“I challenge you to a duel in the Datascape,” Asika declared.

  Mahendra’s pencil-thin eyebrows shot up. “You? You, the flea-sized fledgling? The tyke with the training wheels? You have the audacity to propose that I dirty my hands by educating you as to your inferiority?”

  Asika flicked open a screen and fiddled with her interface. Mahendra’s eyes narrowed. “What is this tomfoolery? You expect to be able to moderate in my presence?”

  “No moderation here, I’m just setting my translation to ‘pretentious’. This’ll go faster if we’re both speaking the same language,” she retorted with a wide grin.

  “I will have you know that my enlightened speech patterns are the hallmark of self-actualisation!”

  “Oh are they? That’s really great, I’m so happy for you,” There was a sort of uncanny falsity about Asika’s sunny demeanour as she spoke, like she was hiding her true feelings behind a veil of carefully cultivated cheer. “But how about we discuss reality, rather than your delusions of grandeur? Your egocentric pontification, in all actuality, only serves to elucidate me regarding the repulsive nature of your archetype. I cannot even speculate as to the logical backflips you must have performed to convince yourself that this was a good way to present yourself to mortals,”

  “. . so is ‘pretentious’ an actual setting or does she just have a dictionary in her brain?” Mikayla quietly wondered.

  “You, both of you, all of you, woefully underestimate the potency which I might bring to arms at the drop of a hat. Your petulant little pleadings are a sham. The only reason you’re even proposing such a risky proposition is because your Armour Core is absent and you are twenty levels below me. I could crush you like an insect beneath the sole of my shoe, and do not deign to pretend otherwise,”

  Asika held up a palm in the universal gesture of ‘stop’. “Try again. You’re not going to kill me. We both know what happens if I die. There’ll be an error log. Time, place, cause of death will all be recorded. A faerie killing another faerie? No one will let that fly. If you honestly believe that being left to your own devices, skulking around in the middle of nowhere, means that you’re a pariah now?” She laughed. “You’re a dime a dozen. One of thousands of disowned faeries pretending that abandoning the responsibilities our ancestors passed down to us to become hermits in some insignificant corner of the world means you’re ‘sticking it to the man’. The only thing special about you is your vocabulary, and the only reason that your sapient blood project, whatever it really is, has escaped notice so far is that you’re not important enough to be watched. But I’m doing you a courtesy. If we fight in a Duel and I lose, you’ll be able to annex me. If I win, you’re done, but if you just kill me you’re done,”

  “Do not attempt to placate me with your pathetic pontification,” Mahendra scoffed, eyes narrowed. “It does not escape my notice that, should I agree, you will ensure your own survival. You, you simpering little snail, are hoping that even if you lose, eventually I shall release you, or you’ll be rescued, or something along those lines,”

  “Correct,” Asika confirmed. “But do you care? We’ve never met before. What have I done to merit dying at your hands?”

  “You disrespected me,” Mahendra growled.

  “Seriously?” Asika grimaced. “You must be loads of fun at parties, huh?”

  Mahendra rolled his eyes. “Fine. We Duel, over the Node. And when I annex you, I’m going to make you clean my boots with your tongue,”

  Asika’s eyebrows crept up incredulously. “Did you actually just say that? You, uh, might wanna check your archetype, buddy, I think it’s broken,”

  “Perish the thought!” Mahendra scoffed. He raised his arm and swung it dramatically, System screens trailing in his wake. “Fine! I accept! But I shall not indulge an ordinary Duel,” His hand flew into the surface of the Ataraxia Node, somehow phasing straight into it. “Engage Canopic Zone Defence mode!”

  Asika giggled. “I was hoping you’d do that,”

  Mahendra blinked, his expression falling as System messages populated in Mikayla’s vision.

  [AN ATARAXIA NODE IS EXPERIENCING AN INCURSION FROM HOSTILE AGENTS. A SYSTEM MODERATOR HAS CALLED FOR AID. ASSIST IN ITS DEFENCE AND EARN REWARDS. WILL YOU FIGHT FOR THE GREATER GOOD? YES/NO]

  Mikayla glanced at Asika, who nodded encouragingly. Thusly reassured, she focused on the ‘YES’ button, and everything went white.

  <=====}—o

  Before her vision returned, Mikayla heard Mahendra’s voice spitting out syllables. “What is this? Why am I slotted as the invader?”

  She rubbed her eyes and found herself standing on what looked like a platform woven out of glowing blue light. Glancing around, she started.

  They were in a completely different place, a seemingly endless desert of blue sand, whose only feature was the structure they were standing within; a massive treehouse coloured entirely in shades of blue and purple. She and Keldryn were standing behind Asika, who was leaning over the rail in and drawing breath to shout back at Mahendra. The enemy faerie was standing on the ground outside and glaring up at them.

  “It’s weird, isn’t it? After all, one of us violated and crippled the Node, and one is trying to repair it. And was also the last one to touch it. And left a worm to make sure I had priority,” was Asika’s retort with a taunting smirk.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  He fumed, and rather than respond, System screens appeared around him and he began typing.

  “Anyway, everyone, welcome to my house!” Asika spread her arms and gestured at the digital treehouse around them. “I overwrote the Node’s basic template for a defensive fortress. This is my place! Or, y’know, a copy of it. It’s better,”

  “Can you please explain what’s going on?” Keldryn insisted.

  “Oh, right. You two aren’t mods. I forgot for a sec, whoopsie!” Asika mimed bopping herself on the head. “So! This is an Ataraxia Node Defence. It’s like a simulated siege that we run whenever some Kaiju cultist or whatever tries to take over an Ataraxia Node,”

  'Or someone working for the Canopy,' Mikayla silently guessed.

  “This one’s gone a bit screwy. But it should be fine! We just gotta hold them off until he runs out of energy,” Asika assured them.

  “And how hard will that be?” Mikayla weighed in, looking around and trying to gauge the treehouse’s defensibility. There was a large spiral walkway wrapped around the tree, with several rooms built into the branches. In her history studies, she’d looked over plans for defensive fortresses, and while none of them were treehouses, it wasn’t that dissimilar to mountain strongholds with only one entry. It didn’t look that hard to hold as a defensive position - at least, as long as Mahendra didn’t reveal some ability to fly.

  “Well, ostensibly speaking, we have a huge advantage as the defenders. But Mahendra’s much higher level than any of us, and he’s jailbroken his limitations too. Not gonna lie, it is really rare for a faerie to be on the invading side of this scenario. So I’m not totally sure what -“ Asika was cut off as the treehouse shook.

  They rushed to the edge of the balcony, and their eyes widened.

  Some kind of massive tower had emerged from the ground outside the treehouse, reaching up towards the heavens. It had a glowing field of energy at its base, from which Mahendra emerged once more. The building he'd conjured was unlike anything Mikayla had seen in this world, formed from tessellating triangles woven together into sharp lines, like shards of ice.

  “So . . do we just fight him?” she guessed.

  Asika scrutinised the tower that he had erected. “Usually, yes, but he’s probably scheming something. I’d have thought he’d say a basic frontal assault would be beneath him . . unless this is a distraction? I’m gonna run the perimeter, hold him off!” she declared, running away with phenomenal speed.

  “What - wait! He’s twenty levels above us! How are we - she’s gone,” Mikayla groaned.

  “Defensive positions. We’ll ambush him,” Keldryn assessed.

  “With what?”

  A ball of mental energy formed between Keldryn’s paws. “Psychic Bolt. Does more damage to living things,” he reminded her.

  “Oh yeah . . and we’re in some kind of virtual reality world, too . . which means Psychic Bolt must be really strong here. Maybe?” Mikayla guessed. “Alright, we’ll try it. If things go wrong, I’ll draw his attention while you keep the pain up from other angles,”

  Keldryn nodded, and they ducked behind Asika’s detritus to wait for Mahendra to appear from the steps.

  It took the hostile faerie less than a minute to arrive. He looked around the landing, which seemed empty. Strangely, he didn’t have any Core-projected equipment visible, clad in bare robes and wielding empty hands. He advanced cautiously, scanning every inch of the treehouse.

  “Now!” Mikayla shouted, leaping out from cover and lobbing a Psychic Bolt at Mahendra’s head. Keldryn did the same, causing the faerie to stagger. “Mana Assistance, Shield!” The newest addition to her arsenal flashed into existence, and at the same time Mikayla used Heel Propulsion, tackling Mahendra to the ground before he could re-orient himself.

  Mahendra refused to go down without a fight. He slammed his fists into the ground, generating twin shockwaves from them that sent Mikayla stumbling backwards. Flipping to his feet with agility that would have impressed an Olympic gymnast, ribbons of condensed green energy flew from his right wrist.

  Before they could make contact with Mikayla, Keldryn tackled him, leveraging the blades mounted on Skyward Grasscutter’s arms to put the faerie in a bloody headlock.

  Unfortunately, the Level difference between them was too great, so when Mahendra wrapped his hands around Keldryn’s elbows and pulled them away, the ranger didn’t have the strength to resist. Adjusting his grip, Mahendra flipped Keldryn into the air and slammed him into the ground between himself and Mikayla, in the same motion interrupting her as she closed the distance.

  Mikayla hesitated, and it took her a couple of seconds to remember that she had a ranged option now. Her left hand span up and flung out a Psychic Bolt, but by then Mahendra had a twirling disc of vital energy that he used to knock the projectile away like a tennis racquet.

  “You’re only using Stamina Techniques. No Mana. Why?” Keldryn realised, narrowing his eyes.

  “I fail to see any possible reason to waste words on the uneducated,” Mahendra sneered, reshaping his wad of Stamina into a razor-sharp blade around his hand.

  And then Asika reappeared, dropping from above and driving both feet into Mahendra’s temples. The faerie collapsed to the ground, and Keldryn seized the opportunity, launching himself upwards and burying his wrist-blades in Mahendra’s neck.

  The man promptly disintegrated into a small pile of blue dust.

  All three teenagers stared at it for a long moment. “Was that it? We won?” Mikayla asked.

  Asika looked around. “Weird . . we should have, but that was totally too easy. He barely tried. Didn't even use his Cores. And I’m not seeing a victory notification? Something’s not right,”

  They heard footsteps beneath them, and rushed to the edge of the platform.

  Mahendra was there, walking away from the entrance of the tower he’d left behind, with absolutely no sign of the injuries they’d inflicted on him. “By the way. Allow me to clear up another misconception of yours,” he shouted in their direction. “You may believe that this fight is three against one,” He paused for dramatic effect, his lips splitting into a wide, toothy smile, “but I’m more of a one-man army,”

  Mikayla looked at the science-fiction tower again. “Oh, crap - um, Ghost Hound’s taint?” Memorising Termanian idioms was a struggle. “That’s a respawn chamber,”

  Asika scrutinised the edifice. “Yuppers, I see it. He must have cloned his profile and created a quantum isolation chamber in which the real him cannot be observed, to get around the anti-cloning safeguards,”

  “So he comes back from the dead?” Keldryn asked. “How many times?”

  “If I had to guess? Infinitely,” the faerie admitted. “He’s bound up all his Mana in that projection, but in return he can keep throwing himself at us until we collapse from exhaustion,”

  “What?” Mikayla’s eyes widened. “But then how are we supposed to win?”

  “We aren’t! I was right. We’re hopelessly outmatched. This is great!” Asika beamed.

  “Have you got a screw loose?” Mikayla snapped.

  “Nah, trust me. I’ve got a plan, I just need you two to hold him off for as long as possible. Buy me time, make him mad if you can. Okay? Okay! Bye!” She jumped off the edge of the landing, and when Mikayla scrambled after her, there was no sign of her.

  “. . did she just leave us to fight her battle for her?” Keldryn’s eyes narrowed, lips peeling back.

  “I think she’s got a plan. And we’re in some kind of internet world, fighting against a psychic faerie. Maybe if she tells us what she’s planning, Mahendra will be able to read our minds?” Mikayla speculated. She was sure she’d read a novel with that plot at some point.

  “So we just keep fighting and trust her?” Keldryn assessed as the next clone of Mahendra advanced up the steps towards their landing. “I don’t like it. We can’t last forever,”

  “Well, I don’t see a way out. Doesn’t look like we have much of a choice,” Mikayla winced.

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