Today's Earth date: June 24, 1992

Apparently, Horcus was in the Bata Desert the entire time he was away. He claims to have found several secret mini-bosses that gave him an absurd amount of XP. They got stuck when they attempted to attack, and all he had to do was whittle down their HP from a safe distance.

I feel like he's holding something back. His stories are usually more detailed and self-congratulatory than this.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

"Heads up: At least one orc has glitch sickness," Wayne warned his party via Voice.

They didn't need an explanation for why that was concerning.

All of the Zeroes were in the Deadzone when Kryss was infected, and they saw how little time it needed to wreak havoc on her body. If an orc had glitch sickness, that meant there must be glitch puddles somewhere in the desert. That too was concerning. The party was unlikely to walk into a puddle by accident, but they could get hit by an infected monster in the chaos of a fight, and Wayne could picture jumping a dune and not knowing a puddle awaited him on the other side.

"Drop stuff, or die!" the orc with glitch sickness shouted. "Final warning!"

"On your orders, Wayne," Armond said.

Wayne didn't look back at the cleric, but he could hear the nervousness in his voice. Armond wasn't afraid of a fight, but he was tactically minded. Being surrounded by orcs was not a good position for the party.

"Not yet," Wayne replied.

"Counteroffer," he yelled. "Let us treat your arm. We know how dangerous that sickness is, and we can help."

"You funny. Think we stupid?"

"It's painful, isn't it? I've seen how bad it gets. We can help you and any other orc who is sick."

"Why human help orcs?"

"I have a similar question," Fergus added.

"We want peace. We are looking for something in the desert and only want safe passage for our people."

"Big light."

"Yeah, big light."

The orc seemed to ponder. "You weak. Weakling no help."

"I can prove I'm not."

"You prove."

Wayne held up a finger and wobbled it side to side at the same time he activated Nudge. The gesture was entirely unnecessary, but he wanted the orcs to know for certain he was responsible.

The ground shook, causing many of the orcs to step suddenly to keep from falling.

Next, Wayne pointed at an orc carrying a spear.

Animate.

The weapon wiggled, and the orc let go in surprise.

"Point, stab!" the Spear yelled as it rolled down a small dune. "Point, stab. Long, wood. Point, stab."

The orcs, especially the one who now had a talking spear, watched the animated weapon with both wonder and concern.

The leader orc spoke again. "Just tricks. You not warrior."

"Who do you like the least of all the orcs here?"

With no hesitation, the leader orc pointed to a dark green orc covered with warts. He looked back at the leader, shocked by the betrayal.

Hrglut.

The wart orc puked.

"See?" Wayne asked.

"Do again."

Hrglut.

The same orc dropped to his hands and knees and vomited in the sand.

The leader orc narrowed his eyes as he watched the expulsion of stomach contents. He glanced at Wayne and then pointed to another orc.

Hrglut.

That orc too dropped to his knees, gagging.

The orc leader laughed. "You strong. You fix glitch. Then fix friends."

"The man who can fix you is in Maliit. We can go get him and treat everyone then."

"Ha! You run. You no come back. Me not stupid."

"What do you want to do now?" Fergus asked.

"I have an idea, but it involves leaving you all here while I go get Vanilli."

"Just us, the Groper, and the orcs?"

"Yep."

"Lovely."

"Everyone okay with that?"

"Not especially, but fine," Fergus answered. The others felt similarly, it seemed.

"Okay!" Wayne shouted to the orc. "I'll go get our friend by myself. Everyone else will stay here. That's proof I'm not trying to trick you. I'll come back as quickly as I can and get you fixed up."

"No trick?"

"Nope. While I'm gone…"

Wayne activated his Replay Camera ability and positioned the screen to face the majority of the orcs. He started a playback that began with the emergence of Charybdis in the Cuts. The orcs were immediately fascinated by the moving pictures.

"Be back in a jiff!"

As Wayne Blitzed back to Maliit, he scolded himself.

Jiff? Since when did he use words like jiff? How embarrassing.

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When Wayne pictured bringing Vanilli from Maliit to the dorcs, he pictured a very long but very fast piggyback ride. Vanilli, however, hopped into Wayne's arms before the Zero Hero could propose an alternative. Carrying Vanilli like he was his new bride would technically work, but it felt goofy.

He went with it.

To Wayne's surprise, Vanilli stood upright as soon as they landed next to the Groper. The demon wasn't motion sick or disoriented, not even a little bit. No human had managed such a feat, not even Wayne. Being a demon had its upsides, it seemed.

The scene was mostly as he left it. The dorcs still surrounded the Zeroes, but the standoff had evolved into more of a tense viewing party.

Several of the orcs shifted into a better viewing range for Replay Camera, most choosing to sit. Wayne giggled to himself, imagining orcs teaching each other to sit "criss cross applesauce" like most of them did.

Any orcs that didn't sit found a way to reposition themselves for better viewing, so the formation that once surrounded the Zeroes had turned into lawn seating. As for the Zeroes, Hector picked at his fingernails with a knife while the others slept.

When Wayne looked at where they were in the replay, he saw the Zeroes working their way down to the Earth Temple, fighting through spawns of zombie sharks.

"I have returned," Wayne announced, doing his best to sound heroic. "This is Vanilli. He is our forger and is the only person in this world who has successfully cured glitch sickness. He has agreed to treat you as well as any other orcs who might be afflicted."

Nobody replied, so Wayne dismissed Replay Camera and repeated himself. Partway through that repeat, he found himself nearly shouting to speak over the grumbles of orcs who wanted the screen back on.

The leader orc stood. "No trick?"

"No trick," Wayne assured him. "He can remove glitch sickness right now, right here. He doesn't have all of his tools, though. He will only be able to remove affected limbs, but if he was properly equipped, he could replace them as well."

"Why no bring tools?"

"They are too large to transport."

The orc scowled.

"I kept my promise," Wayne said. "Let us prove to you that we can help."

The leader orc took off his cap and passed his spear and shield to one of the grunts. He stepped forward, chin high.

"Me no scared."

"Lay on that," Vanilli said, pointing to Groper's back.

The orc did as he was instructed. Wayne noted that even the orc was creeped out by all the arms and hands.

"Don't move."

Wayne had never actually watched a glitch treatment procedure. He was certainly curious about how it worked, but sitting in on a medical procedure for his own entertainment didn't seem right. Once someone knew they had glitch sickness, they were very aware that their time was limited. That was not a time to play voyeur.

So, like the orcs, he observed Vanilli's work with rapt attention.

Vanilli instructed the orc to extend his arm perpendicular to his body. He inspected the sickness closely, being careful not to touch it. After some study, Vanilli adjusted settings on his hammer via a screen that only he could see. A bounding box appeared around the orc's arm, a three-dimensional rectangle like that found in any number of game development tools. He set the chisel an inch beyond the affected area. With small, light taps, he circled the arm.

Holding the chisel like a wand, Vanilli touched the glitched portion of the arm and moved it away from the orc as if he had clicked and dragged it. The glitched body part now had its own bounding box, and it floated up and to Vanilli's left, as high as the demon could reach with his chisel.

It stayed there when Vanilli returned the chisel back to the original cut line, floating in the air like bad physics in a video game. The demon adjusted more settings on his hammer and went back to chiseling the stub.

To Wayne's surprise, and probably everyone else's, there was no blood or signs of pain. The upper arm was perfectly bisected, revealing a cross section of bone, muscle, and skin. In any other situation, a cut like that would require a tourniquet, stitches, and a great deal of aftercare to ensure that no infection took root. In this situation, Vanilli tap tapped his way around the open portion of arm.

For several minutes, nothing seemed to change, but then Wayne saw hints of orc skin extending over the wound. Little by little, Vanilli closed the wound, the chisel somehow adding the tissue necessary for a clean close.

When Vanilli was done, there were no stitches or scars. The orc's arm looked as if it had been born that way rather than afflicted with a strange system disease and amputated.

"You done?" the orc asked, looking at his arm with wide eyes.

"Yes. Are you satisfied?"

"No die?"

"We will all die."

Wayne stepped in, coughing. "He means that we will all die someday, but no, you won't die from glitch sickness."

The orc pointed at the glitched arm still floating where Vanilli left it. "You fix?"

"I can replace it. I can't fix it. Are you satisfied?"

With a touch of gloom, the orc nodded. Vanilli reached up with the chisel, held it against the glitched arm, and tapped the back of his chisel with his hammer. The arm disappeared.

"Does that store it?" Wayne asked.

"That deletes it."

Ah. That was actually better. Filling an interdimensional storage pocket with glitched material was likely unwise.

The orcs gathered around their leader to see the amputation for themselves. Wayne spotted three more among them who had small blotches of glitch sickness.

"We can treat all of you and replace your limbs as well," Wayne said. "Do you believe us now when we say we don't want to fight?"

"Yeah. We peace."

"Wonderful. Can you show us to the rest of your sick? We'd like to treat them while we explore your lands, if possible."

"Yeah. Follow."

The slower the Groper moved, the creepier Wayne found it to be, but there was no avoiding it. The dorcs were on foot and could move no faster. For a moment, Wayne had a flashback of walking behind an agonizingly slow NPC in a video game. He pushed it out of his mind.

The longer they followed the dorcs, the more glitch puddles they saw. At first, they were rare and sparse, like missing pixels on a big-screen television, but soon the Zeroes and their orc entourage had to navigate around glitch puddles, many of which would have been more appropriately described as ponds.

To Wayne's relief, the general heading of the orc band moved in the direction of the pillar of light still shining in the desert, visible even during the day, but they did not move directly toward it. Wherever they were leading the Zeroes, it wasn't the exact area they intended to investigate but was close.

That was good. If the orcs camped directly on top of the Desert Temple, negotiating an excavation agreement would be far more difficult.

After two hours of walking, the orcs stopped in front of two stone pillars with ten or so yards between them. They looked as if they had been taller at one point, but they were both broken and had been that way long enough for the desert wind to make the broken edges smooth and rounded.

The orc leader stepped up to the pillars and spread his arms.

Another orc tapped him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear. The orc leader nodded and turned to address the Zeroes.

"Password secret. No look."

The Zeroes dutifully turned their backs.

"L. N. Rip. Lee." the orc leader shouted.

The hell? Wayne thought.

"Why are you making that face?" Fergus asked.

"Ellen Ripley is a character from an Earth movie. First the Black Alchemist quotes Blade Runner, and now the dorcs are using Earth names as passwords?"

"We have more to learn from the orcs than we realized."

"Someone from Earth put their fingerprints all over this."

"What do you want to do?"

"Nothing right now. Maybe the orcs will be more talkative when we earn more goodwill."

Wayne's mind felt like a Harlem Globetrotters basketball, then the orcs stepped between the pillars, and it was like someone slapped the ball to spin it faster. He watched over and over as orcs disappeared, none of them coming out the other side.

The orc leader stood by and observed as his people passed through. When all of the orcs had gone, he waved for the Zeroes to go next. Every member of Wayne's party hesitated except for Vanilli. While the others waited, he immediately stepped forward, and he too vanished.

The Zeroes waited for a moment.

[chat]

A: Van you okay?

V: Yes.

A: No issues?

V: Your question lacks specificity.

F: Is the portal safe?

V: Yes.

[/chat]

Wayne was the party leader. One of his management seminars said that a good leader led from the front, so he went next.

He emerged from the other side unharmed. The transition hadn't felt like anything at all. The real shock was the first thing he saw.

Resource Values.

Bristol Blenheim Mk IV (Ruined), Average Value of 15 Human Skulls, 10 Human Molars.

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