We eked out a win in our next match, just barely, with Rose getting a killing blow on the other team's support in the last seconds of the match. We reconvened. Rose wasn't talking. Alpha had her mask off now. She seemed grimly determined. Sam and Pete were depressed.

I was still mulling over what the colonel had said, acutely aware of the countdown on Patriona’s offer. All I had to do was pop out of the simulation for two minutes and send an email.

"Right," Pete said. "We do that again. And again and again until we're done here."

"Do we want to keep up our current strategy?" Alpha asked. Her voice was pleasant, now she was no longer using the modulator. "Or should we be trying a cheese strat?"

"Honestly," Pete said, sighing. "If somebody's got one they want to suggest, I'm up for it. But being underpowered and undermanned, I'm having trouble coming up with a plan. Our last round of abilities just don’t synergize that well."

"We need to stick with the basics," Rose said. "We can go toe-to-toe with these guys. Let's not risk it on a cheesy strat."

That wasn’t the right answer though. Colonel Twofeather’s pep talk had left me feeling like I was letting down all of Earth if I didn't win through here. “But cheese is why we're here, to prove thinking outside the box is what Earth needs right now. I don't want to eke out a win. I want to prove that our kind of gaming is better than theirs." I turned to Alpha. "Come on. You were always the best at breaking new games or records in old games. You've got to have some insights here."

She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. The enormous black shoulder pads and heavy cape she wore looked faintly ridiculous. "I don't know. This is the most important tournament we've ever been in. We've got to pull together."

Sam coughed. "Actually, I have an idea."

We turned to him in surprise. Our quiet mage had participated in strategy meetings, but this was the first time he'd offered a strat.

"Sorry," he said. "I like to get a holistic idea for systems. It's taken me a while to really feel comfortable with what we're doing here, but I've been noticing as we go that the realism's good here. Like, too good. I've been playing around. I can dial down my own inputs."

"That's right," I said, remembering my panic attack. “We can.”

"So I thought, what if we coordinate our abilities and come up with some sort of flashbang spell? It'll briefly stun whoever we've got focused with too many inputs. Alpha, you and Pete can line it up. My latest ability lets me infuse weapons. At the start of a match, I infuse a bunch of Pete's balls.”

Rose choked. Alpha glared at her. “Really?”

Sam ignored the interruption. “Now that I have level five, I can combine two different abilities. I'm going to combine water and wind, which in this case actually gives me an electricity ability. We infuse the balls with that. Then Pete lobs them to Alpha, who steps in right behind our target. You use that slash and cut ability you have, but combine it with your deep wounds."

Alpha was frowning. "Slash and cut is on my knives, and deep wounds is an axe ability.”

"I know, but with the Full Savagery ability you picked up at level five, you can combine the two. Trust me, I've looked over all of the details."

He went into details. I found myself nodding along. This plan we could manage.

We materialized in a swamp. Hillocks stuck up here and there. The islands all had low-hanging trees covered in Spanish moss on them. Frogs croaked. Birds chirped. It was hot and muggy, a perfect assault on our senses, dimming my own responsiveness.

I immediately cast, called on Patron Avasta to grant her boon, cloaking us in shadow. I'd used her almost every time she was off rotation. Now that I could invoke two patrons every five minutes, it was much easier to keep up buffs. We all had our realism dialed down to about 50%. Any less and we risked not seeing or hearing our enemies.

"Spread out," Pete ordered, as Sam cast a lightning enchantment on his baseballs. I took myself across to a small island with a spreading live oak tree on it. There I huddled under the branches, watching.

Here came the enemy team, split into two squads of three, approaching us in a fork configuration that had devastated us pretty badly when a team tried it earlier. It seemed like certain strategies were getting passed around between teams. I didn't know if they were collaborating or just using something they had seen used against them but this was a well-known gaming phenomena called ‘tournament meta’. It’s a herd effect happens when gamers start to feed off each other.

It played right into our hands. Alpha materialized behind the right-hand group. She stabbed the rearmost as Pete lobbed her a charged baseball. She caught it out of the air. The energy crackled up her arm but with the feedback turned down she could ignore it. She shoved the ball of electricity against the deep wound she had just carved into our opponent's back. Then she vanished, just as the ball exploded. The noise and sound were overwhelming, even to me with my senses turned down, but it was a signal for the rest of us to move in.

I invoked Patron Domina, granting us a damage buff. We focused fire on one of the remaining enemies, then the other, dropping them both in seconds.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Then as rehearsed, we spread out again. Pete threw another ball into the second group of enemies. Rose dove in. She had a resistance to light-based damage anyway, so Pete threw another couple of fastballs at her feet. When they exploded she staggered, but the enemy was incapacitated. She swung her big hammer effectively, smashing through stunned enemies. One of them got his long energy sword up and slicing through her armor with a clumsy slash. I tossed out a mend spell. Sam hosed them down with ice-based spells, slowing them. Seconds later, the swamp was empty. It was easily as dominant a fight as our first.

We regrouped back at our favorite coffee shop, my teammates glowing with satisfaction.

"They weren't ready for that at all," Rose said. "And they didn't even try to coordinate."

"I think it's the wombo combos that's doing it for us," I said. "If we come up against someone with big MOBA experience, we might face some trouble. But did you see those guys' loadouts? Those are Call of Duty players for sure, used to lone-wolfing it. This is how we can win."

"We're not going to stick with any one strategy," Pete said firmly. "That one was great, but we're seeing strategies get shared around. I know we're not talking to anybody else, but some of the others probably are. Let's come up with another plan. I want us to have multiple under our belts, ready to call at a moment's notice." We bent our heads together and got to work.

We won every match the rest of the day, though our last win was by a thin thread. The opposing team was a level higher than us and coordinated very well. They actually had several players working together with effective combos. We used a combination of skill and cheese and eked out a win.

I'd been spending all my spare time reading over the complete list of classes available and looking for strengths and weaknesses. We didn't have much time in a match to size up the enemy team, but there were a couple of weaknesses we'd been able to exploit, like going up against a team that was a little too heavy on the melee, and then using our ranged abilities to great effect.

Just before leaving, Pete called us all together. "We're still in the top third," he said, "but they're cutting the bottom 50 percent."

I let out a sigh. "We barely squeaked over into the safe zone then."

"Tomorrow's the final cut. We've got a list of teams we'll be playing against. I'm going to study them tonight. I want you to do the same, but remember, they're going to be watching us. They're going to know what we've been up to today. We've got to have new strats." He turned to me. "Colin, I want you thinking of real cheeses, not just these crazy combos.”

I blinked. "What? We haven't had any luck with those so far."

"I know, but I want us to keep out options open. So, see what you can come up with. Alpha, look for weaknesses in the game itself. Sam, I want you thinking systemically. Analyze their teams and what we can come up against. Rose?" He turned to her.

She scowled. "What?"

"I was wondering if I could get you a list of the names and faces that go on this team. You think you might be able to do some intelligence?"

"They'll be watching for me," she said warily.

"Sure, but you're the one who's made her whole career off of getting strats out of people. Tonight's the time for some social engineering."

She gave a smile. "You know what? You're right. The other teams know who they're up against. Anyone who's dumb enough to let me have intel deserves what they're going to get."

"Just be prepared for them to lie to you," Alpha said.

Rose waved her off. "Yeah, I'm not stupid. I'm not going to fall for that trick twice."

"Then let's stay in touch. We'll try to get a good night of sleep," Pete said.

We were wrapping up two hours early today, which would give me a chance to eat dinner and probably grab a couple of hours of sleep despite needing to run these. A thought occurred to me. I sent a message to Specialist Jenkins. Is it alright if I stay late and work? Can you arrange a ride back for me?

Not a problem. You've got to be out of there by 2100 hours. Safety reasons. But other than that, it's up to you.

"Which maps will we be on?" I asked Pete.

He shook his head. "They're not telling us that. I think it's randomized."

"Then I'll just have to hope I get some lucky guesses. I'm going to stay and work on cheesing it. Sam? You interested in helping me?"

"Sure thing," he said. "If we can arrange to ride back together, we can strategize on team comps and counters on the way back."

"Okay," I told Sam once the others had left. "We're going to focus on the rooms with walls. I've been paying attention to how they respond to our abilities, and I think the programmers got lazy and are treating all walls as hard stops."

"And how does that help us?" Sam asked.

"Let's go to the gladiator ring," I said.

We zoned into the coliseum. I'd fought here three times now. In our last match, Sam had been using air powers, and something about the way the sand blew around had bothered me.

"Okay, I want you to kick up a big dust storm. Swirl it around the whole place."

He did as I asked. I dialed down my taste realism and held up a hand to protect my eyes. Sure enough, the sand cloud was clipping inside the lower rings of seats. About halfway up, 15 meters or so, the stands vanished behind the cloud. I pointed it out to Sam. "So the actual wall of this place is invisible, but it cuts through right where the third tier of seats ends." I eyed it, then jumped into the first row of seats. Sam followed me upward. As soon as I got to the back of the third, I slammed hard against a wall. It looked like there were seats beyond, and entire tiers of empty stone benches, but I couldn’t get through the wall. "Yes!" Triumphantly, I turned to Sam, grinning.

"Good, so they are cheating. How does that help us?"

"Well, we know that certain things can pass right through the walls," I pointed out. "Like your dust clouds. Which means probably anything that's non-corporeal. Which includes," I said, pulling up my list of abilities, "the boon I get from my newest patron."

Sam let out a whistle. "Oh, I'm starting to see possibilities here."

"And that's just for starters," I said. "Means we know exactly where to have Pete hit a ball for ricochets. Let's check out the other levels."

We spent the next three hours, until they kicked us out, testing boundaries. And I found a few other hacks that I was certain we could take advantage of. On the trip home, Sam and I poured over the enemy rosters. Sam sitting in the back seat of the van, in front of my chair.

He'd given a bit of a start when he saw me. I had forgotten this was the first time we'd met in real life. Sam had slightly more acne on his face than he did in the simulation. I wasn't sure why some of us appeared in our idealized form, while others, like Alpha, still bore scars. But I wasn't going to pry. He leaned over the back seat, and we compared notes. We ranked our opponents in the order of difficulty we thought they'd be, and came up with as many strats as we could. Zones where we'd identified hacks, some if we didn't.

Back at the hotel, we ordered room service up to my room, so we could continue to plot in peace. It was about 2 am by the time Sam left, yawning, to get his own sleep. I crawled into bed, staring up at the dark ceiling. I had a nagging feeling I'd forgotten something. Then it hit me. Patriona's deadline.

I called up my email. There was an unread message from her. It said, "We're disappointed and will be noting this in your permanent file."

Like that was supposed to scare me. Maybe it did scare Galactics. Maybe it was an insight into what life was going to be like once I joined the wider world. I guessed I'd have to wait and see.

I rolled over and went to sleep.