Jamie ran from room to room, catching people by surprise and tagging them with apples before they had much of a chance to react. He was sure his dad would be pretty annoyed to see that this was what he was doing with all the training he’d had, but oh well, he was putting the skills to use. At first, he had been moving from room to room cautiously, waiting until he saw movement and then throwing. He had been refining it between rooms though, quickly working out that the more brazenly he came into a room the more surprised the occupants would be.

Now all of these people were armed with their weapons, swords, bows, knives, the whole kit and kaboodle. It was a bit intimidating at first but Jamie had a clear advantage that made his confidence soar. He wasn’t lugging around his Japanese club-thing, he was just carrying a couple of suspiciously hard apples. This let him strike quicker than anyone who had to reach for their weapons, even the people with bows had to spend a moment or two drawing the string back. Jamie had none of these problems, he just threw the apples as soon as he saw movement.

If this had been a real fight then Jamie’s tactic surely would just get him killed, an apple, no matter how hard he threw it, wouldn’t take someone out that easily and he’d be left empty-handed against someone armed and angry. Thankfully, these weren’t real fights, it was just a contest of who could hit who first. It was too easy for Jamie, everyone here was looking for a fight while he was just looking to land a shot on them. Jamie cleared his way from room to room, solos, teams, and everything in between were no match for Jamie and his hard apples.

*****

Nick’s entire body was beginning to ache. He didn’t have the space to check his clock so he had no idea how much time had passed, but he was certainly not enjoying any of it. He should have positioned his clock somewhere he could have seen it before getting inside the grandfather clock. As the pain in his muscles began to grow to almost unbearable levels Nick wondered how Jamie was doing, had the big guy managed to find a decent hiding spot?

Nick let out a quiet sigh, he was about ready to just throw in the towel and start running around the mansion looking for a different spot. He decided to wait five minutes and then he’d make a move. Just five minutes more. Nick started counting the seconds in his head, looking forward to getting out and stretching his arms and legs.

*****

Jamie realised that the Lord was getting faster, as the time passed he could hear its stomping footsteps moving from room to room quicker. He had been keeping a better track of it for a while now, double-checking any rooms it passed through to try and find anyone readjusting their hiding position. The first few times he’d tried this strategy it worked well, he eliminated a few more people but then things dried up. He had absolutely no idea how long he had been searching the rooms but either everyone left was incredibly well hidden, or he was the only person left. If he was the only person left he would have won though, so there had to be people still hiding somewhere.

Honestly, Jamie wasn’t too sure what he was doing. His plan had worked out pretty well so far, but now he was at an impasse. What should he do? He wandered from room to room weighing up his options. His growingly bored mind took in the scenery as he wandered around. The mansion was rather impressive, it look like it had come straight out of one of those period-piece drama shows his Grandma had been obsessed with. She would have loved to visit a place like this, spending her time wandering around and pretending to be some sort of British nobility. The thought made Jamie smile, he had some really fond memories of his Grandma.

Jamie decided he was too bored to continue with this game. He started walking from room to room calling out Nick’s name. If Nick was still around hopefully he’d hear him and come out of hiding. Worst case, he lured out anyone else still hiding and could have a chance at removing them. Jamie had no idea what sort of skills people could have, if they were as magical as his own he had no doubt there were people with cool stealth and camouflage skills lurking around. That was an interesting thought, how would Jamie deal with someone he couldn’t actually see in a fight? Jamie let both his feet and mind keep wandering around while he called out.

*****

Nick had dozed off. He wasn’t sure how, but he’d actually managed to fall asleep in the least comfortable position he’d ever been in. He had clue how long it had been but decided to take his chances on the outside. He listened for a moment but could only barely make out the footsteps of the Lord, meaning it was likely on the other side of the manor right now. Nick popped open the door and crawled out. With an extremely satisfying series of pops and cracks, he stretched himself out. Then he heard a loud voice.

“Nick. Nick. Nick,” the voice droned on, sounding tired.

What the hell was Jamie doing? Nick made his way toward the voice, curious on a bunch of different levels. How was Jamie still in the game? Why was he calling out his name? The only way he’d find out was by meeting up with the man. Nick climbed the stairs and started searching through the rooms cautiously, he didn’t want to get accidentally baited by his companion. He eventually made it to the room Jamie was in, he found the man kicking something along the floor, occasionally calling out his name. Nick was perplexed, Jamie wasn’t carrying his club nor wearing his armour.

“Hey man, what’s going on?” Nick called out to him.

Jamie’s eyes snapped up to him. “Hey dude!” Then his eyes widened. “Watch out!”

Nick frowned as he felt something sharp press into his neck.

****

Fucking finally. He’d been waiting for near ten minutes now. His skill told him that there were only three people left in the area including himself, when he found the big kid he’d hatched a pretty decent plan. The big lad was calling out a name and aimlessly wandering around. He saw that they were only a level two Knight, who had no weapon and wasn’t wearing their armour. Too easy of the target honestly, at first he’d suspected that it was just baiting, so he stayed nearby and stayed hidden. After ten whole minutes the kid had just been droning on and on, it was driving him positively insane. He was just about to give up and remove the kid before looking for the last remaining contestant when another kid had come bumbling in.

It was certainly a more cautious approach than the larger kid, but still amateurish in his experienced eyes. The new kid was a 4-3 Brawler, Explorer, an interesting mix for sure. He was geared in mostly rags though, which was unusual. Explorer’s usually flaunted their wealth pretty openly, why was this kid wearing such garbage stuff? Was it some sort of ploy, decoy armour or something of the like? Curious. He’d definitely be taking care of this kid first. The two kids seemed to know each other. So, the Explorer was the ‘Nick’ the bigger kid had been calling out for? The name felt familiar to him for some reason, but he couldn’t quite place it. It didn’t matter right now, he had an event to win. He needed to get his second class to level four already, he had some people to catch up with. He really needed to evolve his tracking skill though, if he could actually pinpoint people’s locations he wouldn't have needed to spend so much time in this event.

He slipped behind the Explorer and stabbed his knife through the kid’s neck, a gruesome way to go, but at least he wouldn’t actually die. The bigger kid looked surprised for a moment but then burst into action. He was ready for it but the kid defied his expectations, instead of reaching for his bag he threw something at him. The object travelled far faster than he could have expected. The Explorer vanished and left him without cover, the small object connecting with his now exposed chest plate. He looked back at the kid in shock, there was no way he lost just like that.

******

Nick found himself back in the manor’s lobby, even more confused than when he’d found Jamie. What had happened? They’d been attacked by someone? Did Jamie manage to beat them? He doubted it, Jamie didn’t have his armour on or even a weapon out. Damn. Looks like they wouldn’t be getting the level four gem this time around. Nick didn’t get too bummed out though, it just meant they’d have to spend a bit more time on the 65th floor. Nick still needed to find some more leads on where Tony had gone from here, so they’d likely need to spend that time hanging around anyway. Nick then spotted Jamie’s head appear amongst the crowd, standing a fair bit taller than most of the other people gathered. Nick made his way over to ask how things had gone.

He was surprised to find the man looking pretty chipper, pulling out his armour and getting it back on. “Hey man, how’d it go?” Nick asked.

“Hey again,” Jamie turned to him, “man that had been pretty boring honestly. Hiding hadn’t worked too well for me so I changed it up and started hunting people down. That went well for a while but then things slowed down again. A pretty exciting end to it all of it though.”

“What happened at the end there?” Nick asked.

Jamie explained that he had seen Nick come through the door but just as they started speaking someone had dashed out from behind a nearby sofa and stabbed Nick in the neck. Jamie was really confused as to how the guy had gotten there, he had been pretty confident the room was empty. He shrugged his shoulders and chalked it up to some sort of skill and Nick had to agree. Jamie then said he’d just thrown one of the apples he’d been carrying around and the dude and taken him out of the event.

“Wait, so you won?” Nick asked with wide eyes.

“Yeah, that was pretty easy all in all. Not looking forward to doing it again though,” Jamie said with a sigh.

Hiding Time!

Jamie Ruth 23:47 Clack 23:46 Nick Jones 23:44 - - - -

- - - - -

Well, that certainly confirmed it. He’d been taken out by a guy named Clack and Jamie had won. What a strange turn of events. Nick realised that his plan hadn’t been as solid as he actually thought. If Jamie had been taken out then Nick would have been left alone to face off against this mysterious Clack, which would have very likely gone the same way. If they were going to do this again then they would need to do a bit of revamping on the plan. Jamie seemed to have done pretty well with his own method, simpling throwing random objects at people. Hiding was all well and good, but the Lord didn’t seem to hard to avoid, so just hiding wasn’t going to get him the win.

That’s when the rewards appeared in a flash of confetti, letting everyone in the lobby know who had gotten loot and who hadn’t. Thankfully there were ten equally sized blasts of confetti all at once, which didn’t give away who had actually come first. Nick quietly told Jamie to put his reward into his bag and prepared to blend into the crowd once they exited the room. After a moment the room flashed white and everyone is back in the hotel lobby. Nick and Jamie quickly navigated through the crowd and into one of the side rooms. Thankfully the duo didn’t draw much attention and nobody was obviously chasing them. Nick then led Jamie towards the button room, this was likely one of the fastest level zero to three journeys in the Complex.

When they got to the button room Nick and Jamie swapped reward boxes. They had agreed that Nick would get the first of the level four gems, to round his classes out, while Jamie would get the second one. If Jamie used both the level three and level four gems consecutively then Jamie would have gone from level zero to level four all in one morning, which was rather insane to think about. Nick had expected some sort of resistance from Jamie when it came to handing over the gem, which would have been fair enough. It had been Jamie that had earned it after all, but Jamie tossed the box over without a moment of hesitation and was excited about the level three gem Nick gave him.

Nick was about to use the gem when the door to the button room opened and a man walked in, knives drawn.

“Hang on there lads,” the man called out.