It was still early in the morning as I slowly worked to catch my breath. I had gotten far more sleep than I had ever intended to, but I had felt such a wave of exhaustion after wandering around Central Park for hours that I had simply needed the sleep leading up to the end of the last phase. Even so, once I was awake, I had a hard time settling back down. Once I knew I wasn’t going to be sleeping much that next night, I found myself hyper fixated on wanting to train.

  There was a part of me that knew I had gotten extremely lucky to have been so far ahead on my Phase Points when everything went down, mostly just because it gave me that chance to recenter myself after… well everything. It would have been one thing if I had just been turned into an Augment, what we called the people who had developed super human abilities in the last ten years, but it hadn’t been that simple. It hadn’t been anywhere near that simple.

  I might have been able to easily accept that the whole thing was just one giant game being played by forces way outside of my control back when I still had my Acceptance Matrix activated, but with it off? Well, there was a reason I had locked myself up in my room for well over a day. Well…. A reason other than the man I had to put down barely a few days ago.

  SnakeBite had been my enemy… or so I thought.

  I had been charging forward so blindly, punching down doors and thinking I was taking on a man that was simply trying to terrorize my neighborhood with an army of snake-men hybrids. But it had been so much more than that. SnakeBite, while being the primary source of power for the Viper biker gang, was more akin to a battery than a leader. He had been captured and controlled by someone he had thought he could trust, someone who had no interest in actually helping him.

  The SnakeBite I had thought I had been chasing down was nothing more than a husk of a person, forcefully kept alive to be used as a source for creating Temporary Augmentation injections used by the non-Sapient NPCs of the Viper gang. His mentor, a man that went by the codename TechWarden, had been simply experimenting on him and the Acceptance Matrix had been the tool he had used to ensnare SnakeBite. He had wanted to do the same to me, but instead SnakeBite had convinced me to disable it, protecting myself from any forced control.

  Then, in an act he knew would be hard for me, SnakeBite asked me to kill him. To free him from the control and constant pain he had been in. And as much as it went against every instinct I had, every moral fiber of my being, I obliged.

  Up until then, I had killed a few of the non-Sapients, but it had always either been by accident or because they had already injected themselves with the temporary Augmentation, which always ended with them dissolving into a pile of dust no matter how much I tried to put them down non-lethally. I had never wanted to kill anyone, even with the Matrix activated, I had always believed I could find a way to simply knock my enemies out. Even when someone like Hydramental, SnakeBite’s exceptionally disgruntled younger brother, tried to kill me on multiple occasions, I hadn’t even thought for a moment to try and put him down permanently. So even knowing it was a mercy, killing SnakeBite left me feeling slightly more hollow than I used to be.

  I wandered around Central Park, simply because I couldn’t return home. Because returning home meant I was going to have to talk about it. One of the nice side effects I had discovered to having my Acceptance Matrix turned off was that I had the ability to mentally disable all internal communications to myself, including from my so far annoying Personal A.I., Angie. Unfortunately it seemed like an all or nothing situation, meaning I had to also disable communications with Jon, my literal Guy in the Chair teammate and best friend.

  Since I did want to be alone, that was more than fine by me, at least while I still had the energy to walk around. Even when I did finally return home, knowing I needed to actually sleep, I avoided the conversation. To Jon’s credit, something I probably should have given him from the start with how long he's known me, he didn’t press me on it. It made me appreciate him all the more as I settled onto my bed, trying to find comfort in a crazy world.

  The interesting part about disabling the Matrix was that it hadn’t come with some sudden influx of locked away emotions. Part of me had been expecting that to happen but the longer I waited without any more than a bit of tinges of feelings when I thought of the last few days, the more certain I was that it wasn’t going to happen. In fact, all of my memories of the last few days had already been permanently colored by the Acceptance Matrix. Of course, realizing I could never truly feel the feelings I should have felt in those memories just sent me spiraling into a panic attack, but in a bit of crude irony, having the panic attack actually ended up making me calm down and actually get the sleep that had so far eluded me since it meant I was actually feeling my feelings.

  When Axio finally blared out his announcement, I had slept for nearly 18 straight hours, leaving me feeling far more refreshed than sleeping that long should have. I listened to his announcement, finding myself somewhat surprised that, although the numbers in our wave had already gone under 50% of the starting amount, no one else had to die for failing the First Phase. The fact that we also were given a bit of free time before the next Phase meant I also had a few extra days to get myself back into the swing of things.

  I didn’t want to think that Axio, the A.I. that seemed to be in mostly full control of the game, was specifically trying to help me, but it was hard to deny that his decisions had helped me. Although he had used words like benevolent and acted like he was doing us favors during his announcement, I was more than aware that Axio was actively trying to circumvent the rules that he was bound by as the A.I. administrator of the game. That was a whole extra can of worms that I was definitely not in the mindset to deal with and I instead chose to focus on the fact that I had absolutely no idea what the next phase was going to entail.

  It was only a bit past 6 AM the morning following the end of the First Phase and I was in the room summoned by my Pocket Dojo Safe House expansion. It used to just be called the Training Dojo in the small location panel that always sat in the bottom left of my screen. After I opened the first of my S:Tier loot boxes the previous night, the box I had received for being in the Top 10 at the end of the phase, I received an item that, well, honestly wasn’t all that great for me. It was an item that seemed specifically designed for healers, and while I certainly could have sold it for a good amount at the resale shop in Sanctuary Square, we did have Jon’s reroll ability to use.

  Other than acting as my second set of eyes, his ability to reroll one of my loot boxes every 12 hours was one of the best parts of his The Guy in the Chair powerset. We immediately used it on the S:Tier, knowing there was theoretically no rush to open all of the boxes in a single swoop. After the item finished randomizing, we were left with an item called The Master’s Seal. The item was specifically designed to work in conjunction with my Pocket Dojo.

  After applying the item to the door of my Training Dojo, the Safe House expansion moved all the way up to Level 3, unlocking a whole host of new features within the room that was pretty much magically connected to what should have only been a 1200 square foot Hell’s Kitchen apartment. It also went ahead and changed the Training Dojo label in my location panel into the Advanced Combat Dojo, which Jon and I pretty much both agreed to just call the Dojo for brevity’s sake.

  The room itself was huge, designed to look eerily similar to an oversized version of the dojo in the first Matrix movie when Neo first practiced his kung fu skills. Jon thought it was hilarious and while I had initially disagreed, I did have to admit it was kind of funny, in an ironic sort of way.

  “Okay Angie, let’s do another randomized swarm, two dozen of them this time, and open the ceiling up,” I said as my breathing finally settled. I had been at this for the last few hours, skipping between four different variants of attackers the entire time.

  “Ah yes, because more will certainly make things more difficult,” Angie groaned and I could practically hear her roll her nonexistent eyes.

  “Just do it Angie, I really don’t need the snark right now,” I said. Ever since I had turned off the Acceptance Matrix, Angie had found that I had been able to far more severely limit just how wild she could be in her communication with me, and without another complaint, the room started to shift, with the ceiling parting to reveal a dark night sky. Two dozen faceless holographic grunts materialized around the room, some wielding metal pipes and others with guns already drawn.

  These guys hadn’t been available when the Dojo was only Level 1, but one of its new Level 3 features was Echo Phantoms, allowing me to generate phantom versions of any non-Sapient opponents I had fought before. They weren’t exactly like the non-Sapients I fought, as they weren’t actually there. Like pretty much all of the technology that made the game and my powers possible, I had no idea how it worked, but the phantoms appeared to be mostly physical. I could set them to be static, allowing me to test random combos, or I could have them actively moving to attack me. The biggest downfall to the feature was that the phantoms would break down with a single strike, regardless of how powerful it was, although the room came with handy features to allow me to gauge just how effective my strikes would have been against similar opponents. So Angie really was right, it really didn’t matter just how many of them I added, the ability to actually practice my abilities on active targets was much appreciated as I was doing my best to use them to reinforce my combat reactions.

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  With the Acceptance Matrix off, I had to be sure I wasn’t going to freeze up in the middle of battle, because even though I really wanted to, I couldn’t just sit aside knowing that TechWarden was still out there. Even if I had avoided him so far, I couldn’t imagine the man was going to let things lie. I couldn’t get it out of my head that if he didn’t keep coming after me, he’d just focus his attention on someone else, and that wasn’t an exchange I was willing to make either if I could help it. And then there was the Second Phase of this insane game that Axio had cooked up… It was more than I could really hope to handle, yet I was going to have to handle it one way or another.

  Angie had already pointed out more than once that these phantoms were nothing like fighting real opponents, but I needed to feel comfortable with my abilities, especially given the massive increase of levels I had gained after killing the much higher leveled SnakeBite. I had gone from Level 8 all the way up to Level 13 in a single swoop, leaving me with a lot of stat points to distribute and two separate Ability Augmentations to assign on each of the even levels I passed through.

  Up to Level 10, I placed 4 new points into both my Luck and my Strength stats, arguably the two most important stats for my close combat style of fighting. After placing the points for Level 10, my Ability Augmentation window opened up. In the past, this would have started a huge countdown which always left me scrambling to pick something without fully considering just how it would affect me in the long run. But eliminating my Acceptance Matrix came with yet another welcome benefit. There was no longer a countdown timer when I opened up the window, giving me plenty of time to look over the two action bars I had available to select an ability from to augment.

  I ended up selecting my Center of the Universe skill, deciding that it was a skill I wanted to upgrade, but I was also okay with using it as a test subject for one last thing I had wanted to check. I wanted to see if I could back out of the window once it was opened, something that had also been unavailable to me, but found that the Matrix only removed the timer aspect of the Augmentation window. Once I selected the skill to augment, I still had to pick one of the available Augmentations whether I was happy with them or not. While it sucked that I couldn’t do a bit more investigating before selecting an Augmentation, I was still happy to see the timer completely eliminated.

  And luckily enough, Center of the Universe did have an upgrade that I had actually been hoping to see. Burst Mode.

  I rushed into the battlefield, activating the skill and then instantly ramped my gravitational pull to its maximum strength, something that would have taken at least 10 seconds in the past. With Burst Mode, I could spend an additional 1.25% on the cost of ramping the skill up to put it at whatever strength I wanted it to be. It meant spending just a bit more Stamina, but more importantly it got everyone in position much faster than I normally could. The now Level 3 ability could pull at a maximum strength of 70 meters per second when at full strength, and instead of having to wait for the skill to get there, I was able to turn it on at that strength.

  It also meant being able to activate another one of my skills, Launchpad, at its maximum strength as well since its power was directly connected to the strength of Center of the Universe. As soon as all of the phantoms had been dragged and clustered closer to me, I mentally clicked the ability on my action bar and went hurtling upward into the artificial night sky in a blaze of speed that was beyond exhilarating. I took a moment to look out at a massive forest of cherry blossom trees stretching into the distance from my dojo at the peak of my leap before I activated Earthbound Impact, causing me to immediately hurtle back downwards into the center of my collected enemies.

  The quick set of skills, one of my easiest combos, quickly wiped out all of the incredibly weak enemies and I let out another breath as my skills all reset, their cooldowns evaporating along with the entire array of phantoms.

  “Okay, now queue up a Sal. Highest level we got of him with two transformed Soldiers in full assault mode,” I said, barely hesitating as I shook my arms out and waited for the snake men to form.

  With my level 11 and 12 stat points, I added another 4 points to my luck, but only 2 more to my Strength, deciding to drop 2 into my Intelligence as well. Several of the books that I could use to give myself increased levels of knowledge required a higher intelligence stat than I already had, so neither Jon nor myself saw a problem with dropping an extra 2 points into the stat. At level 12, it was the first time I could have activated a second Ability Augmentation for one of my skills, Sting Like a Bee, but while it was tempting to see what sort of options a second augmentation would give me, we instead decided to see how Quantum Echostrike could be modified.

  It actually came with a few interesting options, like Pinpoint Accuracy which would have allowed me to choose to make the follow-up strike from the ability deal 100% of the damage on my last attack to the same target I had just struck a second time, something that would have given me some insanely powerful individual target attacks. But I was already really good at hitting one person really hard, and I ended up going with the second available Augmentation it had presented to me, Temporal Afterstrike.

  The Augmentation modified Quantum Echostrike to deal a second wave of damage to all affected targets for 25% of the original damage, while also increasing the cost of the activated ability by 10%.

  As soon as the snake men had finished materializing they came rushing toward me, Angie having set them up exactly as I had requested. I activated one of my best defensive skills, Float Like a Butterfly, increasing my ability to dodge and allowing me to effortlessly dip under the massive arms of the phantom snakes. I worked my way around to the backside of the phantom Sal and activated both Quantum Echostrike and a 40% Gravity Punch. The strike sent the phantom Sal flying like he was shot out of a cannon and his two soldiers were caught up in the shockwave caused by my Echostrike.

  Between my increased level, the power of the strike, the shockwaves, and the incredibly brittle nature of the phantoms, all of the enemies went crumbling into dusty light like they were nothing. I logically knew this wasn’t a good test, the enemies I was going to be facing were certainly going to be my level and far harder to deal with. But even so it felt nice to get back into the rhythm of things.

  “So did you get any sleep last night?” A voice crackled over the speakers of the Dojo. Although Jon could just talk directly into my head while he was in his Command Room, he had made it a bit of a weird habit to use the intercom system when I was inside of the dojo. The only explanation he had given was that the Command Room gave him the functional variety, so why not use it?

  “I got a couple of hours I think,” I said, turning and walking toward the water bottle I had left on a counter near the edge of the room. “You’re up pretty early though.”

  “You left the door to the Dojo open and you kept smashing into the ground…” He said and I could hear him yawn. “I was mostly able to ignore it the first few times, but me waking up was more a factor of when rather than if.”

  “My bad,” I said, looking down at the ground and feeling my brow furrow in frustration.

  “Dude it’s cool, you wanted to train, it’s no big deal. Just close the door behind you next time,” he said with a laugh. “Is beating up the holograms helping you get over… well y’know…”

  Although we had taken care of my leveling, dropping my Level 13 stat points into my Luck and my Toughness, we had only opened the single loot box due to having already utilized Jon’s reroll. Instead of jumping right into training or running out into the city again, I ended up finally taking the rest of the night explaining exactly what had happened to Jon. From SnakeBite’s true nature to his explanation about Calypso’s message and his warning about my Acceptance Matrix, I filled both him and Angie all the way in.

  While Angie still voiced disapproval in me shutting off the Matrix, Jon had agreed that turning it off had been the right choice, though I could tell he had given me a wary look after explaining how I had to kill SnakeBite, and his final cursing of TechWarden. Although I hadn’t placed the name, Jon had remembered him as one of the five highest scoring Guardians in the game, specifically the one that neither of us had recognized when we first saw him. That had its own host of implications that neither of us wanted to deal with for the moment.

  Jon pointed out that without anything further to go on, we really could only wait for TechWarden to make his next move before I could try to make a move in retaliation. Besides, he massively outleveled me and trying to attack him head on, even if I did know where he was, wouldn’t get me anywhere. Thinking I could end this so simply was naive and reckless, and that wasn’t something I was going to risk.

  “Not a lot, but I think I’m almost ready to try and find a Crime Alert to jump back into things… you know, a bit slowly,” I said, heading for the door and walking back out into the main apartment.

  “I am curious what the non-Sapients are going to be now that the biker’s presence has been completely wiped out,” Jon called, his voice now coming from the door to the Command Room only a few feet away from the dojo's exit.

  Although I had claimed the larger Town sized territory that made up Community Center 4 only a few hours before my attack on SnakeBite’s main base, with his elimination, the Viper’s biker gang that technically counted him as their leader evaporated. Their non-Sapient presence practically vanished from all territories they existed in and the Contested status on my claim to the territory was immediately wiped out.

  “I for one just hope it’s no more Snakes,” Angie chirped.

  “I think that’s something we can all agree on,” I said with a small laugh.

  “Now if we could get a whole bunch of shirtless firemen? That’d be something I’d sign up to watch,” Angie purred and I sighed.

  “How much longer do we have until we can use your reroll?” I asked, changing the subject as I leaned against the frame of the door to Jon’s closet sized room.

  “Couple more minutes,” Jon said and I heard him clap his hands together. “I for one suggest we start with the S+, if you’re gonna go out fighting today and we have to use the reroll, that’s the item I want to see first.”

  “Yeah, I want to see that too, I'm just hoping it's not just some fake out that's going to give me an item that's really cool but barely useful," I offered and Jon let out a brief laugh.

  "Well that's what the reroll is for. I for one hope it's really cool and very useful."

  Happy Monday! Welcome to Volume 2! If you're enjoying the story, don't forget to leave a Rate, Review, or Comment!

  Loophole - Level 13 Perfect Planner

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