Jake wasn't sure what to make of her confession. Cassandra seemed embarrassed after making it and tried to change the subject. Asking him about his time in the game. With only half his brain engaged he answered her questions. Explaining how long he had been playing. That he had learned most of it from another player who he hadn't seen in a few days now.
Jake took the loot from the two he had killed and let her have the loot from the five she had killed. With that, she bought all the ammo she could carry. She had several pouches that hung on the small of her back that held the oversized magazines. Each one holding five rounds.
Jake took her around to a number of the watering holes he knew of from clearing with Ella. The more he saw of her weapon the more he thought she was broken. Now he knew how Ella had felt. He had started gathering up the enemies for her before leading them back towards her. When they lined up she could kill multiple of them in a single shot. Sure she had to be immobile and prone to do it. The time it took her to line up shots and fire was kind of long. But it seemed worth it to him.
She pointed out that without his help she would have had to either kill them one at a time or risk being run down in larger numbers. Possibly even having to run away after each kill until they lost interest in her. Each time he complained about how strong she was she pointed these facts out and expressed just how grateful she was for his help. She truly seemed thankful. It was not the Cassandra he was used to. During the hours they spent farming together she talked more than him. The shyness she had shown at first didn't really go away but she seemed to grow more comfortable with him. There was a hint of the Cassandra he knew, just none of that horrible attitude he was used to. She did mention several other things that made him positive it really was the Cassandra he knew.
Desperately he wanted to ask her why she acted so different from class. But by now he had gone so long without revealing who he was and that he knew her. Doing so would have been awkward. Even more so after what she said before. That basically sounded like she liked him.
They split up the loot from hunting and she was insistent that they split it evenly even though she had done most of the killing. On top of that, she had the expense of ammunition. Jake didn't argue too hard but absolved his limited guilt by letting her keep all the intelligence mutagen they had gotten. Keeping the lesser amount of Dexterity ones for himself. He conveniently ignored the fact the intelligence ones were worthless to him.
They returned to the guild where they cashed in and then absorbed the mutagen. He noticed her unhappy expression when injecting the mutagen. She didn't see any reason it should feel like a real needle either. Nor why they didn't absorb all the mutagen each time.
After logging out Jake took a shower before exhaustedly crawling into bed. "What am I going to do tomorrow?" They had agreed to meet tomorrow around the same time. Now he had a friends list and had even formed a party with them.
Jake sighed before collapsing into an exhausted slumber.
The next day Cassandra acted no differently than any time before. She did seem to be going out of her way to ignore him while not actually ignoring him. Her attitude was still that snobby overly self confident attitude that always irked him. Then when they met in game she was the shy and somewhat meek version. They had continued hunting together. Clearing not only the Dread Spitters in mass but every other monster that Jake knew of. They even found a few new ones. Including a scorpion looking monster the size of a small car.
The curled tail on its back didn't end in a stinger but in a lamprey looking mouth. The fleshy circular mouth filled with teeth as far down as they could see. It spread open to insane proportions and tried to eat Jake whole when he first fought them. They were fast and took a lot of damage. Well a lot from him. Cass was able to one shot them just like everything else they had met. She did have more trouble with them than most. The same with the Whip Tails. Moving targets took her longer to line up the shots with. Fast ones even longer.
The [Sucker Tailed Scorpions] were vitality and speed mutagen.
Cassandra seemed super grateful for his help. Always offering him the larger share of the loot each night when they divided them up. Jake actually had to put his foot down about splitting it at the very least most efficiently for their builds. He often gave her extra cores to replace the larger haul of Mutagen he ended up with each night. She needed the money to cover the ammo costs while still buying the rest of her gear. It became obvious that she cared less about increasing her power and seemed to enjoy just playing instead.
By the weekend things had changed quite a bit. First Cassandra still acted the same at school but wasn't bothering Jake as often. While in game Cassandra had opened up, letting Jake learn a lot about her he had never known. Like that her parents were in a loveless marriage they stuck out with only to maintain their lifestyle. Both had high paying jobs and wanted to keep their life the way it was. With lots of expensive toys and very little to do with each other.
Cassandra was mostly ignored by her parents. Something she didn't have a problem with in school she admitted. She seemed almost cripplingly embarrassed to talk about how the boys at school treated her. Mostly how they talked about her body. How most of the girls acted friendly but often talked bad about her if they thought she couldn't hear. As if she was somehow to blame for the attention she got when they didn't. She would stare directly at his masked face while explaining it with her face flushed with embarrassment. He swore she was trying to see his eyes through the mask, probably to see if he was looking at her body like the boys in her stories. He had been, but stopped afraid she could somehow tell.
Most awkward was when she ended up talking about him. She never said his name but talked about a boy she had liked in her class. Apparently Jake had never made any big passes on her. Didn't seem to constantly be gawking at her, though she admitted to have caught him more than once looking. She sounded less angry about it than when she talked about the other boys. Then there was the fact he apparently was the only one she saw as an intellectual rival. For Jake, hearing her talk like that about himself was really really weird.
It boiled down to her snobbish attitude had become her shield from the boys and girls at the school. While her picking fights with him had been her attempt to get his attention. Not knowing what else to do. The biggest change was when she blurted out. "I like you Merc."
He was in the middle of fishing the core out of a Dread Spitter and stopped. "What?"
Her face was flushed. "As a friend." She hurriedly said. "I mean…" She took a deep breath. "Maybe more? I dunno." There was another pause as they just stared at one another. "I'm sorry. I just don't want you to be another Jake. Where I don't say it until it is too late." She was talking fast now. "If you don't like me. I mean like me like like me. We can pretend I never said anything?" Before he could answer she started talking again, faster. "Ugh, it's this game. It's so real but it's not. Running around and fighting monsters. It's easy to quit being Cassandra and instead just be Cass the Heavy Sniper. I wanted to be different this time."
She suddenly looked like she was going to cry. Apparently taking his silence as a negative response to her sudden confession. Jake for his part was just dumbstruck, not knowing what to do. It would have been awkward already, but the fact that she still didn't know who he was only made things worse.
A blur of movement out of the corner of his eye had him moving on reflex. A large round object was streaking straight towards Cassandra's head. His hand snapped out and caught it. Something about the action triggered a suspicion she had told herself just wasn't possible. Her eyes went wide and she said. "Jake?"
Before he could figure out how to respond there was a loud sucking sound. Beside them, the large pond swelled up. The sucking sound came from something emerging from the mud beneath the shallow water. The mud clinging to it made the loud suction sound as the entire pond pushed up. The pool they were next to was the largest they had found. Nearly a hundred feet in diameter and now something taking up the entire pool was coming up.
A gigantic Dread Spitter was rising up. Its flat body was the full hundred feet across while it towered a good twenty feet up above them. The trunk that dangled from below the giant eyes was as thick around as a real elephant's trunk. It trumped loudly as the mud and water finished rolling off it.
"Shit. A boss!" Jake grabbed Cassandra who was still staring at him not the boss with a look of horror on her face. When he tried to run her feet didn't move. She just stood there staring at him as if she had seen a ghost.
There was another sucking sound only different this time. He glanced at the monster to see its trunk scrunching up in a familiar way. It was going to shoot at them and point blank too.
He turned to face it preparing to catch the next attack just like he had the other. Only when it shot out this time. Instead of a single attack, a spray of smaller projectiles emerged. Like giant oversized buckshot.
Jake let out a few real swears.