the forum topic that had evolved from that conversation.

  I watched for a few minutes as the thread exploded. At first everyone was responding to Ulasha’s wall of text, but although the banned former members of continued to vent their frustration (including the revelation of several minor guild secrets), more and more of the posters began trying to draw my attention. Others were complaining that it was unfair that my guild had managed to attract two NPC members when ‘the feature remained unavailable to everyone else.’ I was about to close out the forums when a wild blue post appeared.

  As was generally the case whenever an administrator posted in the forums, the thread really blew up after that.

  ?