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I was still tired even as i sat up after being disconnected from the tower terminal in the center of the tables by one of the technicians, so tired in fact that i had to side on the side of my table and just hold my head in my hands for a minute or two before i was able to even look around the room without squinting against the multitude of light sources about the room. "Hey there, hero," an overly cheerful Arielle says as she comes over to plop down beside me while i watched the others lying peacefully in their tables. "You don't look too good... this is like a surfacing lag, you didn't quite log out of the game of your own volition but after being rendered unconscous after at least two-and-a-half hours of play, you fit the requirements for being force-logged. The lag is because you weren't ready for the switch to reality and is basically an echo of your avatar's condition before you fainted."

"Blacked out," i say stiffly. "Like a raging Irish alcoholic, i black out. Not. Faint."

"You fainted, whether you like it or not," she states simply, before kicking her legs like a child and throwing her head back with a wild laugh. "But, wasn't that incredible? You should have seen the chaos Harold's and Hitome's teams descended down the mountain into, the undead were all coming out of hiding and swarming the mine to keep the workers confined while the rest of the people at the fort went to reinforce everybody you were murdering at the docks. I'm surprised the outlaw commander stayed behind the entire time, though, i feel like he should have left for the beach with everybody else once the mine was secure but i guess he felt he needed proximity to his undead or something. I can't read minds in the game like the professor, so i have no way of knowing, but then there was that moment when the one officer knocked you off of the other and started laying into you, but you just ate it like a heavyweight and turned everything around on all of them with Issa's support."

"Oh, my God, Issa..." i say with a slightly wistful smile. "Have you actually seen Hanran? The katana Issa made for me? That thing is a beautiful pattern-welded piece of art that belongs on display as much as it does on a battlefield, if i ever met a girl who could make a sword like that in reality i would start her a business and marry her. I mean, Shitome that Hitome made from the mold i cast her yari in is a helluva weapon, but its basically a quartz marble instead of actual quartz and Hanran... Hanran is steel. I'm going to ask Doc if i can place an order for a custome replica while here in the beta, i don't even want to try replicating Issa's katana myself and fail to do it justice- this is the kind of thing that needs money thrown at it to be done right."

"You could marry Issa in the game, but she's kind of on the young side- unless you're into that- and then there's the whole cloaca thing..." she adds, trailing off as i stare at her in open-mouthed horror at her conversationally toned remarks. "Calm down, kid, you have no idea how bad the workplace humor gets because we have all the insider information on the game, like how certain mortal races age different or where one country or region recognizes the progression of age differently such as with korea here in reality or just recognizes a different age of marriage and-or consent. Considering all of the failsafes in place to keep the illegal stuff from taking place, you would be surprised by how much of it can take place legally in the game."

Shaking my head as the fog and fatigue finally begin to clear away, i say, "No, just stop, I've seen most of that kid's life story and she's basically a little sister to me, now. What are the others up to right now? I can't believe i got booted from exhaustion."

"They're just now reaching the rafts on the back island while the Scalesh from the mines are cleaning up the bodies from the fort," she replies in much calmler tones than her previous conversational remarks about Issa and I. "The shamans went in and took over the outlaw barracks and have acquired some very useful information on the outlaws in the form of maps and correspondance between facility leaders and the actual leaders of the Red Hand and Red Skull. Most of the boats in the marina that were not already undergoing repairs- such as one of the big war ships that the Red Skull had just recently commandeered and sent in for use by the Hand- are ready to go out on the water whenever you guys are. There's not much else of the fort left after the fight with the necromancer and his minions who tore their hiding places apart on the way out, but anything and everything of value is being picked through with a fine toothed comb- including their ruined armory and vault. Everybody is also partnered with a shaman, now, but they had to pick their own because Issa is too busy organizing the the new navy to do it for them."

"Good developments, very good," i say with a tired sigh before finally standing up from the table to take a few steps away and start stretching out my body. "We now have a standing force of an estimated excess of three hundred Scalesh, actual ships with which to transport them all, and a gold mine under our thumb. Once we have connections in the corporate world, we can use the mines we take to fund the war effort by trading for weapons and vehicles and maybe even some credible mercenary groups to help take the strain off of us players. I assume there are a few in the civilized portions of the island?" I ask as i finish stretching to once again yawn loudly after working off the lag from my forced logout.

"A few but most are just monster hunting groups," she replies with a helpless shrug. "The chokehold that the outlaws have on the outer regions of the islands is incredible, and the fact that the islands are constantly drifting make it hard for any singular government or even the empire itself to do more than supply escorts for trade vessels as well as the fact that the islands have a governing body... who do nothing. The celestial just sleeps and eats and works on turning the islands into one big continent, it doesn't even really know its magic that created the islands also created the Scalesh of the islands. And everything is made worse by the Red Skull, who are using the islands to grow into a proper navy the same way you guys are growing into a proper army, and eventually they are going to take on the celestial to take over the islands."

"For a supremely powerful being that the title 'celestial' suggests, this guy sounds really lazy or really young," i say with a bark of a laugh. "Makes for a great storyline, though, free the oppressed newly developed species of this location and help determine the future civilization that springs from your actions. Optional side quest, usurp the islands from its celestial guardian by manipulating the newly developed species into worshipping you as an immortal god-king. I don't think I'll so much usurp the islands as use my position with the Scalesh as Issa's partner and the founder of the rebellion for fifty-fifty co-ownership while Issa and a combined ruling body of shamans and warriors handle the politics. Should be interesting."

"Definitely get your own islands out of it," Arielle agrees as the first of the others start waking up with Harold groaning to with closed eyes. "Isn't that cute, he used his magic beyond critical and got the boot just like you did for pushing the rafts all the way to the granite mountain. He's been meaning to talk to you, so this should be interesting," she adds as a technician gets Harold's attention to explain the forced logout lag from not fully disassociating from the game before unhooking him from under the table.

Getting up to follow Arielle over to Harold's table where we sit on either side of him, Arielle nudges him gently in the ribs and says, "Look at the flex on this guy, four miles against the current with their very first attempts at Magewear! You go, Harold."

"I miss the professor," Harold groans, sharing my sentiment toward Doc's assistant's flambouyant personality. "You're way more directly informative, but Professor Harlen was only weird-happy every once in a while. Zai, glad to see you, we need to talk about something serious."

I had a feeling i already knew what he meant. "We weren't ready," i say first as he rubs a headache from his temples. "I barely made it off the beach if not for Issa and the galleys, it never even hit me until that last minute that the boss never showed up on the beach- and neither did you guys. If i had just listened to you guys and not pushed to make an opening, we could have surrounded and confined him to wear them out and then take down physically, but i wrecked myself anyway which is what let him get to the beach in the first place. I never once thought about the kind of injuries i could sustain in this game, i just figured it would be light wounds until something fatal takes me out in a quick few seconds... but, now, i wish i had trained with blindfolds over alternating eyes at least."

"You lost an eye?" Harold asks incredulously. "I shattered my knuckles punching somebody's head in, but that... somehow you're always on the next level."

"I didn't lose it," i correct him, helping to bring some of the thunder back to his parade. "The necromancer's aura attack was some kind of corrosion attack, like they were manipulating gasses and water into acid similar to the vapors from burning sulfur mixing with water- not as strong as whatever that fire was, but the fact it hit everywhere at once wore my aura down faster than it could regenerate its entirety. I blinked while passing through that second time to slash them again before you guys were in the crater and one of my eyes just got melted shut. You've seen my coat and what that EMF could do to something Doc of all people made... i won't even tell you what else that aura did to my body inside the armor, i probably need to die and respawn in order to have children in-game after testicular exposure to that aura like a radiation or something."

"That's what it was," Arielle says quickly, struggling to keep a straight face while Harold and some of the techs laugh at me, "Radiation. Radioactive isotopes of any level is even rarer and more valuable in the game than gold and diamonds here in reality, and the necromancer carried once that he used as an energy source for his unnatural corrosive magics. The fire, however, is a power commonly shared by most demons called Hellfyre, dark mages usually make pacts with denizens of hell and the abyssal plains for access to the forsaken arts and overall power and it was the necromancer's bondmate that replicated their own body from the gore at the marina to help them fight. Not an exceptionally powerful denizen, it could only manifest physical strength for power and not really enough to achieve flight with such heavily defensive bone formations, but they could take offense to having their replicated skull hollowed out with fire and try to use other connections to get revenge for the loss of a link to the mortal realm."

"Zai destroyed the boss loot with magic fire," Harold says with an accusing glare in my directions. "I never even bothered looking inside the thing, the fire was mostly that transparent blue at the bottom of a big flame.

"It was blue from the pressure of heat more than the heat itself in such a confined space, and the only way to be sure that hellspawn what-the-shit died," i say defensively. "Plus, the fire was only between twelve- and fifteen-hundred degrees, if the isotope had been destroyed the entire head would have probably exploded, so it's still in there and probably protected by whatever the necromancer was using to carry it. The flames didn't last that long, maybe enough to misshape basic steels from the pressure and render their tempering, but not long enough to melt anything but lead or basic iron which means something made from carbon-alloys or precious metals would still be more or less intact- something magical probably wouldn't even be rendered."

"Everybody's happy," Arielle chimed in as the others finally started stirring in numbers as they actually went to sleep in the game. "But, you're both right, nobody was prepared for a real large-scale battle like this. You're all very capable young adults, but... Harold is the only person who has actually trained to fight for hours on end. The rest of you could only hold out for the duration of a professional football game, Zai maybe half an hour overtime but that's about it. Although, this was probably the best kind of training that you guys could recieve for future fights. And, after taking a gold mine from the smugglers, there will definitely be future fights."

"We need time to prepare, and are already running out of it," Harold groans, getting up to take our conversation to the doorway. "The shamans got their hands on documents, the Red Hand are making an acquisition of free-tradeterritory through a fake trade group to get a foothold in enemy lands, their sending an envoy of two galleys and a low-depth submarine to our mine for the gold in roughly three days... they have freaking subs! That's tomorrow morning's session in real-time, and i honestly don't think anything on the envoy will be of value so we need to get out of the mine and get to free-trade territory where we can rest and better prepare ourselves."

"The spread of information," i remind him in a low growl. "If we left, we would have three days before the spread of information began, if the roaring of that hellspawn didn't tell everybody in the world that the gold mine was under attack. Then, it could be as simple as yelling to the sky with a group of auras or writing it in fire for the world to see, and then the possibility of magical tracking once again sets in which would only lead far greater numbers of the enemy not only to us but to whoever offers the few hundred of us aid. We take the envoy, it's the only option, but we can put it to a kind of vote- those in favor of stopping the envoy stay and become the war party while everyone else who wants to get out and focus on prep and strengthening can go with you to the trade territory."

"Do you really think you can play war without any actual soldiers?" Harold asks with a smirk. "I want on the front lines. I have honestly been thinking, it does not need to be like half the beta, it can be just a couple of people so that the rest of the beta can split into smaller groups and cover more land in the free-trade and regoup at central locations. I kind of took over Emma's grooming since Doc and the game made you so busy with the war, but she's a very competent fighter and strategist who could lead the peace party in our place. You might have the potential to take out a ship on your own just with your Particle ability, but with magic and our own powers Hitome and i could keep up with you and lead the Scalesh forces while you army-of-one and blaze a trail for the rest of us.

"I have talked to Arielle and gone over maps from the game- all of our island Maps are out of the FOW, by the way-" he goes on in a rush even as the others begin gathering around. "The gold mind is smack in the middle of of the outlaw territory's width and only like ten or so miles to the side of the center, and the gold mine would make an excellent headquarters for the war effort if we converted the mountain with magic, but the envoy. It's basically a heavily armed and armored transport probably with the strongest of the strong that the Red Hand could spare for such an important mission, and it's our next opponent if we stay at the mine."

"We need the gold for future funding, we can't just take it and hand it back," i argue. "Like i said, we let the others choose and split the beta into war and peace parties early instead of raiding our way through the outlaw territory. Whoever stays will have the bulk of the Scalesh forces and all the time we need to go back to silver island and stock up on sulfur munitions to take out the envoy. We can board and take the galleys, they're probably just a show of strength in numbers more than the actual muscle of the mission which is probably insde the submersible- who would then have to surface and disembark to come to the aid of the galleys and divide their overall strength between three different places. That's only if the outlaws have Scalesh crews, otherwise we can just sink them all and make our own subs now that we know the already exist."

"Speaking of subs, I'm hungry again," Arielle chimes in from outside the doorway now that the entire group had gathered, curling a finger at everyone to usher us into leaving the operating room. "Quick vote! Who wants to go on the peace party, hands!" She goes on, encouraging only the hands of Billy, Julia, Brittany, Luis, and Emma. "Five of twelve, not as much as i had expected."

"Luis," Angel says in disappointment to his fellow Hispanic, "Bro, no, don't do it to me."

"Last fight was the first time i actually got hurt, like really hurt," Luis argues, shaking his head. "One of those skele-freaks put a knife in my side, bro, it almost got my lung or spleen or something and i could have died- would have died if not for my new goblin from the boat we took. I want to be the first in-game vet and stuff, take care of magical creatures for other players somewhere like here in the islands where there's a bunch of 'em, but i didn't know fighting and battles were going to be... real. One of the skeles put its fingers right through your hand and glove! How can you want to keep going against worse opponents in greater numbers?"

"Because it's a video game and barely scraping by is what you do until you're OP," Angel argues. "You don't start a game with the biggest gun unless you pay for it and then the game's no fun anymore, the fun is the challenge of getting that big gun- not even Zai just walks away from these fights. We were right in line with him behind the boulders, you saw what that dragon did to him and then that Over-Powered come back just like you saw me snatch the hand off that skeleton and ram the arm into zombie's throat.

"I got worse than both of you," Billy cuts in with some bravado in his voice. "One of the guards in the mine speared me through the calf, and i still split his helm with my sword, but that pretty much took the fight out of me. I'm not saying we turn tail and run because we all agreed to take the mines and they're still not ours. Once we take out the delivery boys while we're still at full power, then i have no problem at all with running like a whipped dog to somewhere safe. But, I'm still in it til the mine is ours."

This put a quick spin on the conversation and planning with Billy's personal determination to see what he believed to still be the first step in our war effort through to the end, bringing a new perspective to even Luis who regarded the shorter and somewhat rounder beta member with begrudging respect. Emma took it from there after a hushed discussion with the other two girls on the newly established peace team, saying, "We want to stay and help establish the mine before we go, too. Like Billy said, it's only fair, and if anyone just doesn't want to fight anymore, then they shouldn't have to."

It's finally happened, the pain simulation for the game has finally broken one or some of us completely, i realize in a pained admission of defeat, having failed to protect the others from the extent of the injuries they could sustain while playing this game. I had a somewhat natural pain buff and a ten-percent buff from the gods of the game, but the others probably did not have any such bonuses going for them that i knew of or any lengthy experience with pain that i knew of to have developed a tolerance appropriate for much of what the game had to offer. Some of them had even seen my burned rag doll of a body before making golems, and yet they had continued onward at least until now. I could still help them.

"With the Scalesh to act as our work crews, we can spend the next few sessions focusing solely on the magical and physical development of our characters," i inform the group. "You guys have all already condensed your auras and i hear of advances in Magewear from some of you as well, in just one session i have no doubt everybody can have their own versions of EMF bodies around which the growth of our EMF will make up our extended auras and even an outer condensed layer like you already have. The rest of your time can be spent working your bodies and your overall magic capability with training while our shamans practice their natural healing magics shortening the time it takes for us to work out again while our auras recharge on ether- we may even be able to bond with multiple shamans to increase the Scalesh offensive capacity as well as our own with capacity boosts and familiar buffs. By the time the delivery boys show up with our new toys, each of us and our three or five shamans apiece will be an elite physical and magical force to be reckoned with even divided into war and peace teams- it's not like i can really let my friends go out of reach without every means possible at their disposal."

"The overall strength of the envoy was decided by default by the game upon its discovery, the distribution of that power- however- has yet to be decided by the game gods," Arielle warns us. "To make for a better match against your building power, the game with feed the limited magic factor into few and few opponents until only one or a few bosses remain- the most likely distribution being one boss to each vessel surrounded in elite mundane forces because the more powerful a mage is in magic then usually they weaaker they are physically except in the case of event or unique bosses or in players. It's already certain because of Zai that one boss character equal to the necromancer- though not a user of dark arts- will be on the sub, the rest of you rising in power will cause the concentration of physical and magical distributions. Of course, there is the possibility that you could all become... OP... in comparison to the envoy in general, but to match the distribution of physical skill and strength among the mundanes will take much more that a few days of drills- you guys will have to pair up and spend every moment of the next few sessions fighting each other, learning yours and their strengths and weakness to exploit and compensate until you have no strengths and weaknesses. Only balance."

"That's the most namaste thing i have ever heard anyone say," Billy says in awe, making me wonder if he did not have some form of a crush on Ms. Arielle. "Tell us more, Shifu."

"We know what we're doing for the next few sessions," Harold says before Arielle can get the chance to prove her position as a competitor with Doc and i for long-winded lectures. "Now we need to know how we're doing it. Arielle says we need to spend the entire time sparring with weapons and magic, but we won't build up all that much physical strength just cardio and muscular endurance. We need weights to wear on our armor, we need to wear our armor full-time like Zai does, and overall dress in and use everything we would take to a fight. Rinse and repeat. I'm going to need special permissions from everyone willing to take this seriously allowing me to make the next few sessions your personal hells."

"Gold training suits," i offer with a shrug. "Vests, helms, bracers, and shinguards of soft, heavy as hell itself solid gold and blunted weapons of the same. Minimal coverage will teach us to identify chinks in armor as well as to defend our vulnerables while the density of gold itself will make such basic armaments heavier than our current gear for training purposes. We can keep our training gear for futher use and future private trade, but all the other gold currently mined or processed at the fort should go toward the acquisition of legal lands and vehicles for the war effort- such as indisputable ownership of the gold mine and the other islands we liberate before some trade group can come in behind us and claim the goods."

"I thought the war was to take control of the islands, not buy them," Hitome says in suspicious tones from the middle of the group.

"Once the outlaws are no longer in place to hem in the legal operations, those legal operations will boom outward in a greedy rush to claim power throughout the war process anywhere we leave a possible vacancy," i explain with a helpless shrug from my position at the front without turning around. "That's one of the why's for allies, in the tradelands, people with ties to our cause who earn a right to continue farming the islands while we use them to take over the badlands. Once the Scalesh are a proper military force that controls all of the territory surround the tradelands and civilized society, we move inward like a tidal wave- we may have to sign waivers to skip meals and get it done without any hitches over a short period of time, but we can do it. If we get the attention of the celestial who actually owns and created the islands, we can either enlist or kill them for rightful claim over the islands in their entirety- hopefully enlist because their power in addition to ours would be a force to make the game's entire empire think twice."

"Making the Scalesh continue mining the gold and stuff makes me feel like a complete ass," Angel says in the few seconds of following silence. "I mean, even if it's for them, they would probably love to take a break or something."

"The females don't seem to see it that way," Emma remarks with a laugh. "They work those poor males to the bones, but they honestly don't seem to mind it either. I guess it's just the culture of their species that the women are the intelligent leaders while the men are the strong workers and warriors. It seems... right, somehow."

"As the male leader of our beta group, i take offense to this," Harold states firmly before adding,

"but, you're right. The women rule the Scalesh tribes as their elders because they actually have longer lifespans than people whereas males only live to about twenty before they wander off into the islands to die hunting or being hunted. Ink is almost fifty and her daughter Issa is almost twenty but they don't reach full maturity until thirty when they have their first clutch and do not breed again for ten-year cycles. Most clutches consist of three to five eggs and usually only one or two of them are females- Issa is Ink's only daughter."

"How the hell do you know so much?" Hitome asks incredulously. "My shaman hates me because i wear a crown and barely talks to me. I kind of want a replacement, can my current shaman mysteriously die for the perma-buff?"

"Just find one or more that are more amicable to make the first one jealous or to make the first one chill," i say with a shrug. "No farming sentient familiars on the islands, you'll make us look bad. In between raids, we can stop so you can farm animal familiars, but i am actually interested in this necromancy. If we can turn the people from the envoy into a bunch of undead meat shields, we could just waste them on the next raid. Rinse and repeat."

"Necromancy of unwilling sentient creatures such as villagers and so on is illegal, but an animal or wolfhead?" Arielle innocently poses the question before maliciously saying, "Undead cannonfodder for anyone with the know-how. You guys took out not only a necromancer but a bunch of different magic people and much of their personal affects in the barracks are there for the taking- such as their private studies and magical archives. Players have a menu and list of learned or created spells, but most NPC mages need to keep some written or magical form of list to study constantly or else they forget their magics."

"So spells are also a loot," i state the obvious for the group, thinking back to the Perpetual Elixir packet from gold guy. Then, "Gold guy came from this fort, his alchemy research on stuff like the Perpetual Elixir could still be there! Everything we need to know about where he gets his own store of herbs for the elixir and how he makes it in what quantities and so on. Arielle, you're the official NonCom, so you can spend our training time reading the necromancer's researches or personal diaries. Please," i add, remembering suddenly that she was not actually one of us and could just wander around invisibly doing nothing at all.

"I would gladly filter through all of the material for anything legal that you guys can lean," she says with a bright smile, whirling around to walk backward and show me that horribly suspicious look on her face

"On second though, i use my eidetic memory to skim through the paperwork before letting her filter for her own gain," i add quickly, earning a wry smile before Arielle turns back around. "But, thank you, your assistance will be greatly appreciated in our future endeavors. I hope to one day actually play the game with you instead of just have you pop up randomly to teach me how to fly."

"You could all challenge me to a duel for a minigame, you never got one last session, and I'll be extra helpful just for my new best friends," she says in her normal positive way that i now realize the professor was using as the basis for his grating niceties. "I would definitely love to see what all of you can do in non-magical combat- especially someone who constantly avoids a proper clash of arms. Everybody in the company wants to see what the legendary Zai who dropped an overall two hundred pounds in fat to gain fifty pounds in muscle. Mmm, muscle."

"I'm beginning to see where Doc gets his weird from," i laugh with an ever so slight step out to the side and away from the professor's personal assistant. "But, no, i don't know if i could fight you. The only female outlaw i have faced was killed by reflex by my tail on one of the galleys, never in my life have i fought a lady and i don't want to have to start now."

"I'm totally going to make Doc set the gender of all the bosses on the envoy to female if you don't fight me," Arielle says with a laugh in her voice as she leans across the gap to playfully shove me toward the wall of the hall. "Fight me for points or fight to the death against an envoy of only women. You can't call yourself the best if the other best is a female and you never face them- unless your some pig who thinks the strongest female is beneath the strongest male."

"I'll fight you right now if you keep pushing my buttons, and i bet I'm as good out of the game without magic as i am in the game without magic," i warn her with mock seriousness as the elevators finally come into view. "But, fine, i will accept your challenge and duel you for points in a minigame. I suppose i really can't progress in the game if i cannot face a female boss on my own. Between our difficulty ratings, you're probably equal to the necromancer and therefor the perfect person for each of us to spar against to see how much training we really need."

"If i didn't know any better, i would say somebody sounded sure of themselves," Emma challenged from her spot near the middle of the group. "You're still just a Journeyman and she's still an Expert. Don't forget, she threw more than you flew at the mine boss."

"Adept," Ms. Arielle says quickly but casuallyas the elevator finally comes into view. "After acquiring either passive magical or non-magical flight, you usually get bumped up to or through Journeyman. Even just gliding without actually spending energy- including a magic gadget like a collapsible hang glider or some such- will give you a decent difficulty rating boost. Since training days are ahead of us, this is something you can all look forward to. But, for the record, i never used magic- that was my character's actual physical strength. Since i only get to play every so often, after i discovered magic i just set up shop in the woods somewhere and hunted or worked out. There is lots of money in furs and leather."

If this were true, i was suddenly very worried about my upcoming duel with Doc's assistant. "You don't look big enough to be throwing people like paper planes," Harold says with obvious suspicion.

"Harold," Ms. Arielle states calmly, "Did you know that you and two others in the beta are the only people who regularly use the bathroom in the game? Everybody else has either been too busy to think about it or only done it once to see if they could after noticing the restroom's absense. Now, bearing this in mind, is it really impossible that i could keep my girlish physique in the game simply by not wanting my avatar to change? It seems kind of simple to me if you actually understand how the game works."

"Duly noted," Harold mumbles, not really caring anymore after having been put on blast in such a savage way. This lady seemed to be on a war path to dominate the beta group while she was around.

"I'll manage," i reassure the group at large, wondering what all i could and could not use to my advantage in the way of my passive abilities and buffs. "Win or lose, there is a lot that i could learn from this- about the game as well as myself. All of us should treat this as a learning experience and watch every sparring match closely... to try and figure out how to beat Supergirl's overwhelming strength after i have done my best to drain her stamina for all of you. Do not let my sacrifice be in vain!"

"See how quickly a man's tone changes when faced with a strong woman?" Ms. Arielle asks with a falsetto giggle, helping make the guys in the group laugh as well as the gals. "If it makes any of you feel better, i never had any combat training or experience until joining the company and working on this game. But, i was trained by Professor Harlen himself, so i wouldn't let that first part go all the way to your heads."

"I want to fight Zai," Hitome says suddenly, silencing the entire group in surprise. I had honestly expected it to happen eventually, somebody would want to test me or themselves as the strongest in the group, yet i was not only surprised that Hitome had been the first but was also challenging me when everybody in the group had just been set to duel Ms. Arielle. "Anything-goes death match, i want to see what I'm capable of as well as get the rating bump of beating an Adept with flight before i even have flight or a Magewear body."

"Ooh," Ms. Arielle coos with a soft, normal laugh. "Somebody's hungry for power, i like. I'll ship duels between beta players, but only consentual pvp or amazing assassinations. No sleep-slitting other players, too, most will have logged out and the gods view this as dishonorable."

Most, the word echoes in my mind, striking me as odd after having spent all of my sessions logging out when i sleep as well as leading me to wonder how somebody could healthily play consecutive three-hour sessions. Then again, i had something more important to occupy my mind with as i say, "Listen... fighting Arielle for points in a minigame is fine and dandy, but I'm not wasting my first death just letting you kill me because i don't want to kill somebody i know."

"You are superior in magic and i am superior in physical skill," Hitome states without shame. "Those will make this a balanced fight, and it will be even more epic than all of our boss battles. How about it, Zai? The first true player-versus-player fight between future gods of the game, the fight scene alone will skyrocket our reputations as streamers once the beta is over and i am allowed to release my footage."

"Especially mine, as the complete unknown and possibly the most OP noob to date who beats the famous pro-player," i say in taunting agreement. "Fine, i will grant your suicidal wish and face you without holding back. If anybody else would like to challenge me, do so now because i won't death-match anyone else after this. For the record, Hitome, it's still really shitty to have to kill you- and anyone else ."

"And the confidence is back in full-force," Arielle says with a dramatized sigh of misery, opening the elevator for all of us to start piling in passed her. "For a second there, i almost missed it, but now i remember why it was so nice not to deal with it. We could have an all-out fight to the death, but Professor Harlen would probably get on to me about knocking noobs."

"In front of us, yeah," i agree with a wicked grin from the back wall of the elevator as the doors shut. "With nobody else around, he'll probably whip out some popcorn and break down the replays with you. I know i would if i was in his shoes, it'd be one of the reasons i went through the trouble of making a VRMMO with pain sensory. Are there really no other challengers?" I ask suddenly, reminding the group of my open offer, only for there to be a few moments of awkward silence. Nobody else seemed to want to fight me. "Then i suggest everybody start working out their training regimes because I'm about to start meditating again."

"Peace and quiet, you say?" Emma asks loudly and innocently from right in front of me, turning her head to playfully wink in my direction. "Please, do."

*

Even though i had spent most of my time back in reality meditating on everything i knew about physical combat, i knew nothing of how Arielle actually fought in order to mentally prepare my reflexes with respponses to certain actions and behavior, so i spent all of my time in reality facing faceless enemies of all of the weapons and styles that i knew with augmented strength until i was finally snapped out of my trance-like state to lie down on my table. Back in the game, waking up to find myself lying on an actual mattress of some thick quilting stuffed with leaves and grasses, i simply felt unprepared for the fight ahead as i looked around to find myself in a lean-to shelter of large hardwood beams and planks that were broken and burned all over from the destruction of the fort. Spot and Issa were lying curled up together beside me, which was have been adorable if Spot was not half of Issa's size and the bones of her back and ribs were jutting out against the skin of her plush body to make room for her middle arms that were traveling up over her front legs toward her chest that was stretching out into an actual torso.

Trying not to wake my familiars so as not to disturb Spot's development as i climb slowly out of our stack of mattresses on the floor, i grab all of my armor and weapons silently in the excess of my aura after a split second of reaching for it before finally sneaking out of my shelter. The others all had shelters similar to mine arrayed in semi-circles around the sides of the mine entrance like barricades separated from the rest of the fort by the giant crater some thirty yards away from where i stood in which i had screwed myself over while fighting the necromancer, and like me the others also either carried or were already donning their equipment in preparation for the day ahead. "You're up, first," a wicked voice whispers in my ear after Arielle appears suddenly behind and beside me before she starts skipping merrily off toward the crater wielding two short bastard swords whose eighteen-inch blades were as wide as my hands at the base and tapered all of the way to their needling but flattened points.

Now that i knew she used two sword, i felt somewhat more confident in how i should approach what was obviously going to be a high-speed match against dual weapons, but i could already tell from the inch-thick spines of her swords that any strike on me or my own weapons was going to hard enough to shape iron even without her avatar's incredible conditioning. A quick glance at my armor and coat told me i would be hindered more than helped by the cracking, rusted, or even misshapen iron plates and bands that had weathered and conformed to my body in the aura of the necromancer as well as the melding of my coat's weaving would only restrict the movements of my arms. Donning only my weapons, i particulate the iron of my armor into a fine magical metal sand that i fire back into solid metal before flattening and folding one set of ten horizontal folds followed by ten vertical folds and completed with a finally set of ten horizontal folds to make one-thousand layered, naked iron Japanese shortswords with twenty-two inch blades called wakizashi to match her personally foreign swords.

"Aren't you going to eat breakfast first?" Emma calls out from where the others and their familiars were gathering nearby a large fire where food was already being prepared.

"No, and i don't think whoever fights after me should eat, either," i call back as i spread my aura's wings out at angles to the ground. "Depending on how long these fights last, everybody should either wait or eat light. Like Harold," i add with a nod to the soldier who was only eating a citrus while walking over to the crater before i step over the edge and glide while standing down toward the center where Arielle was waiting for me. "Name the rules and prizes."

Leaning her head from side to side with a thoughtful hum, she says, "We play until i score five points off of you, take all the time you need. If you can score five points off of me, i will make your gold gear for you. Fifteen points, as crazy as ot may sound, and i will make a special item out of a magical alloy for you, something you technically can make on your own but are missing the game's third magical ingredient for. Twenty-five points, as impossible as that definitely is, and i will give you the location of the missing ingredient- no it will not be outlaw related. I noticed that the professor gives all of you these really low requirements, but you're not Novice players anymore and i want to see all of you struggle for some rewards."

"You know that I'm ambidextrous, right?" i ask to change the topic from her digs and head games to distract me with metallurgical questions or the incredibly high bar i had to reach to get them. "You're a lefty, i think, because you plug in and unplug people with your left hand even though you publicly work the elevator with your right. Dual weaponry is my forte, and i know you were aware of that. So, why challenge me with dual swords? A close-in weapon like one of your swords and something like a galdiator's trident or pike for reach would have been the smartest way to go about this fight."

"Dual weapons because you've been holding back the entire time you've been playing, and these rogue daggers- i say rogue over bastard because they're not quite swords- were the only dual weapons that i was trained with," is her honest response with a nonchalant shrug. "My other weapons training involved sword-and-shield tactics as well as two-handed claymore and Kendo sword training on top of staff and common knife fighting. Considering you made a pair of sparring swords just for me, I'm kind of reconsidering switching to a staff."

"The movements are fluid-like by nature and you can monopolize on both the ends and the middle of the weapon for both defense and offense, but the range of motions are restricted by the size of the weapon despite making up for this in its AOE," i somewhat agree after having retaliated to her mind games with a passive disarming. "But i have studied multiple styles of staff and even polearm techniques in general so i am at least aware of most of what you'll be able to do. I did, by the way, train myself in as many ways as i could for large-scale and long-term battle sequences, which is why i trained in as many weapons as possible so that i could pick up and use whatever i needed on an actual battlefield. The free range of motion provided by dual short weapons is honestly the second best method of approach, besides using a short spear to force me to keep my distance, present a false opening, and then gig me in the ribs while i close the distance."

"Why aren't you using a gladiator set to show me?" She asks innocently, bouncing back quickly with a sickly sweet smile as she starts circling with the continued dialogue.

"You have someone to teach you how to fight, already," i reply simply, practicing my poker face and mirroring her circling in the opposite direction. "I only intend to teach you how to pick your battles. Aikido, Qigong, Wing Chun, Bagua Zheng, i practiced or simple studied numerous martial arts based around energy and motion and the redirections of both those things which should help me deal with your inhuman strength. I submitted a full spreadsheet of my training regimes and updated medical record before the beginning of the beta on top of the system's analysis of everything that i am capable of, so you should have consulted Doc before making the rash decisions leading up to the point. Now, are you going to attack or am i?"

She suddenly lunged in across the ten feet of distance between us, then, stopping just outside of my range as if feinting her lunge while i was sidestepping before making another sudden dive to the side toward me with a savage spin with her weapons carefully held at angles to each other on opposite sides of her body. The strength of her second, truer, lunge carried her through the air long enough for three rortations even after i had sidestepped her barrage with much more effort than before to passively glide out of the way before rushing in while she was still landing. I was quickly forced to test the extent of my body's flexibility and mobility after Arielle blinding lunges back the other way as if the technique invited an attack from behind, turning over sideways in midair while spinning her blades about so that i was forced to drop on the sides of my knees and lay back while sliding under her body to narrowly avoid either blades passing through my face and neck until i could safely bounce back up onto my knees and then spin up to my feet while Arielle used her flattened points to control the landing from her second spin technique in a perfect cartwheel back onto her feet with a very smug look on her face.

My turn, i decide while clenching my jaw and sprinting across the bottom of the crate where she had landed over ten yards away and then just jump, relying on my vaguely open and relaxe auric wings to lighten my body so that i could rise and flip upside down over Arielle's head with a testing cycle of my sword revolving around one another and outward just like a Wing Chun cycle jab about Arielle's head and shoulders. She fended off the first two noncommittal blows as i rose and set like the sun over her, but the relaxed attacks she fended off too seriously just bounced off of her swords and continued in their alternating circling attacks so that she was forced to duck away before i had even landed effortlessly on my feet after using the strength of her heavy blocks to maintain my weight in the air. I was honestly unsure of how to view my opponent as she went back to circling slowly inward and i circled to maintain distance, she seemed rash and confident to leave openings and immediately follow through as if anticipating a slow or foolish enemy of me and reveal so much of herself but it was obvious that Doc had instilled in her a combat style designed around deceit and her overwhelming physical abilities that would obviously prove problematic for me in close combat as our shorter weapons entailed.

Lunging in at the same time that she closes the distance between us, i drop down into a spinning slide on my back over the corroded smooth and powdery granite floor of the crater with my swords crossed above me waiting for the moment of contact when one of her spinning blades clashes down on my weapons with a weight like a small car on top of me and immediately respond by slashing outward against her sword the distribute the force of her attack while my own spinning body redirects most of her energy all around and break her own flying spin to send her tumbling to the ground behind me as i was forced back in the direction that i had come. Flurries of dangerous powdered rock settled as i climbed to my feet and watched Arielle roll through a small cloud of the grayish grains, safe within my EMF's passive protection from the metamorphic combination of igneous stones. "Striking in the air is foolish, despite my own earlier stunt," i taunt her as she pushes herself up to her feet on her swords. "Strength comes from the ground-up, even i whose trigram is heaven prefer to remain in contact with the earth, so drop the flashy tricks and fight me like you're actually trying to kill me before i put points on my swords to make you take me seriously."

"I bet you get called an asshole a lot," Arielle says with some frustration as she narrows her eyes at me, crouching low for a lunge like my own displacing Particle attacks before closing the twenty yards of distance between us in a spear-like thrusting lunge that filled the crater with a cloud of blinding rock dust as i turned sideways from her leading sword and then stepped back out of the reach of her other sowrd thrusting out from under her body from the opposite side while using the greater reach of my own swords to lean forward over the restricted range of her second sword and jub both of my flat-topped wakizashi into her ribs. Even as i shoved her body back down to the ground from its dive-like posture, she backhand slashed her leading sword straight into my ribs with enough force to crack two of the lower spare ribs while sweeping me bodily aside before she even hit the ground. "Two-one, not bad but not a good enough ratio to get the gear," she taunts from somewhere only ten or so yards away within the blind of settling rock dust that swirled away from my aura's body. "Plus, i think i might have actually fucked you up just then with a direct attack, how long can you hold out with broken bones?"

Landing soundlessly behind Ms. Arielle after gliding slowly toward the sound of her voice as she spoke, i drop into a crouch and thrust my swords forward even as she turns around into a backhand slash of her left rogue dagger and sweep outward to strike her calves and throw her legs outward in a perfect split that brings her body down to my level where i double my current combo points jabbing either sword into either of her thighs. Raising my sword up to protect my upper legs as she swings her swords backward behind her body in a crude pincer, i triple the combo stabbing down into the metal scales covering her lower ribs before raising my sword stright upright to fend off another vain pincer toward my head from over her own before slash her swords out and away from my body and bring my overall score from eight to ten by chopping the flat backs of my swords down onto the smaller steel scales of her shoulders before finally jumping backward and gliding away into the vague veil of thinning rock dust "Ten-one," i return her taunt, "that's unbecoming of an Expert facing a noob, and i expect my training gear to be fifteen-pound bracers, twenty-pound shinguards, a fifty-pound vest, and a ten-pound helmet."

Arielle quickly appeared through a rush of rock dust, spinning a shining white marble staff in her hands probably made from the granite dust in the crater, having abandoned her rogue daggers in favor of a more comfortable and suitable weapon for the deal as i leaned back and stepped away from one downward chopping end of her staff and then swung my left wakizashi out at a careful angle to deflect to folow-up fall of the other end of her staff away from my already injured ribs before attempting to turn into a backhand slash of my right sword that is swiftly blocked by bringing her staff in close parallel to her body with her hands spread wide away from the middle. Leaning into my attack and shoving outward with a savage thrust of her arms in the Lion Embraces Ball stance, Arielle easily lifts me off of my feet and throws me several yards away toward the ground at an angle where my auric body could not soften the impact on the back of my neck and shoulders before effortlessly hopping the distance with the full length of her staff raised overhead to slam completely flat down on the ground and then across my chest cushioned only by my leather cargo jacket with enough force to send out a small shockwave of dust outward from my body. "Two-ten and incapacitated," Arielle declares after having broken more of my ribs as well as disconnecting my sternum from its cartiledge joints so that it pushed up against and fell away from my skin with every newly labored beat of my heart that the skeletal plate rest on. "All you get is one-ten pounds of gold gear, congrats."

"I"m... not... done..." i groan, using the aura flowing through my body to raise my sternum up off of my heart so that my vision would stop drifting in and out before pushing myself up to my feet on my wakizashi just as Arielle had done with her rogue daggers earlier. "I can't use my magic on you... but if you can use that strength to literally crush a noob then i get to heal myself, this isn't over til twenty-five and i have five to your one right here, come on."

Even before she started to speak i had completed the use of Magic Scalpel, allowing me to freely sprint the distance to cut off her words of, "Your magic only-" with an imitation of her original vertical spinning attack from which the reverse spun her staff between her hands to deflect the first sword before hopping back away from the second. Closing the distance with another one of her brute strength lunges, Arielle retaliates with a spear-like thrust of her staff that i block with the crossed flats of both swords and step lightly off of the ground to use her brute strength as a form of launch for my passive gliding even as my crossed sword slammed back into my chest with enough force to leave a broad band of deadened muscle across my chest along the length of my inner left waki. Reinflating my crushed pectoral with raw energy to charge the fresh injury into healing before a giant blood blister could form, i lean beack at the zenith of my rise twenty feet in the air into a swift dve straight down on Arielle with both swords held out in a prolonged downward chop only for her to purposefully raise her staff up over her head and further back to mitigate some of my momentum before the full force of my falling attack rests on her body and brings her down to her knees in an even larger shockwave of rock dust than the attack she had landed on me.

Taking advantage of my aura's passive gravity defying ability to bounce several inches up from her staff, i flick my wrists to dip my swords around her smooth, cylindrical staff and sweep outward with only the strength of my forearms to smack either of her wrists and and snatch her hands away from the staff before flipping forward into a crouch behind her as her marble staff slams into the ground in front of me and clatters away. Whirling back around to face Arielle as she tries to leap away into the cloud of dust to form another weapon, i glide forward after her and raise my points to fourteen by crossing my swords against her back and slashing them outward to slam her bodily into the ground amidst the dust cloud. "Your biggest mistake was your confidence in your strength and my lack of awareness for what makes you so much stronger than i am," i inform her calmly as my chest finally finished healing and the surfacing blood of the residual bruising disperses about my body.

She reapperead from the dust without a word and almost without a sound except for the single leaping step that she had taken from twenty feet away, slamming her new black marble staff down on my crossed sword raised overhead with enough force to slam me down to my knees with a clenched groan from my busted left kneecap. Lunging up on my one good leg before her feet returned to the ground with enough strength to flip her over into a slam down on her back, i leap backward on my one good leg without pressing the advantage against my wounded opponent and say, "My auric body was designed in a constant flow counter to the planet's rotation to resist the gravitational pull of the planet's EMF, which is how i can passively glide or actively fly with one third of my actual body-weight despite all of my mass. You very well may be able to bench five hundred pounds, but against someone like Harold you would only be able to slide them with your attacks. Another passive aspect of my aura is that, when i dive back down with the pull of gravity it returns me to my proper weight. Instead of fifty pounds times seven seconds of fall-time to equal roughly three-fifty foot-pounds of falling energy in addition to the physical strength of my attack for a rough overall of six-hundred pounds that i do not doubt you could easily squat and deadlift, it was almost two-hundred pounds times seven seconds for over half of a ton of falling energy- which leads me to expect your overall strength-to-weight ratio is one thousand pounds greater than your mass and the excess was around three-hundred pounds. You may have been able to withstand the attack and remain standing, but you threw your arms back behind your head to mitigate what you anticipated to be one third of my falling energy and misaligned your arms from your head and your head from your spine and your spine from your legs- without the redirecting mitigation of energy- i could have snapped your spine and folded you like a piece of bread because of your carelessness, do you have any idea how that would have made me feel?"

"You're the one who told me to fight like I'm trying to kill you!" She screams furiously at me, leaping forward to feint a low sweep of her staff before scoring her fourth point with a savage snapkick straight to my solar plexus with her heel that flips me over backward straight on my head and neck hard enough to tuckl my chin to my chest before my body splays down on the ground with a rough slam in the dust cloud. Thrust out as she steps toward me, i plant the flat point of my wakizashi into her shin for my fifteenth point and shove her foot out from under her body even as she scored point five by slamming the bottom of her staff down on my gut with enough force to bring out an acidic burn that stung my nose and eyes. "You're the asshole," she groans tiredly, just lying on top of me now that the fight was over.

Reaching down to gently pat her head to show there were no hard feelings even as i turn my head to the side and spit out bile, i say, "You wanted to know what you... were capable of just as much as... the company wanted to know what i was capable of... without actively using magic- which i did. If it makes you feel any better, not only did i leave... my original lower ribs broken, but, now most of my ribs are now-" i started to console her only for her to push herself up by her staff on my herneated abdominal rectus and force out a real wave of my stomach contents and blood to spurt up out of my throat and mouth.

She must not have known how seriously i was injured because her immediate reaction to my forced vomiting of blood and stomach acid was to scream and step back from me before suddenly dropping to her knees beside me and placing her hands on my chest before all of my pain and injuries just faded away much as Doc had done for me after the fight with the dragon. "How can you sit there and pat my head... while you're bleeding out internally and your stomach is leaking digestive fluids into your body?" She asks, tears of both fear and frustration in her eyes but refusing to fall. "You're an ass and an idiot."

"You're a good friend," i counter with a smirk, climbing easily to my feet now that i was returned to my health from before the fight before picking Arielle up by the back of her scratched and scuffed armor. "I'm glad i got to fight you first and at your full strength, i honestly don't think any of the others would be able to take the strength of your attacks without antigravity like my passive effect. Or Angel's special ability to counteract your strength by increasing your gravity. Give 'em hell, kid," i add with a wink before teasing her with another pat on the head before leaping into the air and flapping out of the crater to where the others had all been silently studying the fight.

"You threw up blood," Hitome accuses me after the others crowd around and start congratulating me on my score before deciding who would fight next. "You're not going to use that fight as an excuse for why i end up killing you, are you? And, Harold, i duel last because i have a death match with Zai in a little while," she adds for the benefit of our group's current coordinator.

"Which means you can't say you pitied me for my brutal beat down after you respawn," i return with a fond smile, finding it surprisingly easy to face women as reall opponents after having nearly died multiple times throughout my fight with Arielle. "Don't worry about me, princess, worry about how you're going to stand up against my new swords now that they're going to have real points and blades. I won't go easy on you, but i promise i won't hurt you except with the killing blow to preserve your adorable false frailty. May i eat before our fight?"

"By all means, a growing boy needs his strength for the tasks ahead in life," she answers with a smirk, jerking her head toward the fire where most of the Scalesh were now gathered and roasting an assortment of meats and whole vegetables and walking away in that direction.

I was soon greeted by Issa who carried a large wooden platter piled high with what looked like a scrambled omelette of mashed fish, cheese, sweet smelling bits of roasted fruit, and clear veggies like onions except that they smelled like vinegar with a small, whole loaf of sourdough bread that had been darkly toasted and drizzled with some kind of berry syrup and a tall silver goblet of what was unmistakably something alcoholic. "You can drink this," i tell her with a soft laugh, accepting the tray of food and returning the expensive cup of what was probably hooch more than wine. "I don't actually like that sort of drink, but I probably would have celebrated last night after the battle if i had been awake. Do you know where i could find some water? Or actual tea? Do you know if this world has coffee? Do you think the outlaws would have tea or coffee?"

"S-top, ye-s, ye-s, ye-s, and ye-s but then no," she says with a tired shake of her head after tossing back the goblet's contents to drown out my barrage of questioning after realzing i knew she was hungover. "No coffee, but we make tea... thick, dark, s-trong, but with s-ma-sh-'t rainberry and honey for s-weet. You like food, prom-ise, just for you."

"They all made us food based on what they believed to be our taste preferences based on the mind melding," Hitome informs me as i stare down at my still steamy eggy mash on the tray after Issa walks away. "Mine made me a literal meat sandwhich with those salty onion things and some weird fried pear or apple between two slabs of pork carmelized in burnt honey. We all got the same loaf filled and drizzled with that berry paste they made, but believe me when i say our shamans know what they're doing in the kitchen. You do eat nothing but sushi drowned in that cheap soy sauce and fruit smoothies, so this high-ass protein breakfast is right up your alley," she adds with a nudge to my ribs as Issa ladels a thick, soupy drink from a cauldron at the edge of the fire into the silver goblet that she had emptied. "Just eat it and geat ready for our fight, I'm going to be meditating up on the mountaintop while i wait on you."

Sitting down to set the tray of food in my lap as Hitome casually jogs away before disappearing in a blurred streak of motion for several dozen yards, i watch the display of her magically fueled dash that reached speeds similar to my own displaced leaps for much of the sheer incline of the mountain until Issa finally arrived with my drink. Shaking my head as i pick up the sweet loaf first and take a large bite that drips berry jam onto the tray, i actually stop for a moment in shock not only at how good the crude pastry tasted but at how much my in-game body had been craving for an actual sweet or desert beyond the natural sugars in the fruits that i had been eating. "Oh, my God, I'm going to ask Doc if i can download you into my home's AI so you can cook for me in reality, this is amazing," i say with the most extreme gratitude that i had felt in my life besides when i had first met Doc before the beta to be evaluated for my participation.

"We do not make that... bread... but we make... nut... bread... for... holiday-s," she says carefully, considering her words as she works on her English. "You like my... ca-s-s-erole, be better with you... tomato but none in the-s-e part-s of island. Go on, eat food food not sweet food, you not... baby."

"It's because I'm an adult that i can choose to eat my dessert first," i argue defiantly despite putting down the pastry after eating half of it to wipe my face with an offered scrap of fabric. "Can i ask you about the Scalesh shaman training that you've recieved? Like, what all did Ink teach you and do you think we could use it to help the others get stronger?"

Issa went oddly quiet for a moment, looking down at the ground in thoughtful silence probably so that i could not see her face as she tried to think about her life before her time spent as a captive to the outlaws, then she suddenly looked up while i was slowly chewing through and analyzing the incredible blend of flavors from the breakfast casserole in my mouth. "There i-s a... pract-ice among u-s that i learned before... home raid, it how to make plant like flower or vine or tree grow, drain all magic for only few year of growth. You all bond more Sh-aman, we all grow new tree-s, men make new fort and port and boat-s and... s-iege weapon-s from tree-s. S-top eating and let teach," she urges, shaking her offered hand i had yet to take, probably in order for Issa to strengthen our existing psychic connectiong for another melding. "Bo-s-s-y girl wait, thi-s important."

Giving in to finally put down y wooden fork of casserole and the last bit of pastry that i had been inhaling while she spoke, i take her small scaly hand in my own and find myself closing my eyes in time with her as i can feel ourselfs filling each other's minds with our presense. At first, i was forcibly assaulted by a barrage of thoughts and impressions based around her language as i had previous asked her in a past session, but then the high speed education in Scalesh hissing grammar was over and replaced by the vivid, clear memory of Ink melding minds with her then two-and-a-half-foot tall daughter with a small citrus sprig growing out of the ground between them and i found myself instructed by Ink herself in their native tongue on how to bond with any plant or seed by its potential or existing life force and use your own to guide and determine its rapid growth as well as fight off diseases in food bearing trees. Then, Issa was slowly letting go and let our connection die down to a vague pulse of each other's hearts in the backs of our minds while i opened my eyes to go back to eating.

Once half of my casserole, all of my pastry, and half of my harsh berry tea was gone, i say, "You're a better cook than i am, it's official. After this rebellion, you're never setting a foot on a battlefield again because i can't risk losing your skill with food flavors. You should probably go ahead and spread the word among the rest of the fort, work and training are upon us and start matching up shamans with the others. They could use the capacity boosts more than me, but save the best few for just me because i need the best buffs i can get if I'm going to be throwing myself at the bosses. Plus, scour the camp and forestry for these berry seeds- i want the recipe for this preserves stuff and a lifetime supply of these pastries."

"More pastrie-s baking, men S-cale-sh want eat nothing but pastry all day to c-elebrate free s-o we make all hooman bread today and tomorrow treat hooman to nut bread," Issa reassures me as i return to eating, practicing her smile by slightly curving her mouth while tilting her head in an almost cute manner to watch me eat. "I have bat-ch wait for you return, c-elebrate victorie-s today and la-s-t after you kill rude girl."

"Rude girl?" i parrot with a questioning echo despite my mouth being full of the last of my casserole.

"Sh-e rude to sh-aman and men, her food pet-s rea-s-on why," Issa replies with a dissmissive wave of her hand, getting up to walk away, now. "Tea-ch her manner-s like you tea-ch other lady how match weapon-s."

Easier said than done, i sigh inwardly, reaching out to the remains of my first suit of armor by the edge of the crater with my magic and draw out the bronze wiring to start wrapping about the tangs of my wakizashi for proper hilts before smelting large, round plates of bronze that i run the wiring through to ensnare the guards above the hilts of my swords. Another few moments of scrapping my old leather armor and i had a pair of new sheaths for my wakizashi that i work onto the back of my belt so that the shiny bronze hilts of either sword poked out passed my hips from behind me within easy reach of my hands. Reaching out toward my shelter with my magic to retrieve a glob of carefully contained either as well as the giant buckler-blade Issa had made for me, i drink the ether to recharge the few yards of energy i had spent healing myself during my fight with Arielle while strappng and fastening the long, tapering bladed shield to my left forearm to replace the armor that i could no longer wear before displacing myself up into the air.

It did not take long for me to fly up to the pitted mountaintop where Hitome was waiting, practicing her forms and techniques with her yari while waiting for my arrival as i slowly fell feet-first onto a small, twisted spire of outcropping granite several yards over her head. As usual, she was in her full regalia of dragonskin coat and the provocative armor that she had made for herself, and i honestly felt incredibly naked by comparison with nothing but my weapons and a Scalesh shield for any real protection in our battle, but i had accepted the challenge and had no choice but to follow through. "Begin anon or take ten paces?" i ask suddenly from my perch, actually startling Hitome who must not have known i had arrived as she lucks around and then up at where my voice had come from to find me crouched on the end of my spire of granite. "Why is everybody so surprised that i can use stealth? Is it really all that strange to think that somebody with my mass could walk around without stomping craters in the ground at every turn? Like i told Arielle, my aura cuts my weight down to one-third of my mass, I'm better at stealth here than in reality and i don't doubt i could sneak into your dorm unnoticed."

"Did you just threaten me or make a promise?" Hitome asks coyly, crooking her finger at me to tell me to come down. "Stop playing with my feelings and get down here so we can settle this once and for all. I want to know what's strongest, your brain or my life."

Leaning forward into a slow flip down to the mountaintop only a few yards away from Hitome, i say, "My brain already won. Even if you say our power is balanced because you are physically superior and i am magically superior, it does not mean you could survive a sustain Plasma attack and if you actually tried to attack me with magic instead of use all of your power for defense, i would drain you in an instant. Coming in close enough to attack with your weapon is tantamount to jumping over the side of the mountain because i could use my body or weapons to displace your body or weapons and send you flying. I'll give you this one chance to just walk away, we can tell everybody you won to save face and only the company and us will know that i never died and we never fought. Otherwise, i will win as quickly and easily as i can manage and it will not be pretty for either of us."

"Death before dishonor," she growls, her entire being suddenly changing as her face clenches with controlled rage and she lunges forward to thrust out her yari at my chest with an explosion of kinetic and thermal energy that my aura's body reflexively flaps against to repel the brunt of the attack outward away from me as i turn sideways from the continuing thrust of her polearm. I had to admire her determination as she continued drawing back and thrusting her spear forward, attacking with both melee and magic as i continued flapping away her purposefully weak magic as she tested my reflexes with a rapid series of short thrusts vaguely hidden by her bursts of magical energies that i continued to evade rather than stay still and defend. She followed my winding lead from side to side and straight back or around in a circle before going back toward the edge of the mountain, maintaining eye contact with me in a way that Arielle had not to better track and even attempt to read my movements.

There was no doubt that Arielle was a very skilled and strong fighter who could have beaten me if she had started the fight on better footing instead of relying on her flashy strength the way Doc had taught her to beguile an opponent, but there were no tricks or traps in the ceaseless barrage of thrusts and evisceral swipes of Hitome's sword-spear that i allowed to grow closer and closer to my body by displaying a faltering backpedal here or an unnecessary extra motion that fed her a fraction of a second in attack space there. It was my turn to try and bait somebody into a bad move, leading Hitome in a roundabout way to stand sideways ten yards from the bevelling drop at the edge of the mountaintop. "You're holding back probably even more than i am," i accuse her when I see that frustration had tainted the clench of her jaw and was drawing out her breathing after over twenty ineffective attacks, taking a small glide back and away from her as i speak. "You made a big show of your new distance ability, but all of these attacks are in normal speed and range, you're afraid to use it on me."

Laughing angrily despite herself, she says, "It's just like you said, magic is psychic powers and your special ability is just the rearranging of matter, but to do it takes so much energy. And it's not even as fast as you are, how can you break the sound barrier?"

"A combination of-" I start to say, anticipating her sudden displacement by displacing myself sideways as her spear and body blurs through the space where i had been standing. Particulating the granite where she lands some five yards from the edge and solidifying it around her ankles, i continue with, "Constantly changing variables. Everything makes a difference about where or how you displace yourself, whether its on wood or sand or stone, if those materials are wet or dry or porous, the amount of your body you break down and intrude on another mass with, and so on. For me, it's a natural ability that i subconsciously adjust for, projecting myself at the same speeds of a bullet, however, require conscious effort and exceptional depth. So far, it looks like you can only break down other objects like your boots and those iron plated soles you've added for increased mass, i break down my clothing as well as skin and blood and muscle and bone with subconscious effort. Can you fly, yet?" I ask curiously, knowing she was at least capable of the same kinetic-thermal bursts i had used to fight the gold guy with as i broke down and returned the granite containing her feet to its original state to displace her ten feet up in the air and ten yards beyond the mountaintop where she falls soundlessly out of view.

Knowing very well not to trust a death i could not see after my fight with gold guy, i displace myse back toward the middle of the mountaintop just as a massive burst of energy fills the air somewere down the mountain and less than two seconds later Hitome's body was sailing up over the mountaintop and high overhead. "Falling Star?" I ask with a grin, condensing most of my excess aura into a cushion of unfocused potential energy over my shield while dropping down on one knee the raise the shield up over my head as Hitome begins her descent with collective energies. "I used the same move to kill all of the undead just last night..." i say as Hitome crashes down on my shield with her yari with a massive explosion of diferent magical energies from Plasma to kinetic that strike my awaiting ward and explode my potential energy outward for the full breadth of Hitome's attack like a giant, momentary shield between us that redirected the energies of her Falling Star attack in all directions away from me as well and send her flying back toward the edge.

The release of both of our magics, though, unsettled the mountaintop with a ripple of spiderwebbing cracks and crevasses that spread outward from my central position toward the back of the mountain and leveled away several feet of granite into a sudden, sheer drop only a few feet behind me. "You've been studying me," i accuse Hitome with a laugh as she collects herself and starts walking toward me in a low stance wither her yari held out before her. "You're right, your physicall prowress exceeds mine, it's why i won't let you make contact with my gear or come within your range, it would only be too easy for me to get shredded by a few quick flicks once my body was within half the blade's length. But, you can't use my magic to fight me and expect me not to know how to counter? It's actually been a hindrance, only coming up with such weak attacks that appear strong but are easily shrugged aside.

Every attack is based on a form of energy that is in use, whether its the electric-entropy of Plasma or the frequencies of a sonic attack," i go on as i start circling as she comes withing closing distance, "all of the magic we use is counteracted by unused energy. Newton, an object at rest tends to stay at rest until acted on by another force, this is the example of potential energy. My shapeless wad of singular potential energy was acted on by your multitude of energies so that you created a defending force of equal power to your own attack. My style is minimal effort for maximum affect, just like augmenting your own magic with the kinetic and friction energies of falling for free amplification of your attack by the singular source of gravity, so it follows my pattern that to defend against every magical attack at your disposal would require minimal effort for maximum affect. It's not that i was afraid of losing to you, it's that i was afraid you would figure out how weak you all let yourselves become by relying on me- the guy who from day one was the not-so-subtle soloist and benefactor of the beta becoming a singular unit, but you're the ones who decided to replicate instead of innovate"

"You're good," Hitome almost seems to seeth. "No wonder Arielle was screaming at you, your head games are on point and your tactics are incredibly morally flexible. You're an asshole."

"How am i the asshole when you're the ones who wanted to fight me?" I ask blandly, finally getting tired of the brand i had been labelled with since day one by Emma. "I didn't want to fight my friends, especially any of you ladies, i was happy with just being a careless sparring partner, so you're the assholes for making me do this to you guys. I don't usually talk during a fight, the less you say makes what you say more effective- which is how the gods branded me as a sadist because of what i said to gold guy- but I have personal relationships with you guys which makes you subconsciously take everything i say seriously, you can't help but listen to me at this point. This is why i am the best worst person for any of you to fight, you guys know me and i somewhat know you. Are you ready to die, Hitome, or will you surrender before i am forced to hate myself?" I ask to play dirty, playing on her current frustrations and possible feelings for me to draw out a morally biased surrender just because she had called me morally flexible.

Her answer was to lunge for me, only to meet another potential buffer of energy when i smack her yari away with my Scalesh shield with a small explosion of her own kinetic backlash that torques the octagonal shaft of her yari out of her hands and send her spiraling to the ground where she falls into a shallow grave of particulated granite. She was already climbing out by the time the granite solified around her, encasing her lower body from the navel down in the mountaintop even as she reached for her yaru several yards away with her magic only for a sudden lurch of granite to rise up and consume her arm. "Suffocation and drowning are supposed to be painless deaths," i inform her as another stretch of disembodied granite splashes up across her torso, switching to demoralization tactics as i continue with, "I don't want to scar your avatar or ruin your gear by running you through or blowing your body apart, and the death penalty in the game will be increasing incrememnts of time spent reliving the pain of death, so suffocating you may be psychologically terrifying but i am actually doing you a favor."

"STOP!" She screams suddenly, tears welling up in her eyes as the next wave of fluid-like granite starts to crest over her head. "Yield! Uncle! I give! Just... please... not like that."

"I'm sorry," i say quietly as the granite powders and drifts away from Hitome's body, turning and displacing myself back toward the front edge of the mountaintop. "I didn't want to fight you, as many times as i have already said this, but at least i found a way for somebody to win without anybody dying, right? The fight... didn't actually prove anything we didn't already know, that i am the lead mage in our group and I'm too smart to get in close with somebody who is hiding a collapsible blade in their coat sleeve- of course i am aware of the intense magical energy in your clothes, my aura's eyes can see it and subconsciously identify it for me. You never wanted to spear me on your yari, you wanted me to rush in behind one of its thrusts so you could gig me in the ribs just like i told Arielle to do with a spear and dagger combo. Why does it feel like people in reality consistently underestimate me? Everything in the game i have fought has been smart enough to throw everything in their arsenal at me in the first few moments to try and overwhelm me but everybody in reality seems to think that I'm some pushover."