The early morning hours were the calmest part of Hugo’s day. He loved getting up early and feeling like he was the only one up on campus. It was so quiet and serene.

This morning he pulled up his screen and thought about where to put his stat points when he ranked up. Four points were up for grabs. His strength had automatically gone up four points, so he would need to put at least a few points into dexterity to balance it out. If he didn’t, he would run the risk of tearing his muscles. His next decision was tougher.

He kept telling himself to put some points into perception, but it was tough letting go of the points on something without immediate benefit. He had killed monsters easily on the trip yesterday, and didn’t have any crafting related perception problems. Still. He knew it was an area that needed improving. If he didn’t do it now, he would probably regret it.

Wincing, he made himself put two points into perception.

His next decision was easier than the previous ones. He had long since decided on magnesium, and it still seemed like a good idea.

Hugo Rebane [Formation Domain]

Strength (20)

Dexterity (16)

Resilience 10

Regeneration 11

Intelligence 10

Wisdom 9

Charisma 11

Perception (10)

Rank 8

224/900 Points

Health 21/21

Mana 32/(40)

Skills: Fabricate 6, Mana Dart 1

Elements: Aluminum, Magnesium

His stat screen looked good. It would take him a few more years, but he was well on his way to be a legend. It was a silly fantasy, but every time he ranked up, he imagined himself as one of the characters in his two-copper novels.

Oskar woke up about the time he had his selections made. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to him much yesterday, so Hugo said, “How was it yesterday? I assume you ranked up to eight?”

Oskar groaned and said, “If I ever see another strix again, it will be too soon. Those flying bat things will be in my nightmares forever. And yes, we all got to eight.”

Hugo laughed, “Was a mace not the best weapon against a flying enemy?”

“It was terrible! They just kept bouncing off. Rasmus steered me wrong, I tell you,” Oskar bemoaned.

Laughing, Hugo said, “That’s too bad. I can loan you the equations for my crossbow or a shortsword if you want. I think it’s really just a matter of getting lucky with the monster type matching your weapon choice.”

“Oh! That reminds me. Today’s your lucky day,” Oskar said.

“And why’s that?” Hugo said.

“Today is the day you win Lenna’s heart.”

“I wish.”

“No, really. You know how I’ve been going to azad games with her sometimes?”

“Yeah, you never take a night off, parties, games, it never ends. No wonder you like to sleep in.”

“Whatever. I was talking to her about you last week. She said she wishes you liked azad, that you would make great company. I think she likes you.”

“She did not. Why would she even say that?”

“She didn’t like my jokes at the time or something and was comparing us. I am telling you, she likes you. I have a ticket to the championship, sitting right next to her. You take my ticket and enjoy the game with her. It’s the big game, emotions will be high. She will fall right into your lap.”

“Why do you even have a ticket sitting right next to her?”

Oskar scratched the back of his neck, “Well, at one point I thought I had a chance with her, so I bought a ticket, and went to the free games with her.”

“Oskar! You knew I liked her. Not cool.”

“Whatever, nothing came of it. And it set up this perfect situation. Without me you wouldn’t have a ticket to tonight’s game.”

“An azad game. I hardly know anything about azad. I think I watched part of one game when I was younger. That’s it. She is going to think I am just there to creep on her.”

“No, no. I can tell you all you need to know. It’s a complicated game, but you don’t have to know everything.”

They spent breakfast and lunch talking about azad, getting Hugo ready for his azad debut.

...

“Hey Lenna,” Hugo said and sat down on the seat next to her.

“Oh hey, Hugo. I didn’t expect to see you here. Where’s Oskar?” Lenna asked.

“Sick. I took care of him and he is resting back at our dorm. But I couldn’t stand to see the ticket go to waste,” Hugo said, mentally cursing Oskar for coming up with a stupid excuse.

“Finally come to watch the greatest sport?” Lenna said.

“What do you mean, I love azad. I just haven’t had time recently what with studying all the time. I have always wanted to come along,” Hugo said with a smile.

“Mmm, sure.” Lenna said.

He could tell she didn’t believe him, but that didn’t bother him. Oskar had prepared him some, but he didn’t have to act like an expert. She could be the expert. He said, “So, catch me up. I know Martin doesn’t have a chance of winning, but you gotta tell me about the other three.”

She nodded, Martin was the one who tortured Hugo at that one party. Of course Hugo would assume the worst about Martin. She said, “Ok, this year is going to the girls. Everyone talks about Rasmus Jr as being a contender, but they are just brown nosing because of his father. If it wasn’t for Rasmus Jr’s second, he wouldn’t even be in the finals.

“I don’t know who is better out of the remaining two. Saskia has the most raw talent. She has the barrier domain, and everyone says she is a prodigy with them. She can do shields and swords, but everyone can do that. She also found a way to shoot the swords, like super powerful mana darts. She dominates early game.

“On the other hand, Mia is just a genius at azad. She has runic domain, which is normally a disadvantage, but she uses it unbelievably well. She plans out matches, like she knows the future. Like last match, she was up against Robin, who had spent all months setting up a ritual to grant him fire magic for a day. Robin didn’t let anyone know about his fire powers, not even his roommate. But on the day of the match, boom. Mia had made a stack of water runes and countered his every move. Those runes take time. She had to start making them even before the match up was announced. It was insane. She didn’t even have to use her second all match.

“I honestly don’t know who is going to win,” Lenna continued, “But I can tell you this. If both of them were on the same team, Saskia the main with Mia as her second, they could easily beat some teams in the city matches.”

“No way,” Hugo said, “I have seen some of those city matches. It’s not just that they are talented, they are fast. Everyone in Reval’s azad matches has a dexterity of at least twenty. Every match is like a blitz, so hard to follow. And don’t get me started about the Gray Ghost. That man doesn’t even need a second.”

“Oh, so you do watch azad sometimes,” Lenna said with a smile.

“I said I did,” Hugo replied. And that is just what he expected Lenna to believe, as long as she didn’t ask any follow up questions.

Hugo was inordinately pleased when the match started right then. The azad court was a huge cube with an ever shifting maze. The maze was mostly transparent and took up four levels. The match started with four doors opening up, one on each corner. Four students walked onto the court, followed by their seconds, for a total of eight contestants. Most of them were in their fourth year, graduating soon. Hugo knew from Oskar’s ramblings that one of them was a third year, but he had no idea which one.

The match started with a burst of color and light. This was half the reason that azad was so popular, mana constructs appeared out of nowhere. They could be anything, from monsters to myth, but today they were in the form of samurai riding atop velociraptors. The brightly colored constructs appeared in the middle of the field, and spread out from there. The four main players were in each corner, and the first phase of the game was to kill as many of the balls of mana as they could.

Saskia took an early lead, wading into the monsters and killing them with a fury. She had the strategy of cutting the velociraptors out from under the samurai and then dispatching the men before they could get back up. She mostly used her barrier as very long swords, but occasionally shot out mana darts like Lenna had mentioned.

The boys both had formation domains, and quickly armored themselves up and created weapons. Martin wielded a sword and shield and Rasmus Jr had a bow. They both had moderate success in killing the mythical samurai, but the velociraptors made them continually retreat. Hugo was impressed by Rasmus Jr constantly creating a new arrow each time he fired.

He was even more impressed when Rasmus Jr flung his hand forward and dozens of ball bearings flew out and tripped up the monsters. The on demand formation skill was really impressive from Hugo’s perspective. He would have to remember that trick.

Mia wasn’t doing much. She had strewn her corner with runestones, randomly shaped traps that exploded when the constructs walked nearby. It was very effective at first, but then the constructs started avoiding anything that wasn’t a clear maze wall. It slowed down her point gathering considerably.

Hugo was having fun. If he had known it would be this bizarrely entertaining, he would have started coming to matches way sooner. Then the last construct died and the next phase of the game started.

Each player got a certain number of points, based on the number of constructs they destroyed. They could use those points to buy game pieces, or conquer a tile of the surrounding gameboard. The entire cube was made up with octagons about a foot wide. When they bought a game tile with points, the outside of that tile glowed their color.

Saskia was red, and her color quickly took over a third of the gameboard. Her corner of the cube turned red and lent a red hue to everything in that part of the azad court.

The two boys were green and yellow, their sections taking up a fifth of the court each. Mia was blue, taking up less than a sixth of the court. But she was on the fourth floor by now, the other three having stayed on the ground floor to fight imaginary monsters.

Mia didn’t immediately expand her territory like the others, she bought a game piece that just sat there, and Mia didn't seem to be doing anything either.

“Oh, that’s her play,” Lenna said.

“Mia’s?” said Hugo.

“Yeah. It’s risky, super risky. But I bet she can pull it off. I bet that is the game right there,” Lenna said.

“We will see,” Hugo said. He wished he had watched a full game before today. He had no idea what Lenna was talking about.

The rest of the game was more of the same, confusing moves and bizarre game pieces. He counted seven different game pieces at one point, but he only knew what the warrior piece did. It fought and conquered neighboring pieces. Hugo just started cheering when Lenna did.

The crowd was very into the fight, yelling and screaming, seemingly with every move the players made. The players were out on the leading edges, conquering board pieces, while their seconds stayed in their corner and bought game pieces for them to use. They also shouted out enemy movements to their respective players.

At first it seemed like Mia was going to lose quickly. She left the fight on the ground floor and set herself up on a small section of the fourth floor. Winning required control of the ground floor, so the other competitors ignored Mia as she left the fight. The other three players were aggressively expanding, fighting each other with their domains and game pieces. Saskia slowly chipped away at the colors of the two boys, taking equal parts of their territories. It wasn’t until her second yelled at her to focus on Mia that she stopped attacking the boys.

She looked up to the fourth floor and saw four pieces sitting on the top floor, blinking in sync. She swore and abandoned her attack on the boys. She moved every available game piece to the stairs, doing everything she could to climb up the azad court.

Martin and Rasmus Jr took advantage of her distraction and counter attacked her territory. The red section of the court was quickly shrinking. Saskia didn’t even look back.

By the time she was on the third floor, Mia’s game pieces were blinking faster. The crowd was shouting and pointing at the fourth floor, particularly where Mia was blocking Saskia’s advance.

Mia fought frantic defense, burning through runed tablets. Each tablet took out several of Saskia’s attacking game pieces, but there was an unending tide of them. Saskia was pushing forward, doing everything she could to advance up the stairs while avoiding Mia’s attacks and traps.

The boys had noticed the blinking game pieces by now, and abandoned their attacks to race up levels of the court. Rasmus Jr abandoned his pieces and raced ahead, but was caught by a web trap, one of the standard defenses of the court. Martin used his game pieces to advance as well, but he didn’t get far.

Mia’s four game pieces stopped blinking all at once. The crowd yelled “Azad!” Then blue samurai started pouring out of each corner of the fourth floor. They quickly swept down the stairways of the azad court, converting the board to blue like a tidal wave. Saskia attempted to hold her stairwell, but she was quickly overwhelmed and beaten. Once her points were depleted, all of the red section turned blue and it was only a matter of time before the two boys were beaten as well.

When the court was completely blue, a cheer went up and they started chanting, “Mia! Mia! Mia!”

Hugo and Lenna were standing by this point and she turned to him and hugged him. “I knew it! I knew it!” she said and didn’t let go.

Hugo was happy to let the hug linger, basking in the warm glow.

The crowd celebrated for a while after that, but eventually they started walking out of the stadium. It was packed in the stadium, but the throng quickly thinned as they left the building.

“I don’t want to go to bed just yet, I am too amped up,” Lenna said and dragged him over behind a building, away from the crowds. She seemed to be looking for something, but didn’t know what.

They eventually ended up sitting on the grass, looking up at the stars.

“You’ve never watched an azad game before in your life, have you?” Lenna said without looking at him.

His forehead broke out in beads of sweat. “... how could you tell?” he eventually said.

She laughed and pushed his shoulder, “I wasn’t positive until just now. But I was pretty sure because you never cheered on your own, you were just cheering when I was cheering.”

“Ok, you caught me. I just wanted to do something with you. Especially something you are passionate about. You were so cute when you were telling me about the game,” he said. He was nervous to be so forward, but this was the whole point of the evening for him.

“Cute! I wasn’t cute. I was knowledgeable, incisive, and stunningly beautiful.”

Hugo laughed, “Yes you are. Knowledgeable, incisive, and stunningly beautiful.”

She reached over and gently touched his chin.

Hugo could hear his own heartbeat as he leaned closer and tilted his head slightly.

She kissed him.

Hugo reached around and pulled her close as he kissed back.

The moment stretched on, the night silent other than their breathing. The feeling of her lips on his was intoxicating. When the kiss broke he sat back on his hands, breathing hard. That wasn’t his first kiss, but it might as well have been for how it felt. He had goosebumps all over his arms.

“That was nice,” he said.

“Yes it was,” she replied, “We should do it again tomorrow.”

Hugo felt like his smile was going to leap off his face. “Yes, we should.”