The further he ran, he could hear the dogs barking and howling in the distance. How many were there? He wondered. With how loud they were, they sounded like thousands of dogs. Of course he knew it wasn’t possible to have that many dogs in one vicinity with a hazard of health crises, but he was sure Schivoka did not care about things like that.He began to wonder how the man would have come about that kind of name. Did it mean ‘leader’ in some other language that wasn’t English? He looked and sounded literate, so could he have coined that name for himself?He brushed the thought off his mind and focused on getting to the game. None of those things was his business. He should instead be focusing on how to survive without being eaten to death by the dogs, which kept him in untold pressure. He was sure that no one had ever been under his kind of pressure when entering the game. Like Leo, they must have been happy and sure and probably drunk before entering. They might have even slept thei
Draven walked for a long time. He was getting used to it; having walked for hours in the outside world. At first, he thought things were smooth and easy. The system had provided him with a map to locate Leo and continue on his journey. The only difficult thing there was that he had three days to reach his destination, or the instructions on the map would disappear. It was just rough paper with directions on it. It already looked too thin, like something that would disappear in the blink of an eye. The first day was easy. He didn’t even make much effort. He walked for a short while, drank loads of water, and continued. And drank more water. In fact, he took a lot of water for no particular reason other than taste. Draven was unapologetically thirsty. At the end of the day, the water weighed him far down and made him give up easily. He woke up early the next day, hoping to accomplish more than the previous day. Draven soon realized that one element must always hit him hard just as he
They were monsters. Monsters. He wasn't sure he’d seen anything so beautiful and ugly at the same time. They had the perfect body, the perfect hair. They clothes molded to their bodies, giving off this illuminating body shape. They were literally glowing in his vision. But their faces…God, was it horrifying? They had serpentine eyes and a long tongue that hung out of their mouths. It was longer than a lizard, but the same shape. They had fish scales at the side of their faces, and two inward slits in their noses. It nearly gave him a heart attack, to look at all that beautiful body and then see something wrong on their face. His hunger immediately vanished and he was ten times weaker than he was before. They looked like reptiles and humans in one.What the hell were these things? He had to imagine it; he really had to. His hunger had caused these hallucinations to him, that’s what happened. No way would this be happening, because if so, where would they have come from? Yeah, it had
He woke up slowly. It was the kind of leisure sleep that you wake up from, the one that came from a sleep-lagged dream. He stretched as he opened his eyes, yawning and looking around him. He felt good. Maybe he was lazy a bit, but still good.Draven turned to the side and stretched. Everywhere was calm and peaceful, except for the hunger in his belly. He didn’t even notice it until it came in full force, tearing him from within. He groaned and sat up. The game was really out for him; making him remember he was hungry as soon as he got up. What was he doing here anyway?He looked around him. He was lying on lush green grass that had stinging insects, but that was fine. Everywhere around him was green; except for the person who was several feet away, bowing over a brewing pot. Draven squinted his eyes to see in the sun, even though light was shed from him as he was under a tree. The boy looked little in his vision, or was hunger beginning to get to him that he couldn’t see much?“Hey,”
Draven momentarily forgot about the food. Something was very, very wrong. “The women were not real?” he asked the boy. “If they aren’t real…?” The boy shook his head in disappointment, as if the old man in front of him could have done better than those lines. Draven did not want to think of himself in the same sentence with ‘old.’ The game was definitely playing on both his inward and outward appearance. “What are they then?” he pressed further. “They were very much real,” the boy said to him. “They exist because people have been dwelling in the outside world for far too long.” “What do you mean?” ‘It’s pretty simple, really. People die and then don’t return early to the game, so those inside the game suffer the consequences.” Draven straightened. “I don’t understand…” “What don’t you understand?" I’ve laid it out pretty well. I don’t have time to waste on someone who fainted because he was hungry. If you were that hungry, why don’t you just pluck fruit and eat it? How hard ca
After some hours, Draven had reached his threshold. He knew that this was the end, and that he'd got to stop moving around like this. The map was nearly gone and he was desperate and famished. He wanted everything at once; a breath of fresh air, food, water and rest. Leo was so close yet so near. His last location was just an hour away, and Draven had only thirty seven minutes before the map would vanish. The worst of it all was that he was beginning to forget.His theory had been correct after all. If the map vanished, he would forget his earlier mission of looking for Leo. He needed to get as fast as he could, before his hallucinations would overcome his ambitions and he started from square one. He regretted not ignoring his body needs; at least if he had, he would have covered much distance by now.He sped up his walking process, trying to keep up with the map and his memory. He only took a few steps when he heard the roar of a monster behind him. Draven turned slowly. He had neith
The girl laughed. She leaned over and peered at Draven from head to toe. The beastly bear had stopped stomping its hoofs on the ground now; it was instead chewing contentedly on the grass by the road. After chewing, it would spit it out and then continue again.The girl’s partner started to laugh too, stretching his arms far and wide. Draven was too tired to be uncomfortable being the bit of the joke. He just wanted to take a ride. He was sure that the distance he needed to cover couldn’t be done on foot, so it was a miracle that he had come across these people who were stupid enough to tame a beast.“You actually have audacity,” the girl said. “It isn’t a decent amount, you know? You better be careful and hold that mouth of yours tight.”“I need help,” Draven moaned. “Please, I’m dying.”“You were going to die a moment ago, so what difference does that make?”“Please,” Draven said. “I’m not talking about a literal death. I mean that I would die in despair if I did not get to my desti
Draven scowled. This was exactly why the game is survival of the fittest. The fact that the boy sought his solution by snatching the map from him and killing him wasn’t really surprising. At least they had made the decision and notified him in his presence. For the others, they would just act stupidly and use you however they liked. Look at all the women he’d ever come into contact with in the game; they always used him and wanted to kill him afterwards—at least he and Leo had undergone it together. The girl smiled patronizing her brother. They had to be siblings. The subtle love and rivalry between them was quite obvious. The girl was the leader, but the brother liked to insert his opinions here and there—half of which she would accept and the other which she would reject. Draven imagined that it was hard for her to work with her brother as he was increasingly overbearing and tried to brush off her rule at any chance. “We cannot take what rightfully belongs to him,” she said to her