We reached another town, this one ruled over by a party named Ex. Cess. Ive. Punc. Tu. A. Tion. that had four crawlers. They told us to stay the eff away from their quests or they'd end us, but they had no skulls so I didn't take it too seriously.

  Lacie: The others had no skulls showing.

  Maddy: Yes, but they attacked. These just went about their business. They're just surly because they want the town upgrade from their quest.

  Lacie: Fair enough. We have to prep ourselves, anyways. It's ten hours until the hunters are loosed.

  Maddy: You sleep, I'll explore.

  Lacie: Get your sleep first. Also, train first. And train my dodge, too.

  Maddy: Oh yeah, I forgot about that senpai thing.

  She snort-laughed as we headed into the safe room.

  "What?"

  "Senpai is the term all the flirty girls in anime use for the older students. It means upperclassman. Sensei is the teacher."

  I sighed. I had forgotten that like six times already. "Right. Sensei."

  She affected her flirty-anime-girl voice, which she could do perfectly. "Train me, Senpai. I'm so bad at dodging things. Oh no! Senpai, I dodged so badly that I fell over and now you can see a fanservice angle!"

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  "You want this training to go well, or to go rough?"

  "Rough!"

  I blushed and started fiddling with the settings. "I thought we were doing Hide In Shadows?"

  "That was just for the Midnight-Ballroom piercings. Now, we're doing dodge."

  "Oh, that's clever. What's your skill with all the gear?"

  "It lists as fifteen, but it's five plus thirteen, so really good."

  "Man, if I'd wanted to be the assassin everyone told me to be, that would have been wicked." I finally got the dodge system enabled. "Oh wow, you have no dodge, so it's letting me see all sorts of details. Can you see anything special in your interface?"

  "Nope."

  "I can see your exact progress on dodge. You have 0.257 experience and need to hit 100 to reach level 1. You should gain that in the first 16 minutes of this session. Also, skills have emphases that aren't at equal levels. You're at an average of 0.257 experience, but that's 0.229 for spell evasion, 0.118 for avoiding ranged attacks, 0.424 for avoiding melee attacks, and all the others are at 0.0. There are like a thousand classifications."

  I looked at Lacie with a nervous grin. "I get to pick what we emphasize. Also, I have to pick one. If I pick the lowest, it levels fastest, but you probably want melee, right?"

  "Man, I wish I could see that info," Lacie said. "No offense, but seeing the math behind the game is kinda wasted on you."

  "I know, right?" I agreed with a laugh.

  "But, yeah, all dodge is good dodge, but I need the melee for invasive growth."

  "Makes sense to me." I set the room to focus on melee-oriented dodging and began the session. By the end of the session, Lacie was at 2 dodge, but her melee-oriented dodge was closer to level 3, at 647.009 experience points, while all the other emphases were sub-400.

  After that, I trained another two hours of find trap while she started something brewing in the crafting room. She was asleep by the time I came out.

  I looked at the ceiling, envisioning everyone looking at us.

  Carefully, I settled onto the bed, looking at her but not quite touching her. Two hours later, when I woke, she had her head on one of my arms, her mouth smashed against my shoulder, drooling onto my shirt.

  After a few minutes of watching her breath, I replaced my arm with a pillow and the drooling turned to aggressive snoring. Time to scout.