Carl launched the car over it, letting out a shout as the car remained airborne for several seconds. He felt a sudden heat above him, and then a blaze of purple fire erupted overhead, covering the sky.

"This is fast!" Ir'alith shouted again with excitement as the landscape blurred past.

Something soft and velvety rubbed against the side of his face, and he chuckled when he realized what it was. "Hang on!" he called back, starting to get into it. He began swerving slightly back and forth—the most he was comfortable with given the already-beyond-reckless speed at which he was driving.

Another blast of purple fire shot into the air.

Then Carl hit his first ever in-game pothole.

"Oh shit!" he yelled, caught up in the moment as the car suddenly bounced out of the hole at an odd angle. His minor adjustment to the wheel, unwittingly unnecessary and too severe due to his inexperience driving at ludicrous speeds, sent the car careening into a small rock which, at his current velocity, was more than large enough to flip the whole vehicle over.

Carl blinked, and then the car was upside down in midair, continuing forward. He watched, feeling like things were moving in slow motion as he sank upwards towards the ground. At any second, his head would hit the ground, and then he'd have to figure out how to get himself out of the wreckage of the car…

But the car never landed. It hung in place for a short while, and then he saw blue-skinned, clawed feet walking slowly towards him on the ground, which was still above him.

He was suddenly lifted higher into the air—which was still below him—and a grinning, green-eyed, upside down Ir'alith greeted him.

"Carl," she said, her tail waving energetically behind her, "that was awesome." The car flipped over, then slowly lowered itself onto the ground. "We must go for a drive again in the future."

The pressure holding Carl into his seat disappeared, and he grinned back. She can do seatbelt magic, windshield magic, and completely prevent crashes? Now that's a solid foundation to build a friendship on. "Definitely," he said, nodding in agreement.

"You were correct," she said, seeming to be taking in the car anew, "my spirits are raised."

"Glad I could help," Carl said. He glanced down next to him to check—Yup, Mina's body was still in the seat next to him and was still headless. Can't believe she missed that. She's gonna flip out when she sees how much faster her car is now. And she doesn't even need to magic it on anymore either! "Thanks again for your, uh, magical improvements. It didn't go nearly that fast before."

Ir'alith frowned and tapped her axe on her armored shoulder. "What would be the benefit of such a slow method of travel?"

I guess it wouldn't be as fast as portals, but it was still pretty fast before. But… "Mostly for fun?"

"Fun," she said, seeming to be pondering it.

"Actually," Carl said, suddenly recalling an earlier idea he'd had related to the topic, "I was planning to try and do a dungeon or something for fun. Mina said she knew where things were, but she's been gone a while, so I ended up just sort of driving aimlessly."

"Ah, so you have this inclination," Ir'alith said with a nod, seeming to understand. "Such things are no longer as common as they once were, but…" After a moment, she flipped her axe back over her shoulder, and her tail planted the weapon into the ground behind her before flicking briefly into the air. "Carl, I would ask a boon of you. In exchange, I will assist you with your dungeon endeavor, and I will provide you with a guide."

Carl shifted in his seat. Ugh, too cramped. He got up out of the car, yawning in the process. Then he turned back to his waiting, blue-skinned friend, who had taken a step back. She'll help me find a dungeon and guide me through if I give her a hand with something? Seems like a pretty good deal, especially with how much she seems to know about all the game systems. "Alright, what do you need help with?"

"I thank you, Carl," Ir'alith said, seeming relieved that he'd agreed so readily—which of course he had, since they were friends. "My request is simple: I…" She hesitated before taking a deep breath. "I will give you my axe to guard," she said slowly. "What I require now is me time, and I would only grow distracted if he remained with me."

Carl glanced at the axe that was staring at him with its big eye. She wants me to hang onto her axe for a while? "Uh…" Is it glaring at me? "Yeah, I guess I can do that?"

Ir'alith smiled at him. "I thank you," she said again. She brought the axe forward with her tail and placed it just to the side midway between them.

It's definitely glaring at me. Carl frowned back at it. I get why she'd wanna have some time away from it. I'd feel bad even putting it in my inventory, imagining it just looking around. Hope she'll be okay without it. The idea gave him pause. "Don't you need a weapon?"

"No, I—"

"Can't be going around without a weapon," Carl grumbled. "Inventory. That'd be like not having good armor." Gotta have good gear on all the time, otherwise you're not gonna be ready when someone tries to gank you. He pulled out his spear and planted it point-first in the ground on the side opposite from Ir'alith's axe. "You can borrow this for now, and we'll switch for a bit. Just don't lose it," he added, "or I won't be able to go fishing anymore." I mean, I could just make another one, but I'm trying not to use dev mode stuff too much. Already surprising enough nobody busted me for that huge game currency withdrawal. Not like I wanna spend all my time trying to secretly delete stuff from the server logs; that's a quick road to getting caught. I guess maybe they're not checking stuff as much since it's a beta server or whatever? Or does it get merged into live today when the expansion goes out? Eh, whatever, I'm not doing anything that's gonna affect anyone else.

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When he came out of his internal justifications for lending his own fishing weapon out to his friend instead of just making a new one, he realized that Ir'alith was staring goggle-eyed at the spear and so was the eye on the axe.

Wait, is lending weapons even a thing? Carl rubbed his beard. Seems like it wouldn't be for the higher level ones?

"You…" Ir'alith began, still staring, before she stopped for a moment. "You would swap arms with me?" she asked, sounding incredulous.

"Wouldn't it be dangerous wandering around without any weapons? What if you ran into one of those fang-spikes, or a hydra, or…" Carl trailed off when he realized the foolishness of his action. Obviously she's gotta have some other weapons she could swap to, and even without them she seems like she's pretty good at magic.

Ir'alith's skin turned bright pink as she spun around quickly. Her helmet flew over and settled onto her head, managing to fit snugly despite her horns. Then a pink light began shining out of her armor, overpowering the faint green glow that was already being emitted. "I th-thank you for your concern, Carl," she said softly. Her tail began to coil over onto itself, then hooked firmly over her shoulder.

"Don't mention it," Carl said, magnanimously disregarding what he imagined was likely to be a game-powered blush at still being treated as a friend despite her earlier outburst. Or something. She seems a lot more emotional today than she was last time we talked. Must be why she needs that time by herself. Just wants to go somewhere and chill without people bugging her or feeling like she needs to go grind or whatever with her big axe. I get that. Had that great drive earlier and managed to unwind a little myself.

He looked back to her giant weapon. May as well see what this thing's about. He took a step towards the axe and then tried to lift it, but it remained stuck in the ground, not budging even the tiniest bit. He frowned. "Inspect," he murmured.

The status window appeared before him.

Name: Seth'tith, Executioner of Worlds Durability: ∞ Required Level: 1000 Required Strength: 125,000 Damage: éǑû99ЅlGçÆÑy8ÈÁ)äӷ&h Soulbound: Ir'alith Description: The axe forged by the father of the mad demon god. Driven by an insane thirst for vengeance on behalf of a daughter lost, its eternal rage will never die.

Carl frowned more deeply as he read, ignoring the edgy flavor text at the end since it seemed lore-related. That wasn't the name of her axe was it? And the damage numbers are bugged. What the heck, R—Nope, not gonna think about work. "Dismiss."

Ir'alith turned around to look at him at that moment, her green eyes visible through the slit in her helmet. "I…apologize, but I will keep my helmet on for a time," she said, her voice echoing oddly through the slide-y mouthguard-y part of the helmet.

"It's okay," Carl said, wanting to be a good friend and not make a big deal out of it like he was sure all those jackasses back in Charus City would've. "Your, uh, axe is pretty heavy."

That was when he considered the numbers he'd seen on the stat window for the axe he'd just tried to pick up. Hold on, level a thousand required? Didn't Bobby say the highest she'd heard of was only like three hundred something? He glanced a few times between the axe and its owner, who had casually moved it with her tail previously.

Ir'alith turned to the spear he'd planted in the ground. "It must have weight to have power," she said, placing a hand on the glowing shaft of the spear. She tried to lift it, and it didn't budge.

Oh, right, didn't this thing have some ridiculous requirements like two hundred something thousand strength and level fifteen hund…

On her second attempt, Ir'alith easily hefted the spear up into the air. "Ah, it was a jest," she said, chuckling.

Carl stared for a moment. Wouldn't that mean… The thought of numbers, and levels, and attributes put him back in the mindset of a him from twenty-ish years ago and brought with it all the time he'd had to spend optimizing his character's gear, and build, and all that tedious raiding stuff, so he zoomed out his focus. Alright, so she's way higher level than I thought. Maybe she's one of those shut-in types who just plays games all day every day. Wow, and she said she had a guild or something she plays with? They must all be insane. Why the heck is she hanging out here with a noob like me? Guess that's friendship, huh.

She executed a series of incredibly quick martial arts-y moves with the spear, ending with a thrust that sent a boulder some distance away flying off towards the horizon like a pebble.

That's… That's another physics engine bug, right? Yeah, gotta be…

He turned to look back at the axe next to him.

"This is a powerful weapon," Ir'alith said, sounding excited.

"Yeah," Carl said absently, trying to wrap his head around a scenario in which what he'd just seen was not a bug. He realized he was still holding onto the axe with one hand and frowned when he also realized the eye was staring at him again.

"My axe is not the equal of this," she said, "but I hope you will care for him until I am ready."

The words roused him from his considerations. Alright, alright, I don't wanna be a bad friend and make her feel like I think the super cool axe her dad made isn't super cool. Even if this eye is creeping me out a little. "Yeah, I definitely will," he said. "One, uh, sec though. Keyboard."

His keyboard appeared—too low as always—and he considered at that moment that it was really great to have an in-game friend he didn't have to hide this kinda stuff from. I didn't want to have to do this, but… Well, it's not like I'm gonna be using it to kill any bosses or do anything significant. I just wanna chill out for a bit and get a feel for the game in the meanwhile, and I definitely don't have time… Nope, I don't have time to do that normally. Not gonna think about it, too complicated.

He began typing quickly, first entering his sixty four character password to assume dbadmin privileges for a database pro—actually, no, he had to delete the twenty seven characters he'd typed into the password input and start over because he'd just come up on one of the biannual password resets Monday and changed to a different sixty four character password, because even though he was confident that there was no possible way his account had been compromised, he still believed that security must start from the top with good role models and thus changed his own password to a different, equally-long one which he'd begun memorizing a month earlier in preparation—at which point he composed an update to his character's stats using the database prompt, the effect of which was to increase his level and strength values to the amounts required by the axe that he probably couldn't force-equip because it would remove the Soulbound bit from his friend, and Carl was the best at being a good friend.

Carl triple-checked the update that he'd typed out—as he obviously would for any command he executed with elevated privileges, even though it had been some time since he'd needed to run any commands in game with elevated privileges and he could have skipped this step if he weren't so aware that anyone could make mistakes, even if he didn't make them, at least not when it came to computers—then executed it.

The command returned success, and he exited out of the database prompt as well as the underlying shell before chucking his keyboard away into the air behind him.

Then he picked up the axe. "Yeah, has good heft to it," he said, moving it around in the air a little, but not enough to reveal that he definitely didn't know any cool martial arts moves like his friend did.