That freaked Jim out a bit. That should not be possible. How could the game affect him when he was not inside of it? Not only that but time had passed after he logged out. It should have stayed the same. Then he thought back to the modifications he made to the original game. Now that he thought about it maybe it was possible. After all he had very little direct input into the creation of the game. Most of his work was creating scripts to pull from different databases to base things on; how people and animals looked, anatomy, how physics worked, how other games worked, and architecture. After that it was just hitting the "go" button and hoping for the best. The main reason it worked was because the human mind had a processing speed that was light years beyond what anyone had expected. He should have done a lot more testing beforehand but he got fired and then tried to make the best of it. He was actually getting a bit scared. His creation was just a game after all, but he had left much of the world generation to be drawn from real life. The more he thought about it the more he realized a simulation of real life was about what he asked for when creating his game. A constantly ongoing simulation that was based on a game.

The fact that he could feel what was going on on the other side worried him the most. What if a dark cloaked figure came up behind his game character and slit his throat? How would that feel? Trying to rationalize that fear he kept in mind that he had some overpowered armor on and had some insane stats to back him up. A dagger across the throat by a common thief shouldn't do much to him. Jim really wanted to just turn off the sense of feeling. After all who cared if his game character died over and over if he could just turn off the pain and ignore it. Then a thought in the back of his mind made him worry. He seemed to have a connection with his character, and both of them shared a lot of the processing power of his mind. What if he died in game, and his mind decided that he was dead as well? The thought should be absolutely ludicrous, but it was something that he didn't want to chance on. With that decision made his path of action became clear. There were two main objectives he needed to accomplish. First he needed to find a safe place that his character could hang out without worrying about getting stabbed to death. And then his second goal would be to create his noggin computer. He needed to find some answers about what was going on inside his head and he didn't have a super computer readily available. Getting a diagnosis of how his game world was working and how it affected him was going to take a lot of processing power, and he was pretty sure if he walked back into 3D Tech to use theirs he would either end up in a jail cell or have all his data he was trying to keep secret stolen.

Jim saw a sign proclaiming that there would be a hotel on the next exit. He moved over to the right hand lane and took it. Originally Jim wanted to get further away but he was a bit afraid of getting bit by something else. The idea of randomly feeling pain worried him. But randomly dying without warning worried him more. He did have armor covering most of his body but still, the wolf demons showed they could at least take off a leather boot. Instead of an assassin in the dark a new fear came. What about just a plain ol' thief? If a puppy can take off a boot, a thief or two could leave him naked and tied up. Can his character die from thirst or hunger? There were too many long and slow ways to die and his mind kept coming up with new scenarios. And then there were the short and quick ways to die. What if he was driving and he got bit by something a lot bigger next time? Images of himself driving into a gas truck and ending up as a fireball played through his head. Then the next scene that played was falling off a bridge into an oil tanker, causing it to explode. Which would then of course break the bridge and cause all of the cars on it to fall into the river. Okay, that last one was ridiculous. But it would actually be a cool way to go.

Jim pulled into the hotel and paid for his room. He started to prepare himself for sleep when an all too familiar sensation started happening to his toe. Irritated Jim took a seat in a chair and fully went into the game world. Yep there it was again. A wolf cub growing on his big left toe. He stood up and the little wolflings sat down looking up at him happily. They seemed to be looking better since the last time he saw them. Interestingly he could not see their stats with a glance. He had used Sense Lv1 before on them, but the readout was blank now. Jim hesitantly casted sense on them and found that it worked. New game, new rules it seemed.

Scanning over the read out he saw that their names were different. They were previously labeled as "starving", and now they were labeled as "healthy". Their max HP and stats had gone up as well. Jim started looking around to see if he could find his boot. Sure enough he did. There was not much left of it. He sighed and opened his inventory and pulled out a new pair of boots. These ones were made of metal. They gave him more armor, but he would be walking a good bit slower. Still the little gremlins should have a harder time chewing a metal boot into pieces. Jim put on his new boots and took a seat by the tree again. Sure enough the wolves started to go to town on it once more, but they couldn't get a grip and their teeth kept gliding off.

Triumphantly Jim said "Haha bite that you little bastards."

Both pups looked up at him with their tongues lolling out and tails wagging. They were too cute, his only weakness. Bending down he pet them for a few minutes. In his head he knew they were fake, but he couldn't help it. Not much later Jim started feeling the fatigue of being up for so long. It had been a long day, and he would need to come back. Giving the pair a final pat he sat down again with his back against the tree. Logging out he went back to his hotel room in the real world. As Jim faded away to sleep he tried to remember to stay vigilant while sleeping. Not long after he closed his eyes he was dead to the world.