Jake spun through the air wildly, Gadget's drones were sent flying away from him. Using both arms he managed to shield his face to keep from landing face first. Despite that, he bounced off the hard ground and rolled through the dirt. An exhausted Ella and a wounded Cass rushed over to Jake. They found him groaning as he sat up, he looked down to wiggle his metallic clawed toes. His health was once again back to about ten percent, he didn't care as long as everything still worked. 'At least the game must dull pain after a while. That or I'm just getting used to it.'
Ella and Cass turned on Gadget the moment they realized he was alive if badly damaged. Most of the wounds covering his body were from Ella and Aero's combined attack.
Gadget tried to defend her participation in the almost suicidal attack by pointing out he was alive. She even explained how much more health he seemed to have than the others based on how little all her healing drones had managed to heal him. When that didn't work she dumped all the blame back on Jake as it was his idea, she had just helped.
When Cass and Ella turned back on Jake he overly dramatically acted out his dying moments. This got an angry Cass to scold him that it wasn't working this time and he wasn't getting another kiss out of it. That deflected the attention off him better than his poor acting skills. Ella turned a glare on the embarrassed Cass while Gadget hooted out her praises for his skills as a player.
Aero hadn't joined the others, he had just needed to glance at the party menu to see if Jake was still alive. His judgment was not clouded by hormones as he thought. Instead, his attention was on the tunnel the shaman had been blown into. Its health had plummeted and was still falling when it vanished from sight. But, Aero hadn't seen it die and as the black guy of the group, the last thing he wanted to do was follow horror movie tropes. Just believing the villain was dead instead of confirming was the surest way to get suddenly murdered out of the blue.
Cautiously approaching the tunnel entrance he glanced in and saw a bloody splatter on the wall. It looked like the explosion that had thrown Jake thru the air had bashed the Shaman against the wall. There was a bloody mess at the bottom of the wall… and a trail leading deeper into the tunnel. "Damn it didn't die." He muttered and started down the tunnel, his staff glowing dimly as he charged up a lightning bolt. It curved slightly after about ten feet or so, almost as if the tunnel was going to spiral down instead of a straight shot.
Jake, Ella, Cass, and Gadget were still engaged in their own arguments when they heard it over the group chat.
"SHIT!" The panicked shout of Aero snapped them all back to attention. Even Jake got back to his feet in a rush, the pain suddenly a dull sensation as his body flooded with adrenaline again.
Everyone started shouting into the group chat wanting to know what happened when Aero came rushing out of the tunnel. Cass dropped to the ground aiming her rifle before she remembered she was out of ammunition. Ella drew back her bow, her arm trembling with the strain after pushing herself to the limits.
Gadget had her last gun drone hover over their heads rotating every direction in case the ambush came from somewhere else.
Aero sprinted the distance towards his tense companions, everyone searching for the threat. "What is it?" Cass snapped out angrily as she got up from the ground, with no ammunition it was pointless. She wondered if she could use her rifle as a club.
"Per… Permadeath zone." Aero panted and pointed back at the tunnel.
"What?" everyone asked in unison.
Aero explained what he had seen and how he had started down the tunnel hoping to finish off the fleeing shaman with one final lightning bolt. Instead, as he came around the curve a warning had popped up into his view. Huge and more solid than anything else he had ever seen.
[WARNING YOU ARE ENTERING A PERMADEATH ZONE. PLAYERS KILLED IN A PERMA DEATH ZONE HAVE THEIR CHARACTERS DELETED AND THEIR ACCESS TO THE GAME TERMINATED. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.]
It had been bold and red. Flashing in his vision while little alarms sounded loudly in his ear.
Now the others looked around even more cautiously. None of them had actually run into one of the fabled Perma Death zones. Worse, if the shaman had lived it might be getting more reinforcements or recovering to attack at any time.
They checked the other tunnels and found all of them leading to a Perma Death zone. None of them were willing to go down, even to finish off a mostly dead shaman. Instead, they started to quickly loot the bodies.
Gadget and her drone were on guard duty watching over the tunnels while the rest started harvesting cores and mutagen. To Jake's utter dismay all the little ones turned out to be D rank monsters. The three eyes were C rank. While the one four eyed they had killed was a B rank.
Jake also wanted to harvest all the lesser Grims, D rank or not. But the others thought it was a waste of time to try and get them all. Plus many of them had been decimated by the Bladenados leaving their body parts scattered all over in a gory mess. Finding the core and mutagen was actually a game of luck. Finally, they were all worried about another attack. While Jake's health was rapidly filling up. Cass was completely out of ammunition. Aero looked like crap. Ella was physically exhausted and low on arrows. While Gadget was down to just her one larger gun drone, the other smaller ones had been destroyed in the last suicide attack. They hadn't weathered it nearly as well as Jake had.
The only good thing was they did get a skill from the four eyed Grim.
Skill: Rift Jumper
Elite Universal Active
Forcefully opens a rift in reality allowing the instantaneous transversal of space. This is a primitive version of the more refined Teleportation skill. It puts great strain on the user's body. This can be mitigated by high vitality allowing a number of Rift Jumps before suffering the rebound.
Spirit requirements are greatly reduced due to sharing the burden with the physical body.
You meet the requirements for this skill.
Jake had been the one that looted it. He was pretty excited at finding an active skill that might actually be useful for him. The fact that it was labeled Elite made his mouth water. He couldn't contain an excited shout when no one else met the requirements for it.
"Calm down. Geez. It's a really nice skill but not something you need to clean your undies over." Gadget shook her head.
"That is the first elite skill I have seen though." Aero was laughing at Jake's excitement. Of the group, only Jake had much energy left, with his body rapidly healing all the bruises, cuts, burns, and other wounds other than his tattered clothes he looked almost back to normal.
Cass wasn't as tired as the others but she was covered in bruises from the rock shrapnel after the explosion. Her body ached all over and she could only shake her head at Jake. He had mentioned to her before the game actually hurt, but since he rarely made a big deal about it she had thought it was minor. But the pain she felt now really hurt.
"Come on. Let us get out of here and rest before we have to run back." Gadget said before she groaned thinking about the long run back.
"But… There are so many more left to loot." Jake complained. They had already been looting for several hours. It took a while to gut a monster and fish out the "loot" even if they knew where to find them inside. Between everyone being exhausted and constantly having to stay on watch it had gone slowly.
"We got all the three eyes. It is just a bunch of useless D ranks left." Gadget snapped back, she just wanted to get far enough away to rest.
Jake glared at her and she started to tell him off before she realized why he was glaring at her. "Sorry, overpowered murder machines don't count as D ranks no matter what you say."
She grinned at him. "Come on. You get to keep the only skill we harvested out of all these. The sooner we get back the sooner you can install it."
The group left the Grim village, Jake looking back at all the unbutchered bodies with dismay but following. They exited the lakebed and Gadget's last drone held the end of a blanket to make a crude leanto in order to give them some shade. They rested for several hours completely exhausted while diving up the loot. The Grims were mostly Strength, Vitality, and Speed. There were some Dexterity and Intelligence mixed in as well. There were even a few Spirit ones.
Jake had to again show them his tags to prove he really had no active skills and that his attributes were really D rank. Aero made a big deal about it but the entire time he was grinning. Mostly he just really couldn't believe that Jake was a D rank. Gadget agreed after realizing how tankie he really was.
Aero got all the Spirit ones right away. Ella got all the Dexterity. Then Cass and Gadget split the few intelligence ones. Jake got all the strength ones which left him in a quandary. His pile was huge compared to the others and they all agreed he could keep the active skill. As badly as he wanted to rank up a skill he didn't want to cheat out his new friends. When he raised his concern they all laughed it off.
They dumped praise on him and accredited their survival solely on his actions. There were no hard feelings but just to make it more even he let them split the speed and vitality between them. Everyone could use them.
The run back to town was long and exhausting. They had to actually take several breaks as everyone but Jake was on the edge of exhaustion. During their break, Jake had learned a little about Aero and almost nothing about Gadget. Aero was from a small town not much bigger than Jake and Cass's home. He had a cousin that got into the game as well but she started right after he left the tutorial zone. Ended up in a Hub far from where he was.
Aero had laughed and explained when he wanted to go pick her up she had insisted she could do it herself. Aero figured it would be months before she could make it on her own but they were looking forward to when she got here.
When they finally got back to town and cashed in. Ella despite the long run back wanted to stay logged in and hang out some more. Gadget instantly agreed and Aero was on the fence about it. It was now pretty late in the day by the time they got back.
Ella was trying to convince Jake to stay logged in while hanging off him in a manner that made Cass's exhaustion vanish.
"We can't stay." Cass snapped at the girl.
"You can log out. Jake doesn't have to." Ella snapped back.
"No, he can't." Cass practically growled in frustration when Ella wouldn't let him go. Jake was trying to think of a way to defuse the citation without hurting anyone's feelings.
"And why not?" Ella snapped back.
"Because it is late and if my parents come over looking for me. Even they will freak out finding me in bed with a boy." Cass growled. Ella finally let go of Jake to stand dumbfounded.
Cass grabbed Jake's hand while everyone was either slackjawed or in the case of Gadget going nuts and dragged him to the logout room.