Page 138 of Light Leech

“What? No. Did you have screaming parasites?”

I shook my head.

She shrugged and rolled her eyes. “I’m so zegging done with this. How many more…” She turned and counted the remaining competitors now that they had stopped appearing. “Eighteen left.”

“Do you think they’ll half us each round?”

“No idea. I don’t know what they’ll do with the remaining nine after this one, if they take half again.”

“Maybe they’ll let nine through?”

“I wouldn’t be so optimistic.”

“Why?”

She shrugged.

I hated to see the optimist of our group grow pessimistic. “Are you… feeling well?”

She focused on me for a second, then turned back to the other competitors. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Maybe my outer consciousness needs to feed. My mind has been slowing down, but it might just be part of this test.”

“You’re probably right about the feeding. My mind was drained a little while ago and I thought nothing of it. Later, I got a sudden boost of cognitive clarity.”

She nodded. “Other-Ralia needs to get her ass out of her chair to feed. Then again, maybe I’m wrong to blame her. She knows better and we might be dealing with some serious guk outside of here.”

“It can’t be any worse than this.”

“What about meeting that god fetus?”

“I doubt that much has happened since we entered.”

She shrugged. It was so unlike her to let the conversation die with something as simple as a shrug. Why did it feel like I was the one comforting her? Had she finally passed on that too-heavy mantle after she let it break her back? Did she want comfort or was silence a better salve? I knew I often preferred the latter, but this was Ralia.

“Trust her,” Zhu said.

Does trusting her mean leaving her alone?

“I think she would ask for help if she needed it. Let her wage her battle.”

Ralia has never been the humble type. I’ve pushed past her pride often enough to help her out.

I didn’t wait for his answer before speaking to her. “Anything I can do for you?”

No words, just the shake of her head.

Maybe she wasn’t as dismal as she appeared. I remembered when I had seen her set everything aside, including social interactions, just to focus on a project. I let my mind settle with that option, though I doubted it was true. Even Boyband had asked for help when he needed it. She might have been prideful, but she wasn’t prideful enough to let stubbornness kill her.

“To the moon, right?” I said.

She smirked. “If that’s where this leads, then yeah. To the zegging moon.”

The announcer spoke, though the scenery did not change. “Congratulations, victors! Don’t let yourself celebrate quite yet. We still have more testing to conduct. This round of Luminate League will be a little different. I am sure many of you are familiar with the game’s various formats, but we have a new module that was made specifically for the Standardized Test! While some of you may argue that the previous round was unlike any standard match, this will include a new factor beyond that of the altered field. I know many of you prefer Captain, Duos, or Draft styles of play, but those are all children’s forms for players to use when they cannot otherwise win a standard match.”

The other competitors shouted their complaints, but the system muted their voices after a few seconds of angst, only solidifying the aforementioned tendencies of children.