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Evbo yawned, his head drifting ever closer to the quartz counter of the food shop.
Normally, if he pulled food duty, he just gave up on the blocks and clocked out early. It was one of the most boring jobs you could get, stuck sitting behind a counter all day waiting for someone to show up and do a jump for you.
Last week, however, he’d gotten into a drawn-out Parkour Battle with one of the other Masters. He’d won, of course, but he’d used up most of his blocks in the process. With his few acquaintances unwilling to spot him, he’d been forced to keep taking jobs to earn back more blocks.
The clock over the door was inching closer and closer to sunset, when he would be done for the day. Another annoying part of food duty was that the bank was already closed by the time you got off, so you couldn’t even redeem your blocks until the next morning. Life in Parkour Civilization was generally alright, but times like this made him wonder what the Champion was thinking.
Finally, the clock rang, and Evbo was freed. He stood up, stretching his limbs out, and headed for the door. Once he exited the building, it was only a short walk along the parkour highway, then up a staircase and a great leap off the side onto his skyscraper. The jumps had long become automatic from an entire life lived on the Master layer.
Or, that wasn’t entirely true.
He had vague memories of a time before he was a Master. He and his friend Seawatt had lived together in a world with solid ground beneath their feet. They’d gone on adventures together, and somewhere along the way, that had led to creating this civilization.
Some parts didn’t make sense—he couldn’t remember ranking up, even though he must have started as a Noob. But thinking about it too hard made his head hurt, so he tried not to. That had worked well for him so far.
After all, he was a Parkour Master, one of the best parkourists around. Who was to say he didn’t deserve the luxury that surrounded him?
Still, he sometimes wondered where Seawatt had ended up. He’d only ever seen him wear diamond boots, which didn’t tell him much about what layer he was on.
For all Evbo knew, he might be the ever-elusive Champion.
Entering his skyscraper, he descended to the bottom floor with a single water bucket clutch and grabbed a few golden carrots and a water bottle out of one of his storage chests. It would be fully dark soon, but with the full moon, it should be bright enough to go for a run. After spending all day cooped up in the store, he was dying to get out and do some jumps.
Double-checking that he had plenty of blocks in his inventory, he exited his skyscraper and set off in a random direction.
The buildings thinned out as he got further away from the city center, though parkour highways still extended far above him into the distance. He’d heard once that they built the highways so far out in case they needed to build more houses for people who ranked up. Nobody knew of anyone from a lower layer ranking up in recent memory, so it was unclear how true this was, but it made sense to him, at least.
Off to his side, he caught sight of a highway in the distance that he’d never noticed before. It was high up, with no staircases leading to it nearby, but by no means the highest road on the layer. In all appearances, it was identical to every other highway.
The only strange thing about it was that it didn’t lead towards the city, but away from it.
He sat down on the grass block beneath him, pulling out his water bottle to take a sip. The sun was now far beneath the horizon, merely a dim spot underneath all the layers below him. He had been hoping to get an early start tomorrow to earn some more blocks, and if he was going to do that, he’d need to turn around now.
But the highway intrigued him. Could it maybe lead to another city on the Master layer? The one time he’d been down to the Pro layer to punish someone who failed to do their daily task, he’d seen multiple towns there. It wouldn’t be that weird for the Master layer to be the same.
If one thing was for sure, it was that his curiosity would not allow him to leave this alone.
He stood up and, munching on a carrot as he went, began following one of the closer highways back towards a staircase. There didn’t seem to be an entrance to the mysterious highway directly, but with a well-positioned bucket clutch, he could jump onto it from above.
The glass pane stairs flew past beneath his feet as he climbed higher and higher, until he was on one of the highest parts of the layer. Back towards the center of the city, he could make out the Parkour Temple, and he thought he might almost be level with the roof.
He squinted at the top, where the Champion was said to live, but no luck. The highway was still too low. Not that he’d be able to tell who was up there from this distance, anyway.
Taking a few steps back from the edge of the highway, he pulled out his water bucket. The leap to the mystery highway below him was further than he thought it would be, but it would still be possible, if more of a thrill than he’d bargained for.
With three great strides to pick up speed, Evbo flung himself off the highway. Wind whistled past his ears as he fell ever faster, the second highway rushing towards him. At the very last second, he threw his water bucket out below him.
His momentum slowed to nothing, his feet safely submerged in a layer of water.
He scooped the water back up into his bucket and looked down the highway. From where he was standing at one end of it, the highway seemed to extend to the horizon. There were no buildings or other highways in sight, just an endless line of jumps towards nothing.
It sent a shiver down his spine. This had seemed like a better idea when he was on the grass, but there was no backing down now. Stowing his bucket back in his inventory, he began the long run down the highway.
At first, he sprinted, eager to get past the stretch of empty road, but his pace soon slowed. He’d hoped that the highway only appeared so empty because of the darkness, but there really was nothing around it. After only a few minutes of running, the entirety of the Master level he knew had vanished into the night behind him.
His run turned into a jog, which turned into a walk. Curiosity was badly losing the battle against his nerves, and he was about to give up and come back in the daytime when a building appeared in the distance.
It was not like any of the skyscrapers he’d seen, but instead a simple box, like the functional shops and offices around the city. Light spilled out from a door in the front, which was connected to the main highway by a short parkour course. There were no other buildings or players in sight.
Evbo stopped in front of the parkour course. It struck him for the first time that he was probably not supposed to be here. However, there was nobody to tell him this place was off-limits, so he could hardly be blamed for beelining for the door. What did they expect him to do, come all this way and not go inside?
The course was easy for a Master like him, except for the ice jump at the end. He’d had one like that installed in his house, though, so even the seven-block gap barely discouraged him as he leaped to the other side.
He stepped through the doorway and was greeted with a giant hole in the floor.
Holes were not uncommon in Parkour Civilization. Without them, you wouldn’t have anything to parkour over. However, this was something Evbo had never seen—a huge chunk cut out of the floor on one side of the room, with nothing else on the side he was standing on.
Footsteps echoed from above him. He looked up just in time to see a player fall through one of three small gaps in the ceiling directly into the hole.
They were out of view almost instantly, but Evbo could’ve sworn they weren’t wearing boots.
There was a staircase off to his left. He raced over to it and hurried up, using his hands to pull himself up faster than he could make the jumps.
When he reached the top, he wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t Seawatt.
Evbo silently climbed the last few steps, staring in awe at the man before him. Seawatt was exactly as he had been in Evbo’s memories, minus the diamond armor. He wore gold boots, identical to Evbo’s own, which matched the other gold jewelry that decorated his body.
He stood in front of a keyboard, tapping away at a machine on the wall. There was other equipment in the room Evbo didn’t recognize, including a large dais surrounded by glass and odd purple crystals.
Somehow, it made sense for Seawatt to be somewhere so otherworldly. He always had known more than Evbo.
Footsteps light as air, Evbo approached his long-lost friend. “Seawatt?” he croaked out.
Seawatt screamed, spinning around. “Who’s there?” he shouted, eyes frantically scanning the room. The second he locked on to Evbo, he was reaching into a pouch by his waist and pulling out a strange three-pronged block.
Evbo held his hands up, free of any blocks to build an attack with. “Dude, dude, chill. It’s just me, Evbo. You remember me, right?”
“Evbo?” Seawatt said. The block did not leave his hand, but he was also making no move to place it. “How did you get in here?”
“I was just out for a run and found this place. Crazy coincidence, right?” Evbo chuckled, but Seawatt’s grimace didn’t soften in the slightest. “But bro, there’s no way you’ve forgotten me. Me and you were the ones who started this whole parkour thing with the diamonds. You’ve gotta remember that.”
A look of understanding dawned on Seawatt’s face. He stowed his block away and walked towards Evbo, suddenly all smiles. “I remember now! Evbo, right? It really has been a long time since we last saw each other, hasn’t it?”
“I know, man! At least five years,” Evbo said, lowering his hands. “What happened to all your diamond armor? What is this place?”
“I lost the armor a long time ago. Bit hard to jump around in. And as for this place…” Seawatt wrapped an arm around Evbo’s shoulders. “I’m not supposed to do this, but how about I give you the tour?”
“For real? Let’s go!”
Seawatt led him over to the three gaps that Evbo had seen earlier. Up close, it was easier to tell what jumps they were: a simple one-block, two-block, and three-block.
“This building is actually where I work,” Seawatt explained. “I get a lot of late-night calls, though, so I live nearby. Maybe a 5-minute run by the highway?”
“Oh, is that why I’ve never seen you in the city? It’s a real trek to get out here.”
“That’s why I like it. Nice and quiet.” Seawatt let go of Evbo and pointed to the purple dais behind him. “Do you want to know what that is? That is where new players spawn.”
Evbo’s jaw dropped. He’d always been told people spawned at the Temple, which made sense. If anyone was going to be spawning new players, it’d be the Parkour God, after all. To think that Seawatt was the first person a new player would meet…
His friend had certainly changed a lot since they last met.
Stepping closer to the dais, Evbo ran his hand along the cool glass. “Is this like, a holy artifact?”
Seawatt snorted. “Not unless you think the Champion’s holy, which I don’t. He’s the one who built all of this.”
Before Evbo had time to process that Seawatt knew the Champion, his attention was already being directed back to the holes in the floor.
“Now, when people spawn, we need to determine what layer they should spawn at. I have them try to perform these jumps, and they get sorted depending on how well they do.” He gave Evbo a pat on the back, slightly too hard to feel friendly. “Since you’re a Master, you were able to do all three of them.”
He was starting to lose Evbo there. While he didn’t remember it very clearly, Evbo was sure he must have started on the Noob layer and worked his way up to being a Master. That’s how Parkour Civilization worked. How could somebody start from the Master layer?
“So, these jumps are like shortcuts through the ranks?” Evbo asked. “I guess it would be annoying to have to start from the Noob layer if you can already do three-block jumps…”
“Close. You’ve almost got the idea,” Seawatt said. “The final component is this computer system.” He waved Evbo over to the console he had been typing at earlier.
With a few keystrokes, Seawatt opened a file labeled Evbo. There was a surprising amount of information on him—his address, his wins and losses at Parkour Battles. And, in big letters under his name, was his rank: Master.
“Once I’ve tested which layer a player should be on, I input their rank in the system, and that’s where they’ll live for the rest of their life.”
“The rest of their life?”
“For the most part,” Seawatt said, shrugging. “Sometimes players initially get placed higher than they should, but they sort that out for themselves soon enough.”
It felt almost too obvious to ask the question. Surely Seawatt had forgotten to explain this. Surely Evbo had misunderstood his explanation. Surely, right?
He asked anyway. “What about ranking up?”
As if he wasn’t destroying Evbo’s entire worldview, Seawatt casually answered, “Oh, it’s been impossible to rank up for a long time.”
“What?” Evbo shouted. “That can’t be right. Ranks are supposed to be decided by your skill level. How are people supposed to improve, then?”
“Not my problem,” Seawatt said. He still wore a faint grin on his face, one that was looking more and more sinister by the second. “Maybe a few players are ranked lower than they should be. Sucks for them, but that’s the price you pay for an efficient system.”
Evbo shook his head, backing away from Seawatt. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. The Seawatt he knew could be rude. Abrasive. Mean, sometimes. But he had never taken joy in cruelty like this.
“What happened to you?” he squeaked out, voice failing him. “Why are you doing this? The old Seawatt would never have allowed something this unfair to keep happening.”
“A lot of things happened,” Seawatt said with a hollow laugh. “But that’s irrelevant. There’s something else I’d like to ask you. Why do you think parkour is valuable?”
The question was confusing enough to startle Evbo out of his spiralling thoughts. What could Seawatt possibly be playing at? Hesitantly, he replied, “Well, because you can get things with it. You can get food with parkour, and buy a house, and way back then, you even gave me diamonds.”
“That’s exactly right. I gave you diamonds, and that made you think parkour was important.” Seawatt’s grin widened, showing the tips of his canines. Evbo felt like a rabbit being circled by a hungry wolf. He didn’t know what the attack was or where it was coming from—only that it was inevitably coming.
Seawatt delivered the final blow. “Evbo, what if I told you that memory wasn’t real?”
Evbo didn’t doubt for a second that Seawatt was telling the truth.
It made perfect sense. The way his memories never seemed entirely his, like they were dreams he’d had long ago. The unnatural landscape they had inhabited, vast stretches of solid grass beneath their feet. It was almost a mockery in its lies, too outlandish to be true, too outlandish to be doubted.
The blocks were out of his inventory before he knew what he was doing.
“I attack with a three-block jump,” Evbo announced as he landed the jump. “The Parkour Battle begins now. Make your move.”
“Now, no need to be dramatic about this,” Seawatt said with a sigh. “I was actually hoping to recruit you, you know. You’ve clearly got the parkour skills, and it gets tiring doing all of this alone.”
That was enough to make Evbo laugh. “Me, work with you? Never. Believe me, once I beat you, I’m going to find the Champion and tell him how you’ve been ruining Parkour Civilization.”
“Is that so?” Seawatt leisurely placed his blocks down and jumped the gap with ease. “If you’ve managed to become a Master, something is wrong with this Civilization indeed.”
The blocks in front of them vanished. Evbo felt his face flush with anger, but forced himself to focus on the task at hand. He’d been lied to his entire life, betrayed by the one person he’d ever thought of as a friend. It made him want to scream, or cry, or run away forever, but his first instinct had been to attack. Now he had to go through with this.
He barely had any blocks on him, and he’d already wasted two of them on an attack Seawatt could obviously handle. It was go big or go home.
From his limited supply, he placed three blocks, each four blocks apart from each other, forming a combo of two four-block jumps at a right angle. Stepping up to the edge of the first block, he dashed forward, landing on the second block, and then turning—
And just barely missing the third block. His attack disappeared, meaning it was Seawatt’s turn.
Seawatt did not immediately take out any blocks, instead leaning back on the console behind him. “Do you really want to speak to the Champion?”
“Of course. Once he knows what’s happening, I’m sure he’ll make the system fair again. The Champion is supposed to look after all the players, right?”
“Your faith in the Champion is admirable,” Seawatt said without a hint of admiration. He was still smiling, because of course he was still smiling, and it made Evbo want to kick his teeth out. “All the same, I can send you to meet him.”
Evbo narrowed his eyes at Seawatt. “How am I supposed to trust you? You’ve been lying to me since the moment we met.”
“Unless you have any brewing stands on you, you’ll find out for yourself soon enough.” Seawatt placed down two of the strange three-pronged blocks Evbo had seen him holding earlier. “Though, I doubt you’ll get the answer you want from the Champion.”
The instant Seawatt landed on the second of the brewing stands, balanced precariously on one foot, Evbo’s stomach turned. His vision blurred and spun, and he collapsed to the ground as his limbs stopped working.
With his body unable to move, his anger left his body, and all he was left with was fear.
Seawatt knelt down beside him, taking his cheek in one hand and twisting his head to look at Seawatt. Evbo whimpered, powerless to stop him.
“Good night, Evbo,” Seawatt whispered. “Thank you for the fun, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing you again.”
Despite everything, as he watched the face above him drift further and further away, a part of Evbo couldn’t help but think of it as a friend.