Matt had a theory. Parenting books about exercise and words of affirmation were garbage. For every kid in the range of eight to thirteen years old, their quality of life was broadly determined by the best public rec room they had access to.

Life was just better with access to a foosball table. It didn’t fix every problem, but the ability to play about half a game of pool before hand-sliding the balls across the table did an awful lot to balance out the bad stuff.

Barry didn’t change forms for this meeting, but he had gone all-out on the setting. Before Matt even opened his eyes, he could smell the weird combination of fresh, cheap nachos and old, dirty carpet that were inextricably linked to the best rec room he had ever been in. He didn’t even remember how he found it; it was buried deep on the campus of some weird church he didn’t even attend. But the weirdness did nothing to negate the fact that they had a full, faith-subsidized snack bar and, somehow, a free Street Fighter II Turbo arcade machine.

And if Barry knew enough to generate this room for him, Matt knew what was next.

“Barry, is there time?”

“If we talk while we do it, yeah. But I get dibs on Dhalsim.”

In moments, they were playing, and it was everything Matt had hoped. His PER and DEX more than made up for being a decade out of practice. It was absolutely rad, right up until he started crying. Not fun-tears-of-joy crying, but full snot-on-Barry’s-shoulder, Lucy-bobbing-uncomfortably-in-the-background-trying-to-console-him ugly crying.

After a series of what could be termed very hard months, the normalcy of it all was just too much.

“I’m sorry, Barry, I’m eating into our time.” It took Matt a couple of minutes to get himself back under control.

“No, it’s okay. I thought that might happen. I budgeted for it.”

Barry motioned over to the ripped up, duct-taped salvage couch that sat in front of the N64 with controllers that were so busted nobody bothered to try playing it anymore. Everyone sat, and watched as Barry pulled a folder out.

“Are we ready?” Barry asked.

Matt and Lucy both nodded.

“Good. First, as you’ve probably suspected, the system was trying to withhold your accomplishments. To be fair, I think this was only partially because of him being his usual charming self. I suspect bringing Asadel over to play took a lot out of him.”

Matt’s ears perked up.

“Asadel? That was his name? How do you know?”

“He tried to enter one of my dungeons when he got here. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that the system is tired. I can’t adequately explain how it works, but the ambient energy available on this planet is unbelievably weak. Any given dungeon should be able to handle dozens of parties a day. It takes me weeks to recharge one.”

Lucy raised her hand. “And this matters, why?”

“I’m getting to that, I promise. Before, I strongly suspected the system was in the same situation as me. But now I know. It’s confirmed. And to show you why, you will probably need these.”

Barry handed over a small stack of envelopes.

“What are these?” Matt asked, taking them from him.

“Notifications. I know normally you wait until a calm time to open them, but if you could, please open them now. They’re relevant to our discussion. Just to prepare you, the first is one you’ve already seen.”

Life to the Lifeless, Lifelessness to the Living

By now, you’ve probably thought, “Man, I just want to plant plants and have fun. Why is this system instance so serious about this? Does he hate plants?” And you know what? That pisses me off. Because if you had just wanted to raid dungeons and have a little garden, we could have worked that out. It would have taken time, but I would have eventually contacted the main system somehow or other, and we might have made things right for you.

But no, you wouldn’t have it. Your system guardian tells you that you have system authority, and you want to know about that. I tell you not to, and you make jokes about that. I offer you a deal that guarantees your exit out of here, and you don’t care. You just want to look into the stuff I say not to look into. And you know what? Fine. No more deals.

So now I don’t play nice. Yup, you got all your little plants going. And you know what? I’m happy. Because right now, you’re telling yourself, “I brought life back to Gaia.” And you feel great about that. Good. Because once you die, what happens to those plants? They die. They wither and die, just like you will.

And I’ll laugh. My only regret is that I can’t spit on them as they go.

Enjoy your tokens. You won’t get a chance to spend them.

Reward: 5,000 Estate Tokens

When Matt had first seen the notification, he had other, more immediate concerns to think about. Given that, it was understandable to misread the reward as five thousand estate credits. Or, roughly all that he had earned up to this point. It was a lot, but it wasn’t life changing.

Even though Matt had some sort of loose ownership over the entire continent, the estate system only built on land that was “annexed.” That amounted to roughly one-third of an acre. So, to extend his domain, Matt had toiled over a new patch of land to lower the eventual credit cost of actually buying it. Before he could see the fruits of his work, Asadel had arrived.

Five thousand credits could have done a lot. It would have been more than enough for them to annex the field, fill it with soil, put some plants in it, and do some other fun agricultural stuff besides. But these weren’t credits. These were tokens. If that worked how he thought …

“To be clear …”

“Yes. Tokens, not credits. Each of these, when used, will annex a section of land roughly the size of your initial property.”

“That’s over a thousand acres,” Matt’s voice was barely a whisper.

“That’s correct. A pretty good-sized ranch, all things considered. If you could, Matt, please claim those tokens now. And when you get home, I’d recommend you use them right away. I think you might find the results … interesting.”

Matt didn’t need to be told twice, especially with Barry’s wink-wink, nod-nod implication that this would feed into more information about his system authority. He claimed the tokens, noting with satisfaction when they showed up in his list of spendable estate resources.

“The rest I’ve taken the liberty of rewording myself. I thought you’d like that.”

“I do. Thank you, Barry.” Matt smiled and eagerly flipped open the next envelope.

Close Encounter of the Turd Kind

You’ve met, fought and survived an encounter with an alien. Kind of. You’re both aliens, since neither of you are exactly locals. But the system classified you as a Gaian when you arrived, while this new guy fell into the “outside invader” category.

If someone has enough juice to cross the cosmos and try to kill you, they generally also have the means to be successful. You defied that rule of thumb by fighting your way out and escaping. Both in terms of the rarity of this kind of encounter and the rarity of someone at your level surviving it, this is a bigger deal than it might seem like. The rewards here reflect that.

I’m glad it was you who won. He seemed like a little shit, honestly.

Reward: Skill—[Pocket Sand], Boots of the Wasteland Traveler, +5 DEX

“Holy shit! Is this for real?” Matt was shocked. It was the biggest single stat boost he had ever received, a piece of equipment that sounded like it might be enchanted, and a full-on skill.

Barry grinned. “Understand that you’ve sort of hit the big leagues here in some ways. The upside of dealing with threats above your level is getting appropriately large rewards.”

“I guess. Wow.”

“Oh, it gets better. Please continue.”

Matt ripped open the next envelope.

Achievements Completely Unarmed, Justified Unjustified Trust, Triumph of The Working Class, and Scoop De Grace have combined into the following unified achievement:

[The 1,000 Ways You Should Have Died]

To be clear, there have been a lot of times you should have died. Clownrats? Bonecat? Moles? Giant ape? All these are serious, real threats that you shouldn’t have been able to defeat.

This was different. The system threw a fully armed Combat class hero at you. He shattered all your weapons, shrugged off all of your traps, and even survived through all of your direct, honest damage. He was overleveled, buffed, and should have been immune to anything that you could do.

You won anyway. And that has certain implications.

The biggest is that the system was forced to acknowledge that you were the sole defender of an entire planet against an invasion by an outside force. This was technically a great amount of trust to place in you. You’ve lived up to the impossible request of acting as a Combat class when you were a support class. You’ve proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you would make a damn good Combat class.

Your current class is built on the premise of surviving threats for rewards that augment your ability to survive further threats. Well, you’ve survived certain realities that are in turn generating their own realities. Enjoy.

Reward: Survivor class evolution to Combat class (Pending)

“Holy shit. Barry, there’s no way the system instance wanted to give this up.”

“Oh, absolutely not. And that leads into my next wonderful trick, actually. You are, of course, aware that the system instance has been withholding as many achievements as it could, for as long as it could, correct?”

Lucy snorted. “We really couldn’t have missed it.”

“Well, that ends now. Among all the other things to come out of this, one was an opportunity for me to hold the system instance to account. Frankly, it was pretty far out on a limb in withholding your achievements at all. I have, at least temporarily, managed to wrest control of that process from him.”

Matt and Lucy’s jaws dropped open for a second. Matt recovered first.

“Wait, you make all our rewards now?”

“No, and that’s the best part. He still makes them. The energy comes out of his budget. I’m in charge of what they are and when they are rewarded. Expect rewards to be immediate and appropriate from now on. The only exception is when he has a very, very good reason why they shouldn’t be.”

“That’s incredible.”

“And that’s not all. You see, transmigration has costs. I’m not sure if he paid those costs, but even requesting a transmigration in his situation would be expensive. Between that and the estate tokens you already claimed, his prize pool should be more or less empty. Your new prizes are coming out of what you might understand as his operational expenses, the energy he needs to run himself.”

“Is he …”

“Dead? No. But you put the hurt on him, Matt. Your class evolution is pending because he simply doesn’t have the goods to pay you out on it. And he still has a massive energy debt to pay back before he’s up and at ’em. He’s down for the count.”

Matt and Lucy both looked at each other before breaking out into wide, manic grins.

“So he’s out of our hair for how long?” Matt asked.

“Months, at least. Probably closer to a year.”

Lucy snorted, then fell to the ground, rolling around and laughing with relief. It proved contagious, Matt found himself on the ground too, laughing until he ran out of breath.

Barry smiled and let them go. As a very good dungeon system, he had made sure to budget time for this too.

After recovering, thanking Barry for his hard work, and playing just a few more rounds of Street Fighter, it was time for Lucy and Matt to go. As they moved to leave the rec center, Barry stopped them one last time.

“By the way, I have one last envelope for you.”

“Really? The others weren’t enough?”

“This is a little different. It’s an achievement of a different kind. But I wanted you to have a bit more information about the subject we can’t really talk about and I am, as you know”—Barry waved at his perfect replica that provided so much of Matt’s tween joy—“not above a bit of showmanship. I think it’s possible that the time you spend your estate tokens might be a very good time to open this.”

Matt took the envelope, guessing that it would probably make the trip back to the real world with him.

“Barry?”

“Yeah, Matt?”

“Thanks again. Really.”

“No problem.”