Page 353 of Light Leech

I hated to see the optimist of our group grow pessimistic. “Are you… feeling well?”

She focused on me for a second, then turned back to the other competitors. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Maybe my outer consciousness needs to feed. My mind has been slowing down, but it might just be part of this test.”

“You’re probably right about the feeding. My mind was drained a little while ago and I thought nothing of it. Later, I got a sudden boost of cognitive clarity.”

She nodded. “Other-Ralia needs to get her ass out of her chair to feed. Then again, maybe I’m wrong to blame her. She knows better and we might be dealing with some serious guk outside of here.”

“It can’t be any worse than this.”

“What about meeting that god fetus?”

“I doubt that much has happened since we entered.”

She shrugged. It was so unlike her to let the conversation die with something as simple as a shrug. Why did it feel like I was the one comforting her? Had she finally passed on that too-heavy mantle after she let it break her back? Did she want comfort or was silence a better salve? I knew I often preferred the latter, but this was Ralia.

“Trust her,” Zhu said.

Does trusting her mean leaving her alone?

“I think she would ask for help if she needed it. Let her wage her battle.”

Ralia has never been the humble type. I’ve pushed past her pride often enough to help her out.

I didn’t wait for his answer before speaking to her. “Anything I can do for you?”

No words, just the shake of her head.

Maybe she wasn’t as dismal as she appeared. I remembered when I had seen her set everything aside, including social interactions, just to focus on a project. I let my mind settle with that option, though I doubted it was true. Even Boyband had asked for help when he needed it. She might have been prideful, but she wasn’t prideful enough to let stubbornness kill her.

“To the moon, right?” I said.

She smirked. “If that’s where this leads, then yeah. To the zegging moon.”

The announcer spoke, though the scenery did not change. “Congratulations, victors! Don’t let yourself celebrate quite yet. We still have more testing to conduct. This round of Luminate League will be a little different. I am sure many of you are familiar with the game’s various formats, but we have a new module that was made specifically for the Standardized Test! While some of you may argue that the previous round was unlike any standard match, this will include a new factor beyond that of the altered field. I know many of you prefer Captain, Duos, or Draft styles of play, but those are all children’s forms for players to use when they cannot otherwise win a standard match.”

The other competitors shouted their complaints, but the system muted their voices after a few seconds of angst, only solidifying the aforementioned tendencies of children.

“This format will test your extended focus and the ability to handle multiple responsibilities in scholarship. The battlefield and this match’s environment will be revealed upon entry. Every deck this round will be equipped with additional ability cards which will aid your Lonesome Infant, bringing your starting health to what would be a usual maximum of thirty-five health, but before all cards are added, players will be given an additional fifteen health to compensate for the Lonesome Infant. Additional ability cards may be added as per the players desire. Thank you.”

One blink was all it took for the world to shift from that chamber within a black abyss to the arena from before. The field between me and my opponent was a pixelated rainbow. An orb sat on each end of our fields.

I was sure my opponent was glaring at me and the egg was interesting enough, but Ralia’s off-putting behavior was still bothering me. I might be on the edge of death and the eventual collapse of the world, yet her affect bothered me more than any of these things. I didn’t think I was some great empath and was not humble enough to always put others before me. Was I being prideful for setting her before me? No, that was the opposite of selfishness wasn’t it? Maybe I was selfish for wanting to see her happy again so I could leech off her joy. Maybe I wanted her attitude to return to charismatic perfection so I had someone to lean on during my ceaseless hours of melancholia.

I thought of Boyband. Akna. Naoma was different. I tried to reach further into this emotion and found no clarity. Perhaps it was as simple as wanting my family to be well. Maybe Zhu was right in worrying about Ralia’s Gui, but she had always had issues with him. Yes. Part of it was the selfish desire to be back home with them in a comfortable bliss, but that meant that they too were well. It was all a simple desire that I was overcomplicating. I wanted my friends to be well and safe, but that desire was out of my reach.

The announcer’s voice grounded me to the unreal reality of the arena. “Choose your starting legends!”

Part of me wanted to ask the system why we had to choose our starting legends prior to the battlefield’s theme reveal, but there was no purpose. I wouldn’t have the strategy or familiarity with my deck for that to make any difference and–more significantly–the game had no rhyme or reason in accordance with human logic. It might pretend to be a test of true intellect, but I knew it was as rigged and flexible as any of the modern laws. A system wasn’t running this, but an individual–if the Luxists were leading us well. A human could change the order of the game’s phases all they wanted and any complaints would be ignored. Just as with the politicians outside of the neurocore, our opinions didn’t matter. It was their game, not ours.

I glanced at my opponent on the video cube above, which is the same as the last one as was everything in the arena, save the battlefield. He was an older man, perhaps sixty or seventy but still had a youthful visage. This was no comforting grandfather, but a hardened Scholar who seemed as fit for this event as any other. He was of West Arabasian descent and well-toned, though I wondered if his perfect musculature–as seen by the absence of a shirt–was another part of this illusion. My cartoonish apparel was just as unreal, but at least my body was my own.

I turned back to my hand as he finalized his starting lineup, which would be obscured until the game began. I didn’t think before choosing Zhu and hoped that every game from here on out would let me begin with him. Even if I didn’t use him in combat, his advice was invaluable. Advice or cheating, it didn’t matter as long as I survived until the next round.

I had Digital Dependent in my starting hand and would not use it out of spite. The Pain was back and despite its early death, I wanted to see what it could do. I selected it then chose Swine’s Servant, hoping it would at least be able to die before Zhu so I wouldn’t have to kill him again.