Four days remained, but Zenos had slept poorly. He had suffered bizarre dreams of black halls and moon-lit chambers, where white light scattered on pools of infinite depth. In those dreams, he was chased over the pools by an invisible force. If he hid, he would be found; if he ran, he would be caught; and if he fought, he would be torn apart. When he died, he woke in the early hours before sunrise, gasping and cold with sweat.
Presently, Zenos stood on the athletic track with a four-foot long stick in his hand. The dungeon ruler would not forgive fatigue, he knew he had to be stronger. The Player System could increase his stats, but without skills, he had to rely on simple form and technique. That meant practice with Mad.
“Begin!”
[At-Will Ability: True Eyes of the Emperor Activated]Zenos charged, his stick out swung. By activating his mana sense, he took advantage of Mad’s reliance on magic: The subtle trip wires, snares, and pits, controlled by long threads of animated hair, appeared red against the blue background. It was the only way Zenos could get close enough to attack.
Mad smiled and their sticks cracked together. “Good,” he said.
Zenos pressed against Mad’s stick, but though his arms trembled, Mad wouldn’t budge.
“Still as strong as ever,” Zenos said and broke away.
“That’s the difference a rank can make,” Mad said. “As you are, I would say you’re about C-Grade Bronze, so that puts two ranks between us. If I were to fight an adamantine adventurer, our results would be about the same.”
“I know that,” Zenos said and wiped his face. He balanced his stick in his hand.
Mad smiled and pounded the ground with his make-shift staff. “Then come again!”
“I was going to anyway!”
He charged and they clashed over the athletic track, their training sticks knocking together as Zenos flowed from one strike to the next. Although swordsmanship had many forms, Zenos knew none of them. As the demon emperor, he was used to overpowering his enemies with raw strength. As a player, he was reckless of danger.
When he lunged too deeply, Mad sidestepped his thrust, and slapped his hand with his staff. When he swung too wide, Mad leaned away from the swing and pummeled his stomach. The player system healed his bruises, so he would attack again, even after being thrown to the ground. Durability and persistence became his best assets.
“I’m a spellcaster, so I can’t really teach you good techniques,” Mad said as he effortlessly deflected a strike. “But I can help you learn by experience. Art with exercise is useful, but art without exercise isn’t, so even without instruction, you might discover helpful insights.”
Zenos panted heavily. “Then talk less art.” He spit the ground and charged again.
Mad smiled. Zenos lunged with the tip of his stick and Mad moved to block, but it was a feint! Zenos locked his stance and spun into a back swing, their sticks collided.
“That was good,” Mad said.
Zenos snarled. Good isn’t enough, he thought, I want to hit him! He stepped back and swung again, and every time Mad moved to block, he turned his stick to a different angle. Mad peddled back and Zenos pressed forward. They played a game of anticipation until Mad had enough, slapped Zenos on the hand, his shoulder, his knee, and his side. Mad kicked Zenos in the ribs and sent him down onto a patch of leaves.
“If you get too wound up in feints, you’ll give your opponent the advantage,” Mad said. “Even if you’re quick, a battle is about hitting your enemy—not pretending to.”
Zenos pressed himself up on a patch of leaves. “I can still fight,” he said.
“No, I think we should call it a day,” Mad said.
“But—!”
A net of animated threads pulled up around Zenos and dragged him into the air.
“You didn’t even notice that trap,” Mad said and pointed at his eye. “This won’t do you any good if you don’t use it.”
Zenos swung silently in his net of humiliation. If I can’t beat him like this, he thought, how am I going to face the dungeon ruler?
Mad stamped the ground with his staff and the net was released; Zenos fell to the ground with a thump. “What do you say to lunch instead?”
Zenos glared at Mad as he was laid out on his back. The seasoned adventurer appeared upside-down against the canopy of the winter wood. “Fine,” he said.
Mad helped Zenos onto his feet and the pair headed up the hill. Nearly a month of living in those woods had changed the landscape. Leaves had been brushed from their trail paths and the dirt had been packed by their frequent walks. Their campsite looked lived in, with a mess of pots and pans around its charcoal-black firepit, a tall pile of corner-cut logs stacked by the tents, and even the crude wall of bricks Zenos had erected to keep the wind from blowing on his tent.
For lunch: Broad wheat noodles in a cheese sauce, flavored with chestnuts and morel mushrooms from the forest. Mad had picked them that morning and they were piled in a basket beside the fire. Presently, Zenos sat beside Mad, washing the morels in a basin before handing them off to be cut. They sizzled among chopped chestnuts in the frying pan.
“So, your eyes can see mana?” Mad asked.
Zenos nodded, splashed a morel in the water and cleaned it of dirt. “They do,” he answered and handed the next morel over.
“What’s that like?”
Zenos looked at him. “You don’t know?”
Mad cut the morel’s stem and shook his head. “Do you think everyone can see mana?”
“No, but you’re a spellcaster,” he said. “If you can’t see the mana you’re using, how do you work with it?”
“Well, it’s sort of a feeling,” Mad said and gestured to his stomach. “You get it in your gut. A sickness, or a weightlessness, depending on the power. Adventurers tend to get nauseous as their mana runs out, though… worse can happen.”
“But you do see spirits,” Zenos said. “With that… Sight you called it?”
“The Ru-chet,” he answered. “But it’s not seeing with your eyes, again it’s a feeling. I can turn the Ru-chet to the Cho-chet, which is the difference between feeling and seeing, but that can have its own risks.”
“When I see mana, the world turns blue, and mana itself appears as red heat where it’s thickest,” Zenos said. “Although I see it for a while, it’s not something I can keep up for long.”
Mad took another morel. “I think both mana and the dead prefer to keep their secrets,” he said.
“It was different in my first world,” Zenos said. “Mana was apparent in the air, visible without really trying. But then, that world had very little magic at all.”
“Sounds like a paradise for Atilonians.”
Zenos shook his head. “You could call my world many things, but it was far from a paradise.”
“Did it have a name?”
“Hm?”
“Your world.”
Zenos blinked. He knew his world’s name, but it wasn’t one for NPCs. Like the demon emperor, elements of Ark World’s story were left in abstract for the benefit of the players. To the NPCs, their world was ‘the World’ and the demon emperor was ‘the Demon Emperor,’ even to himself. The NPCs that were his family, even, were themselves unnamed characters.
I could say Ark World, he thought, but then, isn’t this also Ark World? It must be.
“Zenos?” Mad prodded his shoulder. “Could you hand me a morel?”
“Oh,” he uttered and pushed a mushroom into his hand. “It was called… Akaron.”
“Akaron, huh? Interesting.”
A morel splashed into the butter and sizzled with the other ingredients. Mad checked the cheese sauce that warmed in its own pan, and Zenos stared at the trees, his hands dipped in the basin.
Akaron.
“The cheese sauce is holding together and the noodles are done, we should be good to eat soon,” Mad said.
Zenos nodded.
“Are you alright?” Mad asked as he tossed the morels and chestnuts in their pan.
“Hey,” Zenos said. “After your last dungeon raid, how did you go on?”
Mad stopped and Zenos heard just the pop and sizzle of the pan. He turned his head and saw him staring at the pan.
“They were all my friends,” he said. “But four of them, well, it feels like I knew them my whole life.”
“Raised together?”
Mad nodded. “In a manner of speaking, yes. The guild acts as a magical orphanage for the mana-talented. It gives the abandoned a home, training, and an outlet for their abilities. It also keeps the Atilonian public safe. That was where I was, in the heart of Atilonia, because I was kid that wanted to take on the world. Luckily the guild picked me up and put me in an incubation group.”
Zenos blinked and Mad glanced his way. “They raise us in groups of five,” he said, “because when we become adults, we become an adventuring party.”
“Were they the people in that photograph?”
“Fiona, Elizabeth, Leo, and Khelero,” Mad said. “Twenty years still wasn’t enough time.”
“I still think about them every day,” Zenos said. “People I saw for centuries, the ones I left behind… in Akaron. Those that I couldn’t save.”
A cold wind blew through the camp and rattled the tents. The conversation fell away and Mad began dishing the food. A pile of noodles was mixed with white cheese sauce, and finally the morels and chestnuts were poured on top. Zenos took a bowl and tin of water, and sat on a stump close to the fire.
“It’s not really a lunch time topic, but…” Mad hesitated as he thoughtlessly tangled his noodles around a spoon. “Did you want to hear what happened?
“What happened at the last dungeon raid.”
