Akhier

Just going to note that I plan to steal how "The True Endgame" by Ace Arriande (note the story is NSFW) does characters logging off. If you haven't read it then the short of it is that if you're logged out and something happens to disturb your character in the game it will react as if you were controling the character except less effective (TE has the character at 70% capability). So any previous mention of what happens when you log off is now non-canon and I will need to do an edit at some point.

James & Rosha

The two dwarven guard breakoff from the group and head over to where James was lounging. He commands them to kneel before his greatness and to prepare for his teachings. Listening to this Rosha is shocked. His voice doesn’t sound any different but unlike usual every word from his mouth oozes a sleazy atmosphere.

Unnoticed by James though Rosha picks it up both the dwarves sigh under their breath and mutter about how, “it’s only a job”. Clearly there is more to this than James realizes but before Rosha can ponder on it more James starts to preach, there isn’t any other way to describe it.

In a hushed tone James raves, “dwarves are the bones of the world! All others are just a plague on our property! We stay deep in our homes satisfied but should we do that? NO! All that gold they blithely throw about should be ours for it comes from our home! They prance around using OUR property! Last night I enlightened you on how this is true and so now I will take you farther! The rotten elves claim the forest as their homes. I spit on their puny delusions. Their ‘world trees’ which they take as sacred are plagues upon the land which should be reduced to charcoal for our furnaces. Those sticks with aspirations send roots deep into the ground disrupting our lands! Underneath each one of those blasphemies our tunnels cannot stay stable as even the smallest roots easily penetrate our toughest supports!”

He takes a breath and a gulp of beer, “It isn’t just the elves though! Those blighted beastkin ruin the world as well! Take the rabbitkin I travel with. Instead of giving me the money it earned as everyone of them should it wasted it on armor for itself! Worse yet instead of proper armor forged from metal it insisted on using leather. Such a waste! That leather would be better used to craft furniture for a dwarf to use.”

He turns on the two dwarven guards, “Though don’t think I have forgotten you two and your disrespect by letting those worthless mongrels rob me! I don’t care what deals you have with the curs! How dare you let them take metal from any dwarf let alone ME! Once we reach the next town and we have some privacy I shall whip you for this disgrace! Don’t worry I won't use this puny weapon here to do it. I will use a proper metal weave whip to rend flesh from your bodies so you will never forget!”

And on and on he goes. Rosha turns a bit green from what she hears him say. Whatever is going on with him it is imperative she figures it out. Before now she had let the other two be and hadn’t bothered to look into who they might be. That policy needs to change starting tonight. Instead of just going to sleep she logs off.

Rosha appears in her private room and right away pulls up a couple browser windows. She doesn’t have that much to go on but there is enough. Especially after hearing that rant. Just the first bit was enough to lead her down the right path. Every major race has some racist group who thinks they are superior. Very few besides the humans however have player created racist movements.

That one statement about the dwarves being the bones of the world leads her right to it though. The “Worldbones” cult. Started by a political family when they lost power in the real world. All the rhetoric she heard James rant fits with their beliefs. Apparently at first it was a facade by the families’ elders. However they did too good of a job at it. When the older generation died off, some in suspicious circumstances their goals changed.

Originally the cult was to funnel money into the revival of their legacy. Now however the younger generation seems to believe in the nonsense they spew. The family has even gone so far as gene-mod themselves to match what they believe is the ideal dwarven form.

Luckily despite how venomous the organization is their reach is small. The cult only controls a single mountainhome. Impressive yes, those great dwarven strongholds have delved deep into the earth and risen far above ground with gravity defying structures. In the end though the Worldbones cult only converted one of the newer mountainhomes. Of course newer is subjective as the place is still over a thousand years old but when the older ones only have legends to go on, it means something. Especially for a long-lived race in a world where there are people older than all of irl record human history

Rosha, or more properly Rachel since she isn’t in the game at the moment can only shake her head. NeoRealm really went the extra mile when setting up its world. Then again, they almost had too for it to saturate the world so completely. Other games come and go but when players, even after hundreds of years, have only explored part of a single world in game that has almost uncountable other similar ones along with who knows how many higher planes of existence with their own worlds? Well, suffice to say all others pale before it.

Though like everyone else who knows this, she has to wonder how NeoRealm is able to simulate everything. Every single moment of every single world and realm being simulated down to the smallest particle? The company claims their special array of quantum computers can do it but clearly something else is going on. About the only thing her family is sure of is that they aren’t somehow poking into an alternate dimension. It took a lot of work but they couldn’t let something like that continue. In fact, now that she thinks about it this is partly why there are no competitors for NeoRealm. All the others cheat in some way which ends up connecting them to somewhere else instead of making a place whole cloth.

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters free on my Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/dragonheartednovels ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).