Spiteful Healer

Level Up!: Unarmed Combat has reached Level 53!

Level Up!: Shield Mastery has reached Level 176!

Level Up!: Leather Armor Proficiency has reached Level 176!

Aegis was panting heavily, sweat dripping from every orifice. “No experience bonus for combat skills sucks,” he dragged the S with a groan.

The three-headed void hydra staring him down ignored him in favor of snapping its three jaws at him.

He’d been training for an in-game week already, seeing good results. He was forced to disengage from the hydra to log out twice already, once nearly luring it onto an unsuspecting group of lower-level players adventuring through the wastes. His repairs and having to log out for classes and sleep were slowing his grinding progress, if compared to how fast he progressed back when he was leveling up with the others.

He’d yet to actually kill one, despite being engaged in combat with them for three in-game days straight. Resetting them returned their health to full, so he’d had to start from scratch repeatedly. Even with spamming Virabhadras, no enraged state was triggered.

The following days of classes and his fight with the hydras did wonders for clearing his head and allowing him to process his thoughts. The other students weren’t even interested in talking about how he oughta save Mikael, or his world notification. All the buzz was about Nicholas’ arrest.

Some had no doubt he was guilty; others questioned the accusations in their entirety. He’d inadvertently heard dozens of arguments for both sides from his classmates, all the while contemplating his own issues. Another nanotech class came and went. Ashley’s enthusiasm from the first week had turned, as though she constantly had something she wanted to say to Eli, but he never gave her the opportunity to do so.

When Eli got back from class and logged in as Aegis, part of him missed having Lina waiting for him so that he could vent and rant about it. Another part of him was happy he didn’t have to see her disappointment when she’d hear he still hadn’t made a decision. He kept track of her and the other Night Hunters’ progress through his friends list, seeing them along with Amlie and Rakkan gaining levels each time he checked up on them.

He’d logged out at the edge of the lava moat circling the City of the White tree, and wasted no time preparing to head into the wastelands once more, but his livestreaming icon was flashing curiously.

He’d only seen this happen when Hae-won was trying to contact him for some technical issues, which made no sense as he hadn’t been streaming for a few months now. With curiously raised brows, he navigated his interface to press the flashing crossed microphone icon, opening communication with her.

“Yeah?” He spoke to no one in particular.

“Ah, good, hi Aegis. Shinji here,”

He became more curious. “Hey Shinji, everything alright?”

“Yup, more or less. No problems, exactly. Uh, this is concerning something unrelated to the game. Ah, well, not exactly unrelated to the game…”

Shinji was nervous, something very unusual for Aegis. Typically, Shinji was calm, collected, and focused.

“Regarding the recent arrest of the director over at Averon, an Averon Inc. employee has reached out to us. Apparently, VGN was involved in some way, and they’d like to talk with former VGN members about it. They’ve uh…” There was a long, awkward pause. “Any way you could contact Makaroth for us to arrange the meeting?”

“Nope,” Aegis replied with zero hesitation.

Shinji sighed audibly into the call.

“Anything else?”

“No, I suppose not. Sorry for bothering you.”

The interview channel closed, ceasing the blinking. Aegis stood there for a few more moments before shaking his head, walking off as though nothing had happened.

He’d made it a decent way across the wastelands before another blinking popped up in his interface.

This time, it was a message from his friends list interface, sent from Rakkan. Aegis paused, rubbing his chin after spotting Rakkan still in the dungeon raid. He opened the message.

“Yo, Aegis, got a sec?”

“Yeah. What's up?”

“A buddy of mine from Puagas just hit me up. He’s a really nice guy, and he helped us contain Seraxus there for a long while with his airship. He out of the blue messaged me, asking me to ask you for a favor.”

Aegis tipped his head back to stare at the glowing roots of the White Tree tangled through the wasteland cavern’s roof. He already knew what was coming.

“Set up a meeting with Makaroth?”

“How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess. They’ve gotta be desperate if they’re going through channels like that.”

“Yeah. But he’s a good person. I owe him a lot. I know you still don’t get along with your old man, but could you help him out? Might be something to do with that arrest.”

Aegis hesitated again. For all his disdain for Makaroth, he really liked Rakkan and Shinji. It was hard to say no to both of them back-to-back.

He sighed with reluctance before responding. “Alright, fine, I’ll set it up with Shinji.”

From there, Aegis scrolled down low on his friends list to find a level 93 bard named Jambyri. He rolled his eyes at the name and sent her a message.

“Mom, you’re leveling with Synopse and Makaroth’s rerolls, right?”

“Yup. How’re you doing, sweetie?”

“Fine. Are you guys busy? I need to talk with David outside of the game for a minute.”

After a pause, she responded. “He’s logging out right now.”

For some reason, he felt a hint of excitement coming from her. Aegis initiated his own log-out process, but remained in his sim-box. He tapped his wrist implant and called Shinji and David simultaneously. Both answered within a few seconds.

“Eli. How’s it going?” David answered first, speaking in a forced, casual tone.

“One sec,” Eli answered dismissively, waiting for Shinji to join the call. It only took a second.

“Ah, Eli! Did you reconsider?” Shinji spoke hopefully.

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“He’s on the call. Shinji, meet David, the player behind Makaroth. David, this is Shinji, my editor at the Fanta-See network.

Both became very formal in their speech, greeting each other politely.

“They wanted to ask you about some VGN stuff, if that’s alright,” Eli said with little enthusiasm.

“Oh. I see. Uh, I suppose that’s fine…” David responded.

“I’ll arrange a meeting with the Averon employee. One moment.” Shinji put the call on hold, leaving the two alone.

“So uh… all crafting skills advanced, huh? That must’ve been tough.” David went back to his casual tone. Eli didn’t respond. “We’re leveling up pretty fast, playing on Kalmoore, even. We all bought some of your crafted mithril gear; it’s been speeding us along. Impressive stuff! Maybe once we get a bit higher, we can do a dungeon together or something. You, me, your mom, Synopse, all your other friends…”

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