Too Stubborn to Die

Passing through the portal, the group appeared in the man-pad Aaron and Mo’han had hung out in several months earlier. It was quite nice to be visiting the place again after everything he had been through, and he was beaming from ear to ear as he stepped into the room.

The group crowded around the bar, and beers, amongst other drinks, were handed out. A short round of small talk followed, and shortly after, he found himself standing around a snooker table with Elmira, Cairon, and Mo’han, playing doubles.

The game was a little bit of a mess, since he was the only one who knew the rules. But it didn’t take too long to explain the basics, and being superpowered meant that they all picked it up rather quickly. After all, high Stats like Dexterity and Perception essentially made them considerably more gifted than even peak-level athletes. And Intelligence gave a nice boost when picking up new concepts, like mental lubricant.

“So, how’d you go, A-ran? Finish any more trials?” Mo’han asked as he carefully lined up a ball. Slowly, he tried to rein himself in, tapping the ball. But it was hopeless, and he sent it flying off of the table like a bullet. “Oh… my bad. Looks like I’ll have to dial back my power even more for this game. A true test of one’s ability to control themselves, I see.”

“Err, not exactly,” Aaron said, but he couldn’t be bothered explaining in detail. “Anyway, to your question, yeah, I did alright. I managed to knock out three in the end. I’m pretty happy,” Aaron lied.

He was happy, in a sense. But his joy at winning was soured by having to give up on the Trial of Travels, somewhat.

“Three?” Mo’han said as he straightened. “Amazing, as I expected of you! And guess what? I did the same, A-ran! Like brothers we are!” He added, extending a fist, which Aaron gleefully bumped.

He could tell the asura held back as their fists clashed, but he also didn’t feel like his arm was almost broken. That was good news going into their duel, and was evidence of how much he had managed to close the incredible gap that had been between them. In some ways, even more so than the fact that they had completed the same number of trials, since Aaron had a clear edge in dying, which was a massive cheat when it came to clearing trials.

“You two completed three full trials?” Elmira groaned.

“Hmph, impressive,” Cairon growled as his eyes swept over Aaron. “Not only did you beat that cyclops, but to complete so many trials… impressive.”

His tone was a little harsh, and Aaron got a feeling he held some resentment.

“Hey, fellas and females,” Voidrin said as he sauntered over, arms wide. “Come check this out. Clem here is cooking something up in the bar. Y’know, I think she knows a thing or two about this alchemy stuff.”

Over at the bar, Clementine was mixing potions and drinks with some protective goggles, looking almost as mad as Aaron as she concocted something.

“Should we be worried?” Talia asked, wincing as she watched fumes and hissing sounds coming from the other side of the bar.

“Why would we be worried? Don’t tell me… she doesn’t expect us to try whatever she’s making, does she?” Joseph said with a nervous quiver.

“Hey, Clem, need a hand?” Aaron said, waving as he strolled over. “I can go get my pot—”

“No!” Talia interjected. “Whatever happens, keep Aaron out of the kitchen!”

He slumped a little at the rebuke. After feeding them a good meal, he had hoped the perception of his cooking would have changed. Unfortunately, it seemed that the dish was seen as more of a lucky break, and not indicative of his regular cooking, as several others agreed, Mo’han being the most emphatic.

A minute later, as the group watched on, vials of bubbling green tonics were lined up on the table, and after several minutes spent convincing everyone to give them a try, they were consumed with apprehension by everyone except Aaron. And if not for the inspection windows proving that they were going to survive the ordeal, many probably would have declined.

However, Clem knew what she was doing when it came to mixing potions. Not only did they taste like a tropical island, with a little sweetness, some hints of coconut, and fruity flavors dancing around one another, but they actually gave him a buzz. But it wasn’t a normal tipsy buzz; it made him feel amazing. Euphoric, even.

It was a nice way to celebrate, as alcohol wasn’t what it had once been. He still enjoyed drinking it, but barely felt anything. And it wasn’t just Aaron who was barely affected by the stuff.

Luckily, these little vials Clem cooked up gave a nice, light buzz and loosened the atmosphere, all the while loosening lips. And soon, the room was filled with conversations going every which way, sometimes even passing right across one another as the chaotic cacophony escalated.

Everyone in attendance probably had a more temperate approach to taking on the trials than Aaron, but nonetheless, they had still been working hard. Everyone had been fighting and trying to improve since the integration, and having an entire day to just unwind without even thinking about all the other stuff was very clearly therapeutic.

And soon, the conversations drifted from retelling trials and Tutorial quests to stories about their pre-integration lives. Aaron found himself sitting at the edge of the bar, Talia to his left, and Emmy left of her, who sat within ear shot, while the rest of the group were drowned out by the chatter filling the room.

Talia was talking with Emmy, trying to get information about the young girl’s own Tutorial, but she wasn’t having much luck. Emmy was like ADHD on crack, and it was worsened by Clem’s drinks. She couldn’t stay on one topic for more than a few seconds before suddenly remembering something somewhat relevant and jumping to a new topic. At some point, Talia gave up and turned away from Emmy, and Aaron took the opportunity to jump in with a conversation of his own.

“So, you still planning on making that settlement when we get back?” he asked.

“Huh?” asked Talia. “Oh, yeah. Some of the others from my Tutorial made it in at the final week, and we talked it over in a bit more detail. We want to at least make a fortified town so that the weaker members of the Tutorial can live in peace. After that, I’m not sure. I definitely want to keep progressing. I got a Blessing last week, so I know at least one god is expecting big things from me.”

“A Blessing?” said Aaron. “No shit. Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” she said with a small smile. “Not much compared to you with your two Blessings, but it’s definitely something.”

Aaron hesitated for a moment before responding.

“I know I might not be the best person to say this, but they say that comparison is the thief of joy. You got a Blessing, and that’s great. Even if other people got more, that doesn’t make your accomplishments any less impressive.”

“Yeah…” she said. “You’re right… I just– Never mind. What about you? What are you gonna do when you get back?”

Aaron wasn’t sure if he should try to press more on the previous topic, but after a few seconds, he decided against it. Maybe she needed to hear some encouragement, but that encouragement coming from him probably wouldn’t help.

“Well, I guess I’ll help you out a bit while I hunt and try to catch up in levels, and then… I dunno.”

“Help me out? What do you mean? You’re going to come find me?”

“Well, you’ve got a Waypoint, right?”

“Yeah…” she said, staring at him like he had said something stupid. “That’s only for people from my Tutorial, though.”

“Yeah,” said Aaron. “Wait. Shit. Did I never tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“We’re from the same Tutorial.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. I found out in the Viewing Room. When I asked to see people from Earth, Rudolf mentioned that you were the highest ranker in my Tutorial.”

Talia stared at him for a few seconds incredulously, then shook her head and took another sip of her drink.

“Right, I suppose that makes sense,” she said. “I did think it was odd when I heard your accent the first time. Honestly, I was pretty surprised when I met you. Can you imagine? Rocking up in the trials only to find that out of the two other humans from Earth who had arrived, one of them was another Australian? Let me tell you, I was not expecting that.”

“Haha, yeah, I can imagine. Small world, huh?”

“That said, you never did tell me the details about how you got here,” Talia craned forward and narrowed her shifting gaze on him. “You arrived at the very start of the trials, right? That’s what I heard at least. There are all kinds of rumors going about in here… It’s hard to know what’s worth listening to. So, what happened exactly?”

“Yeah, you’re mostly right. As for the exact details, I can’t say I know exactly what happened, but I can comfortably say that skydiving before the world ends is probably a bad idea.”

“Skydiving?” Talia’s eyes blinked and widened.

“Yeah? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“What do you mean, skydiving?”

“You never heard of skydiving before? You know, like you put on a suit, and jumping out of a plane?”

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“I know what skydiving is.”

“Right… anyway,” Aaron mumbled, a little taken aback by the insistent glare Talia was giving him. “All I can say is it happened really quickly. I was falling, and then… Well, I died. It happened so fast, I didn’t even realize until I got to the Trials. Then, I was greeted by an annoyingly evasive conversation with Douglas. Through perseverance, I managed to get him to fill me in on the gaps.”

“Y-you died skydiving?” She swallowed. “And? W-why did you end up here instead of just dying?”

“Something about a god saving me,” Aaron shrugged. “I’m not entirely sure why, if I’m being honest. But I can’t complain with results, can I? Douglas said something about rules, but he didn’t exactly lay out their motivations.”

Talia looked lost for words, as if something was churning away in her head.

“What is it? You look… odd.”

“It’s just that… back when I entered the Tutorial, there was a corpse. It was… dressed in a skydiving suit. Helmet and all. It was gory, and I didn’t get a look at the face… I’m not sure if I would have been able to recognize you or not, but I was a different person back then. I knew it was a corpse, and it certainly wasn’t alive, and I didn’t particularly want to touch the thing…”

“The thing? That’s my corpse you’re talking about.”

“Sorry…”

“Don’t be. Pretty cool story. What a coincidence, though, huh? To think, you’re the one who found my corpse. Blimey. Well, I suppose it’s good to know what happened to me.”

“I should probably thank you. I… I…”

“What?”

“I looted you.”

“You what?”

“Yeah,” Talia grimaced. “Everyone who enters the Tutorial gets two health potions. You also get gear, but you have to select it from the armory after entering, and I guess you didn’t get the chance. It was only two potions, but they worked quite well for the early fights. Helped me get a head start, and once I was ahead of the pack, I could take advantage of overflowing hunting grounds that were too high level for others.”

“Really? That’s… that’s awesome. You didn’t have any real competition because of my corpse? Who’d have thought my death helped someone? Thanks, Talia. You kinda made my day.”

“I did?”

“Of course,” Aaron sipped a beer. “I hate things going to waste. And honestly, I feel pretty lucky for how things turned out. I got to know myself better coming here from the start. If I had come here as a level 80 or 90, I probably wouldn’t have gained Yendal’s blessing and would be on an entirely different path. Things happen for a reason, you know? And I’m pretty happy with the path I walk.”

“That’s good to hear,” Talia smiled.

“I have a good feeling about all this. It feels like fate. We can build a base and take care of Superearth together!”

“Superearth?” Emmy leaned forward. “Is that what you call our new world?”

“Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“That sounds soooo stupid.”

“Well, you come up with a better name than!”

“How? We haven’t even been there yet. How am I supposed to name it? What if it’s a water world? Then it’ll probably be called something like Aquatica, but if it’s a desert world? That’s going to sound soooo stupid. It’d need a desert name. What would a desert name even sound like? It would have to end with a vowel, I think. Oh, speaking of words that end in vowels…”

Aaron blinked. Why was he having an argument over the name of their new world with this little girl? Also, she seemed to have already forgotten about the naming thing and was now loudly musing about some kind of monster she fought in order to get a fruit that he assumed ended with a vowel, but he would be shocked if the story actually made it that far, as she was already getting distracted by explaining her Skills.

“So, you want to build a settlement with me?” Talia asked, talking loudly to be heard over Emmy.

“Yeah, I don’t see why not,” said Aaron, shrugging. “I mean, I’m no builder, and I’m not good with people either, but I’d be happy to do some hunting for food or exploring or other things like that. I need the levels anyway, and having a home base for the future would definitely be nice. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason,” she said, shaking her head. “I just kinda thought I’d never see you again. Or at least that it’d take a while. You’d be off in the multiverse, fighting and dying and reviving and gaining fame and power while I was back on Earth trying to get my feet under me. I thought we’d be saying our goodbyes, but now you’re saying you want to build a home with me.”

“Whoa, hey, slow down there, Elmira,” said Aaron.

Talia let out a small snort that soon turned into full-blown laughter.

“Sorry for bringing the mood down,” she said when she recovered. “I always get gloomy when I drink. I should probably–”

“Are you guys talking about me?”

Suddenly, Aaron and Talia both lurched forward as Elmira clapped a hand on both of their backs. Aaron looked up to see that she was a bit red in the face, probably having drunk a bit too much.

“I’m gonna miss you guys,” she said, her voice slightly slurred. “You guys are— You guys are good friends! Great friends! Remember that time we did that three-way?”

Aaron and Talia shared a mirthful glance as Elmira continued her drunken rambling about friendship, nodding along until the tan woman got pulled away by someone else who wanted her attention.

“Alright, so when we get back, we’re building a settlement,” said Talia.

Aaron was pleased to see that her mood had brightened.

“Yup!” said Aaron.

“We should get the other humans to join us. Emmy, you should come?

Emmy was still rambling and had moved on to aliens and spaceships, but perked up when she heard her name.

“Huh? Oh, right. Sure. I guess. I kind of do my own thing, though. But you guys seem cool enough. We can work together, I guess. If that’s what you really want.”

Talia continued listing other people she had to talk to, and a short moment later, Voidrin took everyone’s attention, entertaining the entire group at once with his clones. It was mostly harmless pranks and the odd joke. The guy was a lot of fun, although he definitely thought he was a good bit funnier than he really was. Still, his antics got a laugh out of everyone.

After that, the conversation shifted to Aaron and Mo’han’s duel. It was good fun, a few playful jabs here and there, but in truth, regardless of what they said, everyone respected both of them.

And as the conversation continued, it was revealed that out of all of them, Voidrin had been the only other person to actually finish an entire trial, completing the Trial of Magic. The revelation made clear that he had more tricks up his sleeve than Aaron had originally thought or seen in their duel, which raised a curious brow as Voidrin boasted.

Hiding styles and exploiting enemy weaknesses was kind of Voidrin’s thing, he realized. It was how he had beaten Cairon, and what he attempted to do against Aaron back when they dueled. And at that moment, he realized that the sneaky cyclops might have been holding back during their fight. Not because he didn’t want to win, but because he wanted to avoid showing off any more skills or strategies.

As he continued to talk about the Trial of Magic, Aaron knew something was up. There were gaps in the information. And he was fairly certain that Voidrin had fought exactly as he had against Cairon, not because that was the only way he could fight, but because he wanted to keep a few secrets hidden.

Voidrin, you sneak.

It was an interesting peek into who the cyclops was. After all, while people could follow others in the viewing room, there were limits to the room’s power. It couldn’t see within the trials, and it couldn’t see trial takers once they had reached the trials.

This all meant that if you didn’t know who a potential sector elite was before they reached the trials, you couldn’t go investigating them in the viewing room. And it would have taken a lot of time to go researching every single potential elite, which wasn’t something most people would do when trials and rewards were on the line.

However, Aaron did remember seeing one of Pentival’s guys hanging around the viewing room. He had seen the guy enter on many occasions. It had been a casual observation he had made while passing through the hallway, and he had never thought too much of it.

But he knew Pentival was a smart and quite conniving man. What were the chances that he asked one of his followers to take one for the team and spend their time in the trials investigating all the top elites?

All they would have needed to do was pass a few stages of the Trial of Travels, and then they could have focused the rest of their time on getting insights within the viewing room.

It wouldn’t have been a help against Aaron and other early arrivals, but Pentival and his group had shown up fairly early, and they would have been able to get a lot of information on the others. And since thousands of elites had arrived, that provided a heap of potential information they could have gathered.

It was an interesting thought, but ultimately not particularly important in the present. If anything, the god Lenriel’s relation with Pentival was far more troubling.

Aaron’s thoughts briefly touched on some of the warnings he had received. He had a bad feeling that wars would be heading their way in the future, but it wasn’t something to get stuck worrying about. If Lenriel or this Death God wanted to duke it out in his universe, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

As the night wound down, Aaron took the chance to speak with Emmy and Joseph more. He wished more humans from Earth had joined, but apparently, Johan had his own gathering, and the rest had chosen to visit it instead.

He was surprised at hearing that, since Emmy and Joseph had been the ones who agreed to Johan’s terms and accepted the System-ordained contracts.

Wait, they’re not spies, are they?

Both looked rather innocent, and Aaron didn’t have anything more than a hunch to hold against Johan. But still, it seemed like an odd coincidence that there were the only two who agreed to his terms—besides the two people he hadn’t recognized—and they had just so happened to decide to join their group.

“Did that Ernest guy seriously join Johan’s end-of-trials party?” Aaron probed, trying to get a better sense of this party Johan was throwing.

Not only that, but Ernest had a serious roguish trait to him, and he found it impossible to imagine him joining some going-away party hosted by Johan of all people.

“Ernest?” Emmy echoed. “Actually, you got a point. I don’t think he was in the group, after all.”

Aaron couldn’t be sure if they had intentionally held that information back or not, but it was an intriguing discovery.

“And you’re sure all the other humans from Earth went?”

“Pretty sure,” Joseph said. “More could have come through the gate, though. It’s not like I’m keeping tabs on everyone.”

Aaron nodded. It was a little odd. Still, he didn’t actually believe that Emmy and Joseph had subjugated themselves to Johan. They both seemed too independent. Whatever was going on, he had a feeling that these two were innocent, and if they were involved, they had been dragged into it. After all, the charismatic leader had a way with words, and he could see Johan convincing them that getting the inside scoop on this little gathering was somehow beneficial for Superearth.

And Aaron didn’t really care too much. They were really just a bunch of friends hanging out. He didn’t see how spying on them would really provide any useful information.

With that thought, he decided to drop the topic. He didn’t want to be involved in Johan’s politics. But he also got the feeling that if he just did his own thing, and didn’t try to muddy the waters, and keep out of it all, those who had some kind of grand ambitions for the world might just leave him be, at least for a while. After all, people like Johan would have bigger fish to fry when they reached Superearth.

Also, he was supposed to be relaxing. And Aaron was the kind of guy who’d rather be grinding and getting killed in a trial than talking politics.

As the night dragged on, a few people placed bets on the fight. Most put credits on Mo’han to win, although interestingly, Clem was among the few to bet on Aaron. He wondered why, but didn’t get a chance to ask her. She was quite popular, after all.

He had talked enough, and with the final day drawing nearer, he needed to recover a little. Not sleep, though. He barely needed any of that anymore, especially since he had not so long ago died in a trial and was refreshed.

He did, however, need to eat. And he needed to do a lot of that if he was going to properly prepare for this fight.

His overconsumption had already garnered a few sideways glances in the past, and so he decided to take a little privacy in the lead-up to the fight because he was going to get big. Really big.

Waving goodbye, a devilish grin creased his face. This was it. Everything he had worked for. And he was going to make it count, regardless of the outcome.