It was Remi’s turn to look with measuring eyes. She’d saved him, and she wouldn’t pretend to be humble about it. He liked that. It’s teasing, sure. It was also deflective. Interesting. It was as if they were suddenly back in class. He probed with his favourite question.

  “Why?” He knew it was open-ended, and was a bit out of left field, but that gap is where he usually found the most interesting stuff.

  Nel glanced at him. “Why what?”

  “Well, back in the maze,” Remi said, “I saw you could’ve picked someone else. Someone who didn’t nearly die several times today. That guy in the armour. Why me instead of that guy?”

  She considered. Remi could tell she was flipping back through her options until she found who he was talking about. “The Paladin? Jonathan?”

  “Sure. If that was his name. The twenty-something muscular guy with the glowing spear.” He leaned in a bit. “Why the forty-something book nerd and not the logical choice?”

  “What makes you think you aren’t the logical choice?” She didn’t finish immediately. Instead, Nel stood and dragged her chair directly across from him, leaving two long channels in the rainbow-swept sand. She sat directly in front of him, their knees almost touching, but not quite.

  She looked at him for a long moment. Hard, like she was putting the pieces together. “Listen and listen close. I need you to understand something if this is going to work.” She took in a breath, held it and then continued. “I didn’t pick you because of school. Not because I knew you back then. Not because you were my teacher, or some stupid shit like that. I picked you because you're—the logical choice. Of all the people I've ever met, you understand stories the best. This place is built on stories. I don’t need a hero here. I can handle myself.”

  Remi chimed in with an “Obviously” of his own.

  She smiled slightly, but continued. “So, let’s get the whole mentor-paradigm thing out of the way right now. I don’t need it. I’m not looking for a saviour, so if that’s what you’re thinking, then you’re simply mistaken.” Nel shrugged. “As for Jonathan, he was a friend. We used to play tabletop together, long before any of this. He always picked a paladin. But that guy? He was always an ass. Never did what was best for the group, only what got him the best gear for himself. I don’t need a partner like that in here. I’m looking for someone I can trust to have my back. I'm pretty sure that’s you. Honestly? I think you need me more than I need you.”

  “Truth!” Remi said, grinning. “I can accept that. Not to mention, you always were a gentlewoman and a scholar.”

  Nel sat back. A bit more relaxed now. “Well…one of those is true.” Then she squeezed her fists, cracking her knuckles one joint at a time. The sound was sharp, a dry and deliberate contrast to the lapping waves, slicing clean through the hush of the waves behind her. And just like that, the tension between them unraveled. It was not gone, but loosed enough to breathe again, and for them to move forward together.

  “I guess I should probably update you on what happened after you left,” Remi said, watching her closely. “I noticed you didn’t make it to the ending.”

  Nel gave a small shrug, not apologetic, more like well—you know how it is. “Yeah, sorry—I had to leave before the tutorial finished,” she said. “Had to get back to my thread or risk not reintegrating into The Crucible.” She shook her head no as Remi prepared for a follow-up question. “We can talk more about that later, but for now I want to know what the system did after I messed up its loot drop.”

  “Oh, sure,” Remi said, waving a hand vaguely. “It said I still needed a prize at the end. Something, something logic.” He shrugged. “But the short version? It let me spend my Inkwell on a permanent reward.”

  Nel leaned in slightly, curious. “You mean like a bonus stat, or a better weapon?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Remi straightened slightly in his chair. “Hey. I like my metre stick.“

  She smiled. “You always did.”

  “And it worked out.” Her expression tightened slightly. “It was basically a free wish. Just no djinn.”

  Nel’s brow furrowed. “What did you wish for?”

  Remi hesitated, heat rising in his cheeks. “You’ll tell me I was stupid.”

  She didn’t smile, just repeated, “What did you spend it on?”

  He looked out over the mist-veiled water. “I used it to create a tutorial experience.”

  “For who?“ Her voice was flatter now. Probing. “You again? You wanted more practice?”

  “No.” A pause.

  “For who then?”

  He exhaled. “For everyone else.”

  Nel stared at him for a long time. Remi could feel her gaze—heavy and unreadable. He refused to meet it, eyes instead fixed on the horizon. The only sound between them was the gentle slap of waves against the shore.

  He braced for her response.

  Finally, she spoke softly, almost in a whisper. “That was definitely not stupid.”

  Remi let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

  “Still a teacher,” she murmured as she rose to her feet. “And way better than the Paladin.” She didn’t say it to him. She’d said it to herself, but he heard it. Her tone shifted, businesslike now. “We should get moving.”

  “Sounds good,” Remi said, standing too.

  “Bring the chairs.”

  He blinked. “What? How?”

  Nel rolled her eyes. “Seriously. You have a portable pocket dimension on your hip. It should hold about a thousand pounds of matter and will never feel like it weighs over ten. The opening’s more for aesthetic than literal. If you think about it, it should stretch to fit most reasonably sized things.”

  He blinked again. “But how do I—?”

  “Figure it out, Mr. Page,” she said, already walking down the beach. “It’s part of the test.”

  As Remi scrambled to his feet, she called over her shoulder. “Also? Next time, zip that thing up when travelling through portals. A pocket dimension inside another pocket dimension equals boom!” She made a slight hand gesture that he recognized, even from behind. “Lucky for you, that last trip was a short one. Next time you might not be so lucky.”

  Remi stood there for a moment, stunned. Then he moved and scrambled forward with the urgency of someone already three steps behind. He fumbled with the bag, his eyes darted between the opening and the chair beside him. As he hefted the chair, it clanked awkwardly, his posture a mix of confusion and disbelief.

  He didn’t know exactly how the system worked, but Nel had already decided he would figure it out. So he did his best to keep up.

  [UTILITY LOAD: 1.4%]

  The chairs had been stowed safely in the bag—eventually. Regardless of what Nel had told him, Remi expected some heaviness to the satchel, but there wasn’t. An inspection showed the contents reorganized. There was a section for “Things that Stack” containing the new chairs neatly piled one on top of the other. There was a “Has its Own Container” section with his Scrivener and AV kits. Finally, a “Tree-based Packaging” zone that contained his magazine, metre stick and, surprisingly, the juice box. He shook his head, quietly amused by the satchel’s bureaucratic whims as he closed it with a too-loud ZIIIIIPPPP! That really was loud.

  Remi rushed to catch up to Nel, who had made her way well down the beach and had angled away from the shore towards the dense jungle to the right. He could see a break in the foliage there, a likely path. He guessed that was where she was heading given her current trajectory. Just as she reached the gap in the treeline, he caught up. Sand sprayed from his boots. The beach resisted, but then gave way. He trudged through the soft threshold before the green wall ahead. Every step pulled a little harder, as if the world itself were reminding him that transitions took work.

  He was out of breath when he reached her, and Nel couldn’t hide the amusement in her expression.

  “Took you long enough.” Her eyes twinkled. Remi could only nod in response as he tried to catch his breath. I really need more endurance. He opened his stat panel and assigned his free point without further thought. He’d levelled up right after the Frank fight, just before stepping through the portal—complete with the usual DING! and system fanfare.

  Ding! [LEVEL UP!]

  Level: 10

  [Stat Points Awarded]

  Archie’s congratulations followed. He’d said how Remi “had done better than expected.” Remi had expected another reward, but got a nerf. Archie praised his creativity for using Stat Surge on luck had been “enormously entertaining” but also just “too broken to continue.” He’d then said how the system had “patched it.” Remi pulled open the spell’s tooltip to reread the amended line, which sported a brand new parenthetical.

  Stat Surge channels narrative momentum into raw potential, allowing the caster to temporarily double any one core stat (except Luck).