Their pace was slow as the three made their way through the grassy fields. After the intense battle, they all wanted to take it easy. Eventually, although they were still far from camp, the sun began to disappear behind the mountaintops.

“Alright, let’s stop here,” said Loran.

“Finally,” sighed Alexx.

A few feet behind them Zed grunted appreciatively, the mental and physical exhaustion of the day having caught up to him not too long ago.

“Alexx, can you run over to the woods and grab some branches?”

“Do I have to?” he whined.

“I’m hungry and the only thing left to eat is the Soldier and a handful of goat jerky, so unless you want to skip dinner, breakfast, and possibly lunch tomorrow we need wood,” Loran pointed to the edge of the woods in the distance. “We don't have an ax, so go.”

“Can’t you or Zed use those swords?”

The two looked at Zed, who stared back at them while cradling his new weapons defensively. “Mine,” he said bluntly, “also I’m tired, so I’m not doing it.”

“Oh come on!”

“Alexx, can you please just get some wood,” Loran pleaded with his head in his hands.

“...Fine,” he grunted before walking off towards the woods.

“I can’t believe he’s still upset about that,” Loran said, shaking his head. “What is he, twelve?”

Zed shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re both children.”

“Riiight,” Loran said skeptically, “coming from the guy whose response to taking their new toys away was ‘mine.’”

“I’m at least twice your age IRL.”

Loran wore a look of exaggerated concern. “I didn’t know dementia could set in that early, my condolences.”

“Fuck you.”

“Sorry but you’re not that pretty.”

“....I’m too tired for this,” Zed said as he rested his head on his pack. “Wake me when the food is ready.”

~~~~~

The three sat in the partial darkness of the valley, carefully trying to eat the meat of the Iron Ant Soldier. They didn’t have any of the better cooking tools that they had in the Kitchen, so Loran had settled for breaking off pieces of the Soldier and cooking it in the fire directly, with varying levels of success.

He nearly forgot that a campfire was hot enough to melt the carapace until he was reminded by what smelt like burning plastic. After adjusting the pieces to just being around the fire, they waited for a few minutes before trying to eat.

Emphasis on ‘trying.’

Even without melting, the carapace posed a problem in that it retained a lot of heat. As hungry as they were, the three hunters were too impatient to wait for the shells to cool down completely and were now gingerly picking their way through pieces of meat and carapace with mild burns on their hands and mouths.

“...I chopped wood for this?”

“I get it Alexx.”

“...It tastes like shit.”

“Yes Alexx, I know!”

Whether it was the melting carapace, their slightly burned tongues, or the simple fact that Loran could(and had) start a fire while making a bowl of cereal, the cooked Soldier meat tasted awful and only added to the sour atmosphere.

The only one who wasn’t bitter at the moment was Zed, who was currently examining the hollowed-out head of the Iron Ant Soldier. The three had practically torn apart the rest of the giant insect, and while they had been able to eat around the rest of the organs the head was something they all drew the line at. They had set the head aside to bring it back to the village, but then Zed started to scoop it out without explaining anything.

“Why do you keep looking at that thing?” Loran finally asked.

“Just thinking,” he said vacantly. Zed then got a curious look on his face before turning the opening at the base of the head towards himself.

Alexx and Loran paled as their friend began pushing his head through the hole.

“You are not about to wear that,” Loran said.

“Watch me.”

The opening was still a little tight, but sure enough, the ant head fit rather well around the head of the older player.

“That can’t sm-” he choked, “smell good.”

“How is it?” Loran asked with morbid curiosity.

“It’s awful,” Zed said triumphantly, his voice slightly muffled. “Smells like shit, I don’t want to breathe, and I can’t see.” He took the head off. “It might get better if I… give me a second.”

Taking a stone knife, Zed cut out the eyes of the ant head, as well made some small holes between the antennae. Putting the head back on, Loran could see Zed’s eyes through the holes, and removing the ant’s eyes also let him see to the sides slightly.

“That’s a little better. I’ll need to make these holes a little bigger but getting rid of the eyes definitely makes breathing easier.”

“Why even bother?” Alexx asked. “Didn’t you say that thing had no armor? What’s the point of wearing its shell?”

Zed shrugged. “Honestly at first I just wanted to hang it over the door to my place. Fighting this fucker was stressful. As far as being a helmet goes it’s still decently tough, and it’s probably better than my bare skin.”

“I guess.” Loran set aside the ant leg he had been eating, deciding he’s had enough. “So, do you want me to bonk you to see if the armor works?”

Zed was about to say something when he suddenly became distracted by something in his menu. “That won’t be necessary,” he said with a grin, “Because the game has just decided this counts as a new item.”

“Oh shit really?” Alexx asked.

“Yup. The Iron Ant Soldier Helm, wow that name sucks.”

Loran shrugged. “Eh, I’ve heard worse. What are its stats?”

“Not great. Low durability, and only 3 armor.” His eyes widened. “But it also says it has a Skill that can prevent detection from Iron Ants.”

Alexx nearly choked on his food. “I-it what?!”

“You’re serious?” Loran said as he used [ANALYSE] to see for himself.

[NAME]: Iron Ant Soldier Helm

[RARITY]: 2

[TYPE]: Equipment(Head)

[DURABILITY]: 50/50

[STATS]: 3 Armor

[AFFINITY/REQUIREMENTS]

STR: N/A

DEX: N/A

[SKILLS]

[IRON ANT PHEROMONES] Lv.2

(Passive) Prevents the user from being detected by Iron Ants

[DESCRIPTION]

Armor made from the hollowed-out head of an Iron Ant Soldier. Although its defense is rather weak for the species, it still holds its identifying scents.

“It seems like the effect will be pretty weak, but it could help right?”

“Yeah. if nothing else it’s cool to know that items can have Skills too,” Loran said with a shrug.

“You guys think we can get other items like that?”

“We have to,” Zed said. “No matter how shitty Loran insists this game is it can’t just introduce a mechanic only to remove it.”

“I mean, I have experienced that before.”

“I- you must be joking,” Zed said, eyes widening with disbelief.

“It was another Indie studio,” Loran said wistfully. “They had a bunch of fun little gadgets and mechanics introduced in an update, only to remove them with a patch about a week later.”

“Were the mechanics bad? Or game breaking?” Alexx asked.

“No, they were just fun. A little buggy but the whole game had this setup of being intentionally shitty so it still fit.” Loran shrugged. “I guess the update didn’t work the way the devs expected it to so they thought they needed to fix it.”

“And you think that’ll happen here?”

“Not really. After everything that’s happened so far I don’t expect to see Dr. Zheng putting out a patch for anything, unless he decides players haven’t been dying fast enough.”

“...”

“...”

“...Would he?”

“I don’t want to think about it.” Loran rubbed his temples as he tried to find something else to talk about. He then realized that there was something else to talk about, but it wasn’t something he wanted to acknowledge.

“Oh fuck,” Loran said, holding his head in his hands, his voice filled with more despair than when he had seen the army of Iron Ant Drones.

“...What?” Zed asked cautiously. Both he and Alexx felt a growing worry about what could make Loran react like this, especially considering the subject they were previously discussing.

After a moment of tense silence, Loran spoke, his voice mildly distraught and muffled by his hands.

“...How much EXP did you guys get today?”

The two stared at him blankly for a moment before their eyes widened with excitement.

Pulling up their menus, the two were in awe at their rewards.

[NAME]: Alexx

[SPECIES]: Human

[LEVEL]: 29

[EXP]: 46775/6000

[NAME]: Zed

[SPECIES]: Human

[LEVEL]: 25

[EXP]: 44050/4800

“God damn,” Zed with a wide grin. Although they had earned far more over the last week of hunting it was still an impressive amount to have gained after a single battle. “How many levels is that?”

“It looks like at least five for me,” Alexx said, eyes wide as dinner plates. “What about-” his smile dropped and he started to sound more apologetic. “Uh, how much did you get Loran?”

“A couple thousand, my total is at 10K right now,” Loran sighed. “You two are too good at killing these things.”

“I’m beginning to think you might be right,” Zed agreed. “Honestly, at this rate maybe we could push into the actual nest.”

“We’re going to die if we try,” Loran said nonchalantly.

“Not if we’re careful and wait a bit. If a dozen players had metal weapons and were able to grind levels with us out here they could easily reach a point where a little strategy is enough to handle an ant horde or two.” Zed shrugged. “At this point, the biggest problem just seems to be keeping watch for any Soldiers.”

“I think he’s right Loran,” Alexx said. “If everyone was equipped with something like Zed’s swords we could probably do it.”

Loran was silent for a moment before shrugging. “Whatever, it’s not my call anyway.” Yawning, he laid back in the grass. “Anyway, I’m going to sleep.”

Loran didn’t say anything else, but he was feeling bitter. More than a few times during the battle he had noticed a point where he could have gone on the offensive but had to hold back because of his arm. He still couldn’t decide if what had happened back then was his fault or just bad luck, but the fact remained that it was slowing him down compared to the others.

‘If everyone else in the village could hunt like them with the right weapons…’ Loran closed his eyes and tried not to think about how much he was falling behind.