The next morning Azrael woke feeling as if he had the world’s worst hangover. Between the physical and mental abuse he had put himself through, as well as the absolute draining of his mana reserves there was little surprise in that fact. His body felt like shit and everything hurt. Even his brain hurt. However, had anyone asked him how he felt he would have replied ‘better than ever’.

He rolled the wolves’ magic stone between his fingers, prodding it with his new sense. He felt a faint buzz emanating from it, as if it was charged with lightning. Deep in his core he felt a slightly similar buzz, far fainter than it had been yesterday, as he had used it all up, but that wasn’t important. He had magic. Gandalf’s grey socks, he had magic! He had BLEEPING magic! He still didn’t know where it came from, but that didn’t matter at the moment. Now that he had mana, he had a bigger problem to solve.

Before he could abuse the game he first had to fix it. The developers had missed two important things in any rpg game; clothes and the status system, not necessarily in that order. He grinned like a madman. It was time to build the system. If they wouldn’t give it to him he would simply have to make it himself and he knew exactly how he would go about it.

Standing tall he looked up to the sky. “Oi! Secretary lady!” he called out.

“…”

She was there, right?

He called again “Secretary lady!”

She still didn’t reply. Azrael slumped a little, unsure. It stood to fact that he should be able to call her. He’d spoken to her earlier.

What if he called her name? would she respond then? Actually… did she have a name? He chewed his lip thoughtfully. Was he meant to have given her a name? Was she mad at him?

He began to worry slightly, sweating under his metaphorical collar.

Should he name her now? Was it too late? He could probably blame the fact that he forgot on the fact that he hadn’t spoken to anyone really in the last two years. He scratched his head. What would be a good name? What name would suit a beautiful secretary?

He turned to the empty sky again and spoke “I name you..”

The scene suddenly changed and he was back in the meeting room where he had first met her. Except ‘her’ was suddenly a twelve-year-old girl with blond curls and an almost comically small secretary’s attire, draped over a couch reading a book. The secre… the kid closed the book and turned to him with feigned disinterest. Her eyes were so humanly ablaze with curiosity and anticipation that he froze for a moment.

He cleared his throat nervously. “Your name” he said “is Sera”. Even as he said it, he saw her tasting the name on her tongue. The name was an abbreviation for Seraphim, as he decided to stick with the angel theme. He never was the best at naming.

In hindsight giving a secretary such a cute name could have been disastrous, but for some reason his secretary was now a kid. A really-small-kinda-cute-kid in a too-large secretary suit. She gave off a bit of a little sister vibe. He’d always wanted a little sibling.

“Sera” He looked up as she spoke her name and smiled. “I like it”.

A sigh left his lips that he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding. He really needed to be on her good side in order for his plan to work. But, there was something that was really starting to itch his curiosity.

“Why are you a little girl?” he asked.

She looked at him as if he had asked an obvious question. “How long was it since you last spoke to a person?” she asked.

He shrugged “A week, maybe two.”

She shook her head “no, a real conversation, not thanking the guy behind the counter at the general store.”

Her stern gaze, coming from a small girl, coupled with the oversized suit made her really adorable. He felt as if he just wanted to reach in and pinch her cheeks. He noticed her glaring at him – which only made her cuter, but he thought about her question.

He closed his eyes and sighed. The last conversation would have been what… two years ago? Right after he’d been fire… He shook his head, clearing the thought.

“Two years” he replied.

She looked at him proudly as if he’d just solved the world’s most complex problem himself, which gave him an equally complex emotion.

“Exactly” she said “Two years. Now, what do you think would have happened if I hadn’t looked all official? My form at the time was best adapted to what you needed.”

Yeah, Ok, he could see that. Two years was a long time. If she hadn’t been so official and expressly told him what to do he wouldn’t have made it half way through the process, before being overwhelmed and retreating out of the game and back into the familiar safety of his room.

Sera nodded sagely, reading his thoughts, before crossing her legs and adopting a business-like tone, something she seemingly excelled in, despite looking like a twelve-year-old.

He looked at her, knowing she didn’t have to ask. She could read what he was thinking.

“I need access to the game code” he said finally, however she was already shaking her head before he finished the sentence.

It wasn’t entirely unexpected, but he though he would try anyway.

“Are you” he asked, formulating the question carefully “allowed to help me in any way shape or form, or allowed to give or help me decode the game code.”

She shook her again. “All assistants have been hardcoded not to provide hints, or any other data about the game, beyond what you know for sure yourself.” Despite her statement and the fact that she looked apologetic, he caught onto what she was hinting at.

He frowned. It looked like he would have to do it the hard way. Not unexpected, but unpleasant. It meant he had a lot of work ahead of him.

“So,” he asked “ hypothetically speaking, since you know what I know, would be able to recreate any place I’ve been, for example, a mall or a theme park?”

She nodded, catching on to his plan “That is correct”.

“And you would hypothetically” he said “be able to recreate the mechanics of that place, like… maybe the game, in this… space?”

She nodded again a conspiratory smile creeping onto her face “But only places you’ve been”.

They grinned at each other in understanding. She knew exactly what he was thinking and because she was based off his thoughts, he was sure she enjoyed exploiting loopholes just as much as he did.

She snapped her fingers and the world changed back around him. He was back in the cave, except this time there was a girl reading a book on a sofa. The contrast of a modern sofa in his simple cave really highlighted his lack of furniture and decorations, besides his bed.

She pointedly ignored him. Despite their connection just then it seemed that she was still mad at him for not giving her a name.

He mentally shrugged as he slipped into his soul space. If she wasn’t over it later, he would figure something out. Right now he had work to do.

It was almost ten years since he had done the advanced VR coding course in high school. Due to the cerebral enhanced learning program adopted by schools he knew more than most programmers twenty years ago, but it had been a long time.

He wondered what would have happened if he’d gone into creating games like he’d dreamed of, instead of playing them, but that was how life goes.

Finding himself slipping out of his soul space he gave himself a few quick slaps on his cheeks and slipped back in.