The three continued to get steamrolled. Whether they just got beat in a head to head fight, or fell prey to a trick of somesort, they continued to lose. The low was when the three were fighting a group of three girls, who destroyed them with ease. One even shot Dom in the head with a Fireball, the first magic spell they had witnessed in ForverQuest.

The three sat outside the arena, utterly defeated. Dom was still smoking from getting burnt alive. Gary was lying on his back, thinking of possible ways to accelerate their combat skills. Cedric was simply sulking. “Man, we totally suck,” he said.

“True,” said Dom. “That is very true.”

Gary didn’t say anything. Of course, he agreed. At the moment, they really sucked. Only one of there six matches had been close, but they ended up losing when Cedric took a critical hit from an arrow and died.

“How are we ever going to win the tournament? We can’t beat anybody,” Dom complained.

“We can win,” said Cedric halfheartedly, “Somehow….”

“I think….” Gary said softly. “I think we can win. We just need to grind hard. Dom, you need to figure out magic, the sooner the better. Cedric, we need you tanking. Get big, hit the gains, hard. I’m not just talking strength though, we need you to pull aggro, and block attacks. Get a shield.”

Cedric nodded. “Makes sense.”

“And I need to make big progress in dexterity, acrobatics, archery, and sneak. I need to be able to dodge attacks, and hit my target. I’m failing hard at both of those at the moment.”

Dom looked at Gary, not convinced. “Isn’t it obvious though? Everybody is going to do what we’re doing. Just get better or whatever. What makes us any different? What makes us special?”

Gary took a moment to think. “Nothing. We aren't special. Not at all, really. But I guess that’s the point. Because we are just three sort of normal kids, we are going to have to work way harder to than anybody to win. I guess the question is are you guys down to give it your all. If you aren't, than we probably should just quit now. There is no way we can win unless we are willing to commit.”

“I’m down,” said Dom without hesitation. “That’s what friends are for, I guess,” he added nonchalantly.

“You know we got your back Gary,” Cedric said with a quick smile. “Death’s Requiem may be a stupid name, but we’ll make it cool.”

“Hey!” Dom said, his face slightly red. “It’s not stupid!”

Gary shrugged. “Ehh, it’s kinda dumb, to be honest.”

Dom flipped his hair, “Whatever. Like I care.”

“You know you care,” Gary said.

“A little, maybe,” Dom admitted.

Gary started laughing, Dom joined in, then Cedric, and soon the sound of their laughter was booming across the marble walls of the arena.

The three split and went to train seperate skills. Gary kept of practicing with his bow, shooting enemies, doing his best to dodge blows when the moment came.

Cedric, meanwhile, bought a cheap shield and started training block.

Dom went on a personal quest to see if he could somehow discover magic. It was somewhat of a longshot, but he could at least explore and maybe find some herbs or train various skills.

It was late in real life by the time the three reconvened. Gary had almost grown to level 6 archery, Cedric had discovered block and had it at level 2, and Dom had found a few herbs, but hadn’t made any magic progress.

“Alright guys, that’s probably good for now. It’s late, I got to go. See ya at school tomorrow,” Gary said.

“Alright, later,” said Dom.

Gary took off his headset and sighed in exhaustion. It had been a long day. Although he loved playing ForeverQuest online, it could sometimes feel like work if he was just grinding.

To unwind he made himself a grilled cheese sandwich. His mom was already asleep. She hadn’t been her usual self the past few days, but Gary could understand that. She was, after all, going through some tough times.

Finishing the sandwich, he took a well-needed moment to just think. He worried for a few moments about the arena matches today. Could they really ever win a tournament? They got pounded in every scrimmage.

However, he was confident that if they trained well, they could at least improve. That, he was sure of.

Almost guilty, Gary went back downstairs and switched on the N64. He just wanted to play an old game for a minute or two.

He put in Paper Mario, an old Mario RPG that he was quite fond of. It was one of the first Mario RPGS, in Gary’s opinion, one of the most underrated games ever.

While playing through the desert level, Dry Dry Desert, Gary thought of the nature of video games. There was probably a point in time, around 30 years ago when the game was released, when Paper Mario was the game everybody was playing. Although to today's standards the graphics were antiquated, at release he was sure that they were state of the art.

After a few years, the sequel would be released, and Paper Mario would become old. Some would still cling to the old game, but most would move on to the next-gen console.

Gary thought of ForeverQuest. Although ForeverQuest was much different than Paper Mario in terms of scale and playerbase, he was pretty sure that one day, ForeverQuest would become antiquated as well. Although, Gary thought, Modern day MMOs were a little different than old school games, because the developers kept working on the game even after release.

In some ways, this made Gary sad. But, on the other hand, he realized that all good things come to pass, eventually. Additionally, he always had fun discovering old games. Perhaps the fact that games tend to become obscure was appealing to him. It made Gary feel a sense of discover when finding an old game that nobody was really playing.

After only a few minutes of playing Paper Mario, Gary hit a save block, and started to feel very tired.

Too tired to even get to bed, Gary curled over on the floor and fell asleep, the light glow from the television bathing him in soft light.