The tower’s exterior was quite modern, a sleek blend of steel and glass that was framed by much humbler brick and mortar buildings on both sides. A blast of warm air greeted us as the tinted doors slid smoothly open.

“Damn, this office is almost as fancy as mine. What was the business called again?”

“Don’t think I mentioned it earlier. It’s called Eden’s Gates.”

“Seriously? That’s one of the wealthiest med-tech companies ever created in the modern era. Did you get some big shot’s ID card?” Felix’s eyes glittered with opportunity.

“Don’t think so, he looked like an intern or newer employee of some sort. Also, since when did you care about medtech?”

“I don’t, but the stocks on this company are always strong. They’re almost always in the red.”

“Isn’t red bad?”

“Erm. Meant green. Keep forgetting that the west and east are different like that.”

A security guard walked up to us, an eyebrow raised and arms crossed.

“Anything I can do for you two?”

“Hi! Yes, an employee here dropped his lanyard with his ID in it. I was hoping to return it.”

“Ah, Freddy huh? He’s a good kid. I’m actually surprised that it took this long someone to drop by with something of his. Let me call him down.”

The guard grunted into his radio.

“Anywho, you folk live around here? Freddy came in an hour ago, so I can’t imagine you two were hurrying.”

“Sorry about that. I was heading to the gym to meet up with this guy.” I motioned towards Felix, who waved in response.

“I see. Sorry for taking time out of your holiday to run this errand, I’ll make sure that the boy repays you two properly.”

“No no, it’s all good. I met this idiot because he picked something up for me when I dropped it. Just paying the good will forward.” Felix mimed as if he was offended, throwing out the middle finger and pouting.

The guard and I continued chatting while Felix wandered around the lobby, occasionally squatting to take a closer look at the textures on the polished marble floor. Eventually, some more chatter crackled from the guard’s earpiece, and he guided me towards the elevators.

“Hi! I am so sorry for bothering you. Oh, you’re the person I bumped into this morning! I made even more trouble for you, sorry!!!”

In stark contrast to the picture on the lanyard, the young man in front of me had a neatly kept and cropped style. Noticing my intense squint, he immediately offered an explanation.

“I look nothing like my picture, right? The boss lady took me to the barber right after I took my company photo, and now I have a scheduled appointment there every two weeks. It’s paid for by the company so I don’t mind, but I’ve nearly been late for class because of it and…”

As he rambled on, the familiarity of his face bothered me more and more. Usually people made minor adjustments to their appearances in games, but considering that newer gamers didn’t…

“…complete mess of my grades, but I guess that’s what happens when your friends convince you that -“

“Freddy.”

“Oh! Sorry, Mister Jeff. Sorry about that sir, I have an awful habit of rambling. Anyways, thank you for finding my id!”

“It’s no problem at all! I’m Isaac, by the way. The guy walking towards us is Felix. Hope that we can be friends!”

“I’m Frederick, but everyone calls me Freddy for short. Hi Felix!” Freddy took Felix’s extended hand and shook it.

“Yo! Freddy was it? Don’t listen to this loser, let me treat you to coffee. This guy can go on coffee breaks, right Mister Jeff?”

“Yeah, he can. The boss lady won’t be mad if he’s missing because of a social outing. Just don’t kidnap or drug him and we’re golden.”

And with that, we had an extra person tagging along for the coffee date. It turned out that Freddy was indeed the same Fredd that I had met at the guild the night before, which confirmed a crazy coincidence. Apparently he had slept a bit too much due to Equilibrium, and was nearly late to work because of it.

Felix sipped on his black coffee, wincing as the bitter dark liquid entered his mouth.

“So… you also figured out the Tabula Rasa condition?”

“Yep! The boss lady told me to just think of something that I wanted real bad, and the game did the rest for me!” Freddy tilted the long cup of vanilla bean frappuccino for a moment. “It’s been super useful! I basically summon a really cute cat that helps me do chores and keeps me company. At first, the game kept blocking me off because I thought of real cats, but once I got a good image of this real fluffy chonker, it went through. Look at how cute this girl is.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Freddy pulled his phone out and tapped a few times, revealing said fluffy chonker in some photos. It was a comically round cat, closer to what I saw in memes or doodles.

“Does it fight at all? Also, when we break out of the tutorial zone, can I visit just to play with her?” I glanced back at Felix, his eyes glinting with his affection for anything pet-related.

“Of course you can! And it can fight, but there are some pretty heavy downsides… My secondary resource is just her health bar, and I can’t really use any empowered skills. The boss lady told me that she heard about pet skills from an adventurer, but it was just a rumor for now. That being said though, she’s still a much better fighter than me! VR combat is so cool, but I’ve never had to move around like this myself. It makes me want to join an athletics club!”

“It’d probably be a good idea. I don’t know if there’s proof, but it's a great excuse to stay fit.” I offered my piece, finally sliding in something before Freddy continued rambling.”

Felix nodded with a satisfied smirk, before it turned into another unhappy frown.

“So Freddy wait, you said your boss told you how to use the Tabula Rasa, meaning she used it too?”

The younger man was silent for a moment, chugging the rest of his drink in one final deep gulp.

“Nope, she hasn’t yet. She’s been finetuning her ability the entire time since she wants it to be perfect. The game is pretty responsive to what you want, so I’m not actually sure what’s taking her so long. Now that I think about it, I don’t know what she’s planning on making. Knowing the boss lady, she’s probably unhappy with some specific stat option that is or isn’t showing up.”

Felix’s frown grew wider as Freddy continued to ramble, processing all of the information that he was throwing out. Alice hadn’t mentioned any of this to me, but she was probably blinded by the prospect of having a new toy. The amount of oddly specific information presented sparked an urgent question in my mind.

“Sorry to interrupt – did the boss lady mention if the Tabula Rasas were common items? I realized that they gave us one for free, but if it’s a rare resource…”

“No news as of yet. She’s predicting that we’ll get more after we make it past this starting area. Her assumption is that they gave us a free one to make us curious about what skills are already in the game in the outside world, so that the future Tabula Rasas will be much more difficult to find.”

“So just to make sure, if there’s nothing at all, that means it exists out in the world?” Felix’s frustration was so clear that Freddy paled and froze, before Felix worriedly apologized and explained his desire for the Black Fire Laser Cannon concept to him. As the clarification spilled out, the intern’s eyes seemed to darken with some amount of seriousness.

“From the sounds of it, there probably is something similar out there. Apparently the game world is supposed to be huge, so we’re working against the developers and some limited aspects of AI generated skills. To be honest, the system you’re using seems generic, with obvious foundations in oriental mythology. Considering the fact that Equilibrium operates in a fantasy setting, anything that’s based in a popular mythos will have an overlap. If it were me, I would approach your skill from the opposite direction. You’re too focused on the result and final product. You need to be the person who defines what the Black Fire Laser Cannon inspires, instead of building it on inspiration.”

I took a long quiet blink at the analytical tone shift. Felix was equally speechless — but probably from the gears in his brain working their hardest, judging by the increasingly defined ridges in his forehead.

“If you pass me your contact information, I can send you a spreadsheet of all of the theoretical conditions and concrete data that we’ve gathered in the past few months. I might need to redact a few sheets that contain potentially confidential research, but if you actually care to look through it and understand what the data says, you’ll have what you want in no time. I would pass you my personal file for creating Miss Chonkies, but it’s dense and messy from the lack of organization. You should understand, the more thoroughly that you plan the foundations of the Tabula Rasa skill, the more complexity the game expects you to explain and —“

BZZT! “Mrrrrroooooow~!” BZZT!

My eyes snapped to the jittering phone placed on the table. Freddy had gotten a text with URGENT labeled on it. The oddly tense moment was over, and the more awkward version of the young man was back.

“I’m so sorry you two! I hadn’t realized that we were out for an hour already. Felix, I hope you figure out the Tabula Rasa issues, and I’ll get those files to you ASAP. Isaac, thank you again for my card! It was great meeting you in person. I’ll be sure to arrange a meeting with the boss lady with you two soon!”

The table was oddly silent as Freddy ran out of the cafe. I broke it by sipping on the remains of my chai latte.

“You uh, any closer on the Black Fire Laser Cannon now?”

“…”

I sipped the bland mixture of cinnamon and milk again, the contents of my mason jar dropping dangerously low.

“Let’s head back to your place before you lose your train of thought.”

Felix wordlessly nodded, blankly staring into the space near the table legs as I went to the cashier to pay. He had a habit of completely retreating into his own headspace when he was deep in thoughts. The convenience of it was that he would agree with (almost) anything I suggested.

Apparently, Freddy had already given the cafe his card to pay ahead of time. I wondered how he was able to cover the tab while he was sprinting out of the cafe, but a free drink was a free drink. Gave us a good legitimate reason to invite him out again.

The walk to Felix’s apartment was short and quiet, and I didn’t bother initiating a conversation with him. While the conversation about the Tabula Rasa was interesting, I decided that I wasn’t actually particularly invested in it, so the odds of me just being a needless distraction to his inner voice were high. Freddy had ended up covering significantly more than whatever information I had from Alice, so it wasn’t like Felix was missing out on anything anyways.

Instead, I mentally planned out the day. My morning was pretty free, since Alice had a lunch date with some friends and wouldn't be back until the late afternoon.

Would probably still be a good idea to eat lunch earlier so that I’m hungry by dinner though…

My tentative plan was to run off to the north side of the village to check the skills that the various animals had there. I could also use the time to further explore a concept something Alice had inspired. The tentative name for the concept was “manual skill casting”, but I was certain that someone had probably already made a much snappier label for it.

We arrived at Felix’s modest studio apartment without much fuss. I grabbed a bottle of cold brew from his fridge and promptly said my goodbyes, and got only a distracted grunt from him as an acknowledgement. The brisk walk home was uneventful. I could have browsed more information on my phone, but physically running into one person was good enough for a morning.