Falling out of yet another vortex, Dave was dumped on his a.s.s in Moria. Several notifications appeared in his HUD, blinking.

Dave was in a state of shock, his mind couldn't quite encompa.s.s what had happened just yet. The legion…everything he worked so hard for, was just gone. He was unable to calm the thoughts rattling around, ricocheting back and forth in his head.

One fragile hope he held onto was that everything was just a dream and he would wake up soon and it would all go away. But the blue notification icons flas.h.i.+ng in front of him jarred him out of his hopeful daze and put the lie to his one forlorn hope.

Slowly he moved, waving his hand to pull up his display and read the notifications.

***

Attention Player!

You are in a high-level closed area of Conquest. There are no records of your entry to the area, appropriate character permissions or evidence of extenuating circ.u.mstances. Your character will be de-portalled from the Underworld immediately and this incident will be logged as a possible violation of your Terms of Service Agreement.

***

Conquest Server Announcement!

The Undead Legion has been defeated in the event: The Siege of the Undead Realm.

The Undead Faction has been eliminated from Conquest!

The Undead Expansion is no longer accessible to Players.

Players can still enter the Underworld if they open one of the hidden gates that are scattered throughout Conquest.

***

Attention Player!

The Undead Legion has been defeated in the event: The Siege of the Undead Realm.

The Undead Faction is now extinct. All characters, quests, systems and organizations that were related to the Undead Faction are invalidated and no longer functional.

The Dead Realm, Red Fortress, and the Undead Frontier teleportation gate coordinates have been removed from your logs.

You are no longer able to revive your undead.

You have lost owners.h.i.+p of your Land.

You have lost the ability to access the Underworld.

All your CP has been removed.

All benefits from playing an undead character and cla.s.s are removed.

You gained:

1,500,000 EXP for your deeds in the Siege of the Undead Realm.

***

Attention Player!

You have failed your S cla.s.s Legacy quest!

For your efforts in reaching this far in the S Legacy quest you have been rewarded:

3,000,000 EXP

***

Dave read through the notifications numbly as his undead avatar changed to his human character.

He was in a dazed, dull-minded state. Everything he'd worked so hard for was stripped away from him.

Dave felt something stinging his hand painfully. He looked, a ring on his finger shone brightly for a moment. Every part of Dave's avatar was a living human, except the finger bearing the ring of the golden skull, his ring-finger was still that of an undead draugr.

A red system notification popped up before Dave.

***

ATTENTION USER!

Corrupted Logs have been found in your account, you will be ejected and banned from Conquest for 24 hours or until such a time that the logs are verified by staff members.

Please note if evidence of cheating, hacking, or game exploitation of any kind are discovered you will be permanently banned from the game!

"WHAT DA f.u.c.k!?" was all Death Stroke managed to scream before disappearing from Conquest.

***

INTERLUDE:

The dev stood uncomfortably close while the lead engineer hammered at the keyboard, literally breathing down the lead's neck as the rest of the software engineers pretended they weren't watching and listening to the unfolding drama. The game developer had come rampaging into the room screaming something about them ruining his life's work and he would have all their reproductive organs in a pressure cooker if they didn't fix it RIGHT now.

Once the lead got a coherent explanation out of the fuming dev, he almost went into a state of shock himself. What was basically a VR genocide had happened right under his and his teammates' noses and they had no clue. Not a single game notification or alert. Nothing to tell them that a major game-world changing Event was happening, or had already happened.

The engineer scrolled down the screen and the codes flashed by, the game dev's frown only grew worse as he read the codes as easily as Tank from 'The Matrix.'

The engineer typed in queries and checked the game logs furiously. He was stressing bad, his forehead sweaty, his fingers trembling. He didn't like being yelled at or pressured, but this was some serious s.h.i.+t. Their jobs really were on the line.

"Where the h.e.l.l are the files?!" the dev suddenly shouted, scaring the high-strung engineer again.

The lead engineer didn't answer for almost a minute as he continued searching.

Finally he responded, "From the sequence of the timestamps on the unrelated logs that are still here, I would say a s.h.i.+tload of logs are missing, even the backups are gone, but that's impossible! I- I have no idea how, or even where they went..."

Game-logs were used by oversight agencies to audit the ethics and propriety of a company's virtual and online behavior. Claiming logs were 'missing' was like telling the tax collector the dog ate their accounting books. And it was just about as believable.

The software engineer stopped typing suddenly.

"Ohh shhheeee-oot. It's Alfie. It's gotta be," the software engineer said slowly.

"That a.s.shat penguin AI!? Why do you say that?"

"No one can just delete the logs. But Alfie could, maybe, change them; scramble them and hide them from us. They're probably right there in the servers, we just don't know where, or what to search for. It would be like looking for the proverbial needle in a trillion haystacks."

The dev's face turned red, completely apoplectic.

"That is IT! That f.u.c.king AI wasn't right in his code from the start. We should've trashed that priggy electronic-abortion as soon as he started wearing that ridiculous f.u.c.king tuxedo!"

The staff members a.s.siduously pretended to mind their own business, they didn't dare look up to watch the dev give his temper full reign.

"Call a full-staff emergency meeting, I want that mutated crotch of an AI replaced! TEN YEARS of work down the tubes for nothing! That f.u.c.ker just trashed my ENTIRE world! Which is my ENTIRE life's work! And if I lose my job I'll make sure you do too, every last one of you!" the dev shouted.

"But sir, what do we do about the situation inside Conquest right now, the Undead plotlines and quests that are ongoing?"

The dev's shoulders slumped and the anger left him all at once in a rush. He looked down, his face as devastated as any artist that had just learned a beloved masterpiece had been destroyed or stolen. A masterpiece that was born from the creative efforts and labors of decades.

"c.r.a.p, man. I don't know," he said softly. Then he spoke louder, to the room, "Sorry I lost my temper, everyone." He addressed the lead engineer again, "First, we gotta try to find those records. Somehow. If not, then...we'll see. I'm going to go tell the other devs. They're going to go ballistic when they find out everything that's connected or related to the undead is trashed too. Call me if there are any developments. Otherwise, I'll see you at the meeting."

The dev turned and shuffled away, head down and shoulders slumped. A frail, aged shadow of the charismatic dynamo that had stormed into the room just a little while ago.