“Of course, that’s why we won?” Nick half asked half said.

“Not very sporting of you,” the swordsman complained.

Nick was dumbfounded. The woman that had just tried to rob them five versus two was complaining about them not being sporting? What in the world was her problem? She almost died for god’s sake! Nick just stared at the woman with wide eyes.

“Maybe it’s not our place to be complaining,” the archer said. At least someone was seeing reason here! “No matter how unsporting our opponents had been,” she tacked on. Nick rolled his eyes.

Of course, the would-be bandits were complaining about sportsmanship, why wouldn’t they? Nick instead focused on the gear that had been removed from the swordsman. They had been wearing a sturdy leather set of armour, that felt more like metal than leather, but with a little bit of flex to it. That wasn’t the best find though, it was the bag the woman had. A magic bag to be exact. Nick was pretty excited to find another one, though he’d already decided that it would be Jamie’s. Not before he could go through its contents though. Nick started rummaging around the bag and pulled things out.

There were lots of clothes, lots. It almost felt like the bag had been filled mostly with the cloth and fabric creations. Inspecting them they were mostly female outfits, nothing that would fit Jamie or Nick. Nick rifling through the clothes did make the swordsman blush though. Especially when Nick started pulling out underwear.

“Do you know no shame?” The swordsman asked.

“Not at all,” Nick replied with a smile.

Hang on a minute, why did Nick suddenly feel like he was the bad guy? They had been the ones that had been attacked! It was only fair that they got to loot the opponents they had beaten. Jamie interrupted Nick’s search with a cough. “Hey dude, maybe we do that later?”

Great, now even Jamie was feeling awkward about it. Nick just sighed and dumped everything they had gotten into the new magic bag before throwing it to Jamie. “Here dude, it’ll be useful for you.”

Jamie threw the bag back to Nick. “Nah man, you carry it for now.”

Nick was confused but shrugged and attached the bag to his waist, next to his own bag. Jamie then moved out of the way of the door and let the two women leave, just before the door closed Nick heard the swordsman cuss. “Scumbags.”

That wasn’t very nice. If Nick really had been unsporting he could have killed the two of them, though he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it in cold blood like that. Nick felt like he’d been far nicer than any of the bandits he’d been accosted by so far. Wait, he hadn’t been the bandit in that situation. He shouldn’t even be feeling bad! Nick shook his head in frustration, why had they acted like that? Jamie and Nick then left through one of the other doors in the bathroom and headed towards the sushi restaurant. Nick’s spirits were put to ease when they finally made it out of the tiled hallways and into the wood panel walls of the restaurant.

“Hey guys, good job with the fight,” Clarissa called out from her booth.

“Thanks Clare, I think it went pretty well,” Jamie replied.

Nick just slumped into one of the booths and started eating his fill of sushi, it was only midmorning and he already felt pretty tuckered out for the day. It had been a rather action-packed morning for him after all. Jamie sat down opposite him and started eating as well.

“Good work on that surprise attack, we would have been pretty boned if we had to fight them evenly,” Nick eventually said.

“Thanks, man,” Jamie replied with nonchalance.

“How’d you manage to not hesitate? I know in my first proper bandit fight I was hella hesitant, especially with a blow that could have killed someone,” Nick asked.

“We’re in Hell Nick, nobody down here is going to be all sunshine and rainbows. We’re already all dead anyway, what’s it matter to die again?”

Nick chewed over Jamie’s words. He didn’t agree with the core premise of Jamie’s view but he could understand where he was coming from. Jamie seemed really convinced he had died and gone to Hell, no matter how much Nick disagreed with him. If they truly were already dead and in the afterlife, what would dying matter? Jamie’s worldview did seem to simplify these things.

“So, if that swordsman hadn’t dodged and your club had killed her, you would have been okay with that?” Nick asked.

“Well,” Jamie said, putting his sushi down, “I’d probably feel bad, denying someone their chance at redemption and all. I wouldn’t beat myself up about it though, she was threatening us and seemed more than ready to hurt us if we fought back. I’m not going to go around putting people down, but I’m certainly not going to be letting anyone put me down. I’ve been given this chance to redeem my soul, I won’t be giving up on that.” Jamie’s eyes had a steely determination about them.

Nick believed him, he truly did. Jamie was convinced of his purpose and who was Nick to try and sully that? While Nick didn’t agree, the worldview he’d adopted clearly made Jamie resilient to the absurd situation he’d found himself in. Nick couldn’t actually disprove anything he’d said either. While Nick believed they hadn’t died and this had just been some mystical kidnapping, he didn’t have any hard proof of it right now. The people in black hoods felt like a pretty solid bit of soft evidence though, why would people in Hell feed people? Why would Hell be this convoluted place that had only existed for roughly 20 years?

When he’d brought these points up with Jamie the man had just shrugged. “Who am I to try and understand the way the Devil works?” He’d said. Nick had found it frustrating but there wasn’t much he could say in response. After today, Nick had to admit that Jamie’s worldview was giving him an advantage. The man acted without hesitation and with complete confidence, honestly, Nick felt slightly envious. He hadn’t acted with that much conviction for most of his life.

“Well, wanna go through our loot?” Nick asked.

Jamie didn’t hide the excitement in his eyes at Nick’s proposition. Nick started emptying the bag onto the table. It was mostly clothes. A whole assortment of outfits and clothing pieces covered the table, sadly none of them were for men. The few other bits of loot were interesting though. Nick found a pouch that had 34 green pills in it, which was a pretty solid find. With each green pill being worth five white pills, it was a respectable amount. There were also 65 white pills in the pouch. Adding all of the pills into his own collection Nick realised he had amassed quite the wealth and reminded himself to tally it all up when he had a moment.

There were a few amenities in the bag as well, some dried rations from the Parklands, bottles of water, all stuff Nick was happy to have. The water from the Parklands just tasted so much nicer than the bottled stuff you could find in minifridges around the hotel. The last of the items confused the duo though. There were about a dozen bandages, each of them lathered in a thick green paste. Was it a beauty product of some sort? A makeshift facemask?

As they were discussing what they could possibly be, Clarissa came over and slide into the booth next to Jamie. “Hey bubs, say, I’ll cut you a deal,” she said as she ran her hand over the clothes on the table, “one green pill for each outfit you’ve got here. I’ll give you five for each of the bandages.”

Nick processed the offer quickly, the clothes made sense. They all seemed to be made in the Parklands, the quality difference between them and the hotel clothes already made the price worth it. The bandages though, 25 white pills each? That meant they had to have some value. “What are the bandages?” He asked.

Clarissa clicked and the man with a large nose walked over to the booth. “Bandages with a weak healing salve. They’ll quickly close wounds.” The man then walked back to his own booth and continued his card game. Jamie looked at Nick and Nick nodded. He’d let Jamie make the call, Nick didn’t need the bandages but he might.

“Deal on the clothes, I’ll be keeping the bandages though,” Jamie said.

“Thought so,” Clarrisa smiled and threw a bag to Jamie.

Jamie opened it and counted the pills. There were a dozen outfits but 15 green pills in the bag. “Keep the change bubs,” Clarissa said with a wink.

Nick sighed but didn’t say anything. He gave the magic bag to Jamie and split the rations between the two of them, just in case. Jamie entertained himself for a while, just putting things into and taking things out of the bag. Nick couldn’t blame him, he was still amazed by how cool magic bags were. Eventually, Jamie stopped and posed a question for Nick.

“So why do you guys use drugs as a currency?”

A laugh broke out from the booth with the three brothers but no explanation came from them. Nick then talked Jamie through the pills. The different grades, the value of each one and then he had to explain the Taint and its complexities.

“So you’re telling me that this place makes me sick, the food, the water, the monsters. And the only way to not eventually turn into one of the demons I fought back in the car park is to take these drugs?” Jamie asked, sounding very unconvinced.

“Look, you don’t have to make it sound so dodgy. The pills clear the Taint, so just take them occasionally and you’ll be fine. If you get particularly banged up you’re supposed to take more of them to make sure you don’t get sick,” Nick explained.

“Then why don’t you take them?” Jamie questioned.

That one stumped Nick, he probably should be taking the pills far more often than he had been. To prove the point Nick took out a handful of his green pills and downed them. Bissus walked over to them chuckling. “You just wasted some good pills, Nick,” he then turned to Jamie, “healing removes the infection as well, so Nick’s skill does a lot of the work for him. He’s also been getting some high-quality healing recently, which completely cleared him up.”

“How do you know that?” Nick frowned.

Bissus tapped his nose. “Trade secrets.”

Nick definitely hated the perceptive classes. How the hell could they tell he’d been getting healing, that didn’t even make sense. Jamie seemed convinced though and thanked Bissus for the information before taking two of his own green pills. He didn’t look entirely comfortable with the act but threw them back anyway. After eating some more sushi he asked Nick another question.

“So, what’s the plan now?”

Now that was a good question. What was Nick going to do? The trail led Nick back up to the 65th, that’s where’d he’d find the next clue as to where Benny was. It wasn’t that simple though, the 65th floor was going to be a lot busier than the 64th. Teams of people looking to get level three and four gems would be constantly waiting for the event room to reset. Nick didn’t feel confident defending himself against teams of people around his own level. There was also the new factor, Jamie. What did Jamie want to do?

“What do you want Jamie?” Nick asked.

Without hesitating Jamie replied. “I’m going to help you get your brother back.”

Nick opened his mouth to ask why but stopped himself. The more he thought about it the more sense it made. Jamie was convinced he was in Hell and had to redeem his soul, helping someone rescue their little brother was definitely a good deed. “Thanks man, I’ll definitely pay you back.”

“Don’t sweat it, dude. It seems like I was pretty lucky to run into you when I got here, it feels only right to help you out while I can,” Jamie replied.

Nick had to agree with him. While Nick certainly wasn’t the best guide for the Complex, he liked to think he had been far more welcoming than Tony had been. It did make Nick feel a lot better to have Jamie along for the ride, the dude seemed like a great guy. Nick felt like his skill was finally doing what it was meant to, he was finally feeling Lucky.

“So, we have to head back up to the 65th to find the next clue. I expect there to be a lot of people and potentially more bandits up there. It doesn't feel sustainable to try and level you down here though. So, it looks like we’re going up a floor,” Nick said.

“Sounds good to me.”