Jim's PoV

Jim focused on his breathing as his temper cooled off. How dare that vile digital man lay a hand on his cute digital dog? Had it not been for his conversation with Bilgar he would have toasted that guy. As his rage lessened he reflected on the conversation he had with the man. It was obvious now that the simulated environment was doing a much better job at processing people than he had thought at first. He almost felt sorry for screwing up the guys name so many times. It was very Terry-like behavior, but still, should he feel bad about treating puppets badly? No matter how life-like they were, they were not real. It was the equivalent of programing a cyborg with a ton of conditional statements and then being surprised that it could imitate life so well. Unfortunately for him even imitation was very dangerous. Only yesterday he would have been jumping for joy that the people in his game were this realistic. The final boss might have been dead, but there were plenty of things out in the world that could probably kill Jim in the game if they found him while he was helpless and in the real world. The fact that time moves at the same rate in both worlds as well as a digital avatar that is vulnerable while he is on the other side made a really crappy combo. And now he had to deal with digital people that acted like real people. Glancing down at his masterfully crafted armor it wouldn't be hard to guess that anyone who saw him vulnerable and wearing this armor would try to take it. Should he wear crappy armor so people would leave him alone? Or trust his best armor to keep him alive while he found time to log back into the game? Even if he found a room in a good inn, he would still be vulnerable to robbery. If only he could find someone trustworthy to watch over his body...

Looking around in his menu again he saw the evil spell named Sense Lv2. Glancing back at the pair that was still following him he saw that he could no longer see the extra details that sense had provided. On autopilot he casted it on the two of them. To no surprise at all the wolves were hungry again. Jim sighed and started looking through his inventory. There had to be something other than elixirs that he could feed the dogs. And that was when a glimmer of an idea started to form. He once again read the extra text that Sense Lv2 provided to him about his companions.

"Views you as the new leader of the pack. Completely loyal to you."

He looked at that and then to an item in his inventory. Greater Source - Gives the user twenty five additional stat points to everything.

He glanced at the wolf again. Completely loyal to you. Back to the greater source, gives user twenty five additional stat points. Back to the dog, loyal. Back to the item, user. Finally the little light bulb went off.

With a grin he called to the wolfies "Come on guys, supper time!"

After the sixth one the wolf seemed to be a bit wobbly on their feet. Did these make animals drunk? There was no minimum legal drinking age for animals so no problem there. Still luckily he was able to coax another three into each of them for a total of nine each. Casting Sense Lv2 again he grinned as he saw their insane stats for such small creatures. While he was having that thought he blinked, and then they almost tripled in size. They still looked like puppies, but they were much larger furballs now. They were still basic creatures, so shouldn't be able to pass the 255 stat mark. They did not have the boss designation like him. Deciding to test his theory he gave the male wolf one more, and sure enough the stats got rounded down to 255 when it should have been a couple points over that. They both had the debuff weakness, and they were both hungry as well. Jim reluctantly pulled out another pair of elixirs and fed them.

Once finished downing the elixir the difference was amazing. Gone was their wobbly gate and in its place was a powerful stride that ate up ground. The pair started using that speed to zoom around and dive bomb back at him, Happy with himself, he decided it was time to get on with it, it was now time for a gaming speedrun. Or at least a short segment of it. The trio started running at a speed that would put horses to shame. The caves that were taking forever to get to started growing larger by the second. It didn't take long after that when Jim found the correct entrance he needed to take to get to the other side. As he entered the dark caves he quickly swiped at his sense interface to increase his sight so he could pierce the darkness once again. Glancing behind him he could see two sets of yellow gleaming eyes following him. And then he promptly tripped. Damn karma. Why did he look behind himself while running?

Maria's PoV

Tears were flowing down her cheeks. She didn't want to die. Maria was eleven but she still knew what death was. Why had she not told her mother? It was getting so hard to breath. Right before she lost consciousness the nightmare of how she got here replayed in her mind.

It was another day. Another trip to the caves that almost no one knew about. She had become an unwilling expert at navigating through the threats of the cave. The sap of the trees near her house would keep away the rat size biting insects. The spiders whose bodies were as big as her would never leave their webs, so if she used the glow of the lightning bug she had in her jar she could avoid all of them. The carnivorous plants had a weird odor and she could always smell them long before she saw them. Once she had learned these things navigating the caves became much easier. But there was always the fear. How many cocooned and trapped creatures had she seen? How many husks that were crawling with those huge insects? How many plants that had their jaws clamped shut while something was struggling within? Why should she be special?

She should have followed her instincts when she found this section of the cave. The first thought she had was that she had finally found a spot that was free of all the dangerous stuff that was down here. There was a moment of doubt when she thought that there had never been such a place before, and that maybe there was a good reason why nothing was here. But she quashed that feeling down and pressed on hoping that today would be a short day. It didn't take her long to figure out that she had made a mistake. She should have ran when she saw the single thread that she had touched vibrate so much. At the time it just seemed oddly placed, but all the spiders in here kept to their webs, so she should be fine.

But after accidently touching the single thread she just sat still. After not hearing anything she moved forward slowly. Why had she never looked behind herself? It was too quiet. When she felt the pinch at the center of her back she knew something was horribly wrong. The insect bites didn't feel anything like that. Looking behind her she finally saw it. It was the mother of all spiders. It had its mindibles in her back and she was looking at herself through the reflection in its many sets of eyes. As her vision started to fade she could feel herself being lifted in the air and then the spinning started. At that moment she knew she was going to die in one of those silky cocoons that she had seen so many times before. Only hers was going to be a little bit bigger than the other ones.

Maria thought it was finally her time to be eaten. Something started ripping away at the cocoon. She was confused for a moment though. Spiders didn't have to unwrap the cocoons in order to eat what was inside. Then she heard the barking of dogs. Hope! Had the village been told that she had been missing? But that was crazy, no one entered the caves willingly. No one. Not even her. The ripping continued and she was free. It was still hard to think and her vision was still blurry. Two vials were shoved into her hand and a booming voice said "Drink em up kid. Cmon, I don't have all day. It's a speedrun."

Without much thought she drank what was given to her and she started feeling better immediately! She could finally see again! And then to her horror she looked behind the man and saw the creature that put her here. She screamed.

Jim's PoV

Why did all the kids have to be screamers? Jim said loudly again "Lets go kid, you want to go back to your village right?"

The confused girl looked at him, then behind him, and then back to him. In a small quavering voice she said "Spider?"

Looking behind him he saw what he knew was already there. Man it was an ugly looking thing too. No way was he getting near that with his freshly cleaned armor, if he squished it the juice would probably get inside his shirt. He literally just had a bath and he was sick and tired of all the nasty liquids of this world. Thankfully the spider already got the idea and was staying away. Taking a closer look at the thing it appeared to be shaking. Do spiders get scared? Oh well, speedrun time!

The kid again voiced confusion at pointed at the spider. Taking a deep breath he could smell the fresh air from here. It wasn't too far till he reached his destination. Turning back again he called "You coming kid?"

Taking another fearful look at the spider, she finally started running towards Jim. Too bad he didn't time it, that totally was a fast pace. Well, maybe not when considering he game genied all of the gear in the game. Still, number one was number one eh?