Subjective weeks later

What is armed conflict? In a word, war. The texts Onyxia had read on the subject defined it as “protected violence between organized armed groups”. She just hoped that The Company had a similar understanding of the term. If she needed to prevent every armed robbery and tavern brawl on Azeroth for a full month, she might as well give up now. Or begin killing everyone; that would always be the last resort.

Working out how to gather several bands of desperate but uncaptured orphans in disparate locations as the last survivors on the planet was all well and good, but only as a last resort. If Onyxia was forced to wipe out all life on the planet she suspected the whole venture was doomed from the start. A fun thought experiment, however. Perhaps if she could bait the Horde into burning down Teldrassil, a war of mutual extermination would begin…

No, no, she needed to focus on her current strategy: the orc laying next to her in bed. Ti’va was quite the lucky girl. Draenosh Saurfang had all the orc girls swooning over him; strong, skilled, surprisingly intelligent and pragmatic. He also had that whole “honor” mating strategy down pat, so anyone who was impressed by fair play and mercy mixed with power would no doubt be even more taken with him.

What was important, however, was that he was about to slay the Lich King. Tomorrow, the Horde and Alliance would launch a joint assault on the southern gate leading into the Icecrown Citadel. Thanks to Lord Bismark, Onyxia knew that the assault would be interrupted by the Forsaken Royal Apothecary society, showering the entire battlefield with a powerful flesh eating bacteria that resisted most forms of magical healing. Their primary target, the Lich King, would barely survive while the Horde and Alliance assault would be entirely wiped out.

That the armies would be killed barely registered as a problem. What interested her far more was the possibility of her newest pawn gaining the prestige of being the man that killed the Lich King. By all rights, Body Defense 2 should protect her retinue from even magically empowered diseases and poisons. Draenosh could power through the deadly fog while the Lich King was reeling, chop his head off, and Onyxia would have two new mission rewards.

Defeat the Lich King

Reward: Capture/resurrection of any one member of the Scourge, alive or dead, current or former

Patron: Undead tech tree unlocked

Hint: Establish a foothold in Icecrown

Survive a serious assault on Angrathar the Wrathgate.

Reward: Apothecary Morales Skin

Patron: Undead you personally reanimate are automatically captured.

••••••••••

“Alright.” I clapped my hands. “Let’s try this again, ladies.”

I’d always regretted how the situation with the ladies of the Cenarian Circle had gone. They were all beautiful elven women, I was sure that an orgy could be really hot with the right implementation. Step one was making sure they were all at least reasonably bisexual exhibitionists, step two was ensuring that they were interested in me more than each other. It was all a masturbatory fantasy, sure, but come on! For the most part anything bigger than a threesome has ended up just feeling kinda awkward, and more than half the planet’s population was willing to sleep with me. I won. I could afford to take a few hours off for over the top sexcapades and I really wanted to replace that awkward memory with a better one.

I was dropped into an office quite abruptly, cockblocked by some of the only individuals still capable of doing so.

“Mr. Bismark, I trust you’re enjoying yourself.” Said the blue hooded one in the middle, flanked by a gnome and a spirit healer. “I come with both good and bad news. Which would you prefer first?”

I blinked several times, orienting myself and feeling somewhat self conscious. After all, they hadn’t bothered to clothe me and seemed to have disabled all my powers, including my conjured armor. Eventually I got over it; it’s not like they were leering at me.

“Uh. Bad, I guess. I’d rather not have that looming over me.” I hedged my bets.

“The test is over.” Ghostwalker informed me in clipped tones. “We need to shut down your entire realm by close of business today. Here is a packet detailing your pay, including potential retirement options and perks for continued employment with The Company. That’s the good news by the way, you ranked an average of 4.13 on our five point scale. Very good performance review for a first time tester.”

“End of business today?” I spluttered, completely ignoring the papers. “What? My realm? I have three kids on the way! The first is hatching in a few days! What’s going to happen to them?”

“Calm down,” Auriel cut in, shooting a glare at the hooded man. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. This guy’s just gotten kinda detached over the years. From your point of view it’ll be around 97 years. Once this meeting is over, I’ll set the clock to maximum acceleration and stick around as late as I can. Everyone you know will live a full life. Fulfilling… eh, that’s up to them and you.”

I relaxed a little, though I was still nervous. “I appreciate that.” I thanked the blue skinned angel. “My question still stands, though. What’s going to happen to everyone? I didn’t really expect an afterlife the first time I died, but after all this I feel like it’s a lot more relevant to me than it used to be.”

“Alright, Auriel, can you handle this?” Ghostwalker interrupted, standing up from his chair. “I’ll shift the timeline on the way out. You can have all the time for grief counseling or whatever you want, and I don’t have to sit around for it. Thank you for your service Mr. Bismark, I hope we might work together again in the future.”

He held out one hand expectantly and I shook it on reflex. Silas tipped his hat at me before leaving as well.

“You did alright.” Were his last words before walking through a glowing white archway. I turned back to Auriel, my gaze searching.

“Mostly they will be recycled into new roles that fit with their personalities.” The angel informed me gently. “The company can’t make new souls; even your children will be reincarnations of other people taken out of storage like you. Anyone who isn’t private property or an employee of the company will be placed back into storage, cleared of memories, and distributed to populate a new testing environment or finished product.”

I sat back down heavily. “Shit.” I could make peace with that for some of them. Everyone has to die eventually and 97 years is longer than most people get to live. Contemplating the end was still heavy, though. Putting a specific number on it.

“You can help some of them, but it’s best to manage expectations.” She explained, “You have a retinue of millions; most of them are getting reincarnated. Shall we go through your options? You currently have a very respectable budget of nine souls.”

“Run that by me again?”

“The company refers to them as reward credits but I find that to be a bit confusing, since they are different from other credits used within testing and recreational environments.” She answered, “each is enough to purchase one person as a permanent companion.”

I began sorting through the options. Most were somewhat selfish; stuff to make my future lives easier, essentially. Really nice quality of life things I’d love to grab, like carrying over my sexy undead perk or keeping sexual calibration to avoid STDs and unwanted pregnancies. There were also nifty power ups like a care package of useful items including a piece of company swag or what amounted to a skill chip for a respectable or useful trade in that world.

All of that was probably going out the window, just because I didn’t want to leave my friends out to dry. I could promote five people to testers for one soul, at which point they’d need to take care of themselves, or purchase a single person for the same price. Anyone I promoted would be able to send me gifts occasionally, so it seemed like a nice long term investment in addition to saving my companions from personality death. There was an expensive option to preserve the whole world, but only as a time loop showroom. Eternal stasis didn’t seem any better than reincarnation to me.

Obviously Lividia would be staying with me, and I hoped that my kids would be ready to function independently by the age of 93. Buying them a commission as beta testers would cover my paternal duties, assuming that I could raise them to be functioning adults. That said, even if I spent souls on nothing but commissions, I’d only be able to promote 40 people. It’s psychologically difficult to really give a shit about more than 100 people, but I wasn’t even half there.

On top of that, I knew that my start in this test had actually been a fairly lucky one. Safe location, reasonable amount of credits in my starting build, powerful if slow binding, reasonably easy access to pretty girls with magic powers. I was set up for success, and I’d caught some hints that not every test would be equally easy on me. It was genuinely tempting to blow my budget on power ups just to be sure I wouldn’t be recycled after a few poor showings.

“Is there any way I can get more souls?” I asked Auriel hopefully.

She smiled at me sympathetically and then adopted a formal tone of voice. “The last chapter of the document contains drawbacks, challenges, and voluntary side jobs which a tester may take on in order to gain additional souls, which they may spend in advance of the new test.” She stopped and winked at me. “Per company policy, I am not allowed to elaborate on the subject or provide advice about what perks to purchase in order to avoid the proliferation of exploitative behavior.” The stiffness left her body. “I just hate that they do that to us instead of actually closing loopholes.” She added conversationally.

“I… see. Do I need to make my choices now?” I asked, nervous.

“Of course not.” She smiled at me. “You have until close of business today.”

“So… almost a century.” I said thoughtfully.

“Yep. Also, as a total non sequitur not intended to lead you to any ideas whatsoever, would you mind if I purchased Irma from the Company? I only got promoted to this position recently and none of my old companions are really good at deskwork. Obviously I can just upload the skillset, but I don’t really want to fuck with their personalities, you know?”

“Yes. I think she would like that.” I answered, gears in my head turning, “Thanks for all your help.”

“What help? I said absolutely nothing that Ghostwalker or Silas wouldn’t have said, and explicitly only asked about Irma for self serving reasons.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Make good choices.”

I arrived back in my room, boner thoroughly murdered and heart laden with questions.

“Sorry ladies. Something came up.” I dismissed the druidesses. “Lividia, come on. I need to bring these to the ops team.”

••••••••••

Next chapter is going to be excerpts from the packet, which some of you have already seen. I’m traveling for Christmas so might not be writing as much as I’d like.