JESSIE : LEVEL 10

DAY 130 : B-DAY, FIRSTWEEK, EOS, YEAR 1

CENTRAL 8 : HISTORICAL DISTRICT 1 : SIGHTSEEING

As soon as I exit the private room he allocated to me in his uptown villa, Darreck claps his hands. “So… Where are you headed? And, in addendum, how can I help?”

I mutely hand him the XP button to recharge while I cope with a half-frozen realization that I didn’t actually plan anything beyond leaving that room. “I’m not entirely sure. I feel like I should get an Attunement, right?”

Darreck nods seriously. “Makes sense. Your powerset will never be complete without an element to command. But before that… Care to see the sights? Unless things on Earth took a drastic turn for the futuristic since I last checked, this is by far the biggest city you’ve ever seen. And trust me as someone who’s been here and back again more times than you can count. You only get one first visit. So… Care to join us, Red?”

“Wait, if you’ve lived here so long, why are you ‘seeing the sights’?”

The blonde girl scoffs from over on the couch. “You ungrateful little bitch…”

Darreck glares at her. “Yellow… Please don’t do this today?” After she grumbles out a grudging acceptance, he looks back at me. “Please forgive her. You had no way of knowing, but I asked everyone to keep their schedules open for whenever you exited that room. You can decline, of course. In which case, we’ll have to brainstorm for a whole five minutes to come up with something else to do without you. It’s just no fun getting the tourist experience without an actual tourist in the group, you know? We need someone like you with us to enjoy it.”

The people in this house apparently being organized by hair color, Yellow follows after Brown in a huff. Green follows her with an accusatory glance towards me, and Blue brings up the rear as she just kind of tries not to be seen. Yeah… Yeah, okay. I think I get the dynamic. And I hate it. But I can fuck with that later. For now though… I narrow my eyes as I press the button and realize that Brown, despite being Darreck’s hair color, doesn’t work as a nickname. It’s not just bad. It’s literally shit.

A golden ‘256’ rises from the box in my hand as it loses all color and I head out the door with the rest of the Primary Color Squad Featuring Darreck.

I still clearly remember the first time I pressed the button yesterday. The surge of XP alone… And it didn’t disappoint the second time either. We talked for a while after that. I had nowhere to stay. Or go back to. I mean there was the hotel room. But that’s basically just an empty box with either a bed or an empty spot for one depending on preferences. I’ve clearly been spoiled by my time on the road, spending every night air conditioned and comfy under the open night sky. I can’t go back to the quiet box aesthetic. Not if I have an alternative. But this guy’s place is nice. And he offered to let me stay with him until I find something better.

On our way back, he started teasingly calling me ‘Red’. And I was all like yeah ok, not creative, but at least it’s better than ‘Jess’. And then the other shoe dropped. I met the others, who all go by that same hair-color-based naming convention. Which really isn’t fair since doing that with his hair color just makes me sound like I’m calling him ‘poopy head’ the whole time. Or being vaguely, if overtly, racist. Which would also be an issue if Yellow were Asian… But she’s not. And my hair is red… Well, it’s crimson. But ‘Red’ is a better name than ‘Crimson’. Even if ‘Crimson’ is still better than ‘Jess’…

It is his place and all, so I guess I can make some allowances. We’re just staying there, rent-free and with all sorts of amenities while we set ourselves up in Central. And mooching thousands of XP per day while we’re at it.

After shutting the door to my private room with fully stocked minibar, skylight, and balcony, I put my sand bed on the balcony, as one does. I then proceeded to get what felt like my best night’s sleep in months. I only woke up once. Just long enough to blearily press the XP button, consider bothering Darreck to recharge it, decide that 256 XP wasn’t worth ruining how comfortable I was, and fall promptly back to even better sleep.

And just like that, here I am. Barely a day after I wandered Central like a zombie on a mission to nowhere, and I’m as well-rested as I’ve ever been, touring a new city with new friends.

The tour guide gestures wildly all around. “Welcome to, literally, THE BIGGEST CITY EVER!!!.”

Yellow scoffs. “Like the other races didn’t even exist…”

The tour guide hears that. Apparently, she was waiting for it. “Besides, of course, everywhere else!” She smirks at Yellow as nearly the whole tour group laughs.

Not Darreck though.

I barely avoid it myself. I almost don’t care that all these people would see me laugh at that bitch in slow motion. Honestly, it’s the closest call I’ve had in public since I got to Central. More to the point, I think I’m gonna like this tour guide.

[ HERO TARGETED: LUMBERJILL ]

“And to our right, we have The Archives very own… Historical District!”

Yellow points way off to the left and raises her voice way too loud not to upstage the tour guide. “So what’s with them?”

Green nods along as though never having heard a smarter question.

Lumberjill jerks her head in that direction, which everyone else on the tour takes as a signal to do the same. Being a good tour guide, she just rolls with it, incorporating the question into the tour itself. “To our far left, we have the outside edge of Central’s main Free Battle Zone. It circles entirely around our very own Central District. Minus specific pathways, of course.” She chuckles nervously. “Don’t think it’s unsafe to visit The Arena or The Tower or anywhere else in our vaunted Central District. Just stay on the main streets, and you’ll be safe as anywhere else in the city.”

Not nodding so much anymore, Green just looks concerned. “But… Why are they doing that?”

Lumberjill narrows her eyes at the two closest combatants before shaking her head. “I couldn’t possibly say. They don’t look familiar though.”

Darreck glares at the fighters with far more disdain than I’ve seen from him yet. “It’s what happens when you go around making enemies left and right. Even with an eight-hour head start, anyone can be traced. I’m sure they’ve had that fight hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. More..? Who can say?”

Lumberjill sighs. “And to our right… We have the district of the city we’re supposed to be touring.”

Turning away from the ongoing fight, we gaze at the far more impressive, complicated, seemingly infinite maze of buildings.

“As you can see, each block of the Historical District incorporates a wildly different architecture style. Everything from Ancient Chinese to Modern Greek to Postmodern Technocracy to Steampunk. You name it, it’s around here somewhere. In fact… It’s time for the democratic part of the tour. Each person think of a type of art or period in Earth’s history, and we’ll go to that spot, or something close to it, if you raise your hand… NOW!!!”

Having stopped breathing the instant the tour guide’s lips started to move, my hand shoots up before she even finishes saying the word.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Blinking at my smug expression, she calls on me.

“Anime.”

The entire group grumbles in an overall mess of affronted confusion.

For her part, Lumberjill doesn’t seem to recognize the term. “Come again? Isn’t that a style of cartoon?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m clearly not familiar with it, so why don’t you describe the type of architecture that ‘anime’ signifies?”

My hand lowers and I start to wish a lot harder that I was slower to raise it. “I’m not sure… I think I just wanted to see what the closest match was.”

Lumberjill facepalms. “I am a Hero.”

“Right…”

“Not a search engine.”

“Okay.”

“So I can’t just return the best match for a thing I’ve never heard of.”

“Ah… Then, um… How about High-Fantasy Future Japanese architecture? Is that a thing?”

Yellow scoffs.

Green copies her.

Blue just looks uncomfortable.

Darreck is amused.

The rest of the tour group, less so.

Lumberjill narrows her eyes at me before turning back to her wheel. The increasingly awkward silence stretches until the hover-bus is well on its way in navigating around the intervening buildings between us and whatever my search result returned in her memory. “As you may have deduced. All the land outside of The Central District was initially purchasable from The System. Far outside of living memory, there was supposedly a rush on all the property in or around the city, not to mention every other System-regulated population center in Heaven.”

She gestures all around. “But as you’ll know very well with a cursory check of the local housing market, these plots are being sold for dozens, hundreds, or most commonly thousands of times the System-recommended price. Other than Central District itself, the subsections of the city aren’t System-mandated. This Historical sector represents the ever-shifting bubble of real estate that The Archive has purchased over all the millennia since its formation. Just like Bisney has Entertainment, Valor has The Warrens, and The Adventurer’s Guild has the biggest privately owned swath in The Financial District. Not to mention all The Kingdoms and other corporations that managed to carve out little slices of Central over decades of buying up nearby property.”

Lumberjill snorts, seeming to remember something. “You wouldn’t believe the markup over prices The System sold them for, or will again if abandoned for whatever reason. Be thankful there aren’t any bots that can interact with The System’s land purchasing UI. And it simply isn’t worth the cost of having a guild leader just sit there and constantly press the button on the off-chance that even a single property gets sold in any given month. Anyone with that rank has better shit to do.”

Our tour guide then threads the fucking needle between an archway with this barn of a vehicle before continuing like she didn’t just pull that shit. “But even if not, the likely profit margins simply aren’t worth it for the most part. As with all ‘for the most part’s, people still do it though. The problem with that is, you can see who bought what property. So sniping a strategically timed deal between two powerhouses is a great way to make some especially powerful enemies. It won’t surprise you to learn that the more of the city someone controls, the more they can and will go out of their way to ruin your lives for taking any of it away.”

As it turns out, I get exactly what I asked for. We step off the flying tour bus and onto the sidewalk bordering something straight out of Ghost in the Shell. So basically like a normal, if especially tall skyscraper, but with random rectangular bits jutting out everywhere. A few of those are even big enough to serve as helicopter landing platforms. And there are a few of those zipping around in the sky above the city. But the way they’re being flown makes them look more like toys than something you’d use for transportation.

I kind of marvel at that before I notice my box’s timer popped. Pressing the button and getting XP, I hand the thing to Darreck for a recharge.

Darreck comments for once as he hands it back to me. “Okay, so if you’re going to be here pressing my buttons for a while, I feel I should elaborate on how it actually works.”

“Annoying you?”

He snorts, pointing to the smoke-detector-looking thing. “That.”

I gulp, having prepped myself for an imminently dropping shoe bigger than the dumb color-nickname thing. Oh here we go… “In what way?”

“So this deals with some hidden numbers, but there’s a funny quirk with the timer that I’ve discovered since the relevant Skill descriptions don’t cover it. You can think of it like a leveling system. Every time you press the button, you level up. Every time you go eight hours without pressing the button, you level down. And you only get XP for reaching any given level once.”

“Alright… So say I level down. Then I can level up again two hours later still, right?”

“Sure you can. Five if you miss a full day. So it’s not much of a going concern or anything as long as you stay on top of it. But it adds up. I’m telling you this now because you said you wanted to get an attunement, right?”

I nod.

“That’s what I was afraid of. And why I want to head this off now if it’s gonna be a problem. Even going as fast as your file suggests you will, that’s a yearlong journey we’re talking about. Which means the more you press that button, the more it will serve as a subconscious shackle keeping you from striking out on your own. Unless you get your Box Level into the thousands, it’ll get down to nothing by the time you come back to Central. Not to say that my dumb little button compares at all to higher-level XP sources. But let’s just say the issue I’m describing has cropped up before. And given the choice, I’d like to skip that drama going forward.”

I think that scenario through for several minutes. He’s right. It do be like that tho. But I also do come up with a plan before replying instantly. “Alright, Brown…”

He winces, but doesn’t say anything.

Yeah, that felt as gross as I thought it would. I try to blow right past it. “So here’s what I’m thinking… I’ll wait till level… Let’s say 15. Then, I’ll spend all my points. STATs, Skills, all that shit.”

Everyone just looks at me blankly.

Eventually, Yellow throws back her hair. “So? How is that a plan?”

I look as scornfully down at her as I can manage. I mean seriously, how can you be this much of a stereotypical cheerleader? She even has a sycophant. The irony is so thick that I have to pause time for over a minute just to see past it. “How do you not get this? Nine Skills, six STATs, all at once.”

Much like Green next to her, Yellow looks vapidly unimpressed. “It seems I must repeat myself… So?”

Having been given literally any excuse, I breathe deep, savor the moment for as long as I can comfortably hold my breath, and immediately pop the top on what I’ve been bottling. “So… Nine Skills. All at once. It’s enough to restructure my build into literally anything I want. That’s huge on its own. But more importantly… I don’t trust myself right now. I feel like any decision I make right now will be the wrong one. And I know it’ll be for the wrong reason. Just like I know I’ll regret it. I’m just so fucking pissed that I can hardly even…”

I take an even subjectively longer breath. “And I know I’ll regret that later. So I decided I should wait until I calm down.” I let out a half-horrified chuckle. “And I figure I’ll get there just from the button in-” I do the calculation in my head before continuing the sentence fluidly. “-just over a year. And if I still can’t think anything but negative thoughts about everyone all the time… Then maybe I’m better off beating this thing alone.”

I shake my head and look over at Darreck. “Not that I hate being here or anything. It’s just… You don’t want to climb the planets, right?”

Darreck looks back at me in more alarm than I’ve seen from him. “What? Absolutely not! I abhor violence. You all know that. Well, I guess you don’t, Red. But you do now. And ascending is, by its very nature, a path of violence. So no. I will not be accompanying you on… That.”

I let out an objectively identical breath in relief. “Oh good. Because… And I mean I wasn’t gonna say it if you wanted to-” I shake my head and gulp, hoping that he’s not an egomaniacal narcissist who will take away my XP rights for any criticism. “You’d be really, really bad at it.”

But far from angry, Darreck pretends to be furious and slaps the side of his face, leaving it there in sarcasm-drenched shock. “Whaaat? I, the guy who doesn’t like violence, wouldn’t be good at the violence competition? How Daaare you imply tha-” Midway through his sentence, he breaks down in laughter.

After a second, the rest join in.

I hold it in for as long as I can. But my resistance was futile from the start.

Everyone looks some variation on ‘shocked’ when my laugh finally comes out. Blue looks curious. Yellow and Green look equal parts disgusted and amused. But Darreck? Darreck doesn’t even look. He treats my laugh as though it was completely and utterly normal. Nothing special at all.

And right here, right now, that’s the only thing I care about. The first person who doesn’t care. Someone… Who doesn’t care. Even if not for the huge favor he’s doing us… If I didn’t have a reason to stay before, I do now. Finally… A real friend.