---James---

James was over the worst of his sick feeling. He gathered himself together and found he had been transported to a strange-looking diner.

Richard was across from him confidently biting into a completely red wrap – it was a red dyed tortilla equivalent full of bright red chunks of something and dripping creamy looking red sauce.

In front of him was an identical wrap and surrounding them there were several empty tables. The building was backlit by red tinged lights and had several plants placed in various places as decoration.

“Try your burrito. They mostly got the taste right but it’s missing something” Richard swallowed and mentioned.

James took a bite.

The ‘burrito’ burned on the way down. As if the red was a sign of how spicy it was. The chunks seemed to be marinated and lightly cooked meat while the sauce was an acidic and smoky mix that was overwhelmingly capsaicin.

The heat mellowed as it entered James’s stomach. His stomach defense was more than enough to handle this level of heat – even weakened with his stats being regained slowly like they were now.

James coughed a bit and nodded to Richards vague “good yeh?”

You’d think the spice would upset his stomach more but somehow the burn seemed to wash away the last of the sick feeling. Now James just felt weak and disappointed by his showing.

Finishing his “burrito” first, Richard wiped his mouth on a red napkin, then sat back.

“Well… while you sort out getting fucked by the resurrection penalty, I’ll tell you what I’ve been getting up to. First off, I got this great outfit” Richard pointed down to himself showing off his ‘jeans and a t-shirt’. An outfit that looked utterly normal until you realized how few people were wearing something similar.

The entire time Richard talked two tiny stone hands peeked up from the side of the table gesturing animatedly.

“Then I went to find a way to break my new skill. First off – there are mobile skill breaking facilities. Think mobile libraries – just a van driving about with all the stuff you might need to snap your [skill] painlessly and quickly. They patrol the delver district and did me for a few dozen credits.”

Richard waved the server over to ask for a drink.

“…anyways, skill breaking van. Turns out I had two unbroken skills! I literally forgot I had one that let me delay explosions or something. How does that happen? Well, I turned that one into this here aether slot and let the other one break naturally and fill my body…mixed with my existing skill somehow. Chaos body has some fucking weird interactions mate.”

Richard waved his hand and James saw a shiny metal disk about the size of a toonie on his forearm.

“After that well… I got three quests. One is to research the corruption in a pharmaceutical company. They make super drugs some delvers take. Roids that interact with stats somehow and turn people into the hulk. Quest sounds like they are doing some shady stuff to make that happen. Solid goal.

“Second quest is to make a cult for something mundane. As funny as making the cult of the pencil or the cult of the green smoothies would be, social quests like that sound fucking hard. How the fuck do you convince enough people to count that as a proper completion anyways? There isn’t a charisma stat after all. Reward looked high but not worth it.

“Third quest is to join the villain group ‘deviants. After I am registered as a villain turn myself in just because….and then break out of prison to prove I can. Weirdest quest chain I’ve seen yet, and I might even have gone for it if I was really that bored. Problem with that sort of quest…well this whole place is kind of modern. By that I mean there are cameras everywhere and psyche profiles and police or “supers” or whatever have your face on file with your criminal background. If I had a proper disguise, I could probably join a villain group safely but as soon as you get caught your entire genome and everything is in the system. Don’t…don’t think I want to deal with having a criminal background just for fun you know?” Richard smiled as the waiter was already coming back with a dark red cup of something.

“Thanks,” Richard nodded then took a massive swig from the glass.

“Anyways, first quest seems the safest. It's fun to fuck over capitalistic oligarchs, lets me pretend to be a hero – even if the world is only partly real I’m still doing some good I think…but while trying to figure out what quest I wanted to do I ended up caving and buying a personal AI.” Richard tapped the side of his head as if pointing out something that had been pushed into his head.

“That changed everything. Cheap personal AIs let you interact with all the standard systems. The default ones all require a nearly constantly running aether slot, so I really need to gain another skill to gain a second slot. Distracted from my quest to kill the chemical mafia I decided I needed to speed run another dungeon…except then!” Richard downed the rest of his red drink grimacing slightly before continuing “I found the shitty guild system has already started growing here. Our fellow players have already set up a private network linking personal AI’s together. Some questions about Earth let you into a forum setup and there’s a bunch of info gathered together.”

James nodded – he was following along but it was starting to feel like he needed to say something for this to stay as a conversation.

“That’s bad?” James asked.

“Nah, idea is good – there’s even the start of a system called the combined quest board. Basically, everyone is supposed to use the system quest board and then use their AI’s to verify its truthfulness and add it to the board with their info. Quests and the achievements you can gain have a whole bunch of hidden requirements after all – if you have above or below a certain amount of stats certain quests don’t trigger. Theoretically by cross checking quests like this we can filter out ones that won’t work for us… If you have certain types of abilities or use certain weapons the quest name and reward shifts. Bunch of stuff like that.

“The reason ‘it’s not the best’ is this whole system is set up by a guild that’s kind of monopolizing it. See anyone can ‘donate’ their quests to the board to increase the general knowledge of the player market…but all the best quests with the biggest rewards are locked to member only status. They say it’s the cost of providing the free service to the rest of us but it combines with some things to piss me off. My new plan is to figure out what dirty laundry this guild has – it definitely has some – and then air it all for the rest of us to riot over.”

Richard’s little stone arms smacked into each other the two tiny gloves alternating between strangling motions and punching themselves as Richard talked.

“Oh! I also found a place to stay and ate out at a few places. Only other point I feel like saying is my credits are dry again. Nearly all the credits from the delve are gone – I never ended up buying a new weapon so if any of my plans need a degree of violence I’m shit out of luck.” Richard sat back and stared about the room.

“My trip wasn’t that eventful.” James began. He quickly recounted his journey ending with some descriptions of some of the monsters including the one that had killed him.

“Think the monster was actually moving that weirdly or was it messing with your vision? Richard asked after a moment.

“Huh?” James paused, then looked up. He saw Richard’s face twist slightly as he tried to reiterate his question but James caught up. He quickly responded to make sure Richard didn’t think he was slow.

“I mean…at the time I was 100% certain the creature was physically moving wherever I looked. Now that you mention it…” James started.

“It seems like it might have also just painted an illusion of itself on your eye or tricked your brain into thinking it was in front of you. That almost seems more likely than being locked to your vision right?” Richard finished.

“Huh,” James repeated. “Hindsight makes me think you are right.”

“I don’t want to steer you wrong it just makes the most sense. If it is really locked to your sight you might have been able to close your eyes to prevent It from being attached…if its just an illusion or trick you should have tried figuring out where its real body was or just run straight towards it – it might even have been the cold feeling at your back near the end a single monster luring you back to its real body…” Richard’s one stone hand came up and formed a ‘thinking pose’ as it tapped his face. “Stop that” Richard looked down pushing his involuntary hand away before continuing.

“New conversation topic! Why did you walk so far through the city when you respawned? I was calling your name for a while…think I followed you some 4-5 blocks before you noticed me.” Richard asked curious.

“I…respawned right when I saw you? Immediately wanted to vomit and then followed you here?” James began to hesitantly respond.

But, as he voiced the answer, James was already starting to see the problem Richard had brought up.

“Then…who walked you to that spot in the street?” Richard finished the train of thought to its logical conclusion.

…

“So is the system controlling us?” James asked, worried about his body moving about without his permission. “Mind control? There is a mental defense stat after all – why isn’t that triggering and how can I trust anything knowing it might be a possibility.”

“I’m actually wondering how the system even revives us. Using ‘a wizard did it’ for all the questions I might have is not good enough. The system runs off aether right? So how does it even function?” Richard began thinking back to the super computers running this whole charade.

“Resurrection is outside of the system” James responded. “Anything the system gives can’t be taken away, but stuff the people running this place give can…”

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Richard snapped his finger. “Yes! Okay. So ‘R’ is resurrecting us – or one of his friends is. Still means aether is being used to bring us back to life somehow. Considering I somehow survived being pancaked I can kind of see how healing on a scale higher than anything we’ve witnessed so far might regenerate a body…But that doesn’t sound right. What’s being teleported away? Just your mind? There’s still a body left behind when players die.”

James wanted to help figure this mystery out – if only to regain his peace of mind.

“Quest: How Resurrection Works” James tried…but the system didn’t respond. “Doesn’t reset with death then, only zones.” James muttered.

“I wasted mine, fuck. I don’t want to wait nearly three weeks to learn the answer” Richard grumbled.

Glazing his eyes over as if reading an invisible screen Richard muttered commands under his breath. “Over slightly, next page, search the forum for resurrection…Nothing.” Raising his voice slightly he continued. “Sorry but I don’t see anyone else asking this yet. Either that or it’s a guild only thread that’s hidden – bitches.”

James nodded,

“By the way, Any chance I can interest you in getting an AI? Best bang for a skill I’ve gotten so far, it's basically giving you a phone again! One with frequent software updates based on your use…you would have to break a skill for a slot to use it, but plus side we could keep in touch. AI’s kind of function like a partial mesh network with a trust system to limit man in the middle bullshit. Some nodes are much more complicated than others – the ones hosting the servers and stuff – but as long as you are in range of at least one other ai we can send messages back and forth.”

James looked at him.

“Yeah you want to wait to learn ‘magic’ or whatever first. Could still get an AI inserted? Link a dedicated slot up with it at a future point? That way as soon as you are finished with your goal you can link up with technology and start sending messages.”

James sighed. “First off, if I die, I’ll lose that right? I don’t want to have anything valuable I care about losing. I’m already devastated I lost all my spices…I’m going have to buy those again with the credits I have left from our delve –”

Richard interrupted him “That’s fair but are you really treating the worst part of death as your inventory being lost? I…I’m not the guy to ask about this, but system revives are now hard capped and limited to fuck. That means if you run out you’re gone for good. Treat it a bit more seriously, okay? I don’t want my friend to leave in a more permanent manner than you’ve already been planning.”

James sighed. He hadn’t been treating death lightly – his last traverse of the badlands had been him trying his absolute hardest to survive…but he had let night fall when he was in it so maybe he hadn’t done absolutely everything perfectly?

Besides that, it felt nice having a friend – a real friend. One who seemed to actually care.

James had had plenty of ‘friends’ over the years. From ‘work friends’ to ‘classmate friends’ – people he would talk to at work or in class and nowhere else…but really on the scale of friendship, most of those people were probably just acquaintances. People he talked to but didn’t open up to.

Opening up was hard – doubly so because all of the ‘best friends’ James had had all had their own variation of depression. ‘Worse’ depression than his own – not that it was ever a competition. Most had been suicidal and ‘dealing’ – as awful as that word was as a description – with them while his own mental health was rocky usually made him worse. It was hard to open up to people if it only ever resulted in pain – it was hard to handle getting attached when all that resulted in was calling up the hospital because your friend said they were going to drink laundry detergent and then stopped responding. When a friend decided you were too clingy and ghosted you for a week causing you to start googling obituaries in your area.

Before he knew it – in less time than should be possible – it really did feel like he had made a new ‘good friend’. One who didn’t seem suicidal like all the past friends he had had…it was nice.

“Something on my face?” Richard asked, bringing James’s attention to the fact he had been staring and probably smiling like an idiot as well.

I’m going to mess this up aren’t I.

“Just think it's fun you care. Thanks for being my best friend~” James purposefully leaned into a sappy tone at the end causing Richard to groan and toss a half rolled up red napkin at him.

“Fuck off, don’t make it a bigger deal than it is.” Richard's grey mini hands continued to be a tell – one reaching up and holding the back of his head sub consciously. Standing up Richard gestured towards the door.

“Ready to leave? We can walk around the town while you work off the death penalty. Get you some more spices and stuff.” Richard asked.

“Don’t we have to pay?” James asked looking down and back towards the counter. He didn’t want to dine and dash.

“Already paid for both of us” Richard tapped his head. “Transferred credits a minute or two ago. Let’s go”

“You didn’t have to pay for me” James muttered as they moved towards the entrance.

“Of course I did, ‘ best friends’ and all that” Richard punched James’s arm just as he slipped out the front door – a sort of flap that slid around you as you passed through. It was strange – the door looked like a solid sheet of misted glass but parted like hung fabric. As soon as James pressed his hand into the solid pane, a seam appeared – the middle parting perfectly as if he was cutting a new entrance in a sheet of plastic.

James stepped through after Richard then glanced about in an attempt to gain some bearings.

Already close to night again. Where did the day go?

The surroundings were almost glowing with the number of neon lights about. Quite a few floated on invisible string…or maybe they just floated? A few shops had full scale holographic displays – and a few of those cascaded out into the street. The street holograms caused people to look strange as they walked through them but were static enough to look fake.

James caught up to Richard and looked about as they walked.

“What’s your plan?” James asked after they walked in silence for a moment.

“Don’t really have one, figure if we see a spice shop we can head in. Figure if I see a clue to any of the mysteries we can explore it. Slight secret but I wing most of these sorts of things” Richard confided.

“Oh hey look. A ‘metal bar’ lets check it out,” Richard pointed out a shop showing several flexing metallic statues.

James found himself almost dragged into the new building where he stared about the surroundings. Unlike the last place this ‘bar’ was full of half a dozen patrons who all glanced over as they entered. Most glanced back at their drinks or weights but a man in the corner squinted and stared as they made their way further in. Near the front a muscled man sat on a bench slowly bending a bar of metal into a pretzel a small crowd of three watching him as he nodded towards them.

“We’ll take a table for two” Richard spoke as if to himself then waved his translated info over to the bar man who nodded to an empty spot.

“Why are we here?” James asked as they stepped over to a table. There didn’t seem to be any chairs – the only place to sit was the bench the owner was sitting on, and all the other patrons stood at their tables.

“Listen, I need to get you asking the right questions James. This isn’t a why scenario – instead it’s a ‘why not’ – means I literally don’t know a single thing about this place so I’m curious. Figure we might as well have some fun if we are in down time – in other news, I don’t have enough credits for a weapon but food and drinks are cheap.” Richard waved the question away then looked down at the menu. A piece of paper lay on the table covered in a foreign language that looked almost like English but with an entirely different alphabet. Phonetic but with different characters and words?

“Are those…blocks of metal?” James muttered peering closer.

“Think so!” Richard confirmed then waved the musclemen down.

“This, and this, and this…” Richard pointed to half the menu causing the buff waiter to nod a few times. When Richard pointed to one item near the bottom the two had a bit of a back and forth – from what James could tell based on one side of the conversation, Richard had to prove they both had the stats to handle it? Something about the menu item being poisonous to the non-aether enhanced?

Either way, Richard seemed to satisfy the man as soon as he showed off the ‘stone hands’ and the waiter stopped trying to steer them away. After noting down their whole order, the man left them both with a hand weight and moved the the back room.

“So…we just do some variation of standing curls?” James asked then picked his weight up hefting it a few times. His arms were weak – so much weaker than his stat filled state had gotten him used to – but the weight wasn’t excessive. Feeling slightly awkward he began working out while waiting for his food – his drink? To be honest he wasn’t sure what the bar was offering just yet.

…

Actually, after a few minutes of lifting James changed his mind. The weight was incredibly appreciated – somehow having something to do with his hands relaxed him.

It only took a few minutes for the first ‘meal’ to be brought out. Two tiny saucers each containing a block of what looked like…well based on how it was cut by a knife the metal looked like sodium? Or potassium? One of those metals you can cut by hand.

The block was covered in a light drizzle of oil and came with a single knife and flat looking fork.

“On three?” James asked, causing Richard to grin.

“On three.” His friend confirmed then started counting down from 10.

“…Five, four, three and in,” Richard said lifting the block of soft metal up and taking a bite – James rushed to take his own bite feeling like he was committing some crime against chemistry.

It tasted exactly like he thought it would – this block was definitely not food as far as his brain was concerned.

There was a slight tingle on his tongue and a strange texture but the overwhelming taste was of nothing.

It didn’t seem to have a flavor – was it really edible?

It was kind of disappointing if James was being honest.

When James focused on the metal, the waiter removed his weak dumbbell and replaced it with a heavier one.

He finished off the appetizer and went back to pumping iron.

It wasn’t a full workout – doing curls wasn’t nearly enough – but it was a fun theme at least.

“Don’t think that was food,” James finally said glancing across at his dinner partner.

“Yeah…I don’t know what I was expecting” Richard responded staring in confusion at his clean plate.

Before they could regret their decision, the waiter came out again, this time carrying supplies.

Roughly sliding two plates in front of them the pair saw two golden statues of a man holding a medal high above his head.

Pulling out a canister of something, the waiter carefully drizzled the two golden statues in sauce then held up a hand.

“Five minutes?” Richard asked translating and sending the message.

The waiter grunted in affirmation then turned, nodding once to James as he retreated once more.

James reached out and poked the soaked statue. It felt solid. With a closer look, the metal didn’t seem to be straight gold – it looked more like some unknown alloy – but it was completely hard.

“Guess the doused stuff will make it soft?” Richard asked, poking his own statue.

James shrugged then picked up his new weight and began curling.

Richard seemed fascinated by his statue – he bent in and poked it several times pinching the sides till they bent inwards and licking his fingers to taste the liquid doused on it.

Finally five minutes passed and the statue was ready. James reached out to bite it only to find the taste surprising. Unlike the last block this statue had actual flavors. A coppery tinge was the main note –reminding James slightly of the taste of blood – but a subtle medley of other tastes filled his mouth at the same time. The easiest way to describe it was as ‘something he’d never tasted before’…but that felt lazy. Especially as a third and fourth meal came out – both tasting wholly ‘unique’ as well.

The final offering was a drink and a pile of hard metal balls.

You poured a shot of the liquid, dropped the ball in the drink and watched as it started to smoke and spark – a call back to the sodium in water experiment from high school. The waiter showed off how you shot the sparking ball then watched them each slam their own as if not trusting they could take it.

The ball burned – it sizzled and sparkled all the way down James’s throat and then continued to sparkle in his stomach. A warm feeling slowly filled his body, his arms and legs feeling loose and tingly.

Once again – a wholly unique feeling. James had to say the closest feeling was being drunk but with a vibrating tingle that continued as the ball continued to react in his stomach.

Looking across the table, Richard watched the waiter turn away and then winked at James. Quickly before he could react, the madman tossed the rest of his balls in his pitcher and then chugged the whole thing. Richard's eyes sprung open near the end of his shotgun – smoke leaking from his nose and giving him the look of a dragon.

James wasn’t quite about that macho display, but he quickly made 8 more shots and worked his way through his entire pile.

Each ball increased the drunk tingling feeling – by the last one James began feeling nauseous but he pushed through.

Paying once again Richard dragged him into the night laughing hysterically as he spun about.

“I wonder how they made those meals edible? The waiter never responded when I asked. Want to hit the other dungeon? I bet we can speed run it. Oh…you wanted to wait till your death penalty was done, booooo. Spices! We were supposed to get you spices. Fuck, that’s on me I got distracted. We should get you those balls so you can make that last drink on your own! Aheh, I’m glad to know there’s still stuff strong enough to get me buzzed,” Richard continued to happily talk as he dragged James further into the night.