Katelyn's head shot up when she heard Alexis walk into the room while holding a giant needle and a bottle of Anti-Venom. She then looks at Jason, who is laying down on a couch, looking pale and on the brink of death. The only thing showing that he was still alive was the slight movement of his chest and the health bar, that appeared above his head.
The bar was dangerously low, from the way it looked, Jason has a tenth of his full health (15 hp) and was slowly dropping as Alexis stabbed him with that giant needle. After injecting the Anti-Venom into Jason, he started to stabilize.
"Don't look so worried Miss, it makes you look like one of those useless novel side characters." Alexis said mockingly. "Jason still has plenty of health, and once the Anti-Venom has been administered, the poison will vanish and the stores healing barrier will take affect." Continues Alexis while informing Katelyn.
"I guess the world really has changed so much in only a matter of days, first the change in animals, now special shops and let's not forget about magic. If not for the fact that I already pinched myself I would have thought I was in the dream." Katelyn mumbles while processing everything that happened.
"Everything can only get better from here, right now everyone is the weakest they will ever be again, unless they die at level 1." Alexis says trying to encourage the depressed beauty.
"But I'm only level 1 and just look what a level 4 did to Jason. How can I possibly do anything to get stronger?" Katelyn asked while looking at Jason who still hadn't woken up yet.
"That's easy, get several people together and form a party, everyone that participates will receive the experience." Adelram says while walking in on the girls conversation. "The key to the party system is you don't want the amount of people to be too small or too big, also you want people that you can trust."
"That actually sounds like it might work, plus I already have a few people in mind." As these words are said, Katelyn turns around to see Jason sitting up on the couch with a smile on his face.
"It's about time you wake up sleeping beauty." Katelyn teases.
Jason ignores the last comment as he stands up and looks towards Alexis. "Well how much is this going to cost me?" Jason says getting straight to business.
"I will give you a discount since you brought in the bottle of venom and informed me about a new mutated snake venom….. this time it will only cost you 15 gold." Alexis smiles while collecting her payment.
With the remaining 65 gold Jason is going to buy a bow with 20 arrows for Katelyn and a decent shield for himself when alderman looks at him with a strange face.
"Why are you buying her a weapon?" Adelram asks confused.
"She doesn't have any money to buy a weapon yet and she won't be any use without one." Jason explains to Adelram.
"You never looked inside your inventory under the gifts tab did you?" Adelram chuckles.
Immediately Jason opens up his inventory and presses the gift section, where a present is in the first slot. Jason and Katelyn both click on their own gift but get the same items except for the last one.
[Congratulations
Gold X200
Skill points X5
Individual items
Jason- lvl 10 cursed sword
Katelyn- lvl 5 healing grimoire.]
After combining their gold, Jason and Katelyn had 465 gold. Katelyn used 110 gold on a level 1 bow along with thirty arrows, she then spent 70 gold pieces on leather armor to provide some protection.
While Katelyn was shopping, Jason wasn't just twiddling his thumbs, he searched for shields and chainmail armor. Jason ended up spending 110 for some chainmail armor. While Jason was browsing between shields he had picked up both a metal buckler and a heater shield.
The buckler was to small for Jason's liking, the more he thought about it, the more he was thinking about the heater shield. The only thing keeping him from buying it is the price, currently it's 100 gold but only 70 gold for the small buckler shield.
" I could always buy the buckler now and trade it in later, but I would just be spending more because the resale won't be as high." Jason sighs out loud before looking over to see Katelyn and Adelram walking his way.
"Having some trouble picking out a shield?" Katelyn asks while eyeballing the shields.
"Honestly I would go with the heater because of its size, durability and the fact that you can modify it." Adelram explains, giving his honest opinion of his work and based on Jason's body type. "Sure you might pay a higher price now but it's cheaper to modify a shield than it is to buy a whole new one. Plus with all the options the combinations are endless."
Several more minutes passed before finally Jason decides to buy the heater shield that covered his entire torso, unlike the small buckler that wasn't much bigger than his stomach.
Jason and Katelyn had departed from the store, forming a party of two, but they decided not to go into the woods until recruiting one, maybe even two more people. Both were pondering over who should join them.
"We could recruit Johnathan and Kasey, I worked with them and they seem like decent people for now." Jason throws out a few names of people he knew.
"I don't know, maybe we should get some people that are closer to us and that we can trust." Katelyn responds while scratching her head. "How about your brother Jeremy? He wouldn't be bad to have help, plus he is good with an axe."
"Let's see if we can find him to see what he thinks." Jason agrees, leading Katelyn towards Jeremy's house. By walking it took about fifteen minutes to get to a small three room house with a small shed in the back.
Jason approaches the door, and just as he puts his fist on the green plastic to knock the door flies open, Jeremy runs straight into his brothers outstretched fist. Without missing a beat Jason starts howling with laughter, while reaching down to give Jeremy a hand up.
Jeremy has a decent sense of humor and chuckles. "Wow, I guess it's true what mom and dad always said, once I get in a hurry I become the world's biggest walking disaster." Once on his feet again Jeremy dusts himself off before asking "So what brings you around today? I don't figure Dad gave you the day off to help me get rid of some pesky coyotes."
"Actually I had a personal question to ask and if you accept we will help you with your problem." Jason said, picking up a double sided splitting axe and handing it to Jeremy. "Katelyn and I were wanting you to join our hunting party and maybe even get a fourth person afterwards."
Jeremy agrees without a second thought, once he saw Jason open the menu and got the party invite he way beyond interested, everything seemed like part of a VRMMO he played. Jeremy pinched himself just to make sure he wasn't dreaming, when seeing he also had the axe as his equipped weapon, Jeremy followed Jason and Katelyn towards the back couple acres of land that connected Jeremy's house to Albert and Jan's land.
Jason and Katelyn quickly equipped their weapons, Jason took the front with Jeremy and Katelyn close behind. Jason's hand never left the handle of his sheathed sword, while his left arm was in front of him ready to block with his Shield. Once Jason had the enemies attention he would try and get their backs to Katelyn and Jeremy. Katelyn would take a few steps back then fire an arrow, Jeremy would swing towards the creatures spine.
Everything had gone according to plan until the small party came across two level 6 rabid coyotes. Both beasts stood 4 ½ feet tall with strong bodies, both pelts were full of scars and even had bites taken out of them. Jason gulped when seeing both of them foaming at the mouth, the smaller Coyote lunged at Jason, bloodlust and hunger filled it's eyes.