Chương 2: 8 ounces of elbow macaroni (for a one-person portion)

Thunder rises from the hills as I stare out at the horizon. It's dark. It's dark and I can't see. I do a kickflip and all the ambient light in the area is so drawn to how cool and radical I am I can see again. That's physics, kids. Take notes. In the distance, a shadow. A lot of shadows. I can't see again. I keep doing kickflips to continue to generate light so I can continue to see. I throw in some backflips too, so light doesn't get bored. That's showbiz, baby. Take notes.

Thunder rises from the hills as I'm on my x86 kickflip combo. I stare out at the horizon and see a winding path snake its way through the tall grass like melted butter. The road thins as it stretches out to the edge of my vision, where it curls around a large and ugly-looking mountain like melted butter if it was three kilometers tall and made of granite and was the product of millions of years of tectonic action. That's similes, honey. Take notes.

"So. This is where the Gliqalos Engine is hiding?" I ask, my voice perfectly level despite hitting a x150 combo streak.

"Oh, is that what we're calling it?" my companion said. She was a bright woman. Bright, in that the amount of light drawn in by my insane moves was creating a small sun in the air around us. She was a hot woman too, because superheated air was melting off our skin. Was this another simile? I don't know. My legs hurt.

"Yes. And it must be close. I can't imagine why the chapters would have transitioned this way otherwise."

"You make it sound as if you're the victim of a chaotic, creatively apathetic narrative force rather than an independent agent of your own desires," she says, which makes me so mad I immediately vaporize her with my eye beams.

"Eye guess you could say she couldn't take the heat," I laugh, and the whole world laughs with me. x341 combo streak. A new high score.

"Anyway, legends say the Gliqalos Engine is split into four parts," she continues, starting the long and muddy walk to the distant mountain, "the first part is apparently guarded by a great demon under this mountain."

"Well. Those legends will be past tense soon.

'The first part WAS apparently guarded by a great demon under this WAS mountain'. We're going to get it." I kickflip down the path, both as a means of travel and to illustrate how flippantly I'm taking the situation. My thus far unnamed companion follows at my heel, occasionally spewing some more backstory and exposition I'm too overleveled to hear. Her talking rank B at best. B for 'be quite'. I do another kickflip but this one is to flex on her specifically rather than a means to attract light.

She's too self-absorbed to notice. Typical. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. There's something off about this path that no amount of kickflips — we're at x560 by the way — seems to on. The wind doesn't howl as much as it seems to scream dark poetry across the planes. The grass doesn't wave in that wind as much as it bows towards that terrible mountain as if trying to appease some terrible old god.

And the mountain itself doesn't mountain normally as much as it mountains very irregularly, as if it couldn't mountain right and it's triggering that uncanny part of your brain that likes to gatekeep what's real or not, like 'that's not a real mountain'. It makes my brow furrow. I've lived six thousand billion years and I have 9 trillion points in every stat and even I've only seen something like this like nine-hundred times before. I cast a furtive glance towards my wayward ally.

She counterspells it immediately and I lose my spell slot.

'Heh. Just as well', I think to myself and say out loud so she can hear me think it, 'I have a million other spells where that came from'.

"Something on your mind? I care about your feelings for some reason," she says, putting a hand on my shoulder. I'm not sure where she found it so I take it off.

"Don't waste your energy," I kickflip off a rock to aura farm (note that would be such a cool picture for the cover) "that mountain may be weird but it's just another obstacle in my path to getting the…" I scroll up to double-check the name of the mcguffin.

"... the Gil- I mean, Gliqu… Gli-a-los Engine."

"It's okay to be scared," she brushed the dirt off the hand and put it back on my shoulder, "even God feared a tower for some stupid reason."

"I'll have you know my 'Being a Brave Boy' skill is at quadruple-ranked S. U. P. E. R level," I say as I pull up my stat screen, which is so crowded with numbers it takes up half the known universe to see all my levels and junk. My arm reaches eleven billion light years to point to my brave boy stat so she can see what I mean. She follows my finger with her eyes at normal walking speed, so a short 5. 1722e+22 years later, she smirks.

"Seems there's nothing you can't do. Maybe I should be giving this pep talk to the demon."

"Keep your pep. Only thing you need to give that demon is a thrashing so you can give us the Glilalos Engine fragment we need."

"Well, if beatings are a gift… call me Santa Claus." I smile at her. She smiles at me. We both smile at Santa Claus. The three of us continue towards the newest member of my harem (the demon) kickflipping the whole way. I'm going to carve that mountain a butt so I can kick it.