After I managed to somehow recover from the shock, I told Medicus about the gauntlets. About the whole coincidence in the supermarket. Everything. I don’t know why I spilled out my guts like that to him. Maybe it was the fact that the kid seemed like a good guy and seemed like the first trustworthy souls I’ve seen in a while. But even without knowing the motive, it felt like a large and heavy chain loosened off my shoulders as I talked.

“So, what are we going to do now?” Medicus said as we both stood up. I stood in silence as I thought out my options.

One was to simply go back to the mines. No one would expect a lowly miner like me to have such a good set of weapons. The only problem was that there was a chance, even a small chance that one of those miners could have one of those lanterns. It seemed unlikely, but sometimes the ones that grinded out the game for all it’s worth sometimes just want to relax. And unfortunately for me, mining just so happened to be a good relaxing job if you have ridiculous amounts of strength.

Another was to grind out gold to buy a B. Crush scroll usage, and we liquidate the gloves. It would take a long time, but we could simply split up the profit afterwards and live out our lives being in the one percent of humanity. But then the rest of the Godly items will probably never be found, at least for a long time. I mean, it took at least fifteen years of endless searching by greedy players that crawled into the tiniest and unlikeliest places for loot to find ONE piece of the set.

 The last one was… blasphemous to the life I was living. The nice, peaceful, life I was living, where all I had to do was work my butt off, go back home, and hopefully eat some food before going to bed…

“… Medicus.” I spoke after a few minutes of silence, with my head down as I thought about what I was going to say. Medicus looked over to me.

“Yeah?”

“… What if we made a team. Where you help me get all the Godly items, and we could make a guild! A proper guild, with people that actually wants to play the game as intended, or something like that?” I asked as I began to take in the implications of what I was saying.

The implication that I wanted out of this stupid, repetitive life I was living. The implication that I wanted to do something, instead of just reading it or watching it on the news. The implication that I wanted to do something with my life.

I looked up, and straight at Medicus’ eye with the most serious expression of my life. Years later, Medicus would tell me that the look in my eyes was the look of a man that was beginning to change his life. And that’s what made him say...

“… Sure.” He said simply. For a second, nothing but the wind made a sound as an awkward silence fell on us.

“I uh… appreciate the immediate response, but did you really have to make it so…” I hesitated for a second, trying to find the right word as Medicus looked at me, bemused as we both stood in the grassy plains, already healed from our earlier fight.

“Um, do you want me to do it… dramatically?” He said as he took a deep breath.

“NO!” I yelled, slapping my hand against his face. Luckily, this time I remembered my gauntlets, and held back. He still suffered a bit of damage, but not that much.

“Ok ok!” He said as he slapped my hand back at me. We chuckled as I walked over to a nearby path that I was familiar with. We both trudged along, and soon we were standing in front of a bustling small town. The roads were full of all types of stands. Vegetables, fruits, blacksmiths, all the stands you can think of were there, lining the streets, complete with yelling from all over the town. Part of me wondered why I trusted him to lead him here, but I pushed it off to the side.

I supposed it was great to have a friend that didn’t know my past.

“Get your swords here! Perfect for level twenty to thirty!” yelled one blacksmith as we walked through the busy streets. Another blacksmith butt in, however.

“Don’t buy his! His sword broke the instant someone tried to swing it! Buy mine instead!” They glared, and the pair started to get into an argument.

But I just walked past the conversation, and many more like it. Usually, I would have liked to stop and listen to their arguments so I could look at their gear in peace, but I was on a mission. I quickly walked over to the black stone podium, just like the one I had used to get here in the first place. I quickly hovered my hand over it, and it, in response, popped out an orb. Telling myself this was the right thing to do, I quickly put my hand over it.

Specifically, it was a magical hologram of Orb. On it were various points, some blinking light blue, some blinking gray. These points were teleportation nexus points, or TNP for short. The ones that were blinking light blue were the ones I could teleport to, because I met the level requirements of the area. I tapped on one and pressed confirm. Suddenly, a countdown started in front of the map, and I grabbed onto Medicus’ shoulder before we zapped away.

We landed on top of a town square. However, unlike the first one, the roads were clean, with children running all over the place, with their parents strolling around, smiling as the young children laughed and yelled. Medicus and I stood out as a sore thumb, as we began walking towards a specific section of the city. Strange as it sounds, most of the NPC’s never even took a second glance at us. Those that did were just shopkeepers looking for customers to buy their wares.

Soon, we reached where I wanted to, and we stopped. Medicus got this strange look on his face as he nudged me with uncertainty.

“Uh… why are we here?” He said, as we looked over the Martial Art Sector. Full of various people in Gi’s with various weapons, like nunchunks, bo staffs, katanas, and the like were roaming the street. Hell, there were even some people straight up brawling, pulling off some impressive moves as attack after attack slammed at each other. But I brushed it off and started walking towards my first target.

“We’re here to find us a teacher!” I said, as I reached the first dojo, this one being a karate one. Grappling, punching, kicking moves all in one martial art. What else do you want?

“Shouldn’t… we be leveling?” Medicus said hesitantly. I tsked and turned to him. Man, I took in this kid because he seemed already experienced and powerful. But it looked like I needed to educate him on how grinding works. Ironic considering our level differences.

“Kid, we need proper skills to start leveling efficiently, and here!” I pointed a finger into the air dramatically. Medicus just looked at me blankly, and I cleared my throat in embarrassment.

“Is the place to get skills!” I finished, as I turned on my heel and walked in. Medicus chuckled at my theatrics and jogged in right after me.

A few minutes later, I was walking outside in a daze as Medicus quickly pushed me out of the dojo, hurriedly apologizing to the dojo master who was rubbing his ear in pain. He only just managed to get me out of sight of the dojo when I turned on him.

“Tw-Twenty thousand gold for one skill!? Are they nuts?!” Many other Martial Artists nearby chuckled, and I quickly hid the gloves as I was reminded that in a place like this, there was a way higher chance a lantern could find me. Medicus shrugged with a neutral face, however.

“I mean, my buff spell costed me five thousand gold…” I stared at him in shock before quickly shook my head as I refocused on the goal.

“Let’s… just go see if there’s any cheaper ones, ok?” I said, as I scanned the sector for another dojo. I mean, there’s bound to be a few teachers that were desperate for money... right?

Short answer. No. No there was not a SINGLE skill that was below three thousand gold. For reference, a month’s pay of mining for me was five thousand gold. And that was sixty percent of that at the cheapest, worst skill these dojos had! I had to drag Medicus out of the last dojo though, the poor dude had desperately thrashing as he tried to reach for a skill that combined water magic and fighting techniques together that would have cost him fifteen thousand gold.

“This city is just a huge money sucking, hot garbage, douche bag of a city!” I exploded in anger. Medicus was sitting down by me, looking forlorn.

 “Just a few more seconds… and I could have gotten it.” He said, looking at the ground with his eyes lifeless. For a second, he looked like he was considering trying to go back, before I slapped him lightly on his face.

 “Focus! If you gave them all your gold, how were you going to get items? Potions? Upgrades? Gear?” I said vigorously as I shook him around. Medicus’ eyes snapped back to mine, and he nodded, slowly coming out of his daze.

“Yeah… you’re right…” He said as he got up, still looking sorrowful.

“So, what do we do now?” I sighed at that, looking around with disappointed eyes.

    “… I don’t know kid.” I said in a soft voice, as I helplessly looked around the square. These were the dojos that I dreamed of when I first started the game... When I realized that a martial artist class existed, I was so excited. Just imagining the moves I could pull off filled me with excitement back then! Now I face the harsh reality that all of these were just stupid crappy rip-offs.

I sat down on the sidewalk with a depressed aura surrounding me with Medicus doing the same. Pretty soon we were trying to toss chestnuts into each other’s mouths while we were mulling over ideas.

“Why don’t we just go to the wild and grind out the gold for the skills? I mean, you’re overpowered as it is.” He said after he managed to gulp down the mouthful of chestnuts he collected slowly like a freaking squirrel. I shook my head as I grabbed the chestnut bag, tossing one in my mouth.

“Yeah, but the places that I’m planning to go requires skills. What’s the point of sheer power if you don’t have the skills to back it up? It’ll only take you so far.” I said as I handed the bag of chestnuts back to him. He nodded at the reasonable response and threw another into my mouth. We began crunching on them, as we tried to think about our next move, when suddenly, we jumped at a sudden sound.

“Pssst. Hey you.” We looked around, slightly alarmed, when Medicus suddenly pointed at something behind us. I turned around, and almost jumped as I spotted... something. There in a dark, musty alleyway was a thin, frail old man that was beckoning us to him.