Since most people had been more sensible than Loran and ate before going to The Pit, the Kitchen wasn’t very busy. Unfortunately, that also meant that most of the food would have been eaten by now, but Loran hoped that there was still something fresh to eat.

“Hey, Aman? Got anything fresh for me?”

Loran received no response as he approached the sitting player, staring intently at a clay pot boiling in the fire. Without looking, Aman reached to the side and grabbed what seemed to be a random assortment of herbs before mashing them together in his hands and tossing them into the pot.

Loran sighed and walked away. Aman had clearly gotten some new idea for a recipe, and even if Loran could manage to make them realize he was talking to him, he didn’t want to get food poisoning from an angry chef.

“Can anyone get me some food?” he asked aloud.

“Here you go Loran!” an excited voice said from below.

Looking down Loran saw a young player avatar with deep blue hair holding a messily poured bowl of squirrel stew, staring up at him with expectant green eyes.

He smiled slightly as he took the bowl. “Thank you Maya I didn’t see you there.”

Maya was easily the youngest player in the entire village. No one was sure just how young she was but she couldn’t have been older than eight. Needless to say, most of the players in the village went out of their way to make sure she struggled the least. She spent most of her time playing around, but she would frequently be seen trying to help out around the Kitchen and the Workshop.

Loran didn’t have much experience with kids and initially tried to avoid the girl, but with her always being around the two places he frequented the most contact was inevitable. Fortunately, she seemed completely oblivious to his behavior and was determined to be friendly with every person in the village. Even Loran couldn’t help but warm up to her after a while, although he did still find her exhausting at times.

“I helped Aman make this batch!” she said excitedly as she went back to stirring the half-empty pot of stew.

“Really?” he swallowed a spoonful. “Mmm, tastes better than usual.”

It honestly tasted the same, but she didn’t need to know that, and the beaming smile on her face was worth a little white lie.

‘Besides, if she actually did contribute and didn’t make it worse she’s a better cook than I am.’

Leaving the Kitchen, Loran picked at the stew as he made his way to the river to sit and eat. Loran gazed across the water at the progress that had been made on the village expansion.

The new wall had been completed at some point over the last week, but so far no new buildings had been constructed. With Demeter’s field needing more space a priority had been placed on chopping down trees and storing them on the far side of the river. Loran could make out several stacks of logs, each one standing at least seven feet tall.

‘I wonder how long it’ll be until they get started on the cabins,’ he wondered absentmindedly. ‘The basic shelters aren’t too bad, but I’d really like to have some actual privacy again.’

Minutes passed as Loran ate in relative silence. Soon he finished his food and laid back, staring up at the stars that were beginning to appear in the night sky. As his mind began to wander he thought back to what he said at The Pit.

‘...I wonder if Soze knows anything about tracking. He’d teach me if I ask, right?’

Despite his nonchalant attitude earlier, Loran really wanted to be the one to take down the unnamed Hell Pig. Although he hadn’t played many MMO games he was familiar with player groups competing over special boss monsters. Whether it was for rare equipment, crafting materials, or even just bragging rights, such enemies were fiercely fought over.

Loran was usually more of a lone wolf in such games, so he never really considered going after such enemies himself since that could mean fighting against entire clans or guilds. But this time was different, and not just because there was less competition.

Normal MMOs didn’t have bosses that would specifically target a single player like this.

Normal AIs didn’t form grudges.

The fact that he had a history with the unnamed Hell Pig made him want to be the one to take it out. Loran had always been a sucker for a game with a good story, and at this point, having anyone else be the one to defeat the Hell Pig just felt wrong. Realistic sure, but it felt narratively disappointing.

‘I need to be the one to kill it,’ he decided. ‘This is my story, I’m the protagonist, I need to do it.’(1) He paused for a moment. ‘Actually, I did kill its entire family, does that make me the antagonist?’ Loran thought about it for a moment before deciding to drop that line of thinking.

‘Regardless, this is between me and the pig. I can’t let anyone else get to it before I do.’

But before he can do that he needs to get stronger. He may have been even with the unnamed Hell Pig yesterday, but it was absolutely going to be stronger next time. Not only would it be a higher level, but it would almost certainly have received its name by then, and a Unique Skill to go with it.

Loran was already at a disadvantage because of his arm, he needed some way to close the gap before it became too great. For now, that meant leveling up and getting a new weapon. Climbing to his feet, Loran made his way to the Workshop. After having slept most of the day he wouldn’t be able to rest anytime soon, and he had a few ideas he wanted to test out.

~~~~~

A small group of three Iron Ant Drones were making their way through the woods when they discovered a peculiar scent. It was a scent that put them on edge and made their instincts warn them of danger. Most living things would respond to these feelings by avoiding the source, but a Drone existed to gather information and resources for the colony, and so they sought out the source of the scent.

The group traveled east, the scent growing stronger as they approached the source. They were getting closer to Mountain Goat territory, but the Drones didn’t smell any of the beasts nearby. Soon the ants came to the source of the scent, a group of dead ants. Perhaps other species would have been frightened by the sight of their dead kin, but it made no difference to the ants. Drones died all the time.

Furthermore, perhaps another species would have noticed the problem with these bodies. For the simple-minded Iron Ant Drones the situation seemed simple, some ants encountered a Mountain Goat and were killed. However, a more intelligent creature would notice two other details about the situation.

First, the dead ants had not been crushed to death, but had a number of puncture wounds at various joints and weak points around their bodies.

Second, the bodies had been arranged into a pile, specifically put there to fulfill some purpose.

Perhaps if the Drones were more intelligent, they would have realized that this was a trap.

Loran dropped down onto the ant furthest in the back. He had been hidden from their senses with the combined affects of the Iron Ant Soldier Helm and the [SNEAK] Skill he recently picked up from Soze. As he landed he stabbed the ant with a sharp blade strapped to his injured arm, easily piercing the carapace and making the insect shriek.

Grabbing the ant by the head, he lifted it into the air, its position giving it no way to use its immense strength to escape. Pulling his weapon back, he began stabbing the Drone in the joint between its head and its thorax, landing three blows before the insect’s distressed cries caused the other two to turn around.

Loran’s hand slipped and he dropped the Drone as he evaded the attacks of the other two. Pulling out his Bone Pick, Loran swung the blunt end at one of the Drone’s heads, knocking it out of the air as it jumped at him.

As the other moved forward for another attack, Loran scooped it up with the hook of his pick on the backswing, tossing it aside before chasing after the ant he had just struck. As he did, he glanced at the first ant he had attacked, still moving but bleeding heavily from its wounds.

Confident that the first Drone was slowly dying, he turned his attention back to the second one, having landed on its back and just about to flip itself over. Before it could, Loran pressed the hook of his pick against the ant’s throat and began stabbing its relatively soft underbelly with his blade. The Iron Ant tried to pull and scratch at him with the tiny hooks on its feet, but thick fire-hardened leather was holding the blade to his arm, and covered enough of him to double as armor.

Loran landed four strikes before he released the ant to avoid an attack from the first ant with the uninjured Drone not far behind it. The fight entered a stalemate as Loran continued to evade the angry insects with practiced ease, watching them closely as he waited for an opportunity to go on the offensive.

It had been almost three weeks since the end of the expedition, and Loran had spent as much of that time as he possibly could hunting Iron Ant Drones. Similar to Alexx he was starting to learn the ants’ attack patterns and behavior, and now that he had a new weapon, the Bladed Glove, that not only was usable with his damaged hand, but was also able to pierce the Drone’s armor, fighting them was almost becoming easy.

‘Stop that,’ he chided himself. ‘I can’t risk getting overconfident. These things can still cripple me or worse. And I’m on my own today.’

At first he had done it while Zed and Alexx stayed on standby for safety, but he never needed their help and had been completely on his own for the last few days. Soze had tried to talk him out of it, but both Zed and Alexx agreed that while there were a few close calls at first they didn’t need to babysit him anymore.

Loran’s focus returned to the battle as one of the injured Drones leapt at him. Stepping forward to intercept it instead of retreating, Loran gave the Iron Ant a left uppercut, piercing the ant’s throat with the sharp blade before tossing it aside.

With one of them suddenly missing, the ants’ next attacks had another opening that let Loran knock one of them aside with a backhanded swing of his pick.

Having singled out one of the injured ants again, Loran quickly dropped his weapon to grab the ant by its back, once again leaving it helpless as he began stabbing it while putting some distance between him and the other ants.

His attacks weren’t as quick this time, as Loran was focused more on keeping away from the others as well as making sure the ant in his hands had no chance to escape or attack him, but after a moment he was confident that he landed enough attacks that the Drone would bleed out soon and tossed it aside.

Dodging around the other ants to retrieve his Bone Pick, Loran immediately went on the offensive. Three Drones were quick enough that needed to wait for an opening, but if there were only two Loran could make his own opening.

As the one on the right attacked he dodged left. As the other ant saw him approach it tried to attack but Loran was already halfway through a swing with his pick, catching the Drone by its legs and pulling it upward. As it tumbled through the air Loran punched it with his Bladed Glove, catching it in the abdomen and ramming it into the other ant.

With the Drones stunned for a brief moment, Loran raised his pick and struck the underside of the ant’s head, using the force to pull out his blade before backing up.

Loran observed the ants calmly as they reoriented themselves. Both of them were injured now, one even trembled slightly as it bled heavily from a neck wound.

‘Even now, they won’t try to run.’

Of all the creatures that the players had discovered since the start of the game, Loran had thought that the Iron Ants would have some kind of instinct to run when faced with danger. Not out of a sense of self-preservation, but as a way of getting information back to the colony. However, that was not the case. Perhaps it came from their overwhelming defensive capabilities, but Iron Ants didn’t seem to have much of a plan for how to combat an actual threat aside from the Mountain Goats.

It made sense; everything else in these woods aside from the goats and maybe the Demon Bears were so weak compared to the Iron Ants, and even they couldn’t actually threaten the nest. Iron Ants were truly the apex predators of the valley, which means they have no response to something being able to overwhelm them.

‘Was Soze being too paranoid? It really seems like they’ll just let us be as long as we don’t threaten the survival of the colony.’

Loran shook those thoughts out of his head, they weren’t important right now. He watched as the two Drones moved in to attack him.

“I’m getting hungry,” he told them. “Let’s clean this up.”