Rico waited near a tree where he assumed that Cade will come out from. He wore a serious expression but not on the same level as the serious face he shown every day.
While he looked at the direction of the forest, suddenly someone coming out of the forest. Rico frowned as the one who came out wore normal looking clothes with cardboard all around his body.
Looking at that person weirdly, "Cade?" said Rico as he was not sure if the person in front of him was Cade. The map shown that he was Cade but maybe it was different Cade than he thought?
Rico had known a few different Cade in his life but the only Cade he knew on Planet Dineon was a student in the same class with him.
From what he knew about his classmate Cade, he was not someone that like to play or looking as silly as the person in front of him. He knew Cade was a nice guy but he was not exactly the playful or loved playing around type.
Looking at Rico's face, Cade knew what he was thinking. He sighed and took off the gas mask to reveal his face. Once he took off his gas mask, Rico was finally abled to see him.
"Rico, I never thought that the first person I met here is you," said Cade but he was not smiling. As he came out of the forest, he saw the battlefield filled with dead body.
Even before he arrived, he already smells blood inside the forest. He was keeping a closed eye on his map and saw how the red and green dot in his map disappeared one by one indicating them dead.
He was happy to see the red dot disappeared but not the green dot. Red dot meant enemy and green dot was human who he did not know. Since they were fellow human, it pained him to see them died even if they did not know each other.
Rico looked at Cade and he looked him from up to down a few times as he was speechless. He never thought that Cade liked to play with cardboard.
Cade saw Rico's expression and he knew what he was thinking again. "I am not playing around," said Cade. His heart bleed a bit as someone he knew know that he was wearing silly thing on his body.
"This… this thing on your body…" said Rico while pointing on Cade's cardboard equipment. Even if Cade said that he was not playing around, his attire said otherwise.
"Don't look down on my equipment," said Cade as he slashed the ground with his cardboard sword and the ground was cut cleanly by the cardboard sword.
"These are real legit equipment," said Cade while he was slightly blushing from embarrassment. Luckily, he had upgraded them and they looked much better than before.
Before he upgraded his linked equipment, he looked like someone with mental problem. All his cardboard equipment looked totally useless and silly.
Rico had a surprised face when he saw Cade slashed the ground with the cardboard sword. He never thought that a weak looking cardboard like that was capable of slashing the ground easily.
Looking at the performance of the cardboard, Rico immediately dismissed his thought that the cardboard looked useless.
When he thought properly, there was no way someone like Cade will wear something silly like that in public. There must be a reason for that and the reason he saw was totally justified.
"Welcome to our small group," said Rico. Cade nodded and he looked around to see many people had died and most of the explorers that were still alive were filled with injuries and fatigue.
They looked like they had lost hope in surviving. Some of them were even holding their tears from coming out while they were looking at their comrade's body.
Cade also saw them collecting the dead explorers' body and he frowned a bit. "Isn't it better if they buried the body?" thought Cade.
Rico saw Cade's expression, "We need to collect their body as the boarman is really cruel. If you read all the mission involving the boarman, that was how cruel they were to us," said Rico with pained expression.
"What do you mean?" asked Cade.
"Hanging the boarman's head on a stick. Mincing their meat and throw at their face. Cutting their limbs and play around with it and many more…" said Rico and he paused for a bit.
"That all happening to the human who they called hairless monkey. Some of the survivors here were caught and brought to their camp before. They were tortured and saw many things happened to their comrades and that included the one the system asked us to do," said Rico while he gritted his teeth.
Cade was shocked to hear that. He cannot believe that the boarman was that cruel. He did not see the scene by himself but he knew it must be really cruel that even the system issued a mission like that for revenge.
They collected the dead body of the explorers because they did not want the boarman to use them as their plaything.
"Then, how can they survive?" asked Cade because he found it weird that the captured explorers lived to tell the tale to them. If they were caught and tortured cruelly like that, the boarman will never let them live.
"The boarman let them go to lure more of us out," said Rico and he looked extremely angry. Rico recalled back on his memory on how he found the released explorers.
They looked like a walking corpse. They were bind by some kind of magic skill that prevented them from suicide and keeping track of their movement.
Rico told Cade on everything that had happened on how they had been on constant fight against the boarman every day since they arrived inside the world dungeon.
The released explorers begged the group to kill them as their location will always be known by the boarman if they were alive but no one wanted to do that.
The resident of Biscuit Star Sector had usually lived peacefully and kindly towards each other and there was no way for them to kill their comrade.
Cade was told that the boarman was killable but their strength was obviously stronger than human of the same level and growth potential.
Rico also said that they had no clue on the location of the accompanying core as they had been constantly running away and fighting the boarman every day.
Everyone was tired and many of them had started to give up on continuing their explorations. They had all lose hope because the boarman was strong and many of them had died.
The boarman's strength was top notch and the explorers were too weak. Most of the explorers around were that of D grade and the strongest among them was A grade.
No matter how strong the A grade explorers were, all of them had a hard time even killing one of the boarman. They had more stats than the D grade explorers but fighting the boarman was still hard.
Even the A grade explorers were depressed that they had a hard time killing even the E grade boarman. The boarman had a weirdly high stats considering their grade.
Among the one in the group, only three people were abled to fight the boarman toe to toe and they were Xing, Dianne and Rico. All three of them were A grade explorers.
However, that only applied to a D grade boarman. If the C grade boarman appeared, they did not know if they can handle even one of them.
Hearing everything from Rico, Cade fell silent. Once they had all collected the dead body of the explorers, they also started collecting the boarman's dead body.
Cade helped them a bit and at the same time introducing himself to the group. They all looked at him weirdly especially after seeing what he wore.
Cade cannot take the equipment off as they were in the enemy territory. He can die if he was not careful. He did explain to them that the cardboard equipment was an item drop.
All of them just nodded their head as they knew that there was sometimes silly equipment dropped from the monsters. It was not common but not rare either.
"By the way, did you throw away the dead body of the boarman you killed?" asked Cade. He saw them putting the boarman's body on their storage but he thought maybe they will throw them away later.
The boarman's body was important for Cade to make the essence as the essence can not only be used by himself but other people too.
He decided to make lots of the essence and gave it to the explorers to help them becoming stronger. Everyone was needed to fight against the boarman and it was better to strengthen them.
The stronger they become, they higher the chance for them to survive the world dungeon.