"Goodness, Petey, you look like fried shit!" Jack exclaimed
Looking at himself on his phone's camera, Peter couldn't help but confirm Jack’s words. His skin was burnt, reddish on some parts, or even blackened. Close one…
“Good thinking back there, Jack,” Peter said in a rasped voice. “Thanks. You kinda saved my life.”
“It’s OK, man… This assisted aiming stuff is fantastic. How do I unlock more of it?”
“Say again?”
“The skill you bestowed on me. I got a message. Help Peter, use your new abilities. Don’t you remember?”
Shiiiiiit… Giving him a class was the only choice, right?
“The fuck? Hey! Fafnir! Come back here!”
There was no answer. Peter lay on the grass, looking at the blue sky and the fluffy clouds, his mind refusing to cope with reality.
“Who are you talking with?” Jack asked.
“Give me a few minutes, I’ll explain everything,” Peter sighed.
There was a faint, nagging voice somewhere over the blackness.
“Dude! Wake up! Peter!”
Peter squeezed his eyes shut. His eyelids were already closed, but he glued them together harder. He had no idea who was disturbing him but wished it would disappear.
“Petey! Go fetch me a beer!”
“Go fetch your own beer, you asshole!” Peter screamed, jumping on his feet, ready to teach the jock a lesson. Now that he was powerful, it was just a matter of— Then he remembered everything. “Geez… How long was I out?” Peter asked, rubbing his eyes.
“Hours, man.”
It was five in the afternoon, Peter found out by checking his phone. All around them lay various items he didn’t recognize. Weapons, a few pieces of light armor, and a small wooden chest.
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s from the camp,” Jack said. “I went through the tents and picked up what looked better. I found the chest in the headmaster’s tent. Look,” he opened the lid.
“Whaaaaat?” Peter gasped. The chest was filled with gold and silver ingots. Cultivator type, slightly less or more than an ounce, he couldn’t remember.
“It’s about six hundred pieces of gold and a few thousand silver bullions,” Jack reported. “We…err… you’re rich, man.”
“We are. The rule is to take ten percent for a common fund and divide the rest equally between those who participated in the fight.”
“Err…”
“Welcome to the Resistance,” Peter offered a handshake.
“Thanks!” Jack blurted, grabbing Peter’s hand vigorously.
“Yeah, curb your enthusiasm… it’s a long way to go…”
“I’m kinda hungry,” Jack grimaced. “What if we go into that town and—”
“We close the camp’s gates first. There is still a lot of loot there—”
“There’s nothing of value left, I searched all the tents,” Jack shrugged. “Only if you’re into worn socks and pajamas.”
“The tents are valuable; they are made from an enchanted fabric. And those pillars, broken or not, might be recyclable or stuff. I’ll call a friend.”
“A friend? Who?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Promise you won’t freak out.”
“Why, he’s a monster or something?”
“Or something.”
Half an hour later, with the loot in storage, Peter and Jack arrived at the beach bar. Since the System was still unavailable, Peter asked the bartender to call the doppelgangers and told Jack the whole story over a beer, another one, and a third. They also decided to split the loot in three. That third part was to be divided between Jenni’s family and the surviving doppelgangers.
An hour later, the doubles arrived with two separate sand boogies. Despite Peter’s warning, he could tell Jack was totally freaked out. Peter also noticed that their doubles had bruises and swollen eyes. “What happened?” he asked, worried they had an encounter with the Cultivators’ police or some gang.
“We had an argument,” Jack from Two said. “I got something of great importance back from Jack, and he got upset. Then, we fought, and I won,” he emphasized.
“I don’t want to know,” Peter shivered. “And frankly, I don’t care. I’m here on business. We just cleared a base, a cultivator camp. I’ll mark the location for you. There’s loot to be recovered. And I need you to find me some people in Quebec,” he produced the tag.
“You have to pay for the gas,” Peter’s double said in a low voice, opening his swollen lips just half an inch. “It adds up. Go here, Pete, bring them, go there, Pete, loot—”
“Sell anything you find in that camp and keep half the money.”
Ten minutes later, after setting more details, Peter and Jack returned to their camp. When they entered the premises, there was no sign of any of their friends. It was dinner time, so it was weird.
“Have you seen my girlfriend?” Peter asked a normie, the engineer he had been teamed with to set up the tents.
“I think she returned to the campus,” the young man said.
“In the morning,” the girl beside the engineer frowned at Peter. What kind of boyfriend are you, to go away all day? was the vibe in her eyes.
“Jack!” Peter yelled. “Let’s go home.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“In five,” Jack shouted back from inside his tent. “I’m packing.”
To kill time, Peter entered his tent to check if there were more items to take back home and found a note on his sleeping bag: System’s glitching, your phone out of reach, couldn’t send you a message. We’re going back to the campus.
Shit… putting my phone in storage is like shutting it off.
“Are you ready already?” Peter yelled at Jack again. He was worried sick. A few seconds later, thunder clapped. There was no qi-message this time.
"He did it!" Li giddily yelled, indifferent that everyone could hear him.
"Who, your boyfriend?" Melinda sneered.
Oh, my God! Peter choked. Insulting a parent and a superior in public was a terrible offense in the Cultivators’ world. He exited the tent rapidly to witness the discussion.
"What a silly joke!" Li brushed the insult away. “Don’t you realize how important this is? He took out Wu! He was the second-best lightning master after me. Look, here is the fight.”
Li shoved a phone in his daughter’s face. The faint noises reaching Peter’s ears were his fight in the camp.
A student must’ve recorded it...
Melinda frowned, leaning forward. "A Rogue with both Lightning and Earth affinities?"
"Or an artifact. Remember the last tournament I won using a water-filled spatial tank? They didn’t see it coming.”
“It’s interesting, Grandmaster,” Melinda transited to the polite cultivator tone. “Thank you for sharing.”
“You’re welcome,” Li said, ruffling Melinda’s hair despite her trying to slap his hand away. “That Impulse is a good fighter. Inexperienced against cultivators, obviously, but good. I might enter the pro division in disguise to fight him myself… Can't wait!”
Fuuuuuuck! Peter wailed on the inside.
Without further ado, Li zapped out. Melinda showed her middle finger in the direction he had disappeared and returned to her tent.
Why is she so cranky? Peter wondered.
“You coming?” Jack yelled from the obelisk.
Hurrying to join the jock, they activated the transportation. The Campus obelisk was set on the main lawn.
The System’s voice arrived in his head, faint and slow, like a ghost from the movies.
You OK, buddy?
“Come,” Peter snatched Jack by the arm. “There’s an emergency… or a prank.”
“What’s up with you?” Jack asked. “I have to check on Naomi; we were supposed to go out for a movie tonight.”
“She’s with Regina, and something happened.”
“How do you know? Is she all right?”
Haven’t you included him in the messages?
There was no answer, and Peter sped up. They both rushed up the stairs and bumped into each other when they knocked on the door. The handle moved, and the pan opened.
“Whoa!” Jack jerked. In the door frame was a mummy. Somebody wrapped in bandages, showing only a pair of blue eyes.
“Oh, it’s a prank,” Peter sighed in relief. Those eyes were Regina’s.
Grabbing him by the T-shirt, the girl pulled Peter in. Jack followed. The scene inside was absurd. On one side were Marius and Daniel. The first had the mother of a bandaid on his forehead. In contrast, the second lay laterally on a sofa, resting on an elbow, looking merry or drunk. He had red cheeks, and his eyes were crossed and wobbly.
Ariana sat on the floor, resting on Shredder like on a puff. The warg was in his big size. Wrapped in a blanket and tied up like a sausage, propped against a wall, was Naomi, a handkerchief in her mouth.
“H… H…” Naomi mumbled through her gag with widened eyes.
“I don’t understand the prank,” Jack shook his head.
“Neither do I,” Peter confessed, scratching the back of his neck.
“It’sf not a flank,” Ariana sneered. Her voice was hissing, and two of her front teeth were missing.
“What happened to you?” Peter asked.
“She happened!” the mummy and Ariana pointed at each other simultaneously.
“Should I do the honors?” Marius asked. “Sit. You’ll need it, believe me.”
Peter tried to use the free seat near Regina, hugging her, but she growled and flailed her hands, pushing him away.
“Don’t touch me; it itches!” she complained.
Peter obeyed, sitting on the floor. Jack went and leaned on the wall next to Naomi.
“Hi,” Jack said to her. “We’re good for the movie, right?”
“H… H…” Naomi repeated the same muted sounds.
“OK, here we go,” Marius started. “It’s all my fault. We hunted an old bilghie and only that. Now I hunt responsibly,” he looked at Peter. “I notice some wolves' footprints, and we follow them. We get into the woods, and then a pack ambushes us. They were wargs, not wolves.
“The pup grows and growls. All but two flee. A she-warg and her father. Older, big, gray fur. She woofs something at Shredder, he woofs back, the old warg growls—”
“She askedf Shfeddi fol a date,” Ariana said. “He toldf me. But Shfeddi refused. Good pup,” she fondled the warg’s head. “He’s undelage and knowfs it.”
“He told you?” Jack asked.
“She understands animals now,” Peter explained. “Because of her class.”
“Ah, that… Where do I see my stats?” Jack asked.
“H… H…” Naomi interjected.
Marius shrugged and continued. “Daniel panics and tries to shoot the wargs. Shreddi growls at him to stop, but Daniel doesn’t understand, and he presses the trigger. Shreddi bites Daniel’s left buttock; Daniel misses the wargs but grazes my forehead. The monsters ran away. Then the System gives him a class.”
“Why?” Peter asked.
“To save his life. He was bleeding out. Has some condition; his wounds don’t close or stuff. It was like a geyser of blood erupted out of his buttock.”
“Ew,” Peter and Jack wrinkled their faces in disgust at the same time.
“The System healed him, more or less, then asked Jack’s double to send an off-road truck after us. We couldn’t wait for you, Peter, sorry. We picked the girls on the way. In the camp, Melinda took care of Daniel but gave him one of her pills, and he’s been like that since,” Marius gestured toward the cook.
“HOWDY!” Daniel screamed all of a sudden, making everybody jerk.
“What next?” Peter asked.
“I hadf an algumentf with Melinda. Told hel I lofe hel,” Ariana said. “She toldf me I’m a kidf, and what do I know about lofe.”
So that’s why Melinda was so upset… “I think she loves you too, Ari,” Peter said. “She was very agitated when we saw her. Snapped at her father like a teenager.”
“Leally?” Ariana asked.
“H… H…” Naomi heaved her leitmotif.
“Then, that one,” Marius pointed to Ariana, “started crying, and I decided we should return to the campus. I had no more duties for today. And once here… Have you noticed the big screen on the lawn?”
“No… I didn’t pay attention,” Jack said, with Peter nodding a second afterward.
“It streams the Arena. And here you were, fighting against each other. Naomi screams: Oh, no, it’s a plot, that monster will kill my baby… the baby’s you, Jack, and runs away. The System alerts us: Naomi’s running to her room to use her laptop to spill the beans about Peter’s identity. We caught up with her, and the princess used her voodoo doll to take her prisoner. We were lucky no one saw us.”
“So, it’s not a prank?” Jack asked. “Can I untie Naomi?”
“H… H…”
“I suppose so,” Marius shrugged.
“And what about you two?” Peter shivered, taking in Ariana’s missing teeth and Regina’s wrapped silhouette.
Regina took over. “I dunno. She got mad or something. All of a sudden, the bitch begged me not to cheat on you. Imagine my outrage.” The last word had such a pretty French accent that Peter wished to kiss her lips. Which were invisible under the mummy wraps.
“I saa you flilting with the othel Jack!” Ariana hissed, her anger amplified by the missing teeth.
“I’ll never cheat on Peter!” Regina yelled over him. “I was not flirting; I was having a conversation. I told the other Jack to confess his feelings to his Regina. Their Peter is a jerk. Harem is not true love.”
“He was quite happy when we saw him,” Peter said. And bruised. “I think your advice worked.”
“Yey!” Regina clapped. “Ouch…” she wailed the next second, shaking her hands.
“And was it too hald to explain insteadf of punshing me?” Ariana yelled. “Lookf at me now.”
“It was a reflex! What you did next was mean and intentional!”
“What did she do?” Peter asked.
“She sicced a crazed fire ant nest on the princess,” Marius said. Ariana grinned, showing her missing teeth and bleeding gums, obviously proud of her achievement.
“Baaaaby!” Naomi yelled, finally free, hugging Jack. “I’m so happy you’re alive.”
“And then I heard them fighting and dragged them inside,” Marius finished the story. “Might have knocked their heads against each other a few times to make them behave.”
“You thought Peter would kill me?” Jack asked Naomi. “Why?”
“Because he’s a cold-blooded killer!” the girl blurted. “Why would he challenge you to fight you if not for that?”
“It was the other way around. I challenged him because… it’s not important. But he’s my friend. He recruited me. I got a class, and we fought against an evil cultivator.”
“How come you are not healing?” Peter asked.
“We are,” Regina sulked, “but the regeneration goes to the vitals first. And it’s working slower, for whatever reason. The System is malfunctioning or something.”
Sure, buddy, reboot… Poor you… And I thought my day was hard… “I think he needs me on the same floor to fully function,” Peter said. “It reboots now.”
“Can’t wait to learn more!” Jack exclaimed.
“Yeah… Let’s do this: Regi and I move to my studio, and Marius stays here with Daniel until he gets better. I’m very tired… Why don’t we take a break and meet tomorrow for lunch in the cafeteria?”
“I can’t go out like this!” Regina pointed at herself.
“Come, baby,” Peter gently took Regina’s hand. “Everybody will think you’re dressed for a costume ball.”
“Ol Halloween,” Ariana snapped.
“Let’s go!” Regina blurted, rising abruptly to her feet. “I wonder what was in my head, being friends with those two.”
“Shreddi, you coming?’ Peter asked. The warg shook his head. Ariana has just begun scratching him between the ears.