Levi yawned and brushed his messy black hair out of his eyes as he settled into his gaming chair and lifted up his headset. He checked his friend’s list waiting to see the name Jazz show up online. Jazz was one of Levi’s closest friends, the only thing being they’d never actually met, nor did Levi know much about Jazz. Even his real name was unknown, but they talked everyday and spent more time with each other than Levi did with pretty much anyone else. 

It was the middle of winter break, and Levi was in his Senior year of high school, he knew that he would have to stop gaming as much, and deep down that was disheartening to him, he loved it, it was truly something he was passionate about. While on the thought of school, Levi pulled out his phone to see if any of the colleges he’d applied to had responded. He only had a few months left before he really started panicking. 

Damn, still nothing? He thought to himself. I might be doomed after all.

Now as far as academics go, Levi wasn’t a shining star, but he wasn’t stupid either, gaming takes some kind of thought, but Levi knew he was just average, he needed to be ahead of the game for a scholarship. He was interrupted by a buzz on his phone, it was a text from Jazz. Jazz had work apparently and wouldn’t be able to play for a while. 

“Ugh, again?” Levi questioned out loud, oftentimes he forgot that Jazz worked and was responsible, unlike himself. 

 Might as well just work on leveling up my fighter. He thought to himself. 

He clicked the power button on the side of his phone and sat it down, and loaded up his new favorite game on his computer, ‘The Legend of Quale’. It was a multiplayer vr game where you had to go through a huge tower to rescue the princess at the top.. The tower was no breeze though, the difficulty increased with every floor. Each floor had a boss that had to be defeated in order to gain passage to the next floor. It had 100 floors, and so far Levi couldn’t make it past the 12th one. He grabbed his VR equipment and loaded into the game. His character was a level 27 elf with the name Vikton, because that was his token online name, or at least Vik was, his username was Vikton_231, the numbers were unexplainable, but he always went by Vik online.
Two hours of endless failure and 20 ‘Game Overs’ later, he had finally reached the end of his patience. He decided to stop messing with the tower and just go outside of it and kill low level animals to get higher leveled. He sighed as he left the tall brick building, now that he was outside of the tower, he took a moment to appreciate its complexity. The color scheme was nice, the black blicks with the dark gray printed pattern on them. It really gave off the spooky vibe. 

With complete focus, Vik was following a deer quietly through some bushes. He grabbed his bow off of his back, and was waiting for the shot, the deer stopped, he pulled the bow back, and that's when someone shouted from behind him, he got distracted, shot the arrow, and missed. 

“Bro, you’re trash,” a familiar voice said. Vik knew immediately who the voice was.
Vik sighed, and slid his bow back into the carrier he was wearing on his back. “Jazz, you’re a jerk.” he mumbled, turning around to see Jazz casually sitting criss-crossed on the ground.  

“What was that Vik?” Jazz asked with innocent eyes.

“Just me saying how much I love and appreciate you Jazzy Wazzy,” Vik said, rolling his eyes, extremely sarcastic.

“Ah, how sweet,” Jazz said as he jumped up. “I know I'm extremely appreciated, you’re hopeless at this game without me, and pretty much every other game, you’re kinda bad bro.” 

“That’s not true!” Vik said, defending himself. 

“Oh, really?” Jazz asked, walking around Vik in a circle as if he was evaluating him. “How much did you manage to accomplish why I wasn’t here?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“Believe it or not, I accomplished quite a bit actually, I learned some valuable tips,” Vik said while he kicked a rock. 

“Uh huh, I’m choosing ‘or not’, you’re just coming up with excuses because you don’t want to admit you’re wrong,” Jazz said with a smirk.

Vik pulled out his sword and pointed it at Jazz, “Well you can choose to do whatever you want, but the facts are, I'm a higher level than you now, so I’ll be carrying you, and we’ll see who really is the better player,” he said, turning around and walking off towards the tower. 

Jazz followed after Vik, “We won’t make it past 20, even with my healing spells,” he said. 

“That’s why Mage is single-handedly the worst class in the game, it’s useless, and I fail to see why you even picked it.” Vik said while cutting bushes ahead of them. 

“Mage isn’t useless,” Jazz said angrily, “I do remember saving your ass at least 4 times last week alone.” He stopped following Vik, “If you think you’re so good without me, I’ll just wait right here for you to respawn after you die on the 12th floor,” Jazz crossed his arms and leaned against a tree.
“Oh, my deepest apologies, sir mage-god, I forgot about the mere 4 times you managed to be useful,” Vik said, sarcastically, and getting down on his knees. “My lord and savior Jazz, I humbly beg for you to forgive me and carry me through the super scary demon tower,” he said while raising his arms up and down as if he was praising Jazz. 

Instead of saying anything Jazz just kicked him in the face, and then walked past him towards the tower. 

“Ouch,” Vik said, rubbing his face. 

“It’s a video game, you’re not really hurt,” Jazz said, rolling his eyes, “stop being a baby, let’s go.”

“My pride hurts,” Vik said following after him. 

Vik was sulking while walking, staring only at the ground when he walked straight into Jazz’s back. 

“What the h-” Vik started, but he was cut off by Jazz’s hands. Jazz had held one finger to his own lips, and then pointed at the guard in front of the tower. 

Vik had a moment of realization thinking about a statement that Jazz had made earlier. Maybe I am bad at games after all. I totally missed that guy, thank god Jazz has some smarts, or I would have been straight back to level one. 

“Thanks,” Vik mumbled.
“SHhHhHhHhHhh” Jazz whisper-yelled back. “Thank me after I beat this guy.” Jazz had already raised his staff and was mumbling hysterically. 

“Dude what language even is that?” Vik asked jokingly. 

All of a sudden the goblin that was standing outside the tower just simply fell over, and the victory music started playing. Jazz leveled up 5 times off of that one kill, the notifications kept showing up above his head. He smiled at Vik viciously. 

“What the hell?” Vik asked, completely confused. He’d been playing for hours and only managed to gain 13 levels, it took Jazz less than 10 minutes and he’d already nearly doubled Vik’s progress. 

“Get good bro,” Jazz said as he shoved Vik out of his way. 

The goblin guard was disintegrating into nothing as most of the mobs did in this game, although since it was a very low level guard it didn’t drop any items. Sometimes if you were lucky you could get legendary loot. 

Both Vik and Jazz were on high alert as they left their place in the forest and started up the entrance to the tower. They’d been here many times before, and always seemed to make their way back. Jazz was leading the two and he pushed the large wooden doors, they made a loud screeching sound as they opened; alerting any nearby mobs that they had visitors. They stepped into the darkness and prepared themselves for anything.