TheShingPen
The Arcade Part 2
Tira and Codex moved to some simpler games while keeping in mind when one of the full simulation ones would be available.
Codex followed the voice's advice not to use everything he had in each game, even if he didn't fully understand why.
After a couple of minutes, one of the simulation chambers got free, and both headed at it.
But before Tira could input her info to pay for a simulation session, someone reached them and made a light cough to draw their attention.
They both turned and saw an adult female dark Polymath, with business clothing and a pair of dark glass sunglasses covering her eyes completely.
She seemed like an agent of secret organizations from some books Codex read and had some art of the book's people.
"Can I help you with anything?"
Tira didn't know why this person had to talk with them as she didn't recognize her.
"Excuse me, but are you the female parent of this young individual? Or maybe his agent?"
"Agent? No, I am not his agent, but I am his legal guardian. What business do you have with him?"
Se seemed to get suspicious, especially after asking if she was an agent.
She was afraid that maybe she was someone similar to the young individual she noticed before.
"Oh, sorry, where are my manners. I should introduce myself. My name is Ana Dark, and I represent a small starting company for game development. They informed me of the skills that the young man had shown recently by a friend of mine, so I would like to offer him an offer as one of our testers."
"We deny the offer."
Tira gave her answer right away, as she knew it wasn't wise to let others know about how good Codex was to play games.
"Wait a minute, since when does the Dark Clan work on any type of business. I thought you weren't allowed to do so."
"It is true we can't ourselves create one, but we can be part of others. Mine is a Red Clan-based created, but we aren't part of FireDigital or FireCom. Of course, we have filled all the forms needed and passed all the protocols needed. Miss, I guess you are working for FireCom that's why you don't want to be part of our deal. We have a special permit allowing us of people of the Main Companies to work for or with us since we technically don't belong to any of them."
Tira couldn't make any business deal with companies that had to do with any of the other Main Companies other than FireCom; it was part of her contract. Since Codex was underage, she would have to sign for him, but if they had the special permit that Ana mentioned, she wouldn't be in trouble.
"Still, we aren't interested. You can be on your way."
Usually, one would get angry, but Ana kept a straight face as she gave a slight bow at Tira.
"As you wish. Here is our card, though, if you change your mind. It has the address of our offices to visit if you want to check our work first. Thank you for your time."
Saying nothing else, she turned around and left.
"I always forget how serious they are. I wonder if anyone has ever seen a dark Polymath smile."
Codex poked her shoulder to snap her out of her thinking.
"What? Oh, the game, of course. Let me make the payment for a session. Do you want the tutorial, or should I just let you go through a level? This lets you control a racing car, which can be pretty hard to control."
Codex thought for a second before responding.
"Let me at the level right away. I will make it work as it goes."
Tira would say something if it were someone else, but she didn't doubt him even for a second after seeing what he could do.
Codex entered the big box, which seemed to be called a simulation chamber, when its entrance opened after Tira finished the payment.
As Codex entered, he found a seat similar to the ones at the hover car with a few changes.
He sat on it, and when he did, everything around him changed.
Even his clothes changed, and he seemed to be inside to something similar to a hover car but having much less space, enough for only the driver to be in it and being an actual car with wheels.
He noticed other cars similar to him at this left right and behind him but couldn't see their driver.
A big three appeared in front of him and quickly it got replaced by a two, and finally a one, which vanished too.
All the cars started moving then, and Codex quickly understood that this was the sign of the race beginning since he had played a similar game on the laptop.
Of course, the control wasn't the same, but he quickly adapted.
There was a UI at the game, and he could tell that the race had 4 laps, and it was also informing him what his current place was.
There were in total 12 drivers, including himself, and he was currently at 8th place.
The other cars seemed to move quite fast, and they were trying to keep him from passing them.
But he only needed one chance, and till the 3rd place, those were easy to find.
He finished his 1st lap at 3rd place, which was very impressive but fortunately, nobody could see his session.
He moved on, trying to pass the remaining two, but they seemed to adapt to his moves faster than the other drivers, leaving him no space for him to pass them.
The 2nd and 3rd laps passed with him still being in 3rd place, but he was close to passing them.
He wasn't aware that the reason it was so difficult to pass them wasn't that they were the ones with the most difficult by default, but they programmed the game to increase the difficulty depending on how many cars you had passed on each lap.
Since he had passed 9 cars at the first lab, the difficulty moved up quite a few paces in a short time.
But at the time of two laps, he adapted and used everything he had and finished in 1st place.
The simulation ended as everything turned back to normal, and the door of the chamber opened, and he heard a weird sound from outside.
As he stood up and got outside, he noticed another crowd had gathered outside.
He noticed an old human male trying to go through the crowd to get to him.
"Make way, wake way. If you don't, you are banned forever from all our stores."
Hearing that, people quickly made way for the older man, who almost fell from losing his balance since the people who were in the way suddenly moved.
He reached Codex and grasped his hands.
"You really are a young one. You must have trained for a long time to have such impressive skills. But where are my manners? Let me introduce myself. My name is Edan, and I am the manager of this place. I want to congratulate you on being the first one at our store to face the Insane difficulty and finish in the first place. As a reward, I give you a gold card to use in our places. It will provide you free use to most of our games and a discount on our premium ones. May you use it wisely."
The man presented to Codex a card similar to the one Tira was using to pay for things. Though, this one was gold in color and had a logo of the sign of the store.
"Enjoy the rest of your day. Also, once more, congratulations."
The man left, and the crowd was ready to move towards Codex but got stopped by 'demon' Tira.
"Maybe we should stop for the day. I don't think I can handle more of your fans."
Codex didn't mind as he got to feel a bit what it was to drive, which was why he wanted to try this simulation.
He and Tira moved to one place that seemed to provide food, and Tira ordered them something called burgers.
Codex didn't care about food as he wasn't getting the feeling described as hunger, but he didn't mind trying a new type of food.
"So what do you think of how things went today? Did you have fun? I mean, it looked like that when you played those two games."
Shingi wasn't sure if the feeling he felt was having fun, but it sounded like it was most likely the case, so he nodded.
"You really are adapting quickly, but try to keep a low profile. People like the lady we talked to before may learn about you, and they probably won't as friendly."
"I wouldn't call myself as being friendly, but just acting professionally."
Tira slowly turned towards her right, where the voice was heard of, and she saw the female Dark Polymath, sitting at the table next to theirs, reading a newspaper and having some tea.
She probably had her newspaper up covering her face, so Tira didn't notice her, and she didn't whisper when she talked at Codex.
"I must say, this is one significant coincidence, as you humans call it. Us meeting each other that soon? Maybe it is what you call fate."
"Are you following us now? We already said no."
Ana had some of her tea before she spoke again.
"I want to assure you I wasn't doing what you just accused me of. I was taking a break before returning to our office. It is rare that I have some free time lately, so try to use it to relax, or so a friend had suggested that I should do. I am not to pressure you to progress with our offer."
She continued reading her newspaper and drinking her tea after saying that.
Tira looked at her suspiciously.
"Let's eat and go home. I need a bath to relax."
They finished their meal and headed back home as Tira seemed to be too tired after everything that happened in such a short time.
She was so tired that she almost let Codex drive, but in the end, she didn't take the chance no matter how good he drove in the simulation.