“？‘Once the Seven Shards are reassembled, they coalesce into the Siren’s Soul, a powerful magical artifact with the power to free Leucosia from suspended animation and bring her back to life.’？” I looked up from the page. “That’s all it says.”
We were still processing all of this new information when Lo hit us with another stunner.
“OK,” she said. “We saved the best for last.”
She took a large piece of graph paper out of her inventory and unfolded it. There was an elaborate dungeon map drawn on it in pencil. It was covered with carefully lettered notations and room descriptions written in a very tiny, very familiar script.
“I found this stuck inside Kira’s notebook,” she said. “But that isn’t Kira’s handwriting.”
“It’s Og’s handwriting!” Art3mis and Aech shouted, beating me to the punch.
Lo nodded.
“According to this text across the bottom of the map, it leads to the hiding place of a powerful magic sword known as the Dorkslayer, which was ‘specially forged at the dawn of the OASIS, for the express purpose of slaying the mighty wizard Anorak, if he should ever become corrupted by his power and turn to evil.’？” Lo glanced up at me. “This was tucked inside the front cover of the notebook. Someone wanted to make sure I saw it.”
“Holy shit,” Aech muttered. “You think Og forged a special sword to kill Anorak?”
Lo nodded excitedly. “I think so!” she replied. “Maybe!”
“The Dorkslayer?” Shoto repeated. “Og named his Anorak-killing super sword ‘the Dorkslayer’？”
“He did,” Lo said. “And this map is dated here at the bottom right. April 1, 2022—just a few months before Og left Gregarious. He must’ve made the sword before he quit.” She folded the map in half and flipped it over so she could read the text across the top. “It says here that the Dorkslayer was hidden for safekeeping in the hoard of a fearsome dragon, located in a deep underground cave on an uncharted island in the Nilxor Sea called Farhell.”
She opened a three-dimensional OASIS sector map in the air in front of her.
“There just happens to be a small planet in the OASIS named Farhell,” Lo replied. “Its coordinates are scribbled in the corner of Og’s map. According to the planet’s colophon, it dates back to the earliest days of the simulation, when Kira and Og both still worked at GSS.”
“Farhell?” Shoto said. “Never heard of it.”
“Me neither,” Aech added.
“Because it’s an uncharted planet,” Lo said. “And it’s located out in Zone Zero.”
This threw all of us for a loop. “Zone Zero” was what everyone called the area outside the twenty-seven core sectors that made up the OASIS. It was an endless, procedurally generated virtual space that didn’t spring into existence until an avatar flew their ship into it. So Zone Zero was continuously expanding its size and geography on the fly, as avatars traveled farther and farther out into it. Halliday and Morrow had designed the OASIS this way on purpose, so that if people ever used up all of the surreal estate in the initial twenty-seven sectors, the simulation would still always have plenty of extra room available out in Zone Zero. An infinite amount, to be exact.
I’d only ever traveled out into the Zero once, just to be able to say that I had. When we were kids, it used to be a rite of passage, to travel out to the edge of the simulation in a spaceship, and then keep on going a little farther, to force the OASIS to grow a little more in size, just for you.
The first time I flew my X-Wing to the outer edge of the core twenty-seven zones and ventured into Zone Zero, I remember flying past a signpost floating at the border that read: OUT HERE, ON THE PERIMETER, THERE ARE NO STARS…
“I think Og created a real Dorkslayer,” Lo said. “Here, inside the OASIS, when he was still working at GSS. Maybe as a contingency, in case he and Halliday ever got into a disagreement with their invincible avatars.”
A burst of elation ran through me—followed by one of profound sadness. This might be the weapon we needed against Anorak. But how terrible must Halliday’s behavior have been for Og to feel he needed to prepare for battle against his best friend?
“It must be real,” said Shoto. “That’s why Anorak reprogrammed all of those NPCs to kill off high-level avatars and collect their items! He’s trying to find the Dorkslayer sword before anyone else can.”