Dungeon Exploiter

The first thing you should know about KingSlayer97 is that he had never slain a king. The second thing is that ninety-six other people had the name before him.

He was a player killer. Not a bounty hunter — bounty hunters at least do it for money. KingSlayer97 hunted brand-new raiders in PvP zones for the same reason some kids burn ants: because they can't fight back, and because a camera was running.

He had a video channel. Two hundred thousand followers watched him ambush first-week temps and burn their rented gear while they begged. The comments were full of laughing emojis. The platform took its thirty percent cut and looked the other way.

I've met a lot of monsters. Maybe two of them ever made me feel the way his channel did.

We crossed his path on a Thursday — chip day — under the rail yards. He wasn't there by accident. The bounty list pays for information too, and zones near my routes were paying triple for anything about my habits. He wasn't hunting me. He was hunting the people around where I might be. On camera. For tips.

That day it was four first-week rookies. Rented spears. No insurance. One of them still had the sticker on his chestplate, the way Tim used to.

KingSlayer had them cornered and was streaming it — "chat, CHAT, watch this" — when we came around the tanker car.

I want to be honest about what happened next. Being honest about it is the only thing that separates me from his channel.

Three weeks earlier, the System had offered me something in the middle of the night. The offer screen hung in the dark longer than usual, like even the System wasn't sure.

SKILL AVAILABLE — REVERSAL.

Trade places with someone who preys on the weak. Their rank, gear, and standing become yours. Yours become theirs.

Note: we are not supposed to offer these. we made an exception. you know why.

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I'd left it sitting unanswered for three weeks, because I know myself. Liya had read it over my shoulder and said one word: "Careful." From her, that's a whole speech.

KingSlayer97 turned his camera toward us, saw my face, and lit up like Christmas. The bastard himself. Content of the year.

He was still reading his chat's excitement out loud when I accepted the three-week-old offer and tapped him on the shoulder. That's all it takes, apparently.

REVERSAL: DONE.

He is now: unranked. No gear. No subscribers. Flagged as F-rank.

You are now: none of those things. You never used any of it anyway. Almost a waste. Almost.

His gear turned gray. His badge blinked down to F. And his own channel — still streaming, two hundred thousand watching — now showed his location to everyone, the same way his tips had shown him everyone else's.

The four rookies stood up.

I didn't touch him. I want that on the record too. I walked the rookies to the exit, and we left him there — ungeared, unranked, in a PvP zone he had flagged himself, surrounded by the exact kind of people his channel had spent two years training to laugh at pain.

His camera streamed the whole time. His chat watched him run. The comments, I'm told, were full of laughing emojis.

He made it out alive. I know because I checked that night. Three times. Notice that I'm the one telling you I checked three times. That means part of me wasn't sure. I did it anyway.

* * *

"You're quiet," Liya said, on the walk home.

"He deserved it."

"He did." She rode on the stick the way she does, tail hanging, not looking at me. "That's not what I'm watching."

"Then what?"

"You enjoyed it."

I could have argued. She'd have let me. That's the terrible thing about Liya — she never argues back. She just says the true thing and lets it sit there.

And it was true. For about nine seconds, taking everything that man had felt clean and warm and correct. Like a slapshot hitting dead center.

That's what scared me. The machine squeezes people until they fit inside a listing. I had just done the same thing to a man — a man built out of that exact machine — and it felt good. The System offered me that skill because it's learning what I like. And every trick I take from this world makes me a little more like this world.

"It was for those kids," I said.

"Mostly," Liya said. "Keep the receipt on that one."

Gobi got his chips. Thursday held. Some patterns are the person.

But I put REVERSAL at the very bottom of my skill list, under everything else. And that night the System — which has started leaving me notes like a worried roommate — put up one line in the dark, and deleted it before morning. We have not discussed it since.

Note: it felt good because it was built to feel good. that's how they got everyone else, too.