The Runaway Demon Queen

“Ugh… what the hell was that?!” I cursed even before I got my bearings.

It was logical to assume my habit of skipping meals to save on food had finally gotten the best of me, and I had fainted out of sheer lack of nutrition. But I knew that wasn’t true. The culprit was very clear in my mind—it was that damn phishing email. The feeling of getting sucked into my phone, however little sense it made, left quite an impression on me.

This head-scratching situation only got even more bizarre when I realized I was no longer in my cramped bedroom. Instead, an alien-looking landscape spread all around me. It was clearly intended to be some sort of forest, but literally everything was a shade of monochrome. It reminded me of geometry tests in games before any textures were put in. The lighting worked just fine, and the actual polygons looked right to me, there just wasn’t any color anywhere. In fact, my own white skin looked positively saturated when compared to the shades of gray of the surrounding terrain.

This gave the entire forest a rather strange mood—serene, yet fully dead. A static, frozen world with no color.

Clearly, I was in some sort of VR game. But I didn’t remember how that even happened. I couldn’t remember putting in a headset, much less entering Arcforge or any other VR world.

A closer observation revealed things weren’t quite that static, though. I could see a faint black “mist” rising from just about everywhere if I squinted my eyes. This made every object just a tiny bit blurrier than it was supposed to, and cleaning my glasses made little difference. I elected to not strain my eyes anymore to avoid going fully insane.

This was making me feel sick. Clearly, someone decided to make a lame prank of a former dev. There was no point in staying around here anymore, so I made the hand gesture to pull up the system menu of every VR headset and—

Nothing.

I did it again, but nothing happened. A third time would probably be considered insane—you know what they say about doing things over and over, expecting a different result—but I did it anyway. I was far from thinking logically anymore.

That’s when a chill ran down my spine.

“I’m trapped…”

It was nigh-impossible to trap someone in a VR world. There were safeguards for that kind of stuff, after all. The fact that I couldn’t activate the VR menu meant that either someone forcefully put on my headset, and executed a highly-sophisticated hacking of it, or—

“Don’t tell me this is one of those ‘transported to another world’ scenarios…”

These used to be all the rage when I was growing up, but with the advent of realistic-looking VR worlds, this style of stories starting playing out there instead. It didn’t make any logical sense that this was actually happening, but it felt more likely to me.

VR worlds were ever increasingly realistic, yes, and all five senses could be simulated using fancy neuronal links. But they didn’t quite feel like the real world just yet. Here, however, my senses felt exactly the same as in the real world. The forest was dead and looked plucked straight out of a dev’s monitor, but there was still a slight breeze in the air, and the smell of soil emanating from underfoot—both things that games rarely, if ever, got this realistic.

Still, many mysteries remain. Clearly the email was the trigger for my sudden transportation to whatever this place was. But who had brought me here, and why? And what exactly was this place?

As if answering my call, the heavens themselves decided to answer. Something materialized from the air itself in front of me and fell to the ground before I had a chance to grab it. I crouched down, shuffling through the desaturated grass until I found the small metal canister, shaped like a hexagonal bipyramid.

And then everything clicked.

“Wait… is this Arcforge?!”

It had to be. After all, I knew this thing like the back of my hand—it was a Divine Letter, the in-game way to send messages, give quests, and all that stuff. Unlike many other VR games, Arcforge had strived for ultimate realism, and so there was no in-game menu one could access to see this stuff.

This revelation only made things more confusing. If this was a “real” world, then how did Arcforge’s world—Iditath—become real?

With really no other choice, I opened the canister and pulled out the rolled-up letter.

<From: Worldbender>

<I’m so glad I could reach you! I’ve summoned you, Hero from another world, to take on this most important quest. The Demon Queen infected and absorbed the life of the world with the White Death you see around you. We have managed to weaken and corner the Queen to this area, but only a Hero can kill her and save this world. Please, you are our last hope! Attached to this letter is a knife you can use to deliver the final blow. After the Demon Queen is defeated and the White Death is vanished, you will be able to return to your world.>

Apparently, this “Worldbender” was the one who summoned me here.

So where are they? Where’s my welcoming party?

“And the first quest is to kill the Demon Queen…? Are they really expecting a random programmer to do this?”

Like the letter said, there was something else inside the Divine Letter—a small transparent sphere, about the size of a marble, with a miniature knife inside. This was the method used to store items—the appropriately named Divine Canister.

If this works like Arcforge, then—

I pressed on the sphere, and it immediately started glowing brightly, then increased in size until it became a palm-long knife. I still had many questions, but at least one thing was clear—I wasn’t going anywhere by just standing around these dead woods.

Alright, so how am I going to find the Demon Queen?

The heavens seemed quite nice for me today, as I suddenly noticed a patch of the woods that wasn’t just that off-white color. There, slumped against a dead tree, was a girl I instantly recognized. She had long cyan hair, and was dress in a skimpy black top and black shorts, showing a lot of skin. Oh, and a pair of black horns on her head, a thin tail, and a single bat-like wing.

The Demon Queen’s name was Yzara. She was a major part of the lore of the story of Arcforge and its “secret final boss”. Uber-high stats, extremely difficult requirements to even get to her lair, you know the deal. In fact, during the short time Arcforge was in beta, no player ever managed to figure out she was in the game outside the lore, much less defeat her. She looked plenty evil, but the crown she usually wore was absent, so she didn’t exactly scream “queen” to me.

Was this “Worldbender” really expecting me to go out and kill her myself when I had just spawned in this world?

So I’m just supposed to go in and kill her with this knife, huh?

I had a bad feeling about this whole thing. That I somehow found myself in Arcforge was already strange enough as is, but the entire setup was way too suspicious. I wasn’t just going to accept the word of some faceless “Worldbender” and potentially get myself killed.

For now, I decided that getting information out of the Demon Queen was more useful than being out for blood. I still didn’t understand what sort of logic this world operated on, but apparently game systems like the Divine Letters were a thing. That meant that I should have spawned with a Hero’s Bag, an item every player—or Hero, in Iditath’s terminology—started with. It was basically a magic bag to store items in.

And indeed, it was right there on my belt. I decided to stuff the knife inside for now, but when I did so—

“Huh? There’s something else here already…?”

The item I switched the knife for only brought more questions than answers. It was a futuristic laser gun, with a small screen tucked to the side and two concentric rings at the front that were purely cosmetic. This gun felt so out of place in this world that it was almost comical.

Of course, as a developer of this game, I knew exactly what this was.

It was the “debug tool”—more affectionately named the Debuggun.

During the development of Arcforge, programmers obviously had to fix bugs that their own programming brought about. Fortunately, the engine we used had this powerful tool that let us manipulate various objects or check their stats to see whatever was causing the bugs.

There was only one way to find out if this “Debuggun” was the real deal or not. I immediately pointed it at Yzara and switched the Debuggun into Appraisal Mode. This is what it said:

<NPC: Yzara

Class: Dark Ruler [Sealed]

EXP: 52,894,586 (Lv. 255)

FIR: 0 WTR: 0 ERT: 0 AIR: 0 LTN: 0 PRF: 99,999,999

HP: 1/4,194,304

MP: 9999

Skills: None

Status conditions: Weakness X, Poison X, Slowness X

Titles: Demon Queen>

Ooof, that’s rough. Is this even Yzara?

Seems like the Worldbender wasn’t lying. They had done a serious number on her. They sealed her class? She has no skills whatsoever?! And all three status are all at max rank? Not even the hardest boss battles in the game got this cruel. Sealing classes was no easy feat, and to do it on the unique class that made her queen of the demons was even more impressive.

Before I could ponder much about these questions, though, a low, scratchy voice filled the air.

“So yer the latest ploy to kill me, huh?”

Before I noticed, Yzara had woken up. She was still unmoving, but her yellow, goat-like eyes shot open to reveal a piercing gaze, filled with malice.

“A Hero? It’s been a while since I’ve seen ya lot. Guess that would do it.”

By all accounts, she couldn’t hurt a fly like this—but I still took a step back. That’s how powerful her gaze was. However, she soon broke eye contact, choosing to stare somewhere far away, adopting an almost melancholic look.

“I’m tired of runnin’ around. Just end me already. But know that ya’ll be responsible for the demise of this world.”

“W-what do you mean?” I managed to force out, despite my crackling voice. Can you blame me? She was terrifying!

Calm down, Takashi. She’s just an NPC.

That’s right. The Debuggun’s existence proved it—no matter how realistic-looking, this was a virtual world. She was no more than a dumb AI pretending to be human; no smarter than a chatbot.

And either way, she can’t even hurt me or anything.

“I bet ya got a Divine Letter sayin’ something like ‘The Demon Queen caused the White Death and is tryin’ to conquer the world! Only you can stop it, Oh Great Hero!’. Tryin’ to butter ya up into doin’ the dirty work for ‘em.”

“H-how did you know?”

“It’s been usin’ this tactic for a while now. Trickin’ humans into coming after me because it can’t do it on its own. But none of that worked, ’cos I’m still unkillable by anythin’ other than a Hero. Man, what a joke,” she sneered. “Listen, O Great Hero. This, around us, the White Death? That wasn’t me.”

“H-huh?”

“Don’t ‘huh’ me, ya spineless coward. Ya think I, Yzara, would ever do somethin’ this repulsive? I’m more into cold blues and blacks than this boring monochrome. Just seein’ it all around me makes me wanna puke,” she said with a grimace.

Well, now what do I do?

Obviously, I wasn’t one to take the words of an NPC at face value. The letter says the Demon Queen was responsible. Meanwhile, she says she wasn’t the one.

Luckily, I had a way to definitely find out. I raised my Debuggun again and pointed it at the so-called White Death all around me.

“Is that gun yer weapon of choice, Hero? Yer pointin’ it the wrong way around.”

“Nah, this can’t hurt anyone. Now shut up and let me debug this.”

What the debug screen said made my heart stop.

<¢※⁂§&¢&>

What the hell?!

I had never seen something like that before whenever I used the Debuggun. It was something whose name could not be displayed properly, with the symbols glitching in and out rapidly. I pointed the Debuggun around other things, like the trees and the ground, and the results were more than a little disturbing—<Tree (Infected by ƒ%Þ‽‡&◊¿)>, <Grass (Infected by Þ†ß⁂Þ¤¶)>, etc.

What hell is this thing? This infection.

That’s when it clicked.

…This is a glitch, isn’t it?

The Arcforge beta had its fair number of glitches, but never something like this that corrupted even the debug menu.

Could she actually be telling the truth?

A dark, creeping sense of dread filled my entire being. Something was deeply, deeply wrong here.

“Ya look frightened, Hero. Did that little gun change yer mind, by any chance?”

“…I believe you now.”

She seemed genuinely surprised, as her eyes shot open. “Oh yeah? Yer the first one, so cherish the fact that I have the tiniest shred of respect for ya now. Not that that that will help ya.”

“Huh?”

Before I had the chance to understand what she was saying, the forest began shifting. No, not the forest—that black electronic mist that permeated everything suddenly increased in intensity, as if it was angry. And, to cement that thought, another Divine Letter fell from the air. When I opened it, my heart sank.

<Wrong choice. You shall perish.>

A moment later, I could feel a presence approaching us. No, not one. Multiple. The snarls that accompanied that feeling, along with white glowing eyes peaking through the forest, forced me to take a step back next to Yzara.

Before I knew it, we were surrounded by a pack of wolves, snapping their maws, snarling and barking. These were Dire Wolves, a large species of wolf.

Huh? Something’s not right with them.

Dire Wolves were certainly scary looking, yes, but these didn’t look quite right. For once, they were way larger than they supposed to, and their black fur was quite a bit more gray than normal. But what really made my skin crawl were their vacant, pure-white eyes.

“Infected too, of course,” Yzara answered my unasked question. “It, whatever it is, can also infect living beings and control them. My Horde was taken over before I noticed, and that’s how they got to me. Controlin’ other beings is my domain. Pisses me off.”

“Can’t you do something about them? You know, with your magic—”

“No can do.” Yzara interrupted. “My Dark Ruler class is sealed, and all my skills are gone, so I can’t use magic anymore. I’m more useless than a baby right now. At least ya could toss one of those to give the wolves a little snack. They can’t kill me because I can only be killed by a Hero, but they sure can kill ya.”

Oooohhh boooy.

Now that was a problem. These wolves didn’t seem like they had any intention of backing down, and I certainly didn’t fancy getting bitten to death and then resurrect wherever. Would I even I resurrect? I really didn’t want to find that out if I could avoid it. So I’d have to find a solution.

What could I do? Well, there was that knife this “Worldbender” very generously gifted me. However, this was just a plain old knife; I had just spawned, so I had beginner stats; and Dire Wolves weren’t exactly beginner-friendly. Could I even fend them off?

I didn’t have much time to ponder that, as one of the wolves finally decided it was done barking. It lunged at me with the speed and ferocity of a Dobermann, maw wide open and ready to turn me into mince meat. I only got time to shove the knife horizontally into its maw, stopping the bite in its tracks.

H-huh? How did I even do that?

It’s fair to say I wasn’t exactly in the best shape in the real world, and my reflexes were never that great. But here, it seems, I got all the boons of a Hero, namely increased strength, reflexes, and agility. Yes, the wolves were fast—but I could just about keep up with them.

“Wow! Impressive work, Hero. Maybe ya ain’t that spineless, after all.”

The wolf, now biting the cold, hard metal of the blade, realized that it wasn’t going anywhere. Its eyes looked even more deranged than before, clearly not happy its easy prey was fighting back. However, I couldn’t do much to it, either, and holding a fully grown wolf in that position was quite hard. Channeling all the pitiful strength I had, I forced the blade into the wolf’s mouth, hoping it would slice its head off or something. Instead, it was more like I swatted it way.

That must have dealt some damage, but…

“Yer never defeatin’ all these wolfies with that puny knife, Hero. Might as well give up and join me and Baelrak in Hell.”

Yzara had hit the nail in the head. I barely managed to scratch one wolf. If all of them lunged at me at once, I’d get out of here as a burger patty. So then, if the knife couldn’t do anything, then what could?

That’s when the light bulb shone in my mind.

I had another thing on me—the Debuggun. I pointed it at one of the wolves.

<Mob: Dire Wolf (Lv. 25)

HP: 200/200

MP: 0

Status conditions: Infected (⁋Þ¤§%‽◊$)>

As expected, this guy was infected by whatever this White Death thing was. I changed the setting on the gun, and pulled the trigger. A laser beam shot out from the gun, hitting the wolf squarely in the forehead. Almost immediately, it went stiff, its eyes return to their normal blueish gray color, and it even visibly shrunk a bit.

“Yes! It worked!” I said as I did a little fist pump.

“What in Baelrak’s name is this… what did ya do, Hero?”

“I reset them.”

“What do ya mean?”

Well, of course she doesn’t know what that means.

“Basically, this gun can change things back to how they were originally.”

“Really now…?” I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or just thinking through the consequences. Whatever it was, it shut her up for a while.

Meanwhile, the Dire Wolf I hit seemed to be quite confused by its surroundings and its deranged pack mates. The others also seemed to be distracted by the breaking of their formation.

I took that opportunity to fire the Debuggun at more wolves, all of them going through the same transformation. When about half the pack was turned, they apparently began seeing each other as enemies, and started snarling to establish dominance—ignoring little me and Yzara.

“Alright, this is our chance to get the hell out of here.”

I couldn’t very well leave Yzara here. Not that I really cared about an NPC getting Prometheus-ed by those wolves. No, she was a valuable source of information about what the hell was happening in this world.

“Can you run?” I asked.

“For a Hero, yer really dim, ain’t ya? I’m on the verge of death over here, ya idiot. I can’t even stand.” Somehow, she managed to muster her strength to shoot me a smirk. “Yer gonna have to carry me.”

“Wha—How?!”

“On yer back, duh. I shall not degrade myself to be carried princess-style.”

“But aren’t you no longer queen?” I jabbed, for some reason trying to stall for time. “Your standing would actually improve if I carried you like that.”

“Geh…! S-stop the pointless drivel and get me out of here already. Or are you that nervous about touching a woman?”

“Oh, fine! I’ll do it, okay? Geez!”

I let myself get a bit taken in there. This was just an NPC, not an actual woman. I’m not one of those guys that mistakes VR girlfriends for real people or whatever.

“Here. Get on already,” I said as I crouched down next to her.

“Hmph. Imagine that, the former Demon Queen being carried by the Hero like a child. What a pathetic end for me,” she complained.

“You’re the one who preferred I carry you this way. I’m not happy with this, either!”

She didn’t complain any further. Soon, I felt her arms wrapping around my neck. I tried to ignore the soft sensation on my upper back—now wasn’t the time—as I grabbed her legs and got up. The wolves were by now full-on fighting each other, and I didn’t fancy being the peanut gallery.

“Okay, let’s get the hell out of here before reinforcements come,” I said as I sprinted through the monochrome forest.

“By the way, what’s yer name?” Yzara asked. “Havin’ to call ya ‘Hero’ all the time leaves me nauseous.”

“Takashi,” I replied.

Eventually, I started seeing more and more light peeking through the trees. And soon after, we managed to break out.