The next morning, Loran woke to the sun shining on his face and the smell of roasting meat. The night had been uneventful after the argument with Bates; no wolves, no ants, no fighting, just the stars and the sounds of the woods.

Loran tried to sit up but fell back to the ground as he had put pressure on his left arm again.

'Right,' he thought bitterly, 'yesterday wasn't a dream.' It would take some time for Loran to stop using his injured arm, old habits don't go away so easily. 'Hopefully it won't get me in trouble during a fight.'

Sitting up properly this time, Loran looked around the campsite.

Calix was awake, preparing a breakfast of wolf meat sizzling on hot stones, as well as some kind of berry paste.

On the far side of the camp were the builders. They appeared wide awake as they spoke in hushed voices, drawing designs in the dirt.

He could make out a few members of Bates' team outside the spike barrier, still taking care of the night's last watch. They all looked tired, but still extremely focused.

Everyone else was still sleeping, although it seemed like Alexx was starting to wake up.

Stretching, Loran grabbed some food from Calix before sitting down by the edge of the river. His body still felt incredibly sore, especially his arm. One night wasn't enough time to refill his HP bar, and until then his injuries were going to be an annoyance.

'I may have to avoid combat even more than expected today.' They couldn't just wait for him to recover or have Alexx and Zed go without him. 'Hopefully, those two will be enough for whatever ends up happening today.'

Taking a bite of his food, Loran opened up his menu.

[NAME]: Loran

[SPECIES]: Human

[LEVEL]: 17

[EXP]: 10515/2600

[STATUS]

{HP}: 61.2/100

{SP}: 300/300

[END]: 20

[STR]: 10

[AGI]: 24

[DEX]: 24(-2.4)

[PER]: 30

[REMAINING ABILITY POINTS]: 3

'I probably won't be gaining any new Skills anytime soon, so it's probably best to just dump all this EXP into my stats right now.'

Using up over eight thousand EXP Loran was able to raise himself to level 20, giving him fifteen Ability Points to distribute. He took a few minutes to think about what stats to raise, before deciding that he would put ten points into END and five Points into AGI, raising them to 30 and 29 respectively.

Right now, dealing damage was not Loran's goal, and even if it was the ants were too tough for a few points to make a difference, so he quickly dismissed the idea of raising DEX or STR.

'I'll need to fix that in the future, but it'll be fine as long as I'm with the others.'

Because of [SP BOOSTER] Loran's HP was really low. It hadn't been a problem when fighting Spined Deer, Hell Pigs, and Moss Wolves, but the Iron Ants were on a completely different level. Tanking their attacks still wasn't feasible, but every point of HP would help keep him alive and possibly make it harder for them to so easily dismember him.

Additionally, more END meant more SP, which would allow him to use Skills more freely. Before he had thought about using Skills like [CRITICAL STRIKE] or [PULL] more frequently, but now Loran was only thinking about being able to have [SPRINT] active almost constantly.

'These ants are such a massive difficulty spike,' he thought. 'Only specialized builds like Alexx stand a reasonable chance against them. Even if this is supposed to be the higher-level area, it's right next to the starting zone.'

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"This game is so unbalanced," he groaned.

"Is it really?" Alexx asked, sitting down next to him.

"Yes, who in their right mind puts a high-level area like this next to the starting zone?"

The two were silent for a moment.

"I mean..."

Loran sighed. "Yeah yeah, the same kind of person who would trap us all here. I realized it the second I said it."

"Right, so what's the plan for today?" Alexx asked, trying to change the subject.

"For now I say we make our way for the eastern mountains. The nest probably isn't that close by but the sooner we can confirm that the better."

"Close huh?" Alexx turned his head, staring at the mountain tops in the distance. "Do you think we can even make it that far? I don't think anyone else has even made it halfway."

Loran shrugged. "It should be possible. Our main goal is exploration instead of hunting, so we can move more quickly without worry. Speaking of which," Loran glanced at his friend, "what kind of pace can you keep up for a large distance? Your AGI is still only 10 right?"

Alexx got a curious look on his face and stood up. "Hold on a second."

The two walked out of the campsite, telling the others that they were going to test something. As they walked Alexx was messing around with his menu.

"Okay," Alexx muttered as he closed his menu, "Let's try this."

After taking a moment to stretch, Alexx began sprinting along the river bank.

'What the hell is he doing?' Loran couldn't help but wonder.

After running about a hundred feet away he turned and ran back, stopping right next to Loran. Alexx began doing a few stretches. "How was that?"

"You think you can keep that pace for a few hours?"

"Probably."

"Okay, but why did you need to actually test it first?"

"I wasn't sure how much I could run." Alexx's eyes widened suddenly. "Oh hey, did you know that STR affects more than just your damage and lifting strength?"

"You didn't know?" Loran asked, mildly amused. "How did you...oh right, you've never played a VRRPG before."

Alexx became curious. "You mean stuff like this was standard in other games?" he asked as they went back into the camp.

"Not exactly standard, but it was becoming more popular."

For a very long time, most Virtual Reality games were programmed in almost the same way as traditional games. The program would take input from the player, calculate and update the existing game state, and then provide the player with sensory information to show what was happening. For VR games the code simply needed to be updated to accommodate a wider variety of player commands and sensory information.

The games themselves were basically the same. Players and objects could still clip through the environment, the lag could still make you teleport around the map, and NPC AI's were still basic enough that you could put a bucket on a shopkeeper's head and steal all of their possessions.

But as programmers began pushing the limits of Full Dive VR a new style of game design was discovered; Subconscious Rendering.

This method used the connection between the AetherGear and the player's brain to supplement the existing code. Essentially, the game code would define the rules of how the world worked and provide the necessary processing power, but the player would handle the finer details.

For example, the game would tell the player that they are looking at a block of granite, the player's brain would then imagine what such a block would look like, and then the game would render the imagined image.

Because of this, programmers could save time by providing simple but broad rules for their games which would allow for greater degrees of freedom than traditional design methods.

Continuing with the granite block example, if a player wanted to break the block into pieces, traditional games would need to have a model designed for each of the broken pieces or it could not happen. With Subconscious Rendering, the player can imagine what the broken granite would look like, allowing the game to render it. Even if they wanted to create an intricate statue it could be done.

This can be applied to everything the player sees. NPC movements and behavior can be slightly modified, all player commands can be accommodated, and even game glitches could be eliminated; all based on player perception.

Enhancing a player's physical abilities though was an unexpected effect discovered when developers applied Subconscious Rendering to RPGs. Just as Alexx had discovered his high STR let him jump higher, other players discovered similar effects, causing problems in games that weren't designed for players to be able to jump over impassible barriers or so quick they could evade traps meant to kill instantly.

"The games were designed with stats only increasing certain abilities," Loran explained as they sat down in the camp, "like STR only increasing damage. Subconscious Rendering caused those stat increases to affect every aspect of the body."

"So since my strength has increased it also strengthened my legs."

"Exactly. It's also more noticeable for you since you're min-maxing for STR."

"So what will the other stats do?" Alexx asked, brimming with curiosity.

Loran thought for a moment. "Well, END would also increase your general stamina. DEX would increase motor control and hand-eye coordination, instead of just being a damage or crafting stat. AGI can affect your sense of balance and reaction speed. And PER tends to cause headaches."

"Wait, headaches?" Alexx asked, his curiosity turned to confusion.

"Yeah," Loran sighed. "Raising sensory stats increases how much information your brain has to process at any given time. You can't tell when you're in the game but the moment you log out you can feel just how hard you've been pushing yourself."

"Isn't that bad, like for us right now?" concern clear on his face. "If we're stuck in here maybe we should avoid that stat?"

"It shouldn't be a problem yet. Besides, if you focus you can turn down your senses to a manageable level."

"Really?"

"Yeah, as long as we don't leave our senses running at full blast or get like one million PER we should be fine. Who knows, having a seizure may even force the auto-logout despite whatever Dr. Zheng has done to it."