Tali, annoyed: Tch.

  Game Master, smiling: Hard, isn't it?

  Tali, annoyed: Just a bit.

  Aiming for the second she fired round after round, doing even worse and taking twelve shots. If she didn't take only seven on the next one- No, that wouldn't happen. That wouldn't happen. It. Won't. Happen. She fired once more, but used a three Lux stud, cheating, hoping the game master wouldn't notice, and the bottle went down.

  Game Master: Seems like you win.

  He passes the ingot to her, before going over to the bottles and Blazing them, taking her twenty six total expended Lux for himself. He lost out four Lux assuming she had guessed the amount in the bar correctly. She immediately Blazed the thing to check. twenty. She had lost Lux. She hated losing, not just Lux but in general.

  Game Master: And by the way, I don't appreciate you cheating. Cheating has a charge, ten Lux.

  He noticed. She swallows her pride and Fabricates a ten Lux pebble, the game master taking it and Blazing it. Meaning she has managed to lose sixteen Lux total in some random Festival Game.

  Tali, annoyed: Damn it.

  Game Master: Shouldn't have cheated.

  Tali, annoyed: Yeah yeah.

  Muttering as she stormed away from the game she looked back at it, the board catching her eye. Were there always seventeen missing posters?

  Tali: -That's not right... There were sixteen. There were definitely sixteen.

  Only... One of those faces was familiar. Sickeningly familiar. She hadn't seen it before she started playing so when did it get put there? She hadn't seen anyone come near the board while playing. Was she too engrossed in the game to notice? Or was the poster something the game master Fabricated when she wasn't looking? -No, he wouldn't know that she knew that man. He hadn't seen him. Probably.

  Tali, scared: Please no... Please... Don't let me have been right.

  -Abel-

  [Stamina Points: 60/60 (-50) -> 10/60]

  [Thrown Aim, Level 0 (+1) -> Thrown Aim, Level 1]

  [Dexterity: 10 (+1) -> 11]

  [Speed: 13 (+1) -> 14]

  He had been playing the Festival games for a while now, to the point that he had used the vast majority of his stamina, and had even managed to increase some of his stats and gain a new skill. It seemed if you pushed your body for long enough in certain ways that you'd get new skills or level others up, similar to how muscles work. Despite his want to continue due to the chance for increasing his scores, he didn't want to risk starting to gain levels in [Exhaustion] again, so he decided that he'd have to stop playing the games for now. He went looking for somewhere to sit and rest, but stopped when he saw a board listing missing people with their photos.

  One of the faces was familiar, but he couldn't place it. He felt as though he hadn't seen it very recently under important circumstances, the specifics of which seemed to just escape him no matter how hard he tried to remember. -Ah. It was his face, or rather the face of one Kaelen Calder, the man whose body he now wore. In other words, according to this, he was among the missing.

  Abel: This is... Weird...

  Could it be something that Talyndra had done? Did she still suspect that he wasn't Kaelen? He wouldn't be surprised if she didn't as she had been so sure he wasn't Kaelen in both of the other Save States in very short amounts of time. But it didn't really seem like the kind of thing she'd be able to pull off. Though... He didn't actually know her, it wasn't impossible that this was exactly the kind of thing that she could, and would, pull off.

  He then notices that no-one was near him. The Festival had just started to really fill up with people, and yet no-one was here, why not? "His" face being among the missing, he began to reconsider everything that he knew. He still didn't know why he had died that very first time, he knew how, but he didn't know what events had led to that. It was fully possible that this, right here, would lead to his death, burning up under the sun. However, he was alone. Or at least... He thought he was alone.

  Abel: Hello? Is anyone there?

  He feels something press against his neck, a small dagger.

  ???: Don't move.

  He throws his hands up. He was being threatened, he was now sure that this was the situation that had led Kaelen to dying under the sun, when he was replaced with himself, Abel. It had to be.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Abel: Not moving! Not moving. What do you want?

  ???: Didn't you see the board? You're going missing.

  Abel: Any way we could discuss that?

  ???: No.

  He focused inward toward his Lux and then outwards to his hands, trying to Fabricate a sword to fight back with.

  [Notice: Required Lux count not met]

  [You do not have enough Lux to Fabricate this item.]

  He didn't have enough to make a weapon even if he could fight back, and he didn't know the stats of whoever he was fighting, so he tried to bring up their stat table.

  [Notice: Stats unknown]

  [Please face the person you wish to view the stats of.]

  Damn. He had no weapon, and no way to know his opponent's stats. He was going to die here, wasn't he? All the progress that he had made with Talyndra would be completely undone, and he would have to start again from a new Save State. How completely and utterly unfair.

  -Talyndra-

  Kaelen had gone missing in the span of time it took her to get to the festival and play a game. Had someone seen him stealing and decided to put an end to it? Even if there was a slim chance that the Kaelen she knew was gone now, she still had to find him, just in case he wasn't actually gone and she was just overanalysing Kaelen having an especially bad day.

  Talyndra, muttering: -But why would he be marked as missing?

  Talyndra looked closer at the poster, looking for any sign of it being a forgery. But it was official, nothing looked wrong about it. She even Blazed small bits of all the posters to see if there was a difference in the Lux density. There wasn't.

  Talyndra: Maybe they're all fake?

  For that, at least, there was a pretty easy solution. She'd just have to go to every board and see if it's all the same. If they're all the same, chances are they're legit.

  Talyndra, worried: But Kaelen is missing... I have to find him.

  But where could she even start? Where would Kaelen go?

  Talyndra: Anywhere no one else is...

  Find a lack of people watching and you'd find Kaelen Blazing something.

  Talyndra: Then that's what I'll do.

  She makes her way through the crowds of people playing around The Festival of the Sun. She didn't personally believe in Lumex, but had no problems with joining in on the celebrations, the only thing she didn't appreciate about it was the eternal circus theme. She hated clowns. So with them being seen as the main way to show reverence for Lumex, for all humans were clowns before it, anything religious was always given a sickening dose of clowns. Always the clowns.

  Talyndra, scared: Ugh... Creepy.

  She had managed to find a part of the festival where not many people were around. The kind of place Kaelen would've gone. There was another missing board with the same 17 posters. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw blood on the floor, and large amounts of it dragging off a bit before stopping.

  Talyndra: What happened to you?

  -Abel-

  ???: Turn around. Don't bother trying to Fabricate anything. I've got more than a knife pointed at you. If I even sense a little bit of Lux leave you, you're dead.

  He turns to face the man. He was wearing basic circus attire with a complex mask that despite the designs didn't seem to actually have a face, just a wide grin.

  Abel: Well that's not creepy at all.

  And now that he was facing the man, he could see exactly what this thing's stats were, once he knew that he would be able to fight back. That, or give up and hope he isn't killed.

  [Help Requested]

  [See Character Stats?]

  [Yes / No]

  [Yes], show me what this man can do.

  --{REDACTED} / Brother Shade--

  [Level 7], [EXP to next Level: 98]

  [Health Points: 75/75], [Mana Points: 28/28], [Stamina Points: 140/140], [Lux: 2,003]

  [Attack: 25], [Defense: 19], [Dexterity: 16], [Speed: 26], [Intelligence: 19], [Wisdom: 16], [Adeptness: 18]

  --Skills--

  [Fabrication Speed, Level 8], [Blazing Speed, Level 7], [Magic Armour, Level 7], [Wind Luck, Level 7], [Axe Mastery, Level 6], [Dagger Mastery, Level 6], [Vision, Level 4], [Increased Luck, Level 3], [Night Vision, level 3], [Combat Mastery, Level 2], [Increased Reaction Speed, Level 2], [Simple Future Sight, Level 1]

  --Sigils--

  [The Sigil of Shades]

  Yeah- No, that was not going to happen. He was absolutely fucked.