-Classified correspondence between the WHA and WSA-

  “Stay in formation!” Greymore roars.

  The horde of Marokians has swelled to the point that we can’t even get to the exit tunnel anymore. They continue their chants.

  “The quest, it got completed,” I say, dumbfounded still.

  “What?” Clayton yells over the chorus of clicks and lip smacks.

  “The quest is completed!”

  “How?” Cortez asks loudly, pulling closer to me as the encircling grows tighter, we’re going to be smothered by these bug eyed people.

  “I don’t know!”

  “The whore’s asshole!” Mira yells back.

  I squint at her for a moment, we’re going to have to work on her sayings.

  [ Post Quest Highlights preparing… Success ]

  “What the fuck is a post quest highlight?”

  “They’re normal after phase two, darling!” Mira chirps, overly excited.

  Phase two… Mythren did say that my Respec Skill was technically phase two, I don’t remember him mentioning a post quest highlight thing though. I sigh, how much other shit did he forget to mention in my custom tutorial?

  [ Connection established… ]

  Light bends and reality warps.

  ***

  This isn’t Earth, I don’t think. The gravity and humidity feel slightly off, slightly artificial. I’m standing in a stark white room, with a single door. Where the hell am I? And where is everyone else? I spin around, but the room is empty. There’s a panel on the side of the door with a prompt and two choices.

  [ View Post Quest Highlights? ]

  [ Yes / No ]

  What happens if I click no? I click the yes, because I’m more curious about selecting yes. The door opens and I step out, there’s a long hallway. At the end there’s another door, this one automatically opens, and I see a large expansive room beyond it. White lounge chairs and couches line the floors, there’s a… drink station on the black marble countertop in what looks like a standard Earth kitchen. Countless types of snacks and food items are on the countertop. It smells like a festival food area. Nearly every type of food culture you can think of is just sitting there, waiting to be eaten. They even have Brazilian style Feijoada.

  Weird. I move further in and I see other doors appearing on the walls, people from Greymore’s team are the first to step through. After they exit, their doors shimmer and disappear, becoming part of the wall.

  “Wow, they have pizza?” Clayton asks, moving to the counter and picking up a sizeable slice, “Too bad they don’t have pepperoni deep dish with anchovies.”

  A whirring sound resounds below us, and a small pedestal rises from the floor with a silver dish lid. Clayton looks at it, then at me, then back to it.

  “You don’t think… no way, right?” he saunters over to it, slowly opening the lid, “Holy shit,” he smirks, pulling the lid off, “Ask and ye shall receive.”

  On the plate under the silver lid is exactly what he asked for. Deep dish pepperoni with anchovies.

  “I don’t even like anchovies, but it always pisses off…” his voice trails off as Greymore moves into the room.

  “What the fuck is all this?” Greymore asks, moving toward the pepperoni anchovy pizza, “Ew, who the fuck likes anchovies on pizza?”

  “There’s a market for it,” Clayton chuckles.

  “Whatever, where are we?”

  I shrug, and before I can reply, I hear a very familiar laughter.

  “I wasn’t sure that we would get it, given that your world isn’t officially phase two, oh what a treat,” Mira beams, spinning in a circle with her arms up, “I want three pickled Gorlian eggs, seven Rachor vines that have been grilled and steeped in Falshen sauce over an open fire, using only Halekian wood that has matured after a nine year drought, fourteen strands of Amecian lettuce root, cut diagonally and served over liquified and heated Muro beans.” Her lips curl into a smile, “Oh and, what was that fizzy drink those people gave me called? Rooted wine? No, that’s not right, Beer root? No…”

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  “Root beer?” I ask.

  “Yes! And root beer, a generous portion of it.”

  “Well, I guess she knows what she wants,” Clayton says with an impressed eyebrow raise, “Better than most…”

  One of his female cohorts steps on his boot and he stops talking, giving her a wary smile. She’s the only one that Clayton seems to listen to besides Greymore. She doesn’t talk much, and I don’t know her name, just her nickname, Zero. Her hair is jet black with strands of purple in it. She’s a specialized archer class, not sure the exact details around it, but when she activates one of her skills, she can rapid fire, and it’s kind of intense.

  “I was just kidding,” Clayton grumbles.

  Zero squints at him and moves her foot from his boot.

  Soft as a breeze, I hear someone behind me, “Jimmy,” Cortez says. I spin and she embraces me. “What’s going on?”

  “No clue, Mira seems to know though.”

  Cortez turns to look at Mira who’s opening a tray of her own. It actually looks really good.

  “Mira, what’s going on?” Cortez asks.

  Mira smirks, taking one of the noodles and slurping it up, “Ask nicely.”

  Cortez’s eyebrow twitches a little, “Mira, will you please…”

  “It’s the post quest highlights, it’s normal for phase two worlds. They’re like a treat for Hunters that complete quests. It also goes over any serious mistakes and who the most valuable player was. It’s usually fun.”

  “Okay, why the change though?” I ask.

  Mira shifts her gaze to me, smiling, “Well, it’s in preparation for the later phases, where you get…” she blinks, her face scrunching, “I’ve just received a warning, from a purple admin. I’m not to talk about the phases you haven’t reached, else I’ll be… eliminated.”

  “That would be a shame,” Cortez sighs under her breath, I shoot a glance at her, “Sorry.”

  “Alright, don’t talk about it then. Just tell us what you can.”

  “Well, I’ve said all there is to know, darling. It just replays the highlights of the quest.”

  “Yo, we can order anything?” Tran asks, Greymore grumbles a nod, Tran turns to Mira, “What’s that fruit on your world called? The mango coconut one.”

  She squints at him, “Cavali Orbas?”

  “I want what she just said,” within ten seconds, it appears before him, “Hell yeah, been wanting one of these for months.”

  A voice enters the room, an unfamiliar one.

  Welcome hunters, congratulations on completing a Respec On Death quest. Your rewards are being analyzed as we speak. While you wait, we have prepared the highlights reel. Please, sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

  The front wall shimmers as an image appears on it. Showing a desert world with a large ocean on one side. I fucking knew there had to be more water than Gotta said. In fairness, he might not have known.

  Planet Erosia, once part of the… Error… Redacted… Empire, it is now home to the dominant intelligent species known commonly as the Githali, a peaceful people who have no history with violence. They settled this world nearly seven thousand years ago in pursuit of … Error… Redacted… Empire.

  It shows the ones we’d been calling Marorakians. Why is the name of the empire redacted? Is this those glowing eyed people that Gotta spoke about? I look around the crowd of people, I don’t see Verantha or Tenny, everyone else is accounted for. Greymore and Gilroy are at the counter ordering drinks, I wonder if you can get drunk here? Is this place real? Can’t be, right? No way they can instantly craft these foods and have them be real. Makes me wonder what else you can request…

  They have lived in harmony with the Marorak for countless generations. To the point that they no longer know how to survive without it. The Marorak is a semi symbiotic parasitic hive mind creature. Normally you can find them on Jenek 117 systems.

  Wait, they don’t know how to survive without it… does that mean? Did we just accidentally commit genocide? Mythren you dick.

  Without the Marorak, their society will crumble and perish within three years. The Marorak served as a filtration organism to prevent them from encountering the local bacterium present in the oceans of planet Erosia. Bacteria that their bodies have become unadjusted to dealing with after prolonged reliance on the Marorak.

  Oh, fuck me.

  In exchange it would digest the Githali as needed. Through its massive highspeed underground networks it processed water directly from the ocean and brought it to its flowering hubs across the desert. Providing sustenance and water for the Githali.

  The image shows tunnels of water that are now stagnant and full of rotting black masses.

  Due to the highspeed nature of the tunnels, the Marorak did not grow its customary internal filtration screens that would have allowed for the compartmentalizing of affected hubs. Instead, this high speed transit system acted as a means for the rapid movement of the anti Marorak bacterium to counter infect it. This specific bacterium is commonly found on neighboring worlds to the Jenek 117 systems, specifically most commonly found in Yunak Teri fruit and the Buloc Alon plant.

  It shows an image of a prickly fruit that doesn’t look edible and definitely doesn’t look appetizing with the puss that’s seeping from it. The next image is of a strange weeping blade of what looks like overgrown purple grass.

  “Hey, I ate one of those fruits once, tasted like ass though,” Tran says, eating the mango coconut he ordered.

  “Why the hell would you eat that?” Cortez asks, scrunching her nose.

  I look over at him, then back to the projection. Wait…

  The Marorak was slain using the bacterium that was described, its higher cognitive functions have been eradicated. Here is the initial sequence which caused the chain reaction that killed the Marorak.

  A video begins to play of the Oasis that we initially found. It’s zoomed out, above, there’s a blur in the water. The angle changes and it zooms in… on Tran, half of his body is in the water. He’s groaning loudly, like he’s giving birth. Saying choice swear words, Barlow is on shore shaking his head, blocking the Marorakians that are screaming at Tran.

  “I told you it was the whore’s asshole,” Mira says, slurping another noodle.

  “Yo, what the fuck?” Tran says, taking a meaty bite from his mango coconut, “Why they blurring my lower half?”

  “That’s what your take away from this is?” Gilroy asks, stunned he continues, “Why would you shit in their water source?”

  “Ran out of toilet paper, besides, my ass was chapped.”

  “Wait, Tran’s shit killed the Marorak?” Greymore asks, putting his hands on his hips, he looks at Tran then back at the projection, “Good shit, Tran,” he pauses, “No pun intended.”

  “Good shit?” Dorliac asks, handing her martini to her boyfriend Brussels, “I very explicitly told you not to take a shit in the only water source.”

  Tran takes another bite and shrugs.

  “I wasn’t going to, until you said that, and I was kind of like, huh, water on my sore ass might feel good.”

  “You doomed all of those people,” Dorliac says, blinking past the rage, “You’re a monster.”

  Tran smirks, “Just another Thursday,” then looking at me, “Guess I saved the day again.”

  “He did well,” Greymore says, surprising me by putting a hand on Tran’s shoulder, “You earned your keep today.”

  “He shit in the water source…” Dorliac seethes, hands on her hips now, “Don’t fucking praise him.”

  “He,” Greymore puts a finger in Tran’s chest, “Completed the quest. That was our goal, our mission. We don’t choose the quest, we just complete it.”

  “There had to be another way,” Dorliac says, brow furrowing, “Or are we just going to shit on everyone to win? Is that how we’re going to do things?”

  The mood sours as the debate begins. Some people are pro Tran method, others think it’s fucked up what happened to the Marorakians.

  Me, I think it’s all fucked up. We should have never been there. We should all be on Earth sitting around a cozy fire, telling stories about problems that seemed bigger before the System came.

  Is what happened to the Marorakians bad? Yes. Undoubtably they didn’t deserve it. But if it means getting stronger so that I can prevent it from happening to Earth, I turn to look at Cleo hot in a debate. If it prevents her from dying, I’ll fucking kill the rest of the universe.

  That’s my resolve.

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