“Didn’t realize you were in the area,” Will said. Or alive.

“Oh man,” Waylan crowed. “This is too good. I love seeing drama.”

“The bird is talking,” Ashley said, totally deadpan. Her bow was still aimed straight at Will’s face. She had a pretty impressive control over that thing. “Is it a monster?”

“No,” Will said. “I’m not, either. Last I checked.“

“You two aren’t monsters, cool,” Ashley said. “Doesn’t mean you’re not enemies. You saw that asshole’s message, no?”

“Of course I did,” Will replied. “Everyone did. I haven’t killed anyone yet.”

Ashley squinted at him, her eyes glossing over. Will recognized that as a sign of her using Identify.

She lowered her bow just a hair, aiming in Will’s general direction rather than at his vitals. “Well, damn. You haven’t. Thought you would, for sure.”

Waylan: You got beef with her? We could get our first player kill here. She threatened us, right?

Will: No.

Waylan: She cheat on you or something? C’mon, there’s a skeleton buried there somewhere.

Will: It’s complicated. Stop trying to kill someone I know.

“Hey, you,” Ashley snapped, stomping the ground to bring Will and Waylan’s attention back to the very real threat of her bow. “You talking to each other? Stop doing that. I don’t like when people are quiet in front of me. Usually means they’re about to try something stupid.”

That was a threat, he was pretty sure, but the bow was meant to scare him, it wasn’t working. Will was more annoyed than anything else. This conversation was already twice as long as it needed to be.

“I’m talking him down from doing something stupid,” Will said.

Hold on, he thought. Was she able to tell if I’ve killed someone with Identify?

He used the same skill on Ashley.

[Ashley Li [F] - lvl 11]

Human. Arcane Archer.

Formerly a regional archery champion, Ashley has made a name for herself as one of the 1% of Integrated who cleared a Solo-level boss during Main Event 0… while actually solo.

You know who she is, William.

Main Event 1 Statistics

Player Kills: 2

This is an intelligent Integrated being. To view more information, gain more levels in Identify or add Waylan to your party.

That confirms that the System is personalized, Will thought, his mind moving at top speed. It knows who I am, at least. The people who designed this shit must’ve been watching Earth for a while.

Also, two player kills?

Will whistled. “Wow. I won’t say that I never thought you had it in you.”

“They were trying to kill me," Ashley said, shrugging. “I had to do it.”

She seemed oddly desensitized, but then again, so was Will.

“Well, I’m not,” Will said. “You still want to kill us? I’m unarmed. You’ll find no good loot on my corpse.”

“I’m never unarmed,” Waylan squawked.

“Shut up. You’re not helping.”

Ashley lowered her bow, visibly relaxing. “You’ve always been a shitty liar. Your class doesn’t need weapons to work, am I right?”

Oh, right. Identify showed more details when you were higher level than the person you targeted it with.

“Guilty,” Will shrugged. “How’s it been?”

“Well, you know,” Ashley said, gesturing vaguely at the burning mall around them. “Busy.”

Will snorted. “Same here. You got level 11 pretty fast.”

“Yep. Three goddamn bosses,” Ashley replied. “Let me tell you, I go for one late-night burger run and the world explodes on me. The ocean spawned a load of them. Managed to dodge a few. Killed what I couldn’t dodge.”

Will always felt more like himself around Ashley. She’d sparked love in him once, though those halcyon days were long past. Now… well, now, she was a friend. Someone he could actually talk to without wanting to die.

“Hold on, hold on,” Waylan interrupted. “I thought you two were exes. Aren’t you supposed to be, like, at each other’s throats? Screaming? Trying to kill each other?”

“We are going to have to have a talk about your bloodlust,” Will muttered. Louder, he said, “You get that from TV?”

“The asshole in the tutorial said something about awakened animals,” Ashley said, shouldering her bow. “I really did wonder how that worked. This dude’s got a personality and all? Doesn’t just eat and shit?”

“This dude can hear you, and it’s Waylan,” the crow in question said, puffing up his chest. “And for your information, I’ve always had a personality. It’s just that now, you can understand my genius. Anyway, answer my question!”

“Long story,” Will and Ashley said at the same time. He looked at her. She looked at him.

Ashley continued. “Eh, I can make it short. It was amicable. Work took me one place, his work kept him in the Valley. It wasn’t going to work out long-distance, and I wasn’t going to commute four hours a day, so…”

“Boooooring,” Waylan declared.

“Boring can be good if it means the pretty lady isn’t going to shoot us full of arrows,” Will said. “Ashley, wanna party up? It’ll make it easier for us to live to the end of this.”

“Just like the games we played, huh?” Ashley said. “Sure. Don’t know how to do it, though.”

“It’s pretty simple,” Will said, beginning the process. “You didn’t get any offers to party up before? You’re stronger than basically everyone else here, aren’t you?”

“Didn’t see anyone else alive.” Ashley shrugged. “Figured the rampage got to them. We got hit bad on the coast. Real bad.”

[Ashley has joined your party!]

[As the highest-leveled, Ashley is now the party leader.]

[Party name changed to: Exes and Crow(s)]

Will groaned. “Oh, that is awful.”

Ashley just laughed. “Weird that we all ended up in the same place, though. Still working for that same shitty firm?”

“Yup,” Will said with a long-suffering sigh. “Wait, yeah, that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” Waylan cut in. “What? Can we kill the weird thing?”

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

“Stop interrupting and maybe you’ll find out,” Will replied.

“I live, like, two hundred miles away,” Ashley said. “Are the zones that big? Are there only 1,000 people left alive within two hundred miles?”

“Or there are multiple killing games going on in the same zone,” Will reasoned. “That thing never specified that there would only be one.”

“True, true.”

Privately, Will suspected that it was because whoever was in charge of bringing them together knew they were related. Supposedly, there were people out in the galaxy watching this Event go down, and if the System was so invasive that it knew personal details, Will figured it would fudge the Events a little to make for higher chances of interesting encounters.

“So what do you do?” Ashley asked, peering at Will curiously. “It says you’re a Tarot Mage. Can you show me?”

Will shrugged. “Sure.”

There was a risk to showing his powers to anyone, but he didn’t particularly care. Besides, a basic explanation of what he could do didn’t give the full picture of his capabilities.

He ran her through the basics of her class, showing her the physical manifestation of her deck and resetting it with a quick use of Shuffle.

“And you?” he asked.

“I’m an Arcane Archer with a specialization in Criticals,” she said. “The System recommended it as my class evolution from Archer at level 10.”

That meant almost nothing to Will, though the idea that his class could evolve at level 10 was nice to think about.

“I’m bored,” Waylan complained. “Can we go kill something?”

“We might have to.” Ashley grimaced. “Will, remember Ben?”

“Benjamin? That asshole? Don’t tell me you got back together with him.”

“It’s complicated. I got a Hidden Event on the way in, and I think it has something to do with him.” Ashley paused dramatically, clearly waiting for Will to ask about it.

He didn’t. He’d had just about all the small talk he could stomach.

“Just get to the point.”

“Fine, spoilsport,” she grumbled. “Here. I think I can show you.”

Her eyes glazed over, apparently engrossed in the System. Will took a step back to look around and keep watch. If there were any more monsters coming, he wanted to take the opportunity to level up his cards.

A screeching Pyro Gremlin came bounding on all fours from the direction opposite the hallway from where they’d come. Will drew a card—Web—but before he could use it, Ashley turned and fired an arrow in the blink of an eye.

She’d always been good with archery. For the brief few months they’d lived together, she’d proudly displayed a half-dozen trophies she’d earned in her college years.

Now look at you. The arrow landed dead on target, spearing the gremlin through its opened mouth and piercing straight out the back of its skull. It squeaked weakly once, then died.

“Damn, she can shoot,” Waylan said. “Don’t point that at me again, thanks.”

Ashley chuckled. “Will, you talk to the strangest people. Can I call you that, Waylan? People?”

“…fine,” the crow allowed.

“I meet a lot of strange people,” Will said, shrugging nonchalantly. “That’s how it is.”

“Anyway,” Ashley said. “Here.”

A notification appeared in the corner of his vision, indicating that a party member wanted to share a System message.

When he clicked on it, it appeared in the center of his field of view the same way a normal Event did, with one change—it displayed who it was assigned to.

[Hidden Event — “The Malevolent Past”]

[Event Recipient: Ashley Li]

[Reward: 3,000 coins + ???]

[You have entered Main Event 1 at the same time as someone with a murderous vendetta against you. Benjamin Smith has received a similar Hidden Event to kill you. End his life before he can end yours. You will know when he’s coming. Locations will be revealed when you and your target are within 1,000 feet of each other.]

[Penalty for failure: Death.]

“That’s a lot of coins,” Waylan said, making a clicking noise that might’ve been an attempt at a whistle. “You got my help if you split the prize.”

Ashley’s eyes flicked from Waylan to Will and back. Her grip on her bow grew tighter.

She was thinking about it. Will recognized the look. She was calculating possibilities right now, weighing risk against reward.

“If you carry your weight, you get a quarter,” Ashley ended up saying. “Seven-fifty for each of you.”

“Hey, how is that fair?” Waylan complained.

“It’s my life on the line,” she said quietly. “I know Ben. He won’t think twice before slitting my throat.”

“It’s a deal, then,” Will said, pre-empting any further discussion. “I assume he’s not in the area right now.”

“He’s not,” Ashley said, nodding. “I was about to—“

A wave of chittering cut her off. The three of them had been standing in the middle of a hall just chatting for too long, which was just inviting anyone in the area to attack.

Thankfully, it wasn’t anything with an actual brain—like, for instance, an angry human. Instead, a wave of maybe a dozen blue-skinned ants the size of dogs crawled through the empty hall, barreling over any tables and kiosks that still happened to be standing.

“I got it,” Will said, raising his card and activating it.

As the Web turned to dust in his raised fingers, Ashley loosed an arrow.

Both of their attacks hit at the same time. The ants were clustered close on each other, and the hallway wasn’t particularly wide, which meant the Web had full coverage over the entire group.

Will used his Identify skill as sticky string exploded across the enclosed, ruined hallway, ensnaring each and every ant within.

The arrow impacted before the text finished scrolling across his eyes, popping one of the ants’ heads clean off.

[Huge Ice Ant [F] - lvl 7]

They were all between level 6 and 8, it seemed.

Huh, that reminds me. What level does the System expect us to be at here?

Current expected level: 6

So they were still ahead of the curve. That explained why they hadn’t really felt like their lives were in extreme peril here.

Will drew his knife as he mused, not particularly keen on spending more mana to kill monsters that already couldn’t move.

Another ant died, its head crushed by Waylan’s signature brick throw.

Ugh, Will thought. I’m going to get my hands messy.

A baseball bat would be nice. He could get those from the Store, right?

“Store,” he said out loud.

The System Store is not accessible during combat.

Well. Better to learn this now than later.

With a long-suffering sigh, Will waded into his own web, manipulating the spell to give him some more leeway to get stabbing at the paralyzed ants within. Waylan and Ashley got in on the killing, too. It was easy pickings.

It also got cold blue blood all over his hands. Gross.

[You have gained 41 + 29 + 42 + 35 = 147 coins!]

The thrill of the fight wasn’t here for him, he realized. Exerting effort to easily kill mobs and gain coins and experience for his skills… it wasn’t exciting. It didn’t get his heart pumping.

It was, unfortunately, exactly like work.

At least he knew how to handle that.

“If we’re just grinding, let’s get a move on,” he said. “I want to get this over with.”

“COINS!” Waylan crowed.

Ashley laughed. “Alright. Let me grab my arrows first, then we’ll go. There’s got to be a good place to rest somewhere, right?”

The three of them set off.

Over the course of the next few hours, they meticulously cleared out the mall section by section. It was a remarkably complicated layout, and they found themselves getting turned around more than once. As it turned out, it was a lot harder to travel around a mall when none of the maps worked and half the storefronts were burning down.

Their process was simple. They would run into a group of monsters—none of them higher level than even Will, who was the lowest in the group at level 8. Will swapped his cards around to train them, Waylan tried different methods of Inventory-bombing enemies, and Ashley shot arrow after unerring arrow.

Once they killed all the ants or monkeys or Pyro Gremlins or whatever it was, Ashley picked up up her arrows and Will and Waylan drank a mana potion if they were running low. They were earning enough coins from each fight that it was economical to do so, but their levels weren’t increasing as much.

Will got Magic Missile and Web to level 5, as well as Oil Spill to 4 alongside Shield and Jump to 3, but the progress felt way slower even after they’d worked their way through nearly two thousand coins of enemies.

Any time they encountered another human, they engaged in a tense, cautious redirect. Nobody bothered them, and they didn’t bother anyone else. Will suspected that state of affairs wasn’t going to keep for long.

It was mind-numbing, but at least it was working. Even with their efforts, there wasn’t much time to rest. There were monsters everywhere, and judging from the sounds of humans screaming, they were getting the job done. As a team, Will, Waylan, and Ashley were managing just fine.

Of course, their luck had to run out eventually.

“I got the left,” Will said, clutching the baseball bat he’d bought immediately after executing a bunch of Ice Ants. In his open hand, he held an Amplify and a Chill.

“I’m on right,” Waylan said, acknowledging.

Ashley took that as a silent indicator to watch ahead.

The intersection they were at looked important. There was a crushed fountain in the center of the circle they were entering, still spilling water onto the floor. The entire plaza was wet. Irritating.

It was quiet. Suspiciously quiet. Nothing was falling over. No monsters were running amok, howling with fury.

Will stepped forward, already ready to get this clear over with. Maybe there was a boss hiding here. That would explain the lack of lesser mobs.

The three of them made their way into the miniature plaza, checking each corner for monsters.

They were so busy looking for potential traps that they didn’t realize that the entire plaza was one until the attack came.

A brutal fork-in-outlet shock tore through Will’s calves, arcing from the water to his body. Ashley yelped in pain and Waylan cawed out a cry of shock as the same happened to them.

His increased Intelligence stat must’ve helped him think fast enough. Will cast Amplify and then Chill, one after the other, aiming for a low, wide spread.

The water flash-froze instantly, forming an inch-thick layer of ice over the entire ground. Ashley looked up and yelped again. Will heard her fall to the ground.

“Well, shit,” a greasy male voice said from above them. “Guess we’ll do this the hard way. Lyle! Pike!”

Will looked up. There were two stories to this mall, but the upper one was so structurally unsound that he’d thought nobody would be there.

But sure enough, holding onto the bannisters of a half-collapsed walkway were three men, each of them wearing black masks that obscured their mouths.

When Will used Identify, the System seemed to detect his desire for brevity.

[Pike C. [F] - lvl 8]

Human. Warrior.

Player Kills: 1

[Lyle C. [F] - lvl 8]

Human. Brawler.

Player Kills: 1

[Frank C. [F] - lvl 10]

Human. Electro Mage.

Player Kills: 9

“Well,” Will said with an exasperation that he felt deep in his bones. “It looks like we’ve been ambushed.”