As usual, the ones to start the Pit Meeting were the hunters, although their segment was shorter than it was in the past. As players were getting stronger while overhunting was still a problem, hunting feats were becoming less and less impressive. Until players felt confident enough to challenge the Iron Ant Drones, only solo hunters were able to stand out amongst their peers, and even that was starting to become commonplace.

Rika approached the front as the hunters finished up. A few murmurs of surprise were heard from the audience, as many had seen that the Workshop had been a chaotic mess of activity earlier in the day. It was strange to see the leader of the crafters leave the area at all, let alone when things were so hectic.

“Since everyone is probably surprised to see me, the big project we’re working on is currently drying out so there isn’t any actual work to be done at the moment,” they explained. “As for what that project is, the Workshop is officially beginning tests to process a usable amount of iron.”

A few light cheers sounded out around The Pit, excited at the implications. Rika quickly spoke over those cheers to explain that this didn’t mean iron weapons would be available anytime soon, that tools would need to come first as they worked to refine the smelting process and later forging.

“I’m assuming everyone wants us to get through the experimentation stage as quickly as possible, so we’re going to have as many people working on it as we can spare. With that in mind, there will be fewer crafters available to handle day-to-day requests, so anyone who is capable of crafting on their own, please do it yourself. I know it’s convenient to just give it to us and come back for it later, but we need all hands on deck for this.”

A few groans now replaced the cheers, but nothing more. As Rika said, everyone wanted the Workshop to succeed on this project, and if that meant that repairs were less available then there wasn’t anything else they could do about it.

As Rika returned to their seat the next player approached. Once again there were murmurs of surprise coming from the audience as this player was Liza from the Kitchen team. Generally the Kitchen didn’t have anything to announce, with the sole exception being the discovery of the overhunting problem, and many were concerned her presence meant that a new problem had arisen.

Fortunately, there was no major issue. Instead, the announcement was for a new system the Kitchen was planning to use due to a high amount of complaints. With more variety available in the meals, many players had started making requests as if they were eating at a restaurant. On one hand, many of the cooks were willing to help, but on the other hand they were all still in a survival scenario and individual requests were becoming too frequent to keep up with.

To compromise, Liza explained that the Kitchen decided that they would start announcing what they planned to make two days in advance, based on what they had available. If someone wanted something else, they would need to gather a group of players and agree on a single dish to be added to that day’s menu.

Once again there was some discontent from a few of the pickier eaters in the audience, but realistically they knew that this wasn’t their real, modern world and they couldn’t all get what they want. A few were glad that they could make requests at all and weren’t being told to just take what they were given.

Next was Demeter to give an update on the progress of her field. She began her announcement by explaining that she and her volunteers had officially converted all the available land around the west side of the village into seeded farmland.

“We’ll need to expand it further if we want to feed everybody, and with the help of the builders getting lumber for their projects the necessary space will come. Now with the boring update out of the way, I do have some actual good news! I was checking the progress of the plants I planted when my field was just a small plot outside the North Gate, and while I’ve had my suspicions for a little while I can now say with certainty that a decent number of the plants we have available have a rather fast growing cycle.”

When the needed size of the field had been calculated it had been done using Demeter’s knowledge of real-world plants. Although many of the wild vegetables they had been eating were similar or identical, they could only hope that they would grow at the same pace.

The samples that Demeter had in her field were essentially a test run, and the results have turned out better than expected. Most of the plants appeared to have a slightly faster growth rate than anticipated, not enough for any significant changes to Demeter’s plans, but enough that they wouldn’t need to rush to get the crops planted. As long as they continued at their current pace they should have a fully sufficient field with enough food to get them through the winter.

There were a few cheers when Demeter finished speaking, but overall the energy seemed to drain from the audience. As much as everyone had come to understand their current situation, the idea of needing to grow crops to survive the winter just reminded them all of how trapped they were. Even after weeks of being stuck in New Eden Online, they could still do nothing to escape and only hope that aid would come from the outside world.

No one came up for a brief moment, letting everyone stew in the morose atmosphere.

“Alright fine I’m going!”

Everyone turned to look at the voice that broke the silence, seeing Loran being pushed forward by Soze and Yang.

The negative atmosphere began to dissipate as a few people began to laugh at Loran being forced to speak by his teammates. Some were surprised to see him, unaware that he had returned from the expedition. The rest of the audience were on the edge of their metaphorical seats. Loran didn’t speak in The Pit often, and if he did it was because his teammates decided that he had seen something too important for him to back out of it.

Either that or they were forcing the guy who hated public speaking to go up for a laugh, which was equally welcome.

“Let’s get this over with,” Loran muttered as he turned to face the players nearest to him. “Point number one, the expedition is over.

“So you guys found the nest?”

“Sort of.”

“The hell do you mean sort of?!” someone shouted from the back as others were equally confused.

“Well, we didn’t find the nest specifically, but we found the borders of the ant's territory and were rewarded with a small army of Drones, so going deeper seemed like a bad idea. Regardless, the situation with the Iron Ants is more or less stable. Their border is nearly two days away so no one is at risk of accidentally running into it, but you may come across distant scouts if you head north so be ready to fight or run.”

Loran took a deep breath before continuing. He was speaking quickly, hoping to be done with his announcement as quickly as possible. “On the subject of running, if at any point you are fleeing from Iron Ants and think you can make it to the grasslands east of the woods, do it. The Mountian Goats that live there apparently have a burning hatred for the ants and will absolutely help to kill them. Just don’t try to piss them off.”

A few players shivered at Loran’s words, remembering the condition that Bates’ teammates had returned in. The one who had his leg amputated was now working in the Kitchen and got around with crutches, no longer able to hunt. The other one was even more helpless. They managed to get most of his bones set right before they were healed with Wolf’s Boon, but his legs had been destroyed from the thighs down. The damage was so bad that the debuff didn’t even have a duration timer, without any medical intervention, he was going to be permanently paraplegic.

“If any of you do try to head for the ants’ territory, we found a new subspecies that guards the border. It's called an Iron Ant Soldier. They fly, they have big iron blades that can probably cut Yang in half with one attack, and the one Zed fought had an AGI of 150.”

Loran stopped speaking for a moment as he watched several faces in the audience pale at his description. It was difficult to imagine how fast something was with an AGI of 150 since nothing they had seen had ever gone above 40, but many of them had seen how unnaturally powerful Alexx was when his STR was nearing 100. Using that for a sense of scale, everyone realized that this Soldier Ant, which was both fast and powerful, was too much of a threat for any of them to deal with.

“Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like the Soldiers leave the ants’ territory, and even if you do run into one you probably won’t meet two. Also, these ants do have two weaknesses according to Zed.”

Loran spent a moment explaining how the Soldier Ants had absolutely no armor and relatively low HP, making them quick to deal with, unlike the Drones. He also described how the flying ants can only reach their top speed by diving down and attacking in straight lines, making their attacks relatively predictable.

“I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but as long as you can notice them first it’s still possible to get away or even take one down,” Loran said with a shrug, not expecting anyone to try looking for a Soldier Ant after the description he just gave.

“The last thing I need to talk about is a new named monster, sort of.”

A few gasps could be heard from members of the audience. This was only the second named monster to be discovered so far, and with how unique and dangerous The Wise One had been they were curious about what this new one was.

“The hell do you mean sort of?!” Someone shouted, the same one as before in fact.

“It didn’t actually have a name, but the ‘N/A’ was replaced with question marks, and the description said that the creature was in the process of being named.” Loran shrugged. “I’ve got no idea how this whole system works but whatever, I’m moving on.”

He then began to describe the unnamed Hell Pig, telling everyone about its incredible STR, its greater intelligence, and most of all its willingness to run away, which astonished the audience.

“This thing is still incredibly powerful, but it might just be one of the least dangerous animals in these woods. As long as you can make yourselves into a big enough threat it will probably back off.” After all of his dangerous discoveries, Loran tried to end on a more reassuring note.

The audience wasn’t quite convinced.

“What if that was a one-time thing?”

“Most monsters don’t run like that.”

“It wasn’t just a one-time thing,” Loran shouted over the crowd. “I could be wrong but I’m almost certain that I ran into this pig in the past and gave it the two scars on its face before it ran off. It seems like named monsters are not only more intelligent but have unique traits, this one seems to be even more willing to run away than normal.”

“You really think you met this one before?”

“So what, do you want dibs or something?”

“Bullshit, you can’t just claim a named monster like that!"

“What if there’s a reward for it?!”

Before Loran could respond to any of the players’ questions or accusations, several of them had been worked up into a frenzy, shouting as if he had actually done what they were saying. Loran tried to speak over them but only the first row of players could make out his words.

“QUIET!” A loud voice roared over the chaos, silencing the disgruntled players. Everyone turned to see Yang glaring around at the audience. “Let him finish.”

“Thank you Yang. As I was trying to say, I’m not claiming anything. Whoever can kill it gets it. Honestly it would be pretty stupid of me to get angry about killing it when it was probably trying to kill them.” Loran sighed and began walking toward one of the exits. “Anyway, that’s it, I’m done, bye.”

Most of the audience began talking amongst themselves as Loran finished, but a few were able to get a good look at his expression as he left. Most of them didn’t think much of it, but Soze had come to understand Loran at least a little bit over the past few weeks.

Loran was lying about not getting angry if someone else killed the unnamed Hell Pig.

He was a gamer at heart, and he wasn’t going to just pass up on a possible reward, which everyone was almost certain the named monsters would have. Moreover, this wasn’t the same as with The Wise One, he technically had a history with this one.

Loran had said that the Hell Pig was strangely fixated on him, but Soze knew from that hungry look in his teammates’ eyes that the feeling was mutual.

As Loran made his way out of The Pit there was only a single thought in his head.

‘I knew I should have gotten something to eat before letting them drag me off to the meeting, I’m starving!’