Vol visibly grimaced through her bandanna. "Okay, but if I could prove it to you, you wouldn't be disappointed, right? So let me see your stats."

Carl, a father of two, was no stranger to being nagged for something. He also knew that the one thing he couldn't do when he wanted to make a point was to give in to the nagging, and he was a master of not giving in when situations required it. "Nope."

She let out another growl, this time sounding even more annoyed. "Fine, how the fuck am I supposed to prove it if I can't point out that you probably have some stupidly high fucking stat value that's making you this strong?"

"You can't, and I'm not inter…" Carl had been about to say that he wasn't interested, and he certainly wasn't interested in the period of time leading up to the statement. At that exact moment, however, having been jogged along by her prompting, he recalled a small fact that he'd overlooked. "Stats can affect how strong you are?"

Vol gave him a look like he was either completely insane, or the noobiest of noobs, or probably both now that he considered the situation. "Of fucking course they can!" she shouted, clasping her head with both hands. "What the fuck would be the point of them otherwise?!"

"So, for example, if I had a really high Strength stat—"

"Strength's one of the ones that'd make you strong, obviously!"

Carl felt at least one bead of sweat break out on his forehead. "And, just for the sake of example again, if I—again, this is purely hypothetical—had a Strength stat of ten million—"

Vol threw her hands up in the air. "That'd make you incredibly fucking strong compared to the average person, wouldn't it! Just common fucking sense at that point! Now show me your fucking stats already!"

"Uh…" Carl was feeling at that moment that he'd really made a huge mistake when he'd forgotten to change his stats back after doing that whole dungeoneering thing, but there really hadn't been that many signs that his unnaturally high stats were doing anything crazy up until that moment other than a few weird things here and there which could've easily just been bugs in the system since they'd been happening with his fishing…spear…which he now remembered Roger had called a "boss weapon", and also it had that crazy strength and level requirement, and then even Ir'alith, who was apparently really freaking famous, knew about it and thought it was strong…

"Status."

He didn't look at the window that appeared. No, he was way too embarrassed right now to be reminded of his critical bungle by looking at the evidence of his mistake, though he again acknowledged that he'd really had a lot on his mind at the end of that whole thing, and really there were a lot more important things that he'd been concerned with than just some stats on a game character.

"That's a lot of millions, Carl," Vol said, standing next to him and reading over his stats, which maybe he shouldn't even be showing to her because they were so obviously broken and not something real players could even achieve, and it wasn't like he was trying to show off that he had the best stats in the game or anything—he'd just made one tiny mistake that wasn't really even that big of a deal, though he couldn't fix it now since he'd had that chat with Roger about database usage and hadn't really quite gotten around to looking over the dev console stuff, which could potentially lead to more issues if he tried to use it without the proper knowledge.

Hoo boy.

"Yeah, you're strong," Vol said, sounding oddly approving. "Not the strongest or anything, but still—"

"Wait, what?" Carl broke himself out of his self-flagellation and looked down at her when he heard that he wasn't the strongest person in the game—not that he'd wanted to be, of course, but he'd thought he was, and there was a short-lived period of time when he'd once again felt like he was the number one player in a game instead of being a person who was probably way too old to ever be able to play games again.

"You could probably fight with the upper tiers of gladiators," she said while nodding to herself. "I don't know that you'd win since you don't seem very skilled at fighting—"

"But…ten million Strength and stuff is a lot, right?"

"Yeah, I really can't imagine how you did that. That's a lot of fucking stats, Carl."

"So—"

"But they're not good stats," Vol said. "It's sort of like…" Her brows furrowed. "Just like there's tiers of gladiators—and there are, since you don't know about that I'm guessing—there's tiers of stats. And you have a lot of stat points, but your stats are all…bad."

"Bad," Carl said in a flat tone.

"Yeah." Vol looked up at him and shrugged. "They do a lot, but only because you have so fucking many. There's some stats people have gotten which would do this much with fifty points or less."

He sighed. "You mean all these stats I have are useless?"

"I just said they're not! Maybe they were the strongest wherever you were before—though I don't think anywhere else has stats like we do—but you're in Onyxfell now. Sure, you killed that monster in one blow, but that's something a lot of gladiators could do. It was a weak monster. I was only excited because you didn't seem like you knew, which was incredibly fucking interesting."

"That's stupid," Carl said. "Why would there be a system where you can be super strong in one place with ten freaking million points in a stat, and then you go somewhere else and you suck? Game's garbage," he grumbled, feeling that his earlier blooming respect and admiration for the company he worked at was way overblown, and everything was the worst, but also he was now considering strongly the possibility that maybe this was just Vol being Vol, and she was just messing with him, and also it was ten million freaking stat points!

Vol started to laugh. "Why're you so fucking upset? You just found out you're one of the strongest people in the country here, and you're gonna sulk? What, because I said you're not the strongest? I thought you didn't care about stats!"

"Well…" He didn't finish the sentence, feeling like if he pointed out how stupid this whole thing sounded, she'd just double down on this new prank she was trying to pull where she claimed that ten million points in something—obviously not an intended number based on what he'd heard from Bobby that time they'd talked about stats—was suddenly worthless—well, not exactly worthless, but somehow not the strongest, which obviously wasn't something he really cared about since he wasn't here to be playing the game or anything but still was something he did care about for some reason he didn't feel like fully exploring.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Okay, maybe that wasn't a great way to explain it," she said, still chuckling. "I can see you still don't believe me. Demonstration work better for you? Put that thing away already. No need be waving all those zeroes around." She waved a hand dismissively at him while taking a step back. "Stats don't matter if you don't know what to do with them. Try punching me."

"Dismiss. Uh…" Carl looked at the casually-dressed woman.

"Don't tell me you're one of those won't strike a woman types," she said in a mocking tone. She beckoned with one hand. "Come, let's see your best punch. What's ten million Strength look like?"

The man with ten million Strength, among other stats which were also ten million, struggled to catch up with the current situation in which he was being enticed to punch another player, who was maybe not actually as annoying as he'd thought, though she was still pretty weird and seemed to really love her little jokes. "Can't I just punch something else?"

"Nah, won't have the same effect!" She waved him on again. "What's with the fucking hesitation? If you really think you should be so strong, knock my head off!"

I guess at worst I'm right, and she has to run back to her body. Can't imagine ten freaking million Strength is gonna mean nothing here. Well, not nothing, but… He curled his right hand into a fist. "Ready?"

Vol stood in place, looking entirely unprepared, and waved him on in a taunting manner. "We're only spending one day together even if you try to make me wait out here for two with you."

"Alright…" Carl threw a punch. It was an okay punch, he judged. He wasn't someone who'd ever particularly had training in throwing punches, but it was a punch.

Everyone could punch.

Vol brushed it aside with the back of her hand, and her eyes crinkled. "That was more like a punch from someone with two Strength, Carl. Let's see all ten million."

He frowned. Maybe he hadn't really been serious the last time, but now he was gonna be a little bit serious since she kept telling him to. He threw another punch using a little more strength.

Vol yawned loudly, pushing his arm away with the exact same motion. "Carl, I'm gonna fall asleep."

He wasn't about to go all out. If he was right, as he was pretty confident that he was, and ten million Strength was actually a lot of Strength in a game where Strength had more effect than just being a requirement to equip gear, he didn't want to have to feel guilty when it was revealed that ten million Strength was more than enough to explode a player like it apparently was enough to explode those weird dinosaur things, which also explained a lot about his drive to the city now that he considered it.

Carl punched again, using more strength.

Vol leaned slightly to the side and avoided the blow while rubbing her forehead. "You're really not taking me seriously, are you. What do I have to do to make you try to hit me, take your fucking family hostage?"

"Don't joke about that," Carl said reflexively. "Not funny."

She held both hands up in front of herself. "Okay, then stop joking around when I'm trying to be serious. Punch me. As hard as you can."

"Not really the same scale," he grumbled. "That's not something you should joke about."

"Hey, I don't have a family anymore, so my limits on that are a bit fucked," she said with a shrug.

"Oh," Carl said. "Uh, sorry to hear that."

"It's in the past," Vol said. "Now let's see that punch."

Carl let out a breath. He again clenched his hand into a fist and started to focus. He wasn't amazing at punching, and he'd never taken any martial arts classes, but a punch was a punch in some sense. It was taking a fist and hurling it with a varying degree of strength.

On this occasion, he used most of his strength, feeling almost as though time was slowing while he thrust his fist forward.

The next thing he knew, he was laying on his back feeling dazed and disoriented from the sudden perspective shift.

"Not the most creative way to show you," Vol said, "but you get my point, right?" She held out a hand.

"What happened?" Carl asked, grabbing at the hand.

She hauled him up with surprising ease. "You tried to punch me, and it didn't work. Uh, sorry about the family thing. I was just trying to rile you and got caught up in the moment." She looked away and then down.

"That's…" She actually looks kinda sad about it. People say weird stuff when they get fired up in games, huh. Seems like she's maybe got good intentions? I mean, she went to a lot of trouble to thoroughly convince me about this whole stat thing. "Don't do it again, and I'll let this one pass."

Vol nodded slowly and remained silent for a short while before speaking again. "Sorry, I… Sorry."

They stood in an awkward silence for a minute or two.

"So… You brought me all the way out here to talk to me about stats?" Carl asked.

"In part? Yeah?" Vol replied hesitantly.

"You could've just explained it to me normally."

Vol's eyes shifted in the way that he was now recognizing as a grimace. "I'm not good at explaining shit, and you wouldn't have believed me. And I thought maybe this would be fun."

"Fun."

"Yeah." She looked over to the other side of the clearing and pointed at a giant gorilla monster with horns on either side of its head running towards them on all fours while somehow remaining completely silent. "Because if you were strong, I thought maybe we could have some fun killing these things."

Having been spotted, the monster let out an annoying roar, as monsters always had to.

"And what if I wasn't?" Carl asked, readying his fist again.

"Well, I wasn't gonna let anything happen to you, obviously," Vol said. "We did have a deal. Not about to shortchange myself."

The monster bore down on them and smashed out with a double-handed overhead slam.

Vol snapped her fingers, and the monster fell over.

"You gonna tell me about that yet?"

"Don't worry about it."

"You can't just keep saying that."

"Can't I?"

Carl sighed. "Look, I'm trying to get to know you here, but you're making it pretty hard to be anything approaching friends."

"Friends?" Vol tilted her head, seeming unusually serious. "Do you really think you can be my friend, Carl?"

"Wow, that's a little much," Carl said, shaking his head and letting out a slow breath. I thought she was just being sarcastic this whole time, but maybe she's not about some things. She's pretty full of herself.

"Let's not think past today," she said. "We have a deal, and I'm enjoying it. We'll have some fun, and that'll be that."

"Okay," he said with a frown. Really can't get any kind of read on her. Too weird.

"Let's kill some rift spawns for a while," she said, beckoning him towards one of the fog walls. "If you've only got four hundred marks, you'll run out quick. Nothing says our deal can't have future benefits."

Carl shook his head again. I don't get her at all.