The Four-Body Problem

A new—or, at least, previously forgotten—memory burst through Ignatius's mind. It felt like a bolt of lightning searing through his entire body, making him stagger back with a gasp.

Floor 5's story dungeon required four players to complete.

As with the knowledge of the Revenant Cult, Ignatius now realized it was part of the "chunk" of memories which he'd gathered in preparation for this mission before he was sent back, a chunk which had been somehow badly damaged during the transfer into his old body.

Because, of course, Ignatius hadn't been a very good Path of the Immortal player back when it first released. In his first life, it had taken him nearly three weeks to reach Floor 5. Indeed, this was the amount of time it had taken most players of average skill to reach this point. It would be a few days before most players could even clear Floor 2.

For people without Ignatius's special knowledge of the game, they had to learn the basic mechanics of the game, learn the layouts and puzzle mechanics of each floor, 'and' manage their fifteen-minute Hunger Clock while doing so! Very few people were willing to spend their hard-earned Essence on food items instead of on levels, so overall progress in the Eternal Tower was quite slow during the first weeks of the game.

The fact that Ignatius had reached Floor 5 on his first day was a feat that nobody else would be able to match.

Once he cleared it, everyone in the game would receive an announcement and a small community prize, just as they would each time a player successfully cleared the next highest five-floor checkpoint. Everyone would wonder who this player was, and how he'd managed to reach this checkpoint in such a short time.

Ignatius had already set his account to "private," so that people couldn't see any details except for his name and current class. He'd also set his communications settings so that only players on his friends list could message him.

But Ignatus also knew that he'd need to address his progress at some point. He tried to remember everything that he'd planned back with Dr. Wu Zuhai about this strategy, but his memories were clouded. At the very least, he wasn't worried about a response from the game's developers or its AI. He remembered with absolute certainty that their own technology prevented them from banning his account, now that he existed only within the game's code.

In addition, Ignatius's recent encounter with the game's AI apologizing for his death and asking him not to sue the company made him think the publishing company would leave him to his own devices in pretty much every respect—especially if he kept his head down and didn't make a spectacle about his identity as a dead person.

However, all of those details about what he'd do after clearing Floor 5 were almost meaningless at the moment, because Ozyrus's mention that there were four resonances, not just one, had brought back an embarrassingly basic memory to Ignatius's foggy mind.

During the first two weeks of Path of the Immortal, most missions and puzzles had been designed for a single player to be able to beat it. It became common for parties of only two players to go through the Eternal Tower, making efficient use of the unique treasures that dropped inside it. The skills and other mechanics that made full parties much more—Paladin-only auras, for example—didn't start dropping until much higher-level areas.

However, the first players to reach Floor 5 quickly realized a problem: there was a puzzle in the game which required four artifacts to be activated at the same time. Since one character could only interact with one item at a time, it was impossible for a solo player to complete the floor.

The devs quickly released a blog post explaining that, in the early development of Path of the Immortal, everything had been based around a full team of four players. There had been many more puzzles and mechanics which required coordination between a full party, and the devs had envisioned a game full of collaboration and teamwork.

However, early responses to this had been very negative. One player in a group refusing to cooperate could ruin everyone else's fun, and a huge percentage of players just wanted to go through the game solo.

So the devs had told their AI to create a new iteration of the game in which everything which currently required four players could instead be beaten solo—though the default difficulty still assumed a full party.

Though the AI had done a nearly miraculous job of overhauling the whole universe of Path of the Immortal in only a few hours, there had been some glitches here and there—and the small team of human devs hadn't manually been able to check everything to make sure it worked.

The Floor 5 boss level had been one of these glitches, and one of the most embarrassing ones, because it was such an important early milestone in the game.

However, once the devs were made aware of the problem, they quickly updated the level so that it functioned as Ignatius remembered it: containing only one orb as a key to unlock the energy dome, instead of four... though this single orb was much harder to chase down than the four had been.

After nine years of playing and considering that he'd reached Floor 5 only after it was fixed in his first life, Ignatius had simply not internalized the nature of this game glitch. Though part of his preparation for his mission back in time was studying all the early patch notes, it seemed that many of those had mysteriously vanished from his memory.

Well, he hoped that it wasn't actually "many" memories that he was missing. He'd have no way of knowing what he didn't know.

But the fact remained that there were only two players in this mission: Ignatius and Ozyrus. Meanwhile, they somehow needed to interact with four orbs at the same time.

All of these thoughts passed through Ignatius's head in only a few seconds, as with each previous time his memories had returned. It was like tearing off a bandage and seeing droplets of blood rise immediately to the surface of the wound, covering a wide area all at once. Indeed, Ignatius thought with amusement, the jolt of mental pain from these memories resurfacing was a similar pain to tearing away a bandage!

Just as when Ozyrus had mentioned Dr. Wu Zuhai's name and brought back the memories of the scientist's identity, Ozyrus gave Ignatius an odd look. "I take it that you've just remembered something else important," he said. "And by the look on your face, I assume it isn't something good."

"No," Ignatius growled, regaining his sense of balance. "I'd forgotten that this version of the level existed. Yeah, we need four people to activate the orbs. The good news is that they won't be as annoying to catch as I just described. We should be able to grab them easily and even bring them all back here to make our timing easier. Or we could if we had twice as many people."

Ozyrus grimaced. "That memory loss of yours is pretty problematic. Oh well. I have a solution for this problem, though I'd wanted to avoid it. I will demand that two other members of my brotherhood join our party. They'll follow my instructions... though I had wanted to keep your existence secret for now. I've shared very few details thus far, and I'd like to keep it that way as long as possible." He gave a smirk. "Knowledge is a kind of currency within our organization, you see."

Ignatius pondered this, watching as his Hunger Clock ticked silently down at the corner of his vision. "I'd also like to keep my existence a secret."

Then he glanced at the Astral Clone which Ozyrus had previously summoned as a pet, ripping it from the soul of one of their enemies. The creature's ghostly form had nearly faded by now and would soon dissipate. "However, I think I have another plan. I don't think you'll like this one much better, though."