On the fifth day since the world transformed, Jack finally reached the far suburbs of the city. If he traveled a half day more he would leave the city behind.
Houses were getting further apart as he proceeded. Between them were empty plots of land, several sported 'For Sale' signs. He could see faraway hills and prairies as the road stretched onward to the distance. Monsters were also getting sparce.
'Weird, in normal RPG games, it's the wilderness that's teeming with monsters,' he thought, but he couldn't see any visible monsters in the faraway open fields. He continued following the paved road.
Looking at the faraway scenery, Jack contemplated where he would spend the night, and how to scavenge supplies, or cook food, once he was out of town. There would be no more stores or houses out there. Maybe he should go back and look for some camping supplies and portable cooking wares before he set out of the city.
As he walked, deep in thought and not paying much attention, he slammed into something. He reeled from the impact. He touched and massaged his forehead which had been the point of impact. He didn't receive any damage but the bang had left him dazed because it was too unanticipated.
He looked around for what he had hit into, but there was nothing in front!
He stretched out his hands, and they could feel a hard surface. He traced the surface along the empty air. It stretched out wide, he couldn't find its edges as he kept on tracing it with his hands. It was like there was an invisible wall.
A thought occurred to him.
"It can't be…," he muttered as he continued to trace the invisible wall. It continued to stretch out sideways without any gap.
'Could it be we are not only trapped in this game world, but also trapped within the city? Just like how the world in an RPG game is comprised of several maps which have edges on them that were not traversable and the only way to move to another map was via a designated doorway location?' This made things more complicated. How would he find these doorways? There were no guides and no clues!
"Damn it!" He kicked a rock in frustration. The rock hit the invisible wall and bounced off. He took a deep breath and looked around.
"Now, where am I supposed to go?"
*
He spent the entire morning and half of the afternoon tracing along the invisible wall, finding no exits. But he did find, as he expected, that the wall was not a straight line. It curved, keeping a set distance from the center of the city. So the city was one huge enclosed map.
Although the monsters at the edge of this map were not as abundant, Jack still had several encounters while he was following the invisible wall. At this moment, he detected five red dots in his radar, clustered together not far from him. His Fighter class was near level 6 now, it would take one or two more encounters for him to level up. He advanced towards the red dots.
When he got close enough to see them, he scanned them with his God-eye monocle. There were three level 2 Zombies, one level 3, and one level 4 Skeleton Thug. All of them were monsters he had fought before.
Although their increased level made them stronger and tougher, their movement patterns were still the same. In the case of Zombie, their speed was even the same as their level 1 counterpart. While for the Skeleton Thugs, the higher level ones were a little bit faster, but not significantly enough to matter.
After making some mental calculations, he decided to break his previous record of fighting three opponents. Since all of them were lower levels, it would not be too dangerous fighting with this many foes.
Jack ran towards them. Since the five monsters were all looking in different directions, there was no blind spot for him to ambush them from. A straight-up brawl then!
When he came within eight meters of the nearest monster, he cast Mana Bullet. He had familiarized himself with melee battle for the past two days: now it was time for freestyle! He would mix between melee and ranged combat. Smiling viciously, Jack sidestepped the first monster that lunged at him. Then he cast Magic Shield to block the second monster's attack while he slashed the first one with a Power Strike. He then moved to position the five monsters in front of him.
Changing to his melee strategy, he blocked attacks with Magic Shield and Parry. When the monsters were lumped in front of him, he used his Swing skill. Disappointingly, it only hit four of the five opponents. It was proving difficult to control this many opponents. So, when the monsters seemed like they were about to surround him, Jack retreated and cast Mana Bullet and repeated the sequence.
In this way, he ground away at the Monsters until only the level 4 Skeleton Thug was left. He lost one-third of his HP along the way, which he considered to be reasonable. As he was getting ready to dispatch this last monster, he noticed two blue dots on his radar, and they were approaching his position. Remembering his previous experience with Bill, he knew those two dots were players. Finally, he could meet other people again. Two of them this time!
He paid attention to the two blue dots while evading the Thug's attack. He had deactivated his Magic Shield as it consumed MP each second. Against one lower-level opponent, there was no need to waste Mana. He made some casual slashes when opportunities arose, but his mind was more focused on the blue dots. Strangely, the blue dots stopped before they reached him. He glanced in their direction. There was a dilapidated barn around that side. He figured the two arrivals must have hidden there to observe him.
'Why are they staying hidden? They've there for a while now. Surely, they should have seen that he was a human too. If he was the one that encountered another person fighting a monster, he would have immediately lent a hand. Were they being cautious?'
'In a normal situation, that would be reasonable, but the world had turned into a place where monsters roamed freely while humans were in scarce supply.' Jack thought that he would be happy to find anybody.
'Or maybe I'm the one being naïve?' After giving the matter some thought, Jack decided to be cautious as well.
He stored his staff, and made it look as if he had difficulty fighting the Skeleton Thug. He intentionally let the Thug hit him a few times, but kept his health above half. After more than ten minutes of bogus fighting, he landed the final hit on the Thug and it disintegrated into dust, leaving 1 copper coin. He picked it up and looked at his radar. The blue dots were still unmoving.
'Are they going to ignore me the whole day?' he wondered. He took out a piece of bread and ate it. He then decided to walk towards their direction; he wanted to see what their reaction would be. As he was getting near the barn, he saw the blue dots circling the building away from him. It was clear that they were trying to stay out of his line of sight.
He stopped when he arrived at one corner of the building, and pretending to look far away towards the city, putting his back for them. They were motionless still. When he was considering just dropping the pretense and calling out to them, the two blue dots moved. They were coming at him.