“I still don't see why we had to spend so much damn money at Willmarth’s for what should be some stupid noob island contest,” Valerie grumbled.

Malik knew what she really meant to say: “Why did you make me pay my fair share for the device?” With their repeated deaths, money and loot were becoming a point of contention between the two.

“Well,” Malik said, keeping his shield up as he walked through the hole in the wall, “the alternatives haven’t played out particularly well for us, have they?”

“We could try to ask Nick for money,” Valerie offered as they walked forward. “We could bring him in for the quest too. You two are still close, right?”

“Are you serious?” Malik wanted to throw something at the woman. Nick had been one of his closer gaming companions for five years. They had played one game after the other together, but Valerie hated him. That’s why, when Nick had suggested that they play with Negative first, and Negative had ended up backstabbing them, Valerie had been the first to throw Nick under the bus. She had insisted that, if he wanted to keep questing with them, he needed to go farm his own items. She had refused to lend him even a single staff so that he could get his class and had told Malik not to help him.

Malik, who had been trying to get closer to Valerie at the time, had figured it wouldn’t hurt anything to let his buddy spend an hour without him. He hadn’t known that it would spell the end of their friendship. He had, and he hated admitting it, thought that his friend was so annoying that no one would partner up with him and that he’d be crawling back as soon as he got the quest materials. It had been an inevitability in his mind because Nick was just that annoying. Malik had always seen hanging out with Nick as a charitable act, and he had wanted a long enough break from said charity to get with Valerie. He had just wanted the game-blocking, annoying friend of his to disappear so he could ask her out.

However, that annoying friend that he had dragged along out of charity had never come back. He had never called, texted, or tried to meet up. Then he had seen Nick, the man he had thought of as a bastard, hanging out with the same jerk who had killed both of them. It had driven Malik mad. He had felt betrayed. He had played games with Nick and put up with him for five years only to have him turn coat and ditch him for someone else—for the same bastard who had killed them. It had been infuriating. He had said more than he should have, and now he had screwed up a relationship with an easily-to-deal-with friend and was stuck with this annoying woman.