You know that feeling you get when you're being told to do something but you don't want to, then when you think about it again, it doesn't seem all that bad, then again you don't want to do it because you don't like being bossed around, but at the end... you still do it anyways.

That's how our conversation went.

Except...

I won this time.

°°°°

Shivers travel down my spine. For some reason, his words cloud my vision and I shout at him in response, I'm not bending to his will! "And I don't take orders from strangers!"

His grip on my wrists are still very firm, if any more force than this is applied, my bones will be smashed to pieces. "I don't get why you're complaining," He says in a bitter tone. "This will favor you more than me anyways."

"What makes you think I'll want to be partners with you? I have my friends, and you... I don't even know you."

"Your friends," he says, like the sound of it is poison. "All three combined... can't rival me in strength." He starts loosening his grip on my wrists. "I'm better than a thousand of them. What more could you want in a partner?"

"It doesn't change the fact that I don’t know or trust you."

"If you have trust issues, I can't fix that. That's your burden to carry."

That's not the point! He keeps ignoring the fact that I don't want to be partners with him because he's a stranger... or isn't he? I mean... I don't know enough about him to consider him a friend.

"That's not how you coax someone to be your partner." I tell him distastefully.

"I don't care," I see his eyebrow twitch. Good, he's starting to get irritated. "See, I'm not a very patient man," His hold on my wrists tightens again. "And in the case that I give you muliple options to pick from, I don't take no for an answer."

"Too bad," a little smile draws across my lips. "I don't do well with multiple options, so I just stick to the one I think is safest." I stare at him, hoping he can see daylight-clear my darkened obsidian hazel eyes... "No."

He completely lets go of my wrists and turns the other way. My wrists hurt so bad, I didn't realize how painful it was until he let go of them. I rub my hands back and forth till I feel like they're not about to fall off anymore. Suddenly, he turns around and smirks. "Why? Are you scared of me?"

What? Well of course I am.. but he isn't expecting me to say that out loud, is he? "No."

"Then why don't you want to be partners with me?"

I wonder if not knowing him still stands as a legit answer right now.

"You do know the advantages of me being your partner, right?"

I shake my head and he sighs. "I won't try to kill you."

Sold. That was all it took in my head to agree to his proposal. I mean imagine having someone not constantly threaten to kill you, I don't know about anyone else but after the past few weeks in this game, I'm definitely down.

"In case you didn't hear me well the first time, I said I won't try to kill you." He glares at me, "I didn't say I won't threaten to." Then he rolls his eyes. "But rest assured, I need you alive if our partnership contract is going to last. Also, I might answer a question or two that you have for me. And three, trust me, you're better off having me on your side than against you." At this, he smiles. "I take it you still don't want to be partners."

The damn devil.

I wasn't expecting him to try and negotiate. But he did, and now... "I'll think about it." I quickly add. "But only if you keep your part of the bargain."

His serene eyes are cold and distant, his voice has no edge or bitterness to it as he says, "You have my word."

Well then. Since he won't try to kill me anymore... Kyle and Peyton should be willing to accept him, and I don't even have to do anything-

Shit... why didn't I think of that?

"What's your gain?"

He barely reacts to my question but then he retorts, "What do you mean?"

"I mean," My words drawl out, in between gritted teeth. "You don't benefit anything from this. You of all people wouldn't do something they couldn't profit from."

He looks like he's thinking about it then he just adjusts his hood and starts to walk away. "Who says I'm not profiting anything?"

°°°°

I did win.

It doesn't mean I had my way.

Under the terms he gave me, it would be like killing three bears with one stone. I just have to accept his partner request and I'll be one-person-that-doesn't-hate-me-less.

I did say I'll think about being partners with him. How long do I have to wait to accept? Should I just accept right now? No that'll be too fast. I know, I know, I should definitely hear what my friends have to say about this first.

"That was fast," Aki comments immediately I enter the Motel. "Why's your face so red?"

What??

"No kidding," adds Peyton as she walks in side-by-side with Kyle. "Do you have a fever?"

"No, I don't have a fever." I dismiss their suggestions immediately, but that would also mean acknowledging that there's another reason why my face is burning up. Damn these people! "I have an announcement!"

This seems to draw their attention.

"I'm going to be partners with Black Hood."

Both their faces are horrendous except Aki who doesn't seem to understand what I'm saying.

"Is that why your face is so red?" Aki asks innocently. Well it better be innocently or I'll be sucker punching the middle of his face.

"It's worth your face being red." Kyle states. "Who would have thought you ran out just to partner up with Keanu?"

"Keanu..." Aki trails off. Then he snaps, "You mean that psycho that tried to kill us back at the arena?!"

"You've met him?" Peyton gasps and looks at Aki, shocked.

"I didn't run out to be partners with him, I ran out to give him a piece of my mind." I try to defend myself.

"How did that go?" Peyton asks.

"Quite the way you'd expect it to." I say, a smug smile setting on my face then my eyes close in humiliation. "I froze."

Kyle chokes on air then pretends to clear his throat while Peyton bites the inside of her cheeks to stop her from bursting out in laughter. I completely ignore them... say whatever! In my defence, he was the one that kept looking at me! What am I supposed to do when he just stares into my soul like that?

"Is he forcing you to do this?" Aki asks worriedly.

"No, it's a decision I made myself." When Peyton and Kyle give me questioning looks, I add "And he wouldn't take no for an answer.

"He doesn't seem like the type that would take no for an answer." Aki says.

Yes! Aki must understand the position I was in! He's reasonable.

"I have to say, it is better than having him for an enemy." Kyle starts to reconsider.

"If he tries to hurt you..." Peyton trails off. Her aura is all scary and defensive.

"He promised he wouldn't, it's part of the terms he gave."

"Still can't trust that cunning bastard." Kyle folds his arms. "I'll keep an eye out for him, just in case."

"What now? Are we supposed to be partners with him too?" Peyton asks.

"Well-" 'Your friends,' he says, like the sound of it is poison. 'All three combined... can't rival me in strength.' I doubt Black Hood would want to be partners with people he's stronger than... which brings me back to my weak irregular self, why would he want to be partners with me? "I don't know."

"We'll talk about this later. Right now, we have a quest to prepare for." says Kyle.

That's right. It's about time we went for another quest.

"We leave in 20 cycles." Peyton declares as we all head towards different directions.

I don't mind going right now. I summon my nunchuks from my inventory and they fly right into my hands. Perfect! Food, potions, nunchuks, check. I think I'm prepared enough to survive a quest.

When I reach the reception, Aki is dressed in an oddly-styled dark blue jumpsuit. On his body, knifes are strapped to different parts. Including his boots. His heavy dark curls lean towards his neck and his vivid green eyes gleam excitedly. Honestly speaking, he is quite not-too-bad-looking dressed up like this.

"You're coming with?"

"Yeah, if you don't mind." He zips up completely.

"I didn't take you for the fighting type."

"Oh I'm not," He fixes his gaze on me. "But it's usually more fun than I expect it to be. I wonder what crazy thing will happen next this time."

"Just don't die or cry for help when you're getting your ass kicked, I won't be able to help you." Because I'll probably be getting my ass kicked too.

"If my calculations go as planned, there will be no ass kicking." He says, grinning. "Let's just hope for the best type of luck one can get."

"Indeed."

We make it to the Village Square in ten cycles. There are plenty of quests available but there's only one that catches my attention. It catches Aki's attention too.

Level 5 and above.
Quest: The Hundred.
Reward: 150 exp points, 650 rubies.

We all sign up for the quest and wait for it to begin. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see a shadow move. But when I look again, people are casually moving about and nothing seems peculiar. Maybe I imagined it.

"Listen up! You heap of low level lowlife scumbags!" A Knight shouts all the way from the top of the podium. "If you signed up for The hundred quest, you chose the wrong way to die. No one who's ever played this quest has ever survived."

Well... if that isn't interesting.

"The rules of the quest are as follows:

☆ You will be allowed to spin two dice. Each player gets to spin them a total amount of six times. If you spin it the sixth time and at least one die doesn't show six pips, you will be disqualified out of the game. Better pray to whatever god you worship for the best type of luck possible.

☆ Once you're in the game, you progress or decline by carrying out tasks. Your body parts equal to how many points you start of with. Each player has six points. Failure to carry out a task assigned to you, you'll lose a body part and move down by a certain amount of boxes. On carrying out a task, your body parts will be returned to you can progress by a certain amount of boxes.

☆ The aim is to move through all hundred boxes and reach the last box with all your body parts. Note that you are to arrive with all six points of your body parts.

☆ At the end of the game, if you are left with no body parts, that's game over for you. That means you die." He strokes his beard as he watches us like pests meant to be squashed beneath his feet. "However, if you end the game with some body parts that means you don't arrive with the total number of points required so you will not be given any points for it. That means you failed the quest. If you finish the game with all your body parts, you passed the quest.

Although, I have to warn you: Most participants tend to finish the quest without any of their body parts.

Well then, goodluck! You'll need it."

It doesn't take long for us to teleport to a venue, our bodies turning into tiny blue particles as this happens, this time there are no screams. I assume majority of the participants are experienced players.

Guess who'll be having difficulties passing this quest then... no! I should be positive.

Yeah, positive that you'll fail.

Hush! Besides... we have Aki.

I'll be needing his brain for most parts.

A lady seated casually on a throne with her legs crossed and a metal plate wired to her head looks down at us. Her eyes quickly observe me before they flash to the rest of the crowd. She coughs to draw attention to herself.

A monitor appears in front of her, but angled so we can all see it. "This is a lucky spinner," She pulls down a red lever attached to it. "It does exactly what you think it'll do: spin the items on the monitor and whichever it lands on is what you get."

"This is what will be used to determine whether you stay or you're eliminated." She jumps down from the throne and starts walking, my breath hitches as her eyes fix on me and she smiles. "Why don't I show you how to use it?"

A deafening silence plagues the room.

"Don't be shy." She laughs as she starts walking again, just towards my directions this time. She smiles as she stands in front of me. She's quite tall, maybe 6'0, or do I say I'm 5'10 and she's way taller than me. Yep, that's a good enough description. "We have a volunteer!"

What? But I didn't-

"Come on!" She smiles, looking at me with curiosity and... excitement? "You can't refuse, I already summoned the spinner and it takes 6 unlucky spins for it to dissappear again."

I keep watching her, anticipating her next statement. Why does her voice sound so familiar? Maybe because she was sitting so high up before and I couldn't tell. But up close, her voice sounds like something I'd hear everyday.

"You need to pull it for it to work." She pulls my cheeks to snap me out of my thoughts.

"R-right." I stutter as my cheeks are flooded scarlet.

I step up to have a quick look at the monitor. It has two columns where two dice sit. If I really want to stop at when it'll be 6 then... I don't know. When do I have to stop it? I really don't know. I'll have to take a leap of faith. This is probably what he meant by 'Better pray to whatever god you worship for the best type of luck possible.' Well here goes nothing.

I pull the red lever down with all the strength I can muster. It's not exactly hard, just quite difficult to pull. Immediately I pull it, it spins and the number of pips displayed are 6,6.

"Wow!" The overly excited woman suddenly claps behind me. "Our volunteer got a 6,6 on the first try. You must be either very lucky or there's a glitch in the system." Her smile widens at this.

Tell me you know I'm an irregular without telling me that you know I'm an irregular.

At least she doesn't hate me for it, or so I'd like to believe.

"You still have to pull it again." She motions with her right index finger. "The rules are that if you get a 6,6 you have to spin again."

Huh? I'm sure the Knight with a stick up his ass said nothing like that. Oh well, I won't argue. Rules tend to be a bit flexible around here. And I wouldn't dare to complain especially when they work in my favor. "Okay,"

It shows a 6,1 this time around.

I get teleported into a different venue this time, I watch as the woman looks at me happily, her mouth forms an 'o' and as skeptical as I am about what I watched her say, she couldn't have actually said that because then she would have said: Goodluck, Carmine.

And why the hell would she know my name??

I land in a not too wide, not too small white cubicle. My first plan is to contact the others, I need to get down the number of people who made it in.

C: Who made it in?

K: Me.

P: Me too.

P: Aki made it in too.

C: Good.

P: He made it in on the first try, everybody else that made it got in on their fifth or sixth try except you of course.

Knowing Aki and how precise his calculations tend to be, I bet he could have made it in by pulling the lever at the exact timing. Or maybe it was just his luck.

C: How many?

P: How many what?

K: People made it in. 20.

From hundred to 20??? And the quest hasn't even begun.

The level of difficulty of this quest is definitely higher than Rock-paper-scissors.

"Listen up!" A masculine voice yells from speakers adjacent and opposite my location. It most likely belongs to the Knight. "I'm surprised that the lots of you have made it this far. We wouldn't normally have this much people still in the quest. I'm giving you an opportunity to back out of the quest now. We don't want to be responsible for the massive deaths of innocent participants."

Why is this Knight so all up in our business? I appreciate the concern but I'm not ditching this quest for whatsoever reason.

"Well then, since none of you are ready to back out and you all just want to run right into your deaths." He pauses for a long time and sighs. "Proceed, your tasks will be delivered to your screens."

Instantly, an incoming message appears on my screen, it says:

Proceed by two boxes.

And I do so.

I end up in a white cubicle, again.

By the time I look to my left, Aki is standing there with a world winning smile. "Hi,"

"How did you-"

"It's not rocket science, really. I spinned a 6,6 and then a 5,1 because that's the only way I'd be a box away from you."

"Did you calculate all that using your nerd power?"

He chuckles. "Well if by probability and accurate timing you mean, then yeah. I did calculate all that using my nerd power."

Wow.

"I'd really like to expantiate, but I have a task to carry out. Duck."

Immediately I dodge sideways, a knife slices through the air and Aki dodges it too. Then he brings out a slingshot and loads a crumpled piece of paper on it. He aims it at the direction the knife came from. It hits the man right in the middle of his head and he drops down, dead or maybe alive and foaming from his mouth. "He really shouldn't carry a mirror around if he's going to try and kill people but expect them not to see through his attack."

The man who's lying on the floor with whitish foam leaking from his mouth has a mirror in his left hand. I assume this is what Aki is talking about. But how? I didn't even notice the man and why did he try to kill us?

"His task was to eliminate the person five boxes to his left, you." Aki answers my un-voiced question. "My task was to eliminate him, the person six boxes to my right." He itches his head like he made it overly-complicated for me to understand. "He tried to kill you and I was supposed to kill him."

So we're getting those types of tasks then.

Why does every quest involve bloodshed and the more quests I go on, the more dangerous and bloody it becomes.

"Wait then-" I stop Aki from explaining further. "Isn't it even riskier to be just one box away from each other?"

"Well," He smiles and nods his head. "There is a probability they might give us a task like that, maybe 1 out of 100. Mostly, they'd try to prevent friends from killing each other in this quest so they wouldn't want it to get messy. That means as long as we stick together they wouldn't give us a task like that. The range for carrying out a task like that would be five to six boxes from your current location."

Oh in that case,

I sigh in relief as I release the breath I'd been holding in.

Aki disappears and reappears two boxes to my right. He looks at me eagerly.

"What?" I mouth to him.

"Check your companion-i-chat." He mouths back.

Okay... I open up the messages on my screen and see a partner request from him. I look at him and he nods enthusiastically. Fine! Why's he in such a hurry?

A: We're still two boxes apart. Don't worry about attacking me, your target will be the person five or six boxes to your left.

C: You made me accept your partner request just to say that? Why didn't you just talk?

A: These cubicles are soundproof. No amount of talking will make you hear what I'm saying.

Unless you're one box away from each other.

I sigh.

How come Aki knows so much about the quest and the people in charge refuse to explain what the hell this quest fully entails.

Eliminate the person one box to your left.

I take in a deep breath. I thought Aki said we wouldn't get any task like that. I really don't want to kill or hurt anybody or in my case, not that I can.

I turn to face my target.

Black Hood is looking at me menacingly, his nostrils flare as he takes a step closer so that the boundary between him and I is a thin white frame. "You'd accept his partner request, but not mine?"

How does he know that?

A/N:
I've had this chapter just sitting in my draft for a week now, because I wasn't sure of somethings and I had to keep editing it! It was stressful but completely worth it! I hope you enjoy.
And tell me your thoughts too, I'd love to hear them 😌😌💅🏾