Masquerade

It had been 2 months since he last showed up. Two months of peace and quiet that we couldn’t quite enjoy. It was unnerving, waiting to see if he’d rear his ugly face again. I’d heard other players were being harassed the same way on the other servers, but nowhere near as bad as we’d had it. Could be him, or worse, there’s more than one sick bastard like him. I’d sworn to Andie that I would do whatever it took to keep her safe, and I was fully intent on keeping that promise. I was on high alert 24/7, scanning through every nook and cranny of every town, of every social area, High-Risk Zones, PvP Zones, dungeons, everywhere, just to see if I could catch a speck of this bastard’s avatar, to no avail.

It was absurd. Nobody knew if we’d gotten rid of him, if he was biding his time, or if he was even still playing. The mess he made during the last event, even non-players got wind of it; an in-game death resulting in an actual death? I don’t know how he did it, that was some Matrix-level bullshit, and it got attention from every form of media, TV, radio, social media websites. Maybe he’d decided that all that wasn’t worth the risk? What if he figured he’d actually just leave us alone? No, of course that’s not it. He was obsessed. He’d been obsessed since before I came back into Andie’s life. What if he’d gotten arrested? Snap out of it, that’s wishful thinking.

“mister_november”, that goddamn Sherpa. He’d guided Andie through the early parts of the game, and the son of a bitch became obsessed with her. He was the reason she was able to kill high-level bosses at such a low level. But for now, he was gone. And we figured, instead of worrying about when he’ll show up again, we’d just enjoy the fact that he wasn’t around. It was Halloween, after all, and as per tradition, Bloodcraft was having a special event. Every character was allowed to change their appearance, as in go back to the character creation screen, tinker with whatever they wanted, race, gender, hair color, height, size, anything, and keep that look for the entire week, before reverting back. That, on top of all the new Halloween-themed gear the game put out, and the limited Halloween-themed raid missions, which promised to be more action packed, but also insanely scarier than previous years, it seemed like there was finally something to look forward to.

But what we encountered was infinitely scarier than any horror raid. The high king of Ygdral was making an announcement, basically becoming the mouthpiece of the devs to announce new in-game content for Halloween, when he started glitching. Other players thought it was part of this year’s horror, but we knew. He glitched and turned into what can only be described as a monster as red as death itself. But then I realized he had a playertag over him, “mister_november”. Of course. He couldn’t do any harm here, this was a social area. No combat, much less PvP. If he really could kill someone by killing their avatar, it wasn’t gona happen here. The other players infinitely mesmerized by what was going on, they had heard of the “mister_november” controversy, of course, everyone had but a lot them probably thought this was just the game capitalizing on it, and I hated all of them for being so goddamn stupid.

Andie called me, “It’s real isn’t it? It’s him?” She said, the fear evident in her voice.

“Log out, now. Before he spots you.” I say back, trying to sound calm. I was confident it could take a while for him to notice, considering the sheer amount of people in the town, not to mention our changed appearance. But then he spoke, and not in the NPC recorded dialogue way. It was actually him. He was talking to the entirety of the town, maybe the whole server.

“Why so silent, my good players? Did you really think that I’d left for good? Anybody miss me while I was gone? Well, for those of you unaware, I have designed this year’s Halloween raid, and it’s going to be a doozy. Little Lottie, where are you? I know you’re here, and only you can partake in this raid. You and five others, as per the rules of a raid. You now have millions of players now begging you to be part of this raid. Yes, dear girl, your chains are still mine. You will play for me.” Before reverting back into the High King.

And just like that, with one announcement, Andie was receiving thousands upon thousands of emails, calls, messages, begging her to bring them into the raid. Some asked nicely and respectfully, but there were a lot of threats, too. Threats along the lines of “take me with you to the raid or I will hunt you down and kill you”, sometimes people make me sick. November wasn’t wrong, too. He did have her chains, hell, he had mine. He held the chains of every single player on every single server. We’d figured some time ago that he must be a dev, being able to control the environment as he wished when he was acting as Andie’s Sherpa, making sure she’d gotten good, gradually, but still constantly needing his guidance.

It was sickening to think that they interacted that much. I wanted to track him down, and even paid good money for him to be found, but nothing. His IP was constantly changing, maybe even his location. I knew that if I had any chance of taking him down, it had to be in-game, somehow. And I wasn’t about to let him damage Andie any more than he already has.