I opened up the interface and let the messages scroll by me. It was a lot of XP. Every level seemed to take more than the last, though, so I wasn’t sure what it would actually get me. But I found the Congratulations! message for level 9, so I went ahead and confirmed it.

  The rush of well-being that flowed through me could easily become addictive. It was like waking up from an incredibly good night’s sleep after eating nothing but the healthiest food possible for months. And this time I was clean, too. I felt amazing. I bet I could run a marathon. If, you know, I’d ever had any interest in doing something so seemingly tedious.

  I opened up my status and looked at my attributes.

  Physical

  Strength - 5

  Agility - 5

  Endurance - 5

  Mental

  Intelligence - 4

  Perception - 20

  Resilience - 15

  X-Factor

  Presence - 3

  Serendipity - 10

  Will - 20

  Free: 2

  Two free points. I didn’t much care about Presence, which was that ability to charm and influence people characteristic, but I didn’t love the fact that my Intelligence was starting to lag. That 4 was the same number I’d started with. Back at level 1, a 4 was probably a little above average. At level 9, it probably meant I was starting to get stupid. Or maybe it meant I was still above average for ordinary human beings, but compared to other people in the System, I was stupid. Either way, I stuck a point in Intelligence, bringing it up to 5, and then considered my last point.

  I couldn’t decide.

  I thought about asking Jack for advice, but when I glanced over at him, he had that glazed look of a person reading their own interface. Emma was lying down, staring at the roses overhead, so I couldn’t tell whether she was doing the same, but I wasn’t sure her advice would be much use, anyway. She’d clearly played more video games than me—or at least had people around her who’d taught her the lingo—but I didn’t get the sense that she was an expert gamer like Jack. She might have known what a status sheet was before the System arrived, but I doubted she’d ever spent much time ‘optimizing her build,’ as Jack called it.

  So, what did ‘optimizing my build’ mean to me? What would it look like to be my best self, System-designed?

  The very thought made me cringe. I wanted to do stupid things, like eat my body weight in potato chips or knock back five glasses of wine in a row just at the idea of being the System’s version of my best self. Would it even be my best self? Wouldn’t it just be a generic best self? The System’s idea of what would make a person perfect, ignoring everything that made us unique?

  Ugh. My metaphysical musings were stressing me out. I closed my status sheet, but let the message archive keep scrolling, watching as the XP added up and the loot flickered by. Partway through there was another Congratulations! and almost at the end, a third.

  So I could be Level 11 if I wanted to accept the levels now. That would give me another 4 free points to play with. My best self could have Intelligence of 10. Or Strength, Agility, Endurance of 10. Only one of the above, though. Or I could have Resilience of 20, plus another 2 points in something else.

  I sighed.

  “Tough choices?” Jack asked. I shot him a glance, startled by the question—then stared. Something about him had changed. He looked different, although I couldn’t really define exactly how. But he was simmering with excitement, almost radiating happiness.

  “What happened to you?” I blurted out, unthinking.

  “Magic,” he replied joyfully, bouncing to his feet and then vanishing in a puff of shadow. He reappeared outside the sanctuary, laughing. He spread his arms wide, embracing the world. “I got magic!”

  In a heartbeat, he reappeared inside the sanctuary, still laughing.

  Emma sat up, her expression anxious, her voice sharp. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”

  He stopped laughing, and dropped to his knees beside us.

  “Sorry,” he apologized immediately. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I wasn’t scared.” Emma’s defensive lie was obvious. Her body language, the way she’d drawn her elbows into her sides, the stiffness in how she held her chin—she might as well have been shouting, “I’m afraid!” into the atmosphere.

  Except… why was it so obvious? From the tilt of her chin? Really? Would I have noticed that ten minutes ago?

  My eyes narrowed. I reopened my status sheet, skimming past the numbers until I reached the traits section. Two new entries had appeared.

  Perception (20+)—Uncanny Insight

  Will (20+)—Rooted Self

  I hovered over Uncanny Insight until the tooltip popped up.

  Uncanny Insight—Your eye for detail has become something more. Subtle shifts in posture and flickers of expression speak volumes to you. You intuit people’s emotional states and hidden intentions with unsettling accuracy. You may not always understand why someone feels the way they do, but you almost always know that they do. You can’t read minds. But you can read everything else.

  I bit my lip, almost hard enough to draw blood. Great. Creepy Santa Claus was turning me into Creepy Olivia. But maybe that was okay? It felt invasive to see Jack and Emma’s emotions so clearly. But it wasn’t like I was using it against them. Right?

  It did feel strange to me, though. It was like I could suddenly see a color I’d never noticed before. Maybe Jack looked exactly the same as he did five minutes ago, and the only difference was in my ability to see the excitement and happiness in the way he held himself.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Level 5,” he told us. “Class change, again. I was taking my time, reading every word, but I got offered a Rare class, Shadow Mage. I wasn’t sure at first. You know I didn’t want an assassin-style class. But it’s like a hybrid rogue-mage. I can shadow step and use illusions.”

  Suddenly there were three Jacks in the sanctuary.

  The one on the left waved. The one on the right grinned. Then the middle one paled slightly, and the other two vanished.

  Jack dropped back to his heels, one hand on his chest.

  “Okay, that’s gonna take practice,” he said, breathing hard. “Oof. Still, when I get good at it, it’ll be incredible. I need to level up some more.”

  “Any good offensive abilities?” I asked pragmatically. Ostensibly, I was our front-line fighter but the monsters never seemed to realize that until I killed them.

  Okay, until Warden’s Edge killed them. If it weren’t for my shovel, I’d be the next thing to helpless. None of my abilities were real combat skills, unless Zelda’s killing sprees were based on our Bond Amplification ability. They might be, because she’d never been much of a hunter before. But on the other hand, neither was I, so maybe that was all her.

  Speaking of which, I tapped the sunglasses interface on and switched to the view that let me see allies, not just enemies, then took a look at Zelda. My jaw dropped and I let out an incredulous laugh.

  “What is it?” Jack asked as he followed my gaze. Before I could reply, he put a hand up and shook his head. “No, no, don’t tell me, let me guess. She’s like Level 11 now, right?” He saw my expression. “Twelve? Seriously? Thirteen?”

  “Fourteen,” I finally told him. “And she changed her class from Loyal Heart to Devoted Chaos Heart.” I couldn’t even say it without laughing. What the heck was a Devoted Chaos Heart? Well, apart from being pure Zelda.

  At least, Zelda as a puppy. I looked at my girl, and then I shoved the sunglasses off my face, and really looked at my girl.

  Nobody tells you when you get a dog that they will change just like people do. That the old dog of sixteen years, the one who’s lived a long life in dog years, seen a lot, been through a lot, will have a mature calm to her that you would never have expected from the puppy-who-was.

  And that you won’t notice it happen. One day, you’ll have this recalcitrant, stubborn, teenage dog who wants to test every boundary, and then you’ll turn around, and she’ll be the best dog ever. A tolerant, attentive, devoted good girl, who loves sleeping in the sunshine but is instantly responsive to your every signal. To your every motion.

  Loyal Heart was sixteen-year-old Zelda’s class. That’s who she’d become after growing up, growing old. A wise and patient, endlessly supportive companion.

  Devoted Chaos Heart? That was Zelda as she had grown, but also with that insane puppy spirit derived from the determined genetics of every Jack Russell terrier and the special spark that she alone had.

  “What are her abilities?” Jack asked.

  Did he not understand that I was busy adoring my dog?

  But I opened up my HUD again, navigating to the companions pane.

  Name: Zelda

  Title: n/a

  Species: Canine

  Class: Devoted Chaos Heart

  Level: Fourteen

  Condition: Optimal - Bond influence detected

  Status: Participant – Challenge Scenario #004328, Temperate Forest Biome, Difficulty Level 2

  Affiliations: Soul bonded - Olivia Thorne, First Defender

  Attributes:

  Toughness - 21

  Instinct - 20

  Spirit - 33

  Abilities:

  Emotional Support for the Win (Passive)

  Never Say Die (Active)

  Size is Just a State of Mind (Active)

  Marked for Play (Active)

  Traits:

  Toughness (10+)—All Grit, No Quit

  Toughness (20+)—Still Here, Still Biting

  Instinct (10+)—Bond Reflex

  Instinct (20+)— Chaos Vector

  Spirit (10+)—Heart Unleashed

  Spirit (20+)—No One’s Tougher Than a Terrier

  I didn’t know yet what half those things did, but my highest stats were at 20—equal to her lowest stat. And just from the names, I knew some of those traits were going to be fun.

  My dog was so much cooler than me.

  “We should all just go home now,” I said.

  “What?” Emma sat upright, immediately worried.

  I waved a dismissive hand. “Not really. Just… my dog is so much cooler than we are.”

  Emma snorted. “Did you notice that she does this thing where she gets enormous?” She spread her arms wide, reaching above her head. “It’s like a split second, but for that moment, she’s huge. Twice her real size. No, bigger than that. She’s like a monster dog. And then she grabs the goblin, shakes it like a chew toy, and throws it aside. She took out at least three of them that way in that last scramble.”

  “Maybe Size is Just a State of Mind?” I suggested, opening the tooltip for the trait. It read:

  Size is Just a State of Mind—You are not small. Not when it counts. For a few shining moments, you are as large as your spirit. Literally. Size is multiplied by 10% of Spirit. Effect duration equals 10% of Spirit in seconds. System Note: Size category temporarily elevated to “Try Me.”

  I closed my eyes, which didn’t make the tooltip go away of course, and laughed helplessly. So for three whole seconds, Zelda could be three times bigger. Bear was going to be in for a shock.

  Assuming, that is, that we made it out of here alive.

  A premonition of danger trickled through me, and my laughter faded. I stood up, staring past the rose vines at the darkness beyond. What was I hearing? Was it even hearing? Or more just… knowing?

  “Hey, Em,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “What’s your danger sense telling you?”

  “Oh, no.” She jumped to her feet, too. “Dang it, that’s something big. Dark red, so dangerous. Headed in our direction. But… huh.”

  I lasted about half a second before I asked impatiently, “Huh, what huh?”

  “Sorry. It’s moving slowly. I think it might be the lizard again. I was just trying to zoom out on my map and see if I could find any landmarks. I don’t know whether we retreated back to the line with the circle of clearings, or whether the lizard is on a new route.”

  “Maybe it starts spiraling in to the stronghold,” Jack suggested. “Maybe that’s how the scenario ends. The boss battle for the Rift Control Chamber. If we don’t defeat the goblins, the lizard does.”

  “Or if we’re still trying to fight them when it gets there, it kills all of us? Lovely,” Emma replied sarcastically. “That’s gonna be so much fun.”

  I hesitated. That gave me an idea. But was it a really stupid idea? I glanced down at Zelda, who’d stood up, too.

  She cocked her head at me, lifting the tip of an ear in acknowledgement of my gaze. Walk time? Play time? What do?

  “We’re going to have to move faster, that’s all. We need to defeat the goblins before we run out of time,” Jack said with confidence. But his expression—a worried frown—didn’t match his tone.

  “Like we haven’t been trying?” Emma said.

  “We’ve all leveled up. We’re all tougher. We can do better.” Jack clenched and unclenched his fists, the uncertainty obvious in his body language, despite his words.

  “The goblins still outnumber us. And outlevel us.” Emma picked up the picnic basket. “Whatever, we should get going. I don’t know if it knows that we’re here but it’s heading straight toward us. Let’s not be here when it gets here.”

  “What if…” I started and then paused, second-guessing myself. Jack was going to love this idea, and Emma was going to hate it. I knew both of those things already with a spooky level of certainty. Twenty points in perception might not be mind-reading, but it was closer than I was quite comfortable with. Not that I could do anything about it. I knew what I knew. But maybe I was wrong.

  “What if?” Jack prompted.

  “What if we lured the lizard to the goblin camp now? What if it got there ahead of schedule?”