I staggered on a piece of broken rubble, tipping dangerously to one side, starting to correct myself before Ardenidi fell off my back.

  The rock crunched beneath me, breaking apart.

  I took a deep breath.

  Since Ardenidi’s health was negative, all her weight had been negated, meaning she weighed only as much as the average person.

  That was still way more than I could carry.

  At the very least, the game hadn’t made her weight negative too. She wouldn’t be floating off into the sky.

  “You know, thirteen thousand strength is still a lot,” I stated between gritted teeth.

  I kept walking.

  “This would be easy, but I need to keep my health up or the pain from my injuries would probably knock me unconscious. And when dealing with a hundred thousand health, thirteen is pretty small.”

  I kept walking.

  “So. The weather. It’s been weird lately, right?”

  Ardenidi, being unconscious, didn’t respond.

  “Man, I’m bored out of my mind,” I grumbled, tapping my earpiece. “Soise? Are you there?”

  It screeched unhelpfully, stinging my ear.

  Ardenidi flinched, reopening the wounds in her stomach and passing out again.

  “Don’t you dare die on me,” I whispered, tightening the messy bandage around her midsection. “We’re close.”

  Monsters peeked out from the torn husks of buildings, frozen in shock as the fight between Sharon and the Nightmare continued.

  Sharon was winning.

  I mean, it was hard to tell given the sheer intensity of the mana around them, but between flickers of movement, the Nightmare seemed to have trouble landing hits.

  But Sharon was getting tired too.

  He would win. He’d have to. Because I didn’t know anyone else strong enough to fight that thing.

  My vision exploded with white stars, burning in pain as I pushed myself harder, clinging to Ardenidi and Grey’s screens.

  My job was simple enough.

  I had to keep people alive.

  I would not be the reason someone died.

  By the time I reached the bunker, I realized my party had a problem.

  Crowds of inky black monsters surrounded the closed gates. Every now and then, something would touch the metal, bursting into sparkly prismatic fire.

  I let out a whistle. “Some enchantment.”

  Unfortunately, literally every single monster heard that whistle, immediately swiveling toward me, baring their teeth.

  I smacked myself in the face. “Idiot!”

  A raccoon-bear-squid thing lunged over the others, mouth wide open.

  It was promptly vaporized by a flicker of orange heat.

  Grey stood, wiping her claws on her flickering dress. “Sir? Did I do well?”

  Screech clung onto her shoulder, bouncing up and down as he pointed to the enormous monsters in the distance.

  “HEY! Grind! Do you see those things!?”

  “Yeah, I see,” I said, taking a shaky step forward. “Thanks Grey. Do you think you could get rid of the rest of these monsters? I need to get Ardenidi to Soise before she dies.”

  Grey nodded, gently setting Screech on the ground.

  There was a flicker of transcendent energy, followed by a cloud of ash as several hundred monsters fell to pieces.

  Grey picked Screech back up. “Done.”

  Alarms blared inside the bunker, followed by a groan of metal as the gate lifted back into the ceiling. Toya stood with his hand on the controls, frowning at Gray.

  “Why didn’t you do that earlier?!” Toya shouted.

  Grey blinked. “You never asked.”

  “Some help you’ve been.” He groaned. “Grind who are you carrying—”

  Ardenidi jolted, cracking an eye open and glaring in his general direction. “I’m fine. Put me down.” She opened her mouth to say something else, instead coughing up blood.

  Toya paled. “We’ll get Soise.”

  Soise was crouched over a table of maps, squeezing the earpieces in her hand. “Grind? Grind! Do you read me?”

  “Soise!” I shouted, barging through the door to her room.

  Soise spun around. “Grind! The fighting outside is blocking my earpieces—”

  The moment she laid eyes on Ardenidi, Soise picked her up and shoved me out into the hallway.

  Toya glanced at me.

  We sat on the metal bench, just outside Soise’s room.

  Toya cleared his throat.

  I shifted in my seat.

  “Soise can heal that much damage, right?” I asked.

  “I…don’t know,” Toya admitted.

  He laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “I just want to say, I’m really, really sorry,” Toya said. “I know you two were close.”

  “Yeah, we…” I stopped for a second. “What?”

  “It’s okay,” Toya whispered. “It doesn’t have to be a secret. This is a lonesome game and, speaking as a valuable member of our team, I can promise we’ll do everything we can to make sure she survives.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Okay. We’re not dating. By the way.”

  “You can be honest here.”

  “I’m being honest.”

  He let out a sigh, tapping me on the chest. “Just know. You have a friend in this. I get it.”

  Toya stood, walking somberly down the empty halls.

  “We’re not dating,” I muttered to no one in particular. “Well, I don’t think we’re dating.”

  Though we did spend a lot of time together.

  Did that count as the video game equivalent of dating?

  I massaged my head.

  “You know what? If I make it through this, I’m going to take her out for some ice cream.”

  Despite everything, I found myself smiling.

  Imagine that. Going and grabbing some ice cream in a video game. What if this game was supposed to be a dating simulator?

  Hang on.

  Can you even get ice cream in a desert? I might be able to summon something—

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  Soise flung the door open, breathing hard. “GRIND! WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

  The screens.

  I tore it from my inventory, squeezing the side.

  Still frozen. Ardenidi was okay.

  I let out a sharp sigh of relief.

  Soise brushed her bronze hair from her face. “She won’t heal!”

  “What?”

  Ardenidi lay on a table, shivering. The puncture wounds in her stomach had been sewn up, so they wouldn’t bleed, but despite the obvious crackling of spent mana in the air, Ardenidi’s health hadn’t changed.

  {Ardenidi : -3.5m Hp}

  Or…

  Hang on.

  “Ohh,” I said. “You just have to focus.”

  {Ardenidi : -3500499 Hp}

  Soise grabbed me by the shoulders. “SHE HAS NEGATIVE THREE AND A HALF MILLION HITPOINTS!”

  I shrugged. “We fought a strong guy.”

  Soise twitched, dropping in a chair. “I’ve been a Iron for less than an hour, Grind! What am I supposed to do about this?”

  “Heal her?”

  “That was my whole bar of mana!” Soise shouted. “I can’t heal this! I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I hesitated. “But you’re not just going to let her die, right? You’ll figure something out?”

  “There’s nothing else I can do,” Soise whispered, sinking lower. “Where’d I even start? She should have died already!”

  “She’s in stasis,” I mumbled. “I can stall some game processes.”

  My captain rubbed her head. “You’re telling me you can make anyone basically immortal?”

  “Well. Yes.” I sat beside her. “But health needs to be healed. It’s not like I’m breaking the game so much as I’m doing things out of order. Messing up the timeline.”

  I blinked. “Actually, that might explain a lot.”

  Soise glanced around. “You once said…but I didn’t think…You’re really…a time traveler?”

  “Something like that?”

  Her eyes widened. “How powerful are you?”

  “Exactly as strong as I seem,” I sighed. “I can only go back in time by dying.”

  Soise blinked.

  I blinked.

  Soise blinked.

  “Oh. So you couldn’t—”

  “I’d really rather not—”

  “I see.”

  “The point is, as long as I’m still conscious, Ardenidi will live,” I said, “But we need to heal her. If I push myself too far, I’ll start breaking apart at the seams.”

  “I told you, I can’t fix this,” Soise snapped. “We’d need a Silver at least, if not—”

  Her eyes flickered to the door.

  They widened.

  “FOLLOW ME!” She shouted, sprinting through the network of tunnels, reaching an enormous central hub filled with refugees.

  In total, there were less than a thousand citizens remaining.

  Still more than anyone’d expected, but a far cry from how many we’d like.

  They were in bad shape, covered in dirt and fresh bandages.

  When we entered, everyone got really quiet until you could only hear shallow breathing.

  Soise took a deep breath, jumping onto one of the tables and shouting at the top of her lungs. “Hey! Are there any healers here?”

  Fourteen hands raised into the air.

  “Can anyone heal a percentage of maximum health?” Soise clenched her fists. “Specifically a percentage of missing health?”

  Most of the hands went down.

  Then there was only one, as a young fifth court mage stepped out of the crowd.

  She glanced at me, startling. “Grind?”

  I suppressed a groan. “Harva. Good to see you.”

  “Sorry I beat you up.” Harva blinked. “I was actually trying to stop you from fighting Ardenidi, because I figured she’d actually kill you and you know it’s not really good to have your best friend go and kill someone, right? But then you were fine which really makes me wonder how I beat you so bad in the first palace, so you could say it was all your fault to get beat up, since you really could’ve beaten me if you actually tried—”

  Soise cleared her throat. “Ardenidi is dying.”

  Harva went pale as a ghost and deathly silent. “What?

  We ran to the Soise’s office with Harva pushing past, gasping at the sight.

  She grit her teeth and wiped her eyes. “You guys should probably stand back.”

  {Full Restore I : Combat-Type}

  [Lead]

  [[100%] of Target’s missing hitpoints are converted in a magical blast, dealing damage to enemies while restoring target’s health.]

  “Uh, Harva?” I asked. “She’s missing a lot of health…”

  “We’ll be fine,” she grunted. “This room’s enchanted”

  “Yes but not as much as the door—”

  Harva cast her ability, triggering a force of mana that blew the walls out like a balloon with scalding red-hot heat.

  Soise and I winced, having imprinted a solid metal wall.

  “I think I broke something,” I muttered.

  Harva lay on the floor, only partially conscious.

  “Why yes I’d love to go to the ball,” She giggled.

  Soise rolled her eyes, twisting the door open, letting the heat out with a hiss of air. “Magachemical whiplash. Just ignore it.”

  Ardenidi was still for a moment.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes, looking around the room. She sat up.

  “Grind? Where are we?” Ardenidi coughed, waving away the smoke. “Grind?”

  I tapped her on the shoulder and she punched me in the face.

  {Grind : (-1000) 10000 Hp }

  I whimpered softly, tasting blood in my mouth. “Everything hurts.”

  Ardenidi bristled. “Sorry.” she glanced at Harva. “Uh. Hey.”

  Soise smiled.

  Harva beamed, grabbing her in a death grip of a hug. “You’re okay! Me and Leo were so worried!”

  “Where…is Leo?” Ardenidi cleared her through. “Forget it. Where are we?”

  “Safe,” Soise stated. “We’re in a bunker behind town. Grind carried you the way here.” Her hands had started shaking, so she sat down on the hallway floor. “If you need anything, please don’t ask me. I’m going to take a nap.”

  She fell asleep instantly.

  “It’s been a long thirty minutes,” I whispered.

  “No kidding.” Ardenidi pushed past her friend, stuffing her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “So…now what? Are we going to kill that giant?”

  “Sharon’s got it handled.”

  “Your roommate.”

  “He’s a fairy.”

  Ardenid rolled her eyes. “Of course he is.”

  She kept going, then stopping, skimming over the plates on the wall with directions. She kept stopping, looking around, and then stopping again. “Hey, Grind. Which way is out?”

  “You’re going to keep fighting?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “You almost died.” I took a step forward.

  “Well I didn’t!” Ardenidi snapped. “Which way is out?!”

  We watched one another.

  “Look,” Ardenidi let out a sigh. “I…ran. When the monsters started attacking I bolted out the window, and there were some bugs, and I got scared, so I hid, okay?”

  I nodded along. “So?”

  “I could’ve saved people!” Ardenidi hissed. “And I’m fine now, aren’t I?”

  She tried stuffing her hands in her pockets, but those were too small, so she just kept them awkwardly by her side.

  “Alright,” I started. “You take a left from here and then I’m pretty sure you just go straight. There’s a lot of little airlocks around, so try not to press any buttons, or you might get yourself trapped.”

  “What am I, five?” She grumbled, glancing at the ground. “Thanks. By the way.”

  “Oh, for carrying you through the monster infested city?” I asked, shrugging casually. “Any time.”

  She smiled. ”Forget I said anything, numbskull.”

  She flushed. “Thanks. I…”

  The two of us hesitated.

  Ardenidi nodded. “Ah…yup. Mkay.” She left, disappearing from view.

  I bopped up and down on my heels.

  Right now, I had to go find a healer and get back into shape, then wake Soise up and ask for a mission, so we could cover as much ground as possible.

  It would be totally irresponsible to just wander around with, say, a good…friend, looking for just anyone to save.

  Very, totally irresponsible.

  I ran after her, shouting down the tunnel. “Hey! Why don’t you have some backup?”

  “I don’t need backup” Ardenidi started, glazing at me before immediately looking away with a huff. “But…you do, right?” She scuffed her shoes. “Yeah I guess you could tag along, if you don’t get in the way or anything.”

  She adjusted her scarf, hissing to herself. “Why’s it getting so hot in here? Stupid air conditioning must be broken or something, stupid machines.”

  She said yes. ‘Yes’ in an awfully convoluted way, sure, but still yes. I couldn’t believe that actually worked!

  She liked me!

  I felt as if my heart jumped out of my chest.

  As it turns out, that was just the rippling shockwave of an eight-million ton monster smashing headfirst into the ground.

  // {Notice} //

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