Sam opened the door of their house intending to work on either the information he learned from the translation stone or the odd storage ring he found in the Gnome District, but when he noticed Jen hanging out in the kitchen finishing lunch, his mindset completely changed, and he asked, “Did you finish the app?”

When Jen looked at Sam and heard his voice, her AI tapped into and used Jen’s memories of Sam to almost instantly analyze his voice, clothing, posture, facial expression, physical movements, his smell, and any visible equipment. The AI then automatically activated her psych skill to sense his emotions and read his stats, and then it activated her mana scanning skill to estimate his mana pool and mana regeneration ability. Last, her AI used her body healing tattoo to cast a simple health scan. In less than a second, words and status bars appeared in her vision, like those on a first-person shooter video game. Hovering next to his head was his name, “Sam”, followed by “level 29”. Underneath his name and level were two colored bars. A green bar showing his current health was full. The second bar was blue. It showed the level of his mana pool. The mana bar was only about 40% full. Jen then looked at each of the items on Sam that appeared to have a slight blue glow, showing they may be magical. When she focused on one of his glowing rings, a pop-up appeared with an estimate of what the magical item was, reading, “storage ring”. If Sam were carrying any weapons, or even if it looked like he was concealing a weapon, the weapon or area of concealment would glow a faint red in her vision.

With a thought from Jen, all the text cleared out of her vision except Sam’s name, level, and health and mana bars. She could clear those out too, but this information was relatively small and didn’t interfere with her vision. Jen said, “Yea, I finally finished my app, and it was definitely worth all the effort! I’ve already loaded the app into Tamako’s onboard.”

“Where’s she now?”

“You just missed her. She went to see how the app would work in the arena.”

Sam grunted with concern. “I thought the gladiator recall tournament was scheduled to start this afternoon. That could be painful!”

“And expensive, if she doesn’t place!” finished Jen.

Jen and Tamako learned the City Lord put on monthly gladiator recall tournaments just for humans, but had decided they were not interested in competing them. Tamako wanted to participate, but she knew it bothered Jen to see people brutally “murdered” in the recall tournaments. The System required an advance payment of 50 gold into the City Shop from high-level fighters to enter the gladiator tournament, and The System would entice lower-level fighters to enter the tournament with gambling quests that included free entry. Just like any recall arena match, even though participants were returned to full health, the fighters felt every bruise, cut, stab, disembowelment, or injury incurred in the fight. Additionally, if any of their gear or weapons were damaged or destroyed in the fight, the system would not restore the equipment. The gladiator recall tournament was set up more like a traditional tournament, without all the randomness of the Bot Battle Day Tamako had participated in before. The System matched fighters up based on their levels. It might match a level 24 fighter against another level 24 fighter, or against two level 12 fighters. Except for the finals or semi-finals, fighters didn’t know exactly who or how many opponents they would fight, because The System only announced the match-ups a few minutes before each fight was to begin, but leaving just enough time for betting to take place. City residents gambled insane amounts on the gladiator recall tournaments, and both the City and The System took a cut of the wagers. Fighters could also benefit from some of the gambling options started by the spectators. Ultimately, fighters placing fourth received a return of their 50-gold entrance fee. Third place received 60 gold. Second place received 70 gold, and first place received 100 gold.

“Do you want to go and watch her compete?” asked Sam.

“Watch her kill a bunch of people, or get killed herself just for sport? No thanks!”

Sam imagined the gore and cries of pain from a level 20 fighter slaughtering 20 level 1 gambling addicts. Even though they would all be returned to full health, he understood why Jen was repulsed by it. Sam didn’t think it was appropriate to gossip behind Tamako’s back, by commenting to Jen on Tamako’s decision to enter the gladiator tournament, so he simply said, “Even if she doesn’t win her money back, we still have enough gold to get ready to jump, so let’s start preparing to travel to the Third Deck.”

While Sam was talking, Jen’s AI alerted to Sam’s expressions and flashed a notice on her on-board, “Impatient and frustrated.” She mentally waved the message aside and asked, “Speaking of spending money, how much did that ballista cost!”

After Sam explained how much he spent acquiring the ballista, Jen asked, “Why was purchasing the gambling quest so cheap?”

Sam replied, “In the Shop interface, I noticed that the easier the quest, the lower the rewards provided by the system. This resulted in a lower cost for me to purchase a private gambling quest. The private quest I paid for only required the gamblers to charge forward and get within 15 feet of the ballista to get their reward. However, there were also quite a few gamblers there responding to system generated quests that were pretty aggressive about destroying the ballista.”

Jen replied, “Pretty clever! You call a retreat and burn the decoy under the tarp. Everyone thinks it’s destroyed, and no one suspects or wonders why you own a giant wall-mounted ballista.”

Sam understood why it was important to Jen, but he was getting a little exasperated with all of Jen’s questions about their finances, he felt they must have plenty of money, and said, “You’re now up to date about everything, are you going to install my AI or what?”

“You haven’t told me about your trip to the Gnome District yet,” replied Jen.

As Sam’s eyes widened and his jaw clenched with impatience, Jen laughed and said, “Don’t get your old man boxers in a bunch! Follow me. It’s easier for me to install the module into your neural and physical system if you are lying down. It shouldn’t take too long.”

Sam frowned as he stood to follow Jen, and asked, “Is it going to hurt?”

Jen replied, “Yea, it hurts a lot!”

“You’re kidding right!”

“Nope, dead serious. See those finger marks in the bed’s metal? That’s from where Tamako was gripping it in pain.”

Sam replied, “Wait! Let’s hold on for just a second. Maybe there is something we can think of to decrease the pain.”

Jen nodded her head in sympathy and said, “I offered to put Tamako to sleep during the procedure, but she felt it was important that she stay aware of anything being done to her.”

“What? No! She’s crazy like that! I don’t need to stay aware of anything. Knock me the ‘F’ out first!”

“Don’t you want to prove you’re just as tough as Tamako?”

“I may be old, but I’m not an idiot! Also, hurry up so we can go watch Tamako.” replied Sam as he lay down on the bed.