JESSIE : LEVEL 11

DAY 158 : F-DAY, FOURTHWEEK, EOS, YEAR 1

CENTRAL 13 : VILLA 3 : MATURITY

After that week of mainlining the button with no sleep, followed by two more of trying to get the nicest girl ever to be even slightly mean, I stopped worrying and learned to love the XP Box. As such, I’m back to sword practice.

Not against people. Not in the city. No monsters, either. “None of those in Central to begin with…” But my tried-and-true regenerating-tree method is useless now.

At 32 Strength, all my Physical attacks cut through environmental objects like butter. It doesn’t even matter what angle I use. Edge or flat of the blade, the feedback is the same when it’s butter. “Softened butter, at that…”

But Darreck’s training room has regenerating dummies that The System regards as a valid, living target of whatever Level and STATs you set it to. I can be so much more precise with my practice now. And I can practice on any sort of target I want. I’ve been spending most of my time this week doing it.

Turns out, Kratos was actually right. Dual-wielding really is altogether different than fighting with a single sword. Using two at once feels nothing like I expected. That being basically just holding a sword in one hand, only twice. Of course, I now realize that was a stupid assumption. But I did assume it.

And now, everything I learned about single-wielding, the weight, the balance, the stances… It’s all different now. So all that training was pointless. Well, not pointless… I’m still way better with two swords than when I started with one over half an objective year ago. But… My main damage source…

Most of it is doable. Annoying, but doable. There’s just one part I’m stuck on. And that’s my whole main thing. The one bit that gave me a massive advantage over everyone and everything I’ve gone up against. The resheathing…

And to think I wouldn’t even know about the full extent of it without Darreck’s private training hall. I’m just thankful he’s letting me use it. That was never part of the arrangement, after all. He’s even nice enough to walk down and remind me when I’ve gone a few hours without an XP button recharge.

The whole thing seemed kind of creepy to begin with… I definitely had my doubts. But even that mindset feels like a distant dream. And now I’m Level 11, and well on my way to 12. Just a month of pressing a button once per hour has gotten me nearly as much XP as all my struggles up to that point combined.

The fact is, I really lucked out meeting him. Not much point in going live with this whole dual-wielding business yet. At least not until I’m as competent at resheathing two katanas as I was with one. Then, I guess I’ll probably go get that Attunement? And I’ve even got until then to decide on which to choose. Electricity, water, earth, wind, fire, ice, light, and dark…

I’m obviously not going anywhere near water. And not just because The System calls it ‘Juicy’. Or ice either, for that matter. Nothing wet… I think I’d like to be done with ‘wet’ as a theme altogether. And no Earth, either. Just doesn’t seem like a Speed-focused kind of thing… Maybe someone could do some kind of super-speedy juggernaut? Not as a glass cannon though. Also dirt… And mom liked fire, so fuck that as well. Which leaves only Lightning, dark, or light…

With the empty insulated training room, I feel truly comfortable for technically the first time in living memory. So much so that my subconscious lets up on its constant vigilance against being seen any given way. As a result, I’m talking to myself while I practice. And with no regard for how much like a chipmunk or donkey I might sound to anyone overhearing me disregard my little breathing issue for a while.

“Light has to be the fastest element, right? And I know I’ll regret it if I eliminate the best option just because the name is something stupid like ‘Shine’. Water is called ‘Juicy’, after all. I mean I’m not picking that either. But that’s not why. Then there’s Surge…”

I imagine the same thing I always do when picturing a lightning swordsman. “Not if I can’t sheathe my fucking katanas right… Actually, how does he sheathe his sword? Wait, no, really, how does he do that? I don’t mean ‘how can a human body move that fast?’. I mean, what are the physical body movements that even allow for any of it to work? Does he just reverse momentum or something? Can he even do that? Wait a minute… I can do that.”

Changing up my practice at the thought, I take another set of swings at the training dummy, and then pause time to zero out my momentum. Next, I flip the swords over length-wise, moving slow enough to pinch the non-sharp part of the blades the instant they’re facing me mid-flip. That done, I pause time once more to cancel the momentum of both my hand, and the swords to guide them home. I spend several long microseconds devoting all my attention to course-correcting both swords until they ever-so-gradually slam into place.

A smile overwhelms my face. “Rashomon…”

I just sit there for an undisclosed amount of time, grinning up at the ceiling.

Eventually getting up, I do it again. And again. And again, and again, and again. I lose count after the fifth.

Just as eventually, I start to get winded. Yeah, can’t just pause and unpause time like that forever. I mean I can do it for a while…

But for now, I just head upstairs.

The moment I enter a non-soundproofed space again, Yellow is already mid reprimand. “First thing, never say-”

But I don’t need to hear whatever egregious thing Blue apparently said because I already have the perfect annoying non-comeback to interrupt Yellow with. “First thing, never say ‘first thing: never say-’.”

Yellow stutters for a moment. But her lightbulb does belatedly sputter on. “Oh what, you think that’s clever? At the very least, it’s no less lazy than my thing.”

Green rubs her shoulders. “Well, in my opinion-”

I don’t let her finish either. “You don't have opinions. You're like a living summary of Piss’s facebook timeline.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

The aforementioned Piss literally snaps at me. “SHUT UP.”

Apparently, that’s Darreck’s cue to walk in. “You did agree not to do that, Red.”

Will my failure ever stop haunting me? I solemnly hold my spent XP button out to him as a consolation prize.

Recharging it, his nose starts bleeding as I immediately press the thing.

Dopamine rushing my system from the rising gold ‘256’, I plop down on the same couch as Blue. I relax even further as I feel her untense from several feet away. And then I think of literally anything to say that doesn’t insult someone in the room. “So I’ve been here for a while now… Is there a reason I haven’t seen any non-human races? Anywhere? Like, at all? I mean I would’ve thought there’d be more interspecies travel involved in a Heaven where they’re all represented. But there’s been nothing. Can most aliens just not survive in our environment, or what?”

Darreck chuckles, clearly happy that I dropped my counter-bullying so fast this time. “Actually, everyone, everywhere within this sphere, can ‘survive’ in any environment across its inner surface. But yes, there’s a reason for why there are next to no aliens to be found here in the center of humanity. Past The Exterior, are The Eight Kingdoms. No aliens there either. Because at the end of each kingdom is a door. Four of those doors each lead to a different race’s Territory. And apart from the occasional political representatives, those Territories have long-since been locked from their side.”

Apparently, Green can count. “Wait, what about the other four doors?”

“Those are Neutral Zones. They’re the squares settled between each racial octagon on the concave grid. And each gives us access to one additional race. But they’ve been unusable for as long as anyone can remember.”

I raise my hand. “Why can’t we ‘use’ them? Are we locked out of there, too? Is it because they know Piss is here?”

Darreck shakes his head with a sigh, ignoring Yellow’s snort and Green’s sympathetically scandalized look. “None of that… Neutral territory is truly neutral. So as soon as anyone, anywhere, of any race, steps foot in one, Xemu kills them.”

Green nearly raises her hand, but seems to realize she’s about to imitate me before putting it back down. “What’s a Xemu?”

Yellow jumps up, turning around to gape at her in affronted astonishment. “Seriously?” She then looks at me and Blue in turn, each with increasing disdain. “How do none of you know this?”

Blue whispers softly enough that no one else but me seems to hear her. “I do…”

Darreck settles his hand on Yellow’s shoulder with a comforting squeeze. “It’s okay. It’s always okay not to know something yet. For you too, Yellow. Just ask me. I won’t get mad. And none of the rest of you should either. This is a judgment-free zone, remember?” Squeezing once more before removing his hand from her shoulder, he turns briefly to Green, and then faces me and Blue on the opposite couch. “Maybe you’ve heard of its other name… The Black Dragon.”

Behind Darreck, Green’s eyes widen in recognition.

I remain confused, assuming he’s not talking about children’s card games.

Darreck ignores Yellow’s eye-roll, turning to face me directly. “As you might’ve guessed, it’s a massive dragon. Or a massive shadow in the shape of a dragon… But you can clearly see it thanks to how it totally blots out whatever’s behind with a pure blackness that the inner sphere’s very space can’t help but ripple around.”

He shakes his head. “More to the point, whenever you exit a racial border through one of those doors… Xemu kills you. It happens immediately. If you’re looking in just the right direction, you might see an impression of blackened warped space before you get the System message and everything else becomes black anyway. If you blink at the same moment you cross the border, you won’t just be dead before your eyes open again. You’ll be dead before they even close.”

I flash him a confident smirk. “Oh will I now?”

Darreck sighs in exasperation. “With your whole time breathing thing… I guess not technically. I’m sure you could get a great look at it before you run out of breath and it kills you for your trouble. But don’t, though. You’ve already died enough. You shouldn’t have to anymore. Not for anything.”

Surprising myself, I blush.

Sensing weakness, Yellow seems to decide that this frozen moment of me fantasizing about spitting in her gaping mouth for several minutes, is her perfect chance to strike. “So many deaths, and in only… How old are you again?”

I’m more surprised at her flaccid attempt to get at me through a mental tower shield than anything. So I don’t even phrase my answer in the form of the insult she deserves. “I think I’m 16.”

She snorts. “You think? Wait, no, you’re a minor?”

“I said ‘I think’!”

“How could you not know?”

“Because time works differently for me now, you dumb bitch!”

Darreck picks then to cut off the standard bickering to fill me in on what I already knew. “We have fewer days per year than on Earth. But each of those days has more hours. And the hours have more minutes. And the minutes have more seconds. But the seconds are about as long as the ones on Earth, so it evens out.”

“No, I get that. I mean how old am I really?”

“It’s simple. And probably what you thought already. Your actual age is whatever age you were when you died, plus your time here so far. When I said it evened out, I meant that 64 seconds in a minute, 64 minutes in an hour, and 32 hours in a day… Adds up to a day here being just under half again as long as its counterpart on Earth. With our days being nearly 50% longer, 256 of them is practically the same amount of time as 365 Earth ones.”

I shake my head more and more vehemently as he keeps talking to the point that my eyes are blocked by a thatch of crimson by the time he’s done. “No, I mean, with my ‘time breathing thing’ as you so eloquently call it, how long have I experienced being alive? Frozen time and all?”

He blinks. “Oh. I couldn’t possibly know that.”

“That’s why my question was rhetorical.”

“It… It was?”

“Yeah.”

He sighs. “Sorry… Sometimes, I suspect The System didn’t actually fix my ADHD on arrival like I thought. I tend to get off on unprompted diatribes. As you’ve clearly noticed…”

Green looks concernedly at Darreck. “You had attention problems?”

Turning to her in a huff, she shrinks back from the closest thing to real hostility I’ve seen from him, before managing to calm himself. “It’s more than that.” Darreck sighs into his own chair bordering the two couches. “Complaining about ADHD isn't fun. Because people who think it isn't a real thing just say something like ‘yeah, I've had a hard time paying attention too… Don’t have a prescription about it or anything…’. And then you say something like ‘no, I mean I literally can't’. And they go ‘Well yeah, me too’.”

He stares into and through his own hands tented in front of him. “And it feels a lot like if you were paraplegic and I just kept going ‘Well yeah, I've had to sit down before’. And then you’re like ‘No, I mean I literally can't get up’. And then I’m all ‘Yeah, I've had some days where I literally couldn't get up. But I got over it. I’m sure you can walk without that wheelchair if you really tried’.”

Darreck reclines his seat. “That’s what it feels like mentioning ADHD to anyone who doesn’t have it.”

Green blushes this time.

I open my mouth like I’m gonna give her shit about it.

Yellow takes the bait. “You promised to stop that, you Crimson Bitch!”

I just laugh.