“Up up up, we’re all out the house in 30!” Kristen said while knocking hard on Darith’s bedroom door. He woke up slowly, still tired from his lack of sleep. He drowsily made it to the bathroom while listening to the sound of busy feet downstairs in the kitchen. As he got in front of the bathroom mirror and started brushing his teeth, his eyes widened at the sight of his full Energy bar.

He power-brushed his teeth and went back to his room, quickly doing 10 push-ups before getting dressed for the day. He didn’t get any stat boosts, but he didn’t want to waste any energy by letting his bar stay full. As long as the game would let him do push-ups without making his arms hurt, he’d keep doing them.

By the time he got out of the house with his lunch both Liana and Kristen were already in the car, driving off to the hospital for work. Darith waved them as they pulled out of the driveway, and both of them waved back.

He felt different this morning. Normally walking to school he felt self-conscious, stretching down his shirt over his stomach and trying to be as invisible as possible. Today, he didn’t care, he felt good, excited about leaving the house. Would he find a new dungeon? Would he find a new way to get stronger? Anything could happen with this game! He looked up at the sun rising over the city and stretched his arms out, walking with a skip in his step.

By the time Darith arrived at school though, his confidence had all but left him. Seeing all the football players and other well dressed older boys as they stood around talking to girls he could only dream of being friends with helped set him back down to where he thought he belonged. It quickly became his goal to sneak past everyone into his first period class-room, and he went back to stretching his shirt down over his stomach and hoping he went unnoticed.

He arrived in his class first as usual, sitting down and then staring at the door waiting for Ryan to walk in. First came the same girl from yesterday, barely glancing at Darith as she fiddled with her phone all the way to her desk. Then another group of boys walked in, and more kids, and more, and soon enough the first period bell was ringing. The last time the door opened was the Teacher, and Darith started to accept that Ryan wasn’t coming.

What was he doing? Was he okay? Did he find a new dungeon? Was he training one of his attributes, or a new skill maybe? Darith’s imagination ran wild, and though the teacher started his lesson, his words only sounded like mumbling. Darith didn’t want to be in that class-room, he wanted to get outside and enter a dungeon, he wanted to hit level 5. He eyed his health bar to see a new status appear, ‘Impatient’, it said. Reading this, Darith tried to calm down and take a deep breath as the teacher called his name for attendance.

“Here.” He said reluctantly, and as the teacher got to Ryan’s name he felt a bit angry. Angry that Ryan could do what he wanted without his parents caring, while his Mom would yell at him and take away all games if she got the call from school saying he missed a single class. Why was his mom like that? Why couldn’t he have cool parents like Ryan’s. His mom just didn’t understand. Darith began tapping his fingers on his desk, glancing around at the other students, his body began to heat up from his frustration; sweating was something it did easily.

He felt as though other students were starting to look at him, making fun of his size in their heads. Every tiny glance they made at him, even for a second, got to him on a deep level. He hated their looks, he didn’t want to be here, he’d rather be playing the game, at home where no one would stare at him, where he could be left alone. He needed to go somewhere else fast to calm himself down.

The teacher started walking up and down the class handing out worksheets, Darith hadn’t been listening to know what it was about, but when he got it he could see simple questions that he could answer without much thought. He quickly filled it out and then dazed off out the window, half hoping to see a beam of light. In his mind he played out an imaginary scenario where he saw a beam and came up with an awesome excuse to run out of the class and go into the dungeon. He then looked around the class again to see everyone still staring intently down at their papers. He then glanced up to see his teacher sitting at his desk and eyeing him.

“Finished the test already Darith?” his Teacher asked.

“It was a test?” He replied surprised, though the teacher took this as arrogance.

“Alright then, let’s try a bonus question just for you.” The teacher replied with a raised eyebrow, several students glancing at him with a surprised expression. The teacher stood up and began writing a more complex math equation on the blackboard, one that Darith had seen before but not in his math textbook for this grade.

“Is that even grade 10 Math?” Darith asked.

“No, grade 12.” The teacher replied smugly, sure that the question would stump this arrogant student. Darith was now interested, intrigued by the challenge, it was close to a game now, this real life puzzle. The fire in him that loved games lit up, he had to solve it, and he quickly copied the puzzle down on the back of his test paper.

He could see the numbers, but he had never seen them put together like this. He didn’t know what the equation was showing, or how he could even solve it. He didn’t even know where to start. The sounds of the other students pencils scribbling on their papers calmed him though, he knew that as they worked on the test they probably wern’t staring at him, judging his weight and thinking how disgusting he looked. He could think clearly.

He first considered trying to use the game menu for help, but as he thought about it he couldn’t think of anything he’d learned of so far being able to help him. Still, the more he looked at it, the more familiar it seemed, he had seen an equation like this before, in a game maybe? Or from something his mom had shown him. As the time ticked down he started playing with the numbers a bit, calculating them together in different ways, and it wasn’t long before he figured out that the equation was actually points on a graph, it was a shape of some sort.

He had to use the equation with it’s only valid inputs to find the points on the graph, and at first they seemed random but as he put a few on the graph they started to form a shape. He noticed some points he found weren’t matching the same on his makeshift graph he drew, so quickly went back to realize he had made mistakes in them. Before long he had pulled out a second piece of paper and started jotting down more attempts at putting valid numbers into the equation, until he felt he did 3 correct, and found the pattern.

By this time a lot of the other students had finished their tests and had started whispering amongst each other, though a few took interest in the bonus question and started trying to solve it as well. Noticing this, the teacher started walking through the class to check on everyone, stopping to look over Darith’s shoulder to see what he had so far.

He wasn’t sure what the teacher would say, if he’d tell Darith he was wrong, tell him not even close, or even laugh, but the teacher simply tapped one number on his extra paper, a 13.

“14.” The teacher whispered. Darith turned up to him and smiled. “Really impressive... Aside from that it looks like you’ve got it.” He added, walking away. “You should be in grade 12, what’re you doing in this class?” He said, this time much louder so the whole class could hear. Several students looked to him with raised eyebrows, a boy with glasses and a girl with long brown hair walked over his desk quickly.

“How’d you solve that? I couldn’t even figure out what to do with the first number!” The boy asked as he looked at Darith’s papers.

“Wow, I wasn’t even close.” The girl commented, and before Darith could say much else the bell rang.

“Tests up to the front, finished or not.” The teacher said. “We’ll see how you did tomorrow!” Several students groaned as they reluctantly handed the tests in before leaving the class, but Darith felt good, confident again as though the glances he was getting as he got up were because he solved the problem, not because he was big.

Attribute Up!: +1 Int

The pop up message was just icing on the cake, but also reminded him that while he was in class gaining 1 intelligence, Ryan was probably running around in a dungeon doing a quest and fighting monsters. As he walked the halls he debated skipping the rest of the day, but he decided against it which only built up more spite for his mother inside of him. After a long second class he made it to his lunch period and headed to his normal corner of the cafeteria. There was still no sign of Ryan, but Jacob came to the table in a rush.

“So, what happened?” Jacob asked as he sat across from Darith. “And where’s Ryan?”

“No idea where Ryan is, and I can’t say.” Darith replied.

“Aw cmon, you’re not even level 5 yet? I thought that’d be cake for you in one night. This game super hard or somethin’?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah, something like that.” Darith replied hesitantly, worried about saying the wrong thing.

“Well go on then, play it, I won’t look I promise, just get level 5 fast.” Jacob said as he motioned to Darith’s phone.

“It’s not that simple.”

“What’dya mean, you can’t just play it to get level 5?” Jacob asked impatiently.

“No, not really.” Darith said, only briefly glancing at his phone as he set it on the table.

“Man just lemme see!” Jacob grabbed the phone and started looking through his apps. Darith wasn’t worried though, he had already looked. There was nothing on his phone about the game at all anymore, Jacob wouldn’t find anything. “What the hell, you delete it or something?”

“I told you it’s not that simple. I’ll try to get level 5 tonight alright? Ryan’s probably already doing it though, skipping school like usual.”

“That’ll be a first that Ryan is better at a game than you are.” Jacob huffed with disbelief, and these words stung Darith as he remembered all of the menu options he didn’t figure out on his own and had to learn from Ryan. As Darith took out his lunch he eyed the small bag of chips and the homemade sandwich, trying to pick one to save. He remembered the quest from Mayiera and wanted to keep one to give to her, eventually deciding to eat the chips as he figured a sandwich was a more normal meal for an NPC.

“You’re on a diet now too or something?” Jacob commented.

“Not really.” Darith replied.

“Maaan this sucks! You’re being all secretive! I want in on this game too, what the heck is going on!” He groaned, but just then Darith spotted Ryan running into the cafeteria through doors on the far side. He glanced towards them and power walked around the other students, Jacob spotting him after following Darith’s eyes.

“Yo! Where you been?” Jacob called to him, but Darith didn’t say anything. He got distracted by the bar above Ryan’s head that said he was Level 5 with 160 HP, 120 Mana, and 100 Energy.

“Leveling up for you, duh!” Ryan said excitedly as he sat down with them.

“Whoa, so Ryan’s better at this game than you Darith?” Jacob said to incite something, but he didn’t need to, Darith was already frustrated. He felt as though Ryan had cheated him, skipping school to play.

“I invite you, Jacob, to join my party.” Ryan said excitedly, and moments later Jacob felt his cell phone buzz like it had the other night.

“Sweet!” Jacob said as he pulled out his phone, showing the same menu that Ryan and Darith had yesterday.

“Hurry up and accept all that stuff and make your character, I got a ton of stuff to tell you guys. Darith, I found a place like you did, with the light just like you said. It was purple though, the light.” Ryan said, barely able to contain himself, but his glances towards Jacob showed signs of him holding back a lot of information he wanted to blurt out.

“You sure he should start the game here? I mean...” Darith said nervously.

“Oh, shit, yeah you’re right. Don’t start it at school, it’ll cause a big mess. Let’s go back to my place, my parents are at work anyway.” Ryan said, standing up from the table and heading out.

“Don’t you want to wait until after school?” Darith said, though Jacob had already stood up with him.

“Are you kidding me? Who cares about school, this game is way beyond school.” Ryan replied, walking from the table with Jacob behind him who already had his face locked to his cell phone. “You coming?” Ryan asked, halting after seeing Darith hadn’t stood up yet.

“I can’t, my mom will take away all my stuff if she gets a call saying I missed a class.” Darith replied reluctantly.

“Man, who cares about all that, this games better than all those console games.” Ryan replied. Darith’s mind ran over these words. Why should he care if he can’t play his console games when he really wanted to do this? He then thought about Liana being bored alone, and remembered he wanted to invite her to this game anyway. There was something else though, a reason he really didn’t want to miss class, a promise he had made with his mother. A promise made when they left his dad. It was carved deep inside of him and he couldn’t break it.

“Sorry, I can’t. I’ll catch up with you guys after school.” Darith sighed.

“Alright, you’re gonna fall behind though. Maybe we can power level you or something.” Ryan said, then the two sped out of the cafeteria, Ryan already looking at Jacob’s phone to help him make his character, giving him pointers.

As they left Darith alone in the cafeteria he sucked his teeth in frustration, then glanced around the cafeteria seeing the names and levels of the other students. Most were all 1 or 2, a few level 3 students but not more than he could count on his hand. He got bored of looking at their names fast and looked down at his untouched sandwich, thinking of his quest. What purple light? What area did Ryan find? How many areas were there? He had too many questions and was unable to get answers.

Just as Darith was about done talking himself into going to the boys bathroom and sneaking into the Frozen Caverns for a bit, he spotted his first level 4 student enter the cafeteria, and she didn’t just catch his attention but it seemed everyone turned to look at her, even if just for a brief second.

She had long golden blonde hair that went past her shoulders, with fair skin and bright light blue eyes like the sky, a perfect figure hidden under a short white skirt and a skin tight white tank top with a small black short sleeved jean jacket over top. What got Darith’s attention the most was how she seemed to be walking right towards him, her eyes even locked on him causing him to look away.

“Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?” She asked, her voice soft and friendly.

“N-no.” Darith replied nervously, not looking up at her as she pulled out Jacob’s chair and sat across from him.

“Your name is Darith, right?” She asked. How did she know, could she see it above is head? Is that why she was level four? That would explain why she wanted to talk to him. He looked up to see Karin written above her head.

“And you are Karin, right?” Darith replied, trying to show confidence. His earlier shyness was brushed aside and replaced by is gaming mindset. He wasn’t sure if she would be a friendly player or not.

“Oh, yes.” She smiled. “How’d you know?” She then asked, seeming genuinely confused. Seeing her expression Darith realized he’d made a mistake.

“Uh, well, I’ve seen you around I think.” he tried to recover.

“You’re right, my name is Karin, nice to meet you.” She said, putting her hand out over the table to shake, but Darith didn’t want to.

“My name is Darith, yes.” He said, pretending not to notice her hand. She pulled her hand back, making Darith feel bad, but she only misunderstood him, he thought. “Sorry...” he mumbled.

“Hehe.” She smirked, her smile seeming to light up the room.

“What’s funny?” He asked defensively, though trying his best not to sound aggressive. He immediately assumed she was making fun of him.

“Oh, well you didn’t want to shake my hand but then you said sorry. It’s like you were trying to be mean, but then you didn’t want to be mean.” She giggled.

“Oh, no! I wasn’t trying to be mean!” He replied nervously.

“Hehe, it’s okay! I understand, strange girl you’ve never met coming to talk to you out of nowhere, and she knows your name somehow, right?” She said.

“Y-yeah, I guess.” Darith replied, deciding to take her explanation for his actions as his own. It sounded better to him than ‘I was too shy’.

“Well, we had Mr. Tulk last period, he’s our grade 11 math teacher, and he said there was a grade 10 student in his last class that solved a grade 12 question. I asked around and found out that was you, right?” She said, barely breaking eye contact with Darith as she spoke, while Darith kept looking away pretending to be interested in other things happening in the cafeteria, but this only made him aware of other male students staring at Karin.

“Y-yeah, that was me. It wasn’t really anything special though...” Darith shrugged.

“Really? Mr. Tulk said it was an advanced question too, he kept bragging about how you might be a genius or something.” She said, causing Darith to blush slightly as he tried to recall Mr. Tulk praising him, but didn’t remember him saying anything close to that. She had to be over exaggerating, Darith thought, but he accepted what she said as truth simultaneously.

“I was wondering if you could maybe help me a little bit...” She said shyly now, looking away from Darith in a shameful manner.

“What’d you need help with?” Darith replied enthusiastically.

“Well, I’ve been having trouble with my math grades, I just don’t have enough time to study because of my dancing classes. I was wondering if you could help tutor me a bit?” She said with a desperate look in her eyes.

“You mean you want a grade 10 to tutor you in grade 11 math?” Darith asked in disbelief.

“Please! I don’t know anyone else I can ask, all of the people I know just try to hit on me instead of actually helping me, or they’re equally bad at it.” She said while putting her hands together on the table as if to pray.

“I don’t know... I’m not sure I can even do grade 11 math let alone teach it to someone.” Darith shrugged.

“Well, here! This is our homework today...” Karin said as she opened her bag and pulled out the math textbook, opening it to page 136. “Mr. Tulk wants us to do these questions for homework. Do you think you could learn them and teach it to me after school?” She said, in a begging tone again. Darith hesitated, remembering he wanted to level a bit after school, but he then noticed a blue square appear floating above her head.

“What the...” he whispered as he looked at it curiously.

“Is something wrong?” She replied curiously, trying to look up and see what he was seeing, but it was invisible to her.

Name: Karin (Non-Player) Level: 4

Quest: Solve Karin's Grade 11 math homework by the end of the day

Objective: 0/1 Homework Solved

Reward: 10 Experience, Favor with Karin

Accept Decline

The message appeared beside the square causing Darith to raise his eyebrow, he couldn’t believe it at first.

“I’ll accept, I’ll do it...” Darith said hesitantly, reaching out to hit accept as Karin watched his finger curiously. After hitting the button he noticed her eyes and tried to play it off like he was swatting an invisible fly, causing her to give him a strange look.

“O, okay great! Thank you so much! This means a lot, I have a really big dance recital soon and need all the time I can to practice, but if I start failing in school my mom will kill me!” She replied thankful as she stood up from the table.

“It’s no problem, I understand, my mom is a bit like that.” He replied with a forced smile.

“Can you meet me in the studio room upstairs after school?” She asked.

“Sure, I’ll be there.” Darith said.

“Okay, thank you so much, I owe you big time Darith!” She smiled at him one last time before heading out of the cafeteria, many eyes following her as she left. Darith stayed in a daze for a moment, incredibly pleased with himself now that he was helping a beautiful girl like that. He forgot for a moment that he actually had to do something difficult, and looked down to the math textbook.

“Hrmm...” He said as he eyed the page up and down, barely understanding anything on the page in front of him.

Over the last two classes of the day, Darith took time analyzing the grade 11 math questions discreetly. He ignored almost everything his teachers said in those classes and tried covering up his work anytime they got near his desk. He was good at making it look like he was paying attention while he daydreamed his way through class, often thinking about games, but this time he was focused on a quest.

As the final period came to an end he was confident he had the correct answers for the questions after much studying of the book by looking at previous pages and answer keys hidden at the back. He had already played out different ways he could teach Karin how to do it in his head, so that she could understand it much faster than he did. The bell rang and his mind was already trailing off thinking about what other types of quest he could get. He made the assumption that a square quest meant it was from a real person, but he wasn’t sure.

As the majority of the students headed out of the school, Darith headed up to the second floor towards the studio room. The room that he seldom visited, as half of it was filled with workout equipment for fitness classes, the other half left open for dancing, yoga, and other club activities. All things that Darith had never been interested in before.

When he got there the door was open and quite a few students were inside stretching. It was easy to spot Karin, she looked even more beautiful now wearing black tight pants and tank top with white socks and ballerina shoes. She was standing with several other girls dressed identically to her, chatting while stretching as though getting ready to practice.

He then stood in the doorway stumped, he wasn’t sure if he should call out to her or knock, or walk up to her to get her attention. He nervously fiddled his fingers a bit, her math textbook under his arm.

“Watch it meatball.” A boy said as he pushed past Darith into the room, also wearing black tight pants and shirt. The push knocked Darith inside a bit, his leg hitting a bench that was along the left wall of the room.

When he hit the bench he got the attention of a girl sitting on it with a textbook open on her lap. He looked to her just as she looked to him.

“You looking for someone?” She asked politely with a familiar smile, reminding Darith immediately of Karin. She had the same long golden hair and blue eyes, but looked a bit shorter and had several blue streaks in her hair.

“Uhm, I’m here to talk to Karin.” Darith replied nervously as he quickly broke eye contact and made a futile attempt at stretching his shirt over his stomach.

“Oh.” She replied, moving her mouth to one side and crunching her eyebrows. “Sis! Someone’s looking for you.” she called across the room. Hearing her say sis, Darith understood their resemblance now. He looked to Karin and as she looked towards him he waved nervously, and she returned a half hearted smile while her friends looked at him disgusted, and seeing this he immediately felt regret.

“Hey, you made it!” Karin said cheerfully as she headed across the room to meet him. “Did you figure it all out?” She asked hopeful.

“Y-yeah, I got all the answers written down, it’s pretty easy, I could explain it to you!” Darith said excitedly.

“Ah, well it turns out my group needs me to practice a lot more than I thought today.” Karin replied with a fake apologetic smile, one that Darith had seen before. She signaled back to her friends who were finishing their stretches. “You got the answers though, right?”

“Yeah...” Darith replied.

“Thank you so much! I owe you big time. When I have free time you can help me study, okay? Tomorrow after school maybe.” She said as she took her textbook from him, opening it to double check the paper inside that Darith had written the answers on.

“Okay, don’t worry about it, this was nothing.” Darith shrugged reluctantly.

“I’ve got to get started now, so I’ll see you tomorrow?” She asked in her friendly voice, standing on her tippy toes and pulling her book towards her chest while she asked.

“S-sure.” Darith shrugged back, he was now distracted by a pop-up appearing above Karin’s head.

Name: Karin (Non-Player) Level: 4

Quest: Solve Karin's Grade 11 math homework by the end of the day

Objective: 1/1 Homework Solved

Reward: 10 Experience, Favor with Karin

He felt a bit bad for being used by her to do her homework, but getting experience from it made it not so bad. He saw past her smile and fake friendliness now and was just waiting to walk away, not expecting to see her again or get any favors.

“Bye!” She said, turning to go back to her friends. Darith was about to turn out of the room until he noticed that Karin’s sister was looking at him with pity the whole time, and he met eyes with her again.

“She does that a lot.” She said to Darith just as he turned to leave.

“Does what?” He asked.

“Please help me I’m a pretty little ballerina girl who can’t do anything for herself!” Karin’s sister whispered mockingly. “Don’t help her anymore, then maybe she’ll have to do some work for once in her life.” She added, sounding incredibly bitter.

“Heh, I don’t mind helping.” Darith shrugged back nervously.

“Yeah yeah, all the swooning boys don’t mind.” She rolled her eyes as she went back to studying her textbook. Darith glanced at her once more, noting the bar above her head and her level. Elise, level 4 like her sister. He then shrugged off what she said and headed out of the studio, feeling better the further he got from the room. The whole exchange gave him a bad taste in his mouth, but the closer he got to leaving the building the more his excitement replaced his bad feelings, by the time he got outside he could only think of the Frozen Caverns. He pulled out his cell phone and tried calling Ryan, then Jacob, but neither would answer their phones after multiple attempts. He then glanced around the city skyline hoping to see a pillar of light for a new dungeon, but he didn’t look hard before he switched to running home as fast as he could without using any energy.

When he got there he was alone and threw his bag down while grabbing something to eat and drink out of the kitchen, he was starving from missing his sandwich at lunch. While eating he started thinking of anything he might need in the caves, he didn’t want to come back until he was at least level 5. He remembered Mayiera mentioning it was a Labyrinth, so as he grabbed his sandwich he also grabbed a pencil and a few pieces of blank paper, then opened his menu and tried putting it all in his inventory.

The sandwich, the pencil, and the papers all took up 3 separate inventory slots, going right next to the silk and the frostberry leaves. Feeling prepared, he went up to his room.

"Gate." He spoke, and the spell began to cast. From his floating transparent menu, game particles of light started forming the door of Ice in the middle of his room, though the door passed through anything it touched and didn’t cause any damage, much to Darith’s relief.

“Alright! One last thing to change.” He said as he opened his display menu, switching his appearance back to his tiny Nemothyne wielding a staff. “Perfect! Finally, time to do some leveling up.” He said, stepping through the doorway into the Frost Caverns. The cold air chilled his fox tail’s fur, making it stand on end along with the fur on his ears. He was a bit disoriented at first, forgetting what the cave looked like for a moment until he heard a familiar voice.