Chapter 60

Arwyn pushed her grocery cart along the outside aisles[i] of the grocery section of the superstore, picking up enough produce to last her the week. Absently, she noted the piles of Halloween candy waiting to be purchased and picked one up in case children rang her doorbell in two weeks. Not being near a school, there were not many children in her neighbourhood, so she picked a box of chocolate bars she would not mind eating if they weren’t given away. (As if she’s not going to start eating them before that.)

Arwyn was shopping in a superstore that sold everything from food to clothing to electronics and appliances. Remembering that she needed more socks (because she’s too lazy to do laundry frequently), she wheeled her cart over to the clothing section, passing a vid-screen display on the way.

A flash in her peripheral vision caught her eye. The previous animation had finished and the new video stopped Arwyn in her tracks.

An angel in full plate armour fought an aerial battle with a giant, vicious-looking bird of prey. Even without sound, the dazzling maneuvers and flashes of magic made her catch her breath. Arwyn was mesmerized as the angel pulled off death-defying stunts to eventually emerge victorious over the flying monster. She did not come out of her trance until the video ended with a fade-out to the Fantasia logo and the next video started.

Arwyn slowly resumed pushing her cart. The angel in the video was made anonymous by a full plate helm, but she had been certain it was Leandriel. Man, everything reminds me of him. That wasn’t even the same set of armour. The last time Fey had seen the angel, he had been wearing a silvery blend of mithril and titanium, while the angel in the video had been wearing something that looked like bronze scales. As far as she could tell, the height and build would match Leandriel’s, but the aerial video lacked any objects to reference for size.

Arwyn sighed and resumed her normal quick pace. The video did not quite put her into a mopey mood; thanks to Blade, all she had to do was think ‘PMS’ and a wave of cleansing rage would return her to herself. (See Chapter 54 if you don’t remember.)

She arrived at the sock section and picked up a 10-pack of the generic white socks she preferred. Since they matched all the other white socks she owned, it made folding laundry a lot easier. (As if she actually folded her laundry. It also made finding matching pairs inside her pile of clean laundry a lot easier.) She had a similar arrangement with her black socks.

Unconsciously, Arwyn looked back at the vid-screen section before heading to checkout.

◊◊◊

Fey stood in a small clearing inside a laser tag practice arena, hands relaxed and empty. Her gun lay on the ground several paces away, the shield she was allowed likewise unequipped.

Sirena stood within easy shooting distance, gun at the ready. “Three, two, one, go!”

Fey activated Self-Haste and moved. With her reaction speed doubled, Sirena’s movements as she aimed and shot were easy to read.

Turn ninety degrees to negate the targets on her chest and back, tilt forward to dodge a head shot, pivot to compensate for Sirena’s circling movements, tilt backwards, pivot the other way… It was a strange dance as Fey manipulated her body to keep her vest and helmet targets out of the line of fire.

The trick to using Self-Haste, Fey had found, was to minimize her body movements while taking full advantage of the faster reaction time. Except when necessary to maintain her balance, Fey did not move her arms and legs to dodge. With this method of reducing stamina consumption, Fey could now activate the ability up to four times in a row. It was still exhausting, and her stamina had risen to 150 after a week of training with it.

Sirena stopped shooting to recharge her gun, having expended its hundred shots without landing a hit. She pouted, having had a similar lack of success for the last ten rounds. “This is getting boring,” she complained.

“Well, you can go play hide and seek with Mimi and Blade,” Fey offered (evilly). Blade’s losing streak when it came to tagging the sniper was a lot longer than ten rounds.

Sirena shuddered and raised her gun. “Again?” she asked, pretending she had not complained in the first place.

Fey grinned and readied herself. In Critical Sight, now level 9, Sirena’s gun shone yellow, an indication that it was a mana-consuming weapon. More usefully, a yellow trajectory line extended from the tip of the gun, showing her exactly where a shot would land. It was this new aspect of Critical Sight that allowed Fey to successfully dodge all the shots with such minimal movements. Initially, it had been difficult to overcome the instinct to move her entire body out of the line of fire, but she had eventually shifted her mindset to make it a game of keep-the-targets-away-from-the-laser. (She hoped that this retrained instinct would not result in her getting shot after the tournament was over.)

Fey was now confident that she could dodge shots by pretty much anybody— as long as that ‘body’ was not Mimi. With Focused Aim, the sniper could readjust her aim with preternatural speed; she had also perfected the timing of her shots to coincide with the miniscule moments of stillness Fey had to go through to change direction (*inertia*). When sniper and assassin faced off, the hit rate was approximately 50%. That was before Mimi used Shadow Shot and Guided Shot to shoot from multiple directions at the same time.

With no need whatsoever to practice her shooting skills, Mimi was currently honing her hiding and stalking abilities with the hapless Blade, as well as multiple training dummies programmed to run away at any hint of her presence.

After the second round of dodging, Fey put her hands on her hips and breathed hard. She could still activate Self-Haste twice more, but the exertion would leave her flat on the ground for at least twenty minutes afterward. “How about it’s your turn?” she asked Sirena.

Sirena agreed with enthusiasm, wanting a change after her frustrating lack of success. Making her own preparations, she used her gun as a wand and conjured Water Mace in a sphere large enough to obscure her head and chest at the same time. She then lowered the globe to the ground and spun it until it became muddy and opaque. After some experimentation, she had found this to be the most reliable method of blocking laser fire. The transparent globe could refract lasers, but did so at unpredictable angles based on where it was hit.

Mixing the water with soil took about a minute. “What are you going to do if you have to do that in a hurry?” Fey asked.

“This.” Sirena pounded her Water Mace into the ground repeatedly, sending clods of dirt flying in all directions with loud splatters. The technique (‘technique’) was not extremely effective at mixing dirt into the water, but the chaos it generated was a good screen to buy time.

“Just don’t actually hit anyone with that or you’ll get disqualified,” Fey warned.

“Yeah, yeah. You don’t poison anyone,” Sirena retorted.

“As if I’d poison anyone by accident,” Fey snorted.

(Elsewhere in the arena, Blade sneezed and was immediately tagged by Mimi.)

“Ready?” Fey asked, retrieving her gun.

“Ready,” Sirena affirmed, raising her muddy Water Mace to cover her face and chest.

“Go!” Fey burst into motion, sprinting sideways, trying to angle around the water for a clear shot. Sirena turned and adjusted the globe’s position, trying to keep it between herself and Fey’s gun.

Fey circled, abruptly changing directions, trying to get a shot in before Sirena could react. She was aided by the fact that Sirena could not see through the muddy Water Mace. The mermaid either had to peek around her conjuring, exposing her helmet, or wait until Fey had already moved before reacting.

Fey was not using Self-Haste, but she was still considerably faster than Sirena. If she could aim as quickly as Mimi, or even Blade, she would have tagged Sirena within a minute of their game starting. As it was, it took closer to ten minutes before Sirena’s vest flashed red.

“Yessss,” Fey said victoriously. She was quite proud of her progress from ‘terrible’ to ‘mediocre’ when it came to shooting. A week ago, she had not been guaranteed to shoot a stationary target without at least three seconds to aim, and now she could hit a slow-moving mage on the fly.

Sirena dismissed her Water Mace in disgust. “Poop,” she said with annoyance. A clod of mostly dry dirt plopped to the ground, accentuating her speech.

As a mage, Sirena’s physical abilities were far below those of her teammates, and she had low success at both hitting and dodging shots. Mages in general would find it very difficult to find teams for the tournament were it not for their indispensable ability to recharge spent guns.

As if to remind Sirena of her value to the team, Mimi and Blade appeared at that moment to have their guns recharged. In a practice arena, this was not strictly necessary, but the team had decided to go through the small inconvenience during practice so that they would not start to subconsciously expect guns to recharge themselves in a real match.

“So? How did it go?” Fey asked the pair with a (n evil) grin.

Blade gave her a look and then handed his depleted gun to Sirena without a word.

“Ninety-nine to one,” Mimi reported in her neutral voice, passing her gun to Sirena when the mermaid finished with Blade’s.

“He landed a hit on you?” Fey asked, genuinely impressed.

“I missed once,” Mimi clarified.

Fey did a poor job of hiding her amusement. “Well, that’s good, too,” she said in an encouraging tone that grated on Blade’s nerves.

Blade scowled. “What’s even the point? She needs to practice against other rogues.”

Fey and Mimi conceded the point with similar lifts of their eyebrows. “What we actually need to do is practice against people who are better than us,” Fey clarified. Without that drive to improve, their training would stagnate.

Mimi nodded in agreement.

“Okay, better than you,” Fey corrected herself, as if the sniper had disagreed. Fey was very good at running and hiding, but considering her high dexterity level, her shooting ability was decidedly sub-par. Mimi, on the other hand, was so overpowered when it came to laser tag that it was as if her class were specifically designed to play the game. (*cough*)

“Well, that’s nobody in our level bracket,” said Sirena.

Nobody disagreed. Unless the other player was also a sniper, Mimi would basically be doing the same training as she was with Blade.

“I don’t see anyone wanting to bother practicing against a lower level team,” said Fey.

The four spent a moment contemplating the problem.

It occurred to Fey that she knew a high-level player who might be willing to spend time with their group. She hesitated at bringing up the idea.

“Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask,” said Sirena. She marched towards the arena exit with a confident stride.

“Ask who?” asked Blade, following automatically.

“Whoever,” Sirena answered airily. She had no problem with walking up to random strangers, demanding to know their levels, and then inviting them to a practice match.

Mimi looked over to exchange an amused glance with Fey only to find the assassin wearing an unusual look of indecision. She nudged the taller elf with a questioning expression.

“…It’s nothing. I’ll tell you if Sirena’s way doesn’t work,” said Fey.

Mimi raised an eyebrow but said nothing, falling in beside Fey as they followed Sirena back to the Moonwood.

***

Leandriel increased the mana output to his Holy Edge ability, chopping through his opponent’s arm and beheading it at the same time. He sprang into the air, out of reach of the rest of the monsters he was fighting.

Leandriel was not lying. In fact, he had specifically been told to cut back on his training to allow Allison Byrne’s avatar to catch up to his level, an order he was currently disobeying with somewhat of a guilty conscience.

A long pause before the answer came.

It was Leandriel’s turn to pause. When the tournament had first been announced, he had been half-expecting Fey to invite him into a team with her, a request he would have had to turn down because of company policy forbidding work avatars from competing. He had been relieved – and disappointed, the type of irrational reaction he was coming to expect from himself when it came to Fey – when the invitation never came and their daily conversations had revealed that she had found a highly skilled sniper named Mimi to fill the fourth spot in her team.

Deciding that he was overthinking things, Leandriel answered.

Leandriel did not hesitate. A practice match was not against the company rules and he had been ordered to stop working, so this was the perfect opportunity to spend time with Fey.

“We are going to see Fey,” Leandriel informed his pet, winging his way towards the nearest teleportation gate.

“Yay!” cheered Magic. “We haven’t seen Fey-Fey in a long time.”

“Indeed,” Leandriel agreed. “Too long.”

Footnotes:

[i] Fresh food such as fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat are generally placed along the outer perimeter of a grocery store, so one can avoid being tempted by snacks by staying away from the central aisles.