Unlike the other times, a small yellow marble dropped.
Challenge: Kill 100 Balloon Monsters. Reward: ?
053/100
When the Balloon Monsters popped, they would leave behind some blue leather sheets only. But this time, there was a small yellow marble — or now that Jack was looking closer at it, a yellow crystal inside the monster?
“What is that?” Brian said.
“I dunno. Maybe some mana thing or reward? I have no idea. But sometimes in games monsters drop loot. So maybe it’s something like that?”
“You should eat it,” Lucas said.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” Jack said, and showed the yellow marble into his pocket.
Though the leather sheets were thin, it was starting to be too much to carry. They had about 150 of these blue leather sheets and they decided to see if they could bring it back home.
Brian turned his jacket into a temporary bag where they put all the leather and they rotated who had to carry it. They decided that before leaving this place, they would all split carrying equal parts in their arms when they pressed the exit button. They also agreed to buy a real backpack when they got back home.
”I hope we can sell it or some shit. We need to get our funds up” Brian said.
“We don’t even know if it’ll let us take it out to the real world,” Lucas said.
“I’m guessing it will. I’m pretty sure that this knife fighting skill I’ve got I’ll be able to use in the real world. And it lets us bring our normal clothes and normal knives. By the way, how are those other people in the arena even fighting? I didn’t see any of them carrying any weapons. And have they been here longer than us? Is this the first day this shit popped up? We should research shit,” Jack said.
“Yeah yeah we can think about that later, let’s just all clear this quest first. I think we should change strategies, this is going too slowly,” Brian said.
“How?”
Currently all three of them stayed in a group and rotated fighting a Balloon Monster one at a time after Jack showed them how to defeat the first one and then afterwards drilled them on the correct stance.
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Sometimes they would follow his instruction, other times they would revert to bad form.
“So I’m thinking this,” Brian started explaining, “we do a three role rotation every 10 monsters killed. So the first person’s job is running ahead and gathering monsters and making them follow him. Then the second person’s job is killing them. And the third person’s job is to be behind the second person, ready to step in and help if something goes wrong.”
They all agreed it was a good idea and decided to do that plan.
The plan worked well in terms of increasing their grinding speed, but sometimes the ‘scout’ would bring in too many Balloon Monsters and the attacker would almost get bitten.
So far, none of the monsters had managed to bite them, but it was a real danger.
They don’t look too dangerous, but maybe they could bite a finger off? Jack thought.
The Balloon Monsters were really testing his reflexes. Now when he killed the monsters, he didn’t jump away but just stood his ground and kept the knife up and far ahead of himself and slashed downwards. He would have to be very fast when two of them attacked at once.
“What the fuck even is this place?” Brian said aloud.
“I dunno? Some kind of game? The advertisement you two showed me looked sketchy as fuck anyways. By the way, how come you two didn’t panic when you realized you were trapped in that room?” Jack said.
“What do you mean trapped?” Brian said.
Jack explained what he saw, how the doors wouldn’t open.
“Oh shit, I didn’t even think about that. I just went in right away like fuck it,” Lucas said.
“I did get claustrophobic, but I didn’t realize I was locked in and I’m not a bitch so I just went in, didn’t waste hours like you crying about it,” Brian said. “But, back on topic, what the fuck is this place?”
“Maybe aliens tryna kill us all?” Lucas said.
“What?” Brian said.
Lucas shrugged.
“I dunno. But I don’t think this is some kind of game. This place is too realistic, no way in hell humans have the technology to do this kinda shit.”
Some more time passed and they kept grinding Balloon Monsters while chatting away. Then it happened.
“Hey, it’s my turn now! I think I’ll get the reward after this!” Jack said.
My arms are tired as well. Finally this is over.
Jack slashed and popped the Balloon Monster.
Challenge: Kill 100 Balloon Monsters. Reward: ?
100/100
Challenge completed. Your reward is…