(Ork Ruins – Occupation: None)(Amos)

  FOUR DAYS LATER

  Amos hates the desert. The word “ruins” doesn’t do this former town justice; time has even robbed it of its name. Every single building is roofless and windowless, full of rubble and sand. The only things alive are the orks, roaming around in packs like wild animals, and players making camps out of bone and lizard-hide. The three are resting in one such camp, right across from another group of players.

  Amos never learned the lore of this place and never cared to. If he were to look back at any of the quests he did or tasks he finished here, he always skipped past the dialogue. His only interest in the game was to fight, and to collect powerful weapons, of course. Whatever he learned about the game’s combat system, he taught his students, or to those who listened, anyway.

  “Let me break your arm!” Amos says, pointing at a blonde kid around his age, sitting with several others underneath a long tarp made of lizard skin. He’s wearing hard leather chaps and an iron chain body, rookie gear. Amos stares the kid down as Zero and Cazel share a grimace behind him.

  “Break…my arm?” asks the kid. Amos nods.

  “See, a few days ago, I saw this dude with his arm in a cast.”

  The kid nods. “Ye… yeah…?”

  Amos rubs his chin. “Well, why would he be in an arm cast if we can heal ourselves, right?”

  “I don’t like-” before the kid can finish, Amos interrupts him.

  “But because of that new update from a little while back – where we can feel pain – I want to know if a broken bone needs as much time to heal here as it does IRL.”

  “Maybe that guy didn’t have food to heal his arm,” says one of the others, seated in the shade underneath the tarp.

  “Maybe, but we won't know unless we try,” Amos says.

  Cazel sighs as he steps forward from behind Amos. “Listen, you don’t have to do this.”

  Amos nods. “He doesn’t, but that's the only payment I’ll accept if he wants the Great Gru’s Bone Necklace.” Amos holds out his hand. A necklace of long, sharp bones appears, hanging from his outstretched palm. The blonde kid’s eyes widen. Several others under the tarp begin whispering to one another. A gust of wind rustles the tarp and sends wisps of sand against the trio’s boots. The bones on the necklace clitter.

  “Are you sure there’s no other way we could buy that from you?” the kid asks, staring at the necklace of the Great Gru, dropped by a boss Amos, Cazel, and Zero have been grinding for a few days. “Nope,” Amos says. The kid retracts his left arm to his chest, holding it tightly with his right.

  “Hear me out,” Amos says, raising the necklace. “The chance of getting this drop is one in four thousand, and I’m guessing you and your pals are headed north, to the City of Bell. You’ll need coins when you get there, not to mention along the way. I’m offering you an item worth a fortune and saving you a lot of time, If you’ll participate in my little experiment. Hell, this knowledge will benefit you just as much as it benefits us. Honestly, I would take the deal if I were you.”

  Zero joins Amos and Cazel, expecting the kid to accept.

  The kid looks back at his friends, all wearing wary looks. One of them slowly shakes his head. “We’ll need it when we do dungeon runs,” the blonde kid argues.

  “You’re crazy if you’re going to do it,” one of the others says.

  “If you have to,” says another.

  A sigh leaves the kid as he turns back to Amos. “Alright, I'll do it, but it has to be the left forearm.” Without hesitation, Amos lunges forward and snaps the kid's forearm like a twig. It takes the kid a moment to comprehend what just happened. When he comes to, he stares at the sharp point of bone poking up from under his skin. Blood runs from the wound, wrapping around the kid’s arm and pouring in a thin stream onto the ground, like a faucet that’s barely turned on.

  Cazel gags, Zero make a “hmph” sound, and the kid’s friends start freaking out. One of them covers his eyes, another screams, and another scrambles from under the tarp and crawls a few feet before vomiting.

  To the kid's credit, he didn’t scream. He probably was shocked more than anything. The only face he made was breathing hard through his teeth when given food to heal. As soon as he ate, the bone snapped back into place and the wound sealed shut. Amos told the kid to move his arm, then press on the spot where the bone had poked through. Each time, he winced.

  As expected, the kid's arm was healed and the bone set back in place, but not fully healed. The same would be true of a fracture, then. The actual crack or split in the bone would take weeks, if not months, to fully heal. A deal is a deal. Amos gives the kid the necklace, throwing in a splint as well.

  Shortly afterward, while watching the kid and his friends walk off, Amos pulls out his notebook and pencil to write down what he learned.

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  Cazel leans over Amos’s shoulder. “That was fucked.”

  Amos keeps writing. “What we all learned from that broken arm might save their lives, ours too.” Writing the last word in an exaggerated swipe of his pencil, he smiles at Cazel. “They got the necklace, right?”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you: what does that necklace do?” Cazel asks.

  Closing his notes while turning to Cazel, Amos scratches his head. “No clue, my magic level is seventy. I only have access to the tier-one Scan.”

  Cazel tilts his head. “You gave away an item that rare and you have no clue what it does?”

  Amos moves to sit on a boulder across from Zero, who’s under their camp tarp, repairing his gear. “If by ‘giving away’ your mean ‘trading for an experiment that provided valuable information,’ then yes, I did.”

  Zero chuckles as he sews up a tear in his pants. “Imagine how desperate you must be to get an item that you’d let a guy break your arm.” Glancing up at Amos, Zero’s face drops. “Sure would’ve been nice to know what it did.”

  “Relax,” Amos says. “We did fine without it before and we’ll be fine without it now.”

  “Whatever,” Zero says, going back to his thread and needle.

  “Oh, before I forget!” Amos says, drawing the other two's gazes. “I decided to change my direction.”

  “Is that so?” Cazel says. “Are you just going to focus on melee?”

  “Yes, and syndesis.”

  “Why syndesis, especially this early on?” Cazel asks.

  “Two reasons. If we only have two days left here and the tournament is still going on, it’ll surprise those who know my curse during the upcoming versus battles. But, if my gut feeling is correct and we’ll be here a little longer, I’ll need to get my heavy dexterous spell.”

  Syndesis is a bind between the individual’s energy reserves and the world energy, allowing the user to do one of three things: create an invisible protective layer over the player against melee, magical, and ranged attacks; give damage boosts to melee, magic, or range at higher levels; and provide energy to the charged attacks of imbued weapons. The catch is that the Syndesis meter can run out quickly and, once drained, can cause dizziness and nausea.

  “That's a stretch,” Zero says.

  “True - syndesis takes the longest to train out of all the other skills. You better start now,” Cazel points out.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Zero says.

  “Well?”

  Zero ties the thread he was sewing before biting off the excess. “I have no doubt you’ll get your Syndesis and magic to the levels needed. I think it’s a stretch thinking RoT will let you in the Goblin Ninja Village to do the quests for the spell.”

  Amos chuckles. “When did RoT ever tell us not to do something and we listened?”

  The pants vanish from Zero’s hands and reappear on him. “Point made. But you also have to remember that death is real. Well, according to the devs.” Zero stretches his arms and legs before standing up, his joints crackling. “I’m getting back to ork slaying before the sun goes down. Watch me max my strength level in no time.”

  “If you get to level one thousand strength within the week, on normal experience, I’ll shit myself.” responds Cazel.

  “More like within six months,” Amos adds. The three laugh a little before Zero and Cazel head out to train.

  Meanwhile, Amos returns to their camp, sits down cross-legged under the tarp, and prepares to train his syndesis. Amos empties all the energy in his body that his syndesis will allow, causing an instant feeling of weakness. His fingers go numb and his knees feel weak. His head slumps forward and his arms go slack. “Holy shit,” he exhales. That was much worse than the last time he trained, no doubt because of the new mechanics of the tournament.

  Gaining some composure, Amos opens his interface and notices he has jumped from level one syndesis to level twelve. It's easy now, but the levels start to slow down around the two hundred mark. Closing his interface, Amos lies back on the sandy ground. He has to wait another hour for his energy to be restored before emptying it again. He could stand, as the effects are already starting to wear off, but he doesn’t want to exert himself too much. He isn’t some TV show protagonist. He’s just “Liam of North Carolina.” He grimaces at the thought. That sounded cringy even in his head.

  After a while, sits up. He feels better than ever, but his Syndesis reserve still isn’t full. He can’t picture what the Syndesis meter looks like – he only “feel” its fullness. If he were to use up what little he has now, he wouldn’t gain as much experience. It’s an awful skill to level, and he wonders if there are better ways to train it. If not, he will need to do this over three thousand times before maxing the skill.

  Dusting himself off, Amos crosses his legs and closes his eyes. All afternoon and into the night, Amos drains his syndesis reserve four more times before Zero and Cazel return to find him lying under their tarp.

  Cazel leans over his friend. “How’s it going down there?”

  “Forty-two fucking levels,” Amos grumbles. “I don’t remember it being this awful.”

  “Ouch,” Zero says while cringing. “Could have spent better time jerking off. But your level has to be better than most people, so I can't say much.”

  Cazel nods as he reaches out a hand for Amos. “He’s right. Any smart person would wait to train their Syndesis. Maybe this idea isn’t worth it.”

  Amos grabs Cazel’s hand and pulls himself up. “No, I just need a better training method.”

  Zero laughs. “What better method is there? All you do is drain the meter and let it refill, rinse and repeat.”

  Amos waves his hands in front of Zero. “I don’t know. Maybe you can punch me while I’m draining it.”

  Zero smacks Amos across the face. “Well, did you gain a level?”

  “Dickhead,” Amos says.

  “I don’t know, Amos,” Cazel says. “Maybe you should give up on it for now. We only have a few more days until the tournament, right?”

  Zero rubs his forehead. “I Don’t know. With this…death bug…I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets postponed.”

  Amos lifts his pointer finger. “Don’t do that to me. Don’t say that. Stay positive!”

  Zero nervously chuckles. “I’m sure whatever’s happening, the tech people are hard at work trying to fix it. You don’t become a trillion-dollar tech company without recruiting plenty of eggheads. In any case, we always got each other.”

  Amos blushes and smiles between his beet-red cheeks. “Geez, Zero… Why do you have to say cringy stuff like that?”