8. The trio gamers

“Gotcha! The boss is at half his HP, get him, guys! What’re you doing, Armen?” Ray asked.

“Argh… That damn monster, is he immortal? My claws deal no damage at all,” I complained.

“That’s because he’s an iron type. Use your curse rod!”

“The… What? I was saving it, you jerk, you just made me use it!”

“Don’t be so tight-fisted. Hey, Arkill, can you use Flame again? … Wow, so effective. Ten points left!”

“Your demon is so cool, Arkill,” I said in a jealous and complaining tone. “I should have picked a demon too. Why are the undead so weak in this game?”

“What are you saying?” Ray grumbled. “Mummies are cool too. You need to find more curses, that’s all.”

“I finished the guy,” Arkill announced in a calm tone.

“Oh, the treasure’s on the altar!” I said, excited. “Please make it so it’s filled with curses.”

“Don’t jinx the box. Wow! I can’t believe it! The Three-headed Sword!” Ray laughed happily. “In Survival Dungeon 2, it was my best companion. I so wanted to own it again! Did you see that, Armen?”

“Bleh. Good for you.”

“There, there, the next level is a tomb apparently, so there should be useful things for a mummy… What?!” he suddenly breathed out. “The Three-headed Sword is cursed? I can’t take it off! And it’s covering me in acid, but my HP isn’t decreasing… What the hell’s going on? My amulet of resistance has broken!”

“What…? Pfft…! Hahaha! You transformed into a slime, what the hell, hahahahahaha!”

Ray cleared his throat, struggling not to laugh as he made his slime character slowly advance in the dark corridor.

“Let’s go.”

“Hahahahahahahaha!”

When I calmed down a bit, I turned and looked at the big, green slime.

“Arkill, there’s a creepy slime following us. Should I curse it?”

“But I’m already cursed!” Ray complained. “And I’m a human!”

I burst out laughing again. His slime was so slow! We just reached the stairs of the dungeon when Arkill coughed for attention.

“Hey, guys, it’s not like I want to spoil your fun or anything, but didn’t you guys said: we finish this level, then we’ll continue studying?”

I felt a sudden lump in my throat. I held my gamepad like a life preserver as Ray said reluctantly:

“Ah… you’re right.”

“You’re damn right,” I confirmed.

Arkill looked at both of us. That gleam in his eyes… Was he teasing us? I sighed. I had been staying in Ray’s place for five days now; we didn’t have to go to school until midterms next week, and I had been studying a lot, but…

“Hey, Ray! I’ve got a great idea!”

“What?”

I gently smiled at him.

“Order me to study please?”

Ray widened his eyes, then snorted.

“Not happening.”

“But why?” I complained.

“I don’t like ordering around.”

“But you just ordered me to use that curse rod.”

“That’s… That’s not the same. It’s a game. And I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“But—”

“Stop it. Besides,” he stood up, “you should be more confident about yourself. You just need willpower. Willpower is the key!” He gave me a thumbs up. “Well then, I’ll be upstairs.”

“Damned slime,” I whispered.

“I heard you!”

I rolled my eyes and began to put all my textbooks on the low table.

“You’re not going to study, Arkill?”

The red-haired guy had just grabbed his coat. He looked somewhat elegant in his outfit, but also kind of outdated.

“I don’t need to. I’m just keeping Ray safe at school. I actually already graduated from high school long ago.”

“Oh, you said that the other day. But how old are you anyway?”

Arkill stopped by the doorway and gave me just a glance as he answered:

“My body is thirty-eight. I was revived by the Lord twenty years ago.”

I gaped at him. T-T-Twenty years ago? That much?

“How did you die?”

Arkill frowned.

“Well… I don’t remember. I lost my memories. That’s what happens to most of us, undead people. You could say I’m twenty years old instead of thirty-eight.” He paused as I listened to him, filled with curiosity. Grasping the doorknob, he added: “By the way, asking an undead about his death is quite rude. Don’t do that.”

Dammit. Did I just offend him?

“Sorry.”

“Also, I said I graduated from high school, but I had just received the diploma when I died, so… I can’t help you much with your studies.”

“I… I didn’t ask for your help! I can manage by myself!”

Arkill gave me one of his rare smiles.

“Sure. Protect the young master while I’m out.”

He left, and the room fell silent. I wondered. What did we count when we told our age? The body’s age or the memories'? Should I consider that Arkill was twenty years old since he had to relearn everything from scratch in an eighteen-year-old dead body?

Anyway, this confirmed one thing: undeads don’t age.

That was cool in a way but also kind of disappointing. It meant I couldn’t get any wrinkles. When I was a kid, I loved wrinkles. I used to say to my grandma, when she was alive, that they made her cute. Once my grandpa asked:

“What about me?”

“Baldy, grandpa! Baldies are no cute!”

They laughed at my comeback, but ever since that day, my grandpa always wore a knit cap. Kids are scary.

The muffled sound of an audio lesson from upstairs startled me.

“Oh, no, no, no,” I said to myself, “I have to study.”

What should I start with? Math? I had already studied literature and history in the morning, but if I began solving equations, my willpower would suffer a critical blow right from the start…

I hit my head with my fist. I hardly felt a prickle of pain. Nothing very satisfying. Anyway, I wasn’t a masochist, so the problem wasn’t there. My mind was the real danger: it couldn’t even focus. The worst thing was that, compared to when I was alive, it hadn’t changed, not one bit.

I opened my math textbook and stared at a definition. Then I looked at the formula and the exercises. So many symbols. There was a teacher, in middle school, who scolded us pupils for using emoticons and contractions in our essays —I was one of those ‘fools’ by the way. Still, math exercises were full of glyphs too, so, in a way, were equations like electronic messages?

I stabbed my hand with my pencil. I broke the tip. Damn.

Why did Ray have to be so strict? Just a little order and I would be studying just fine…

No, no, no, willpower was the key!

I sharpened my pencil and turned the pages of my textbook until I reached the quiz section. Okay, here I go. I closed my eyes. Focus, focus, focus…

What would Ray have done if I had lost my memories? I would certainly not be studying right now, but it would have been really sad. Memories, after all, were what made the character…

I smashed my head on the table.

Dammit. Focus!

* * *

It was almost dinner time when Ray left his bedroom.

“Armen… Did you manage to study?”

As he was going downstairs, I leaned on the table groaning:

“I’m gonna diiiie…”

“Don’t worry, you’re already dead.”

“Ah.” I briefly raised my eyes, then buried my face again between my arms. “I told my big sis you would help me study. Was I lying?”

“When you’re asking for help, at least say it directly.” Ray sat at the table. “Okay, I’ll help you.”

“…!” I sat up like a resort. “Really? Ray, I knew you were a friend I could rely on—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. What are you struggling with?”

“Well… This.”

“Equations?”

“And this.”

“Functions, huh?”

“And this too.”

“Ah… That too. I see.”

“Yes.”

Ray looked at me. I was afraid of seeing annoyance on his face, but all I saw was an earnest concentration.

“Well. First of all, let’s see what you already know. Which functions did you learn? The math curriculum wasn’t the same at my European school, so I may be wrong but… you probably learned about the natural logarithm, right?”

Natural logarithm? The teacher did talk about that.

“Ah, yes! You mean that tree bending to the right?”

“Well, yes, the one you draw like this, you see? Let’s see what’s in your textbook first…”

Ray kept talking and helped me solve some exercises. He was good at explaining, and I was amazed at how many things I understood.

When I saw him yawning, I realized it was already 11:00 pm. As an undead, I couldn’t get tired, but Ray was a normal human.

“Let’s call it a day,” I suggested.

“Ah… yes, it’s getting late.”

As Ray rubbed his eyes, his stomach growled. He blushed. What for, though? I smiled, amused.

“I’ll cook you dinner. You helped me a bunch today, so you can have anything you want.”

“Huh? Anything? You sure?”

“Just say it.”

Ray hesitated.

“Then fries and scrambled eggs. Is that okay?”

I grinned happily.

“Leave it to me!”

I went to the kitchen and began peeling potatoes and preparing the eggs. I put my whole heart into making a dish that would satisfy Ray. Half an hour later, I placed the steaming plate before him. His sleepy eyes gleamed.

“Wow. It’s like a restaurant dish!”

“Haha, it’s not, really. I can’t taste it, so I hope it’s okay.”

“Thanks for the meal!”

Seeing him gulping down with appetite was quite gratifying. In the past years, I usually had dinner alone. It felt good to eat, but watching Ray eating was definitely better.

“Armen? What are you thinking about?”

“Heh… Nothing much. Can I borrow your headphones? I don’t know where I put mines.”

“Ah… I saw Arkill use them earlier.”

“Oh? He likes music? Well, let me borrow yours. The sound is far more better.” I connected his headphones to my phone and added: “Do you want something for dessert, by the way? Like, ice cream?”

Ray’s eyes sparkled.

“Do we have that?”

I stood up.

“No, but I can go and buy some.”

“Huh? Hold on—!”

“The convenience store at the corner is open all night. I passed there last night.”

“You went out last night?”

“I was bored. Well, I’ll be right back.”

“Wait, Armen, you don’t need to go buy ice cream!”

“But you want it, right?”

“B-But…”

I stopped at the doorway and suggested cheerfully:

“Why don’t you come too? Night walks are fun.”

Then I saw Ray’s troubled face, and I remembered. Ray was afraid of the dark. That’s why he would always avoid going out at night as much as possible. It was a real phobia. According to him, he had it since he was eight years old. He never told me what caused it. I thought, after two years, he had gotten over his phobia but… No, actually, it completely slipped my mind.

“Sorry… That was so stupid of me. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Ray said nothing, and I left the house as I wondered silently how a necromancer’s son could be afraid of darkness. Could it be because of his dad?

I turned the music on and made my way to the store. Ever since my sister decided to work from home, I had stopped wandering on the streets, only going to Harvard High School and back, dropping every weekend by Ray’s place. I had run away from freedom. I didn’t want to make my sister worry about me anymore.

But freedom wasn’t bad at all. Now that I was dead, I realized I regretted nothing about last year. Scaring the hell out of some gangsters who were capable of beating you up to a pulp… Nothing was wrong with that. If anything, I regretted not having kept in touch with some Cheetahs. Especially Zeeta. Who knew whatever had become of that nice guitarist.

“That’s three Corns even.”

“Here you are!”

The storekeeper was half asleep as he handed me the ice cream box.

“Call again,” he said in a spiritless voice.

Dang. The living looked deader than the undead sometimes.

When I came back, Ray had fallen asleep on the sofa, a heavy grimoire lying on his chest. That book must weigh a lot. How could he have fallen asleep like that?

I put the book away and covered Ray with a blanket, then turned on the nightlight and went to the kitchen to leave the ice cream in the fridge. I smiled as I was washing the dishes.

In a way, Ray reminded me of my sister. Both were awfully clumsy when it came to housework —one could only wonder how they managed to live on their own for so many years. Also, both of them were hard-working and good at studying, being able to focus on the most complicated things.

They were worrywarts as well. I was sure that, despite all of my talk, Ray still blamed himself for my death. It was in his nature. As for me, maybe because I wasn’t as smart as him, I was starting to get used to my new life. No tiredness, no sleepiness, no needs other than meat. That wasn’t quite bad. I seldom dreamed anyway; as for the food, Arkill had said lifeforce was tasty. ‘But it’s also risky: you can get drunk and get mad if you’re too greedy,’ he had told me.

Life reapers that were revived as such were rare, but according to Arkill, some ghouls were able to evolve into life reapers with their master’s assistance, after ingesting large amounts of raw meat. From what I understood, the main difference between life reapers and ghouls was that the former had a well-formed outer soul inside a high-quality core that allowed them to absorb lifeforce in a much more effective way. I wasn’t told how exactly the absorption of lifeforce worked, but Arkill said it was something so natural for a life reaper that I would learn how to do it subconsciously when the time comes. He also said that, as long as life reapers absorbed just a bit of lifeforce from a person, the energy of that person would be replenished in a matter of hours without leaving any trace, aside perhaps from a temporary, slight weariness.

I didn’t want to steal anything from the living, but as long as it didn’t mean to steal their very own lives and become a mass murderer, I didn’t want to die either.

After cleaning up, I sat down at the low table in the living room and opened up my math textbook.

I didn’t want to give up on my sacrilegious life: there were so many things I still wanted to do.

Like enjoying my new life, understanding more about my nature… or proving to myself that I could have good grades if I wanted.

My fist clenched on my pencil. I could do it.