Home again, I spent about an hour making more rechargeable MANA BATTERIES before gearing up. I called downtown to check on unassigned spawn locations, then spent the next three hours handling four rural sites. I ended up with one of the leather helmet drops, a couple of swords, a pile of copper coins, and the usual leather ponchos.

  My Game Interface showed I had four Silver Moons and 80 Copper Shields. Rich, at least in Game terms, with nothing to spend it on. My Character Sheet displayed the total, letting me pull out coins if I wanted. But if I tried to carry it all in shields, I’d probably drop half of them trying to hold them all.

  When I got back, Blaze was already there, cooking dinner. She’d arrived about an hour and a half before the next spawn starts. She was stirring something on the stove while wearing a light blue t-shirt, shorts, and sandals, almost what she wore the first day she came.

  “Hi, Will. I said I’d make you dinner with a decent amount of garlic. It’ll be done in a few minutes.”

  “I remember. And whew, I can smell the garlic. Thank you, I hope,” I said as I started getting out of my armor. “Did you hear about the new armor drop?”

  “The helmets? Yeah, there’s a lot of talk about how things are changing and what might happen next. Most people are guessing tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.”

  Nodding, even though she couldn’t see me. “That’s my guess too. The 19th & Fox guild used three SHIELD walls with three casters and the building as the fourth side. It worked pretty well. How was your day?”

  “The office is open. The agency’s renting the basic furniture, which got delivered just before I left. We’ll move it around tomorrow to set it up how we want. They’re also bringing in a couple of printers and extra computers from the capital office. Should be here sometime tomorrow.

  Oh, and there’ll be two more agents arriving. The Army’s taken over the main hall and a few side rooms at the convention center. We’re getting one of the smallest side rooms, with someone from Matt’s department staffing it and reporting to my office as well as his. They should all be here by tomorrow evening.”

  “Sounds good. Back in a moment,” I said, fast-walking to the bathroom.

  “Don’t take too long. Dinner’s almost done.”

  Despite the smell, the garlic didn’t overpower the meal. I joked that with how much she’d used, I’d be vampire-proof for days. After dinner, we took our coffees out to the porch to watch the 7 p.m. spawning. Less than three minutes later, the fight was over and loot was divided.

  Out of curiosity, I checked our guild’s bank. We had just over a Silver Moon, and guild experience was climbing. The Irregulars had become a larger, mostly active guild, and the 2% bonus from members’ gains was adding up. By the end of the week, we might hit Level 3 and be able to add more members. Plus the three percent gain from activity.

  “If 19th & Fox keeps it up, I think they’ll be one of the best guilds in Eddington,” I told Blaze. “Once the semester ends, they can do more fighting, maybe even take on some county spawns.”

  “They have a good teacher,” she said, smiling.

  Lifting my cup in salute, I said, “Thank you. You’ve done some of it too. Oh, I meant to tell you, they have two new mages I met today. An Ice Mage and a Mana Mage. Two women in their early twenties who look like they’re married. Their game names are BandS and SandB. Ones in a master’s program, the other’s a cook at a pizza place down town.”

  “Good. This can’t just be a guy thing. Women need to have a part in this, and not just as Healers.”

  “Agreed. You and Shadow are showing people that women can hold their own, or more. We’re going to need everyone, leveled up as far and as fast as possible. Did I ever tell you the game rules look like they’re designed to create heroes?”

  “No, I don’t think you have. Why do you think that?” she asked.

  “It’s how the system powers us up. It’s not linear. I saw some new graphs online about it. I hope people downtown are looking at them too. I’ve been holding off on improving some spells and skills, so I can use those points when I need them most, instead of waiting for another level.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “That’s smart. I think I’ll start doing that too. That’s something all of us can do.”

  “It saved us at the stadium. I just hope we never have to fight other humans again. Save it for the monsters. If this goes like games and books, eventually we’ll get dungeons with tougher monsters and better loot. We’ll level faster, but the gaps between levels will get wider.”

  Then I dropped the bigger news. “I’ve been soloing spawns today. Might hit level 10 tomorrow or the day after.”

  Blaze laughed. “If I hadn’t been tied up with agency stuff, I’d be level six by now. Ingrid’s there, and I think Bhaarrt is too. Shadow might be by now, though who knows what she’s up to.”

  “Yeah. She’s still secretive about where she lives and what she does, and I’m not going to pry. She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

  “I agree.” Blaze paused, then asked, “Will? What do you think is going to happen next? If this were one of those books you read, what would happen?”

  “If it were a book, we’d be having a lot more adventures, and things would move faster. In a game, once you leave the nursery, you get quests that teach you more things and take you to new places, helping you level and gear up. That’s happening, but we should be out of the nursery by now because of our levels. There’s just nowhere else to go.”

  “You said the nursery would leave us. I think it’s happening as the creatures get stronger,” she said.

  I nodded. “They are. I faced a double spawn today, two groups back-to-back. One had three gear pieces, and a Kobold had a dagger instead of a club. It was junk, but it was still a Game weapon. The Game’s slowly giving us what we need, but we also have what we can craft. We’ll get there.”

  “I know.” She paused again, looking down into her coffee before raising her eyes to me. “Will, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

  That didn’t sound good. Good things rarely start that way. “What is it?” I asked, leaning forward, arms on the table.

  “I…well, I love being Blaze. I enjoyed torching those Goblins and Kobolds. I wanted to kill more, and I was never like this before. Some of the murder cases we studied in school…I think I understand them more now.”

  She stopped, eyes glistening. “There’s a thrill in killing. They still seem unreal, but in battle, I was aiming for people. People like us. I wanted to burn them down. I know I shouldn’t feel that way, but it’s eating at me.”

  I stood, went around the table, and took her hand, turning her toward me.

  “What do I do?” she whispered. “Good people aren’t like this. We shouldn’t want to kill.” She set her cup down and pushed her chair back, standing and slowly wrapping her arms around my chest. I hugged her back with my hands at her waist as she buried her face in my shoulder.

  “You’re right. We shouldn’t,” I said softly. “I wish we lived in a world where we didn’t have to kill. But you know better than most that sometimes, to stop someone, they can’t be allowed to walk away to harm others. You save more people that way.”

  I paused, thinking about the arms we had around each other, about the way the kitchen light caught in her hair. “This thing that happened to us, it’s more than a game you can turn off. We’re part of it. Unless we find a way to stop it, we have to play the hand we’ve been dealt.” I pulled her tighter.

  After a moment, looking into her eyes, I added, “I feel the same way. I liked the games and books, stopping when I wanted, dying and getting back up. But this is real. No do-overs. No save points. We only get one shot. No chance to keep dying until we learn how to do this.”

  “I know.” Her voice was muffled against my shoulder, dampness seeping through my shirt. “I always knew I might have to kill someone someday. That’s part of the FBI. There are agents who retire after a career without ever firing their weapon except on the range. I thought I’d be one of them. So far, I have been.”

  “Good for you. I hope you still can.”

  “So do I.” She hugged me tighter, and I hugged her back, resting my chin lightly on her head. We stood there, holding each other in the warm mid-May evening, until we both knew it was time to let go.

  ***

  Later, sitting together on the couch, we kept talking about what tomorrow might bring. We agreed the spawns would get tougher, and that whatever was forming over the old K-Mart could be a system store, a dungeon, or something else entirely. There were lots of guesses online.

  We disagreed on whether we should stay for the 7 a.m. spawn or go to the store first, assuming it appeared then. I wanted the store first. Blaze argued we should handle the spawn first since the store would still be there, then leave immediately after the fight.

  I gave in, agreeing we’d watch the spawns first, then go. Since Blaze didn’t have a portable cop light, she arranged for a police escort from Chief Brown to speed us up. He wanted our group to be the first ones in if something appeared.

  ***

  “Damn it!” I didn’t quite shout it from my office, but almost.

  “What’s wrong?” Blaze called from the kitchen, where she was typing up her reports after dinner.

  “I’ve got a rush editing job from the university.”

  “When do they want it?” she called back, amusement in her voice. “Let me guess, if they’re like my boss, he wants today's reports yesterday?” She laughed, and I didn’t mind. I’d been there too.

  “They said they should’ve had it finished last week, but ‘somehow’ it got misplaced. Right. They probably gave it to another editor who didn’t get it done. That’s happened before. Thankfully, not very often.”

  “You can handle it, Will. You’ve been editing for how long now?”

  “Feels like forever. After the accident, I wanted to get back to work as soon as I could. Took almost a year before I could work long enough to be close to my old speed.” I looked at the file size. “Maybe two days if I do a full day and don’t aim for my best work. I’ll tell them four days and see if I can get an extension.”

  “Do what you can. But don’t stay up too late, we need to be up early.”

  “Hey, you aren’t my mom,” I said in a little kid’s voice. We both laughed and went back to work, the room warm and quiet as the sun set. It felt like we’d been together longer than just a couple of days.

  It felt good.

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