Jess crouched next to the mutilated boar. She was careful not to have her clothes touch the clotting blood, sticking to the bristle of its head.

Adrenaline was still pumping as she had a look at the glowing ball hovering above the pigs head. A warm, soothing feeling emanated from it, making her want to be closer to it. She put her hand closer to the fuzzy light source, almost touching it. When her hand got really close, the ball repelled form her, moved by the tiny current invoked by her hand movement.

Intrigued by the interesting phenomenon, Jess grabbed it carefully to have a better look. Bouncing, free of gravity, between her hands was now a fuzzy orb, pulsating with a satisfying feeling of comfort and safety. Wow, holding this thing felt great.

Having grabbed the ball, there wasn’t much reason to be crouching over the ex-boar anymore. The thought of checking for more loot hit her, but was soon discarded; the carcass was partially covered in an easy flowing, smelly, yellow green liquid. Despite its lack of chunky elements, it put an end to any further looting endeavors. Jess felt sick. Ben didn’t seem too comfortable either, spitting repeatedly as he backed away from the carcass.

The rush of excitement and fear started to wear off. Regret surged through every fiber of Jess body. What they had done was ugly and horrendous. The joy usually accompanied grinding was not to be found. The reason, why realistic RPG games hadn’t been able make it to the era of perfect immersion, was lying, sadly and obviously, in front of her. Shaken, she stared silently at the thing she had created in front of her. She experienced many feelings, but repulsion was the strongest.

She and Ben, a group of two, stood still, looking into the far distance, empty eyed, both lips moving faintly, but no one uttering a word. A tempest of different emotions swirled in her consciousness, dulling the misplaced tranquility of the orb. She was naked in appearance, captured in a cruel game, doing things that made her want to cry out her multiple strains of disgust. Piglets, with eyes too newly opened to notice the danger happening around them, were confusedly looking for their mother.

At the leg of Ben’s blood pricked pants, was a piglet, sniffing, hungry and confused. Ben’s frown went deeper. His head fell, looking at the piglet, or just the ground, Jess didn’t know. Ben sobbed, shakingly, but silent.

For a while, they just stood there, doing nothing. It wasn’t enjoyable, maybe not needed, but near impossible to snap out of. A voice had the two freed of their apathy:

“Well done, mighty heroes, you’ve completed your first battle… and retrieved the old orb o’ mine. Once we make it to my village, I assure you, you will be amply rewarded,” their tutor emerged from who knows where.

Somewhat eased, being reminded that it was only a game, Jess removed the piglet from Ben’s leg, snapping him out of whatever he was thinking about. This time the piglet found its way to what used to be its mother. Its siblings soon joined in, besides one, which laid still on its side.

Jess looked at Ben’s face, seeing a reflection of her feelings in it. It didn’t feel good, but it felt a bit better so to share her sadness with. “Jerk up, it’s just another game!” she consoled him, lacking the confidence in her voice to make it sound believable.

***

Jerry walked back to the shrine with the others, both arms full. He had had enough of the forest, and if there was an easier leveling area, he would go there, and never get back.

In his arms were two piglets. They weren’t struggling as much as when he had first grasped them, thankfully.

He didn’t want them to end up like their mother. He feared the cute little fur balls wouldn’t make it without their, until not long ago, one and only food supply. There was still some hope for them, giving Jerry a smile on top of his bitterness; the NPC villager was an expert on raising critters, and had insisted that they should bring them along to the shrine.

***

KimZor smiled for every step he took. A feeling of accomplishment surged though him, as he again reminded himself of how well he had performed, turning a potentially shitty morning to a promising day. In between his hands, he bounced his well-earned fluffy ball. He liked it; holding it gave him a feeling of serene calmness, to accompany his well-deserved sense of accomplishment. The protruding hair-like strains on its surface were in contact with his skin, yet he couldn’t feel his skin connect with them.He only felt contact when touching the surface of the orb.

He liked squeezing it. Every time he applied a small pressure to it, it would pop satisfactory; and split up into ten smaller copies, floating into all directions; letting pleasant pulses envelop him from their different places. It was a great feeling to crush the brittle orb into smaller pieces, as was leading all of the weightless orblets back to merge back into one, big orb. So satisfying, so satisfying, his unknowing minions had proven themselves useful already.

They were getting close to the altar of awful reflections. KimZor’s legs were starting to get heavy, yet another silly thing in this game. He hoped there would be some kind of regeneration at the shrine. There should be, but he didn’t have any way of telling. He shouldn’t have let the inspection of the black globe thingey to the two incompetents earlier. Now was the time to make up for that.

He longed to buy a spell of instant baconification. He had made sure to bring the materials after all. Anything else could wait.

They had made a disgusting mess of their first prey; things did turn ugly when he had others do his errands.

It was for a well-motivated reason that he didn’t join the fight though; he was proud of how he instinctively avoided the fight beforehand. It was for the best that he hadn’t jumped in to score the pig kill; showing how real pros get stuff done would have been a bit too discouraging; he didn’t want to give the others a minority complex; they needed to grow and become useful. KimZor knew that it was best for them to learn, by slowly realizing how ineffective they were.

KimZor’s legs ached in their heaviness. The weird feeling in his legs, the unnecessary simulation of hunger and thirst, none of the weird mechanics mattered much to him at the moment. He was finally about to get some stuff done with the granite globe at the shrine. Judging from the others performance with the pig, he wouldn’t be the least surprised if they had misses a log out option at the stone menu. A sharp, skillful, sound was heard as he masterfully hit the checkbox next to [Items].

***

Jess’ arms were hurting. It had been a long walk with two piglets to carry. Their weight hadn’t been much, but the position she had had to fix her arms at had slowly infused a burning weakness into them. It hurt, but she figured she shouldn’t complain too much; she was pretty certain her pain wasn’t as high as 2.5%, the threshold sane developers usually had. The devs had been pretty cruel to create prolonged pain and discomfort like this though.

“Behold, your reward for returning my long lost orb,” an annoyed NPC announced, momentarily not playing with his glowing toy.

At his side was a wooden box, accompanied by two massive linen sacks filled with things of protruding, round, shapes.

“First quest completed I guess,” Jess concluded victoriously, looking at Ben.

“What are these?” Jess asked, her forehead wrinkled, pointing at the brown and red ellipsoids in the linen sacks.

“I’m pretty sure they’re potatoes,” the rabbit hunter said.

“I didn’t know you were into cooking games”

“Nha you know actually…” Ben had a rather long rethoric pause.

“My family makes potato pancakes every time someone has a birthday. It’s sort of a family tradition. Mum is a bit weird that way, doing some stuff in real life... One day I decided to check what they were made out of, and when I was already at it, I kinda decided to go full pro on potatoes. ‘Twas way back though,” the rabbit hunter eventually spoke out.

“So we’ve got two sacks of potatoes and a myst…”

“Well, they’re King Edward potatoes and Asterix potatoes, they differ greatly as how you c…”

“Yeah, two sacks of potatoes and a mystery box, let’s check it out,” Jess spoke out fast, smiling. She had won the war of disruption.

Beneath the lid of the wooden crate was an assortment of different items, each accompanied with a small label.

“Thank you a lot for your generosity, but is it possible that you have any, you know, more weapon like things? I don’t know how long we’ll haft to stay around until we can log off, but I’d rather be a kickass warrior than a farmer,” a slightly disappointed Jess inquired.

***

“All things are weapons; fault never lies amongst things, for they’re all a fearful bane to the right enemy,” KimZor replied to the overly, curious minion.

Things hadn’t gone as they should. Turns out the nice orb of his was the currency known as “glory”. Why was this prison of a game so ambiguous, not telling him what’s what. He had been glad to see his rightful head start of one ‘g’. The game had, instead of being cool, as it seemed, and should, tricked him of his nice little orb, and what did he get in return? Shitty stone age food and shitty stone age equipment. He could as well throw it away to the two idiots around him. It suited them.

Jessica had emptied the crate and put the piglets into it. The bacon generator, or ‘piggy home’, as the naïve club minion thought herself to have declared, was a reasonable compensation for the unfair loss; KimZor was starting to get a bit hungry.

It was weird, he knew that he didn’t need to eat; his body was in his capsule, but the hunger was irritating. An effective master shouldn’t be strained by petty bullshit; he deserved bacon.

While Ben-Ben, made stupid faces, petting the raw bacon, the club minion read out loud from the item labels:

"Begginer’s Survival Kit:"

"Instructions: Basic Rope Making"

"Instructions: Basic Pottery"

"Instructions: Starting a Fire"

"Instructions: How to deal with an Animal Carcass"

"Four Waxed Water Leathers"

"Bronze Knife, pretty sharp"

"Whet stone. Makes things pretty sharp"

"Flint"

"Bronze Casserole"

'Boring, boring, boring, boring. This is worse that getting IRL presents at christmas.'

"Scroll of Fire Rune"

'Holy shit, that one's going to me'

“Oh, I’m sorry, almost forgot I stashed the ol’ fire Rune scroll o’ mine in there,” KimZor confidently excused himself, grabbing his scroll before it got further contaminated with stupidness.

He left the stone age tools for the others to play with. It was time to become the strongest in the group, in its truest sense, not just mentally. He sat down to learn the spell. Finally the game had decided to be fair and given him some OP stuff to abuse.

***

Jerry every so often found himself having an involuntary spasm of an ugly grin as his thoughts relapsed to his turd bath dilemma . His itchy behind didn't save him from his imagination.

He had gotten more and more worried on whether or not he’s make it back to his team’s practice session tomorrow. His team would probably be left with more than one question; he had never missed a single practice opportunity before.

Things were getting better though. Not that he was entirely sure if that was a good thing, but at least the itching had been alleviated after finding a combination of leaves and privacy. A hope that one of his teammates would contact his family and have him unplugged was there as well. They had, of course, never met in real life, where action needed to be taken, but, his family, especially mom and grandpa, were frequent visitors of Jerry, and where Jerry was, his team was too.

His stomach rumbled out of hunger. Oh, that’s right he had another purpose, being back to the forest. They had decided to make a fire, and he was to get tinder and firewood. Hopefully the flint found in the [Beginners Survival Set] would work as a fire starter somehow, otherwise there wouldn’t be any opportunity for him to show off his potato skills.

The next step, after finishing the hunger and thirst issue, would probably have to be tied to the primitive tools the NPC had given them. Nothing had happened when he had held the instruction scrolls, so it was pretty obvious that the entire part needed to be read until you’d gain skill from them.

The rope making part seemed pretty promising though; using ropes instead of abilities would probably give him an unfair advantage grinding wise, early on at least. He grinned. Sooner or later, he should be able to mass produce rabbit traps. Finally time for revenge on those fast little fuckers.