We hugged each other and cried a bit. We spent this reunion time like we were doing some experience sharing.
I told him everything about what happened to me.
I never lied to Jim in my life except when he asked me about my past. When he did I always made up stuff until he noticed an error and stopped me.
Jim was 28 and he used to be a musician. He then racked up debt from shady loaners and had to sell his loved guitar to pay them back. He always told me that life was like this:
"If you want something, life will make you suffer for it and when you have it, you can lose it in seconds."
What he meant was that he suffered to get to his level with a guitar and when he mastered it, he lost his tool to get out of poorness.
From that day on, I promised myself that the first thing I will buy if I have free money would be a guitar.
A crazy one.
Jim told me that he got beaten 10 minutes into the game. He was kinda shy about it, but he told me that he had a way harder lobby. That was his way of keeping his big brother archetype.
We walked and talked until we reached our destination. A big mall full of shops.
"At least one hade to have some piece of news, right?", he asked hoping for a positive answer.
I told him that there was a huge chance for it. We walked past countless shops and finally saw one that did put the news on to probably cure their customers boredom while waiting.
"You should choke the shopkeeper to survive", Jim said sarcastically.
He didn't believe me when I told him that I won. But I didn't press the matter. More urgent stuff. Like what was on the TV.
We watched and heard crazy stuff. Apparently, everyone was enraged that the high class would keep the games secret from them. Me and Jim had to have our luck stat maxed out because after 5 minutes of watching, The president of our country himself made an annoucement that shocked everyone.
"We couldn't tell you people of Groveland because it could have been a hoax and would have sent you to panic. But we have a more worrying matter, we got sent an information that said that the new death game would happen in a month because of complication from their side. They also added that because of their problems they would give every human the chance to bring a low level object. ", he said it with calmness.
What he did was smart. He basically excused himself and changed the subject by scaring us more.
"One month", Jim said.
"I have one month to prepare, pretty good.", I thought.
I am probably one of the only person in the world to know that we can upgrade ourselves by breaking our limits.
"Yo Jim!"
He turned.
-"What?"
"We'll make ourselves stronger"
-"What do you mean?"
Our conversation was stopped by the president who added:
"We also get a hint. The game will be about our individual weakness. You can also see your "stats" by saying status."
Jim tried and told me that it worked.
"Status", I said
Identity: Dave Morek Anglius
Lvl:1
Stats:
Strength: 0.8 + (0.2)
Agility: 1.2 + (0.2)
Stamina: 1.4 + (0.2)
Intelligence: 2.8 + (0.2)
Title slot (1/1): [Among the 250] Effect: (+0.2 all stats)
*1 is average
The title may be OP. Not my problem. If what the president said was right, that meant that the test would be on strength for me.
Jim told me that it would be the same for him.
"What would be a way to train strenght?", we both thought.
Probably exercising.
I told Jim about my discovery in the practice round and he was also down to train. We both knew that failure would mean death in a month. I also wanted to try a theory.
Meanwhile, the millions of commentators were jumping around happy that their event was getting so popular across realms. One of the strongest beings was actively asking to watch.
They all loved it.
Everyone that watched. I mean who wouldn't want to see a battle royal of weak insects attacking eachother with such hate.
Like MMA, but with losers and strongs insect in different categories. Most of the watchers looked at the A tiered arenas but some loved watching a Y tier one.
Y-10.
Because of one crazy guy that made a bad deed by attacking someone clearly weaker than himself and got strategized on by a spectator who spent a lot of money to give him a weapon.
He survived. Amazingly even.
They had to take some time to organize the next event as there would be more than millions of spectators. Way more.