73. The lengths of side AB and side BC of a scalene triangle ABC are 13 cm and 7 cm respectively. The size of angle C is 42°. Find the length of side AC.

Silas's brain hurt as he stared at the next math problem. Trigonometry was why computers were invented, so mankind could spend their days on more important tasks. He would have never needed to know how to solve such problems by hand, working in the real world—and certainly had no practical need for such nonsense now.

Still, he agreed it would be nice to get Skill credit for all that hard work he put into studying for his Trig final. But not now. He'd come back to this later.

"I need a break!" he announced.

"Again?" Eve asked, appearing beside his desk and peering down to look at his work, as if she didn't already know what the pages said. "Mmm." She drew a red line through his answer to 72. "Look over this one again after a half hour break. You almost had it."

She produced a copy of his laptop, down to the Xenothings logo, for him to amuse himself with. He couldn't log into World of Fantasy from within Eve, not unless he wanted to take her up on her offer to install an abdominal pouch to hold a conjured modem, so instead he loaded up The Watcher, rolling his eyes at the loading screen. Eve wanted this virtual laptop to feel authentic, she said.

"An hour," he insisted.

"Your breaks are lasting longer than this test, Silas. At this rate you'll finish the math portion in six more hours."

"Then make a shorter test! A hundred questions, really Eve?"

"It needs to be comprehensive," she argued again.

"Does it, though?"

"You need every Skill level you can get, to level up enough to purchase your next Skill. One SP for Gaming Necessities. One for Help. Two for Mana Magnet. Three for Summon Character. Five for Obscurity. What comes next in this progression, class?"

He ran a hand through his hair, momentarily distracted by the sensorial accuracy of Eve's virtual space. "I know, I know. It's the freaking fabulous Fibonacci sequence. I'll need eight SP. Level twenty, six more levels. So I need all my skills registered. I get that. It's just sooo boring," he groaned.

She shook her head. "I'm not sure you get it. Based on your leveling progression you will need one thousand three hundred thirty one experience points total to reach level twenty. Last you checked, you had five hundred twenty six. Can you do that math, Silas?"

He sighed, thinking, resisting the urge to just grab the calculator before him, then groaned. "Eight hundred and five."

"Eight hundred five," her lips tightened. "'And' implies a decimal. You're better than that."

He just gestured for her to continue. Knowing a pedantic rule and caring enough to follow it were two entirely different things.

"The level cap for your skills, just the knowledge based ones, is twenty nine, assuming your Wit governs them all. What's eight oh five divided by twenty nine."

He rolled his eyes and picked up his calculator.

Eve spoke before he hit the first key. "Rounds to twenty seven and eight tenths, so twenty eight individual Skills, if they're all governed by one of your second tier Attributes. Forty three new Skills at Nineteen would also get you there."

Thirty to forty new Skills.

This was going to take forever.

"What's going on out there, anyhow?"

Eve put her hands behind her back and studied the chalkboard. "Oh, you know. Ainsley is working on his thingamabob. Wanted to move to the dungeon, though I'm not clear why we didn't go there in the first place."

Silas gave her the look. "We're in the dungeon now?" he said dryly.

"Yes?" She smiled and blinked her wide eyes, looking the way a child does after stealing from the cookie jar.

He sighed. "Eve… What am I doing right now?"

"Stalling. You have a math test to finish. Let me take care of the things I can take care of."

He shook his head. He didn't really have a problem with her piloting his body; after all, he summoned her knowing doing so was among her fictional capabilities, only… "I should Summon someone, get that Skill leveling too. Woof can Entangle and Wild Shape. Ai has her sonic blaster, as does the Ensign too, I suppose. Taylor is a Priest, so she has the starter attack and healing spells, and a basic wand attack. Maybe she can level up fighting? Woof too, for that matter. Would be good to know. Could become a problem, if they get too powerful for my regen."

Eve nodded. "Summon the Ensign, then. Would be good to know what happens when one of your Summons dies, assuming he can't hack it. Best to call on the disposable one now, see how he fares."

It was a cold logic, but he agreed the Ensign was disposable. It's not like the guy was real. Maybe if he 'died' the slot would open back up?

Silas pictured summoning the Ensign in front of his real body. He waited, but received no feedback. "It work?"

Eve smirked. "Mmm. He's fine, if a bit panicked. Not every day you get dive-bombed by giant beetles upon appearing within a forest of unusual size. Ah, his sonic blaster set to kill pierces right through those shells, though. That's nice."

She tapped Silas's desk. "I'll let you know when the world again requires your input. No need to keep getting distracted. The only way you're going to advance is if you keep working on improving yourself, and to do that we first need to fully assess your baseline."

"Yeah, yeah," Silas drawled.

"You're safe enough for the moment. Best we take advantage of that while we can. If there's true danger I'm sure Ainsley will step in. For the moment, he seems quite impressed by your martial skills."

Silas coughed out a laugh.

"Now, enough stalling. Twenty minutes of game time, then I expect you to spend at least the next thirty getting through the trigonometry questions. There's only five more of those."

"Yes Eve," he droned. She sounded like his mother…which was fine.

Eve was helping, like she always would.

After all, Eve always did what was best for her creator.

Ainsley watched the boy, the young warrior Hero, make a single one-handed overhead arc with his glaive, eviscerating a squirrel big enough to swallow them both whole in a single bite, not even bothering to look up as he simultaneously lopped off the head of another ant with a spinning kick. He flowed into form after form, merging them together as if he'd done so a thousand times as the rampage of ants continued, yet he stood firm amidst the onslaught.

The boy fought like a genius, pure and simple. Ainsley had never seen the like outside of certain Bond manifestations, mostly from weapon Bonds.

Yet, the boy's Bond was completely unrelated to fighting, as Ainsley understood it. Perhaps the boy channeled the spirit of a fighter, instead of conjuring one outright? Such might explain his prowess, coupled with his uncommunicative state.

Could he, perhaps, channel the spirit of a master wizard as well? Or an artificer? It likely depended what stories he could access, Ainsley knew.

Ainsley's skin prickled at the thought. Whatever happened in the next few days, he would be sure to keep the boy close. Such talent needed a mentor. Together they could go far indeed.

The boy spun, whipping his glaive around in a full circle, then suddenly a new being appeared beside him, this one a young man somewhere in his teenage years, not all that much older than the boy. He resembled the translator child, both having sparkly black skin and pointy ears, and a similar style of simplistic dress, the young man wearing plain cut black trousers and a clinging red shirt which displayed his moderately muscled upper body. Clearly this one originated from the same story as the odd translator girl.

"Defend yourself! Set to kill!" snapped the boy hero.

The young man performed an unnecessary tumble in Ainsley's direction, then whipped some handled device from a holster on his hip. He turned a knob on the back all the way sunwise, then, using both hands, pointed the tip towards the lead beetle and pulled a crossbow-like trigger.

Air shimmered in a line, the impact shattering the side of the beetle's shell, sending it careening off to one side.

The young man, possibly a soldier of some sort, fired once a second, calmly choosing his targets from the flight of beetles in the air while the hero killed ants and the occasional larger forest critter.

From behind, a deadly praying mantis nearly ran over Ainsley, who of course had enabled the 'ignore me' enchantment on his amulet, sparing the boy for the sake of easy communication.

Ainsley saw what would happen, as did the hero, constantly spinning about as he was. Meeting Ainsley's eyes for half a moment, the boy shook his head ever so slightly. 'Stay out of it,' he seemed to say.

Ainsley assumed the conjured soldier had yet unseen depths and watched on in curiosity, only to be shocked as the mantis lopped off his head with a casual flicker of one bladed arm without bothering to slow down on its way to confront the hero.

The head rolled to a stop, then head and body both shimmered away in a puff of smoke.

The boy, unphased, threw his glaive at the mantis, or perhaps he aimed it to land beside Ainsley, for the blade plunged into the ground a single step away after the mantis blurred to one side, avoiding the projectile.

Ainsley added the glaive back into his storage, watching as the boy slung the shield from his back in time to block the creature's first strike. He timed the blow with a leap back, the force hurling him backwards, only for him to spin midair such that he could plant his feet on a blade of grass, sliding along as the blade bent with his weight, as if he knew exactly how far the blow would propel him, had prepared for it, even.

The mantis lept, wings on its back unfolding to propel itself forward.

The boy withdrew the sword, one of the better ones in Ainsley's collection. He'd been a bit surprised the boy had held off using it until now.

Purple arcane lightning flickered from the blade of the same hue. He swung the sword backhanded in the mantis's direction, as if the action might discharge the weapon.

Still, he was ready to deflect the mantis's charging blow with his heater shield and counter with a strike of his own. Arcane lightning coursed through the mantis, branching out to fry a nearby cluster of ants as well.

The boy hopped down from the blade of grass, then glanced at Ainsley. "You could have mentioned it would do that."

"You were doing fine," he countered with a stroke of his beard. "What of the…soldier?"

He shrugged. "A test."

"And?"

The boy gestured, again conjuring the child translator. To the girl he said, "We're in a red sector. Sentry mode. Eliminate hostiles."

The child nodded, then began staring at Ainsley.

"He's probably not a hostile, Ai," the boy added, giving Ainsley a smirk.

"Understood." The child gave an odd salute, slamming her left fist to her chest and stomping her left foot, keeping a hand on the handle of her holstered weapon, the same kind used by the other soldier.

Then, the boy smiled a bright, genuine smile. "Ai, time to meet Walker."

At his gesture mist swirled and condensed, forming an imposing man wearing a bone-white mask and armor, small, shimmering black skulls circling his head, a ragged black cloak fluttering despite the still, humid air. Most striking, however, was the oversized scythe the man held in one hand, resting the handle end on the ground like a walking staff, the sharp blade hanging ominously in the air.

"Orders?" the man rasped, his voice sounding strained, as if he hadn't drank water in days.

"We four are the only friendlies in the zone. Kill the rest."

"Understood."

Ainsley felt chills run down his spine as the bone-clad man a head taller than himself gestured at the praying mantis's corpse. Earth rose up and swallowed it whole, spilling away to leave behind two humanoid skeletons, each holding a bone white sword and shield.

Four more times he gestured at an ant corpse, each producing a single bone warrior.

"Keep it to five, for now," the boy ordered.

With a grunt the conjured necromancer, of a type unfamiliar to Ainsley, given he could create skeletons from any dead flesh, not requiring human bodies, waved his hand and one skeleton turned to dust.

Curious. Some kind of hidden limitation? That was for the best. A hero producing a horde of skeletons, even if second hand, with no human bodies disturbed, would not be looked upon kindly. Even this necromancer might be too much for the masses to stomach. He'd need to warn the boy later.

Sword in hand, the boy again led the way forward, sounds of battles unseen occurring in the nearby grass around them. Often the necromancer would gesture to raise a new skeleton. Occasionally the little girl would shoot something from the air. Yet their path forward through the first level of the dungeon became unhindered.

Ainsley considered the warrior hero, his pet necromancer, and the little girl who continued to glance coldly in his own direction from time to time. Maybe he wouldn't keep the boy so close after all, when this business was done.