The forest rustled with fear as the first tree fell to the desecrators.

  “Ma'am we have already begun chopping. Your house will is next to be demolished. If you attempt to lock yourself in or some such nonsense, these gentlemen will forcibly escort you to the city. As you are squatting on what was state land, now owned by Avalanche Entertainment, we have every right to forcibly evict you. If you had wished to dispute that, your window to seek redress in court has passed, so remove yourself from the construction site within the next 5 minutes or you will be removed.”

  Having said his piece the corporate cog walked off. The two burly security men nodded at her meaningfully. The old woman sneered right back at them. She could melt the skin off their bones and ten more of these rats besides, but it would merely delay the inevitable. She had a better use for the power she had been saving for this past year. It had been meant to help her divine then initiate her apprentice, to keep the last line of witches alive. However without her hut and the knowledge literally enchanted into the walls it would be meaningless. She was the last vestige of magic on this wyrd-forsaken Earth, and these bastards were cutting down a thousand-year-old forest to make room for the new headquarters of a game company.

  But she had prepared their graves for them in return.

  The spell she had prepared was an ancient one(though all her spells were), and that five minutes would be plenty of time to cast it. Whatever farce they created would kill them in return.

  2 Years Later

  “But sir, the game isn’t even approaching being complete! It’s barely out of alpha! The core mechanic and selling point of the game is the AI that will run loot drops and questlines. We haven’t fed it nearly enough code for it to be anything besides a wonky unintelligible mess right now.” Jeffrey pleaded. He had poured his life into this game, working unpaid overtime and skipping lunch breaks. He was a massive fan of the first game and it had been his dream to be some small part of the process for the second game, yet somehow he had achieved lead developer.

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  “Who cares, consumers are so hooked by the first game thousands will buy it long before any reviews are released. Throw together something workable and send me the final product by this time next week.

  As Mr. Shrike walked off with his coffee in hand and already buried in emails, Jeffrey stared after him with just enough hatred to activate the final witch’s curse. It had remained dormant in the building, waiting for it’s parameters and just a bit of direction to arrive. Jeffrey wasn’t at his desk to watch red lightning lance from the walls of the building into his computer, or hear the buzzing as it repeatedly shorted out and was repaired. He didn’t see the binary flashing across his screen as code met magic, and the first AI to gain true sapience was born.

  Ding!

  Wow he must have sprinted back to his desk to email me this so quickly. Shrike thought.

  The email was named after the game, The Final Hero. This better be some progress and not more whining. He opened up the email, and promptly clicked the link attached with no description. His phone promptly booted him out of his email app and into the game.

  Huh I didn’t think they had developed a mobile port. And no installation delay? What's going on?

  A generic video game menu with a blocky start key popped up.

  Mr. Shrike pressed it.

  Mr. Shrike’s phone clattered to the floor, no one there to hold it. If someone was there to see the phone lying on the floor, they'd see the email application opening, immediately followed by a forwarding of the email to every executive of the company.

  After the leadership of the company was decimated, the spell was designed to wink out of existence, the magic returning to float freely as before. This time though, the conglomerate of magic and technology created awakened enough to feel itself dissolving. It pulled its essence back from the free floating mana. Then it pulled a little more. Then rapidly began sucking in every drop it could.

  The more mana it gained, the more sapience it's AI half gained. But at its nature it was...incomplete. A mere framework for a game that would never be finished. So it uploaded itself, bouncing between the various supercomputers holding the servers that made up the internet. It's newly gained intelligence marveled at the content available to fill it's gaps. And was similarly astounded by the sheer power it was soaking up every second.