“It really worked… but…” I said over the phone, my voice trembling.

Contrary to what I had expected, our – in retrospect, insane – plan had worked. We had checked with a couple of our classmates who had been absent the other day, and they had all pretty much said the same thing. They’d had headaches and had greenish blue spots appear on their skin, but after the ‘Divine Surge’, as people were calling it, they had all been miraculously cured.

And not only that, all sorts of other illnesses and injuries seemed to have been affected. Everything from the minor bruises and common cold to cancer and even Alzheimer’s. And not just humans, animals and some plants were affected as well, which even Casey was surprised by. We had saved the lives of thousands from deadly diseases and life-threatening injuries across the globe and cured millions more from more minor ones.

But at the same time…

“–are still rescuing victims of all the traffic accidents that happened when the unexplained global phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘the Divine Surge’ engulfed them,” the news anchor reported, her expression way too cheery considering what she was covering.

I clicked the remote and turned off the TV. I couldn’t watch it anymore.

Over fifty thousand deaths all over the globe due to various accidents caused by the momentary distraction from the divine crystal’s cleansing effect. Many more were injured, although most of those were healed by the crystal right after.

It didn’t feel real. We had saved the world from a zombie apocalypse, cured all sorts of illnesses and injuries worldwide, and yet…

I felt like vomiting from the sheer guilt.

We had gotten people killed.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

It was so obvious in hindsight. The crystal’s effect was incredibly distracting, so of course people who were driving or operating delicate machinery would get into accidents. Obviously.

“Fuck… How had we not realized…?” Even Frank sounded distraught, beating himself up for this.

Casey had to have it the worst, though. After all, she had been the one to pull the trigger, so to speak. She technically had a five digit body count now.

Fuck.

I wanted Mom. I wanted to hug her or at least talk to her. If she had been here, she would have pointed out what a stupid plan this had been. She would have stopped us.

For a brief moment, my hatred for Cradence spiked up again. There was no way we could even contact Mom and the others now. There wouldn’t be any signal all the way at Cradence’s lab and we couldn’t trek all the way there again with just the three of us.

We were forced to wait for everyone to return on their own.

In the meantime…?

With my thoughts being as dark as they already were, I couldn’t help but remember the damn dream again. I worried that the zombie virus would somehow make a comeback and all the deaths we had caused would be for nothing.

“So… Uh… What now?” Frank posed a very good question.

I had no idea.

Maybe we should just go to sleep, then go to school the next day as normal, since things seemed to have been resolved.

But it felt so wrong to do that after everything. Going back to class filled with people who we had cured from the zombie plague, all happy and probably chattering about the Divine Surge. All while we sat there, knowing the truth and having over fifty thousand people’s deaths on our conscience.

“Maybe we just go back to class tomorrow…? Act like we know nothing?” I weakly suggested, my heart not really being in it.

“I… I can’t…” came Casey’s weak voice over the phone. “I’m going to stay home.”

With a jingle, Casey disconnected from our call, and I couldn’t help but wince.

“Well… shit…”

“I know I suggested it, but I don’t think I want to go either, to be honest…” I admitted with a sigh. “It’s all just too much. Not to mention, I’m worried that this still isn’t over. That the virus will come back somehow.”

“Oh… The dream, right? Fuck.” Frank groaned. “This is such a clusterfuck… Gah! Maybe we should just expect the worst, skip school again, and start preparing to take down the tentacle king right away?”

I thought about it for a second… and decided that I really just didn’t want to go to school. Moping all day wouldn’t accomplish anything either, so…

“You know what? That might just be for the best.” I sighed. “Wanna come over right now or…?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be there in a minute. We can start by– Wait, hold on! Isn’t it Tuesday?”

I blinked at the non-sequitur.

“Yeah…?”

“Wasn’t Tuesday the update day? Did the game update?”

My eyes went wide.

“Oh, you’re right!” I quickly opened up the browser on my phone and went to the game’s news site to see the newest post a couple of hours old. “Yeah, the game updated…” And then I stopped and remembered why this update had been so important.

“Do you think anything happened to Elyssa…?” Frank asked, voicing the same worries I had.

“I hope not… But we have no way of checking with her right now…“ I pursed my lips. “Casey couldn’t affect Wi once we met her, right? And… her omniscience only worked on her when Wi was inside her own world, right?”

Otherwise she would have known what had happened on Frank and Wi’s date.

“Huh… Yeah, that’s true… Well, that hopefully means that the devs can’t affect Elyssa as long as she’s not in the game world, right?”

“Hopefully, yeah…”

“Right… Okay, I’m coming over then. Let’s get ready to slice some calamari!” the guy cheered. I could tell he was forcing himself, though.

“Yeah, I’ll be waiting. See you then.”

“See ya.”

The call ended and I got up from the couch. I headed to my room while opening the game’s news post on my phone and reading through it.

They’d mentioned wanting to flesh out the new area, and so they’d added all sorts of things just outside of Abyground – the bubble city – including some mineable rocks, gatherable herbs, and even a small dungeon with a mini-boss inside it.

There was also mention of an experimental feature. Something about skills being too complicated to obtain, making the old and outdated ones not worth the effort, so they decided to create skill scrolls for a lot of the basic skills and distribute them as rewards for various side activities. Reading a skill scroll would allow the player to instantly learn the skill while consuming the scroll.

I blinked.

“Huh…”

Apparently, they’d added a flash step skill scroll as a reward for the Abyground’s treasure hunt and anyone who had already done it before could revisit the final location to grab the skill scroll.

That… could potentially be really good. I hadn’t bothered trying to learn any skills besides the true form skill with my real self because not only were the skills themselves a lot of effort to learn, most would have also made me go to populated places, attracting attention because of my name.

But if I could just give myself the scroll and learn it from that? That ought to make the fight with the octopus much easier…

When we inevitably went to fight it… Ugh…

Other than that, there were some bug fixes, balance changes, and adjustments. I skimmed over it, looking for any mention of the old woman in the Golden Woods, until I found two surprising entries.

‘Testing new AI for NPCs around Redaghoul’ and ‘The old woman in the Golden Woods has retired and passed on the torch to her friend Kate.’

What the heck? Retired? Testing new AI?

Did…

Oh…

They couldn’t change things anymore.

Because I’d made them real. Just like with Casey’s novel. The ‘gods’ of this world couldn’t change anything that would break continuity. Which meant that even if Elyssa returned to that world, they wouldn’t be able to do anything to her.

That… was good?

Well, yeah, it was good, but I still couldn’t help this sinking feeling that I’d once again done something big and irreversible. If the devs couldn’t touch the NPCs I’d interacted with, then they would go on and ‘infect’ more people with their ‘realness’, and eventually, the entire game world would be real… if it all worked like Casey’s novel.

I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Was this a good or a bad thing? Probably good…?

I sighed.

It didn’t matter. No point in dwelling on it. Whatever the case, I would just have to deal with the consequences.

Also, who the heck was Kate?