Dupe Glitch

As the Heavenly Executioners' knives slashed away the last of Ignatius's HP, he died and the world faded into darkness.

A few moments later, he respawned in the middle of the City of Stomrus. He had almost reached the marketplace where the Grand Master's golden throne had been set up. Time had rewound to the point before the Grand Master began his speech.

Siegmund was once more walking alongside Ignatius as they approached the event, his claymore still resting on his shoulder. "Quite a crowd gathered up ahead, my friend!"

Ignatius was happy that the Onion Knight would have no memories past this point, no memories of his death at the hands of the assassins.

Even though the developers had overlooked many details of Path of the Immortal when it first launched—one of which Ignatius was now taking advantage of—they'd realized that, if they allowed NPCs with evolving personalities to remember every time a player sent them to their death, it might cause… unfortunate side effects in their AI.

Therefore, when Ignatius had died and respawned earlier in the mission, Siegmund's memory had rewound to the appropriate time as well. As far as the Onion Knight was concerned, the two of them were walking through the majestic City of Stomrus for the very first time.

Ignatius double-checked his inventory.

[✵Sarexia's Gauntlets] were still there.

He breathed a sigh of relief. Though he'd had no reason to suspect this glitch wouldn't work—it had been nearly a year before Path of the Immortal's AI fixed it in his first life—it was still a relief to know that his plan was working properly.

In this mission, picking up [✵Sarexia's Gauntlets] automatically equipped them. They gave a huge damage and a smaller defense bonus which scaled up based on the difficulty of the story mission, because the intention was that the new player would equip them and experience the full power of an Immortal as they slaughtered the Heavenly Executioners.

Once this fight ended, the game's programming would remove [✵Sarexia's Gauntlets] from the player and replace them with a much, much weaker version. This was supposed to make it seem as though the player had awakened their own Immortal blood—since this was the entire point of the storyline—and had absorbed all the power of Sarexia's Gauntlets in order to do so.

The player was blocked from using their inventory to unequip [✵Sarexia's Gauntlets] in the normal way during this mission… but there was a bug in the game which allowed them to use the chat console's "/unequip" command and successfully drop the gauntlets as a regular item.

Only a few story missions used this "cannot drop" mechanic, so it was several weeks before the top players in Ignatius's first life had even discovered that this was possible. They kept it secret between themselves for a long time, though someone eventually leaked the secret. Once the secret was public, the developers told the AI to patch the exploit, and that was that.

But right now, when the game had just begun…

Ignatius grinned, his heart swelling with triumph. However, he still needed to actually finish this bit of story if he wanted to keep the weapon. So long as he could successfully complete this story mission, he'd be able to keep all the loot he found, including these gauntlets...

But leaving it early would force him to give up any item and Essence drops, so he did need to complete it on the Hell difficulty he'd selected upon joining the mission. With the Onion Knight armor and the additional defense bonus from [✵Sarexia's Gauntlets], that was probably doable.

Probably.

'The six Heavenly Executioners killed me faster than I'd thought they would,' Ignatius thought as he and Siegmund reached the crowd of NPCs once more. 'I might not be able to kill them all as a Monk without dying on Hell difficulty. If I was a Barbarian or Paladin, I definitely could… but my starting Skill Gems really aren't much use for AoE fighting or for tanking raw DPS.'

So, as they approached the edge of the crowd, Ignatius created a new plan. His heart pounded with excitement as he wondered if it would work! "I think there are some suspicious people here," he whispered to the Onion Knight at his side. "If you see anyone put on a white mask, attack them at once. They may be trying to kill the Grand Master."

Siegmund's aged face wrinkled up in disgust. "Assassination? Despicable! Thank you for letting me know, my friend. We will defend the good lord of this city at all costs."

Ignatius equipped [✵Sarexia's Gauntlets], feeling their uncanny warmth seep into his flesh and bones. None of the NPCs around him were programmed to react to a situation like this, since the developers had never anticipated it.

In the sandbox world outside story missions, they definitely would have… but story mission NPCs were pretty rigid.

The Grand Master began his speech again, and shortly after, the Heavenly Executioners once more revealed themselves and prepared to attack with their rainbow knives.

"Assassins!" the Onion Knight heroically bellowed. "To me, guards of Stomrus! To me, every man in whose chest beats a warrior's heart!"

He leaped at the first assassin, and was promptly murdered. The guards and other NPCs reacted exactly as they had the first time.

But Ignatius took advantage of Siegmund's distraction and swung his fist at the back of the assassin who had killed his companion.

[✵Sarexia's Gauntlets] took a huge chunk out of the Heavenly Executioner's HP, and the NPC spun in place to attack the new combatant.

Ignatius lost a lot of HP himself, but he killed the first assassin and then moved to help the city guards fight back.

The assassins were programmed to pay little attention to players in this scenario, but then their programming hadn't expected the player to actually be able to damage them at this time!

Ignatius was careful to leave two Heavenly Executioners alive. If they all died now, then the mission would probably glitch out entirely. It was supposed to be impossible for the city guards to win here.

So, once only two assassins remained, he unequipped the gauntlets and sprinted after the Grand Master, who had nearly reached the temple by that point.

The next series of events passed smoothly. Ignatius entered the temple and, while one pair of [✵Sarexia's Gauntlets] sat in his inventory, equipped the new pair which the story gave him. The city guards had finished off one last assassin before they also died, so it was only the leader of the Heavenly Executioners who remained to kill the Grand Master and then face Ignatius down.

"You have no idea how happy I am that this all worked," Ignatius said to the NPC.

Then he leaped forward and slammed his gem-encrusted fist into the Heavenly Executioner's face, driving him into the wall and shattering the ceramic mask under the bronze metal of the gauntlet.

The NPC's hand twitched as he died, letting the glittering knife fall to the ground.

"We will return," the assassin groaned, even as his body evaporated into glowing white smoke. "The Immortals… must never rise… again…"