Good thing I’d copied that power. While it did allow me to take no damage from the deep stab, it had to zorch through a massive amount of my mana to do it. I realized instantly that the mana used was proportional to the amount of damage it negated, and that a couple more hits like that and it would be game over, even with my extra mana reserves.

I tried to back away, but as soon as I let go of his arm he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me closer, holding me in place. I could feel his breath on my neck as he twisted the blade inside me, drawing it sideways to slide through internal organs, and I was forced to use the power again. More mana gone.

He let go of my shoulder and shoved me back, pulling the knife out at the same time. I imagine he expected me to go down, and I rather enjoyed seeing the look of surprise on his face when he saw that while my shirt had a long horizontal slice over my belly, there was no blood, and no wound underneath.

“Well that’s unexpected,” he said.

“Maybe I’m a bit extraordinary too.”

“Doubt it,” he said, then came at me again.

It took everything I had to block or dodge his ceaseless flurry of attacks. My arms got nicked in several places, but I didn’t dare use the power again if I didn’t have to. I was worried about my mana, and I needed to save it for when my life was at stake.

I was barely managing to hold my own against his attacks, but the difference between Adept and Expert became all too apparent. I kept searching for an opening to switch from defense to offense, but it never came. The few hits I got in were minor, and he accepted the negligible damage with a grin.

Eventually, I was a bit too slow to dodge and the knife slashed across my arm, forcing me to use the power again. It was either that or lose the arm. For the first time I found myself wishing those elven blades weren’t quite so sharp.

“Why won’t you just go down?” Flint said during the moment he paused to look exasperated when my arm stayed attached. Then he went right back onto the offensive.

He wasn’t the only one frustrated. I'd been feeling sluggish through this whole fight, like my concentration was shot. I couldn't tell if it was a side-effect of his commanding aura or what, but I knew I wasn't fighting my best. Even worse, my precious omni-do, that first synthesis child who I’d reared and kept fat on a hearty diet of every fighting technique I could find, was being unceremoniously torn to shreds by a thug with a knife.

I knew it was only a matter of time. Depending on how severe it was, I might’ve had enough mana to resist one more big hit, but after that I would be at his mercy. Literally.

It didn’t take long for the next big hit to come. It was another thrust into my torso and I barely had enough mana to negate it. From there, as expected, things went rapidly downhill.

Soon I was covered in cuts, some minor, some not, but all of them hurt. My health steadily went down, passing through yellow into the red zone.

The next hit sealed my fate. It was a wide slash across my chest that brought me down to just a sliver of health left. It left me feeling a bit wobbly and light headed and couldn’t stop myself from collapsing to my knees.

“Okay,” I croaked, spitting some blood onto the road, “looks like you win.”

“Looks that way,” he said, looming over me.

“You’ve proven your point. Time for me to crawl away and think about what I've done.”

“Hmmm, I don’t think so,” he said.

So much for mercy.

Maybe I was too out of it from blood loss but I didn’t even see his arm move as he swept it in a wide arc in front of him.

Fun fact: ever since the French Revolution introduced us to the guillotine, a grim debate has raged over whether or not a person retains consciousness for any length of time after decapitation. Allow me to resolve this issue once and for all.

I didn’t see his arm move, but I did get a unique view of myself after my head tumbled to the ground. It only lasted for a second or two, just long enough to watch my own headless body fall at Flint’s feet.

Fade to black.

The next thing I knew I was standing in the clouds again, blinking against the bright light streaming between the gossamer curtains like heavenly rays. Stratos was there, arms folded, scowling at a floating screen. I couldn’t see what was on it, but I could hear enough to know they were watching a video replay of the fight I’d just lost.

I heard Flint say, “Well that’s unexpected.”

I cringed when I heard my reply, “Maybe I’m a bit extraordinary, too.”

Then he said, “Doubt it.”

The sounds of us fighting followed, then I conceded to his victory, he rejected it, and it ended with something nobody should ever have to hear: the sound of my own head tumbling to the ground, followed moments after by the rest of my body.

Stratos swiped the screen away, then folded their arms again and glowered at me. If they had worn glasses, that’s the time they would’ve pushed them up on their nose using the middle finger of their hand.

“This is a disappointment,” they said. “I was honestly starting to have hope, Daniel, but now...”

“Don’t I at least get some recognition for the fact that I died trying to save someone?” I said.

“I do recognize that you have a nasty habit of putting others before yourself and paying the price for it.”

“Can I assume that since we’re here like this again it means I’m going to respawn?”

“Yes, yes. You will be going back. I have invested too—”

All of a sudden I couldn’t hear what Stratos was saying. After a moment, their lips stopped moving when they realized no sound was coming from their mouth. Then they heaved a deep, silent sigh.

Their lips moved again and I’m pretty sure I saw their lips form the word “System” at some point.

System: The Gamester has been unmuted

“Thank you,” Stratos said.

“Um, what was that just now?” I said.

“Never mind,” Stratos said.

Sure, I could’ve dropped it, but I wanted to know. And Stratos wasn’t the only one there who could tell me.

“System,” I said, “why was Stratos muted just now?”

System: The Gamester was about to break a rule

“What rule?”

There was a pause, the kind of pause that I’d come to associate with System looking for a rule against giving me a real answer to the question I'd just asked.

System: The Gamester was about to reveal information that you are not meant to know at this time

Was it just me, or was that an odd way of saying “I can’t tell you?”

If there was one thing I knew about System it was that it chose its words carefully. Instead of a simple “I can’t tell you,” System’s response actually gave me a fair bit of information. I learned that whatever came after “I have invested too” was information that wasn’t supposed to be revealed at this time.

System was giving me as much information as possible within the rules.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

System was trying to help me.

“System, will there come a time when I am meant to know that information?”

System: Affirmative

“When?”

System: When the conditions for revealing that information have been met

I should’ve known it’d say that.

“Let me guess, the conditions for telling me what the conditions for me knowing are have not yet been met, right?

System: Affirmative

“Any more questions or can we move on now?” Stratos said.

Dang it, I really wanted to know what Stratos was about to say after “I have invested too.” Or was that to? Nah, you never invest to anything, you invest in. The next word was probably much, either that or many. So what had Stratos invested in?

After looking at it from all angles I could think of, the only logical conclusion was that the thing they’d invested too much in was likely me. Too much to let me die-die now. Which meant there was something Stratos was counting on me to do.

“System?” I said. “What has the Gamester invested too much of into me, and why did they invest it? What are they hoping to accomplish?”

I had expected the pause that ensued, but I didn’t expect it to be as long as it was.

“Never you mind,” Stratos said. “Let us just get you back into the Game now.”

System: Resources

System: For the Game

System: Winning

I suppose I had asked three questions there. I'd barely expected to get an answer. Any answer Stratos gave would have told me something. Even saying that they couldn’t tell me would have confirmed that it was indeed me they had invested in. The answers I got were vague, but I was sure this was System telling me that I was on the right track.

“I think you’ve heard enough,” Stratos said. “Off you go."

"Really?" I said. "That's it?"

Stratos smacked their forehead. "Oh, you are correct. I almost forgot the reason I had you detoured back here before returning you to the game. I just wanted to say: try to do better, okay?”

System: Respawning now

The world surrounding the gazebo in the city center took shape around me, rapidly shifting from totally blurry to crystal clear. I couldn’t have told you why, but for some reason respawning felt different than teleportation, which was instantaneous. The moment I had fully finished respawning I immediately used the teleportation circle I was standing on to go to the elf village. For all I knew, word had gotten out that I’d been killed on the road and if I’d hung around I’d find Teams Nemesis, Overgeared, and Droogs waiting to laugh and jeer at me for dying. That I could do without.

As I made my way to my tree house I started sorting out my thoughts, mentally replaying the conversation in the clouds in the hope that if I pulled on a few threads I’d be able to unravel more information from the little System and Stratos had revealed. They may not have said much, but they inferred plenty.

Here’s what I came up with: Stratos had invested too many resources into me in the hopes of winning the game to let me die-die. I was meant to know about the investing of resources at some point in the future, when unknown conditions were met.

It was reassuring that I was deemed valuable enough to keep around, plus it told me that Stratos had some influence over who respawned.

Wait. System's exact words were "For the Game." Not a game, not any game, but the Game. Whatever that was.

And was it me who Stratos wanted to win, or was it a whole different game that Stratos was playing that they wanted to win? The game I was playing, whatever it was, could just be a part of their Game. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal that Stratos had ensured I’d respawn, maybe as Gamester the meta-game they were playing gave them a few get out of jail free cards they could toss out to prevent the death-death of a chosen Player.

I was beginning to think that Player was more of a title than a descriptor, and that I might very well be little more than a chess piece in a much bigger game. The fact that I was deemed significant enough to keep around implied I was more than just a pawn, though. Maybe a bishop or a rook.

“System, what resources did Stratos invest?”

System: Financial

So Stratos was experiencing the sunk cost fallacy, eh? I could’ve asked how much they’d spent so far, but it probably wouldn’t have meant anything to me. I doubted the aliens paid for things in Canadian dollars, and I didn’t know the conversion rate from Galactic Credits or Knuts or Quatloos or ounces of Spice or whatever they used for currency.

“System, what game do they hope to win?”

Another one of those pauses. Even if I didn’t get a real answer, at least the fact that System had to think about what to say told me that I was getting close to something.

System: The conditions for knowing that information have not been met

I’d been starting to think I’d never understand why we were there or what we were actually supposed to be doing, but now I was pretty sure that someday, when the right conditions have been met, all shall be revealed.

“System, is Stratos playing a game?”

Pause.

System: Everything is a game

I wasn’t going to get anywhere with that line of questioning. I needed to be more strategic. I was certain now that there were lines of questioning that could allow System to give me non-answers that actually disclosed real information. I had to think like a lawyer and use semantic trickery to lay a verbal trap that could give System an opening to reveal something. If only I had some kind of Law skill. Surely there had to be some NPC lawyers skulking around here somewhere.

I gave my head a shake, clearing away this train of thought. I had more pressing concerns at the moment.

The first thing I had to do was replace my cloak and get a new set of knives. I wasn’t kidding when I told Flint that the elves were very particular about who got to have those, and Petal was not happy when I told her what had happened to my old ones.

You do not lose your knives. It wasn’t a fall on your sword kind of offense or anything, but it was considered a bad omen at best, dishonorable at worst.

“Tell nobody about this,” she hissed at me when she handed me the new knives. “And you need to figure out how to get those other ones back.”

Easier said than done.

That fight with Flint had been a wakeup call. I had been getting complacent and over-confident, if not cocky, and that had to change. I had to find ways to keep improving, growing stronger. As Stratos had said, I needed to do better.

Apart from working to get back the loss of mastery I’d suffered in a bunch of abilities because I died, there were two things I could think of that I could do now. The obvious one was getting more powers.

After my humbling experience with the Silver Sword, I was greatly motivated to plug the holes in my abilities. Being able to copy powers and synthesize them into something different was my secret weapon. It was time to get serious about it.

It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I went a little Synthesis-loopy over the next several days. I couldn’t tell you how many days for sure. A few, I think, like three. No, more like five. Six maybe; no, maybe nine. Okay it was at least two weeks.

I didn't only work on new powers. To maintain some balance in my life, I created a routine that didn’t have me constantly eating to replenish the mana spent to constantly synthesize things. My morning runs with Sigrid were sacrosanct, and we added in daily strength and flexibility training to the regimen as well. I may have been limited in raising my abilities above Adept, but that restriction didn’t apply to my body.

That was the second thing I could work on.

I showed Sigrid the trick of exercising until I was nearly dead, healing myself, then rinsing and repeating. Sigrid already had a great body with excellent muscle tone, but in her mind she could never be buff enough so we started doing it together. It didn’t make that much visible difference in the size of her muscles, and after I achieved the sort of physique that caused a certain type of man to strut around shirtless for the sole reason of showing it off, my appearance stopped changing. But that didn’t mean we stopped getting stronger. And faster. And more agile.

Soon we were effortlessly completing a run that used to take an hour in half the time. Once, when we were feeling silly, we even played catch with an entire tree trunk. It was bizarely fun to toss a whole tree back and forth, right up until I made a bad throw and Sigrid took it literally on her chin. It wasn’t a huge tree or anything, but it was big enough to mess up her face pretty badly. Thank heavens it wasn’t anything a quick heal couldn’t fix right up, but still.

Okay fine. So my so-called balanced schedule had me alternating between creating new abilities by spamming synthesize and eating, and building up my body by spamming heal and eating, but at least I wasn’t spending all day every day holed up alone doing nothing but synthesizing and eating.

It probably won’t surprise you that while I enjoyed exercising with Sigrid every morning, I was almost always thinking about what I was going to synthesize that afternoon.

Having access to so many new powers after stalking other Players meant I had a lot of options for concocting new, customized powers. I even modified some of my own. For example, I upgraded my All Shall Be Revealed power into All Can Be Revealed by merging it with every vision-related power I could find so that I could see previously hidden attributes on Statuses. That meant I could finally see what abilities the other team builders had.

I also found a way to put an illusion on my own Status so that anybody using All Shall Be Revealed to look at it wouldn’t be bombarded with a near endless scroll of [Hidden]s. I set it so that they’d just see an average number of abilities shrouded by the [Hidden] marker. I didn’t want anyone to see just how many abilities I’d collected, and I really didn’t want them to see Good At Everything and know I would never rise above Adept in any ability.

One power I kept hoping to find but never did was razor floss. See, there are characters in some of the literature with the ability to create something like a giant spiderweb of super-strong threads of magic or something. Only unlike a spiderweb, it doesn’t have to be spun one thread at a time, the entire web appears instantly, woven around and between objects in the desired pattern, and the user can tighten the threads gently to bind objects, usually other people, or more enthusiastically to slice right through them. It’s deadly, and deadly cool.

Characters who get to use this ability tend to be ones on the overpowered side, as you can imagine. It can immobilize anyone with the threat of dissection at any instant. The truly OP ones can dice anything into tiny bits by pulling on the threads, like running a potato through a mandolin that can cut in three dimensions, only much, much messier.

Like the Grinch with a reindeer, if I couldn’t find a certain power, I’d make it instead.