We walked eastward through the Great Grasslands for hours, the grass’s height and density dwindling as we traveled. By nightfall, the ground was more sand than grass. According to the Knowledge Bracelet, we were almost in the Avarian Desert. Once we crossed the border, we would be vulnerable to attacks from the enemies that lived there. Based on this, and the fact that we hadn’t slept for about thirty-six hours, we decided to rest.

The following morning, we did not say our goodbyes as the doctor had suggested before we entered the desert. Stepping over the invisible border was like crawling into an oven. The sun threatened to tear through my flesh and roast my soul like the succulent turkey it was.

Even worse than the heat were the human-sized fire-breathing red lizards and even larger poisonous yellow snakes—or flizards and sidewindlers, as they were identified by the Knowledge Bracelet. Our first battle against six of these enemies was much more difficult than we had anticipated. Even though the bracelet advised against it, Mag attacked them with Inferno Fists and Napalm Kicks, which she had added to her arsenal after the Mother Araknor battle. However, they did minimal damage, as did her physical attacks. And, as a white mage, my attack stat was even lower than Mag’s.

Furthermore, our water balloons had no effect on these monsters—if anything, they were thankful for the splash of cold on such a hot day. Thus, my dad was our only viable fighter, and he was kind of a wild card, to put it lightly. For us to survive just this first battle, I had to use Magic Barrier on all of us, as well as multiple Heal spells.

We wouldn’t make it to the pyramid unless we avoided as many battles as possible. Fortunately, the instant we had crossed into the Avarian Desert, red dots had popped up on Mag’s map, indicating the enemies’ whereabouts. She could even detect sidewindlers that were hiding under the sand and would have had my feet for lunch if not for Mag’s warnings. And, most fortunately of all, we didn’t see any sand ogres.

The Knowledge Bracelet also told Mag where the desert’s safe zones were, and we rested often.

Throughout our three-day journey, we only had to fight a few unavoidably fast flizards and sidewindlers (though these rare battles consumed our entire supply of potions). The overall lack of battles gave my dad a lot of time to rant, and, boy, did he ever make the most of it. Sir Rants-a-lot, I should have called him, but I’ve only just thought of that name now as I write this.

On the first day, Mag and I made affirmative grunts and gave short responses to satisfy him as he spoke. On the second day, we only nodded. By the third day, we couldn’t even manage that. But that didn’t matter to my dad. He kept talking anyway. He was like one of those people where you can put the phone down and go to the bathroom, and they’re still chattering away on the other end when you get back.

In a way, it was like having an audiobook to listen to as we journeyed. In another way, it was like walking across an unbearably hot desert for three days with a complete asshole.

I won’t relay all his rants to you in detail here, as doing so would triple the length of this book. However, I will mention that, in addition to his dislike for random items (screwdrivers, billboards, etc.), he often spoke of his contempt for other people. For example, he mentioned this one “idiot” who once criticized him for the way he ate bananas. “He told me, ‘That’s not the way monkeys peel bananas. You’re eating it upside down.’ I wanted to tell him, ‘No, this is how you eat a banana upside down,’ and then shove it up his ass!”

And, for every person he despised, he would say how he wished he could kill them. He wanted to kill everybody. The similarities between his rants and my dark thoughts were most unsettling. I worried that my dad had always thought this way but had hidden his dark thoughts from me. Like me, he wanted everybody dead, and now he was finally speaking candidly since he had lost his filter due to the Vulgra infection.

I spent most of the journey through the desert hyper-aware that Vulgra could probably infect me as easily as it had infected my dad. Would I be this way, too, if I didn’t care what anybody thought and just said whatever came to my mind? Would I actually shout at people for mentioning breezes? Was I an asshole? I worried that my dad’s misanthropy was genetic and swimming around in my blood, just beneath the surface, waiting for me to bleed.

By the evening of the third day in the desert, we finally reached the fifty-foot-tall pyramid that contained the Dream Ring. Though we couldn’t see them, Mag said a gang of sand ogres surrounded the pyramid. Fighting would be unavoidable.

“There are eight of them,” Mag said to me, “so this should be a piece of cake. We have eight water balloons just between the two of us, and Sir has loads more.”

But when she asked my dad to confirm how many water balloons he had, he said he had none.

“What do you mean?” Mag asked. “You took ten of them, and you haven’t used any.”

“No, I did use them. While your lazy asses were sleeping in this morning, I noticed my armor was dirty and had a shower.”

“And you used all ten balloons?”

“Hmmm, let’s see... If the man had ten balloons, and now he has zero balloons, how many balloons did the man use? Wow, that’s a tough one.”

“Whatever. We still have enough to beat all the sand ogres. But we can’t waste a single one now.”

My dad had stopped listening and was walking toward the pyramid. A few steps further, and right in front of him, a sand ogre rose from the sand like a Push Pop. But a Push Pop that could lick you.

I cast Barrier on my dad. However, before I could cast Boost as well, the sand ogre tossed him backward over its head. He flew fifty yards away and out of range of my spells.

Another sand ogre then arose where my dad had landed. I ran to this second sand ogre while Mag battled the first. But before I reached my target, it lifted my dad above its head and threw him another fifty yards away, where a third sand ogre spawned. I bypassed the second sand ogre, but before I could get to the third, it dropkicked my dad to where a fourth now stood.

And it went on like that until we had eight sand ogres to deal with. Luckily, they had pounded, punted, and projectiled my dad in a full circle around the pyramid, so at least we were back with Mag, who could see their weak points.

Despite our recent differences, Mag and I worked very well together in defeating the sand ogres. Just like when we played video games, our mystical bond told us what the other was thinking. Without discussing it ahead of time, one of us would distract a sand ogre, and the other would throw a water balloon at its most fragile point when it wasn’t looking.

We defeated the first seven sand ogres easily, as they were vulnerable in convenient places—a toe or the back of a knee. The eighth, however, would need to be hit on the crown of its head.

“You’re going to have to climb it,” Mag said.

But I wasn’t paying attention. I was observing my dad, who was in a heap twenty yards away. As Mag and I had been disintegrating the sand ogres, my dad had taken severe damage from the ones we hadn’t been focused on. He looked to be almost out of HP. I needed to heal him.

“Emerson, no!” Mag shouted as I ran to my dad. “Worry about him later! You have our last water balloon!”

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But I didn’t care. I had to save my dad. As I healed him, Mag shouted some profanities at me. Then she let out a terrifying screech, which finally caught my attention.

The sand ogre had grabbed Mag and was crushing her in its arms. Mag let out some awful grunts and screams as the sand ogre tried to crack her ribs.

What I learned here is that when someone you care about is getting crushed to death by a sand ogre, an instinct to save them kicks in, regardless of any issues you may be having with them at the time. However, as often happened when I was faced with danger, I became paralyzed with fear. I could only stare at Mag, thinking about clocks as she suffered.

She stared back at me, the look in her eyes a heart-stabbing concoction of pain, fear, and mostly disappointment, for I was letting her down.

I was so overwhelmed by my fear that I didn’t notice my dad get up and charge at the sand ogre. By the time I regained my wits, he was already hacking at the sand ogre’s leg. I don’t think he was trying to save Mag as much as he was angry at this sand ogre for using his body as a Frisbee earlier.

Regardless, the sand ogre dropped Mag and turned its attention to my dad. It chased him for some time but failed to seize him and soon showed signs of heavy fatigue. My dad sprinted toward me, the sapless sand ogre struggling to keep pace. When they were twenty feet away, my dad stopped suddenly and dropped to his hands and knees. The sand ogre tripped over my dad’s body and fell to its stomach. Its bald head was pointing right at me, just a couple of feet from where I stood.

I shouted, “Babushka!” (I don’t know why) as I pelted it with our last water balloon. It crumbled and joined its brothers as part of the desert floor.

I rushed to Mag and cast Heal on her.

She recovered, and then she pushed me down. “You fucking asshole!” she shouted.

“What?” I asked innocently. We had beaten the sand ogres. I thought she’d be happier about that.

“You put me at risk to save a digital rendering of your dad! And then you were just going to stand there and let me die! That’s what. The fact that I have to spell that out for you proves what a shitty friend you are.”

“For the last time, he’s not a rendering! He’s real!” I shouted back at her as I returned to my feet. “He’s my dad! Of course I’m going to save him before you. He’s my actual family.”

Mag’s face went red, and she clenched her jaw. “Oh my God, I want to punch you in the face so fucking bad right now,” she said. But then she took a deep breath. She relaxed her jaw but was still upset. “How can you say that after everything my moms and I have done for you? So then you’d save your mom before me, too, just because you’re blood related?”

“No, of course I—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Mag interrupted. “Let’s just get this stupid ring so I can prove to you that Sir isn’t your dad. Maybe then you’ll go back to being the old Emerson instead of this piece-of-shit Emerson who obviously doesn’t care about anyone but himself and his non-existent dad.”

“But you’re the one who stopped caring about me!” I protested.

“I can’t do this,” Mag said. “I can’t talk to you right now. I said I would never hurt you again, and I’m getting really close to breaking that promise. Let’s just do what we came here for.”

We walked up to the small doorway on the side of the pyramid. We peeked through it to see a steep slide leading into complete darkness. Once we went in, there would be no easy way out.

We leveled up before entering the pyramid. I had 2650 EXP. I opened my Skills submenu and focused on Magic Boost. I was still mad at Mag and, therefore, didn’t want to learn this skill, as it could benefit only her. But I was also worried she was right about me being a shitty friend.

Also, I hadn’t stopped questioning my morality since noticing the similarities between my dad’s desert ramblings and my dark thoughts. Maybe I didn’t think about Mag (or anyone) nearly enough. I constantly internally rebuked people for being selfish and uncaring, but what had I ever done to make the world a better place? Maybe I was just as terrible as everyone else.

But I didn’t want to be, and I didn’t have to be. So, I learned Magic Boost to prove to myself that I could be a good friend and that my dark side wasn’t my only side.

I also learned another new skill called Conserve. This was a passive skill, which meant it was always active and cost no MP to use. It cut the MP cost of all my other spells by 25%. It was expensive at 1500 EXP, but it felt worth it, especially considering that we were out of potions. I’d need to stretch my white magic as far as it would go.

Finally, I upgraded Remedy for 800 EXP. I was at level 11 and had 230/260 HP and 30/65 MP, as well as seven item slots now.

I became excited when a pop-up window informed me that Remedy now reversed confusion and rage statuses. Memory loss is a kind of confusion, and my dad certainly had some rage to him of late. This could be just what he needed.

Forgetting that I needed to restrict my MP usage, I cast the upgraded Remedy spell on my dad, but nothing happened.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” Mag asked. After I explained my thought process, she said, “You need to be smarter about how you spend your EXP next time. And your MP, for that matter. How much MP did it cost just now to make yourself look like a damn fool?”

“Eight. I saved two because of Conserve.”

“Whatever. You just better hope we don’t need that 8 MP later.”

I wanted to say, ‘And YOU better hope we don’t need you to stop being such a bitch later!’ But I bit my tongue. Only a few minutes ago, I had promised myself I would try harder to resist my dark side.

So, instead of calling Mag a bitch, I tried putting myself in her shoes, as I’d heard that’s something good friends do. I wondered what she might be going through that would make her be so mean to me. Even if I was wrong about Sir being my dad, it wasn’t like her to be as annoyed with me as she had been these last few days. There was something else going on that she wasn’t telling me or that I was missing. Had something happened to Mag around the time I realized Sir was my dad?

Suddenly, the answer hit me like a bag of tangerines. “Remedy!” I shouted, casting the spell on Mag this time.

“You didn’t just do that,” Mag said. “Tell me you didn’t just do that. What did we talk about literally two seconds ago?”

“Well, I was just thinking that maybe one of the baby araknor bit you and put a confusion status on you. Or maybe a rage. And that’s why you’ve been so mean to me lately.”

Mag stared at me blankly, blinking hard and angrily, so I explained myself further. “I was just thinking back to when we started fighting, which was right after we beat the Mother Araknor. I was trying to think from your perspective why you’ve been so bitter lately.”

“And that’s what you came up with? That I had gone insane because of a spider bite? Fuck, you might as well have said it’s because I’m on my period.”

“...Are you on your period?” I wasn’t trying to be rude; it was a genuine question.

“No! For fuck’s sake!” she said, laughing with anger. “Are you serious?”

“Come on, I’m trying, here, Mag. I want to understand why you’re so upset. Can’t you just tell me why you’ve been acting this way?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to tell you if you actually gave a shit about me. It would be obvious if you thought about my feelings once in a while. But you clearly don’t. I’m starting to think you’re incapable of empathy. You’re just as much of a sociopath as this asshole,” she said, motioning to my dad.

Hearing her call him that sent a bolt of anger through me. It felt like my hand was on fire. I looked down at it and saw that my staff was black, like it was made of charcoal instead of wood.

“Don’t you talk about my dad like that,” I growled. “Take it back, or I’ll kill you!”

“No! It’s the truth! If Sir’s your dad, then your dad’s an asshole.”

Another bolt of fury. Before I even knew what I was doing, I whacked Mag on the head with my staff. Somehow, the staff being black translated into it being more powerful, and the blow knocked Mag backward down the slide and into the pyramid.

I instantly regretted it. What did I just do? I thought. I don’t think I wanted to do that.

“Atta boy!” Sir congratulated me. “Way to show her who’s the man!”

I was too distraught to even process my dad’s outdated remark. “Did I... threaten to kill her?”

“Yeah, that was great! That’ll show her to talk back.”

“No,” I said. “No, it wasn’t great. I think I might be a horrible person.”

I prayed Mag was okay, and I launched myself down the slide to find out.