Leo watched the scene, slowly taking in everything. Draven moved fast, picking up his things that were abandoned on the ground. There were broken bits of arrows, the bent shape of the bow, bits of shattered stones that Draven had worked with, the upturned rocks that lay about.“Was this where you did your training?” Leo asked.“Yeah,” Draven replied. "But the Master is not around.”“He’s not around?”“He’s gone. I don’t know where he’s gone to; probably back to where he came from.”“And where did he come from?”“I told you it was a virtual trainer, Leo. Where else would he have come from?”Leo smiled, but the smile disappeared as soon as he saw Draven’s sword lying against the bark of a tree. Draven picked it up and sheathed it, then hung it by his side.“Whoa!” Leo exclaimed. “That’s one big weapon. And it looks quite sharp!”“It is sharp.” Draven motioned to the broken wood and stones and rocks about. “How did you think I was able to break all this rock hard stuff?”Leo managed to r
They both sniffed the air desperately. Draven was sure he had never felt such gnawing hunger until that very minute. Back in the real human world, when he starved of hunger, he already knew how to control it and plan his next move. Here, however, hunger felt real and uncontrollable. The discomfort and churning of his stomach only drove him insane with the need to feed, and feed, and feed. When he looked over at Leo, he saw that he too had the same expression on his face.“We shouldn't," Draven bit out with great effort. “We really shouldn't."“I know,” Leo bit back. “But damn it I can’t control it.”“It feels wrong.”“It is wrong.” Leo bent over and wrapped an arm around his stomach. “Fuck, if I don’t eat it I’m definitely going to die.”“Let’s try to walk back out.” As he said this, Draven looked back at where they had come from.The distance seemed so long and unending. How had they come this far? Draven’s stomach churned at the thought of walking back without satisfying the craving
Draven stirred. His head was banging. He couldn’t even get up; he lay still and tried to gather his thoughts. His body was weak, and his bones felt even weaker. He was lying on rough ground yet he couldn’t summon the courage to stand up. How long has it been since he was asleep, so much so that his muscles had lax and become weak? His memory came back in hazy bits. He felt so drugged and his memory felt so distant. Weren’t he and Leo walking into the cave when they perceived that delicious meal? What happened after that?He groaned internally as he remembered the exact thing that had happened. Of course, he had fucked up. They ate the soup without exactly caring for the source it had come from.“See what the chickens brought in?" He heard a female say. “I think this one is handsome.” She kicked Leo and emitted a groan from him.“You’re going to ruin his pretty face by the time we’re ready for him,” another said, male this time.Draven heard the girl sigh as she walked to an angle. He
Draven’s sword was nowhere near him. He panicked, patting the sides of his trousers to realize that it really wasn’t on him. The kidnappers had probably taken their weapons off them, Draven knew, yet he did not feel comfortable knowing that the sword could be anywhere in the room and they could easily be killed by the now rising numbers of killers. If only he could find his weapon…“What are you doing?” Leo yelled at him. “Let’s get out of here!”“I can’t find my sword!” Draven yelled back, pushing someone off him and standing to his feet. “I need to find it. It should be around somewhere!”“We’ll get another one!”“No, that was a very sharp sword!”“Are you serious right now?”“Yes, I’m very much serious!” Draven pushed someone off him yet again and ran about, searching for his sword among the chaos.Leo seemed very upset about this, but he didn’t know what to do as more people rushed towards him. He picked up a sword on the ground and started slashing mercilessly, screaming while at
Leo ate his crackers as he watched Draven train with his virtual trainer. It was an interesting sight, but not as interesting as the crackers he was eating. It had a sour sweet taste, a welcome snack at the thought of eating stones. As he watched Draven train, his mind went back to when the trainer appeared. Master, he was called. Draven had been taken aback at the thought of his mana reducing, which he’d been working tirelessly for the past three nights. After the second night, Leo summoned the courage to ask Draven to ask Master about the stones in their belly. Draven had accepted, because it felt odd to him too. It looked as though they were no ordinary stones, and it made them heavy and breathless.“We ate some stones mistakenly on the way here,” Draven said to the Master. “What do you reckon we should do?"“How did you eat a stone mistakenly?” Master asked, his expression stiff and emotionless.“It was a series of stones," Draven answered. “We were trapped and deceived…”“I know
They walked a long distance, Draven following Leo’s steps. Ever since he agreed to find monsters on their own so Draven could increase his Mana level, Leo had been pretty hyped up. Draven understood the need, of course, but at the same time he felt skeptical about searching for something that wasn’t searching for him. All he wanted to do was calmly follow the route that would be easy for him and get it over with this game, that was all. Leo, however, was riding on the desperation of wanting to relieve himself; which was completely understandable, of course.“We’re here,” Leo said.“Where?” Draven asked a little too loudly.“Shh!”He instantly kept quiet. They were hiding behind a large rock big enough to crush them to death. When he walked around the corner of the rock, he saw that there was a sort of house strewn together with leaves and tree bark. It wasn’t exactly a house, but you could call it one since it was housing some monsters within. Draven craned his neck forward, as if he
The beast snarled its feet, charged and ready to battle. It was larger, more dangerous and more likely to kill them with one big step. The two boys stepped back, afraid and worried about what to do next. The arrow, bow and sword seemed useless against the big animal. There was no way they could succeed if they actually tried to fight back.“Where’s the other one? I’m sure they were two,” Draven asked in a shaking voice.“I don’t know,” Leo whispered. “I worked the whistle around a big unsuspecting waterloo so they must have fallen into it.”“This one clearly survived. And he’s going to eat us alive.”“Maybe we shouldn’t have gone monster hunting in the first place!”“How else are we going to get points if we don’t? It’s not like other players have specific points to give!”The beast took one step forward and the earth shook. The two boys shuddered and stepped back. Coming to a face to face confrontation with another monster unplanned was not what they had expected at all.“We only hav
Draven carried with him the ash of his sword in a mud jar that he’d made in a rush. Leo was not comfortable with it; he felt that the ash of the monster had combined with the sword when Draven was gathering the ash.“You don’t need the ash,” he said to Draven. “Just ask your master to make you a new sword.”“If it were that easy I’m sure he would have made me two,” Draven replied sarcastically.Besides, he could decipher which was his sword and which was the monster. With his growing powers that came with his upgraded points at level three, he could absolutely beat this. He wasn’t sure if the master had disappeared with the sword, since he made this with his hard technical strength.“We can just go back to the last place your master was and summon him to make you a new sword,” Leo said again.Draven was irritated by his annoying nag.“At this rate you’re going to turn into a woman with the way you keep yelling at me,” he said to Leo. “Besides, it’s too risky to go back to the very pla