“This is pointless,” Tarnish said.
His words made Solace pause. He briefly checked his veil to make sure his spirit was concealed, and then turned to his partner. “What is?”
“This—” Tarnish said, gesturing to their surroundings and then back at themselves.
Solace looked around, taking in everything there was to notice at the Arcane Arcade, their third destination for the night. It was the largest recreational center in the city. They were currently near one of the entrances to the place, a section that seemed to contain old fashioned machines instead of anything scientifically advanced. Over the music coming from each machine and the general chatter of the crowd, he could hear a microphone amplified voice coming from the center of the room, but not what the person was saying.
“Perhaps,” Solace said. “But we won’t be here long. I want to see a few things and then—”
“This one wasn’t talking about the games, but what Senior Brother is doing,” Tarnish interrupted.
Solace frowned. “How so?”
“If this whole… adventure, is to learn more about the places we visit, should we not engage in the activities at these places?”
“You just want to play the games,” Solace retorted.
Tarnish flashed his toothy smile. “That as well.”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“Senior Brother,” Tarnish said seriously. “Is this not a partnership? Senior Brother wanted to explore and we explored. Now, this one wants to experience what the Merchants think is fun. Is this not fair?”
Solace paused. He supposed he could put off the other locations on his list tomorrow, when they were originally scheduled before he had learned about the botched booking.
“Fine,” Solace relented. “We can spend some time trying some of the games.”
“Excellent!”
“But not too long, I want to eat dinner at some point.”
“Of course,” Tarnish said.
The man set off to find his first game, taking his time. He meandered until he stopped in front of a traditional arcade cabinet, one with a joystick and several buttons.
“How does one play this?” Tarnish asked.
“I don’t know,” Solace lied. He moved behind Tarnish and read aloud the basic instructions to the game, helpfully written on the side. As he did so, the cabinet’s music came into focus. Heavy bass and screeching tones. “The stick is for movement and the buttons are as follows. Up is to jump, right is to swing, down is to…”
When Solace finished, Tarnish decided to try it and started up the game. All one had to do was place a finger on the machine’s scanner to pay.
In moments, Tarnish was piloting a little pixelated person as it delved a rift. Coincidentally, it was populated with giant spiders.
“This one is empty handed!” Tarnish complained as he jabbed at the buttons to make the person punch the first spider with his fist. The arachnid exploded after a few hits, leaving behind a cloud of blood and a little floating sword. “Oh.”
It turned out the character had a Talent to convert defeated opponents into equipment. After learning that, Tarnish eagerly started running at all of the monsters, hacking away at them as he made his way deeper into the rift.
After five or so minutes, Tarnish had amassed several swords, shields, and full sets of chitinous armor.
“It should be impossible to lose at this point,” the man said smugly.
Less than a second later, his character died from a jumping spider that grazed his shoulder.
“...What happened?” Tarnish demanded. “That was not a lethal attack.”
“Your health hit zero,” Solace replied.
“What?”
Solace pointed to the little meter at the top of the screen, one that had been slowly depleting throughout the entire playthrough as Tarnish chose to take glancing blows from the spiders to do more lethal ones of his own. “When you take damage, this bar decreases. The character dies when the bar is gone.”
“But that is ridiculous!” Tarnish said. “Injuries do not work like that.”
Solace shrugged. “It’s just a game.” He pointed again at the screen, which was now gray-scaled and had the word “CONTINUE?” plastered on it along with a countdown. “If you pay again, you can keep going.”
Tarnish frowned. “Again?”
“Alternatively, you can give up and—”
“Never!”
Tarnish paid, only to die another five minutes later. He then paid again, dying just three minutes in. The game was getting harder, filling the tunnels with more spiders that were also faster and stronger. They started having venomous fangs too.
Despite this, Tarnish kept trying. As the man played, he was getting better, adjusting his fighting style to compensate for the health mechanic, but he wasn’t keeping pace with the difficulty increases of a game designed to kill the player and squeeze as many credits out of them as possible.
It was on the eleventh death that Solace decided to step in. “You should probably stop.”
“Not until the boss is dead,” Tarnish replied vehemently.
“I don’t think you’ll encounter it without dying triple what you have so far.”
“And?”
And that’s expensive, was what Solace was going to say. But it suddenly occurred to him that someone with Tarnish’s background might not be the most financially responsible. Especially since rapidly Tiering up could create an “easy come, easy go” mindset due to how the value of rift rewards ballooned each Tier.
So instead he said, “And that will take too much time.”
Tarnish immediately moved his hands away from the controls, and turned around, leaving his character to die again. “Very well.”
After that, Tarnish set off to try other games, making his way deeper inside the building. The man tended to gravitate towards the games with shorter lines.
Solace, for his part, stuck behind Tarnish while focusing his attention on the layout of the place instead of the games themselves. The floor plan was erratic, winding. There were no clear lines of sight to an exit. In addition, the machines grew more technologically advanced the closer they were to the center; they had better graphics, sleeker designs, changing until the “cabinets” looked nothing like the ones on the periphery.
He briefly mused if there were terms for the various types of games. In a reality full of immortals with a recorded history spanning millions of years, surely calling something “classic” or “retro” wasn’t descriptive enough.
Maybe they call the oldest types of games classic-classics. Or specify by year and—
“Is Senior Brother not going to try anything?” Tarnish asked.
“Nothing has interested me yet,” Solace replied.
“Really? Nothing at all?” Tarnish pressed.
With a sigh, Solace looked around at the games. He really wasn’t interested in them, not when he had other things that he wanted to do, but if he had to choose something…
He walked over to a table, slanted so that it was almost like a podium. He had no idea what the game was, didn’t even take a moment to read the title, but the controls were something he hadn’t ever seen before. It was just a singular innocuous half-sphere that could fit in one’s palm.
The moment he paid and put his hand on it, the sphere glowed and a 3D holographic projection popped up from the table.
“Choose a character,” the screen said. Below the words were four individuals defined by a color scheme. Red, green, blue, and purple.
Solace spent a moment staring at characters, especially the red one. There was something familiar about it, but he couldn’t remember where.
“How does one play?” Tarnish asked.
“Not sure,” Solace replied. He tried to push on the orb, but it wouldn’t budge. Tapping it did nothing either. He knew there had to be an intuitive way to use it, since there were no directions, but he couldn’t figure it out. With a frown, he focused his spiritual perception onto the thing.
To his surprise, the half-sphere had an incredibly complex interface just underneath the surface of the material. It was mana circuitry, a branch of runes that was geared towards engineering and this reality’s equivalent to electric wiring. Only, instead of powering anything, the circuits had hundreds of tiny nodes designed to pick up nearby mana and transfer it.
Hesitantly, Solace sent a small amount of mana into the sphere from his index finger. It was less than a tenth of a standard unit of mana. Immediately, the sphere lit up and a tiny cursor on the screen moved.
“What did Senior Brother do?” Tarnish asked.
“Gave it some mana.”
“It must be annoying to use, then.”
Solace shrugged. After working with Edison, his ability to control mana output and location was excellent. It only took a few minutes for him to fiddle with the half-sphere, to get a feel for it, and then he selected the first character, the red one.
The screen quickly faded to black while the sound of music emanated from the speakers. Six little green pinpoints began to glow in the darkness, flickering.
A chill went down Solace’s spine as he saw them, but he didn’t know why.
“Another try…?” A voice said, accompanied by subtitles at the bottom of the screen.
Solace paused. “No…”
The green eyes blinked, and suddenly the scene became illuminated by light, dim, flickering torchlight. Before Solace’s character stood a massive scarred whale, its weary gaze lingering on his character.
At the sight, Solace withdrew his hand from the sphere as if it was searing hot.
“Is something the matter?” Tarnish asked.
“It shocked me,” Solace said, waggling his fingers for emphasis. But the shock wasn’t electrical, it was mental.
For before Solace lay a creature from one of his lives, his very first life. One that he had almost all but forgotten. And now, the memories were resurfacing, coming back with a vengeance. Taking a deep breath, Solace took a hold of those memories, those thoughts, and shoved them into his spirit. When he was done, he refocused on the game.
That’s all it was, he reminded himself as he lay a hand back onto the sphere, just a game. The nature of multiple realities meant that there was always a chance one could coincide with the other. This just happened to be the first time he’d ever had it happen.
The whale offered three choices, listed at the bottom of the screen. Boons with which to tackle the trials that lay beyond.
Despite the fact that Solace had technically done this before, lived through it before, he did not know which one to take. He had long suspected, and now had confirmed, that his experience in that sunless Spire had been altered by Him.
So, Solace picked the boon that would grant him a relic, a little treasure to boost his character’s capabilities. And then, he was off. The red character left the room and walked up the uneven cobblestone steps. At the top was another room and his first opponents.
Two slimes, one larger than the other, the classic start to any adventure. The music quickly changed, somber and slow. His character drew his sword, and combat initiated.
But it wasn’t what Solace expected.
Because rather than a hack and slash game, it was a turn based one. Cards appeared on the bottom of Solace’s screen, ones that described attacks and moves.
Every turn he could play a set number of cards, causing the character to make animated attacks or maneuvers before the slimes had theirs. After a few rounds of experimentation, two puddles of slime lay before his slightly injured character. The game offered him three rewards to pick from, more moves for his character to learn. Once Solace chose, he moved onto the next floor. If his memory served him right, the Spire was a long climb.
—
It ended up being fifty five floors tall.
Fifty five floors to reach the top, a miniscule number in the grand scheme of things and yet it encompassed the entirety of one of his worst experiences.
How many times had Solace died in that Spire, only to be forced to restart at the bottom empty handed?
Uncountable, because he didn’t want to.
But perhaps Solace could put it behind him now, as he watched his character step over the corpse of the final boss, a grotesque and massive blue heart that beat no more, and ascend the final steps to the top.
There was a certain level of catharsis for Solace as the credits rolled. For once, all the planning and strategizing had paid off. He had not experienced yet another ignoble death from some random encounter.
“Finished,” he said to Tarnish, who was still standing behind him.
“That was amazing!” a voice replied. “I can’t believe you managed to win with only five relics.”
The voice wasn’t Tarnish’s.
Solace wheeled around to see a complete stranger spectating him. The action made the stranger flinch.
“What is it?” They said.
“I thought you were someone else,” Solace replied. His eyes searched the nearby crowd, but Tarnish was nowhere to be seen. Of course Tarnish would wander off when Solace was distracted.
“Oh, well, I’m me,” they replied. “Um, actually, I’m Mei, but—”
“Did you happen to see a man about your height? With piercings here, here, and here? Aggressively obstreperous?” Solace moved his hands to indicate where the piercings were.
“Huh? Uh, there might have been someone like that. But he left when I showed up to watch.”
“And how long were you watching me?” Solace asked.
“About thirty minutes?”
“Do you remember a general direction?”
They pointed.
“Alright, thank you,” Solace said. He took off to search for the man.
“Wait I— your welcome… I guess…”
Though it seemed like the stranger wanted to chat, Solace wasn’t interested. Not when Tarnish was probably getting into trouble that Solace would have to bail him out of. The only issue was, half an hour was a long time, and the man could be anywhere.
With a deep breath, Solace expanded his spiritual perception to its utmost limit, using his Talent to reallocate all of his essence into his mind. His “sight” increased to dozens of feet, pouring over the arcade. It was easy to filter out the spirits of inanimate objects and focus on a living person’s, but there were still so many spirits to examine and spiritual perception was less like a sight perceiving color and more like determining a specific ingrained pattern by touch.
He began to work his way from one side of the arcade to the other in search of Tarnish, moving slowly and carefully to make sure that there was no way for him to miss the man. With how stealthily Tarnish had managed to get away, perhaps he had learned how to veil his spirit as well.
After thirty minutes, however, he realized that the search could take several hours at the rate he was going. The arcade was just that big. Solace needed to change tactics.
He spotted a nearby wall with a map of the arcade and moved towards it.
Tarnish tended to enjoy novelties. With an hour to explore the arcade, he’d probably have started roaming from one end to the other. So, if Solace estimated the amount of time each game could take, as well as how many games Tarnish would be willing to try…
It wouldn’t work out. There were too many variables to actually predict where Tarnish was and the man in general was unpredictable.
Solace sighed as he felt his stomach growl. He considered leaving Tarnish and getting something to eat.
That was when he saw that the arcade had a food court, on the side opposite where he was and in the general direction that Tarnish had snuck towards. Perhaps the man was already enjoying a meal there.
Solace memorized the way and then took off once more. He kept his spiritual perception flared just in case.
The trip took another ten or so minutes. At one point, Solace passed through a carnival themed section which had illusion runes to make the area appear outside on a sunny day.
If Tarnish isn’t where I think he is, I’ll come back to that.
The food court itself was easy to spot. It was its own subsection domed in a curtain of light with exactly a dozen restaurants surrounded by tables and seats. The moment Solace stepped past the curtain of light, he was hit with a deluge of scents from the food.
His stomach growled even more at the scents, but he forced himself to search for Tarnish first.
“Hey, turn it down!” Someone at a table yelled while pointing at Solace.
He looked behind him. “Me?
“Yes, you, whole else?”
“Turn what down?”
“Your spiritual perception,” they replied while shaking their head. “Bad manners.”
Solace frowned, but did as directed. He hadn’t known that it was possible to detect someone’s spiritual perception. It was like being able to tell when something was being physically looked at. It wasn’t an obvious skill, and his work with Edison certainly hadn’t taught him it.
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Perhaps it was their Talent. Though that seemed unlikely. Hardly anyone casually revealed their Talent like that.
“That’s better,” the person in question grunted, before turning back to their food and a tiny screen of light before them which was streaming some sort of sport.
Solace decided to ask the person. He approached them and took in their appearance. Leather jacket and trousers, blue curly hair, an overall androgynous appearance. The person’s violet eyes squinted at the screen intently.
“What, wanna start something?” They asked aggressively as Solace approached, eyes never leaving the screen.
“No,” Solace said in a placating tone. “I just wanted to ask about your ability to sense spiritual perception.”
The person snorted. “Can’t do it?”
“No.”
“Well, I hope you’re not here for the Exhibition. You’re way behind the curve if you can’t even do that.”
“Would you be willing to show me how?” Solace asked.
“What do I look like, a teacher?” The person replied, waving a hand dismissively. “Go away and figure it out yourself. I’m eating.”
Solace shrugged. “Thank you anyways.”
At least he knew it was something he could learn. But as he was taking his leave, his enhanced mind allocation caught up with him and he realized that he had seen something on the stranger’s screen.
He wheeled around and walked back.
“Are you serious?” The person demanded, but Solace ignored him.
Because on the person’s little light screen, the camera angle was focused on Tarnish running from people and dodging between metal bars to avoid them.
“Where is this?” Solace asked.
“The arcade?”
“No,” Solace pointed, “Where is that.”
“The arcade,” the person said again, annoyed.
It took Solace a moment to get it.
“So the thing you’re watching is streaming from some place in the arcade?” He asked for clarification.
“Yes.”
“Is it alright if you told me where in the arcade?”
“The Nexus.”
“Thank you again,” Solace said before walking away once more. As he left, he could hear the person mumbling about how the Exhibition always seemed to bring “weirdos.”
A quick check of another map revealed that the Nexus was the name for the center of the arcade. Unlike the other labeled areas, the Nexus only had a vague description of what it contained: “daily entertainment.”
He briefly worried that Tarnish would be gone by the time he made it, but the man was still there when Solace finally laid his eyes on the rink-sized area. Like the person’s stream had shown, Tarnish and a group of others were running around in a field outlined by paint and filled with random structures made from metal bars. Several individuals were outlined in strobing lights that altered colors. Occasionally, someone would stop being outlined while another began to glow. At other times, a small orb of light would flicker into existence and disappear whenever someone touched them.
He had no idea what they were doing, so he scanned the audience sitting on nearby bleachers. He identified one of the louder ones and approached, climbing up a few rows of seats.
“Just got here,” Solace began, imitating the tone and drawl of the person from the food court to try to fit in. “What’re they doing today?”
“Ultra-tag,” the woman responded. “Woo! Go Tarnish!”
Tarnish, for his part, flashed a smile at the people cheering. One which widened when the man noticed Solace’s presence.
Solace raised a brow. Apparently Tarnish had left an impression. And after a bit of spectating, it wasn’t difficult to see why.
The man was quite literally moving circles around most of the people that tried to tag him. He was, afterall, in excellent shape and had even picked up the basics of integrating spiritual perception into maneuvers. Whenever a glowing limb tried to tag him, regardless of what direction or if he could see it, he easily stepped aside. It was almost mocking, certainly taunting, and a lot of the audience was eating it up.
Solace quickly learned that the glowing outline was a countdown. If someone was glowing when the light became red, they would be eliminated. The only way to stop glowing was to tag someone and pass it to them. The glowing orbs, on the other hand, were temporary game modifiers for the person that touched it; they seemed to range from halting the progression of a countdown to outright allowing a person to somehow temporarily phase through the metal obstacles.
Once all the lights were gone, roughly a fourth of the survivors would be outlined to start the next round of eliminations. He watched as the numbers rapidly dwindled down until it was just Tarnish and one other person.
“Will the challenger dethrone today’s biggest winner?” A voice said over the speakers. An announcer of some sort.
He should, Solace thought. Tarnish’s opponent was on the bigger side and had fast reflexes, but was ultimately slower and less nimble around the metal structures. They also weren’t as fit as Tarnish and had nearly been eliminated several times before the finals.
There was a minute countdown to give the two finalists a chance to catch their breath in opposite corners. And for the audience to place bets, Solace noted, as he saw a few people pressing buttons on a device or miming the activation of something through their AI implants. When the timer neared zero, the audience joined in on the count.
“Three!” They cried.
“Two!”
“One!”
A horn rang and the light flared bright blue on Tarnish. Immediately, he began to rush over, occasionally ducking or jumping over obstacles to make his way to his opponent.
His opponent, apparently named Lludd based on some of the audience’s cheers, merely climbed onto one of the slightly raised platforms. It was a bad move, in Solace’s opinion. While it made it harder for one to initially be tagged, it limited movement and made it harder to tag back.
And he wasn’t the only one who knew this, Solace thought, as he saw Tarnish smile as he approached. His arms were splayed outwards at angles to cut down on Lludd’s already limited options. In this position, all it would take was for Tarnish to do a feint and a lunge in order to win. There was no way Lludd would be able to catch Tarnish once tagged.
But when Tarnish executed the maneuver, he missed, allowing Lludd to jump over Tarnish’s upper body and sail to safety.
The crowd groaned and cheered in equal measure, seemingly divided equally in terms of supporters for each finalist. Solace didn’t make either noise, however. Instead, he frowned thoughtfully, reviewing what he saw.
Tarnish shouldn’t have missed. Not with his generally exceptional dexterity and his cultivation spread.
Is this a fixed match to rig the betting?
Briefly, he worried about Tarnish getting into something that was highly illegal in the Corporations and had steep penalties, but one look at Tarnish’s face convinced him otherwise. The man was genuinely confused by the miss as well.
No, something else was going on here, which became increasingly apparent as the game continued and Tarnish kept missing despite constantly cornering Lludd. The arena was a dazzling display of flashing lights as the game modifying orbs flickered in and out of existence. But no matter how they changed, how the lights flickered, as the seconds ticked by the countdown glow stayed firmly on Tarnish much to his visibly growing frustration.
“And that’s the game folks! A one sided defeat dealt by Lludd to Tarnish, breaking his five game win streak.”
There was a wavering of light, and then the metal bars disappeared, vanishing into tiny motes of light themselves. Hardlight constructs.
Solace briefly noted that it was in fact Tarnish who had been “the biggest winner” of the day, but waved the thought aside as he noted the fury in the man’s eyes. Tarnish was seeing red, and it wasn’t just the outline.
Tarnish began to say some stuff, angrily, while Lludd laughed it off and said something back. Based on Tarnish’s reaction, it seemed to be a taunt. Immediately, Solace stood up and made his way down to the area. He needed to make sure a fight didn’t break out.
“Normally we’d start the next match immediately, folks,” the announcer said. “But it looks like the two want a rematch! With a twist too. Would one Solace make his way to the arena? Solace.”
The last bit of the speech was in the Sect’s language.
What has he done now?
The moment Solace showed himself, Tarnish turned to him with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Senior Brother, this one must ask for your assistance.”
“In what?”
“A two duel,” Lludd said in a stilted accent, no doubt using an AI implant to translate. It was sloppy. “Er, dual duel.”
“And why would I do this?” Solace asked wearily.
“To help restore this one’s honor!” Tarnish replied. “And win the wager.”
Solace stared at Tarnish. Since when had the man cared about honor? “What’s the wager?”
“The losers have to pay for the winners’ next meal,” Lludd replied.
It was a very open ended set of terms, which caused Solace’s eyes to narrow. Those sounded like terrible terms to Solace. He knew for a fact that a nearby buffet charged by the minute and suspected that Lludd knew about the place too. Perhaps this was a little con by the locals on some perceived foreigners.
“Were you the one that set these stakes?” Solace asked Lludd.
The man shrugged while smiling. “The price of a rematch, though Tarnish insisted on… phoning a friend.”
Solace pretended to not understand, tilting his head in confusion.
“Asking for help,” Lludd clarified. “Making it a two versus two. You and Tarnish, me and her.”
A quick thumb jab at someone behind him. She was one of the people who made it to the top four in the last match, and was incredibly quick. A Tier 4.
Solace considered it for a moment. Would he be able to beat them? Perhaps, but only if it was fair. The last match had been suspicious, even if none of the arcade’s anti-cheating measures had been triggered; he recognized some of the runes in the intricate circuits laying a finger’s width below the now empty stadium. Using a [Skill] within its bound or an enchanted item would be instantly detected.
If there had been cheating, it was probably Talent based since they were much harder to track and identify.
Solace paused, was using one’s Talent considered cheating in these types of games? As he understood it, Talents were a natural phenomenon of a living, thinking person’s spirit in this reality. An argument could be made that using a Talent was the same as using a limb.
“I would like to know the rules of the game first,” Solace said.
“It’s simple,” Lludd said. “At the start of a round, a person will glow. Whoever has the glow at the end of the round will be eliminated and the only way to stop glowing is to transfer it through touch to someone else. This will repeat until only one person remains. The team with that last remaining person will be considered the winner.”
“This is a team game,” Solace pressed. “What are the rules on helping allies, blocking, or grabbing opponents? Can I use [Techniques]? Talents?”
“Help each other however you’d like. Open hand contact only, but no grabbing, pushing, or tripping. I don’t know what techniques are… oh you mean [Skills]. Yeah, no, no [Skills]. And Talent’s can’t be used once the round begins.”
But it can be used beforehand, Solace mused. And potentially between rounds.
It was a setup ripe for underhanded tricks, favoring anyone with the right kind of Talent to abuse the rules. It also disadvantaged Solace, since he wouldn’t be allowed to change allocations in the middle of the round unless he was willing to cheat.
All in all, the deck was stacked against them and Solace approached Tarnish to say so quietly.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said. “This whole situation gives them the advantage.”
“It doesn’t matter, we will win regardless,” Tarnish said confidently.
“You understand that a meal in this city could technically cost us each a month’s wages, yes?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tarnish repeated obstinately. “We won’t lose.”
“Why do you want to do this so much?” Solace demanded. “Why is this so important to you? This is just a game.”
“It’s not just a game. Not when it involves restoring this one’s honor!” Tarnish yelled, loud enough for anyone nearby to hear. “No bet is too big, no risk is too daunting.”
“Then you’re foolish,” Solace said. “And this partnership is—”
“What partnership? It has only been one sided so far. Senior Brother makes a plan, and expects this one to follow. Now, he refuses to listen when this one has a plan of his own.”
Solace paused. The issue of fairness again.
“Do you have a plan then?” Solace asked.
“Yes! But this one can’t tell you it, otherwise it won’t be as effective.”
“But you’re confident in it?”
“Yes,” Tarnish said seriously. “No matter what, the outcome can only be satisfactory.”
Solace studied the man’s face for a few moments, and then sighed. “Fine, but the next time I ask you to do something, you can’t complain about it.”
“Deal!”
Someone in an arcade uniform presented Solace and Tarnish, the two without AIs, with a tablet. On it, a virtual contract was displayed detailing the terms and stakes of the bet. Once he read through it, Solace signed it with his essence signature, then Tarnish did as well. They were locked in now, no way to escape.
Once Lludd and his friend also signed the contract and the arcade worker confirmed it, Solace and Tarnish made their way to one side while their opponents to the other. As they moved, Solace relocated his essence to a more ideal distribution, favoring dexterity and flexibility over raw strength. He kept his stride slow, giving him as much time as possible to reallocate.
“Hurry up!” Lludd complained, but Solace again pretended not to understand.
When Solace was finally in his starting position, the lights in the arena activated. Metal obstacles began to materialize out of thin air, in a new pattern different from the previous match’s. A countdown began. The audience joined in like before.
“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!”
“Thanks for the meal!” Lludd taunted from across the area.
Solace ignored him, instead studying the field, memorizing all of the bars and platforms.
“Six! Five! Four!”
“Knuckle-sandwich,” Tarnish muttered furiously.
“Three! Two!”
Solace turned to Tarnish. Had he just said—
“One!”
The buzzer rang and the game began, no time to worry about what Tarnish said. There was a little dinging sound that Solace had never heard before, and then Lludd’s teammate began to glow.
It was a good start for them.
“You got this, Anna!” Lludd said.
“Scatter,” Solace said, moving away from Tarnish and a bit deeper into the area.
He chose a place with a platform between him and Anna, with enough space to dodge sideways or even backwards if he wanted.
It would have been a good move, except for some reason Tarnish decided to follow on his heels.
“What are you doing?” Solace demanded.
“Trust.”
Solace would have given another sigh of annoyance, but in an actual match of any sort, he needed complete control of his breathing.
Because the two were grouped up, it was inevitable that Anna approached them while Lludd himself stood back and out of the way. The woman leapt at Solace, who was in front, but Solace easily contorted his body out of harm’s way before deftly jumping between bars and to the side.
He supposed it wasn’t the worst to be grouped together, Solace thought. Having two targets to choose from could cause some hesitation, like a school of fish grouping together to confuse predators. Then, when one was targeted, the other could easily escape—
“And Tarnish has been tagged!” The announcer said.
Are you serious?
Solace wheeled around to see Tarnish now glowing, chasing after the woman as she made her escape.
“Have you no shame?” Lludd taunted from his spot. “Pick on someone your own size Tarnish! Or was your plan to win without actually beating me? Just pathetic.”
Tarnish wheeled around and glared at Lludd.
“No! Keep chasing the closest person!” Solace said.
But his words apparently went unheard. Tarnish began to race towards Lludd, brushing past Solace’s position to do so.
“Stay. Part of plan.” Tarnish whispered as he passed.
“What?”
But the man was already gone, chasing after Lludd. Solace could only watch baffled as the two began the same cat and mouse game as the previous match. Tarnish would get close, but then Lludd would slip away.
“Are you slower?” Lludd continued to taunt. “Tired already? If your hand eye-coordination isn’t up to snuff, I know a few arcade games that can help.”
The whole chase only covered one half of the area, meaning that Solace could and did stay in the same spot like Tarnish wanted without positioning suboptimally.
He decided to take the time to study the obstacles in more depth, better memorizing every single bar in the case that it ended up being him against Lludd and Anna.
The obstacles were hardlight constructs, but what did that mean? Solace reached out to grab a bar. It easily fit in his palm and was roughly textured, like sandpaper. When he squeezed it, the bar had a miniscule amount of give before firming up. Perhaps it was a safeguard against light bumps.
“Now!” Tarnish yelled. “Block!”
Tarnish had ended up managing to herd Lludd towards Solace. Not completely, but enough for Solace to move in position and cut off the best way of retreat.
Solace did just that, and then Tarnish leapt at Lludd. It was an all out dive to tag the man from behind.
But for some reason, Tarnish’s movements were once again off, a bit too slow and uncoordinated. He ended up missing Lludd, soaring through the air instead.
And into Anna.
There was a loud thud on impact, and then a soundless clang as Anna hit her head against the bar behind her. Hard.
“Oooooh,” the announcer said while the audience all winced in sympathy.
The game was immediately put on pause, and the arcade employee came out to check on her. There was a faint green glow as the employee activated a [Skill].
“She’ll be fine,” the employee said after a few moments, “but she obviously won’t be playing at her best after this, not for a bit.”
“What?” Tarnish asked.
“She can’t play anymore, you overzealous oaf!” Lludd said. “You fouled her and should be disqualified.”
Though Anna had been his teammate and possibly friend, he didn’t look that upset about it.
Tarnish, on the other hand, frowned, looking pensive. “Agreed. If she can no longer play, then this one shall not as well. Is this satisfactory?”
“Yes,” Lludd said immediately. “We’ll settle this like it was supposed to be. One on one, but me against him.” He pointed at Solace.
Are you serious?
Solace went over the last few moments, furiously trying to figure out how he had ended up in this position. A match with an unreasonable amount of money on the line against someone higher Tiered who was somehow probably cheating while he himself couldn’t even use his Talent effectively.
As the field cleared, with Tarnish walking off and Anna carried away on a [Skill] conjured stretcher, the only conclusion Solace could come to was that Tarnish was atrocious at planning.
“The show must go on folks, and the game must be played out! Let’s start the next round: ten! Nine!”
“I hope you’re better than Tarnish, friend,” Lludd began, but Solace tuned him out. He needed to come up with his own plan now, a way to victory.
“Eight! Seven! Six!”
There had been no game modification orbs in this duel, from what he had noticed of last round. That was good, it meant one less unfamiliar variable to factor in.
“Five! Four!”
Whatever Lludd had been doing to make it hard to tag him, it didn’t seem to make Lludd that much more dexterous or good at chasing.
“Three! Two! One!”
Solace’s eyes narrowed. There was a way to secure victory, and fortunately, his allocations were already good enough to execute the plan.
“Go!”
The buzzer rang, and Lludd began to glow.
“Lucky!” The man shouted as he raced towards Solace, winding his way through the metal obstacles.
Solace, rather than move into a more advantageous position, leapt onto a nearby raised platform and then began to dust the dirt off the soles of his shows with the back of his hand.
“Have you given up already?” Lludd asked, approaching rapidly. “Don’t think you can beat someone higher Tiered than you?”
The man’s hand shot out to tag Solace’s leg. He jumped over it much like how Lludd had jumped over Tarnish in the first round.
But rather than land on the ground, Solace sailed through the air to land on top of the highest metal bar he could reach.
“What a maneuver!” The announcer exclaimed.
Lludd turned around, searching the ground in confusion before his eyes finally found Solace overhead.
“Show-off,” his opponent snarled, running forward with his hand raised high to reach.
Solace said nothing. Instead, he jumped out of harm's way again, nimbly landing onto another raised bar, and then another further. With his essence allocations, the bars’ rough texture, and his delving shoes that provided excellent grip, he was able to not-quite-easily balance on the thin bars and dance out of the man’s reach.
“You can’t do this forever!” Lludd said.
But Solace could. And he did. For the rest of the game, fifty five agonizing seconds of athletic effort, he stayed atop the bars, running from one end to the other. Because of Lludd’s big size, he was forced to spend far more effort winding his way through the obstacles than Solace did jumping on top of them.
“And with that, we have our winner!” The announcer said when Lludd’s outline turned red. “And what a win it was! I’ve never seen anyone able to do that, folks. A most impressive show of balance.”
With a sigh, Solace fell to the ground as the obstacles dissipated into motes of light. Though he had exerted himself as much as needed, he had hardly broken a sweat.
He should have been happy with the win, pleased with the results of his training paying off, but instead he was irritated at Tarnish for putting him in such a disadvantageous position to begin with.
All for an overpriced meal.
Lludd was shouting something, demanding a rematch probably, but Solace ignored him and stalked towards Tarnish.
“We’re done here,” Solace said. “Let’s go.”
“What about the promised meal?” Tarnish asked.
“The one you didn’t care about?”
“Well, it’s always important to make the most of one’s spoils.”
“The payment is attached to our accounts,” Solace said tersely. “No matter where we eat, the next meal will be paid for by those two. Now, let’s go.”
“Where?”
“A restaurant several roads away from here.”
Tarnish frowned. “Can this one not choose where to have his free meal?”
“Tarnish,” Solace said wearily. “It has been a long night and I am going to go to that restaurant because this will be the only chance to do so cheaply. You can choose to either join me, trusting my judgment of restaurant, or meet me later back at where we are staying.”
There was a long pause. “Very well then, lead the way.”
Solace turned on his heel and made his way to the exit. He ignored anyone trying to talk to him as he left, his mind stewing on what had happened tonight.
Tarnish and him were going to have a long talk after this.