Although I had agreed to keep Windsor’s new discovery a secret, it wasn’t going to stop me from testing it out in the highest PvP dungeon. There was an event simply called “Battle Royal” where the top-ranked fighters went to find out who was the best, and anyone who stayed alive could fight the champion in an arranged match.
It was located in Northern Galrinth, where the aesthetics were more Romanesque. Although it had been around for as long as I had been playing the game, and I was well aware of it, I’d had no reason to take part until now.
Before I re-entered the Dream State, I realized I should make sure my winnings weren’t recorded in the Wanted Ranks. As Windsor had said, if people knew I had this new ability, they wouldn’t leave me alone.
Surely Data would be able to hack the Wanted Board so it doesn’t show up.
The next day I made my way to the Overseer’s GC, a room for the team of seven that Data ran personally. I’d always thought Data had leadership capabilities and that it was only a matter of time before he was given his own team. He had been so busy training them that I hadn’t seen him lately. However, considering a month had passed, I could only assume that he managed to pass enough of his knowledge over to them so that they could take over. After all, Wona only hired the best.
I knocked on his GC door. “Data, I need your help!”
There was the sound of shoes on the metal floor, and with a beep, the door slid up into the ceiling. Standing in front of me was a young man with a red Mohawk and more piercings on his face than looked comfortable to me.
“Yo.”
I raised a hand. “I need to talk to Data.”
The punk rolled his eyes. “Alright, give me a sec.”
He walked over and pressed the red button on the wall control panel. “Ah, Data, some dude’s here to see you. Uh . . .”
He gestured to me, and I quickly said, “Noah.”
“NotThatNoah?” His brow rose, and he looked around excitedly. “Hey, it’s the kid who survived for a month straight!”
“I know who it is, Shawn!” Data’s voice replied. “Hang on.”
“What’s he doing in there?” I asked.
Shawn let me in, and I saw three other members of Data’s team on their own recliners, faces hidden behind their curtained cubbies. I had seen a lot of people walking all over the facility and wondered if I would have recognized any of them.
“Experimenting,” Shawn said. “Windsor told us to try and find out what’s allowing the Screamers to log us off. That way we might be able to augment the Dream Engines to stop it. We have a few leads, but nothing concrete.”
“That would be useful.”
“So, Noah. Are you planning on taking your Moola prize for your Primatier Survival Record?” Shawn raised his eyebrow at me. “After spending nearly two weeks in the game nonstop, the compiled time added up to three straight days in a Primatier dungeon. No one’s broken it since, meaning you would probably get the prize money for all the competitions since then.”
I shook my head. “Honestly, I never thought about it. But if that nest egg keeps growing so long as I don’t claim it, why would I?”
Shawn tapped his temple. “Smart. That’s why you lasted so long.”
Is this guy a fan or something?
“In fact, my Survival Record is the reason I’m here. I’m trying to make sure that it doesn’t show up for the Coliseum dungeon’s Wanted Board.”
Shawn screwed up his pierced face. “Why would you not want to have your Survival Time recorded?”
“That’s what I was about to ask.” There was a buzzing sound, and Data’s recliner lifted him into a sitting position, his Dream Engine retracting into the cubby.
“Because I’m about to kick some serious butt in the pits, and I don’t want anyone to know it’s me.” I waved my hand in front of my face. “And don’t ask me why. Believe me, I want to, but I seriously can’t tell you more than that.”
“Secretive.” Shawn nodded. “Cool.”
Data shook his head and smiled. “I mean, I could do it. But I don’t think that would stop people from recognizing you. You should maybe change your avatar up a bit, at least its appearance. Unless you use your Sapphire Edge, I doubt people could recognize you just from the spells and abilities you use.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that too.” I had to admit, it was a good idea, and obvious enough that I should have thought about it myself.
Maybe I’m rushing this a bit.
“How long will it take you to wipe my name from the Wanted Boards?”
Data shrugged. “Tsh, if I did it right now . . . maybe five or ten minutes.”
I knew the ‘if’ caveat was him playing with me, but I wasn’t in the mood, so I simply said, “I appreciate it,” and walked from the GC.
“Noah!” Data ran out after me.
I turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “Hmm?”
“You’ll fill me in later, though, right?” he asked, clearly curious about my intentions.
“Convince Windsor, and I might consider it.”
I strode down the hall back to my own GC. As the door slid open, I saw that Chloe and Dice—our Japanese programmer—were both inside. I walked in on them having a heated discussion and stopped.
Dice rubbed his forehead. “I don’t have to do anything you tell—”
They both turned to look at me as the door slid shut behind me. I felt suddenly trapped.
“Noah, you’re the team leader. Tell him to decode the photo on this memory card for me.”
I almost laughed, recognizing the situation for what it was. After Dice had taught her to use the Drawing Board software, Chloe had gotten used to receiving his help. Now that he was helping her on command, she had gotten demanding. Chloe was desperate to find her brother, but without context, Dice had no reason to help her.
I sighed, feeling like a parent who needed to console my children. I gave Chloe a cheeky smile. “Chloe, are you demanding something of Dice again?”
“Spot on,” Dice said, nodding.
Chloe shook her head. “It’s your job!”
“It’s not my job to do everything you tell me!” he snapped back.
“That’s true.” I watched with amusement as Chloe’s face became red with anger that I wasn’t taking her side. “However . . . it is your job to do what I tell you.”
“Only if it’s something to do with a task Windsor has given us,” he corrected.
Chloe waved to the picture I had made of the code, which she had clearly printed out after I’d sent it to her from my cloud. “And that’s exactly what this is!”
“You didn’t say that when you spoke to me!” Dice yelled. “You just came in, asked me to look at a code, and then got angry when I said I was busy!”
“Why else would I ask you to help—?”
“Kids, kids, settle down,” I said, failing to hide my amusement. “I can see what happened here, and you’re both right. Chloe’s right in that this is something to do with the task Windsor gave us; Dice is right in that you should have made that clear from the get-go. Now, let me explain, because I can see it’s a little heated in here.”
They both glared at me, displeased with my tone, but I was their supervisor, so they had to listen to me. Chloe fell back onto her recliner and crossed her arms, seeming unhappy that I wasn’t only taking her side, as a good boyfriend should.
There it is again, that attitude that comes with anything to do with her brother.
“Okay, this code Chloe just showed you might lead us to one of the Screamers, and as you know, Windsor has told us to find these guys.”
Dice nodded. “If she had just said that—”
“Ah-ah-ah,” I tutted. “Water under the bridge. Now, will you decode this for her? See if it means anything either inside or outside the game, okay?”
Still scowling, Dice nodded.
“Good. Now, Chloe, I want you to come with me to Galrinth. I have something really cool I want to show you.”
As soon as I said this, I knew I had given away more of the secret than I should have. At the same time, I was aware that I would have spilled the beans to her eventually. As Windsor had said about spinning the tragedy of the beta testers in Wona’s favor, and as Chloe had just demonstrated with Dice, it was the delivery that mattered most.
Chloe gave me a frown. “Okay . . .”
I grinned. “But first, let’s grab some lunch.”
***
After lunch, Chloe and I returned to the GC. Roughly an hour had passed, and after getting some food in my stomach, I felt a lot better. I would have asked Vega to come with us to the Coliseum, but he was taking some time off the game, and I hadn’t seen him for a few days. Unlike me, he was on a casual contract, although I knew someone like him didn’t need the money.
Then again, neither do I.
We were in the elevator heading down when I finally brought up what I had wanted to ask Chloe. “So . . . after we’ve found your brother, would you want to go away somewhere with me?”
“Go away?” Chloe looked down. “Like on vacation?”
“Yeah, I don’t really have anywhere I want to go, but I figured going to another country for a vacation would be fun.” I lifted my brow suggestively. “Is there anywhere you would want to go?”
“Maybe Scandinavia?”
I grinned, feeling my heartbeat speed up in anticipation. “So, do you want to go to Scandinavia with me?”
“After we find Lucas?” She nodded and then met my eyes. “Sure. I’ll go with you.”
My anxiety exploded into joy in my chest. “Cool. Scandinavia, then.”
The elevator door opened, and we returned to our GC to find Dice leaning over a laptop resting on a table he had pulled out from the circular wall. He looked hard at work, and I decided not to interrupt him. Besides, I was beginning to feel a little like Windsor, eager to show off my new ability.
Chloe and I sat down on our chairs, took our drinks, and delved into the Dream State. The medieval setting of Galrinth surrounded us, and I looked around the city square. The place always made me feel nostalgic, but not entirely in a good way. After all, this had been the first area I had arrived in after hearing about the crash that had left me stuck in here. That said, because I had spent so much time here, I knew the city like the back of my hand.
After the opening of Heaven, Galrinth was looking a lot less busy than it had when I first arrived, though I doubted it was the same for the Coliseum.
“You know where the Coliseum is, right?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Alright, let’s head there.”
I pulled out my blue summoning stone and called forth Peragon, my lightning blue pegasus-dragon hybrid mount. Chloe pulled out her own summoning gem. It was orange and looked more like a cut topaz than a round stone.
“Huh, I didn’t know you had a mount.”
Chloe shrugged. “After we got the Bird’s Eye, I didn’t see the point in using him.”
She threw the stone into the air. With a flash of blazing light, the topaz turned into a burning phoenix. The graceful bird flapped its wings slowly, padding its landing with its talons on the city tiles.
“I call him Fawkes,” she said as she hopped on. The bird wasn’t that large, and I assumed that only Range or Spellcaster Niches could ride such a mount.
“After Dumbledore’s phoenix?”
“I knew you would pick up on that reference, you geek.”
“Biggest fantasy books for decades, biggest fantasy game.” I shrugged with a grin. “I’d say it was a safe assumption.”
I got on Peragon, and we took off into the clear sky. Although the Coliseum was in the Galrinth province, it was far enough to the north that it could have overlapped with the Onjira Desert. The farther north we went, the more Romanesque it became.
The warm wind rushed at us as we soared over Widow’s Forest, looking down at the few small Dark Age provinces where people could gain minor quests for Moola. I knew this was historically inaccurate, particularly considering the aesthetics changed from European to Roman as we headed north when Rome and Africa were actually south of Europe. It was like the first era of the Dream State was the European and African continents flipped geographically upside down. They must have flipped it horizontally, too, considering the Asian themed settings were to the west instead of to the east.
After several minutes of flying over the changing countryside full of ranging avatars and roving monsters, the massive circular Battle Royal Coliseum came into view along with its surrounding city.
“Chloe!” I shouted over the wind. “I’m going to head down and change my avatar in the Trans-House. This is going to sound selfish, but I’m going to enter the Battle Royal alone.”
“Why alone?”
“Because to show you what I want to show you, I’m going to have to destroy all my competition, and you can’t watch from a front row seat if I kill you too.”
Chloe gave me an unimpressed look. “What makes you so sure you would kill me?”
“Not you personally. Everyone. That’s why I want you to watch. It’s something that Windsor just shared with me, but I can’t tell you about until I get permission from him. When you see what I can do, you’ll understand.”
“Even so . . .” She turned away with a scowl. “Just watching doesn’t sound like any fun.”
“I’ll watch you fight in one afterward if you want. Just give me this one chance to show my new ability, and you’ll see what I mean.”
“Alright, fine.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Just don’t take too long changing your avatar; I don’t want to wait around forever.”
“Sounds fair. Alright, let’s head down so I can Robin Hood this thing.”
“Robin Hood?”
“Yeah, you know. Disguises himself for an archery competition?”
“Oh, right.” She smiled again. “Geek.”