Axton sped along the ground, Franken’s propulsion systems letting the machine and its pilot zip along at a decent clip. The jungle had long since faded into the distance, and now there was little around but a mix of rugged savannas and small gatherings of trees and shrubs.

The occasional small hill dotted the landscape, making the vast terrain less featureless than it normally would have been, but that comparison was poor to begin with, mostly due to the aforementioned trees and shrubs. No, it would have been better to say that the small hills broke up the monotony of the general flatness of the landscape, which in turn forced any who ventured through the area to change up their own movement to match the terrain.

Franken was able to round these hills with little trouble if any at all, but the occasional bit of greenery (even the greenery that had already dried up and died) did provide a bit more of a difficulty. Though sparse, the places where the flora bunched together were far too dense for Franken to simply power through without issue.

Yes, it could power through them, but it would both slow the machine down and restrain its movements, and Axton had already learned his lesson after having to pry foliage from the treads on his War Suit’s feet after testing the mighty power of Mother Nature twice in short succession. No, the gatherings of flora would be avoided like the plague, at least until Axton felt like using Franken’s disposable flamethrowers.

Yes, he had all but forgotten that they existed up till now, but the thought of using them came back into his head after he had to kite a few mobs away from the dense foliage to avoid them diving in to save their skins. He dearly wanted to reward their survivalist cowardice with a healthy dose of liquid fire but given the fact that he was in a place with a metric fuckton of dried grass, he felt it would be in his own best interest if he did not.

After getting a certain distance from his latest killings, Axton stopped his personal killer robot suit for a bit to give it a look-over. The native cybernetically-enhanced fauna had been particularly disagreeable today, and a few had managed to get a scratch or two in on Franken’s limbs.

In the interest of safety and survival, Axton felt it appropriate to check his oversized humanoid death machine every few battles. This was, of course, because he wanted to avoid his War Suit falling apart with him in it, and most certainly not because he was paranoid that the cheating bastards both on this planet and above it were trying to do something funny without him noticing.

“Hmm…”

As he looked over his pilotable humanoid war machine, Axton took notice of any places where the armor looked like it had suffered undue abrasion. Every time he took time out to check on things like this, he couldn’t help but both marvel and be annoyed by the level of attention to detail that the game had.

In some respects, the attention was intense and thorough, but in others, it was… well…

“How the fuck does the terrain cause paint to be eroded off, while metal scraping against metal doesn’t?!” Axton fumed. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, people! A little consistency would be nice, you know?!”

He shook his head. Well, he may have said all of that, but he was actually rather glad that environmental abrasion was the only real source of such a thing here in this MMO. He figured that the realism had to be carefully managed in order to make the game a worthwhile thing to play, all while also giving that little bit of annoying realism that everyone loved to gripe about no matter what level it was at.

He had heard the whole “Muh Immersion” argument on enough occasions to be sick of it, but then again, here he was griping about that same damn issue as he wondered how a bunch of mud, plants, and a bit of sandy water could remove paint so quickly. Maybe it wasn’t truly realistic, or maybe the planet he was on was just a bit janky, either way, he now had to worry about the now-exposed metal taking damage, though he honestly doubted whether it actually would.

He shook his head before glancing over his shoulder at a dense patch of greenery just around a hundred meters away. He may not have had his own senses be strong enough to see and hear the various critters creeping up on him (depending on the terrain, which this time wasn’t an issue), but being a Player in a VRMMORPG had its perks, of which included a constantly active HUD that displayed the positions of all nearby enemies.

Axton let out a sigh before hopping back into the cockpit and closing it shut, which the nearby beasties took as their cue to attack. Maybe they thought that they could strike before Franken powered on completely, thereby allowing them to rip their tasty prize from the tin can in front of them and have a nice meal for a change.

But, if that really was their thought process, then they were obviously a few brain cells short in regard to their planning skills, as if they had bothered to watch the other times that their fellows had done this, they would have learned that Axton never turned Franken off unless he had someone watching his back.

And he was in the middle of hostile territory, so of course Franken would be idling, waiting for its Pilot to get back in and cause some more havoc.

The nearest critter broke into a sprint and leapt forward towards Franken’s right side. Perhaps it thought that a flank attack would be a good idea, given that most animals would be unable to prevent such a strike, especially when it was a ‘surprise’.

Franken, though, was already on, and raised its right arm and caught the hyena-coyote creature by the neck before slowly increasing the pressure of its grip. The other critters nearby realized the jig was up, and rather than do the smart and sensible thing, which would be to turn back and leave their compatriot to its fate, they foolishly chose the option of “All for one, and One for all!”

Another tried to leap onto Franken, taking a gamble that a frontal attack would be harder for the giant tin can to avoid due to one of its limbs being occupied. Franken merely used the currently held beast as an impromptu weapon and smacked one critter with one of its brothers until both of them were dead.

“God you fuckers are dumb.” Came a voice from inside the metal monster as it unsheathed one of its combat knives. “I guess… whatever the fuck you are… is on the menu tonight. Oh boy… gamey, lean, and stinky meat for days….”