[You lost 4 hit points]

At least I lasted a bit longer this time. Or at least, it felt like I did, I thought. I was clutching the area where a moment ago, my arm had been severed, hissing. "Shit, shit, fuck. That one really hurt. Oh god, I think- I think I'm gonna-"

I puked.

Lan patted me on the back as I coughed and spluttered, his Artifact nowhere in sight. "Good job, man. You did good, seriously."

My head was throbbing like mad, and I felt like a goddamn corpse. "Thanks," I said. Strangely enough, even though my arm was completely cut through, it remained attached. Still hurt like a bitch.

"Let's get inside, get you a drink."

He shouldered me up, and as we made our way back to the apartment, he said, "Might want to Unveil, by the way. You'll feel better, trust me."

I looked at the steel plated gauntlet and said, "Unveil," and it returned to its more normal, leather glove style. I immediately felt fine as my head stopped throbbing, and Lan let me go. "What…?"

"Your FP was getting low. Focus points. You need them to maintain your Artifact while it's unveiled."

"Right so… hit points, focus points… what's SP, then?"

"Skill points. You need them to attack, dodge, block… and use skills."

We reached the apartment and walked inside. "Skills? Do I have any?"

"No. I don't think so. I didn't get my first skill until third level, anyway."

A little silence passed between us before I asked: "So what now?"

Lan shrugged. "We wait until you recover some FP first, then get back out onto the lot. Best way to level is to keep fighting, so that's what we'll do."

I tensed up at that, going white at the prospect of taking another hit.

Lan chuckled. "Don't worry, I'll go easier on you. No more hits, yeah? It does take a while for HP to recover, especially at your level. Though, the lower your HP while fighting, the more XP you'll gain while in combat. Remember that."

"Uhh… XP? Okay…"

"Right, you're not a gamer. XP is what you need to level up."

"Got it."

In honesty, I didn't really get it. Sure, it made sense I guess. But… why? What was the point of all this? I sat down on one of the chairs by the small, round table just out of the lounge area, and was left to stew in my thoughts while Lan went to get me a drink. I didn't even notice when he asked me if I wanted anything in particular.

When the cup of water was planted on the table in front of me, I looked up. "I've got other drinks if you want, but you should at least drink water anyway."

"Thanks."

It took around maybe an hour before my FP was back to full. In the meantime, Lan booted up his console and showed me some of the games he had, which didn't really interest me until he showed me some of the fighting games. Now those were cool.

There was this one where you could fly around, hit your opponent into rocks – breaking the rocks – only for the enemy to come flying right back at you while you barraged them with energy blasts. Others were simpler like where you were looking at the characters from the side, but I quickly found playing it was way more complex. Not to mention the time it took for me to figure out all the buttons and combos.

And then it was back to it. When I activated Meatball, I felt its power run up my arm and through my body, and readied myself.

He upheld his promise even when I was going all out, and didn't cut me again. Instead he used Acharon in its rod form – that is to say, cloaked. I still got hit of course, but the pain was superficial and there were no damage notifications. I also didn't have to worry about having it thrown at me.

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It felt pretty bad though. I was faster than Lan since he was relying purely on his own strength, yet I was still nowhere near a match. He landed me on my ass every damn time.

I did find out, however, that any damage I took while I had my Artifact activated didn't affect my actual body. In fact, being hit with anything that wasn't an Artifact did nothing.

"Yep," Lan said. "You could get shot point blank with a shotgun and it would do nothing, unless said shotgun is an Artifact, of course. Cloaked Artifacts also hurt, but don't actually do anything, in terms of hit points."

I kept swinging at him while he talked, which he could apparently do with no effort while dodging each strike. Jerk.

I found out that I could fight for roughly five minutes or so before I ran out of SP, if I paced myself. Going all out could gas me in only a minute. I'd never pant or break a sweat, but I could definitely tell once I'd run out of SP. It felt like I was submerged in water, the very air resisting me, and gravity itself was trying to weight me down.

Lan made me deal with it when I burned out too fast. Even punished me for it. I may not have been taking any actual damage, but it still hurt to get hit…

I also found out I could cloak to save FP while waiting for SP to recover. Handy.

In the end, I still hadn't managed to land a hit on him. Besides that, I was starting to feel my head throbbing. FP must be low now, I thought. I was even starting to breathe harder. When I quickly checked, I had about 7 points left.

"How long have we been going?" I asked.

"Almost twenty minutes. We can take a break now if you need to?"

"A little bit more."

We kept at it for about another three minutes, pacing myself. At that point, it was like my head was being repeatedly hit with a hammer. My final attack was a wild swing that overbalanced me, and I stumbled before almost crashing into the ground. I landed on one knee, panting heavily, Meatball slamming the ground for stability.

"Okay, you're done. Cloak your Artifact before you pass out."

"That's possible?" I asked, panting, and then to Meatball I said, "Cloak," in an undertone. The Artifact deactivated as Lan answered.

"If you run out of FP, you're Artifact will dissipate. Which also means you'll be almost completely defenseless. But, you can push through it. It does suck, though. You'll probably have to do that eventually, but no reason to go through it if you don't have to."

Well, that was nice to know.

"How long will it take for me to recover all my FP?"

Lan shrugged. "Around an hour, I think. It depends."

"Right." What it depended on, I obviously didn't know, but I was struggling with all this information as it was and so, naturally, didn't feel like asking any further. I planted my ass down right there in the parking lot.

Even though I was feeling lighter after cloaking my Artifact, I still felt tired.

"Do you have a phone?" Lan asked as he sat down beside me. The afternoon sun was feeling nice on the cold, slightly windy day.

"Yeah, but it's pretty old. Why?" I'd gotten it years ago and was way overdue for an upgrade, but being short on cash, I didn't have much hope of that anytime soon.

"You can use it to check your stats. It's a pretty recent feature, but at least you don't have to be discreet when you bring up those attributes. I mean, people can't see your sheet, but at least it won't look like you're staring off into nothing constantly, you know?"

"Uh… sure. Wait, what? Recent feature?"

"Oh, yeah. Every now and then, the game 'updates.' Last update was a few years back, I think. Anyway, just hold your phone up to your gauntlet, say Resonate and boom. Done." He finished with a smile.

I did just that, kinda feeling like a dumbass and almost positive he was yanking my chain, but sure enough when I said the word my phone went black and a white loading bar appeared.

When it was done, a screen appeared showing me my stats, in a bit more detail too.

Artifact: Meatball, 1st Level

Slots: [4]

XP: 44 / 50

HP: 9 / 25

FP: 3 / 25

SP: 11 / 23

STR: 10 | AGI: 12 | ACC: 9

CON: 5 | END: 5 | VIT: 3

I was close to leveling up, but… I was finding it hard to even care. "What's the point of this?" I asked Lan while staring at the phone, barely knowing what I was looking at.

He cocked his head, raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean… this game. Why do we have to fight? Why do I have to level up?"

Lan shook his head. "I know. Simple answer is greed, I think. You kill someone, you get their dice. More dice…" he shrugged, "more power. If you stay at first level, you'll die."

Power. Makes sense, I thought. For a minute or so, there was silence until I lay down on the hard ground. "I should probably go home."

Lan nodded. "Let's get you leveled first, then I'll give you a lift back, yeah?"

Roughly half an hour of idle chat later, I stood back up. My FP wasn't completely full, but I figured it would be enough. Both Lan and I took positions across from one another.

"Unveil."