Sip collapsed onto the couch with a grunt. “Finally! Today was so boring!”

  He glanced at Sharon. “Who’re you?”

  Sharon blinked. “His roommate.”

  “Oh, really? Weird. I could’ve sworn everybody got their own room,” Sip mumbled. “Haaangg on. Why haven’t I seen you in class?”

  Sharon smirked.

  “I graduated.”

  “It’s a medical condition,” I stated.

  Sharon and I looked at each other.

  Sip bit his lip. “Wait, which one is it? Or, both, or…huhmp…guess I don’t really care…” He wrapped his robes around himself and went to sleep.

  “Who is this pudgy mortal?” Sharon hissed.

  “An associate,” I stated. “He was tired so I invited him over to rest.”

  Sip cracked an eye open.

  “Did he just call me ‘mortal?’”

  “Shuddap human.”

  “Grind, your roommate is awful.” Sip yawned. “How do you live with this?”

  I blew out a sigh. “Sip. Take your nap or you’re gonna get cranky.”

  Sip scrabbled around, piling additional blankets over his colorful robes. “Whatever.”

  Once I was certain he’d fallen asleep, I sat next to Sharon. “Hey, I need some advice.”

  Sharon smirked. “You’d think I’d give something so precious for free?”

  “Maybe?” I asked. “If, for some reason, you knew of a four star core wandering around the Union tunnels, what would you do?”

  He scoffed. “I don’t care much about Cores. They hog the natural mana, but only near wells, and so as long as you hang around biodiverse areas, you’ll be fine. Once you see a little more of the world, you’ll find that second area cores are utter pushovers compared to real monsters.

  Sharon picked at his sharkish teeth.

  “Why’d you ask?”

  “No reason.”

  Sip chuckled to himself in his sleep.

  Sharon and I looked at him.

  “He looks like an idiot.” Sharon hissed.

  I smirked. “He’s quite smart when it comes to turning a profit. Plus, he heard some rumors, which I wanted to look into.”

  “Bah! Rumors are a waste of time,” the Fairy grumbled.

  “Anyway, what’ve you been doing here?” I asked, checking the room. “It looks pretty much the same as when I left.”

  Sharon huffed. “I can’t do anything. My body is recent, requiring me to spend most of my time in hibernation. I told you it’d take at least a month before I regained my full power.”

  “I’m just surprised to find you waiting in here all the time,” I admitted. “A couple hours of doing nothing would drive me crazy.”

  “Don’t humans sleep too?”

  “I’m unconscious, so that doesn’t count,” I stated. “Speaking of which, when Sip wakes up, send him to the markets just outside the Academy. I’ll be there, picking up groceries, alright?”

  “Fine,” Sharon grumbled. “Back some food.”

  “There’s plenty in the fridge.”

  “Real food. Meat.”

  Sharon opened his mouth wide, revealing an additional row of teeth, which must’ve grown in recently. “Fairies don't eat vegetables.”

  “Whatever,” I grunted. “Just don’t eat Sip.”

  “I’m offended you’d even suggest the idea.”

  “But you thought about it, didn’t you?”

  Sharon glanced at Sip.

  “...No.”

  “Don’t. He’s ninety percent robes.”

  After a short trip down the stairwell, out of the academy and around the block, I faced the Capital Markets.

  ‘Market’ was probably the wrong word.

  While the nighttime slave traders brought in more traditional market stalls, daytime traders could afford to set up shop within actual concrete buildings.

  “Exp. Exp. Exp,” I murmured to myself, snooping around. There were a couple of different weapons supply stores, and a store filled with all sorts of stat orbs, but nothing specifically for Exp, and nowhere seemed to have good discounts.

  Not until—

  “Geaves?” I asked, knocking on the little wooden booth. “Cleavey Geaves?”

  A man with a long beard shot upright, smiling like a lunatic. The beard was, of course, fake, just like his glasses.

  “Why yes! Have we met before?” He forced a laugh. “Oh it doesn't matter. We’ve got everything at Cleavy Geaves. What’dya need?”

  “Exp,” I said. “Specifically to increase the power of my ability. Do you have anything like that?”

  “Ah, Exp variations,” Geaves cackled. “They form the base of all competent builds. Could you use your ability?”

  I nodded, raising a hand to the air, dropping my mana down to ten.

  Rather than the usual blue or purple, these orbs were jet black, snaking like bolts of lightning into the sky, where they drowned with a thunderous rumble.

  Geaves whistled. “For a Tin? Not bad!”

  He collected armfuls of massive orbs from inside his booth, choosing a few and stuffing the rest back. “It’s hard to get proper Exp types. To come to my stall, you must be either a man of fine taste, or just desperate.”

  The first orb was volatile red, squirming under the glassy surface, the second a more normal blue, and the third a milky yellow, like the sun behind clouds.

  He grinned wider. “If you’re looking for an ability…,” He slapped the one in the middle. “This blue one isn’t anything special. It’s dense-type Exp, perfect for a quick cheap level up. The bonus is pretty simple. It takes up less Threshhold, allowing your other Exp to have greater effects, but you already knew that, right?”

  I nodded slowly. “No.”

  “Oh.”

  He blinked.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Geaves cleared his throat. “There’s a limit to how strong the effects of Exp can be per area. Threshold is the suppression thing but for Exp, so if you get high-quality exp you don’t want weaker exp diluting the effect. It’s like spices. Too many flavors and you can’t taste anything.

  I blinked. “Oh. That makes sense.”

  “But clearly you think the Dense-type Exp is BORING!”

  “I never said anything—”

  He held up a hand. “No it’s true! Nobody uses Dense-type Exp. Normally I’d recommend our red Strength-type orbs, as they’re very popular among the simple masses, but I can already see you’re a more refined fellow than that.”

  “Actually strength sounds pretty good—”

  “No, no you don’t have to pity me,” he grunted, running a hand on his yellow orb. “This one improves your energy output, which would only be useful if the ability itself is taxing. Normally, I wouldn’t recommend these, but if you’re impatient, they’re the only kinds I have in stock at the moment.”

  “I thought you had everything?” I smirked.

  He laughed with a little less humor than I’d like. “Not to your liking? Give me an hour, then come back. I think I know something you’ll like.”

  A moment later, he vanished.

  I bobbed up and down on my heels.

  He seemed a little more edgy than in the first area, but he could’ve just had a bad day.

  But if he was in the first area?

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked no one in particular.

  Then again, Npcs weren’t bound to the same rules as players. Maybe there were several copies of him, all over Tetratera. Maybe he could teleport. He had left pretty fast.

  I wandered around, noticing the flyers pasted around.

  The tournament.

  Or one of the many, many, many preliminary battles for the tournament, anyway. It hadn’t really started, but if I had nothing else to do, I might as well see what kind of power real fighters had.

  An attendant stopped me on my way into the stadium.

  “The tickets are free,” I stated, holding up one of the flyers.

  “It’s not about that, rookie,” he huffed, pointing directly left. “You need to stand in the Low-rank section, as per Union code three hundred forty.”

  Low-rank.

  Was there some kind of classism here? Or—

  I took my seat, directly behind fourteen panes of enchanted glass.

  Enchanted in some form of durability.

  Ah.

  A ref stepped forward, clad from head to toe in a suit of armor.

  “FRRRROOOOMMMMM THE HOWL CLAN—which doesn’t actually but sounds cool anyway, MITAKO!”

  A burly man, no less than nine feet tall raised his sword into the air, letting out a scream, the force of which cracked the floor beneath his feet. There were little wisps of mental energy as the stone healed from another sort of enchantment.

  “Aannnddd in the ring beside him, THE LEGENDARY NYLE!”

  Music sounded, and a skinny guy stepped onto the stage, wearing four thin swords strapped to his back.

  “BEGIN!” The ref shouted.

  Both fighters took a step forward.

  Flashing light and energy blurred my vision.

  The skinny guy flicked blood off his hand.

  I had both hands clenching my seat, eyes locked on the glass.

  Thirteen of the fourteen layers had been shattered.

  In other sections, cracks a foot deep had been gouged out, forming a cut through one side of the stadium to the next.

  Mitako, the other fighter, laid on the ground with a red line cleaving through his whole body.

  The enchanted glass reformed in an instant.

  The Brass beside me clapped his hands. “HAH!”

  “Hang on, isn’t he getting back up?” I whispered.

  The audience hushed as the ref stepped forward, grabbing the man by his wrist.

  “DEAD!”

  And the stadium went wild with screams and cheers.

  Nyle blew some halfhearted kisses, walking back down the hallway.

  “Dead?” I hissed. “Bu-but why would they actually kill people?! HOW IS THAT LEGAL!?”

  “Oh relax, the Golds put a revival on him,” The Brass stated. “He’ll wake up tomorrow with foggy memories and a headache. It’s all part of the fun!”

  When I walked out of the stadium, I had mixed feelings.

  Even if they were going to revive someone—however that actually worked—death was death. Did they want players to enjoy killing one another? What if a revival went wrong?

  How hasn’t this already been banned? The union should’ve done something!

  I shook my head.

  In the end, if players killed all the monsters in an area, they wouldn't have anything left to fight but each other. And if players were going to fight each other—really fight—they couldn’t be holding back. So, if people had the power to keep players alive even after being killed, was that necessarily bad?

  But it felt wrong.

  I laughed at myself without a hint of good nature.

  This whole place was messed up. A fight like that didn't make any more difference.

  Geaves grinned, poking his head up from his stall. His beard was gone, replaced with a handlebar mustache and eyepatch. “There you are! Hope you didn’t get bored!”

  “No,” I sighed. “It was good to know what kind of culture I’m working with.”

  Geaves chuckled. “You’ll get there someday! I’ve got a good feeling about you!”

  “You’re just saying that,” I sighed. “Though I appreciate the thought. Did you find some Exp?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” He leaned forward, sliding a dark blue orb about the size of my fist onto the table. Beneath the glass surface, it crackled like thunderclouds. “I’ve got one worth about a thousand Qualms. It’s a real deal if you know what I mean.”

  “What do you know? It’s worth exactly as much money as I have left.” I raised an eyebrow. “My, how convenient. What does it do?”

  “Mana regen amplification,” Graves whispered. “That ability is unusually strong, meaning, if it's got good cooldown and versatility, and isn’t particularly straining to use, there’s only one real factor left for the game to counter it with. MANA!”

  He tossed the orb from hand to hand, creating wisps of energy. “With this, gain a percentage of your missing mana, for a barely, practically imperceptibly weakened flat mana regeneration. The more mana you spend, the more you’ll gain, see?”

  I smiled, tossing him the money from my inventory. “Sold.”

  Immediately, he shattered the orb. Exp bounced off his skin, sliding over the table and into my hand.

  {RANK UP!}

  [+Percentage Mana Regeneration]

  [-Flat Mana Regeneration]

  ~

  [Progression to Copper: 100%]

  [Progression to Iron : 40%]

  ~

  [Minimum ability threshold : (+ I) II]

  [Eligible abilities : 114/10]

  ~

  [Abilities have been modified.]

  I stared at the last bit.

  “What’s that mean?”

  He climbed over the counter, watching my screen. “Ability threshold? Suppose you wouldn’t really notice yet. Every area has its own leveling system, which means every area has its own ability upgrade system too.”

  He shuffled back.

  “Basically, if you get an ability weaker than the threshold, it gets upgraded. Honestly speaking, it’s probably the worst upgrade system out of any area, especially compared to area three’s.”

  I grabbed his shoulders. “Hey. Every ability?”

  “Course,” Geaves smiled nervously. “Why’d you ask?”

  “Nothing.” I stepped away from his stall, raising my hands into the sky, pushing my mana threshold to the new limit.

  One thousand.

  Molten black energy erupted from my palm, punching up with a force that broke the stone beneath my feet, shattering nearby windows. And when it exploded, volcanic fallout rained down on the city, clattering the street, bonking patrons as they moved.

  {GRIND}

  [Mana : 0 ]

  [0 remaining.]

  I laughed. “Geaves! Did you see that!?”

  When I looked around for him, he was gone.

  “Geaves?”

  The ringing sound of metal echoed over the street as a dozen guards pressed their blades against my neck.

  “Crap.”

  // {Notice} //

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