Chapter 5: [5] : The Campfire Encounter, Real World Bleed

Declan walked through the muddy twisted forest for what felt like an hour. The Weeping Thicket lived up to its name. The trees constantly dripped oily water and the wind blowing through the branches sounded like people crying.

His stamina bar was flashing a dull yellow. It was down to twenty out of a hundred. His stomach was also rumbling.

"Of course this game has hunger mechanics," Declan muttered as he stepped over a massive rotting log. "Because getting eaten by giant pigs wasn’t stressful enough."

Through the thick gray fog, he saw a flickering orange light.

He slowed down. Light usually meant people. And as Garret and his gang had just proved, people were currently the most annoying monsters in the Grid.

Declan triggered his Shadow Meld and pressed himself against a tree trunk. He became invisible and watched the light.

It was a campfire. It burned with a strange magical orange flame that didn’t seem to care about the heavy rain. The system threw a small text box into his vision.

[Location Discovered]

↳ Type: Neutral Campfire Safe Zone

↳ Effect: Monsters cannot enter a 10 meter radius of the fire.

↳ HP and Stamina regeneration increased by 50 percent while resting here.

Sitting on a wet log near the fire were two women.

One of them had short messy brown hair and was wearing a white tunic that looked a lot like a nurse’s scrub. She was furiously poking the fire with a stick.

The other woman had her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. She wore a green archer’s vest and held a basic wooden bow across her lap.

Her eyes were darting left and right and stared into the fog. She looked like a coiled spring ready to snap.

Declan watched them for a full minute. They didn’t look like Player Killers. They looked exhausted and terrified. That was the standard mood for Sector 4 Blight.

He stepped out of the shadow. His invisibility dropped.

Kendra the archer reacted instantly. She snapped her bow up and pulled an arrow back to her cheek. She pointed it straight at Declan’s chest.

"Stop right there!" she yelled. Her voice was shaking but loud. "Don’t take another step!"

The woman with the short hair jumped up and dropped her stick. Her name was Sloane. She held her hands up and they glowed with a faint green light. It was a healing skill probably. She stared at Declan and her eyes widened in pure horror.

Declan stopped at the edge of the firelight.

He raised his left hand slowly and kept his empty palm open. His right hand still held the cleaver but he kept it pointed at the ground.

He looked down at himself. Oh right.

He was wearing a pitch black trench coat.

The bottom half of it was caked in thick mud.

His face and hands were splattered with dark dried blood from the Razor Boar. A fresh spray of bright red blood from Garret was painted across his chest.

He looked like a serial killer who had just finished a very busy shift!

"I’m not looking for a fight," Declan said. His voice was calm and flat. I just want to sit by the fire."

"You look like you just crawled out of a meat grinder," Sloane said. She didn’t lower her glowing hands. She had a sharp cynical look on her face. "Whose blood is that?"

"Half pig. Half idiot," Declan replied honestly.

Kendra didn’t lower her bow. "Put the weapon away. Then you can sit."

Declan looked at the rusty mutated meat cleaver in his hand. He willed it into his inventory. It vanished into blue pixels.

"Happy?"

Kendra hesitated and then slowly lowered the bow. She didn’t put the arrow away though. "Sit on the other side of the fire.

Keep your hands where we can see them."

Declan walked over and collapsed onto a wet rock on the far side of the campfire. The warmth hit him immediately. His stamina bar started ticking up slowly. He let out a long breath and wiped the rain and dried blood off his forehead with his sleeve.

"I’m Declan," he said while staring into the flames.

"Sloane," the medic said and sat back down on her log. She pointed to the archer. "That’s Kendra. She has trust issues. I have issues with guys who show up looking like a horror movie villain."

"Fair enough," Declan said.

Sloane reached into a small burlap sack at her feet. She pulled out a piece of charred meat on a stick and tossed it across the fire.

Declan caught it.

"Eat," Sloane said. "It’s rat. Or something that looks like a rat. Tastes like burnt tires but it fills the hunger bar."

"Thanks," Declan said. He didn’t care what it was. He took a bite. It was tough and tasted like ash but his stomach stopped hurting.

For a few minutes, the three of them just sat there. They listened to the rain hiss against the magical fire.

"So," Sloane said to break the silence. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. "How much of this do you think is real?"

Declan stopped chewing. He looked at her.

"What do you mean?"

"The game," Sloane said. She waved her hand at the dark forest around them. "The Grid. Whatever this is. Don’t act like you haven’t noticed."

Kendra kept her eyes on the fog but she was listening.

"The pain is too real," Kendra muttered.

"When that slime monster hit me earlier, it felt like my skin was melting. Virtual reality isn’t supposed to bypass neural safety limits like that."

"It’s not just the pain," Sloane said. She rubbed the back of her neck. "Before I got thrown into the pod the physical pod in the real world the metal felt hot. Like burning hot. Like it was drawing way too much power."

Declan narrowed his eyes. He thought back to his own dive. He remembered the blinding white light and the feeling of his body being ripped apart. He remembered the system error messages.

[System Remark]

↳ Memory fragments fractured. Core data corrupted.

"Here’s the crazy part," Sloane continued.

Her voice dropped lower. "I was in a car crash three years ago. I’ve had chronic lower back pain ever since. Real physical nerve damage. The doctors in Sector 4 said it was permanent."

She stood up straight and twisted her torso left and right.

"Since I spawned into this mudhole the pain is completely gone. My avatar doesn’t have nerve damage. And when I check my system settings, there is no log out button. There is no pain dial to turn down."

Declan stared at his hands. He flexed his fingers. He had spent five years eating nutrient paste in a prison cell. He was malnourished and weak in the real world.

But here? Even with a base strength of 5, his grip felt solid. His muscles felt tight and responsive.

’It’s physically rewriting us,’ Declan thought silently. ’This isn’t a simulation. It’s a transfer.’

If dying here fried your brain in the real world, maybe surviving here upgraded your body in the real world. The megacorps weren’t testing a game. They were testing an alien dimension.

"Maybe the game is just really advanced," Kendra said. She didn’t sound like she believed it though.

"Yeah, sure. Advanced," Sloane snorted.

She looked at Declan. "What about you serial killer? Notice anything weird before you logged in?"

Declan chewed the last piece of rat meat and tossed the stick into the fire. He decided to play dumb. The less people knew about his glitched entry and his SSS Talent, the better.

"Just the usual corporate threats," Declan lied smoothly. "They told me to sign the waiver or rot in a cell. I signed. Now I’m here."

Sloane sighed and looked disappointed. "Right. We’re all just desperate rats running in a maze."

"Speak for yourself," Declan said. He leaned back against a rock. "I’m just trying to farm enough points to buy something better than rat meat."

Kendra suddenly stiffened. She pulled the bowstring taut again and aimed past Declan’s head into the dark woods.

"Quiet," Kendra hissed.

Sloane froze. Declan didn’t move but he opened his inventory menu in his mind.

The sound of the rain was heavy but underneath it there was something else. It was a low guttural growl. It sounded like metal scraping against stone.

"Something’s out there," Kendra whispered.

Her hands were shaking slightly.

Declan slowly stood up. He looked out into the thick fog beyond the ten meter radius of the campfire.

Pairs of glowing yellow eyes began to appear in the darkness. One pair. Then three. Then five.

They were surrounded.