Paragon Earl says: Sure.

I finally use my herston to leave the bowls of the labyrinth. Bert greets me in his typical stiff manner, Toebark doesn't even look my way. The guilt of using him to fight Aighe resurfaces, making my face flush with embarrassment. I leave the inn and run to the Halls of Honor.

Helga is waiting inside, the halls are empty except for us.

"I guess everyone has better things to do than hang out here at midnight?" I ask, more to break the ice than out of genuine curiosity.

"Yeah." Helga says.

"So what's up?" I decide to ask, she seems unwilling to open up.

"I signed on with A.M." she tells me. "So now we can stream together."

"Oh awesome!" I say, genuinely happy to hear it.

"There's a few problems, though." She sits at one of the long tables, and gestures for me to join her.

"What's that?" I inquire, sitting.

"First off, my old agency is pissed. My contract was pretty air tight, but Mr. Bell found a way around it. She tells me.

"Bell signed you personally?" I ask.

"Yeah. It took his personal touch. I don't know if you know, I was… am, the number three Paragon. Number one female Paragon. You don't just jump ship when you're the captain." she says.

"But you did." I observe.

"I did." she responds. "It might cost me my career… but this is what I want." she says with absolute certainty.

I blink.

"Us?" I ask.

She laughs, not cruelly.

"You could say that, in a way. I like streaming with you. I like hanging out, too. I get to be my authentic self without the peppy perky bullshit. Don't get me wrong, I can get excited playing this game, but not as much as my viewers have come to expect. I had to start faking it for them, then I found myself faking it all the time. I lost touch with the real me." She frowns, looking down at the table. I reach my hand out to her. She takes it, and smiles up at me.

"I like hanging out with you too. You're really cool, even when you're not pretending to be someone else's idea of cool." I tell her.

She smirks.

"Do you really feel that way? I did my cool girl act, then we fucked, then… feelings got in the way. Are you sure?" she asks, her voice growing smaller by the word.

"Yeah." I tell her. She raises an eyebrow, clearly expecting an explanation. "We've had rough spots, sure, but you're an impressive person. You've been fighting your own battles, and when our relationship turned into another one, you did what you had to do. At least what you felt like you had to do."

Her eyes glisten. Maybe I do understand her, at least a little bit.

"Okay." she says, almost in a whisper.

I squeeze her hand, and stand to lean over the table. She stands with me, meeting in the middle with our lips. It's a gentle thing, unlike every time before.

"I'm not ready for anything serious." She tells me when we separate. "We can still have our fun, but I don't even know you in real life." she says, but realizes she misspoke. "Oh, I'm…" she covers her mouth. "Sorry, Earl."

"It's okay." I smile sadly. She'll never get the chance, and she knows it.

She sighs.

"I'm sorry, I want to curl in a ball and die but right now we have business." she says.

"Oh?" I respond.

"Bell wants us to do a welcome stream for me. Explain to the audience what my plans are and do a Q&A." she tells me.

"Right now?" I ask.

"Yes." she says. "Is that ok?"

"Sure." I tell her.

One of her eyes grays over as she starts the stream.

"Hello everyone, welcome in." She speaks to the audience. "I'm here with Earl, we're going to talk to you about my new contract and what that means for the channel." she takes a breath. "I signed on with A.M. I'm sure you've all already seen the press release."

She gets up and walks around the table to sit next to me. She pulls a sort of camera from her inventory, and makes it float in front of us.

"Good, now you can see both of us." she says to her audience, and gives me a peck on the cheek.

I blush, aware of how many people just saw that. Who am I kidding though, 30,000 people saw me balls deep in her last week. This is nothing.

"I'm going to prestige. For those of you who don't know, that means starting over from level one, but keeping all of my stats and equipment. It's also known as 'New Game Plus'." she stops speaking, I think she's reading chat. "Yes, I know this is career suicide. Go big or go home though, right? Switching contracts is already going to be a huge hit to my numbers. I'm also ending production on all adult content. If my career survives either of those things, it'll be a miracle as is."

"You're really doing all that?" I ask her. "At the same time?"

"Yep." she says, crossing her arms. "Might as well rip all of the bandaids off."

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"Alrighty." I say.

"Don't you believe in me Earl?" she asks, fluttering her eyelashes.

I laugh.

"Yes, of course. If anyone can do what you're going and come back stronger, it's you." I tell her.

"Damn right." she grins. "Ok, time for Q&A. Let me…"

A display pops up, showing me her stream chat.

"We'll take turns picking questions for each other. Earl, you pick first." she tells me.

"Okay." I say, reading the rapidly moving chat. "Uhh… that one." I point at a question.

"Go ahead and read it." she tells me.

"What is the point of prestige, asks footfungas" I read aloud.

"Prestige, funnily enough. The game pits me against level 90 enemies at level one, level 91 enemies at level two, and so on. I have to make it back to max level as everything I fight gets higher and higher level. So on the Paragon leaderboard, I keep ahead while other Berserkers stagnate at 90." she informs them, and me.

"Interesting" I say.

"My turn, let's see some questions for Earl." she says. She waits for a good one, ignoring ones like "What does Helga taste like?" and "Is your orc compensating for something I.R.L.?"

We look at eachother and roll our eyes.

"Okay, here's one." she says. "What would you say is the best part of playing a Weaponmaster?"

I scratch my chin.

"The weapons." I say. Helga gestures with her hand for me to go on. "My spells take something already great and make it better. I can only use weapons with both Sentient and Floating for most of my abilities."

"That's new information." she says, we both watch chat discussing weaponmasters instead of Helga's announcement. "Let's get back on topic, though."

I nod.

"Helga, how long is it going to take to level back up to 90?" I read the next question.

"No time at all. Maybe a week or two at most." she answers.

"Really? I've been at it for a week and I'm only 63." I say.

"Oh, hun," She puts a hand on my shoulder. "You'll get there." she says like I admitted I still wet the bed.

I frown as she looks for the next question. That reminds me that I haven't invested two talent points, opening the tree reveals the same options as before, it seems that now I've reached 60 I'm not locked into any one tree. Instead of spreading my points out, they both go into Armory. The second tier unlocks a fourth weapon slot, I'm not even using my third right now. I equip my shield and spare sword, noticing their names gray-out.

I equip and unequip them, eventually noticing that my stats don't change. Another negative consequence of the patch. I sigh.

"Earl?" Helga gets my attention.

"Huh?" I say, having not paid any attention.

"They asked how you're adapting to the patch." She repeats herself.

"Oh, sorry. Uh, it sucks. Half of my abilities are broken, and the ones that still work are much weaker." I tell them.

"Broken?" Helga encourages me to elaborate.

"So before the patch, my weapons could take damage for me and one of my spells is literally called 'Distribute', as in 'distribute damage between my weapons and I'. Now, I take all of the damage. So I can't use my clones to tank for me, Distribute does literally nothing, using my weapons has introduced a new liability to my combat."

"They must be working out the kinks." Helga says as we read chat's response. A significant amount say they're going to submit a ticket to the game developer for me.

"Thanks everyone." I say. "Whats some leveling advice you can give us and Earl?"

"Well, in general my advice is lock in. Focus on leveling and it shouldn't take any time at all. I'd tell Earl to focus and stop chasing tail." She smirks at me.

"Tail chases me, thank you very much." I say, crossing my arms.

"Oh yeah?" she looks like she might cut the stream short to make me beg. "Is that what your stream with Moose is?"

I almost say 'Bell made me stream with her, I'm not chasing anything.' but I remember she could be watching and how disastrous my last response to them talking about each other was.

I just roll my eyes, it seems like the most non-committal response.

"Alright enough bullying Earl." she elbows my side, as if she wasn't the one who started it. "Who would win in a duel, you or Helga?

"Helga" I answer.

"Me." she says simultaneously.

"Would you all like to see that?' she asks, clearly sensing an opportunity.

Chat answers in the affirmative. She makes the camera follow her and she stands to go to another room in the halls, one I haven't visited before.

"You're going to destroy me, you're level 90." I tell her, not even bothering to get up.

"The private duel room in here functions like a battleground, our stats are equalized. The only factor is class balance and skill." she informs me.

I sigh, standing to follow her. She leads me into a private room with a sand pit instead of a boardroom table like the others.

Helga has challenged you to a duel! [Accept] [Decline]

I accept, ready to get my ass handed to me.

As soon as the timer hits zero, she charges me with both axes drawn. My two floating weapons intercept her as I draw my non-sentient sword and shield. I smirk at the surprised look on her face. Yeah Helga, I can slot four weapons.

She strikes my hammer, knocking off a quarter of my health. God damn it, she knows my weakness. I wouldn't have said anything if I knew we'd be dueling after.

Stay on the move, don't let her hit you.

Your word is my command. Apaki says snarkily.

I'll hit her instead! Thozur announces.

I cast Tornado Edge twice, not boxing her in but… triangling her in? Whatever, she's caught between two spinning deaths and me.

She swings an axe down into one of the cyclones, whatever she was trying to do it probably wasn't getting knocked away with enough force to fall into the other weapon, and giving me an opening to slice her side. She winces in pain, using the weight of her weapons to regain her balance by swinging up. I raise my shield to block the downswing, losing ground as she puts too much pressure on me.

I command the tornados to move towards her, but that just makes her swing more wildly. I'm forced to change tactics, casting Circular Saw in orbit mode twice, making being near me a fatal error.

Somehow, my health is still around 80%, but hers is reaching half. There's no way I'm winning this, right?

On que, Helga uses her big lady ability and begins hitting me with such force that my shield is knocked away and she almost kills me then and there. I sent Thozur away and use Exchange to trade places, putting some distance between myself and Helga. A fatal error, I realize, as she charges me and wipes out the rest of my health.

Helga has won!

I sigh as the magic of the room restores my health to full. The pain suppression is a nice touch, too.

"You put up a lot more of a fight than I thought you would." Helga tells me.

"Thanks?" Is that supposed to be a compliment?

"Don't be like that…" she says, putting her arms over my shoulders.

"Okay." My mind is suddenly blank.

We both see the viewer count skyrocket as she puts the moves on me. She steps away, and clears her throat.

"Like I said earlier, no more adult content. My streams are going to be gameplay, showing what it's like being the Berserker Paragon." She reminds them and herself.

The viewer number dwindles rapidly. Helga stops watching and puts on a brave face.

"It's about time for Moose's morning stream, so I'll let you go." she tells me.

"Oh, ok." I say, trying to not sound disappointed. It's not that I am, I just have the feeling it's very important that I don't.

"You can be excited to spend time with her." Helga tells me.

"I am." I tell her.

"Good." she says, with a genuine smile. "Go get em', tiger."

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