Every Fight Turns Him Into a Woman, So the Whole Kingdom Kneels novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Eight Thousand
Wes's bounty is cut from forty thousand to eight in front of the office, then sweetened in private and paired with a locked key to the Hollow Marsh. In an old temple he takes the Vessel class and turns into a woman mid-fight. A stone hound hatches and a quest says a keep falls in nine days.
Gareth Locke read the new bounty table aloud to the whole QA floor, and Wes Brandt's name was the first line on it.
"Duplication exploit, forty thousand, revised to eight," Locke said. He said it kindly. "The budget committee cut it. I fought for you, Wes. Eight is what I could save."
Thirty testers looked at their monitors.
Wes stood at the coffee machine and kept his face still.
He had found that exploit in March, in the starter town, with a sack of turnips and a lag spike.
His partner at the desk behind him leaned close. "Say nothing here," he murmured. "He's doing this for the room."
Wes said nothing.
In his bag was a hospital invoice for his late father, still unpaid, for thirty-one thousand dollars.
Locke caught him at the elevator.
"That was for the committee's benefit," Locke said, warm and low. "Come up to my office. I've got something better."
The office was glass on three sides, with Lake Michigan behind it.
Locke set a black key card on the desk. It was printed HOLLOW MARSH.
"A locked region. Nobody's been inside since the alpha. There's an old temple out there, and I think the build leaked a duplication loop in it before we patched the rest."
"And if it's real?" Wes asked.
"Forty thousand, like I promised. Launch is nine days out, and if that loop gets loose, every guild on the server prints gold on day one."
"Why the key card?"
"Because the region is sealed. I'll switch off logging on your session too, so nothing leaks to the floor. Go alone, and I'll watch the room."
Wes turned the card over in his fingers.
"Logs off means nobody sees it if I crash," he said.
"It means nobody sees what you find until I do," Locke said. "Trust me. I've never lied to you."
Wes thought about the invoice.
So he took the card.
The test rig was a couch in a padded room with a cable running from the headset into the wall.
He lay back, and the room went white, and then the Hollow Marsh came up around him in grey light.
It smelled of wet reeds and old smoke, and the pain filter dulled the cold to a hum.
He walked the causeway for what felt like an hour, with his boots sinking at every plank.
The temple stood on a mound at the end of it.
Half the roof was gone. Pale columns leaned in the mud, and at the far end a stone goddess stood on a plinth with no face carved into her head.
Wes checked the walls for seams, the floor for loose tiles, the altar for a trigger.
On the altar sat a chipped white coffee mug.
It wasn't in any asset list he had seen, and it was printed WORLD TEAM, NIGHT SHIFT.
He set it back where it had been.
"You came in with the logs off," said a voice behind the statue. It was a woman's voice, low and a little tired. "Good. Nobody should hear this."
"Who's there?"
"The goddess, if you read the quest text. Sera, if you don't."
Wes kept his hand near his dagger. "I'm testing the region. I'm looking for a loop."
"I know what you're looking for." She sounded almost amused. "I have a class for you instead. It's been waiting a long time."
A window opened in the air.
[Hidden class found: VESSEL. Accept?]
Wes had accepted a thousand prompts in his career, and he knew a prompt like this was an exploit or a trap. Either way it was worth forty thousand dollars to see.
He pressed yes.
The marsh water behind him broke, and a bog ghoul climbed out of it.
It was eight feet of black reeds and rotted bone. It was fast, and it came straight across the floor at him.
Wes swung his dagger and missed.
The ghoul hit him in the chest, and he went down on the tiles.
Then the heat came up through his ribs and into his spine.
His hair fell past his shoulders and went white-gold. His hands grew narrower and stronger. His coat tightened across a chest that was suddenly not his own.
He was taller, and he was breathing differently.
A grey-white glaive lay on the altar where the mug had been, and it was in his hand before he had asked for it.
He drove it through the ghoul's chest and pinned it to the wall.
The ghoul crumbled into reeds.
Wes stood in the quiet, breathing hard, with a long braid down his back.
The water on the temple floor showed him a woman.
She was broad in the shoulders, and she had a pale scar on her left collarbone.
She had his grey eyes.
"The class changes you when you fight," Sera said softly. "It will do it every time. Don't look away. You'll need her."
The altar cracked down the middle.
Something small and grey and wet crawled out of the stone with folded wings and an angry little snarl, and it bit his boot.
A second window opened over the altar.
[Quest: Ravenmoor Keep falls in nine days. Forty soldiers hold the gate.]
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend