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The Arcade Part 1

Tira similarly paid for them as she did for the laptop, but this time, she didn't have a box of anything else in return but just a piece of paper.

"They will deliver them at our house tomorrow morning as some aren't available yet, and we aren't in a hurry."

Tira almost like she read the mind of Codex, she gave him an answer to his question.

"Let's go to the Arcade place. Hopefully, it isn't too busy today."

Codex got confused about what this Arcade place was, but he considered it another way of referring to the area with the simulation machines.

They moved and had to get an escalator up to get at one of the upper floors. Some places seemed to provide food as there were images of them and prices of them.

At his point, Codex understood that this strange symbol he kept seeing next to numbers was the symbol of the currency used. In most books he read, they seemed to use gold coins or silver and such, but this didn't seem to be the case here, at least not entirely.

He noticed some people paying with coins. The coins looked similar to what he imagined the ones from the books to look like or pretty close to that image.

But it seemed pretty rare for one to use coins, and most were using those plastic cards.

Codex heard of them to be called credit cards.

He and Tira moved and reached a place with a massive door and a sign that said The Arcade with many lights around it.

Getting in, Codex saw different types of machines.

Some seemed to have a seat for the one to use them to be, some had a screen, and what looked like a gun from one game he had played, and others seemed to have a door and be big enough for maybe two people to be inside.

Some people were using some machines, so Codex could see them in action and understood how they worked.

"Oh, the simulation ones seemed to be occupied, but you can try some of the simpler ones, or we can kill some monsters."

Codex was interested in the killing monsters mention. According to the books, killing monsters was one of the best ways for one to level up.

He wondered if Tira also had a System herself since she made that offer.

"Monster killing sounds like fun."

He could feel messages from Soryn being excited about them having some action.

Tira led them to the machine with the big screen and the guns.

She pulled out one gun and showed Codex how to hold it before giving it to him.

Then she pulled out another one for her to use.

"Get ready and aim for their head."

She swiped her credit card at a specific spot of the machine, and a countdown started on the big screen.

When it reached 0, the screen showed an empty valley, and Codex noticed that an icon was at the screen when they were aiming with their guns.

His was blue, and Tira's was red, though.

Then, from the machine's speakers, they heard sounds of movement, and some humans with rotten skins started moving towards them.

Tira pressed the trigger of her gun while aiming at the heads of those creatures. The heads of the creatures blew up one after the other.

As she kept shooting, a bar at the bottom right of the screen was getting smaller.

Codex quickly joined the shooting.

His timing was a lot better than Tira's, as he never had to shoot the same target more than once.

His shooting was slower than hers, but he was doing a lot better because of his precision.

The bar at the bottom right got empty, and Tira seemed to have lost her calm then as two enemies were near her and her weapon wasn't working.

"I don't have enough time to reload."

But in the middle of the sentence and as the enemies were ready to attack her, that would damage and possibly kill her in-game character, the enemies fell, with each of them getting their head blown by one shot each.

Tira turned towards Codex, who was calm and returned to kill the enemies at his side.

She pressed a button at the bottom of the gun, and the bar of hers started to getting filled.

It seemed like during recharge, and she couldn't use her weapon.

Codex noticed this and started calculating how many shots he had left before he was out of energy and he had to recharge.

He also paid attention to how long it took for the recharge, which seemed to be four seconds.

Tira tried to be of better help and not spend her shots as fast as before.

People seem to notice them and the skill of Codex as they started gathering, watching them playing.

Codex was close to having no energy, but there were more enemies he had to deal with.

There were four enemies, and he had enough energy for two. As for counting on Tira, she seemed too busy to keep her side clear.

He tried to think of a solution as he noticed something in the enemy's behavior.

Each enemy, when appearing, was targeting either him or Tira, and they were heading towards them using the shortest route.

Typically, they stayed in the same position and kept shooting. Still, he noticed Tira moved slightly to the left and the enemies, targeting her, changing their direction towards her new location.

He then moved himself to the right to be in front of the one target of his coming from the right and was also the furthest currently.

Since he moved that way, the enemies changed their path to and after a few seconds, and Codex made his first shot.

The heads of two of his enemy got blown up, one that was at the right side and the other being more left than the last one but had to move a bit to the right to get to Codex making their head to be in a perfect line.

So now he had to line up the other two, and then he could recharge. The precision for doing a shot like that was complex for most, but for him was like breathing.

That technique amazed people. Most haven't heard of this being used in the game in the past.

Codex killed the other two similarly as he pressed his weapon to recharge.

He turned to see how Tira was doing, but even she wasn't wasting as much energy with each killing as before. It didn't seem to be enough, and Codex could tell that she would be over before his recharge was over.

And so it happened, and Tira's character got killed as her weapon was unusable once again.

Then all her enemies targeted Codex's character.

But before they got to him, his weapon recharge was over, and he quickly took care of them.

Since now Tira wasn't playing and could only watch Codex playing, she noticed the crowd gathered and understood why.

People expected Codex to not keep up with all the enemies as he had to deal with double the amount from before, but it seemed like it wasn't the case.

His speed of killing enemies didn't get slower or less precise, but it got even faster.

As Codex progressed, he thought of fresh ways to deal with the enemies as shooting some barrels that randomly appeared now and then for a few seconds.

His character had moved and headed toward a stone castle's gate.

Different enemies started appearing, some appearing less human-like and being creatures with horns and red skins and spitting fire.

The fire heading towards him was at great speed, but he could avoid them by sidestepping. But the time window was pretty small, or at least it would be for anyone else.

After killing one of the red-skinned creatures, he noticed a sword being at the ground lighting up that appeared where the creature used to be before disappearing after dying.

Codex aimed at it, and an option to pick it up appeared, and he selected the yes option by aiming at it and shooting it. Fortunately, no energy got used for it.

The machine that had the weapon on it made some noise as a hidden slot of it got out, and out came a handle similar to the sword he just saw.

Codex pulled out the handle, and it seemed like it was just the handle.

But he quickly noticed that if he swung it, signs of his swings appeared on the screen.

"Oh, he got the sword already? He is pretty lucky, but it is hard to use it."

The one who spoke was one people from the crowd.

He was a young man, maybe around the age of what Codex looked like to be, and he was a red Polymath.

Tira looked towards him and recognized his clothing.

He was wearing the clothing of people working at FireDigital, the game creators of the one that Codex had broken the records of the other day, and the game he was currently playing.

Tira knew little about the people who worked in FireDigital as she was part of the leading company, but she knew that only one Polymath of that young age was part of it.

He was a genius, even among adult Polymaths, and had helped improve many of the games. He was the one with the idea of the paying leaderboards game and the one in charge of most of its development states.

Tira didn't know what to do as she was afraid if they found Codex out to be the one breaking all those records, they could want him to test everything and most likely would take him away from her even if she worked at the mother company of FireDigital.

She didn't know what to do and didn't want to tell Codex to stop playing as he seemed to have fun.

She hoped for the best.

Codex progressed in the castle with the sword in one hand and his gun in the other.

He usually had to keep the gun with both hands to keep it steady after the recoil, but he could handle it with one hand too.

The sword was harder to use as he had to be more precise and aim for the next of them to cut their head which was difficult to do at the red-skinned enemies, who he heard to be referred to as demons from the crowd behind him.

They moved faster than the other ones, but he could handle their speed.

After getting into the castle, he encountered enemies wearing metal armor, and in the armor, instead of a person's body, there were just shadows.

He noticed his gun wasn't working on them and had to use his sword on the small openings that existed at the different parts of the armor.

The crowd was speechless seeing him adapting to each situation with such speed like he had played the game a million times.

It fascinated the young Polymath to see the one in front of him playing the game with such ease.

'Maybe he will be the first one to beat the boss.'

But it seemed like Codex overlooked one enemy that got too close to him and killed him.

The enemy didn't just appear out of nowhere, and Codex should have noticed him.

'I guess he wasn't as skillful as I thought.'

The young man then left as he wasn't interested in the current situation anymore.

Tira noticed this and could tell that the man lost his interest in Codex, and she was happy about this.

But then she got sad as she thought that Codex lost after getting so far.

People from the crowd surrounded Codex and were trying to talk to him all at the same time.

Some wanted tips for the game, some wanted to be his friends, and a few even wanted an autograph.

Codex wasn't sure what to do, but Tira came to the rescue, making everyone leaving Codex alone.

"You ok? You may finish it next time."

"No need for that. Can we play something else?"

Tira looked at him but didn't see signs of him being sad about losing the game, so they moved to a different game.

In reality, Codex had noticed the enemy and was ready to deal with him, but the voice inside him told him not to do so.

He didn't know why, but he trusted it and Soryn's advice till now as they seemed helpful.

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