“So, before we get started, now that we’re on the same page, I have a few questions.”

Maya shrugged. “Go ahead and ask. But I may have some of my own, if I remember to think of them.”

Sevard - Rend - chuckled. “Fair. What’s your luck today?”

“Minus 90. It’ll be bottomed out for the next three days. And then I am never going to let so much penalty build up ever again, no matter what kind of bad days I have to have. One bad day is bad enough, I never want to do four in a row ever again.”

“Fwoofh. Good thing you have me. I’ve had a few -90s days, and they were not fun.”

“So what’s yours?” Maya asked.

“57. So we’ll make a perfect team. Things will keep happening that are ‘bad’ for you, but good for me. AKA, powerful monsters with epic amounts of loot.”

“Aren’t you worried that we’ll get in trouble for gaming the system?”

Rend laughed. “Of course not! The Trickster loves it when we game the system. I bet he’s having a blast watching us.”

“Can he do that?”

“I have no idea. I generally assume he is, though. Makes things so much more worthwhile. What’s the point of being clever and mysterious for only myself?”

“Being clever and mysterious is its own reward,” Maya said, putting on a wise mentor voice. “Seek not the adulation of the masses.”

Rend snorted with laughter. “I like you. I think I’ll keep you.”

“Didn’t we already decide that?”

“Well. More or less. But now it’s official.”

They started up the stairs outside Nirsym’s walls, leading up the stony hill to the leypillar arrival platform.

“I will need to check in with the mages at the academy at some point,” Maya said. “I kind of ran out on them with no warning.”

“Not a problem. We need to head back to Kalyx in a few hours to pick up your new equipment from Dalra anyway.” He glanced over her now-white agility armor. “Well, most of it. Does that armor have a resistance on it, by the way?”

“I don’t know. How would I tell that?”

“If it had one, it would be listed after the stats. So it doesn’t. Makes sense. It’s clearly meant for low-level players. Not all uniques are created equal.”

“Which reminds me. I will find a way to get your amulet back from Zarene, or make it up to you. I promise.”

Rend waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. It’s rare and valuable, yes, but it’s not like it’s a family heirloom or something. It has its uses, but I’ve got plenty of better items for everyday use. Besides, I have my own plans for her downfall. They’ll just take a bit more preparation than my last attempt.”

“You know, you’re a scary good actor,” Maya said slowly, remembering his actions the whole time they'd been running from and fighting Zarene. “When you ‘figured out’ that I was a trickster, I never suspected at all that you were one as well.”

“It’s all in the mind,” Rend said. “Like I said. Pretend to be something long enough, and you’ll find that it isn’t a lie any more.”

“But you’re not a rogue.”

“Of course I am. Have been for a long time.”

“But, you’re a trickster, aren’t you?”

“At tier 3, you unlock the ability to take a secondary class. You still have to fulfill its basic requirements, but rogue isn’t a hard one to get if you’re already sneaking around. Has no one mentioned cross-classing to you?”

“I guess they probably have,” Maya mumbled. “I don’t remember.”

Rend considered her a long moment, then pursed his lips thoughtfully. “We have got to do something about that.”

“About what?”

“Your memory.”

Maya waved him off. “Really, don’t worry about it. I can deal with it.”

“You’re not dealing with it, you’re trying to pretend it isn’t a problem. Denial isn’t healthy.”

“Well, it’s not hurting anything either.”

He sighed, then tapped the leypillar. “Ready to play bait for me?”

Another player would like to transit you to [unknown area]. Accept?

Maya assented, and they shifted to yet another new location. This time, the leypillar sat in the middle of a small trading village, surrounded by farms and fields on every side. A river flowed noisily nearby, rushing water accompanied by the creak of waterwheels on its banks.

“Why does it always say ‘unknown area’?”

“Because you haven’t unlocked it yourself yet. Once you do, you’ll be able to transit in and out on your own any time, and it’ll show up on your world map, name and all. This area is called the Plentiful Plains, for obvious reasons.” He gestured out around them as he started walking, and Maya couldn’t help but nod agreement.

Beyond the small cluster of buildings, there were no hills to break up the seemingly endless flatness of the golden plains. Grains waved in the light breeze, the air slightly damp but not uncomfortable.

They followed a narrow road out of town, twin cart tracks leaving faint ruts in the dirt while the center was overgrown with greenery.

“And this is where we’re going to find terrible, dangerous monsters?” Maya asked, a bit incredulous at the notion.

“Though it may not look it, this is the next-highest zone, just below the Frozen Clefts. It’s where I spend most of my time. Until I figure out how to advance to tier 5, it’s the best place to grind out gold.”

“And my bad luck will help?”

“From what we've observed, it isn’t the positivity or negativity that determines the monster, it’s the absolute value of the number. A -90 will get you just as many strong enemies as a +90. It’s also more likely to give them subtle buffs instead of extra loot, which is why it’s good that I’ll be the one finishing them off. The drops seem based on a combination of who finishes it off and who actually loots it, not the one who caused the monster to spawn.”

“Have you teamed up with other tricksters in the past?”

“Once. We were experimenting, trying to figure out the mechanics. It didn’t end well. We were still all in the same spot at midnight and. . . well. Let’s just say luck compounds the more people are together with it.”

Maya remembered quite clearly the times she’d had -100. She was not looking forward to a full day at the bottom, but she absolutely had to clear her buildup of rollover penalties. She couldn’t even imagine what might happen with more than one or two people together, all that low.

“Aren’t you worried about staying in the same place as me?”

“Nah. We’ll split up to reroll for tomorrow. And I do have obligations on other worlds—”

Rend stopped abruptly and held up a hand. Maya opened her mouth to ask what, but he shushed her and pointed toward the field off to their right.

A ripple of movement passed through the tall grain, seeming to home in directly on their current location. A bit further away, Maya made out two other trails of ripples, then another even further out.

"What are they?" she whispered.

"Hopefully," Rend said quietly, "an angry pack of hunting dire-turtles."

"Dire-turtles?" Maya laughed. "They're moving awfully fast."

"Hence the ‘dire’. They don't tend to travel this far from their villages unless they're hunting. They can be quite friendly under normal circumstances, but you do not generally want to cross the hunters." He grinned. "Unless you're looking for a fight. Like right now. This is exactly what I was hoping for by bringing you along. Looks like it's paying off already!"

Maya shrugged. "Happy to be of help."

Then the grass parted before them and their first assailant leapt out. Maya had begun to expect something that looked remotely like an actual turtle, and was quite surprised by what she saw instead. It didn't seem very turtleish at all, except for the oblong green-mottled shell covering its back. There, the similarity ended.

Really, it more closely resembled a bipedal lizard than anything else. And not the chunky humanoid lizardine of players and common NPCs, but something long and lithe, almost newtlike in form, but easily four or five feet tall even in its fighting crouch. It certainly had none of the roundness or sluggishness she would associate with turtles.

The creature leaped on her, baring long fangs that were definitely not turtle like. It looked almost draconic.

Maya yelped and instinctively equipped her throwing knives in both hands, stabbing up with them wildly into her attacker’s face in hopes of fending it off.

Rend vanished. For a brief moment, Maya almost thought he’d decided to abandon her. But he reappeared a moment later, slamming his daggers into the dire-turtle’s neck. It snarled and spun on him, leaving its armored back facing Maya. She started charging a Wind Whisper, hoping it would be sufficient to slice through the shell. Otherwise, she would be very useless in this fight.

Rend continued to move in a blur, slashing and stabbing far faster than Maya could track. He kept vanishing mid-fight, which gave the dire-turtle an excuse to face Maya and slash at her with its long claws, seemingly forgetting each time that Rend liked to leap on it from behind with both his daggers.

Maya cast her spell and began charging another before the second and third dire-turtles arrived. They were similar to the first, only differentiated by a slightly different hue to their slick skin and mottled shells: one a more yellow-green, the other faintly golden-red.

They quickly surrounded Maya, and after that she didn’t last much longer.

Rend stood waiting for her when she respawned. "Nice job! It's been a long time since I had a fight that close. I knew this was a good idea, bringing you along. You might be the most valuable investment I've ever made."

"Even if it means you have to run back here after every fight? Sounds a waste of time to me."

"You don't understand. The game's balance is thrown so much out of whack with insane luck numbers. As long as they keep spawning within range, it won't be a problem. If I ever do manage to tier up, I'll definitely be inviting you along to help grind."

"Why can't you just use your own bad luck to summon monsters?"

"Because then I won't get rewards. Just like good luck acts an an XP multiplier, negative luck acts as an XP divisor. At -100, no experience is gained whatsoever. Trust me. The best way to exploit the compounding luck bonuses is exactly what we have here: a low-luck low-level character, and a high-luck high-level character. You will only get a fraction of the experience, but it's such a high-level zone that you'll still make out better than if you stuck to your own tier."

They walked for another several minutes without being attacked again, silently this time, as Maya looked around in hopes of spotting their attackers before Rend would. While he seemed to be just enjoying the walk.

Their second ambush was not dire turtles, but a giant hunting cat huge enough that it would have to crouch down to bite at their heads. Despite its bulk, its claws moved incredibly fast.

Maya did not survive that fight either.

This time, she actually had to wait almost half a minute before Rend jogged swiftly into town.

"Tough fight?"

"Not particularly. Just long. Those things don't go down easy."

They spent several more hours in much the same way, making short trips out from the town and fighting a variety of local beasts and monsters. Maya didn't quite always die, but more often than not found herself heading back to respawn while Rend finished off whatever enemy they'd faced this time.

Once, she survived long enough to see a new notification:

Experience threshhold reached.

New mission: Tier Trial 1. Find and defeat a Goblin Champion without assistance.

"I have a new quest," Maya said. "I have to solo a Goblin Champion."

"Tier trial?" Rend asked.

She nodedd.

"I remember when all I had to do to advance was kill something. Good days. Want to take a break and start searching?"

Maya shook her head. "If I have to solo a champion, I can't do that with my current luck. I still hit myself more than half the time with my weapons. And the next few days will be even worse. No, I think I'll have to wait until right before our Conquest."

"You won't gain any more experience until then," Rend warned. "It doesn't stack or carry over."

"That's fine. Let's just keep going. I'm going to need all the money I can get."

More than a few times, she had to wait for Rend to respawn as well. When attacked by a group of three giant moorcats, when a second group of dire-turtles ambushed them during an in-progress fight, and once when Maya fell down a hole that was actually a dungeon entrance.

His repeated deaths surprised her at first, until she remembered that this zone was actually on level for him. Unlike the jungle zone, some of these harder fights actually would be a challenge for him and not result in an automatic victory. She’d gotten so used to thinking of him as so powerful, so far ahead of her, it was sobering to realize that here he might be just as vulnerable as she would back in Kalyx.

Finally, as evening came on, he sheathed his daggers with a satisfied nod. "One more thing, then we'll head back to Kalyx to pick up your gear."

"And what is this one last thing?" Maya asked.

"You're going to help me solve a riddle."