“Guys, we might have a serious problem here,” Jerry said, foreboding like never before. He was almost worried shitless, emphasis on ‘almost’, his bowel made that unpleasantly appearant.

“Stay here, I need to just check something,” Jerry said, already on the leave. There wasn’t time for excuses; he needed a private spot, now.

He passed pine after pine, biting his teeth. The trees were too big and too spread out, no hiding within sight. To focus on was two things, squeezing his buttocks tight as fuck first, getting the hell out of there second. Jerry sped up. The careful steps turned into strides.

Hidden below the rushed through fern, was another root, or something else, but hard and immobile it was. Whatever his feet hit, it locked them in place, leaving his torso to fly freely forward. With legs still squeezing as hard as he could, he fell head long.

Insane pain was there again. He frowned. 'Can't move, not now, not for a while!' Shit wouldn't stay for long otherwise. Every extra second of dry pants was precious. He tried his best to keep them so.

The day had been weird as it was; failing now would be too much. Jerry made a glance towards the others. Instead of the others, fern was all that filled his vision. A low laying screen of green was between him and the others.

"Vegetation, sorry for hating, I really love you right now," he sighted, finally relaxing.

***

Ben returned as promised. He had had Jess a bit worried. His face from before had been alarmingly red.

“Could you please tell what's happening” Jess asked. The rabbit fanatic weirded her out.

“Oh, yeah, I was just...” Ben looked into the distance, almost looking embarrassed. He soon snapped out of it and went on: “ I can’t log out. I mean, I tried both my own logout phrase, and the standard one, but... nothing. It's insane!”

“Really? Show me”

Ben a made couple commands and left them all in silence. Even Kim seemed to catch up with the escalating tension.

Jess tried her own logout phrase silently first; it was almost as ridiculous as Ben’s, darn, how young was she whenshe chose it?

“Holy shit, you’re right, it, it doesn’t work”

The silence intensified. A breeze shook the tree tops' needles. Jess heard it, but the sound faded out as thoughts exploded in her mind.

“Maybe it’ll get fixed soon, I’m not used with playing betas, but glitches are to be expected, aren't they?” Ben said. "Do you think we'll get any creds for reporting it?"

Jess didn’t know where Ben had gotten the ‘Beta’ thing from. She had joined the game together with some other old school enthusiasts. She hadn’t been early to join either; the game had been running for a good month.

She hadn't heard from her friends yet. The game was, in modest words, lacking in communication features, or any features really. The visuals weren't enough to compensate for the rest.

Anyhow, this brat, spoiled in games, both modern and popular, didn’t have a clue about the situation. Log out featuers were supposed to never ever ever malfuction.

“First off: how are beta testers supposed to tell developers about a log out problem if they can’t even log out in the first place?”

“Secondly, this isn’t even a beta; it’s supposed to be a fully functioning game. I don’t know where you got your beta ideas from, this is the second time you’re making a fool out of yourself like that.”

“Well, actually, I happen to be a pro gamer, and…

“Lastly I’m pretty sure this violates at least one of the Inception Paragraphs. Do you have any idea how bad that is?

.

.

"Well... Fuck!"

***

KimZor finally walked in forefront of the group. Ben had persisted on leading the way for a brief moment. He said something about the path he had run towards earlier being rootier,or something like it; he hadn’t been very specific. Seems like having minions already started to pay off, damn that root of satan had really hurt.

He didn’t mind sending his pawns out to get mutilated by roots, but Ben leading them had been both irritating and unnecessary; just telling about the way would have been enough. Oh well, the best pawns were usually the ones believing themselves to be free.

The others not being able to leave the game either, was a bitter sweetness.

He didn’t know if it would make it easier or harder for him to log out, but he was glad others suffered too.

Ben’s ranting about getting back to IRL for some reason wasn’t anything KimZor could relate to. Kim wasn't weird like that. Being stuck in this game though, sucked, especially with nasty roots hidden as early as at the starting area.

Ben had started asking him a couple of arbitrary questions. The fucker tried to poke a hole in Kims alibi, too bad it wasn't gonna work, KimZor spun a weave of legit lies...facts about his distant forest village. He had some pretty good lolz, seeing the others submerge deeper intodelusion. Little did they know, little did they know. Everything went smooth until Ben asked how forest villagers wiped at the toilet.

These questions were stupid. How did you answer them? Kim didn't even know how IRL people did their dirty stuff. But he couldn’t sound stupid in front of there two. Luckily, he had a pretty good to-go model for silly questions.

“Such talk is not dignified to be uttered amongst great travelers such as you. I imagine your imagination would be sufficient enough to envision every piece of grain in my humble village…”

***

Ben was at the back of the fellowship, he preferred it that way; his itching behind made him walk weirdly.

He wondered what had happened to the eaten cake and bacon IRL.

In his mind, he saw himself floating in nanofluid, the same nanofluid that fed him. Somewhere in there his food had to have gone. How fast did turds dissolve into water? There was definitely a deadline he wanted to be out of this game well before.

Ben tried to think aboutother things. Rabbits! They were too fast to catch, too small to hit, had he justbeen given more time... What about their burrows? Could he use them to his advantage somehow?

His focus retracted. His ass still itched badly. How did they flush their behinds here? Why couldn't the NPC be a bit more specific on inportant information?

They had entered a bare, pine needled area, this time with a few occasional bushes a little here and there. The convenient footing had the pace increase.

Ben, as the others, looked far into the distance. Time to turn something into exp.

Nothing remarkable happened, not until Kim, walking in the front, lead them over a small hilltop.Screaming in a high pitched tone, he hurried backwards. Kim ran like Jerry walked when needy, but faster, and in reverse.

A deer sprang away from its resting place. Apparently, getting stepped on and screamed onto didn’t promote sleep.

Kim calmed down and gave Ben a deep, focused eye.

Ben soon got some tips on how to implement this ‘powerful’ intimidation technique on his own. He wasn’t sure if Kim was pulling his leg. But, the powerful skill, as described by the NPC, was too good ignore. Ben needed abilities. Maybe, this powerful crowd controller would do the trick.

Damn, how badly his ass itched!

***

It had been some time since Kim had 'scared' away their best grinding target thus far. There had probably been more, but the rabbit fanatic wasn’t easily convinced to stop screaming his throat out, alerting any critter without a couple of kilometers.

After some silent walking, Jess finally spotted something. In an area with fewer pines and more saplings, a beast laid down.

As they stalked closer to the pray, weapons at the ready, Jess got a better glance at their prey. It was pretty dense in structure, covered with a thick coat of dark brown, long, spiky fur.

At its teats were half a dozen of lively, striped piglets. She silently hoped they's get away.

Jess lost an argument of hand gestures. Having the biggest stick, she apparantly had to be the vanguard.

They carefully sneaked closer to the she feeding boar mummy. As they got to meters distance, the wind shifted direction. The boar raised its head a bit, ears raised. 'Shit!' Jess hurried forward, her club raised high. As she hurried a dead twig snactched

The boar grunted and rolled around. Before getting its hind legs up to match the front ones, Jess hit it in the head. A distinct sound, similar to when Ben sparred with a sapling, was heard. The hairy pig fell, head first.

Content, Jess inspected the floored pig. It inhaled slowly. Maybe she needed to hit it again.

The inspection didn’t last for long. The boar made a sad and ugly screech as it tried to stand up again. Before the terrifying sound ended, it was up on all wobbling four.

The beast's breath was heavy and raspy. It didn’t sound anything like a pig, or any other living animal, for the matter. What charged towards her didn't feel anything like a pig at all. The frenzied monstrosity, broader and sturdier than the biggest dog she had ever seen, burned into her cornea, unwilling to fade away.

Her mind froze to ice and her legs ran faster than they ever had.

***

Jerry had been close to running in Jess’ footsteps, but being further away from the sow, his adrenaline filled consciousness took note of something. The beast couldn’t run straight.

In its concussed state, it was barely charged forwards more than sidewards. As fast as he could, he sidestepped to the side the pig had troubles walking towards. ‘What would grandpa have done’, struck his mind. The question had, as always, been rhetorical. He grabbed his staff as hard as he could.

Ben rushed to the beast and hit it as hard as he could with the staff. The tilted over to its side, but quickly stood up again. It now charged Jerry instead. Luckily the pig still ran in heavily curved lines, standing still was enough to dodge it.

Without control of its trajectory, the pig got stuck ina bush. Before it got loose from entanglement, Jerry hit it with some heavy swings, wielding the staff as an immense longsword. The hits bounced away from the boars back, dealing unknown damage.

The pig got out and turned towards Jerry. It stopped for a second, preparing for something. Jerry jumped to the side, almost missing sighting the thing puking a yellow-green concoction. Shaking its head, the boar wryly charged again.

***

It didn’t take long for Jess to get back to her senses. The swine was heavily concussed and pretty much ready to be finished. Her heavy blow had made sure of that.

The rabbit hunter, to no ones surprise, had another animal he couldn't handle. Swinging his staff as if it was a sword or something, the skinny stick would never deal any damage. She ran to Ben's aid, hoping that her own damage would be enough.

Ben had switched strategy of fighting. He used the tip of the staff to stab at the she boar’s head. He missed most of the hits though, putting all his bodyweight behind each stab. Luckily, he had unlimited tries on this half-finished pig.

When she got back, one of the boars eyes was mashed in. In now ran in smaller circles than ever. Jess raised her club, delivering another hit to the head. The beast fell down to its side, legs twitching.

She didn’t test her luck this time; She hit its head at least another ten times before inspecting how much alive it was. It wasn’t.

If the pulp head wasn’t enough evidence, a gamelike feature finally revealed itself; from the remains of the sow’s head, a white fluffy ball started hovering, shining with a bright soothing light.