Loran slowly opened his eyes, the dim evening light filtering through the branches of his shelter. A cool breeze blew through, carrying the scent of dirt, smoke, and freshly cooked food. His mind slowly shook off the haze of sleep, an action he quickly regretted as he grew more aware of his body.
The muscles in his legs were unimaginably sore and stiff as if they had been replaced by wood and set aflame. Breathing was difficult as the muscles around his chest ached from the ceaseless efforts of pumping oxygen through his body, it even felt like there was a weight on his chest. Only his arms felt relatively normal, but even so, they felt as heavy as lead, and his initial attempts to move them were met with mild but firm protest and inaction.
Loran was exhausted beyond belief, and though he was too tired to form the words, he knew that there was not a force in the world that could make him move.
*GROWL*
‘...’
As he sat up, he realized that he wasn’t imagining the weight on his chest. An animal, a Moss Wolf cub, was currently fast asleep with its head lying on his chest.
‘...What the hell happened while I was out?’
Despite his many questions, he decided they could wait until he had something to eat and drink.
Pulling himself out from the wooden structure was more difficult than it had ever been. His arms refused to move without conscious effort on his part, and though he had yet to stand up it didn’t seem like his legs would be willing to support his weight. He wanted to be gentle with the wolf cub, but he was too sore to do much. Fortunately, the cub was tired enough to remain asleep despite his movements, its tongue hanging from its mouth as its head fell to the ground.
The more he moved, the more clumsy he felt. Gone were the dexterous movements he demonstrated in his past fights, now he was shambling around like a newborn giraffe. His senses also felt dull and muted. Sound lacked its usual crispness, and his vision was slightly blurred.
It took him over a minute to finally get into a sitting position outside of his shelter. The thought of trying to reach the kitchen in his current state almost made him faint (again) but he quickly noticed two bowls placed next to his shelter, one with jerky and the other with water.
The dried meat was unappealing to his painfully dry throat, but he nearly jumped at the water. He desperately began gulping down water, chugging the whole bowl in a matter of seconds. He was so thirsty that the crisp water nearly tasted sweet from how refreshing it felt.
He sighed once the water was gone, even checking his inventory in the hopes that he was misremembering dumping the last of it over his head during his run home.
‘God…that was the worst idea ever. Of all time.’
Eager for more water, Loran started to stand up, pulling on his shelter for support.
“Woah woah! Hold on Loran, stop moving!”
Surprised by the sudden outburst, Loran fell back to the ground. Turning his head, he saw Soze and Yang running up to him, concern radiating off of them.
‘I guess Goat Whisperer works on people too. Can't say I expected there to be a Skill for social interaction,’ he thought with a chuckle. “Hey guys,” he called out, his voice raw and strained. “Can I get some more water?”
“Sure, just stop fucking moving,” Yang said, taking his bowl and getting some water from her inventory.
“Why are- why are you guys panicking so much?” Loran asked, stumbling over his words as his lungs started to ache from speaking.
“I’m guessing you haven’t looked at your menu yet?”
A little confused by Soze’s question, he opened his menu and began reading through the debuff section. He expected to see [HEAVY EXHAUSTION], the debuff that Zed received after fighting The Wise One. Instead, what he saw was [EXTREME EXHAUSTION], and he immediately understood their concern.
[NAME]: Loran
[SPECIES]: Human
[LEVEL]: 30
[EXP]: 87740/4500
[STATUS]
{HP}: 30/150(-120)
{SP}: 20/400(-310)
{MP}: 200/200
[END]: 30(-24)
[STR]: 20(-16)
[AGI]: 36(-28.8)
[DEX]: 26(-23.4)
[PER]: 30(-24)
[INT]: 15
[SPT]: 20
[REMAINING ABILITY POINTS]: 3
[DEBUFFS]
[CRIPPLED HAND]
[EXTREME EXHAUSTION]
Remaining Duration: 2 Days, 20 Hours, 31 Minutes, 4 Seconds
Reduce all Physical stats by 80%.
Reduce HP Regeneration Rate to 0.
Reduce SP Regeneration Rate to 0.
Excessive activity will inflict [INSTANT DEATH].
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“...What the actual fuck?” Loran said after a moment of silence. 'An instant death effect is terrifying in and of itself, but that much stat reduction is just as much a death sentence. I think I'm weaker than I was at level 0!'
“Still want to try standing up?” Yang asked, calming down now that Loran understood the situation. She handed him his bowl of water.
“Oh yeah, actually I feel great. I was about to go for a run real quick.” Loran took the bowl and chugged it down in a few seconds. Feeling refreshed, he was now willing to start eating the jerky. “God, I royally fucked up with this one.”
“Yeah, about that,” Soze sat down in front of him. “What exactly happened out there?”
“Well…It was going alright at first. I had a spell to make a perimeter alarm so I could sleep, and honestly, I forgot just how weak everything in the west is so I barely even needed it. The only problem was fighting the Demon Bear.”
“Did you get like this fighting it?” Yang asked.
“Not exactly. Fighting it left me hurt and concussed. I managed to heal the concussion, but that gave me Mana Exhaustion. At that point, I was worried about being found by another bear so I…” Loran’s voice trailed off, not wanting to say it out loud.
“Loran, what did you do?” Soze asked, his tone suggesting that he already knew it was bad.
“I…talked myself into running back to the village in a single day.”
“...How far did you-”
“By that point, I had been hunting and moving west for about three and a half days.” Loran closed his eyes as he rested his face in his hands. “I don’t remember getting back to the village, so where ever you guys found me was where I collapsed after running and walking for 24 hours straight.”
Hazarding a glance at the others, Loran looked up to see Soze and Yang staring at him incredulously, as if he had told them that he had been unconscious because he decided to punch himself in the face a few dozen times.
“I- you- I don’t,” Soze was too stunned to form a clear sentence.
“What the fuck made you think this was a good idea?!”
“Hubris mostly. It didn’t seem completely outside the realm of possibility, and the more I thought about it the more I thought my stats were enough to pull it off, at which point I had to do it just to see if I could.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You’re a fucking idiot.”
“I get it,” Loran sighed. “Look, it took everything I had to beat the Demon Bear, and even that left me barely able to defend myself afterward. I knew I would get some kind of debuff, I just figured getting to safety was worth having to spend a few days recovering.”
“I just- please don’t do that ever again, okay?” Soze asked pleadingly. “You’ve been unconscious for almost two days since Maxie found you.”
“No need to ask. That whole experience was awful and didn’t even work.” Loran shook his head as he recalled how terrible his body felt just before he lost consciousness. He utterly failed to find words to describe the pain of running until he collapsed. “Never again.”
“Glad to see even you have limits to your bad ideas,” Yang said jokingly.
Loran shrugged. “We’re in a video game, do you have any idea how much stupid shit I’ve done to find out how much I can exploit?”
Yang was silent for a moment but then nodded her head understandingly. “That’s fair. I’ve honestly lost track of the number of times I’ve just stood in a fire before.”
Soze looked up at Yang, utterly bewildered. “Why?!”
“She wanted to see if the environmental flames were cosmetic or not,” Loran explained, having done the exact same thing before. “You won’t see that kind of thing in survival games or nature sims, but a lot of games will render flames just to decorate an area.”
“...Okay, whatever, moving on,” Soze said, turning his attention back to Loran. “You’re not going to die just from talking right?”
“No. When Zed had Heavy Exhaustion he just needed to avoid standing, I can’t imagine-” Loran stopped suddenly, hastily opening his menu before letting out a sigh of relief. “Yeah, it’s ticking down. Talking is fine.”
“You were just about to say you can’t imagine the game being that petty, right?” Yang asked.
“Yes, and mercifully I was right.”
“Well, if you can talk I need you to answer some questions.”
“Alright, let’s get this over with.”
“How was fighting the bear?”
“Tough as hell.” Loran shook his head. “There wasn’t anything particularly fancy about it, the damn thing was just big, powerful, and tanky as shit. Even with my spells doing over 100 damage per hit and causing Severe Bleeding I still ran out of MP.” Loran’s brow furrowed for a moment. “I think it’s on a higher difficulty tier than the ants too.”
“You mean it had more stats than it’s supposed to?” Yang asked, eyes widening.
“Maybe? I don’t remember the stats, but its Endurance to HP conversion rate was definitely higher.”
“So what’s the verdict, boss monster or is there an even higher level area to the west?” Soze asked.
“I think it’s too early to say. We need to know what else lives out there first.”
Soze nodded in agreement. “Alright. Any tips for fighting it?”
Loran quirked an eyebrow. “You planning to go after one?”
“Hell no. But you know at least a few people are going to be curious once I tell them about it at the Pit Meeting tonight.”
Loran paused to think before giving Soze a shrug. “The best advice I can give is don’t get hit.”
“Wow. Thank you, master strategist,” Yang said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“I already told you they’re nothing fancy. They’re just big damage sponges. Hit it till it dies.” Loran opened his mouth to say something else, but was stopped as a yawn came out instead. “Okay, I think… I think I need to rest.”
“Two more questions?”
“...Make them quick.”
“What happened to the bear?”
“It’s in my inventory. I get it for you guys when I’m less tired. What else?”
“What’s up with those wolves?” Yang asked.
“Yeah… was just about to ask about that myself.”
“Maxie was led to you by a Moss Wolf, and when she arrived you were basically being guarded by two more and a bunch of pups.”
Loran’s eyes widened at the information, his exhaustion pushed to the back of his mind as he tried to make sense of the situation. “I think…On the first day after I left, I ran into a group of wolves. I killed two before subduing the remaining three. After healing one of them I got this Skill called Goat Whisperer and we parted ways. They must have remembered me.”
Soze nodded. “Okay. That’s about what we assumed.” He turned towards The Pit and started walking away. “Now rest up, last thing we need is you dying to your own stupidity.”
Loran looked at him curiously. “You guys aren't even going to ask about the goat Skill.”
“No, we already knew about it.” Yang said. “I’ll explain later, but you’ve missed a lot.”
Loran watched as she followed after Soze. Questions were starting to form in his mind, but he quickly stamped them out. He was tired and his body desperately needed rest.
As he crawled back into the shelter, he realized that the wolf cub was now awake and staring at him with big, curious eyes.
“Uh, hey there?”
The moment he spoke the cub started bouncing on its paws slightly as it exited the shelter. It wanted to play with him.
“Okay, sorry but no,” he said, trying to be as physically expressive as his exhausted body would let him. “I really can’t right now.”
The cub seemed to understand him, expressing disappointment as it pressed its head against him.
Loran was never much of a pet lover, but being able to practically feel the young wolf’s emotions was making it incredibly difficult to say no, even knowing that playing would probably kill him.
‘If only I had some kind of…’ he blinked as an idea formed in his head. ‘...distraction?’
Loran opened his menu and focused on his debuffs. [MANA EXHAUSTION] had worn off at some point while he was unconscious, and he reread through the description on [EXTREME EXHAUSTION].
‘It only reduces my physical stats, and doesn’t stop my MP regen either.’
Deciding it seemed safe, Loran reached for his magic, forming a small ball of mana in his hand. It was as effortless as ever, no feeling of over-exerting himself.
The wolf cub was startled at the appearance of the mana ball, but any fear it felt was quickly replaced with intense curiosity. Loran focused a little harder, making the ball about the size of a volleyball, changing the structure to be solid and stable, and finally infusing it with more mana to make it last on its own for a few hours.
Once the ball was complete, he tossed it to the wolf cub. The ball didn’t bounce much, but it was lightweight, durable, and glimmered with ethereal light. The perfect toy for such a curious pup.
The cub was ecstatic, knocking the ball back and forth while trying, and failing, to get its jaws around it despite the ball being larger than its own head.
Loran chuckled at the sight and lay down. Closing his eyes for some much needed rest, he was confident that he had at least a few hours before being disturbed again.
*ROOOOAAAARR*
Loran’s eyes shot open as a distant roar sent a chill down his spine.
“...Shit.”