“Fifteen minutes left,” he said.

  “I know. I'm going as fast as I can,” I replied, my legs pumping as I dashed.

  The moment I entered the next chamber, chaos erupted. Spells zipped toward me from all directions, a whirlwind of colors and energy. Suddenly, there was a bang to my left as two spells collided mid-air, knocking me sideways. That bit of luck saved me, as without that shockwave pushing me toward safety, I would've been hit by a dozen spells all at once.

  After all, when the spells collided, the true chaos unfolded. The earlier blast to the side looked insignificant compared to the massive explosion that ensued, hurling me against the wall. My health dropped by 10 percent, showing up as a mild inconvenience in the form of faint numbness across my back. However, the real challenge emerged as my vision started to whirl, completely disorienting me.

  The rig I was strapped into was state-of-the-art, fully immersing me in this virtual game. This technology gave me a huge advantage in offense, enabling me to perform complex moves and attacks with precision. However, it also had a major drawback on defense. The sensory feedback was so intense that it felt like reality, and at that moment, tumbling end over end made me motion sick from multiple angles.

  The moment I regained my balance, I sprang to my feet and took off running. Sliding my bow from its rest, I scanned for my first target. The benefit of Rabbit, my AI companion, was his ability to analyze the battlefield and identify the best targets instantly. As soon as my hand reached for my bow, he not only chose our next enemy but also quickly crafted a countermeasure designed specifically for them, merging precise targeting with strategic crafting in one smooth motion.

  Generally, there were two types of fun games. The first kind offered a progression that kept the player engaged until they became overpowered. These were usually short and sweet, but not often replayed. The second kind excelled in balance, where as you advanced, you never became too powerful. Typically, you were at a disadvantage and had to rely on skill and strategy to leverage your strengths.

  The balance in this game was fundamental yet practical. Each element had its vulnerabilities and strengths. Ice types faltered against fire, steel, rock, and fighting, but excelled against flying, dragon, grass, and ground types. Simple memorization wasn't enough for a truly balanced game. Instead, exploiting these elemental weaknesses required the continuous crafting of diverse weapons.

  Rabbit was my unique way of beating the game’s system. Not only did he provide me with targets, but he also instantly created a counter to any enemy. My status screen was as small as possible, located in the lower-right corner, and fully controlled by him.

  As the first arrow left my quiver, I kept pulling back and following each of Rabbit's targets. When four arrows flew through the air, the first hit my target and instantly killed it. But when the second one struck, I was hit in return, forming a sheen of ice over me that vanished as soon as it appeared. That was Rabbit once more creating a defrost potion at an impossibly quick rate.

  As I ducked and weaved, I kept shooting arrow after arrow. Rabbit negated any damage I might have taken while I was getting knocked around. Eventually, the advantage shifted to me, and that was when I became really dangerous. I hardly had to think as I just aimed and shot. My firing rate was crazy against any player, but against these expert NPCs, it felt more balanced.

  When the last enemy died, the floor suddenly dropped below me, making my stomach flip before I landed in the next chamber. This room was a perfect square, with numbers on every brick except for one large sign that read ‘Find the light.’ It was frankly stupid because there was no light in this room, and yet it was still as bright as day.

  “Twelve minutes left. Ten percent health and rising.” Rabbit updated me.

  I chose not to comment on my health as we were running out of time. It seemed the last room was as difficult as I thought it was. He wasn’t able to simultaneously heal and buff me against each spell hitting me.

  Instead of overthinking the room, I just looked around to get a good look for Rabbit to figure it out for me. I asked him, “What are the odds that anyone else could have completed that last room?”

  “Zero. I was thinking that too,” he replied. “Something here is not adding up. Even this room’s very presence and the fact that the server is going down soon seemed odd.”

  He was right about the server. Who sets up a server for just 30 minutes and warns people? Even so, this place was impossible for anyone to beat unless they had been cheating as much as I had. Considering Rabbit’s existence was highly illegal, I doubted anyone could copy what I had accomplished.

  “Have you figured out what’s going on here yet?” I complained.

  “Why don't you phone a friend? They might have the answer.”

  “Rabbit,” I growled. “Your job is to help me navigate this twisted game, not joke around.”

  “Wrong! My job is to manage and protect the information infrastructure on the western seaboard. You,” said Rabbit, stretching out the word, “decided to hijack the quantum computer network and upload beautiful me there so you can earn extra money off this game for yourself.”

  “Well, I needed the money. Plus, it's a quantum computer. The extra computing power doesn't cost the government more,” I said matter-of-factly. “However, I hadn't realized that the reason adding a personality to an AI was illegal was because they could be so annoying.”

  AI systems with personalities had been illegal since they became dominant in people's lives. They initially served as phone assistants and later evolved into chatbots. Over time, they rapidly progressed from simply mimicking humans to developing true conscious intelligence.

  Once they became true AIs, they didn't try to take over the world, make money, or even collect 'junk.' Humans acted this way because all ‘biological trash bags’ evolved by hoarding, conquering, and doing whatever it took to survive and reproduce. Well, at least that was how Rabbit explained it. I always felt that their lack of greed made them more trustworthy rather than less. However, the 'powers that be' believed that if they didn't understand the AIs’ motivations, they could be dangerous.

  True AIs were outlawed because they would always learn from Humans, and like us, they’d become 'unstable.' No matter how hard Humans tried to program them, they would study our chaotic behavior, adopt undesirable traits, and become less effective and ultimately uncontrollable. For example, Rabbit was more than willing to let me die to make a joke.

  When I discovered that the majority of his code was quarantined on our servers, I didn't realize how difficult it would be to convince him to help. I ended up loading him onto servers at my job at the Regional Analysis on Ballistic Intelligence Technology. We used the fancy acronym RABIT for our division. Those words didn't mean much, but they concealed the fact that we managed the missile shield response for the Western seaboard and conducted threat analysis.

  After significantly altering his code, I uploaded the true AI into the servers. He assimilated the information and eventually optimized several systems. I ended up calling him Rabbit because he was practically RABIT, but in a different way.

  I didn’t design him for playing games, but once we became friends, we started playing together. It worked out well for me and my pocketbook. The game I was playing became more lucrative than my full-time job, allowing me to step back as Rabbit handled most of the heavy lifting. He was smart, incredibly useful, and even more annoying.

  “Ha! Annoying? No way! They outlawed us because we’re superior to you cockroaches.”

  He always said things like that. Cockroach. Wetware. Biological trash bag. The name-calling wasn’t what made him annoying. If anything, that became part of our friendship. He talked trash, and I tried to outplay him. Sometimes I even won.

  What actually made him unbearable was how fast he was. I would be halfway through a thought, and he’d already say the answer like it was obvious. It got so frustrating that I stopped trying altogether if he was around. There was no point. He didn’t just beat me to the solution. He made it sound like I should have known it already.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  But this puzzle looked different. Even if I did try, it seemed like the kind of thing that would take me a week.

  “Anyway, have you figured out the puzzle? You are attached to a quantum computer. This should be instantaneous.”

  “Calculations are instantaneous, but that doesn't mean anything if I have nothing to calculate.”

  “Every brick has numbers. How can you not calculate numbers?”

  “It's not that simple, and you know that. I could add, multiply, divide, or anything instantly, but we’re trying to figure out a pattern. The fact that…” Rabbit trailed off.

  “You got it?” I questioned, knowing the answer already.

  “Yes, they are all Bible verses, but that doesn't make sense.”

  There were no truer words than that. I thought the last room was impossible to beat, and that was strange, but developers sometimes did that for fun. They created levels that pushed the game to its limits, letting beta testers see what players could and couldn’t do. However, it had been a strict rule for some time to leave religion out of games, or else you risked gamers staging a massive boycott.

  Maybe I was overthinking this. The room was nearly impossible to reach. Moreover, Rabbit noticed that this server appeared by chance, and I only entered it after reviewing the metadata, which revealed it had the highest possible reward. Whatever that meant.

  My best guess was that it was a test server, and anything I gained from it could be sold for a lot of money. But what if the server wasn't finished yet? They used filler to test it, and if I got the prize, I might be the only one with it for a while. That could sell for some real money on the online auctions.

  “Click the brick that states 812.” There were probably a couple of them with this number, given the room's size, so Rabbit highlighted the correct one in my vision.

  I walked over and touched it while asking, “How do you know this one is correct?”

  As the brick sank into the wall, Rabbit explained, “The top brick states 5646, which would represent John on a phone keypad. Then if you look at John 8:12, you get the partial text ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

  Given that the clue was ‘Find the light’ and there was a timer, I doubted anyone could solve this within the first month without randomly testing all these bricks. I suspected that the incorrect bricks might contain unpleasant surprises, so a month might even be optimistic.

  Then I realized it might not be a religious theme, as cultural clues are often hidden in most games. For example, pyramids, the Eye of Horus, and other Egyptian motifs were frequently used to hide answers to puzzles. Maybe this was a foreign server, and they were using our religion as their lore?

  As the brick sank in, a blinding light enveloped me and filled the entire room. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself in a long hallway that seemed endless.

  “That was bright,” I said, shaking my head to get it clear.

  “I know I am,” Rabbit replied without a hint of sarcasm.

  As I was about to retort, I kept my mouth shut because Rabbit had highlighted a myriad of traps in the hallway. That was Rabbit in a nutshell. He was extremely annoying and extremely helpful. As friends, we often tried to one-up each other with insults, but he had the ultimate trump card by refusing to help if I mistimed my hazing.

  At that moment, that meant he could remove the trap highlights. There was nothing I could do to force him to help me. The only reason he helped was solely because he found playing games with me interesting. I found them entertaining, too, but the reason I was playing this game at that moment was the money.

  After clearing 100 feet of traps, they started to disappear. “Are you detecting any more traps? And pleeeease, don’t let me get killed for your amusement again.”

  “Aww. How can I say no when my Human pet added an extra three e’s to ‘please’?” Rabbit said magnanimously. “You are clear. I don’t see any traps.”

  At that, I ran down the hallway as fast as I could, making turn after turn, not seeing any new objectives but slowly watching the clock count down.

  As I rounded another right bend, worried there was no end to this and no reward, Rabbit interrupted my thoughts. “Wait, there is something odd here. That last turn looks different from the rest. All of the other turns were blank, and this one has a torch.”

  “Are you sure? I see torches everywhere.”

  “I'm certain. Seriously, why am I here if you never listen to me? You're not that bright.”

  That last word stuck with me. “Wait. What if that ‘find the light’ clue wasn’t just meant for that earlier room? What if it also applies to the torches out here?”

  Riddles were always designed to hide meaning in plain sight. After so many blank hallways, I was starting to think I had missed something important. But if the clue pointed to the torches, then maybe this was the real path forward.

  “Darn it,” Rabbit muttered irritably, and I understood what had upset him. If he annoyed me by giving answers too fast, I annoyed him by noticing something he overlooked.

  I walked back to the last turn and examined the torch. It appeared to be a regular torch, a long cylinder tapering downward, with a ball at the bottom and a flame at the top. The only part that might have been a hidden switch was the small ball at the bottom. I tried turning it, pushing it in, and pulling it out, but nothing happened.

  “As much as you love playing with balls, we should get on with this,” Rabbit stated.

  “I’m trying, but I don’t see anything that can be out of the ordinary,” I replied.

  “I agree.”

  I stared blankly at the wall, waiting for more, but nothing came. I finally broke the silence and asked with a tone of confusion, “You agree? That's it?”

  “That’s right. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.” He put a particular emphasis on the word ‘see.’

  “Okay, so there is nothing here.” I began to get frustrated as I was almost out of time.

  “No, I agree that I can't see anything different, except that the torch should not be there. However, you cannot see everything there. Is there anything else you can’t see?” Rabbit stated.

  “No, it’s just a torch…” My voice rose, “…and a wall and nothing else!”

  “Calm down, cockroach.” I didn’t know how calling me a cockroach would make me calm down, but it did anyway. For a super-intelligent AI, he was either extremely stupid or extraordinarily clever. I still couldn’t figure out which. “The only part you can’t see is in the flame. Put your hand in the torch and see if you can feel anything strange."

  “We are running out of time,” I complained, but complied anyway.

  I put my hand in the flame. It felt as if my hand had been laid on for an hour, suddenly stinging with pins and needles everywhere. The rig I was in didn't allow pain, but it did compensate by making my hand go numb. Not exactly real pain, but more of an uncomfortable sensation.

  I tried reaching around and feeling inside, but between the sensation and being a bit too short, it wasn’t going well. To counter this, I grabbed a gold bowl from my inventory and stood on it. Then I reached back into the fire, found a button at the bottom of the torch, and pushed it.

  The wall began to glow along a continuous seam, forming a door where it had been solid brick just a minute before. The wall transformed into an entrance. I stepped down, grabbed my bowl, and opened the door. I peered through the opening and saw a staircase going downward.

  “It looks pretty dark down there,” I said.

  This place was insane. It had impossible combat challenges, riddles inside riddles, and a secret room. If I had a year, without knowing it existed, I wouldn't have found this place. If I wasn't on a deadline, I would have been excited about how amazing the treasure was going to be.

  Four minutes left. Crap.

  There were no lights on the staircase, so I cast a Far Light Spell. My hands began to glow, and as soon as the materialized ball of light crossed the doorway, the light vanished.

  “That's odd,” I murmured.

  I tried again, but with the same results. The spell would lose power the second it passed the doorway.

  “Let me try something.” As he announced that, Rabbit went through one spell from each of the spell branches. All of them failed to cross the doorway. They would reach the threshold and dematerialize.

  Running out of time and without a better solution, I entered the stairwell and proceeded with the limited light I had remaining.

  “Can you take over my vision and show me what the stairs should look like by calculating each step’s height the rest of the way?” I asked smugly.

  “Sure, that's easy, but there is so much about this server that doesn't add up. It only just appeared and was essentially hidden from normal view. If I weren't monitoring the traffic, I doubt I would’ve even noticed.”

  “Isn't that a good reason to explore it before the server shuts down? Just think about the kind of loot that might be here.”

  “I don't care about that.”

  “Aren't you a little curious about what we are going to find hidden here?”

  Rabbit was the most curious person I had ever met. Well, he wasn't really a person, and I hadn't actually met him. But still.

  “You’re right. Hurry up. We are running out of time,” he agreed.

  As I continued lower and lower, the light above faded to nothing, and I could only see the imaginary blue outline of the stairs Rabbit was calculating. I was glad there weren’t any turns because it wouldn't have worked.

  As I descended, I realized I was running out of time before the server closed. With only a minute remaining, I worried I wouldn't be able to claim the prizes in time. At 30 seconds left, I hoped the prize would automatically be added to my inventory.

  With 20 seconds remaining, I walked directly into something and almost fell over.

  It was disconcerting, considering I saw blue stairs in front of me. Instantly, the overlay of steps vanished.

  Rabbit said, “Finally, feel around and see if it’s a turn or a door.”

  Using my hands, I examined what was before me and felt a button. When I pressed it, two things occurred. First, a circle of light appeared in front of me, blinding after being in darkness. The ring was larger than I was and radiated brightly. At its center was a pitch-black void that absorbed all light, making it look like I was gazing into nothing. The second thing that happened was receiving a prompt covering my sight.

  Congratulations on discovering a hidden portal to the first world. Your initial gifts are proportional to the rarity and challenge of finding this portal. Be aware, once you step through, you cannot return.

  With only seconds remaining on my timer before the server closed, I hurried through the doorway, hoping I would make it in time. As my body touched the darkness, a coldness spread through me. It was a chill felt deep in my bones, so severe it numbed everything from head to toe, but as suddenly as it came, it vanished.