Chapter 89

Dan made his way slowly towards the parking lot, a smile plastered across his face as he replayed the events of the day. Hands down, this had to have been the best day he’d had in a very long time. Once he’d gotten over the uncertainty of skipping class, the day had been damn near perfect.

Now, he was walking by himself though, towards Peter’s car. Everyone had finished up roughly 30 minutes ago, and while club members were still arriving, Peter, Ashley, Sophia, and Dan were wrapping their day up at the club. The girls, in fact, had already left. While they’d had their tennis gear with them, they usually showered at home. And after the work Peter had run those two through, they’d been completely drenched in sweat when they were finished. So much so, that they’d actually left quite quickly, after confirming Dan would help Peter clean up the court and put everything away. After the practice they’d had, Dan had been more than happy to step in for those two.

With his stamina nicely refreshed, thanks to the time he’d gotten to sit and watch the girls practice, he was actually feeling quite well, and he and Peter had quickly gotten the court tidied up, retrieved everything they’d been using, and made their way off the courts. That was when Peter and Dan had separated. The senior had told Dan to head towards the parking lot, as Peter had to handle some last minute, personal business, with Maddie. Given what Dan knew about Peter and Maddie’s situation, as well as the situation with Peter’s brother, Dan had just nodded, offered Peter a smile, and headed away. He was happy Peter had shared his secret with him, and he wasn’t about to disrespect that by prying.

A sudden fanfare in his mind caused Dan to nearly fall as he stepped off the curb from the clubhouse area, that led to the parking lot. In his mind, music akin to leveling up, or maybe achievements or beating monsters in a game, was blasting. While he immediately knew no one else would be able to use it, he still instinctively glanced about. Both to confirm he wasn’t going crazy, and to make sure no one had seen him almost fall on his face.

“What are you doing Syn?” He asked dryly as he confirmed he was still alone. The music had begun to fade, and immediately, Syn’s laughter followed. Dan kept making his way towards Peter’s car as he waited for the strange being to stop laughing.

Hey now, that wasn’t me. Syn’s voice said, mid laugh. Promise.

“Uh huh,” Dan kept his voice low. While he could send messages and such to Syn without verbalizing it, he found speaking aloud to the voice in his head still felt more normal. Though, admitting that, obviously, would make people think he was weird.

I swear man. Syn pressed. While yeah, I got a kick out of you almost busting your ass, seriously, wasn’t my fault this time. That’s all thanks to your new racquet.

“You’re telling me, my racquet unleased that little instrumental bit into my mind? What next, does it pick up FM radio?” Dan smiled a bit at that. He was getting a little better at sarcasm. Though, whether or not that was a good thing, was also up for debate.

No, but real talk, that would be pretty neat huh? You’d have your own personal music player out on the court whenever you played. You could even set up special match playlists. Oh, now I really am tempted to make that a thing…

“No. Just no.” Dan loved his racquet. And it didn’t need any new gimmicks. Besides, while Syn had actually come through and given him an amazing magical ‘weapon’, Dan wasn’t about to push his luck. He had no doubt, Syn’s trollish nature would come through sooner or later.

Buzz kill. Syn said, letting out a heavy sigh, but yeah, anyways, that racket caused by your racquet… Syn paused, and Dan refused to say anything, letting the silence grow awkward until Syn was forced to continue. That noise represents the end of a session with your racquet, meaning you’ve now been rewarded experience towards its next level.

“I, what?” Dan was at Peter’s car by now, and he immediately dropped his tennis bag, opening it up to look at the racquet he’d been using all day. Mentally he pulled up its information, and as he did, a notification rolled across his vision.

Training Session Complete: Experience Awarded- 114xp*

886xp towards next Tier

*Advanced Breakdown? Y/N

Dan mentally selected yes, and more information filled his field of view as he looked over the racquet.

Points – 28xp

Game – 12xp

Set – 4xp

Match- 25xp

Special Skills- 45xp

Total: 114xp

“I think now is a good time for a little extra explanation.” Dan prompted the voice in his head. While it was apparent he’d gotten experience from different aspects of his match with Maddie, it wasn’t as comprehensive as he’d been hoping the advanced breakdown would have been. Meaning, sadly, he needed Syn’s help

Say please. The voice responded, full of snark.

“Please.” Dan said, voice dry enough to make the Sahara jealous.

I swear, teaching you manners is going to be a twenty-four seven job. Seriously, you need more adult supervision in your life. Didn’t you, Syn immediately stopped, and cleared his throat. Er, sorry. Right, explanation.

“Thank you,” Dan whispered sincerely. The strange voice may have been a dick, but at least, he respected that line. Sometimes, Syn actually did seem to care.

As you figured, your racquet gains experience, which will help empower it and level it up.

“Mhmm.”

The racquet has different tiers, which essentially count as the level or class of the weapon, depending on your ranking structure I suppose. Those specefics don’t really matter here or now, so just gonna skim over that part. Syn muttered a bit to himself, as if he were rapidly reading through an instruction manual or something. Which, Dan actually realized, wouldn’t be that out of character for the individual.

Ah, right, here we go. Because your circumstances are, uh, unique, your racquet views matches as battles, and regular practice as training sessions. Experience gain is different, depending on what you’re doing. If you’re just practicing by yourself, or even with partners, you’ll gain 5 points of experience, for every 10 minutes of practice, rounded, uh, down.

“Is that 10 minutes of any type of tennis practice?” Dan’s normal sessions after school were about two hours and, in the morning, he could squeeze at least an hour in, if not more. Meaning, three hours of practice a day would result in 90 experience points. Which meant, in less than two weeks of just practice, he’d be able to level his racquet up. Neat.

Probably? If I had to guess, I’d say yeah. Though remember, this is just your racquet. If you’re just on the ball machine, or hitting at the wall, to just stretch out your training session, I’m going to stop you. For one, that’s going to be super boring for me to watch, and obviously, that’s most important. Second, that type of monotonous, low activity level of practice, is going to slow down the rate of your experience growth on your skills, since the higher intensity and more difficult training increases experience gain that way.

Syn, actually had a good point, even if Dan didn’t like to admit it. Plus, the voice had totally figured him out. Dan had been wondering about just setting himself up with the ball machine, using auto-battle at like, 50 percent, and just letting it whack pointlessly at tennis balls to power level his racquet. It would be boring, yeah, but efficient.

I wasn’t conceptualized yesterday. Syn said in response to Dan’s damning silence. I’ve seen all the tricks in the book buddy. You’ve no idea the things people try to come up with, in order to cheat these systems. When like, you’ve got magical powers… that’s a cheat enough. No need to go full cheese mode. Sheesh. Granted, that one guy that was super cautious, I suppose, did have a point…

Any who, Syn cut back in before Dan could ask what exactly he was mumbling about. The other type of experience your racquet will get, is ‘battle’ experience. In this regard, that’s match experience. Which, as is to be expected, is always the more rewarding when it comes to experience. After all, you can practice all you want in life, but the real deal is the most rewarding experience wise.

“Makes sense.” Dan said in agreement. He’d already noticed that much in tennis. It was one thing to practice skills, but putting them in use and combining everything, on the fly, in a match, was a completely different situation entirely. Still, he could already tell he had an unfair advantage on those who’d been ‘transported’ to other worlds. A tennis match wasn’t life or death. Meaning, Dan could participate in those probably a lot more often, to his and his weapon’s benefit, than if he’d been transported to a world to fight monsters.

So, yeah. Looks like there’s a laundry list here of things you can get experience from in your matches. For each point you win, you get two experience points. Winning a game will grant you five experience points, winning a set will get you ten experience points, and winning an entire match net you a bonus 50 points of experience.

Dan looked at the experience he’d gained. He’d gotten a good chunk of experience from losing. And yet, winning was so much more lucrative.

“I got over 100 points of experience from losing the match. What’s the explanation for that?”

I was getting there, sheesh. Patience is a virtue, you know.

“Says you.” Dan muttered, knowing full well Syn would hear it.

I’m half tempted to not tell you now. Syn replied, but, I’m not going to stoop to your provocations. I’m in a good mood.

Dan chuckled, though a smile played across his face. He was in a good mood too. And honestly, learning about his racquet was just making him more and more excited.

Losing a point wins you, nothing. Losing a game nets you one experience point, losing a set nets you two experience points, and losing a match gets you a full 25 extra points. Which is probably a stupid crossover loophole for your situation. Because, yeah, rewarding someone for surviving a battle, even if they lost it, makes sense. But you getting that much experience, for failing a tennis match. Bah.

“And the special skills experience?” Dan pressed. He’d gotten nearly 4 hours of regular practice experience, from his single match against Maddie. He wasn’t going to complain, and honestly, it didn’t seem all that unfair. Though, he was a bit sour. If he’d been better, he could have gained so much more experience.

Each time you use a special skill from the racquet, you gain 5 experience points. At the moment, that means you can gain an additional 45 experience points from using those skills.

“Neat.” From the looks of it, he had quite a few ways to gain experience for his racquet, and a new, burning drive, to grind out experience as quickly as he could, in order to level it up. He was eager to see how the stats would grow when it reached the next tier. Already the racquet was providing him with an invaluable boost, and he wanted to capitalize and grow those boosts as fast as possible.

Neat is all he has to say. Gift the kid a freaking awesome, magical weapon, and all he says is neat. Kids these days. Laugher accompanied Syn’s comment, and Dan figured Syn’s friends, coworkers, whatever they were, had rejoined him. Dan was starting to notice, Syn’s comments and mannerisms would shift dependent on if he was alone with Dan, or if he had onlookers. Which, was more than a little annoying.

“Well, thanks for everything.” Dan said, trying his best not to let the situation sour his mood. When it was just him and Syn, it was one thing. But when the others were there, it felt like his life wasn’t even his own. It felt as if he were just existing for their amusement, like a character in a story or something, and he didn’t like that. Furthermore, it made it feel like he had less control over his life than he did, and that was never a fun thought.

No problem buddy. Now, make sure you don’t do anything stupid and reckless, and do your best to keep getting better. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

“You and me both.” Dan said as he finished zipping his tennis bag back up and glanced back to the clubhouse. Peter was finally walking towards him, the senior waving at him, his typical grin plastered to his face. Dan couldn’t help but smile and wave back. With Peter there to guide him, anything was possible.