"Hey, Nina!" I said, as we exited the facility. "I remember you saying you would get me to somewhere, to eat."

Nina looked at me and said. "Stop flashing, Ashen."

I looked about us. My shorts had no breeches. "I’m not flashing." I considered. "Tell me a way to contact you. We can resolve this matter at a more convenient time."

"Even though you are not my type, hmm?" Nina said airily. "Let’s get to the living quarters first. As for how to contact me, you can go to Archive > Books. You will find the contact book there. Or just buy a phone gadget. That will work."

I took out my barebone bike. Nina told me to fold up the bike instead. "Why?" I asked.

"Darius has brought his car. We are fine for now."

"We still have to get out of this tunnel," I said, surveying our surroundings. Roger went over to a space. He hovered his hands above, revealing a translucent surface. At a precise point, he pressed his index finger on the translucent surface. A van appeared. "Oh, I see," I commented.

This was handy. Well, it was a game. At any rate, it was handy.

The twelve prisoners boarded the van. Darius came out of the entrance. Nina went over to him. I followed along, my bike trailing on the ground. "Darius! Mind if you give me a lift until the headquarters?"

Darius put his index finger under his chin. He removed it. "You mean our living quarters."

"Yeah, living quarters it is," I said. I glanced down before looking at Darius, I wasn’t sure what the difference was.

Darius smiled. "I’ll take you there, but you give me 200 utils in return."

"You’ve got a deal," I said.

"Darius!" Nina said, angry. She was kind of reticent.

Darius shrugged. I reflected. I had gotten 1200 utils for my first brawl. The consecutive brawls lead the sum up to 4450. I bought a barebone bike for 3000 utils, grenades and a lighter for 1000 utils, and got four dynamite sticks for 100 utils each. The electric disruptor had cost 50 utils.

Accounting for the reward for rescuing Emma, I was 15,000 utils up, plus the 3,000 utils for completing the covenant quest. This left me with a decent amount of money for the day.

After exiting the alley, Roger delivered the prisoners to the Covenant of the Warrior. It was absurd that he would give them back to the people who had captured these prisoners. When I pointed this out, Darius said that it was not our job to guard prisoners. So, why did we break into the facility then?

***

"Speaking of culture I’ve only browsed, why does this building look like it has fifty shades of gray?" I asked.

My watch displayed 1701. The sun appeared dimmer. I could see a building splashed with squares and circles, of black, gray, white, and many shades of black and white. I heard Roger smirk, as he walked before us.

Nina looked at me, to the side, perplexed. ‘The wiser the fool,’ I thought.

The woman with binoculars, or was it with the face of Batman’s girlfriend, followed Roger. The woman with the bow followed along. A man followed behind.

Someone kneed my leg from behind. I turned around to see Nina. I stared at her. Nina looked away, and walked off. I took out the electric disruptor, but saw Darius’s foreboding eyes. I walked up to Nina and zapped an electro orb against her elbow, momentarily. David looked at me. Elizabeth Darwin was ahead. One man and one woman gossiped about me being a coward.

Nina was miffed, but did not return the favor. I stayed put too. This was not the objective of the game. At the very least, it reminded me of one occasion in primary school, when some guy broke out crying, because of some sickness, for some reason, in a toilet. The mathematics of this guy was wrong.

Compared to that, when I once fell, while playing football in high school, I had been injured from the fall, but I was the one who dragged my leg when standing up. My friend, who pointed out the vagueness of my blame had me quickly realize the problem.

That was fun memories.

Funnier still were one or two occasions of subtlety, also in high school. I learned from these experiences more than from self-important bullies. Feeling threatened by a mere inconvenient fact of existence, like a coward awaiting his desserts.

I reminded Darius to open his car’s storage. I took out my barebone bike. I parked it in the garage, inside some kind of locker. It was big.

We entered the building. The entrance was spacious, made for mobility. Nina instructed me to follow along. A woman called Alice took care of explaining the situation for me. I was aloof. I did not take note of her appearance.

Alice started by saying that she was taking care of the admission and customer service to get rid of some anxiety. That flew over my head. She wore a gray dress, looking like a nanny of the Victorian era. The Covenant of the Wise Fool, like all Covenants did theirs, collectively owned this building, though any member could break off at any moment’s notice, with his share, provided he had already bought such share.

Even without buying a part of the building, all members of the Covenant of the Wise Fool were welcome to the building. 204 individuals, of the Sect of Dragon-Hunters and the Sect of Dragons, lived here.

Here was the north-western part of The Great city. To me, it certainly smelled of oligarchy. Reality, for its part, was about feudal technocracy. Spyocracy economy.

I got to my room. Inside, there was a short corridor which separated the entrance from the first room.

I emerged out of the corridor.

Directly in front, there was a foldable table, and three chairs. A folding wall separated it from the rest of the areas. Behind, south-east a kitchen corner bent over to a gaming area to its right, like double waves. The walls curved inwards - first before the transition to the gaming area, and then after such transition.

A small table with enough space for three, and three chairs, lay in the north-east intersection of the gaming area. There were two wooden stands, to place artifacts or books. This sounded like an apartment. A discrete wall hanging overhead separated one wooden stand from the other. To the east, further north, beside the wooden stand, there was a bed. There was a bin beside the bed, other than a drawer overhead and two more, shorter stands.

There was a bin beside the kitchen too. North-west, I opened up to a bathtub and a toilet. I counted three basins in total. In two cubicle-like rooms, there were a gym and a workspace, respectively. These lay in the north, and opened up to an outer area.

In that outer area, fresh air flowed.

I observed the building was made of wood, and glass. When I rushed to the counter to ask, Alice assured me the building was safe from fire. "That’s just the way it is," she said.

I got out of the house. I had to have some cloth. Two hundred meters down the road, I encountered a shop. It sold cloth. That was great. The north-west side of The Great city, huh?

I freshened up. I consulted the Old Book.

System Notification

Create copy of ‘Old Book’ on your book stand?

Yes

No

I tapped [Yes].

A gray book dropped onto my book stand. The stand looked empty. I figured that was the price for having been a binge-consumer of information and stories.

Equipped for epicness. Same story as studies.

About one and half an hour passed. I had had the time to consult the contact book Nina mentioned. I had Darius’s and Nina’s contact details. As for the rest, it seemed I had to request it from them. The menu asked me if I wanted to be incognito when interacting on the contact book. I chose [No]. Ashen Spines was just my in-game name.

Granted, the game was my reality, right this moment. It simply did not register.

[Hey, Nina. What happens if I die in ‘Life of no Legacy’?]

[You suffer depression in real life,] Nina messaged back.

I pondered over it. [Sounds like that would be a rough road. We good to go for dinner?}

[Yeah, meet me downstairs,] Nina replied.

[Btw, does dying log me out?] I asked.

[No. Just like me, you opted to be a test subject. You don’t get out unless you clear the game or your health is critically endangered. Or maybe something happens in rl.]

[I see. You are a player too,] I told Nina.

[A pointer. I would never recommend dying or waiting to have your health critically endangered, latter due to your in-game problems. I don’t care about Caecus limits or whatever. Just don’t do it! *miffed emoji with tears*]

I stared, looking at the message. ‘Life of no Legacy’. In other words, did the game want its players to die without their body realizing it? That sounded like supercooling water to below zero degrees Celsius without allowing it to freeze. I vaguely remembered being told this by someone. [Relax. That must be the plot line only. They are probably testing our stress levels or something. Good for our psyche, I would assume.]

[… Are you down yet?] Nina asked.

I looked at the elevator doors opening. [Yep.]

[Great!] Nina replied.

I saw Nina, as I walked past a column. She wore a comfy-looking yellow t-shirt, under a dark-brown coat. I figured I would give the credit for the dressing code to her parentage. She wore a plaited brown and white skirt.

"This looks casual," I said.

"Echo chamber," Nina replied.

I was perplexed. I liked floral colors on soft-looking objects or people. "The Great city has a nice garden," I said.

"Come on, it’ll be quick," Nina said, grabbing my hand. We got into Nina’s car. Nina took the car out of the garage and drove ahead. Along the way, I asked Nina about teleport points, in ‘Life of no Legacy’. Nina assured me that these were far and few. The game developers preferred dramatic displacements, to teleport points. I had a feeling the game developers were shooting themselves in the foot. Dark Souls 1 played in the back of my mind. I commented no further on this topic.

We arrived at a restaurant. "You know, I feel a bit guilty," I confided.

The evening went well. We had turkey in butter. There were also a few desert specialties. By the time Nina ordered for desserts, I had figured out who I was, for the interim. We shared the bill.

Nina avoided quest discussions. She did get heated about injustice, which was what it was.

Apparently, she liked making abstract paintings. Nina had a taste for sass and danger, just not what I would be concerned about.

We returned back.

***

Morning.

Fire shot across the sky, literally. When I checked, it was a visual effect that affected my windows. I turned that off.

The sky was clear. I couldn’t see strains of rain from any angle I looked. I checked the watch – it said 0600. That was strangely punctual. I was a non-24 guy. Only necessity made me want any sense of limit. Screw primary assholes who frowned at this. Sleep hours were personal business.

I lifted myself from the bed. I made my bed covers. I pushed the extra bed sheets and my pillow into the drawers above. I brushed my teeth and looked about the apartment.

System Notification

You may rummage breakfast in Wing B, room 5.

That sounded fairly opportunistic. I commented as much to Darius. "Good morning, Darius!"

"Good morning," he said.

"Don’t you think that free lunches are too good on newbies?"

"You are indeed new here," Darius said. "It takes one to two weeks to get past the label of newbie in here. That said, enjoy your free lunch. The higher-ups are charitable folks, including me. We have freely allocated charity stakes for all members. There is no obligation for us to provide that once our funds dry up. So, keep an eye out on your personal savings."

"Okay, cool! Awesome. How do I get to Wing B, by the way?"

Darius stopped. "Just turn left from here. Turn left again. Turn right. You will see room 7 of Wing A. Go straight on, till the third room. You’ll enter Wing B. We don’t offer maps here. You want one, you will automatically get it if you try generating one from your [Maps] inventory."

"Got that," I said.

Today, my objective was to visit the Royal Lucretius. From my consultations with the [Archive] yesterday, I had discovered that the Royal Lucretius had some open-access museums. That would be interesting.