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The falling damage he’d taken must have sobered Tardee enough to drop his falsetto and taunt me in a conversational tone. At least he wasn’t performing for the cameras anymore. “You’re spilling blood in a church? That’s blasphemy—very bad karma.”

Mother Marteen’s interpretation of balance and revenge made me smile at the irony of Tardee’s assessment. “No. We’re in the perfect place to fight.” Ignoring my Weakness debuff, I raised my spear.

Tardee mistook my meaning and shrugged. “I suppose. It’s cleaner than fighting outdoors.” He made a great show of tossing his sword behind him, and it landed with a loud clang against the temple floor. A stout, ornate mace appeared in Tardee’s hand. “I picked up this cudgel last week from a player who found it on a wererat boss in the Grayton sewers. It cleaned up well—don’t you think? You’ll be a perfect target to rank up my bludgeon skill. You game for some whack-a-mole?”

Belden’s military academy instructors taught us to use bludgeoning weapons first because they were safer and simpler to learn. Clubs didn’t get snagged or stuck into opponents. They required a tighter grip, so there’s less likelihood of dropping them.

Item

Black River Cudgel

Rarity

Masterwork (green)

Description

Level 12 bludgeoning weapon

+2 damage

He held an excellent weapon, better than anything I’d seen, but it wasn’t the right tool for the job. Maces caused tissue trauma beneath the armor, but I was an agile, cloth-covered pipsqueak. But why switch to a slow weapon like this? The short sword he’d tossed to the floor with such panache would have been deadlier.

It served as such an impractical weapon swap I expected a trap. Tardee lunged forward, and I dodged several clumsy attacks. The more he charged, the more he convinced me he had no skill ranks with bludgeoning weapons.

I entered The Book of Dungeons as a gamer, but gamers don’t know how to attack with bludgeoning weapons. To RPG fans, a blunt weapon provided an alternate flavor for fantasy fighting.

Training at the academy taught me how to fight. As any cadet knows, bludgeoning inflicts maximum damage when striking with the tip, so attackers want as much distance from their opponent as possible.

Tardee’s optimal strategy should cycle through hitting, disengaging, and recovering. But he pursued me as if brandishing a dagger. I was low-level, to be sure, but precisely the worst opponent for a mace. Instead of learning how weapons worked, he opted for the showiest. Despite his levels and gear, he played like a casual gamer and hadn’t learned to adapt.

I stopped keeping my distance upon realizing Tardee wasn’t drawing me into a trap. My injured arm weakened my thrust, preventing me from inflicting damage. I backed up from Tardee and raised it threateningly. Instead of hitting Tardee, I spun and tossed it at Falconeer, who didn’t see the incoming projectile.

The distraction stopped the assassin from exploiting Charitybelle’s wavering defensive stance—a delaying tactic for crowded combat called la folla. The stalwart set of maneuvers proved effective in the academy, but he exploited her weaknesses and wore down her health pool.

I had a short sword handy, but I whipped out my trusty old sharp knife from my first day in the game. Belden meant me to kill rats with it, so I would oblige them this once.

Unimpressed by my blade, Tardee pressed his attack.

I dodged and jabbed him with my knife. He tried several more swings, each with the same result.

Tardee’s face soon flushed with frustration, and his taunts turned into curses. “How are you doing this?”

I dodged another slow, broadcasted swing.

As I tangled with Tardee, I heard sound effects from actions that Falconeer unloaded on Fabulosa and Charitybelle. If he killed either of my companions, the other would collapse like a house of cards. I couldn’t see how they could keep Falconeer’s cooldowns at bay for much longer, but my inactive spells and engagement with Tardee put me in no position to help.

Tardee kept trying to take me out with a single blow. His all-or-nothing attacks yielded nothing.

My knife jabbed him at every miss.

When he started dripping blood, he backed away and cast Rejuvenate on himself again, taking an instant to cast. It shook his ego to heal himself from fighting a player a quarter of his level.

We re-engaged. After every missed attack, I stuck Tardee with my blade.

He whined to himself in frustration after each counterattack. “What?” “Aww—come on!” “How is this possible?”

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I maintained my close engagement. When my opponent’s mace missed, I answered with a quick stab.

Tardee muttered under his breath as I bested him in every exchange. “Come on! Come on.” After self-Rejuvenating, his health climbed to 70 percent. Level 16 still had its advantages, but his distress prevented him from thinking clearly.

/You hit Tardee for 5 damage (1 resisted).

/You hit Tardee for 3 damage (2 resisted).

My advantage in this close-quarter melee became clear to both of us. Tardee had tossed his short sword behind him, so he had no choice but to continue fighting with the mace.

When my cooldown for Shocking Reach ended, I relented my aggression, backed off, and cast it on Falconeer behind me.

Tardee looked grateful for the reprieve.

Falconeer flinched when it hit, prompting Charitybelle and Fabulosa to Charge him simultaneously. The convergence of our efforts winnowed his health pool to zero. His corpse disappeared before it hit the temple’s floor.

I stopped time with a glance at my event log.

/Tardee misses Apache.

/You hit Tardee for 4 damage (1 resisted)

/Tardee misses Apache.

/You hit Falconeer with Shocking Reach for 12 damage (2 resisted).

/Fabulosa hits Falconeer with Charge for 40 damage (4 resisted).

/Charitybelle hits Falconeer with Charge for 28 damage. (2 resisted).

/Falconeer dies.

/You received 32 experience points.

“This is not happening!”

Despite what he’d done to my friends, Tardee’s naked desperation made me pity him. It would have been better form to end him faster, but my conservative and methodical nature stayed impulses to overextend myself. Drawing out the battle made his defeat more embarrassing than it could have been.

Judging by my Compression Sphere’s cooldown, barely a minute and a half had transpired since casting it. I’d scarcely processed the timeline before Fabulosa Charged Tardee.

Charitybelle, Tardee, and I had not prepared for her endgame. I hadn’t seen Fabulosa fight since the arena and couldn’t compare her attacks to any form or stance. My hours of practice hadn’t diminished my respect for her natural talent. The academy instructors repeated their mantra—levels don’t matter. While combat remained a contest of skills, and mine outranked Fabulosa, her improvisation showed an alien proficiency. Her footwork transcended classifications of patterns or positions. Not only could I not replicate her performance, I didn’t think she could. Her attacks displayed unfiltered fury.

Tardee fell on the receiving end of that passion. He blocked at her feint, opening his guard for a Thrust.

Fabulosa drove her heel into his knee when she hesitated her next swing. She ducked beneath his cudgel when he countered. The kick Hobbled our opponent’s dominant foot, and Tardee staggered against the wall, practically helpless.

The three of us struck in unison. Like wolves on a kill, we knocked him out of the game without a sense of honor, sport, or ceremony. It amounted to revenge in its purest form. No one uttered another word, not even Tardee, as we each performed our roles.

When Fabulosa delivered the killing blow, Tardee disappeared, and his gear hit the floor.

Congratulations!

You are level 5

You have gained a level. You have increased your stamina by 2 and agility by 1. You have received 1 power point. You have 311/355 experience points toward level 6.

The three of us embraced in sniffles and tears. Only the statue of the pontifex witnessed the fight or its aftermath. Nothing else stirred in the temple of Our Lady of Balance while we mourned.

The Book of Dungeons was only a game, but RIP, ArtGirl, and PinkFox had become a part of our family—the closest family I’d ever known. We became dinnertime companions, friends, and lovers who never considered attacking one another for the sake of The Great RPG Contest. Despite my soloist ways, I bonded with them over our year together, making me ashamed of the distance I maintained.

We gathered ourselves. Without bodies to bury, we only had bags of loot to collect.

Fabulosa broke the silence and spoke as if lost in deeper thoughts. “None of RIP’s armor or weapons are here. It doesn’t look like they looted anyone. It’s not like we carried anything valuable—we were probably too low-level for them. This mace is magic, but I’m not touching it.” She offered it to Charitybelle. “You want?”

Charitybelle shook her head. “It ought to go to a better fighter. Patch, you ought to take it. You earned it.” She gave it to me.

Had I earned it? The thought of profiting from the day sickened me. I picked up the cudgel, and we left the temple together.

We reserved a room at the inn with two beds. Charitybelle and Fabulosa took one bed, leaving me with the other. Not remembering to activate Rest and Mend testified to our numbed state of shock.

No one made plans for tomorrow or divvied the loot.

The belongings included three broken gray cores. The cracked crystals represented our opponents’ departure. They weren’t warm, unlike other cores, nor could we repurpose them to enhance a weapon or crafted item. The lifeless objects held no character or identity, a fitting metaphor for absent players. I dropped the worthless objects and absorbed the change in our virtual lives.

The amnesia after waking up from The Book of Dungeons might be intentional. If virtual lifetimes of happiness or misery made adjusting to the real world difficult, blacking out memories avoided trauma and lawsuits. If the game returned its players to the real world with psychological trauma, perhaps Miros was best left forgotten.

The Book of Dungeons wasn’t a game to me in many ways. I wasn’t trying to entertain myself or Crimson’s audience, nor did I care to become a reality show celebrity. The prize money offered me a chance for college—a chance for me to grow into the person I wanted to be. Why should I feel guilty for giving it my best shot?

And yet, I vacillated between self-pity and self-hate. I examined the mace that gave +2 damage. Charitybelle’s words echoed in my mind. “You earned it.”

I’d earned it alright, but not in the complimentary way she intended. My investment into an endgame strategy weakened our position. The Belden players had been my strength all along, and I’d been too tunnel-visioned by personal advantages to realize it. Instead of enjoying the role-playing game in the spirit Crimson intended, I exploited the contest’s newbie buff to inflate my skills. If I hadn’t convinced Charitybelle to stay on campus, we would have been around level 10 and had a two-to-one advantage against the self-dubbed Hit Squad.

This catastrophe shattered that delusion.

How many times had my friends begged me to join them? Every decision made in self-interest gained the advantage of Applied Knowledge, but only at the cost of splitting our numbers. Half of our group had paid the price.

The game offered no Mulligans or restitutions. I could only learn from my mistake and move forward. But RIP, ArtGirl, and PinkFox paying the price didn’t make the lesson easier to swallow.

The ladies slept in one bed. Instead of taking the other, I sat in a chair by a fireplace and listened to the logs pop and hiss. The burning logs reminded me of spent player cores. The jagged flames tore the wood apart, consuming its identity and essence. As the fire broke its fuel into ash and smoke, I succumbed to unconsciousness.

And I did not dream.