You know how, typically in MMORPGs, you’re supposed to raid dungeons with other people?

A tank, a healer, a DPS… The tank attracts aggro away from the healer and the DPS, the healer heals the tank, and the DPS dishes out enough damage for all three. Sometimes you’d throw in a support class to buff the damage the DPS is doing, or to buff the healer’s healing capacity. It’s a pretty good system. Teamwork makes the dream work, after all.

But unfortunately, I am not good at teamwork.

“Luck, it’s attacking me!”

“Ah, crap, hold on!”

I dashed to the boss and slashed fervently at its retreating back, hoping to grab its attention back onto me. In the background, Rue was jumping away as the sluagh’s tendrils whipped in his direction, his face set in a look of hard concentration.

When you have a tank and a DPS, you let the tank draw aggro. When you have a DPS and a healer, you let the DPS draw aggro. What happens when you have two DPSs?

Chaos.

As the close quarters fighter of our mini dungeon diving team, I was the one who was supposed to draw aggro while Rue cast his spells in the back. But turns out, when there’s two of us, it’s a lot harder to keep track of where everything was.

Like back at the start of the fight.

I was so flabbergasted by the fact that Rue was not one shotting the miniboss as my hypothesis would decree, that I didn’t notice until I got slapped hard in the face by the boss’s tendrils. It didn’t hurt, but that was a lot of HP gone.

I’d never exactly been a great team player, to be honest. Back in my speedrunning days, my guild mates had repeatedly expressed their sentiment to not team up with me on any of their dungeon dives.

I had a knack for messing up the boss’s aggro, for one. Either it would aggro on me while there was a tank present, or it would stop aggroing on me when there wasn’t. Add that to a list of accidentally getting in the way of someone’s attack, not making the right decisions to protect the team, and failing to keep everyone alive, and you have me.

It’s like the “how to make sushi” meme. You know, the one where the guy tries to make sushi, fails on the first step, gets berated by the narrator, and crawls under the table to cry? That’s me, but with team play mechanics. It was partially why I usually soloed my dungeons. Better for everyone that way. After all, it was easier to only have to focus on the boss and myself, without the extra distractions that were teammates.

But I’d be lying if I said that Rue was anything but cooperative. In fact, he was what others would consider an excellent teammate. Whenever I was about to get hit, he would stun the boss. Whenever there was a break in my attacks, he would supplement with an attack of his own. He even had a nifty little lifedrain spell that he applied to my slashes so that I wouldn’t die even when I got careless.

Made me feel bad that I wasn’t quite living up to the same standards.

“Come here, ugly,” I called out as I managed to tear the miniboss’s eyes away from Rue with a crit hit. Its leering tendrils paused, seeming to waver in the air, before shooting towards me at high speed.

I dodged to the right to evade them, and responded with my own attacks. I was getting a lot more use out of Short-Range Teleport with this fight, using it to weave and duck over and under the various spouts of acid and tendrils that the miniboss kept throwing at me.

Somehow, my MP was plateauing at a pretty good level no matter how many skills I used. My guess was that Rue was the cause for that, giving me an MP boost with one of his spells.

A series of glowing spikes shot past me and into the boss’s gullet. The sluagh shrieked its last, and finally died, its tendrils flopping to the ground in a heap next to it before it disintegrated into a pile of drops.

Rue scrambled down from his position on a separate ledge and headed towards me, beaming.

“We actually did it,” he said slowly, as if not fully registering what had happened.

“Yeah, we did! Good job there, Rue,” I stowed away Sorrow and clapped my hands. “Your assists were super clean.”

“Really?”

“Yep! Got me out of more than a few pinches. You’re a lot better at this teamwork thing than I am.”

“Oh… thank you…”

“Have you worked with others before?”

“No, this was my first time,” Rue admitted. “I’ve only ever watched teams work together. I just tried to imitate what they did.”

“Well you’re doing a great job at it, that’s for sure,” I patted him on the back. He seemed to jump at the contact, shying away from me with a surprised expression on his face. “A lot better than I was. Sorry about failing to keep aggro.”

“No… It’s fine,” he smiled.

I turned my attention to the drops, hoping to get something good out of them. Who knew? Maybe with Rue with me, I’d have better luck for once…

Let’s see… Some common materials… some rare… Ooh, here’s a good one.

Jade Sash (B)

MP+100

Increase MP recovery by 50%

“Hey, Rue! Are you sure you only want the healing potions? The boss dropped a nice accessory! Pretty good for Briar Elves if you ask me!”

“May I see?”

I passed the nephrite coloured sash to Rue, who inspected it carefully.

“I am quite sure. You should keep it,” he announced after a moment of scrutiny. “I have something better.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t mind if I do then,” I removed one of the Rings of Dimensions to make room for the Jade Sash in the accessory slot. Snaking through the air, the Sash bound itself around my waist snugly. Almost immediately, I could see the difference in MP recovery before and after, the blue bar at the top of my vision shooting upwards at a much faster rate.

Rue collected the HP potions that the boss had dropped, hanging them by his waist on hooks instead of stashing them away in the Inventory like I did.

We had come to an agreement on splitting drops not long after clearing the first chamber (he takes the potions, I take everything else), after he’d tried to reject my offer to split the drops 50:50. Something about him not needing anything that was dropped here.

Of course, I could have gone along with it and taken everything, but the fact that my awfulness at teamwork was making more work for him made me insist on letting him have something. That, and the uncomfortable realisation that I’d be exploiting him if I didn’t, just like one of the more dickish superiors I’d had in the past.

As I waited for him to finish up, my mind began drifting in a retrospective manner. Drifting off, way back to the very beginning. And then along the journey that I’d gone through. From the Capital to the Light Marshes, from the Light Marshes to here.

So far I’d been running at top speed, sprinting from point A to point B on my mad dash to re-experience Briarwood Rebirth to the fullest. I was constantly planning my next destination, to the point that I never really had the chance to stop and think for a moment. But now, with Rue slowly picking up the HP potions, I had nothing to do but think.

I’d been taking everything at face value so far, hadn’t I? Under the assumption that everything was a dream, I’d gone nyooming through BR without consideration for whether characters I was meeting were trustworthy. I’d just looked at Rosa, gone “Oh, she’s with the good guys”, and never really cared to question how different she was compared to what I knew of her ingame.

Marge and Trix as well. They’d just showed up out of nowhere, and dumped a bunch of information on me. Back then, I’d gone “Oh, Rosa’s fine with them, and Rosa’s one of the good guys. So they must be the good guys too”, and joined the Chosen Ones Alliance willy nilly.

I hadn’t been asking for the answers I should have been looking for, instead choosing to follow along with the flow of the dream however it went. Was Rue really on my side?

“Rue?” I called.

“Yes?” he paused in the act of hooking another HP potion to his belt.

“Before I head on to the boss, I’d like to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

“Why were you waiting for me?”

“…What do you mean?”

“Well, the Princess told me that you would be waiting for me at dungeon entrances, but never why. I didn’t even know that you’d be here at the Ruler’s Grave. I thought it was just a one off thing with the Crimson Hall.”

“…”

“All this way you’ve been nothing but a stellar teammate, even when I end up holding you back. And all for a few measly health potions.”

“Is that really all you’re here for?

“…” Rue stayed silent, twiddling his fingers as he listened.

Finally, after what seemed to be a long while of gathering his thoughts, Rue spoke.

“I cannot say that I am here without ulterior motives,” said Rue carefully. “And I know very well that our meeting circumstances were highly suspicious from your perspective. But I assure you, I have no ill intentions.”

“Truthfully, I arrived here as fulfillment of a… you could say, a promise to Her Highness. I’m afraid that I cannot tell you exactly what this promise is, but my motivation is to seek experience in interacting with Chosen Ones, and I had decided to do so by teaming up with one such as you. Not for any reward or personal gain, merely to enjoy the experience and to fulfil my promise. I had initially anticipated opposition to the notion, and was pleasantly surprised when you agreed so readily.”

“I see…” A promise? What kind of promise could he have possibly made that involved me? “Couldn’t you have talked to Marge or Trix instead? They’re the guys in charge of all the Chosen Ones around here, after all.”

At the mention of my guild mates, Rue flinched.

“Ah… I do not have a good relationship with Larkspur or TrixNoct,” a grimace spread across his face. “I fear that the promise cannot be fulfilled if it were with them.”

“Then why me? I just arrived here, surely there’s nothing special that I can offer.”

Rue said nothing.

“Or is it because I just arrived that makes me the optimal choice?”

“You could say that…”

“Why?” I pushed further. “Is it because there’s something that the other Chosen Ones know that I don’t?”

“…”

“I’ll… be waiting outside,” announced Rue all of a sudden, turning back the way we came. “I wish you luck in beating the boss.”

“Wai—“

And he was gone, vaporised into that same black smoke that I had seen way back at the beginning, and phased through the dungeon walls. A handy way of escaping an awkward conversation, but unluckily for me, that meant I was left with even more questions.

Was there something the other Chosen Ones knew that I didn’t?

Well, I mean, of course there was. After all, they’d been here a lot longer than I had.

What I meant to ask was whether there was some sort of secret that everyone in the Guild knew except for me? That had me singled out by Rue and Rosa due to how clueless I was

No matter how much I racked my brain about it, teaming up with me had no relation to mysterious secrets at all. So what was left?

Unable to come to a conclusion, I moved down the tunnel towards the boss room, deciding to shelve the matter for after I’d beaten the boss. When I had a chance to confront Rue again. Possibly.