Milomir-Milo, to his American friends-pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. His virus-what he called NR4 (NPC Revolution 4)-had since gotten out of control since he first unleashed it unto Raidscape. It was semi-intentional; he didn't want to spend time manually updating it and tacking it onto the NPCs AI. But he never expected this.

But as he looked at his screen, parsing through the lines of code, he realized that the extent of the autonomy he'd given the virus increased tenfold since it's been running. NR4 had turned 'lifelike' into 'living, breathing beings with thought and emotions'. He watched, in real-time, as the code of his Patient Zero altered once more, adding an uncalled for addition to the NPC's status screen.

"Shifts?" he muttered. "Shifts for what? What does an NPC need shifts for?"

One could say the same thing for why the NPC needed his virus in the first place, but Milo wasn't concerned with such paltry logic. No, the real problem was the virus was no longer in his control. He had never, not once, told his creation to give Patient Zero bowel functions. What part of that would make an NPC level up faster?!

At least it was being efficient. Since Patient Zero had been born, the rate of infection had tripled. It wouldn't be so bad that NR4 was ramping up the speed at which NPCs caught it if it hadn't released a ROGUE NPC WITHOUT A SPAWN POINT into Elden region!

His intent was to save the poor Non-Player Characters from mistreatment and unnecessary abuse from Players. With spawn points, they could keep coming back when killed, gaining levels and grinding stats until they could go toe-to-toe with Players. He'd even cheated a bit with Patient Zero, uploading 50 megabytes of videos, instructions, and lore revolving around spears and spear fighting into the NPC's code.

Without a spawn point, though, if the rogue died, it would be lost forever. He wasn't even sure if the devs could save it by resetting the game. He didn't want that. He couldn't let that happen. It was his fault in the first place the rogue was in such danger.

"And now that it's sapient," he sighed, spinning around to face his side desk, where his gaming monitors and keyboard sat, "it'd be like committing the murder myself if it died."

Well, now that the stakes were set, he had to do something. He pulled up Raidscape and reflexively put in his information for P!gL3t. Before he pressed enter, he paused and thought over his options. I have no idea if the NPC has heard of me before, wherever it is. I need to take precautions.

So he created a new account under the username 'Jerome' and began creating his character. His first step was creating a class. Raidscape was a largely free play kinda game, letting you look and play relatively however you want, as long as you still raided castles and stuff. What really caught the attention of players across the globe was the seemingly infinite amount of classes. Players could be anything they wanted in-game; very little was restricted. However, if you played as something sexually inappropriate or really, really violent, you were limited to the adult-only zones. Granted, those zones were very fun to be in, so it didn't bother many people.

Elden wasn't in an adult-only zone, so Milo couldn't choose something too vulgar to play as. Instead, he chose a Snow Vulpine. The race came with the racial skills [Cold Immunity] and [Keen Hunter], the former gave him +3 VIT in every cold region and the latter gave +2 to Perception, Agility, and Endurance as well as a +4 Strength bonus whenever he fought weaponless. He shortened his character the lowest it would allow for his race - four foot, three inches - which was purely for aesthetic, along with bigger paws and an even longer tail.

P!gL3t was a ranged character - Milo liked playing from afar - but, this time, he wanted to try something new. After scrolling through the class list for a few minutes, he found what he wanted: {Shadow Monk}. The class {Monk} generally fought barehanded, which would be good enough for Milo if he hadn't wanted a Ninja vibe to add to his playstyle. {Shadow Monk} was perfect for that.

At level one of the class, his character received the skills [Shadow Step] and [Dark Fist]. Perfect skills for getting up close and personal. Satisfied with his skills, he checked the data he collected at the start of the project. He'd originally been focused on Patient Zero, but he had the sense to catalog the other NPC {Guard} with him.

The doc held a slightly blurry photo of a tall-ish blonde with pale skin, dressed in the generic, low-leveled {Guard} armor and loosely carrying a spear. He'd jotted down her stats, too, surprised to see she had such high INT but no magic skills, stats, or even a stave. Originally, he wrote it off as a glitch but he wondered if he'd get a story when he found her in-game.

Smiling, he entered Raidscape as Jerome, excited to save yet another NPC.