“I get it, I get it … but yeah, it’s a summoner-type class, basically. I didn’t expect it either, trust me, but … it’s pretty neat.”

  A broad, curious grin formed on Richie’s face as he put everything together. “Oh, okay, I see where this is going. Let me guess, whatever it is you summon, it’s a …” Richie held his hand over one another, about twenty to thirty centimeters away from each other, “… yay tall physical combat summon?”

  “That … yeah, that’s exactly right.” Ryan glanced over at Modak, who was just standing there with a smile on his face.

  Exactly then, Richie stretched his hand out toward the table that he was sitting at earlier. For just a moment, his eyes seemed to give off sparks of soft blue light, which quickly traveled through Richie’s arm like a current. An arc of electricity shot outward from his finger to the table, connecting with something there. Before that arc of energy even settled down, some quiet metallic thumps could be heard. A small figure leapt off the table and came running over to the group, quickly jumping up onto Richie’s arm.

  “Meet R.0.X.13. Or, well … Roxie,” Richie said proudly, showing off the small humanoid robot stood on his shoulder. Roxie had a vaguely feminine, stylized form with thick arms and legs. The two antennae on top of its head, combined with the hexagonal compound eyes and some other design features, made it very clear that Roxie was borrowing a lot of traits from ants.

  “Wait, is this a Power Duel robot?” Ryan asked immediately, leaning slightly forward with a broad smile on his face. “Holy shit, I watched that show every week as a kid, that’s so cool!”

  Silvia pushed forward and took a close look at the robot as well. “I think I’ve still got all the Power Duels comics at home, I’ve never seen a real Duelist! I mean, I’ve got some of the toys, but it’s not the same thing.”

  “Heh, well, Roxie here is a state-of-the-art model that I myself built.” With a smug grin, Richie glanced at the robot, before looking at Ryan. “So, are we doing this or not?”

  Ryan looked at Modak, not sure if he was understanding everything correctly, but seeing his friend’s excited smile, he let out a sigh. “Honestly, you could have explained it beforehand, man.”

  As he held forward his hand, a flow of red wisps appeared from Ryan’s arm and hand, gathering on the ground until they formed the body of Maximus. As Richie placed Roxie down onto the ground, he took a closer look at the small knight.

  “Oh wow, that … what kind of summon is it?”

  “He’s a type of spirit. Maximus the Knight.”

  Richie raised his brow curiously. “Huh, alright. I wonder how a spirit compares to my cute little Roxie, then.”

  “Great, can we start right away, then?” Ryan asked, just as curious about that as Richie seemed to be. However, the gnome quickly shook his head.

  “Oh gods no, we need to do a bunch of tests first.” With a scoff, Richie walked over to his table, grabbing a tablet that was laying on it. He moved some things around opened some kind of data-entry program. “All of our robots are installed with full-body sensors. You know, to track the damage points and stuff. But obviously, your spirit doesn’t have that, so we’ve got to figure out how to track all that. And since armor doesn’t exactly have stats in the same way, I—”

  “Actually, that armor is his body, so I can actually tell you what his resistance stat is,” Ryan pointed out, and Richie raised a brow curiously.

  “Is that so? Well, that does indeed make things a little easier. Here, can you fill this out real quick? I’ve made some stat approximations for Roxie, so with that I should be able to calculate the damage received based on the amount of force that Roxie uses at any specific moment together with the counter-impact that’s measured with any attack,” Richie explained, handing the tablet over to Ryan, who quickly entered the stats that the input fields were asking for. When he was done, he quickly handed the tablet back, and Richie looked it over for a moment.

  “Huh, that’s pretty high, considering its size … but it doesn’t have the agility stat, so I guess it’s really more of a strength-tanker?” Richie asked, and Ryan nodded with a slight shrug.

  “Basically, from what I gathered,” he replied, looking down at Roxie somewhat curiously. “So, that robot can put up with his stats?”

  “Stats aren’t everything, so yes.” With a smug grin, Richie crossed his arms. “You’re at the NRU robotics club right now, bud. Our Duelists would kick the butts of the ones from the original series. The original series is also about thirty years old, but that’s not important. The fact that we’ve got state-of-the-art magical engineering resources helps too, I guess. Oh, but we’ll be balancing some of the point values to make up for the stat difference to a certain degree. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Nah, go ahead.”

  Richie walked over to one end of the square area sectioned off through tape. He snapped his finger, and a spark of electric blue magic arced between the tablet in his hand and the monitor set up at the side of the makeshift “arena.” There were now two numbers displayed on the screen, one labeled, “Roxie,” the other “Maximus.”

  “Each side has a hundred points. It’s basically their health, and every attack will reduce the opponent’s, of course. I mean, you’ve played games before, right? You know how it works.”

  Ryan scoffed and nodded his head immediately. “Yeah, don’t worry. I get the gist. But … sorry, can I have a quick moment?”

  “Sure, take your time.”

  Ryan slowly squatted down and picked up Maximus off the ground, approaching the door. Modak and Silvia looked at him with concern, before the latter quickly asked, “Is everything alright?”

  “I’m good, don’t worry. I just need to talk to Maximus real quick,” Ryan replied, then pushed open the large door and closed it behind himself again as he stepped out. Modak stared at Silvia with a worried expression.

  “Should I have talked to him about this first?”

  Silvia smiled and shook her head. “You’re fine, don’t worry. He’s probably just nervous? I mean, he’s been in plenty of fights before, but this is a little different. And by the way”—Silvia looked over at Richie curiously—“you guys are just spending your time reenacting old game-shows-turned-cartoon-turned-cultural-

  phenomenon?”

  “Not all of our time. Just a lot of it.”

  Outside the door, Ryan looked at Maximus who stood on his palm. “Before this starts, I feel like I should ask, but … you’re fine with that, right? To fight that robot?”

  Maximus stared back at Ryan for a few moments, before giving him a single slow, but very deliberate, nod.

  “It’s not like this is just for fun either, you know … ? I mean, sure, it does sound fun and all, but I mean … you’re a Knight; this is like the perfect environment for us to practice the Spirit Link skill, right? It doesn’t hurt anymore, but the doc said I shouldn’t put too much pressure on my shoulder yet. My mana’s still out of whack too, but skills are fairly harmless in that sense.”

  Once more, Maximus replied with a single nod.

  “… Am I way overthinking this?”

  Another nod from Maximus quickly followed. Ryan let out a slight scoff. “Alright, if you say so. So, when we use Spirit Link, how are we doing this? Do you want to try out my style of fighting for a bit? Or do you just want me to nudge you in certain directions? I’ll be able to see the whole thing, after all. Might have a better overview.”

  Maximus seemed to think for a moment. But it didn’t take him long to come to a decision, holding up one finger.

  “Alright. Then let’s do this.” With a grin, Ryan nodded his head. “Guess it’s a good opportunity to try out that new arm of yours too, huh?”

  With an excited smile, Ryan stepped back into the room, then placed Maximus down on the ground on the opposite site of the arena to where Richie was waiting.

  “You okay?” Modak was worried after Ryan left the room so suddenly a minute ago. But Ryan quickly turned around toward him, and all the concern he had was immediately washed away. There was a broad smile plastered all over his friend’s face.

  “Couldn’t be better.” Ryan took a few steps back until he was outside of the makeshift arena. By now, the other robotics club members had also gathered around and were eagerly awaiting the start of the Power Duel. Having one of their creations fight against a spirit certainly was a rare opportunity.

  “Can we get started?” Richie asked, pulling some gloves over his hands. They were covered in circuit-like patterns that immediately lit up the moment Richie fully wore them.

  Ryan raised his brow curiously. “What are those for?”

  “Hm? Oh, these are just a tool to give me finer control over my magic. You don’t have anything like that?”

  “Not yet at least. I’ve got a pretty rare class, so there’s no equipment made for it.”

  “Gotta get it custom-made, then. I can send you the name of a place I like,” he suggested, and Ryan didn’t hesitate to accept the offer.

  Richie quickly clapped his hands together with a broad grin on his face. On the monitor that was displaying the “health” of each Roxie and Maximus, a ten-second countdown started. “Alright, get ready. Now.”

  As Richie said so, and as the timer kept counting down, Ryan activated the Spirit Link. He closed his eyes for just a moment, and as he opened them again, his irises were glowing in a bright red. The red wisps of magic flowed out from his hands, forming a connecting thread between himself and Maximus, so thin that it was hard to see it.

  Soon, Ryan was overcome with new sensations; Maximus’s sensations. The weight of his armor, the things that he could hear and see. All the information was simply put straight into Ryan’s head. He wasn’t sure if he could ever get used to this. It just always felt so foreign to him.

  Ryan held his hand slightly forward, clenching his hand into a fist. And right then, Maximus did the same thing, as if mimicking Ryan’s movements perfectly.

  Richie seemed to have noticed this as well, but wasn’t able to properly register it before the countdown hit zero. The moment that a buzzer signaled the start of the fight, Maximus ran forward. It was a weird sensation to Ryan; he wasn’t controlling Maximus directly, but it was a sort of “suggestion.” Ryan and Maximus were working together almost perfectly, as Ryan, who had an overview over the arena, guided Maximus’s movements as much as the knight was allowing him to.

  Maximus closed the distance to Roxie in not even a second, at which point, Ryan swung his fist forward as he would in a normal fight. He felt a pressure stop his arm as Maximus’s fist impacted on Roxie’s body. Ryan glanced to the side; that punch was worth fifteen damage points.

  As he looked back at Richie, the first thing Ryan noticed were the gnome’s bright white teeth pressed against each other for a massive, excited smile. Richie held his hands forward, as though he were placing his fingers onto some kind of keyboard or controller as his fingers started moving faster than Ryan could keep track of. Roxie slid past Maximus to move the fight closer to the center of the arena, and the knight quickly followed.

  Ryan did a sweeping motion with his leg, which was quickly mimicked by Maximus. And as Roxie jumped out of the way, Maximus jumped toward the robot. He reached out, and while Roxie entered a guard stance to protect its face, the knight’s hands wrapped around the back of its head, grasping it tightly.

  As the body of Maximus crunched together, forcing Roxie’s head down with his whole upper body, his knee rocketed right through the robot Duelist’s defense. Immediately after the full impact, Maximus let go and stretched out the leg he used to attack just now, kicking Roxie away. The robot now only had forty-one points left.

  “Gods … so that’s how you fight?” Richie asked with a nervous smile on his face. “Remind me to never mess with you …”

  “Hah, don’t worry.” Ryan laughed slightly. “You seem like a good guy, so I doubt it would come to that.”

  “Right … well, anyway … it was a bit surprising, but nothing I can’t handle.”

  Ryan raised a brow at what Richie said, focusing on the arena again. Roxie was running toward Maximus, and Ryan pushed forward his arm for another punch. But just before Maximus’s fist was supposed to touch the robot, Roxie just stopped moving altogether. As if someone had pressed “pause” on a video, it just froze mid-motion, interrupting any sort of momentum. Taken aback and unsure what was going on, Ryan hesitated. And in that moment of hesitation, Roxie’s momentum returned.

  With almost the same speed as before, the small robot moved forward and swung at Maximus. But the moment that Roxie’s jab touched the knight’s armor, sparks of electricity flew outward. Ryan could feel the heat and impact on his chest as the bright light of the sparks blinded Maximus’s view. It was truly an overwhelming “stun.” From the corner of his eye, Ryan saw Maximus’s points.

  Fifty-six. That single punch took nearly half the points off, and if he hadn’t experienced the sensation of that punch himself, Ryan would have thought that Richie was cheating. But it wasn’t really like Ryan had the time to think about it all too much. Before the sparks of electricity even disappeared, Roxie attacked again.

  Its arm shot forward for another jab, as the robot started to move around skillfully like a trained martial artist. Meanwhile, Richie’s fingers were moving around midair like he was playing a complex piece on an invisible piano. But that skillful and fast movement wasn’t really what Ryan and Maximus were struggling with the most. It was the fact that at seemingly random points, Roxie’s momentum was just canceled or paused, or whatever it was that was going on.

  Sometimes it would continue, as though Roxie was unpaused, but at other times, it just started moving in a completely different way, as if it was restarting its movement from zero. Like that momentum from before was just thrown away; discarded. Though, there was one thing that did seem to keep building up.

  Throughout these erratic and hard-to-predict motions, it was hard for Ryan to keep track of it all, and Roxie kept getting hits in. Sometimes, there were more sparks, and sometimes, there weren’t. Either way, it didn’t take long before Ryan and Maximus’s first Power Duel was over.

  Roxie - 41 Points | Maximus - 0 Points

  Chapter Seventeen

  Power Source

  Ryan and Maximus hadn’t gotten a single point in after Richie and Roxie got serious.

  “What …” Ryan looked at the gnome across from him in disbelief, as Richie carefully picked up the robot to look it over and make sure nothing was broken or too scratched up. “… what the hell was that?”

  Modak and Silvia also quickly approached. “How did you do that?” Silvia questioned, just as puzzled as Ryan. But Modak seemed to have some kind of idea.

  “Was that an Energy Transmutor?”

  “An Energy what, now?” Ryan asked, and Richie quickly explained with a proud grin on his face.

  “An Energy Transmutor. It can take one form of energy and turn it into another directly. In this case, it can access and transmute kinetic, electrical, and magical energies into each other.”

  As he picked up Maximus off the ground as well, Ryan looked at Richie confused. “So what, you just turned Roxie’s momentum into electricity for those sparks?”

  “Basically. It’s a relatively new technology, so it’s not perfectly efficient. The only reason I can do it is because I can supplement some of the energy loss through my magic. The others had to come up with their own gimmicks, though.”

  Ryan looked around at the other club members, who were all excitedly agreeing.

  “Do you think … Maximus and I could fight the others as well? For practice, I mean,” Ryan asked, not even hesitating. Maximus was a knight, a physical combat class. And after the end of the battle, Ryan noticed not only himself, but Maximus be surrounded by a particularly thin layer of that glowing dust representing a growth in experience. Of course, the others couldn’t see it, but Ryan could. While these battles were basically nothing but spars, they still allowed for Maximus to grow.

  He had no idea why he hadn’t thought about it before; a large portion of martial-arts-based Awakened ended up in combat sports, rather than actual “classic” combat scenarios. While they tended to level up slower than people that were active in Dungeon Diving or Heroics, they still leveled up.

  Ryan wasn’t necessarily expecting a full level-up, but just bringing them closer to the next one would just be great. Plus, the sooner Ryan reached level 10, the sooner he could get the Bluesky guys off his back. They kept calling and showing up at the café. Luckily Runar managed to intercept them most of the time, but until Ryan reached level 10, the point at which the trading of classes became impossible even with whatever methods Bluesky had found, they clearly had no intention of letting up. Not to mention, leveling up and strengthening their skills would make finding the rest of Gaia’s fragments just that much easier.

  So, in order to level up as soon as possible, Ryan and Maximus would make use of whatever they could. They needed to fight. And doing it here, in such a safe environment, only brought benefits. And if all the Duelists were as unique as Roxie, then this would not only be useful to grow stronger … but it would also just be a lot of fun. However, it wasn’t just Richie’s own choice to be made.

  The gnome looked around the room, trying to gauge the opinions of the other club members. Seeing that they were all curious and interested, the gnome replied with a nod, “Sure, as far as I’m concerned at least. I’ll run it by the other members properly first, though. Ah, but obviously it can’t happen right now either; we’re all still working on the finishing touches. This whole Power Duel thing is part of our main project for the semester, so we’re doing our final test run this Friday afternoon. You can come by if you want, I’m sure the others will be happy to have the data from fighting a spirit.”

  With a grin, Ryan looked at Maximus as he stood on his palms. “Are you alright with that as well?”