Page 109 of Light Leech

The office went silent and my vision blurred into a smeared cascade of lights that removed the illusion around us. We returned to the endless hallway within the neurocore but were not yet prompted forward.

I spotted Ralia not far ahead of me. Her followers had since disappeared, along with the crowds that surrounded the other competitors. I searched for my converts wondering if I could even identify them outside of the office setting.

No luck.

Everyone else appeared as confused as I was, like children looking for their parents after wandering off in the heart of a city center.

I was never great at estimating the size of a crowd, but after a quick count, I supposed the remaining people fit the thirty six who would be admitted to the next round.

“We made it,” I said to Ralia.

“Kind of obvious, isn’t it?” She grinned. “Doubted yourself again?”

I shrugged. “Kind of hard not to when put up against scholars.”

She shook her head. “None of these shacs get it, you plug? They’re a bunch of Violet and Indigo nepos whose life experiences consist of memorizing useless information. You have had more experience than any of these pompous pricks in the last few years of your life than they’ve had in their entire lives. The race and the debate war we just had to prove how worthless their degrees are. You know how much I paid for my education? Time, that’s it. Time they wasted earning money for another pompous shac to teach them information you can get on your own. All information is free, you just have to know where to look and whom to ask. Look who you’re talking to right now. That should be enough evidence for you that you’re smarter than everyone else here.”

“A little prideful, huh?”

She shrugged. “We’ll see how the next segments go, but the two we’ve had so far prove that these aren’t about what you know, but about how you think.”I didn’t doubt her expertise but knew that neither of us would have come this far without our Gui. I had lived a sheltered life when I was younger, but everything I knew about Ralia convinced me that she had been forced to think to survive. Still, I doubted she would have made it without Sha’s assistance. She was probably boasting of her prowess just to deny to herself that she needed aid from a being she loathed.

“Fine,” she said, but did not admit what she should have. “I guess a lot of it was due to the luck of our given ‘truths.’ Some of the other people had no chance.”

“You think the system is favoring us?”

She shook her head and turned away from me. She didn’t want any excuse besides skill. I felt more assured that she mentioned luck to make me feel better with my argument, rather than hers. This didn’t bother me. Pride seemed like a sin to anyone but Ralia. It bothered me that I thought so, knowing the plague that pride was, especially seeing the danger it placed us in if left unchecked. Perhaps confidence was a better word. As long as she remained confident, so could I.

I sprinted ahead to catch up, seeing that she wasn’t avoiding conversation, but heading for a shining golden card on the ground.

She picked it up, but my gaze remained on the ground for a moment longer. It was neither a matte or glossy black, but what looked like a thin veil that protected us from a grainy abyss of black and grey below. We were a single pixel floating in a cube in a sea of that outer substance.

“What is it?” I asked her.

She held out the card as if to show me but pointed to another that appeared to my left.

Rather than ask, I followed her prompting and saw the others in our chamber do the same as cards appeared all around the floor.

I picked up the one below me and inspected it. Furrowing my brow, I wondered if I was correct in assuming that it was a trading card. I thought I was familiar with the most popular trading card games, seeing that in many criminal circles they were used as currency and as valued as stocks by even some of the most elite businessmen. It looked like one of the monster battling variety, but the frame and stats were unfamiliar.

Zhu snorted.

You know what this is?

His snort turned into a laugh. “That is me.”

I didn’t need to ask anymore as I understood the image. Below the title “Boarrior of the Journeymen,” I saw what looked like a caricature of Zhu taken to a muscular extreme.

Giant tusks extended from his jowls capped with blue orbs. His eyes burned a vibrant blue with white flames burning outward. He wore traditional silks of ancient china, though only on his torso and groin, while cybernetic armor covered his appendages. He held his giant rake ready for an attack.

I read the stats and abilities below, not understanding the health and attacks with the numbers one through four listing specific actions and terms in bold.

I looked on the back side of the card and saw no name or anything to clarify what this was.

I ran to Ralia, who was already comparing her card with fellow competitors.

She turned away from them as she spotted me, despite the silence of my footsteps.

She reached for my card and took it without asking.