Friday's party lived up to Maya's promise of being the biggest one they'd thrown yet, at least by volume. There was music loud enough to be felt through the floorboards, a karaoke session that deteriorated into something closer to competitive shouting, an ill-advised drinking game Maya invented on the spot and immediately declared a house tradition, and food enough for twice their number, most of which still got eaten anyway. Tony was somehow banned from the kitchen twice, a ban he treated like a minor inconvenience and a recommendation more than anything else. Somewhere around midnight, about half the group ended up in the pool fully clothed for reasons nobody could later reconstruct with any confidence. In other words, by any reasonable measure, it had been a success.
Saturday morning was considerably less triumphant. The kitchen looked like a crime scene. Several people had apparently half-turned into nocturnal mythical creatures, communicating exclusively in groans and expressing very strong opinions about the sun being rude.
The goodbyes, when they finally happened, were really emotional — tearful, even — but delivered with all the grace of people running on sleep deprivation and regrets. Camila was wailing loudly enough that several people nursing hangover headaches winced while Nicole threatened her with bodily harm if she didn't quiet down. Maya hugged everyone twice because she forgot she'd already done it the first time. Bags got loaded into cars; people pulled out phones to exchange numbers before they realized they were already in the same group chat and awkwardly put their phones away. There were even promises, with complete sincerity and zero follow-through plan, that they should all do this again next year.
Eventually, though, people scattered and returned where they belonged in the same groups they'd arrived in, leaving only Jade at the beach house.
Sofia drove Magnus, Alex, and Tony back to their campus. Then, Magnus took a series of buses home for his next battle, where the specific details of what happened over the weekend remained classified between him, his mother, and possibly however many innocent bystanders who happened to be within earshot.
***
By Monday morning, Spring Break was officially over. The campus was alive again with students carrying backpacks, complaining about early classes, comparing stories from the break, and generally trying to remember how to function like college students after two weeks of not having to.
Magnus and Alex met quite early that morning to go grab breakfast together.
"You look like shit," she told him as she saw him.
"Yeah, well, whose fault is it? You kept me up until 1 AM talking to you, and I still had training with Jordan at five this morning!" He glared at her. "…Also, you look unfairly good for someone who only had like an hour or two of sleep more than me."
"It's my superpower." She giggled and pulled him along toward the cafeteria.
As they crossed the quad, a familiar figure passed by, on her way somewhere and chatting with fellow professors. And, the System, with its impeccable sense of bad timing, chimed in his head:
[Conquest Quest Initiated: Seduce and Sleep with Target — Elena Marquez. Time Limit: Complete by Sunday at Midnight.]
Magnus stopped walking, his face paling as though the ground had suddenly given way beneath him and he was already spiraling. Which probably was exactly the case.
"Magnus?" Alex noticed almost immediately. "What's wrong?"
He didn't answer her right away. Or rather, he couldn't. Only after several deep breaths did he finally manage a single sentence:
"The quest target, the System picked Marquez again…"
Alex went still, her head snapping in the direction Elena Marquez had disappeared off to before slowly turning back to her boyfriend, her eyes widening in about just as much shock as he was probably feeling. Then her phone was already pressed to her ear.
"Sofia," she said as soon as the call connected. "Emergency meeting! All hands on deck!"
***
Ten minutes later, Sofia was driving. Naomi Homura was sitting awkwardly in the passenger seat, while Magnus, Alex, and Tony were in the back.
Sofia glanced at them through the rearview mirror. "So lemme get this straight, you didn't just get assigned a professor, but you got assigned Professor Marquez again—as in, the same professor whose quest you failed and died as a result of right before my week?"
Magnus winced. "Yes."
"Well, fuck!"
"Yeah. My thought exactly," Alex said, staring out the window, her hand holding Magnus's tightly on the seat between them.
They parked near Harper Ellis's apartment building a short while later. Once everyone was inside, they set up a laptop on the living room table and started a video call with the whole beach house group.
Faces appeared one after another on the screen. A quick introduction occurred to catch everyone up to speed on who was who, then the emergency meeting officially commenced.
Alex quickly recapped the problem at hand — the fact that not only did Magnus get assigned an impossible quest, it was also apparently a repeating quest, with a target he'd already failed with before.
For a while, the room was deadly silent after that.
Alex cleared her throat and started talking again:
"So, I've called you all here today… to ask if any of you have any ideas that might help, because we really don't know what to do that can keep him alive this time."
"I mean," Ethan started, "is there any chance he can successfully do it this time around? Has anything changed between the last time and now?"
Eyes fell on Magnus. He rubbed his temples. "Well, a lot of things changed, but none of them are in my favor." He started counting his fingers. "She's been more and more suspicious—no, more like academically curious about me since that week. I no longer take any of her classes this term, so no legitimate reason to go see her, either. Oh, and I've occasionally had stress attacks while around her, since my body still remembers dying that night."
"Yeah, okay. That doesn't sound good," Aaron concluded.
"About not being in any of her classes, could you just enroll in one?" Maya suggested.
"It's already Monday."
"Drop another class and enroll in hers?"
"I'd still have to explain why I'm suddenly taking her class."
"Office hours?" Valeria offered.
"Why would I go to her office hours?"
"To ask questions?"
"About what?"
"Anything?"
Magnus stared at her. "Sure, that's not suspicious and wouldn't raise any question at all."
Valeria shrugged. "I'm just brainstorming."
"Keep brainstorming," Alex said.
So they did. For several minutes, ideas were thrown around — most of which were terrible, a few merely impractical, and none solved the fundamental problem that Magnus had been assigned a target he had already failed to approach once, no natural reason to interact with now, and exactly six days to somehow seduce. It was like the perfect cruel joke the System could have given him.
And if that was the perfect joke, then the perfect punchline was the fact that while they were unable to come up with any solution during the discussion, the solution still came as a result of it.
[You Have Leveled Up.]
[System Notification: Level 9 Reached. Hidden Objective Function Unlocked.]
"What's wrong?" Alex immediately noticed her boyfriend freezing.
"Nothing is wrong," he said, already focused to bring up his Inventory. "I'd just leveled up."
That simultaneously clicked for several people who were at the beach house.
"The Epic Crate! Open it!" Sofia pointed at him.
"Way ahead of you!" Magnus replied as he focused on the Epic Crate he'd gotten from Jordan's monthly quest.
[Epic Crate Opened]
[Active Power Skill Book Acquired: Enhanced Muscle Control.]
[Temporary Stats Potion x3 Acquired.]
[Substitute Doll Acquired.]
His eyes skipped over the skill book and the Stats Potions, and zeroed in on the little nightmarish porcelain doll — the same model as the one he'd gotten from daily quests during Lila's week — as he heaved a sigh of relief.
"I got the doll!" he announced the good news to everyone.
"That's the… um—" Harper raised her hand. "—miracle item that brings you back if you die, right?" She blinked as if she still couldn't quite believe what she was saying entirely.
"Yeah." He nodded.
A wave of relief swept through the room and the screen, before the air settled into something else completely.
"Okay," Aaron said. "So at least you'll survive this week no matter what. We should still address the elephant in the room."
"Which is?" Ethan prompted.
"Failed quests can repeat," Aaron said slowly, "which means, surviving this week doesn't necessarily mean you're safe for long. What if your System keeps spamming you with your professors week after week?"
Alex buried her face in her hands. "That was why we avoided any places where professors and faculty could be before his quest pinged on Monday for most of last term. We were just careless today."
Aaron seemed like he wanted to say something else but ultimately decided against it after seeing the states Alex and Magnus were in.
Harper, meanwhile, was tapping her fingers on the table. "How does the resurrection actually feel? You said earlier you still have PTSD from the experience."
Magnus hesitated. Everyone currently in this meeting was already intellectually aware of his death and resurrection. But he hadn't actually shared how it had felt.
"Bad," he said finally. "Really bad."
"Physically?"
"Physically, too. The System wasn't kidding when it described the penalty as 'heart failure and potentially excruciating pain.' But the worst part is…" He searched for the words. "It's hard to explain. You know you died. Your body remembers dying. Then you wake up again, and your brain still kind of expects you to be dead."
Alex's expression tightened.
Magnus looked down at his hands. "I really don't want to go through that again."
Nobody said anything. A Substitute Doll meant he would survive. It didn't mean he would walk away from death and resurrection unchanged.
Harper glanced at Alex, then back at him. "Are you still going to attempt the quest, then?"
Magnus looked up. "I don't know. Doing nothing is better than doing something I'll regret just to stay alive." He glanced briefly in Alex's direction. "Maybe I'll just lock myself in my room Sunday night, die alone, and let the Doll handle the rest."
Alex subtly flinched at that. Magnus noticed, but pretended he didn't. They were both remembering that night, and neither of them wanted to experience it again.
Harper shook her head. "You said it yourself: you don't want to go through that again. So you should try. You don't want to do anything that crosses your lines? Fine, don't. But try to do the quest anyway. If you fail, then you fail, you'll still have the Doll as a safety net. You'll survive the week, even if… the cost of surviving will take a toll on your mental health."
Magnus was quiet for a while, turning it over in his head.
"Okay," he said finally. "I still don't see how there's any way I can do this without crossing any moral line. And I'm not gonna do anything I can't live with. That still stands. If it comes down to it and it feels wrong, I'll stop. Doll or no doll."
"That's fair." Harper nodded. "Nobody here's asking you to do otherwise."
"But…" he continued, "…I'll try anyway. For myself." He looked at Alex. And for you, he added silently in his head.