Chapter 23: First To A Hundred

We lined up on an open patch of grass, along a straight stretch of sidewalk with a bench where Miguel could sit next to Benji, with Donica’s wheelchair parked on his other side.

Zhizhi stood on the sidewalk facing directly at me, her camera in hand. I had my back to a tree and my phone raised.

Matt stood on my left in the pale sunlight. He’d had his smart glasses on from the outset, and now had his phone out as well. He made a few taps on the screen. Through my phone camera, I saw him transform. The glasses disappeared, as did his phone, and his jeans and bomber jacket rippled into a suit of brigandine, leather armor with metal studs. A cloak, deep blue at his neck, faded to a rich brown near his feet.

I turned my phone and my attention to Lena. She stood on my right, partly hidden by the shade of a pair of pine trees. The darkness didn’t last. She snapped her smart glasses into place and jabbed at her phone. I stood too far away to feel the wave of heat roll off her, but got a fantastic view of her dress and wings erupting forth.

I’d once seen Third Eye interpret Lena’s clothes as armor. That had been when she led me to the apartment where she’d sequestered herself before she moved in with me. The game hadn’t extended the same defensiveness when we went to the construction site, and it didn’t do so now.

I wondered why Matt’s avatar so often appeared armored, and why Lena’s didn’t.

The only one who might have an answer was Matt, and I wasn’t about to ask him right now.

Let’s be real. I wasn’t about to ask him at all, because the two of us rubbed each other the wrong way just by saying hello. Maybe he would post about it on the wiki if he decided it no longer counted as a secret he wanted to keep for himself.

Almost all of us had seen these transformations. Miguel never got to experience his own, and for Zhizhi, they’d always been secondhand.

The interesting reactions came from Benji and Donica.

The former gave a low whistle. “I see what you mean about the graphics. Holy shit.”

“Absolute wizardry,” Miguel said. Which I thought was a little on the nose, but it wasn’t like any of us had told him to hide what we knew from Benji. Hell. It wasn’t like I really wanted him to hide it. If Miguel wanted to come across as the craziest one, he was more than welcome to kick off that conversation.

Donica, on the other hand, drew in a hissing breath. She clutched her hands in her lap and took a long time folding her mouth into a credible smile.

She was the only player we personally knew who’d been dropped from the Third Eye beta after getting to play. The only person who’d had access to magic – and had it ripped away from her.

Pursuing the game had hurt her worse than anyone else we knew. It had given her nothing in return except a hole where her power had been.

What did she want from it now?

I had no time to find out. Nor any idea of how to ask, considering I got along with Donica only barely better than I did with Matt.

“Great stuff,” Zhizhi said. “Thanks for switching the app off and on again to start the video, Lena.”

“No problem,” Lena called.

She sounded like she meant it, and maybe she did. In the open air of the park, with a couple of other players to stand side by side with her, I liked to hope she’d feel comfortable dropping her defenses for a few minutes.

Which wasn’t the same as saying I believed it.

For my part, I’d had Third Eye active the whole time, so Zhizhi’s camera would show me as my avatar. Third Eye interpreted my corduroys as quilted trousers, my bootleg Earth Defense Force sweatshirt as a long tunic with swirling stylized clouds over a blue field, and my unzipped parka as a long blue cloak that pooled at my feet. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to pick up any mud.

“Do I need to go over the rules again?” Zhizhi asked.

“Only if we get to change them,” Lena said.

“Nope,” Zhizhi and I chorused.

Lena put her hands on her hips. Matt folded his arms.

The rules Zhizhi had proposed made me so, so much more comfortable with the idea of Lena plunging headfirst into Third Eye PVP. Normal PVP involved slinging the most lethal objects either player could conjure until one ran out of HP. Under Zhizhi’s rules, they would do the same thing –

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Until one of them lost at least a hundred HP. That would end the round. The first to win two rounds would win the match.

Which only worked because they both started with a max over three hundred. Not every player did. Not every player came close, as I knew all too well.

These rules wouldn’t make PVP any more palatable for me to play, either while I subsisted on the overhealed HP from Albie’s potion, or when I eventually wore down to just the max of ten I started with.

For now, for today, the rules meant Lena and Matt could go all out without even the slightest risk of one of them getting hurt. Or even having to cede XP to one another.

Lena didn’t like it. Her greater max HP was a resource she’d intended to leverage.

I loved it. Her greater max HP meant that even if Matt went too far, he couldn’t get close to actually hurting her.

In fact, I loved it so much, I didn’t completely hate the role Zhizhi had cast me in. I mean, I still did, and I still felt ridiculous to be performing it on camera, but if it amused Lena enough to go along with the rules, I was fully prepared to do my part.

“In that case,” Zhizhi said, “we’re ready to go. Take us away, Cam.”

Her camera trained on me.

I swallowed. Editing would cut that part out. Unless it, too, amused Lena too much.

I could think of worse results than making her laugh.

The thought brought a smile to my face, and my hand up to whip through a series of gestures. A plate of metal appeared before me, liquefied to mercury courtesy of Water, became an orb, then changed back to Iron. I swapped to Air, bobbed it in place once.

In my best announcer voice, I called out, “Round One. Fight!”

I sent the orb skyward and stepped back.

Just in time, as Matt’s familiar projectile ripped through the air I’d occupied. He’d used this in a duel with Erin, so I knew what to expect. A piece of Stone stretched into an almost invisibly thin line, shaped in real time with Earth so one tip or the other became a striking point.

If Lena had been allowed to fight to her last HP, she probably would’ve just tanked that attack, because we’d seen how little damage it did. With only a hundred HP to work with, though, she seemed to feel the need to play defense.

Of course, Lena’s idea of defense and mine didn’t work quite the same.

As the Stone flicked toward her, she mashed her fingers together three times. Her explosion had destroyed my Stone shield, and that had been a solid plate. Matt’s attack, stretched thin to be harder to see and capable of striking further away, never stood a chance. Pebbles showered the grass.

“You better not be trying the same tricks on me you used on Erin,” Lena said.

“I do hate to give up all my secrets.” Matt conjured another plate, this one Iron.

“Well if you want,” Lena said, “you can just give up. Although I don’t think my viewers are going to be very impressed with the power of Earth.”

Matt shrugged.

I realized it was more than a dismissal and had to clamp my mouth shut to keep from barking a warning. As the referee, my role was to start and stop matches, not to take sides.

Not that it mattered. Lena saw the same thing I did. She went for her phone, but before her thumb could even brush its surface, she jerked back, hissing in pain.

I tensed, but the tightness left Lena’s eyes in an instant. Just Third Eye’s way of letting her know not to let that happen again.

“Pretty good acting,” Benji said.

Miguel and Donica glanced at him, but neither spoke.

Matt’s Iron pulsed in the air beside him, almost like it was breathing. His shrug had half-hidden the gesture that made one of those pulses extend far further, into a point that had jabbed into Lena. The fluidity of his control seemed better than during his duel with Erin. It wasn’t quite on the level we’d seen from Albie, because she’d managed such smooth transformations while maintaining her weapon in a solid state between strikes, but it seemed like a step in the right direction.

“Nineteen damage,” Lena said. “That’s not going to cut it.”

Another way in which Matt’s attack wasn’t on the same level as Albie’s. In exchange for speed, he’d traded away a ton of power.

Both combatants had agreed to announce how much damage they took. The pauses would make their match a lot less like an actual fight, but a lot easier to dub explanations over when we assembled the video. Without a way to pipe from each of their Third Eye apps, it was also the only way we could track when the match should end.

“It’s only not going to cut it,” Matt said, “if you have some way of stopping me from doing it about five more times.”

“I mean,” Lena said, “you’re not wrong.”

Matt’s hand moved again, and again, his Iron pulsed into a spear.

Again, Lena went for her phone, conjuring a plate of Stone between the two of them, but Matt just lowered his hand and arced his attack around the shield.

Which would’ve worked out great for him, if the Stone had actually been meant as a shield.

Instead, Lena’s fingers flew across her screen.

Everything crashed together at once. Matt’s attack, which lanced into Lena’s side. Lena’s Iron, conjured a half-step back from her Stone. In between the two, her Wood, infused with triple Fire, which rippled into an explosion.

Her Iron crashed into the trees behind her.

Her Stone, softened by Fire, subjected to an explosion closer than the one that had shattered my shield, directed by the energy reflected from the Iron plate behind it, turned into a shotgun spray of hot gravel.

Lena backed away, rubbing her ribs. “Twenty two.”

Matt picked himself up off the ground. He bit out, “A hundred and seven.”

I tried not to smile too much as I lowered my orb to mark the end of the round.