Ikky didn't know how long he had been sleeping, but he woke up with the pain of many of his wounds, which reminded him of the realism of what he had experienced the day before. Some were beginning to heal, the minor ones; however, the cuts on his arm, the tear on his leg and, above all, his shoulder did not look good.
His shoulder also had an ashy tone, as if it were infected. He tried to clean the wound with the water from the waterskin, but the pain from the cold contact almost made him faint. And the worst part was yet to come.
Ikky searched through the goblins' tents and belongings until he found something that looked like a needle and thread. They were rough and larger than he would have liked, but if he wanted to survive, he had no other option; he had to sew up those wounds.
The boy knew that as soon as this phase of the cave was over, if everything remained the same as in the previous test, his body would be in perfect condition again. But the boy had learned the hard way that the level of pain realism in the game was overwhelming, and the greater the challenges, the worse it would be. It was better to get used to it, dehumanize yourself, and learn to endure.
The boy bit a stick and began to stitch his leg live. He passed out from the pain halfway through and had to continue when he recovered a bit after pouring all the water from the wineskin over himself. When you do that, your whole body hurt horribly, something indescribable, something overwhelming. But his mind was slowly escaping from his old personality, he was no longer Leon, the clumsy boy who pirated video games and was unable to face a simple rat. Now he was Ikky, his alter ego, and he had to endure, learn, and grit his teeth when things got tough like now.
In real life, with those wounds he would be a cripple forever, but this was just a tutorial for a game, he had to try to survive to go beyond what was reasonable, to be able to unlock all the advantages he could. His mind sometimes wandered about what he had to do, about how he had to be in the game. Most likely it was the result of the fever and the pain and delirium caused by the serious infection.
He made an effort to get going, he needed to get his mind away from the memory of the pain.
He scattered all the loot he had found on the corpses on the floor, including the loot he found in the goblin tents and in the large pavilion that must have belonged to the chieftain.
The findings were as follows: A finely crafted long sword, Ikky was evaluating it, it was better than any of the weapons he had had up to that moment. The same went for a battle axe with engravings on the side.
It was easy to deduce that there had been many adventurers who had entered that cave, and they had not survived. There were many other things that were not of great quality but could be of help in a pinch, such as three knives and four daggers.
Among the various things, one in particular caught Ikky's attention was a two-handed iron hammer, it was even too heavy for Ikky to handle, and that was despite his strong and enhanced body. At least that hammer must have weighed a hundred kilos.
The great joy that Ikky got was an infantry spear similar to the one he had broken but of better quality, it would be a good substitute for his favorite weapon until now.
To complete his outfit Ikky found a coverall, or to put it in some way a long leather jacket, and two capes one long and one short. It's not that the capes seemed very useful or comfortable, in the real world capes were almost only used at costume parties, moving and fighting with one was something more complicated than it might seem at first glance.
Another advantage that he found among all the loot was that he could replace his old wooden shield that was completely destroyed, it was a metal shield, medium sized, it had some dents, but it would serve to protect him in the following tests.
However, the disappointment came with the footwear he found, the leather boots were too tight; and the boots with metal toes, which surely clearly belonged to the corpse that Ikky baptized as the dwarf from the entrance were even smaller. Only a pair of simple leather and cloth sandals fit his feet, it was better than nothing, and better than the rags he was wearing, but seeing the comfortable leather of the boots, the boy lamented his bad luck.
There were many more things, including three backpacks, two shoulder pads, a horned helmet, a buckler, a sleeping bag, and several small bags that were tied to the belt to carry coins, in which he found a total of 54 gold coins, 110 silver and 30 copper, as well as three blue gems and a journal, although he could not read the language in which it was written.
Ikky did not want to get rid of anything, so as best he could, he gathered everything into one of the backpacks, ready to crawl out of there but with all the loot.
There were no other tunnels or branches from the cavern. The surprise came when, beyond the mushroom forest, where the cavern narrowed, beyond the enclosure of the strange six-legged sheep, the walls were no longer natural and were carved from large solid blocks of stone. At the end, two columns flanked what was clearly a square door, ancient and most likely not made by goblins.
Doctor Steward received a call, they had just started the test and he had the reports of all the players in front of him. He answered the phone in a friendly and bored tone.
"This is Steward"
"Good morning doctor, how are the boys doing?"
"Everything as expected, some players' readings have shot up in the pain reception area, they must be having a bad time in there, but nothing we hadn't anticipated. Well, I'm lying, there's one in particular who seems to be getting beaten up more than the rest but like I said, nothing to worry about."
"Let us know if there's anything important."
"I will, don't worry, now if you'll excuse me, I have reports to fill out..."
Steward hung up without giving the conversation a chance to go on any longer, the paperwork for controlling two thousand players in an induced coma piled up on his desk. He sighed and continued filling out the reports.