Chapter 12

'SSS?' Ivy thinks.

—What in the world was Stan doing here? Being the announcer/coordinator of the tryouts should garner some responsibilities, but instead, he was in Oasis City. Ivy, Kira, and Dillan look at Stan as he waves three Slayer Passes into their faces.

"It is I! Stan Stanley Stanlington! But you knew that already I'm sure..." Stan starts, "I don't have all day, so can you pick a card, any card?"

Ivy looks at Stan, trying to come up with any trick he has up his sleeve. As she does this, Ivy notices Kira move her side-part to the other side of her face, just as she did before when she used her move, All-Knowing-Eye, on that group of unsuspecting players.

"Yea? So these passes are for us?" Kira inquires.

"What do you think I'm here for? A party trick?" Stan says, "Oh, actually, that would've been clever..."

"So you're giving us Slayer's Passes for free?" Dillan asks.

Kira's green aura flashes around herself, and she turns back to her party. She also parts her hair back to its resting position.

"He's telling the truth. Those passes are ours."

The party looks away from Kira and back to Stan. He smiles as they do so. Dillan looks at Kira another time.

"Are you sure? What if it's a trick?" Dillan asks.

"It can't be. Stan's telling us the truth. I didn't sense any other motive he had." Kira responds.

Ivy walks ahead of the group to Stan in range to grab one of the passes. Stan doesn't change his stance at all and looks overall bored at this point.

"Guys, seriously, if I were pulling your legs, I would've done it by now, *TAKE THEM*!!" Stan begs, waving the passes forward as he does.

Ivy flinches at Stan's yell but quickly extends her right hand to one of the passes in Stan's hand. She readily takes it from him.

After seeing this, Kira and Dillan swiftly follow suit. They snatch up the remaining two passes from Stan. Ivy looks at the pass she had just got from Stan, being very similar to the referrals, except for even more markings and decoration on it. She looks back up from it to see Kira and Dillan retreat with their passes.

"So you're just giving them to us? Where are the other passes for the rest of the runners then?" Ivy asks.

"Yea! Why tell everyone to go somewhere then show up in person?!" Dillan roars.

Stan keeps his composure.

'I knew they wouldn't be satisfied.' Stan thinks.

"Well, to be brutally honest, this was never meant to happen! Guess it just had to be this way, is all." Stan replies.

"What do you mean?" Kira asks Stan.

Stan shuffles the rest of the cards in his hands and puts them back into his pocket. He turns to his left and paces left and right while explaining further.

"Well, you see, I had this marvelous idea! I would send everyone a trade offer with nothing I wanted on their end, but I would offer a Slayer's Pass! It would be a silent gift!—"

Ivy gasps and remembers the properties of Trade Requests. Players get offered so many at a time in the market that the game has automatically silenced those notifications to improve the experience. She listens to what Stan has to say again.

"—Now the game has a limit, as you know, for how many trade requests you can send in a day to prevent spam! Only three requests per unique player ID—if they don't respond to them—and 1,000 complete trades a day!—"

"—I hit that 1,000 trade limit already, so I have to hand out the rest of the passes in person! I hope that wasn't too much of an explanation..."

So Stan had a plan to set up everyone with a puzzle or something and then have players realize they had the passes all along. That's probably why Jay and Axel tried to call Ivy earlier, but Ivy I had no idea if they had figured it out or not, or if Stan had to give them passes like this as well.

"So, how many other players do you have to hand passes out to?" Ivy asks

"Only you guys. I guess I forgot you were even in the competition!" Stan laughs.

Ivy, Kira, and Dillan all blank for a second, pondering Stan's statement.

"*YOU FORGOT ABOUT US*?!" Dillan says, grabbing Stan's collar on his suit.

"That's *ALL*?!" Kira says, also grabbing Stan's cooler in rage.

Ivy's face turns bright red as she sees her party members assault Stan. She rushed over and tried to stop them from doing anything rash. Dillan and Kira both looked like they were going to kill Stan.

Then, Stan's laughter grew louder and louder until Dillan and Kira heard it over the gritting of their teeth.

"Hey, what's so funny?!" Dillan demands.

"Yea, pretty boy, what's so amusing?!" Kira snaps.

"Well, now I know he's a poison Aspect user," Stan starts, pointing at Dillan, "And you are an umbral Aspect user!" Stan finishes, pointing at Kira.

Dillan and Kira let go of SSS, Jumping backward in the process. Ivy is alone in Stan's presence. They both question how Stan found out about their powers when they didn't show any apparent signs.

"I don't know yours yet though, mind letting me know?" Stan asks Ivy, who is standing close in front of him.

"U-uh, life Aspect," Ivy responds.

Stan takes a step back from everyone and straightens his collar.

"That was a glimpse at my power. Anyone who touches me while I have my deck of cards holstered gets their power and moves shown to me. I call that move my «Sleight of Hand»!" Stan says triumphantly.

The three party members look at Stan in evident confusion. Stan slouches at sight.

"Fine, I'll have some class," Stan says, pulling out his deck of cards once again, "I'm a «Material» Aspect user, fluent in the art of «Playing Cards»!"

'Playing card Aspect? What?!' Ivy thinks, 'Never imagined that would be powerful at all, not even considering that I've never heard of such an Aspect like that before!'

"Well then! Thank you for the kind words and introductions, but I have a show to run!" Stan says, pulling a card from his deck and throwing it in front of him.

A strange doorway made up of a large playing card—The king of diamonds—appears from thin air. Stan walks into the empty opening, which didn't connect to anywhere different on either side. He waves goodbye.

"See you guys! I'll remember your faces!" He says as he closes the card door.

After he did, it looked apparent that he was still behind the card. I mean, you could see the street through the doorway as he created it. Dillan and Kira laugh and go behind the door to mess with Stan some more.

To their surprise, he was gone. The large playing card shrinks back to its standard size and starts to shrivel up. It disappears shortly after, which shocks the three party members.

"What kind of magic was that?" Kira mumbles.

"Yea..." Dillan adds.

Ivy looks at Dillan and Kira and then hears a commotion behind her. She turns to the scene and sees the male players from earlier all running away from their spot. They seemed to be in a hurry. Ivy's eyes widen as she realizes most of the race-contenders might've figured out the weird enigma Stan posed on them. She runs over to Kira and Dillan, who are still searching the area for Stan.

"We have to go! We still have to be in the first 100 players to pass!" Ivy says.

The clock was on once more, and the race turned back into a race. Ivy pulls up her game menu and tries to call Jay and Axel back, but a pop-up appears as she tries to do so.

<Sorry! But an Item is preventing this action!>

The menu then shows Ivy what item was stopping the connection to Jay and Axel.

It was none other than the Slayer's Pass itself.

If you have one, You can't contact anyone to tell them where the Passes are.

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-

"Where'd you learn how to do that?" Jay asks Axel in a rush.

Realizing that Ivy and the rest of the party had something to do, Jay and Axel quickly found out they couldn't call them back after getting their passes from the trade requests. It was prohibiting them from contacting anyone in the race. Jay and Axel were rushing back to the finish line with their passes in hand, somewhere in between Oasis and their destination. They weren't running from Ivy, Kira, and Dillan, but they had no choice but to gun it to the end so they could secure a spot. It was first come, first serve, after all.

Not only did the Slayer's Pass itself block calls and texts from the contenders, but it couldn't be stored in the inventory. SSS had explained to the other half of the party that the point of the passes being distributed like this was so they could be stolen, adding a level of tension to the competition. Jay and Axel didn't figure this out.

"Learn how to do what?!" Axel bursts as he paces back and forth with Jay.

"That move! The one you used to cross over that slope so fast!" Jay reiterates.

"Oh!! You mean this?!" Axel says as he jumps high into the air.

In a flash, Smoke and a burst of red flames emit from Axel's shoes. Debris and dust start to circle underneath him in a clockwise movement.

"*«Ash Burn»*!!" Axel announces.

Axel's body was propelled from the ground for a few moments as he glided across the landscape at a short level, trying to avoid the tree branches nearby. Jay watches this new action once more, trying to see how it works.

Axel's feet started to lose their intense heat, and the smoke that freely poured from them began to slow. As this happens, he's brought back down to the floor with Jay. He sticks the landing.

"That's something I'm working on! It's called Ash Burn!!" Axel says, "I basically concentrate heat in my legs, which lets me heat the air below me. That lets me glide a short distance!!"

"Did you learn that in your training a week?" Jay asks while still running.

"Yea!! I met someone who helped tons!!" Axel says, turning his head forwards and getting serious, "But that's not important!! We need to get to the finish line!!"

Jay's curiosity got the best of him, but he understands privacy. He hasn't shown Axel or Ivy any of the tricks he picked up in training, either.

"Right!" Jay calls out.

The two friends continued sprinting through the Wilds, making sure they were going the right way at all times. After around thirty more minutes, the two start to slow to a jog.

"We should be coming up on the finish line soon!" Jay calls out.

"Okay!!" Axel says, trying to save breath.

The trees in front of them start to diminish in numbers, and a clearing is soon visible. Leaves scattered in the clearing, with multiple players gasping for air. They were most likely other contenders. Jay hoped that they made it in time to qualify. After stepping foot into the clearing, Jay and Axel both spot their destination.

Jay and Axel both darted to the finish and jumped for it. Their Slayer's Passes—gripped tightly in their hands—were the first thing to cross the end of the race. At that moment, the passes started to despawn, fading out of existence into tiny polygon shapes. A blue glow emits from each player's hands, and a message shows up in their personal HUDs.

<Congratulations! You made it!>

Jay and Axel tumble back onto the ground after their jumps, and they both get a faceful of dirt. As dirty as they were, however, they were ecstatic.

"*Yes*!!" Axel screams.

"*We made it*! Jay proclaims.

The two stand up as fast as they can and fist bump in celebration. Huge smiles stretched from each corner of their faces.

After celebrating, they look around at their competition. There were indeed a lot of players here already. Jay estimates about seventy contenders had already reached the finish line.

Axel notices a number on his HUD now, next to his health bar.

"#89..." He reads out, "Hey Jay do you have a number next to your HP?

"Huh?" Jay mumbles, checking his UI (User Interface).

After looking at his health bar, Axel was right. Jay did have a number next to his name. '#90' was displayed next to his health and other stats.

"Yea, I'm #90," Jay says.

"Haha!!" Axel boasts, "So I beat you!!"

"Shut up," Jay replies quickly.

"I'm #86, so technically, I beat both of you!" A voice says in the distance.

Jay and Axel both turn away from each other in the voice's direction. To their surprise, Ivy stood triumphantly in the clearing, with Dillan and Kira behind her.

"You made it here before us!?" Axel yells.

"What do you think, idiot?" Kira whispers.

It turns out that the rest of the party had just run back to the finish line as soon as they got their passes from Stan, and they managed to outrun Jay and Axel. It was then that Ivy explained how the Passes could be stolen from players, which Jay and Axel both denied knowing at all. Neither half of the party got into an altercation at all, which was a relief.

"Haha! try to keep up next time!" Dillan says, holding a thumbs-up.

"Why you-!!" Axel grovels, power walking to Dillan's location. Jay rushes to him before he has another outburst and then turns to Kira.

"So what exactly happened with you guys? You got cut off as soon as we called." Jay asks.

"Yea, something like that..." Kira says, looking nervously at the floor, "We had a run-in with that charismatic character as soon as you called…"

"Turns out Stan never sent us trade requests, so he delivered them in person." Dillan says, "And he wasn't subtle about it either. It was a whole performance to him!"

"Yeah," Ivy starts, "He was very outgoing to us!"

The party groups up again as qualifiers for the following sections of the tryouts to come. With their differences aside, they all come together in a huddle.

"*WE DID IT*!!!" They all shout together.

After breaking the huddle, they were all satisfied. They grouped up just to tackle the race, mutually benefitting from each other, but most of them got closer to each other. Well, most of them, some had to work out a couple of things still.

"Do you think we can keep this group through the entire tryouts?" Jay asks.

Ivy and Axel both seem to perch up a little bit as Jay says that. Kira and Dillan look at him in surprise. They were both close to leaving.

"U-uh, I mean you guys don't have to!" Ivy outbursts, "But I was thinking the same thing—"

"We seemed to work well with each other! Despite our misconceptions, I think we can carry each other through the trials up ahead!" Ivy states.

Dillan grabs his jacket collar and pumps it outward in a fast motion.

"You know what? You make a good point!" Dillan says, pointing at Jay, "I couldn't have done this without you! You helped me see past all of the stares and comments people say to me, so thank you!"

Jay smiles and nods his head. That interaction on the train still put that much of an impression on him? That lets Jay know Dillan meant what he said.

"And you!!" Axel says, turning to Kira, "I don't like being dangled like live bait!! But you did save my life at that gorge, so thanks!" He finishes calmly.

Kira gives off a small smile, then shakes it away as soon as it appears.

"Shut up, it's not like I wanted to save you in particular or anything," she mutters.

'That's cold!!' Axel thinks.

"Hey, It's cool to have a variety of Aspects on a team as well!" Ivy says, giving a glance to Jay, "Except you, Jay."

Everyone laughs. Jay tries his hardest not to feel too bad about it and awkwardly smiles as he scratches the back of his head.

"*AHH*!!"

The party turns from each other, hearing a scream coming from the Wilds nearby. Everyone in the clearing—in fact—also turns to the Wilds at the awful sound. It sounded like whoever just screamed like that was in agony. Jay's body tenses up as his instinct is to summon his Aspect, which he knew did nothing for him except keep him super tense, but he did it anyway.

Ivy and Axel both look on in the general direction of the scream in discomfort. Kira and Dillan look on as well in curiosity and fear.

As the air around seemed to get stronger and stronger, a silhouette emerged from the trees crowding the Wilds. It looked more like a high-level brute monster that fills the game, but it was a player. Their build was even more significant than Dillans, and as they got closer, more players in the clearing backed away from the Wilds. It seemed like they recognized the prominent player.

As the player gets closer, it's evident that their size was due to a massive set of armor that plated every part of their body. Large spikes emerged from their shoulder guards, and chainmail covered their exposed parts in-between their armor. Their helmet had four large slits into it, but the player's face was still shrouded with an eerie darkness, giving the slits a pitch dark shadow.

A large war-axe embroidered with gems of all kinds rattled onto his metal plating with every heavy step. His metal boots engraved the floor with massive prints as he closed into the finish line.

Everyone close to the finish backed away and retreated into groups from the player. Upon further inspection, Jay could quickly tell that this player was a guy, but his voice sold it even more.

"I'm Tide." The player says as he holds up his closed right hand, "And I'll be qualifying with all of these."

'Tide,' Jay thinks, 'What did he mean by qualifying with all of these?'

"What an entrance..." Axel whispers to the rest of the party.

"Still not as flashy as Stan's from earlier, but yeah, this guy means business..." Dillan whispers back.

Tide walks to the finish line and crosses through it. As he does, he opens up his closed hand. The rest of the players in the clearing that had finished already gasped in shock at what he had in his possession.

<Congratulations! You made it!>

Tide was #91-#100, submitting ten different Slayer's Passes. That meant he had to either steal them in stealth or combat other contenders for them. With how he presented himself, he most likely took the ladder.

As soon as Tide's Passes disappear and he receives his ten numbers next to his health bar, a flash of light from the screens in the makeshift arena blind all of the players.

"Woah! Ten Passes? Who's the seasoned veteran?" A voice sounds from the speakers. Jay and his party instantly recognize its cockiness.

'Stan...' Jay thinks.

"Well then, with the menacing new player joining your ranks," Stan announces, "All 100 slots for the first section of the tryouts have been taken!—"

Jay spots Tide evilly staring at the speaker system. This player was serious business. What if he really is a seasoned veteran, taking the tryouts multiple times? It's a shocker he isn't in a guild already.

"—The next section will take place tomorrow at this same spot! And this time, we'll be entering the arena here!" Stan says, "Just make sure to be here on time..."

Everyone in the clearing understands. This concludes the tryouts today, and they could log off or do other things now.

"Well then! That was an interesting end to it all." Ivy says.

"True, we didn't even fight anyone," Kira says with her.

"I still think we were faster than you guys!!" Axel says to Dillan, Kira, and Ivy, "Right, Jay?—"

"So your name's Tide?" Jay asks, standing next to Tide and away from the party, "Have you done the tryouts before and knew about the passes, or did you just steal from players for fun?"

'What is he doing?!' Axel thinks as he sees Jay questioning the behemoth.

"And your name isn't important. This was my first time trying out." Tide responds to Jay.

"So this is really your first time? Then you hunted players down just to take up ten different spots?" Jay asks again, thinking to himself as he says it, "Don't you think that's not fair in a way?"

"You're testing my patience." Tide mumbles, grabbing his axe from behind him, "I said you're not important to me, so back off.

Jay's muscles tense. He wanted an answer to his question, not a fight. Regardless, he was frozen in fear and stood his ground. Tide leaned down to Jay's level while he stood still. A glowing red eye emerges from the black slits in Tide's helmet.

"You've just made yourself my target," Tide whispers through his armored helmet, then walks away from Jay.

Jay stood still in fear. His legs were shaking and about to give in. He hadn't been scared so much from another player like that before. The way Tide just looked down at him and said he was his 'target' sent shivers down Jay's spine. He knew he couldn't compete with someone like that.

"Hey!! Back off, you bully!!" Axel yells from across the way to Tide.

Tide turns and directly faces Axel. The look he gives him even upsets Axel's stomach like Jay. Axel is taken back but is still frustrated.

"Just you watch!! Jay's gonna take your spot in the guild if you have an attitude like that!!" Axel yells.

Jay looks up at Axel with wide eyes. Did Axel defend him from Tide? He must know by now that Tide is probably the strongest player here. Tide turns from Axel as he says that and instead to Jay.

"Jay, huh?" Tide says,

"I'll make sure that name's forgotten by the end of these tryouts."