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"Consider me impressed," his brother said. "It looked like you could have taken that forger too."

Trevor stepped closer to the tear. "Is that Siberal?" he could feel cold air coming through it. On the other side, it was icy white and blues.

"It looks like it," Marc said, awed.

"How did they do this?" Taro asked.

"It's just code," Tuck said, "so someone programmed it. Right, Trev?"

"It's Omar, and it's not that simple. Marc, Siberal wasn't on the network, right?"

"It shouldn't have been," the bull replied. "The tests were run locally. Any beta was done through exclusive connection, and there wouldn't have been anything connecting it to Gaia. It was done in isolation."

"So someone on Siberal's side had to be involved in creating this breach," Omar said.

"One of the beta testers?"

"Possible, but to keep the server from being sent to Mercury implies control of someone higher up."

"That's..." Marc began, trailing off. "That isn't good."

"That's putting it mildly," Omar said. "If criminals have a hand in a company this large, there's no telling what else they have a hand in."

"That's not what I mean." The bull looked at the others and The brastock tiger followed his gaze. Tuck was goofing around with Taro, doing acrobatics. The brother's eyes met and Tuck gave him a quick nod. He'd sensed the two of them needed privacy and was doing that to keep Taro from overhearing.

Marc looked at Omar. "There's proprietary code buried in the game. I mean, since you know about Caduceus, that kind of proprietary code."

Omar looked at the tear, then at Mark and lowered his voice more. "Are you telling me there's an AI in that game? In Gaia?" He paused, thinking it over quickly. "Constantine?" any Admins could do what Constantine had, but an admin would have deployed an army of programmers to fix an area in the game that wasn't working, not just let it be as if he had no one to do the fixing. Or, nor likely, since Constantine had to have systems in place to direct the living people involved in the game, he was curious as to what might happen with it. He had to remember that if all AIs were like Uncle, they wouldn't always think like people; and that sometimes they would act scarily like people.

"Well, we already plan on stopping them for Bobby, so doing it to keep Constantine safe isn't going to take much more work."

"It won't be Constantine," Mark said. "It's complicated, and I'm not really qualified to explain," he added at the confused look Omar gave him.

"Regardless, it doesn't change what we need to do. Tuck, if you're done teasing Taro, we're ready to move."

"I'm not teasing him." The leafy monkey replied, coming down from the technological bat.

"You pretty much were," Taro said, sounding flustered. "If this had been an adult area, I'm pretty sure your tail would have been in me."

"Oh no." Tuck beamed at the bat. "In an adult area, it's not that appendage that would be in you, trust me on that."

With a sigh, Omar grabbed Tuck by the neck and threw him through the tear. "Don't let my brother get to you."

"I'm not." The bat said, then hesitated. "You do know your brother is a rock star of sex, right? And he was hitting on me."

"My brother isn't a rock star of sex. He's just obsessed with fucking as many guys as possible."

"Isn't that like your entire family?"

Omar sighed. "Alright, I'll give you that one, but--"

"Guys?" Marc called. "I think we have more important things to deal with than who's going to fuck whom."

"Right." Omar turned. "Let's joined my--" on the other side of the tear, Tuck was jumping from one person to another. Either screaming in fear or yelling in joy. Sound didn't carry through, so it was tough to tell. "Where did they come from?" He got over his surprise and ran to the tear before Marc answered. He needed to go help his brother.

The cold hit harder than most blows he'd received in the Lands. Fortunately, he had cold gear and equipped that quickly as he looked through his spells. Tuck was laughing, reaching for an opponent as he careened over them, and ripping their armor off.

So his brother was having a ball. At least there was that.

Omar watched, mesmerized. He'd never thought much of his brother's build, or play style. Tuck wasn't devoted to the Lands. He was a casual player at best, and the armor breaker build from the thief's class was more of a build for putting on a show than anything else.

Or so Omar had thought.

In Tuck's hand, he'd turned the build into something impressive. There was no doubt the primary use was to get his opponents naked, it was Tuck after all, but his brother had to have found a bunch of agility based tweaks to add because the way he moved was nothing like what thieves usually went for. He was in his opponent's face, chest, ass, and groins, grabbing, breaking armor, and coming out of the mass untouched and brandishing a piece of clothing or another.

That the clothing Tuck held was only an animation, and not really what the opponent had been wearing, didn't remove from the fact he'd broken the armor, leaving them exposed to attacks. And the cold, Omar realized.

"Trev! Hate to break you out of the trance my amazing display of skill put you in, but I'd appreciate some help here before they get over the surprise and tear me apart!"

"It's Omar!" He yelled back reflexively, before realizing Tuck was right. His build became much less effective once people realized he was on the more fragile side.

Fire and lightning were out of the question, both's areas of effect were on the all-encompassing side of things. Earth needed the ground to be that, and of course Siberal was all ice and only ice. Why hadn't he taken ice magic the last time he'd gone up in level? Hadn't he promised himself he'd get that last element?

That left water; and it would have to do. At least it was a more precise attack spell. He went through the motion and the jet plowed through a group of opponents. Damaging and sending them flying away.

Taro joined his side and lobbed potions, mostly debuffs that Omar took advantage of, avoiding the shadowed form that was Marc as he moved around the periphery of the fighting, taking down any enemy he could reach. Without Paul and Melor, they'd lost both their front-line fighters, Omar realized. They'd have to be careful.

"Where did they come from?" Omar asked once the last fell, dressed only in their game mandated groin covering. Tuck had done a lot of damage once the enemy's attention had been divided.

"From the camp over there," Tuck replied, chugging a health potion.

Omar turned and beyond the tear showing Gaia was an encampment. A dozen tents, half that in fires. Of course, they would have left a force to catch anyone who defeated the guards on the other side. Now the low number made sense. They hadn't been there so much to prevent anyone from crossing but to warn the others of the arrivals; and Omar had thrown Tuck in the middle of that without thought just because he was annoyed at his brother's antics.

Omar was used to going up against game enemies, not people. He needed to be more careful. Or hand the leadership over to Tuck.

He watched his brother dry hump one of the fallen enemies to Taro and Marc's laughter.

He'd be more careful.

"Alright. Where to from here?"

* * * * *

"Maybe someone can tell me how to lower the setting on this thing?" Taro said, teeth chattering with cold. "There isn't much to be said for lower-tech game suits, but at least in those, I don't have to worry about freezing my cock off."

Marc handed him a set of furs. "Leftover from the last time I ventured in the north. That adventured gained me this set, which comes with cold protection."

Taro put it on and immediately the freezing debuff went away and he was warm again. "How do you deal with this level of sensory input?"

"How do you deal with it in the real world?" Omar asked. "This is just as real with our implants." The brastock tiger looked at Taro with an odd expression, and Tuck shook his head as he opened his mouth.

"We don't have the time for that right now," the monkey said at the annoyed look Omar gave him.

Family trouble? Taro wondered. It wasn't the first time since entering the Lands those two had exchanged a look. Hopefully, it wouldn't interfere with Paul's rescue. "Do you think the encampment works as a respawn point?"

"No," Marc answered. "Without this world being on the network, the infrastructure to let players establish respawn points in the open world without a caern isn't in place. That means settlements, keeps, and open dungeons are the only place respawn can happen. Unless these people have been on Siberal long enough to reach a caern, they should respawn on Gaia."

"Wouldn't that imply this world is on the network?" Tuck asked.

"It can't be," Marc answered. "If it was, there would be an infrastructure in place that would make what's going on right now impossible, I hope."

"But we're here," Taro said. "We need a network connection for that to happen, right? We aren't disembodied beings floating through virtual space right now, right?" The idea he was now cut from his body scared him.

Marc indicated the tear. "The network bleeds through there."

"Doesn't that mean they can cut us off by shutting it down?" Tuck asked.

"It would shut down whoever they have in Siberal too," Omar said. "Which they either aren't willing to sacrifice, or the tear isn't under their control and they're simply exploiting what happened here."

"So we're safe?" Taro asked.

"We are," Omar answered. "At the very worst, if the tear is shut down, we'll end up back in our body with some level of mental shock. We're still there; this is simply projected to simulate us being here. Stories of players getting disconnected from their bodies and wandering the Lands are just that, stories."

Taro hoped Omar was right. He had to remind himself that unlike them, he wasn't mentally connected to the Lands. It just felt that way because of how advanced the suit was. His worries calmed he looked around at the icy landscape.

It was beautiful.

The snow was pristine outside of the battle site and the further he looked, the snow took on a blue tint and glimmered. In the distance, mountains rose, touching clouds that had a fractal look to them, as if he could just make out the snow crystals they were composed of.

"You said this world is going to be located on Mercury, right?" he asked, unable to keep the awe from his voice.

"Yeah. That's the plan for it."

Taro smiled. His family had holdings on Mercury. He'd have to negotiate with his dad, but once they rescued Paul and saved this world from the criminals, he'd be able to see this vista again.

"Are we dealing with more triangulation again?" Omar asked.

"I hope not," Marc answered. "Because only one of the pictures Paul left us matches something I can see." He pointed to a mountain and a reception icon appeared in Taro's vision.

He accepted it and the image of that mountain appeared. He lined it up, and it was a perfect match.

"So, we're assuming that's the direction he went to?" Taro asked.

"It's the only thing we can work with," Omar replied and began walking.