Chapter 87: Thesis and Antithesis
“Get off your high horse, Matt,” Lena snapped. “You’re not the teacher of anybody heading in there. We’re grown-ass adults.”
“Oh?” Matt looked back and forth between her, his watch, and Bernie. “You’re the one who wants to treat the game like some kind of Pokemon knockoff. Are you claiming that if you had a horse, you’d get off it?”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll admit, if I actually had a magic horse, I would totes ride it as much as I could.”
“It’s not a literal expression,” I said.
Too late. Lena had unicorns on the brain, or maybe pegasi. She murmured, “But a magic horse, though.”
“Regardless,” Matt said, “I’m not giving you my watch. If any of you want it, you’ll have to win it.”
He tucked it back into the inside pocket of his jacket and folded his arms.
Waiting to see if any of us would accept his challenge.
I had no interest in doing so. I didn’t know how much Matt might’ve leveled up since the last time we tangled, but I was pretty sure that with the stats I had from Albie’s potion, I could win any Third Eye duel through sheer endurance. But those were HP and MP I wasn’t getting back. Ones I very much wanted to save in case there genuinely was PVE ahead of us – in case some kind of monster lurked in the construction site.
“We only need the watch to do one particular time-based experiment,” Donica said. “I’m fairly sure that if we have to, we can just download an app that tracks time on our phones without syncing.”
“You’re so eager to get back in there, Donica?” Matt asked.
She scowled. “I’m committed at this point. Better to get it over with.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you’re going to do, then?”
We exchanged glances.
“I certainly won’t object to footage of a Third Eye fight,” Zhizhi said, “but it doesn’t sound like a great use of everybody’s resources.”
“Yeah.” Lena wiggled her way out from my arms. “But have you considered that I’d really like to kick Matt’s ass?”
Erin stepped between them.
“You should arrange a match for tomorrow, then,” she said. “Anyone who’s going into the construction site needs to preserve their HP and MP, because there’s at least a small chance it could actually be the difference between getting seriously hurt or not.”
Lena looked skyward and sighed.
“Which,” Matt said, “is an excellent reason not to go in the first place, and to focus on building yourselves up in the safe way that the game has laid out for you.”
“You mean PVP,” Erin said.
He didn’t even bother to confirm it. “You must admit, it’s strange how now that it comes to competitive versus cooperative content, you’re the one advocating for the exciting but dangerous course, while I’m the one advising caution?”
“My position is probably hypocritical,” Erin said quietly.
Immediately, Donica reached out to her. “It’s not.”
Erin smiled. “Thanks for having my back. But you’re wrong.”
We all looked in her direction.
She took a deep breath and drew herself up. Even though I wasn’t looking at her through my phone, I saw something of her avatar in her bearing.
She faced Matt. To his credit, he bore up under her gaze. Maybe because she was only looking in his general direction through her coke bottle glasses. She said, “What I’ve advocated is probably driven less by a sense of ethics, or even a sense of self-preservation, than it is by what I like in a game.”
“But then...” Matt grinned. “Isn’t doing what you like what games are all about?”
Erin returned the grin. “I’ve always enjoyed your game design classes, Mr. Green. And while we want different things from games, I can respect the philosophical underpinnings by which you reach your conclusions about them.”
He inclined his head. “Likewise. You’ve been an outstanding student.”
Erin bowed. At the last moment, she caught her glasses before they slid off her nose. “Would you please accept the opportunity to give me a practical exam?”
Matt bowed back. “I would be delighted, Ms. Marshall.”
Headlights whizzed past down Broadway. A crowd of people jostled and laughed their way into a sports bar across the street. People in suits and business casual walked toward it, leaving the Alameda light rail station.
Nobody looked our way.
All of us except Erin and Matt backed off, forming a semicircle between the two of them and the construction site.
Lena pulled Bernie from his harness and hugged him. All of us except her and Zhizhi raised our phones.
“We’ve really got to figure out a way to put a filter on my camera so I can see what’s going on in the game,” Zhizhi said.
“We do need the IRL view, too,” I said.
“Sure,” she said, “but it sounds like this is going to look really cool to you, and really silly to me.”
I supposed she had a point.
Through my phone, Erin glowed. Her Custom Personification didn’t have an obvious source of light like Lena’s flames, but that didn’t make her aura any less impressive. If anything, the opposite. As she took her spot and raised her hands, one curled to make symbols and the other outstretched to hold her own phone – invisible through Third Eye –, she seemed to grow taller and brighter with every step. The game interpreted her winter clothes as an angular, draped dress with long wide sleeves and twisting geometric golden highlights. Her hair was unbound in an explosion behind her head, and her eyes, covered only by a piece of golden jewelry where her glasses would be, were almost shockingly contrasting concentric circles of white and black.
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Matt’s avatar was subtler, of course, but even without the custom design and the special effects, I had to admire it. A fur-lined padded jerkin, dyed dark blue fading to brown, with leather boots, leggings, and sleeves reinforced with dark metal bands.
He was the second person I’d seen whose clothes had been translated into armor. I wondered what it represented for him, compared to what it had for Lena.
If I lowered my phone, or just looked around it, I’d see a teacher and student acting very serious about their Live-Action Role-Playing.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen, though.
They paced in a wide circle, leaving trails through the slush when they didn’t intersect either the tire tracks or places the rest of us had walked. Neither made an in-game move until they reached the start of the others’ trail.
“Matt’s got smart glasses and Erin doesn’t,” Zhizhi whispered. “That’s a huge advantage, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s still got to use his phone if he’s actually going to manifest something, though. Right? You can’t run it all off the glasses’ screen?”
Albie had, or at least I thought so in the park. Now I wasn’t sure she needed screens at all.
“I definitely can’t with my glasses,” Lena said, “but Matt’s look newer than mine. And he doesn’t have his phone out.”
I tried to remember how he’d attacked when he invaded me.
“He did use the phone when he took me out, for whatever it’s worth,” Lena said. “Of course, I couldn’t actually fight back. Once he realized, he just kept smacking me with Stone until my HP ran out. Kinda annoying.”
I tried not to laugh and mostly succeeded.
I don’t know if the duelists heard our exchange or not, but something prompted Matt to speak. “If you want my watch, you’re going to have to attack.”
“I’d still prefer if you’d give it to us without fighting,” Erin said.
“Unfortunately, a multiplayer game must find balance between the preferences of its players.”
She smiled. “Just because I don’t like PVP, doesn’t mean I don’t understand how it works.”
“Show me, then.” He extended his hand.
Her fingers curled, and she did.
Iron, Reacting with Earth. Erin manifested a sheet of it, then, abruptly, formed it into a point and thrust it forward.
Matt flicked his hand, and something smacked into the lance, shoving it down into the slush.
I narrowed my eyes.
“What the...?” Lena muttered.
A pebble hovered in midair between them. It drew back when Matt moved his hand.
I swept my phone around. “Where did he get that?”
Nobody answered.
Erin blinked at him. Her brow furrowed in confusion, which seemed almost blasphemous on her avatar.
“Is that the most you’ve figured out when it comes to offense?” Matt asked.
“I’m much more interested in your defense,” Erin said. “I don’t feel or hear any wind, which means you’re not using Air, are you?”
“Haven’t got any, I’m afraid,” Matt said.
“Oh!” Erin grinned. “You’ve got Stone compressed into that tiny space, and you’re actually reshaping it with Earth to move it?”
Matt nodded. “There’s a reason you’re my favorite student.”
“Have you had it manifested this whole time?”
“That’s the wrong question, Erin,” Matt said.
Her eyes narrowed. They widened and her hands flew, but too late. Something slammed into her shoulder and she stumbled to one knee.
Donica tensed.
Lena applauded.
Donica, Zhizhi, and I all looked at her. Only Miguel regarded her with a smile; if he’d had any popcorn I supposed he’d be munching it.
Lena shrugged. “What? It was a sick move.”
It was. I watched as Matt gathered the two parts of his Stone together. He must’ve shaped it into something almost like a bolo and kept it manifested. Because each piece was so small, and the “fiber” between them so thin, none of us had even noticed it while we talked to him.
Would just Earth be enough to do that? If so, how many units of it? Matt might have four, or even more. Or, since I knew he had Water as well, he might’ve modified the Stone somehow, and switched to Earth just before he got here.
At the moment, he flexed his fingers and the Stone construct pulsed in the air.
“I know it’s rude under the circumstances,” Matt said, “but could you tell me how much HP you lost for that? I’m trying to refine my attacks and ditch the ones that don’t do much.”
Erin’s eyes flicked downwards. She stood up and brushed snow from her knee. “Thirteen.”
“Tsk.” The two pieces of stone merged and expanded into a larger ball. “I love the potential for surprise with that, and it’s nice and low profile for walking around, but if that’s all it does, there’s not much point to it.”
“How much would my Iron spear have done?” she asked.
“It seems to depend on how and where it hits,” he said. “If I took it directly to the chest, which I note you weren’t aiming for, it might’ve clipped me for almost forty.”
“That doesn’t seem very good for such a linear attack.”
He shrugged. “There’s a reason I’ve been experimenting with weapons other than simple Iron constructs.”
I tried not to be annoyed by the numbers they threw around. Failed. Even the attack Matt had dismissed as being too weak to bother with would’ve knocked me out in one shot at my normal maximum HP.
Erin lowered her eyes. “This is data I really ought to be collecting, isn’t it?”
“It’s data that needs collecting,” he said. “Whether it interests you or not is a different matter.”
“At the very least,” Erin said, “I should provide a space where people who are interested can share it.”
“How you use your wiki is your business. The information will get out, one way or another.” Matt spread his hands.
Erin’s fingers curled and a spike of metal shot up from the ground to lance into Matt’s thigh.
He grunted and kicked it away. “Only seventeen damage. But I like the initiative.”
Erin straightened up and held her hand before her. Her Iron formed into a shield like the one we’d used for cooking earlier.
“I know you’ve got Fire,” Matt said. “When are you going to break it out?”
“When I need it,” she said.
He laughed.
His fingers snapped downwards, then up, and his sphere of Stone became a column. Erin’s Iron stopped it from falling on her, but it split and the pieces wrapped around it. And around her.
She grunted. Her Iron tumbled to the slush. She flexed her arms, but the Stone held her fast.
Matt’s hand tightened. “If you’re going to hold back, I’m just going to end this.”
Erin’s fingers flew. More Iron flashed through the air, and she stepped forward as the Stone cracked around her. With one smooth motion, she turned her makeshift sledgehammer into another spear and shot it forward.
For the first time, Matt’s hand was in the pocket of his jacket, where, I assumed, he kept his phone. He called up Iron of his own, a shield like Erin’s.
The sound of their clash rang across the construction site.
Both their hands danced, using Earth to shift the same pieces of Iron between weapon and shield.
I recognized the problem immediately. Maybe Erin did, too, but that didn’t give her a solution.
I didn’t know if Matt had more than one unit of Earth to pour into his manipulation. Certainly, though, he had two hands to perform gestures with. I’d learned what a tremendous advantage that could be, to the point I’d even preferred it over the ability to see the ball when I played catch with Albie.
In actual PVP, it seemed like an insurmountable edge.
Erin could reshape her Iron. So could Matt, but his turned from weapon to shield at either end. His point of attack was wherever he wanted it to be. It changed faster and less predictably.
One exchange after another, he pushed Erin back. She would deflect a linear strike, bounce a swing, but react too slowly when the backswing became an attack as well. She would launch an attack, and it might force Matt to block or sidestep, but her followup gave him all the time in the world to recover his advantage.
For finding Materials or studying Third Eye’s effects on the real world, a phone had advantages over smart glasses. You could compare what was actually happening to what the game showed you.
For PVP, the glasses were immeasurably better.
On top of that, Matt had the advantage in skill when it came to PVP. I didn’t know what kind of practice Erin did on her own, but I was willing to bet it didn’t involve either attacks or defenses.
She kept backing up, kept deflecting attacks, missed every third or fourth and winced as her HP chipped away.
The exchange continued, and it continued to look amazing. I could probably learn more PVP tricks from watching.
Nonetheless, I shifted my thumb to switch off my phone camera and check the Play store for an app that would track time without syncing with an external source.
It seemed like we were going to need it.