As he perused the in-game forums, Axton found that his experience was not an isolated one. This, as you might imagine, gave him some rather mixed feelings.

It was clear enough to see from the reactions of other people that they were both irritated and confused regarding the instant change that had occurred, and some were rightly outraged. After all, you don’t just drop a stealth patch in a VRMMO while people are still inside of it.

The potential damage that could be caused would be something capable of ending any company if things went poorly and some minds ended up being fried. Of course, it was not like the company that made this game hadn’t survived the fallout of letting Donovan and his ilk have their twisted fun, but they were on thin ice, to say the least.

Thankfully, the change seemed only to apply to animals and not humans. So, rather than taking the coward’s way out of whatever issue forced this change (no doubt caused by some idiot parents or bleeding-heart activist group that somehow had enough influence to force this change) the company had opted to just make the fauna have blue blood.

It seemed as though little Timmy would have to stick to killing animals from now on, unless his parents learned their lesson, which was unlikely to be the case if that hypothesis was based in truth. Now that the issue of the blue blood was settled, another issue reared its ugly head.

These mobs were edible, not to mention cookable, but would this sudden change of biology change that? Were they now poisonous? Would they taste better, or would they somehow manage to taste worse than they had previously?

Axton still had a bit of stockpiled food in his Item Box, but now that the biology of all the fauna had changed, would that suddenly make the vast majority of gathered food inedible? Well, he had to try and find out sooner or later, so Axton popped the cockpit open and hopped out.

Taking a knife to the carcasses around him, Axton looted a few minor trash items from most of the kills, but one at least managed to give him some meat. He looked around a bit before taking a mobile cooking station from his Item Box and placed it on the ground in front of him, turning it on and waiting for the thing to reach full activation before placing the meat and a few other objects into a large bowl.

The bowl was sealed up and retracted into the device and a timer appeared in the air above it, counting down as a ring slowly formed around the decreasing numbers. After thirty seconds had passed, the device let out a dinging sound, and rather than a bowl emerging a tray came out with a plate of seasoned steak on it.

Axton had already pulled out a chair and a table from his Item Box by now and had set the earlier copy of the steak on it. Without missing a beat, he grabbed the new steak and placed it alongside the other one, and took a knife and fork to both, cutting off a single piece from each.

“First up, the old one.” Axton said as he braced himself. He bit into the meat and chewed it, grimacing as the overly gamy, stinky meat was ground up inside his virtual mouth. He swallowed and shook his head. “Exactly as I remember it…”

He then took a bite from the newer steak, and, to his surprise, the meat tasted exactly the same. That did not mean that it tasted similar, oh, no. It, quite literally, tasted 100% identical to the bite that he had taken from steak made from the earlier, pre-stealth patch meat from the exact same animal.

“Well, at least they are consistent…” Axton grumbled as he forced himself to eat both meals. Waste not, want not, and all that. Plus, while they tasted bad enough to be barely palatable to a non-gourmand like himself, they did provide a few minor stat boosts, so they at least had some value beyond filling his satiety meter.

After finishing both steaks, Axton washed the disgusting taste down with a refreshing bottle of Generic Cola. Yes, that was the actual name of the cola in-game, and yes, it was likely trademarked so that other companies couldn’t use it.

The drink tasted good, though, regardless of the lack of imagination that went into its name. He wasn’t sure if it tasted more like P*psi or C*ca-Cola, nor was he sure whether it tasted like a specific variety of either of those two drinks.

As the name suggested, the taste of the soda, pop, or whatever you wanted to call it was utterly, completely, and totally generic. Nothing about it stood out, and you honestly could not compare it harshly or affectionately to any other brand of the stuff due to how utterly ‘normal’ it was.

Still, it washed away the nasty taste in his mouth and kept his virtual stomach from revolting against him for daring to put such filth inside of it. In the end, that was all that really matter, now wasn’t it? Oh, yes, he also had to check one other thing before it slipped his mind.

Axton popped open the overview of his own existence in this virtual reality and looked it over. He half expected to see a debuff regarding something like poison or toxins on his sheet, but the change in the cosmetics of the animal blood seemed to be just that; cosmetic.

This washed a lot of anxiety off of him. He now no longer had to worry about the meat of certain kills ending up being a death sentence if he tried to cook it and eat it. Of course, there were still other animals whose meat was strictly off-limits due to being inedible even after being cooked and/or prepared, but those mobs usually had some loot besides their meat to give anyway.

Retrieving all of his stuff, Axton clambered back into Franken and shut himself inside the metal man before setting off towards another area. The animals here were getting a bit too smart for their own good, and he needed to get out while he could. Of course, there was still one thing keeping him in this savanna, and he needed to put that thing down.

It was time to go hunting in this place for one final time. Or at least it would be final until he came back after this Battle Royale was long since over.