A shuddering Jess woke. The sun was above the forest line, but not yet hot enough to compensate for the cold dew.“Where’s the rabbit stoner,” a couldlike breath asked the nearby NPC.

“He’s… on a mission, important” Kim replied, his eyes red swolled, lower lips padding outwards.

“Jeez, what’s he doing, when’s he coming back?”

“Gaah, travelers quests are long.. ehm, unpredictable, I.. few can tell. It’s important”

“What! What should I do then?” she asked.

“Err, no, just be a wise adventurer”

*Sight* "Great"

Being productive for the sake of the ‘group’ wasn’t as appealing as before, not when its only other non-NPC member wasn’t there. No pottery today then, she decided. If Ben didn’t do his chores, neither would she.

“Should we feed the piglets again?” she asked while heading for the piggy home. The pig expert replied: “Such…erm… You should be able to spot such obvious things on your own, by the way you shouldn’t disturb a… ”.

“Aaaii, no, oh my god, NOO!” Jess whispered in falsetto.

Next to a small pile of mashed potatoes, two of the cute furry ones were lying, spasming in shudders. She felt surreal. Jess quickly picked up them both and held them tight against her. Hugging them tightly, she could hear their tiny, hyperventilating breaths. They were cold, colder than the grass she had slept on. “We need to light a fire, now!”

“Stop disturbing me. I’m doing important things,” a rusty voice replied.

“What the...”

She went to yesterday’s fireplace. Lying there was nothing but a mix of black charcoal and white ash. There was nothing to start a fire with; all firewood had been used up yesterday. This wasn’t gonna do.

Body heat! That might work. There wasn’t any time to prepare a fire, or at least there might not be.

She went to the box to check out the other piglets. “Oh, no, please, no.” The other, non-shaking piglets, lied way too still...

She turned her back to Kim; he might be an NPC, but he still was a male. Then she took all of the piglets under her sweater. Their coldness stunned her for a second. “It’ll be better soon,” she promised them, as she looked for a dry turf of grass. She silently thanked the game creators for making her linen clothes big and loose.

The still piglets had her worried the most. She held them to her chest, constantly hoping for signs of improvement. All muscles she knew of were flexed in her body. Her temperature needed to compensate for the acutely shuddering pigs.

After half an hour, the two hyperventilating pigs shuddered less. She could do nothing but hope that it was a good sign.

Nothing happened with the smaller piglets though. She couldn’t see any breathing going on, nor could she sense any pulse on them. Tears dropped onto the little piglets in her bosom. She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t crying.

“Please, please stay alive.”

The piglets were still cold, maybe not as cold as before, but that she couldn’t tell; much of her body was still itching when regaining heat.

She wished she had more heat. Fire, flames, bodyheat, anything. “Hey Kim, come over here will you?”

“Don’t disturb me.”

“Hey Kim!”

“Didn’t you just hear me?”

“Hey, Kim, Hey!”

“What?”

“Didn’t you have some fire magic going on? Please light a fire or something!

“No, I can’t.”

“What do you mean by that!?”

“You shouldn’t look down upon magic, for it’s violent nature isn’t to be used as thoughtless as you just suggested”

“Come on, just a fire”

***

An exhausted, yet cheerful Jerry walked back to the camp. For how long had be been gone? The sun was’t even close to the center of the sky anymore.

He had some bad news, and some very good ones for his new team.

Rabbits were the easiest targets. No easier leveling anywhere where he had looked. Heck! This difficulty was so high, it wasn’t even hardcore anymore. It was as if the developers never even wanted anyone to level up.

That wasn’t gonna be any problem though, not for a good while; Jerry had some good news that rekked shit! He had glitched the system; he powned despite having no ability unlocked. Too pro to be contained! Fuck yeah!

He walked back cheerfully, eager to tell his story. In his right hand was the neck of a still rabbit, its belly was white, and its back was spotted, like a scoop of chocolate ice cream, with licorice, and mint sprinkles.

As he got closer to the hill, the first person to be seen was Kim. He seemed to be doing a mysterious ritual again. Jerry had wanted to learn that one ever since yesterday, hopefully he’d get it as a reward for today’s endeavors. Not too worried about bothering the NPC, he was a NPC after all, Jerry knocked on his shoulder.

“Sup cap’! I’m back!

The NPC briefly became airborne. “Holy shit you… Don’t ever do that again!”

“Your quest had been completed, how about you teach me some of those moves as reward?”

“Well, oh, yeah… the quest.”

“Pleeease! This game is almost unplayable right now.”

“Sorry, these moves are reserved for individuals whose level is twenty five or above.”

‘Dammit’

“So, what about the reward?”

“Well, sometimes an adventure can be rewarding just as it is,” the NPC said, looking towards the forest.

“Yeah, I guess.” 'Today had been a pretty good day after all,' Jerry thought, feeling the rabbit's fur rub against his leg.

He went on, looking for Jessica. She wasn’t hard to find; he spotted her back next to the piggy house, carving on her club.

He had missed the little cute ones. They had been so adorable last evening, eating their little mash of potatoes.

He crunched down to get within petting range. Two of them were missing. He smiled at Jessica, who probably had them exploring somewhere. Her club now had a spiraling pattern on it, stretching form slightly below the thick end of it, down to the newly carved handle.

“Wow they’re cute!” he remarked.

Jessica continued on, carving.

“How are the other two doing.”

***

The words stirred her a bit, but not enough to make her cause a scene; she didn’t have enough mental fortitude to feel any more on the dead piglets behalf.

“They’re dead,” she said in an indifferent tone. The last days had been hard on her. Either that or she just didn’t care enough about the cute little piglets. Things didn’t feel as clear as before.

Ben’s happy complexion visibly drained from his face.

It sort of sucked to ruin the mood of her potential mood raiser, but what else could she have said?

“What happened?”

“They just died.”

“What?"

.

.

"… I though things were going pretty fine. I mean, they ate and...” the discouraged Ben fell short on words.

“We don’t know that, we never saw all of them eat, only the ones still alive. The smaller two were smaller, maybe too small… “

“But that’s not it, it was the cold! Even the two bigger ones were shuddering like noobs with weeks worth of spikes.”

“I tried to save them Ben, I tried. “ But they were...dead.

She nor Ben seemed to have anything to say for a while.

“This game kinda sucks,” she said, dejectedly.

.

.

.

“Yeah”

Back to carving! She wanted to have her mind somewhere else than on the dead piglets. Ben didn’t transfer into doing anything though. Poor guy, he seemed to be ever worse than her at handling furry cuteballs.

There wasn’t much left to carve at on her weapon. Not unless she would go ridiculously intricate, but carving with the bronze knife was pretty hard at it was. She had peeled off all bark of the club, except for a hand sized chunk at the tip, and a finger’s worth of it at the other end, to save the grip from slipping. That was the easy part though. What had kept her busy was making spirally patterns in the naked wood. Carving her patterns was almost enough to keep her mind occupied.

“I’m starving, we should get stuff for a fire”

“Yeah.”

Hey Kim! Get over here, it’s time to get going”

Kim came, carrying two still piglets.

“You do that, I’ll bury these piglets. They deserve a proper rite of passing, leaving this world.

Jess snorted mentally at Kim. The NPC hadn’t helped her save the piglets, but now he wanted to help her bury it. What was this? A 21:st century game?

“That one to your left, I carried him to here… Thank you.” Ben said. No robot could've matched his dullness.

“Well fair enough then,” she didn’t want to spend any more thoughts on the ex-piggies.

“Yeah, yeah, no problems traveler. Jessica, would you mind giving me the knife? I’ll need it to carve some crosses”

“Oh, yeah, sure, I’ll go fetch some cooking water again I guess,” Jess responded, leaving her almost finished club.

“But this time,we can't camp here. Having our base next to this shrine is really stupid; It gets cold as hell during night, and every time we need to fetch stuff we have to walk for miles.

“Good idea,” Ben said monotonely. That guy really needed something to do right now.

***

Time for experimental session nr. 2, codename: Sneaky Bacon.

Kim had brought the two mini-pigs, with him. These would do perfect targets for his magic power leveling. Clearly he targets to cast his spells on, that didn’t need any explanation at all. If rabbits weren't so evasive he'd been a mage long ago.

If it wasn’t for the other two, we would have put the piglets to proper use, long ago. Well, well, he shouldn’t complain too much, there still was a good chance for bacon getting out of this; tweaking his fire spell to become a baconator couldn’t be too hard could it?

***

Operation Sneaky Bacon had failed. He hadn’t gotten any magic going; the thing definitely needed another scroll to work. There probably wouldn’t be any bacon at all for a while, but when it was, he wanted it to be made smoothly. He hadn’t brought the knife and the butchering instructions without purpose.

He stuck his knife, as instructed, into the bellybutton of one of the still pigs, moving it upwards methodically. When he stretched the new opening with his hand, as instructed, the dead fucker started twitching for a second. Weird. Something urine smelling covered the innards of the pig. Crap, he had popped the urinal bladder when making an opening. Gross! He looked at the disgusting mess of urine covered half severed intestines.

“Disgusting! No way I’m baconing this shit.”

He backed away from it to have a more experienced try at the other carcass.

“Is that…? Wihoouw! Fuck yeah! Turns out they weren’t as dead as the minions thought”

Above the, now truly dead, piglet’s head was a white and fluffy orblet. KimZor knew exactly what it was. He grabbed it contently. Yep, this thing sure pulsated with a familiar feeling.

“Seems like pretty much all pigs drops these things.”

“Fuck, yeah. One down, nine to go; another scroll is as good as mine.”

The experimenting had turned into a great success! Even better was that the others didn’t know how to make cash.

He walked over, grinning, to the still, soon to be butchered piglet.

“Hey piggy-piggy! Sucks to be you today, doesn’t it?”

***

“You know, I think we’d have some pretty good use for those ropes when you get them done.”

Jess and Ben were trying to get a hut going, but it was hard get any of the pine needled branched to stick to one another, at least at the points where it mattered.

It was getting late, and their hut didn’t even have a main frame. Jess thought it would be better to get their base going tomorrow instead. At least, they had enough firewood to last them the entire night. No more freezing while sleeping!

Finally, the NPC came back. Trying to do carpentry without a sharp object had felt like a waste of time.

“Now hand me the knife, will you,” she instructed the NPC, which suddenly didn’t seem to mind taking orders anymore.

“Ben, sorry for ruining the mood earlier. GZ to the rabbit! How did you get it? How was the quest?

Ben brightened up from the comment.

“It’s okay, shitty game was just shitty again.”

“Glad that you asked by the way,” Ben soon continued. Of course Ben had been dying to tell the tale of the silly rabbit fanatic going actual rabbit hunter.

.

.

.

“Hand me the knife again, will you?” Kim demanded. He soon disemboweled and skinned the rabbit Ben had caught. The cutting movements were careful, yet awkward. Jess doubted that she’d do any better on her own; the NPC seemed to know his stuff.

***

‘Damn, the rabbit hunter haft to go hunt another rabbit tomorrow!’

After a meal, lightyears beyond what they had yesterday, Jess proposed that they’d settle for the night.

“NO WAY, I’m NOT sleeping like this,” Kim whined.

“I frickin’ heard wolves last night. No way I’m sleeping without someone checking my back”

“Holy shit, wolves!? What level are those?”

“I don’t know”

“I don’t wanna know.”

.

.

After some debate, Kim had volunteered to take the first guard. Watching out for wolves, as well as keeping the fire going. Jess hadn’t objected; she felt weak after the long day.

She lied with one of the piglets in her arms, next to the fire. No way she’d have them freezing! Ben lied a bit away, petting his piggy. When Jess looked carefully at them, they were slightly different form each other. Ben’s had five bright stripes on its back, whilst Jess had four. The piglets lied down contently, munching on some leftovers from their meal.

.

.

.

“Yeah, just look at it! It’s gotta be something more than a quest item, right?,” Ben said excitedly.

“This… We should definitely check it out at the shrine tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but what about Kim? Should we see if there’s any quest on it real quick?”

“Nha, this one’s kinda smaller, and what did the last quest give us? A bunch of potatoes, and some stone age items”

“Hey! We might’ve had to respawn if it wasn’t for the potatoes,” the rabbit hunter protested.

“Yeah, yeah. Or maybe we’d just been logged out of this insanity”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.”

.

.

“Good night.”

“G’night”

***

“Plopp”,”Plapp”,”Plott”, “Crack”, Ploff”,”Crack”…

Jess had joined Ben in the throwing exercise. It felt sorta stupid, but if the stupid rabbit fanatic had caught a rabbit yesterday, stupid was stupid no more.

“The fuck you… you two doing!?!?”

Finally the NPC was awake. She and Ben didn’t wanna leave it without giving it some kind of heads up. She told him about their intended trip to the shrine.

“That’s bullshit, you two need to be hunting boars.”

“I’m sorry, we’ll probably get to that later,” Ben said, tossing his white and fluffy ball into the air.”..

“You… How did you?… Give it back to me!”

“Sorry, we’ve got a thing we need to check out first. Don’t you already have one of your own, by the way?”

Kim searched his pocked for a moment.

Oh, my pardons, there’s been a misconception...Good job, great traveler, you have returned another of my orbs! Please give it back to me.”

“Sorry, we need to try something out first”

“That… That’s not ok! It’s mine! Give it back, or, or I’ll cancel your quest."

That was a hard ultimatum. Whatever quest they had, it sucked pretty badly, but it was their only one. Jess didn’t want to lose it, but before she got to say anything, Ben handed his orblet to the NPC.

“Good, well done, great Traveler!”

A potential disaster had been averted.

***

Jess and Ben paced slowly through the grass. It was impossible to hide form the annoyingly paranoid, long eared, rodents, but as long as they moved slowly, the rabbits wouldn’t panic then they were noticed.

In front of them, seven meters away, was a rabbit, eating grass. Well, it wasn’t eating grass anymore, but... that was that it was doing before they snuck up on it.

They spread out in opposite directions. Their goal was to guide the rabbits attention to one of them and let the other one throw a stone at it. This time, the rabbit turned it’s back to Jess, staring carefully at Ben instead. She prepared a stone in her hand. This was their seventeenth sneak attack, and Jess’ sixth. She raised her arm, tried to relax her shoulders, and hurled the stone at it.

The stone hit! She had almost scored a headshot! The rabbit jumped high, straight up into the air.“Hell yeah!” she burst out, smiling viciously, as she ran to capture it. It was about time!

The rabbits legs never stopped moving while airborne, neither did they when it landed on its back. Jess had no idea what would’ve happened if it had landed on it’s feet. Luckily the rabbit in front of her only spun in circles, legs running, but body lying. She tried to grab it carefully with her hands. When it didn’t work, she forcefully pushed her forearm on the rabbit and smashed its head with another stone. ‘Only one hit a time, this time,’ she though. The rabbit quickly and silently lied still, dropping an expected orblet from its head.

“Hell Yeah!”

“It worked!”

Next to her, Ben pocketed his stone. He hadn’t said anything yet.

“This is great! Way better than the boar! That was disgusting.”

“...Yeah,” Ben replied. This guy was horrible at killing cuddly things.

“Time to get to the shrine before the NPC steals it,” Jess smiled, satisfied.

.

.

"Crack"

"Crack"

"Crack"

口Back Jessica Total glory: 0.1 Agility 0 口+1 (10g) Strength 0 口+1 (10g) Endurance 0 口+1 (10g) Intelligence 0 口+1 (10g) Stamina 0 口+1 (10g) Wisdom 0 口+1 (10g)

"Holy shit! We just made money!"