We reached the edge of the city after an hour and a half of traveling. This was revealed by Frank who was keeping time with his watch. Based on the pace we had set, the distance was probably about three miles or five kilometers from the plaza to the wall. The wall itself was tall, about the height of a four-story building, and completely smooth. That was clearly another minor oddity; I guessed that something had made it with magic or some system skill.

After another fifteen minutes of walking along the wall in one direction, we found the gate or at least a hole through the wall. It was shaped like a half circle.

“This is odd and unsettling,” I muttered.

“What is it?” Jim asked.

“There is no portcullis or door. Also, there are no towers or stairs to get up on top of the wall, either.” There was silence at my explanation. The wall was also massive and appeared to be quite thick based on the tunnel through it. The purpose of a wall was to keep things out. I doubted a wall this size was for people.

“This whole place is cursed,” Frank muttered and gripped his club tighter.

“Alright, we keep the same formation. If you hear or sense anything dangerous, speak up softly. Also, look up a lot and watch out for ground tremors. If we retreat, retreat as a group. If there is a monster or anything out there. Don’t hesitate. Just swing and hit it. Don’t hit your teammates. Questions?”

“Any idea what may be out there?” Frank asked.

I considered the question for a moment.

“If game logic holds true, then the starting monsters are going to be slimes, goblins, wolves, boars, or rabbits in order of difficulty for us to handle.” Anything fast would be a headache, especially with my weight.

“Why are rabbits at the end?” Jim asked.

“They would probably have horns and be extra fast. Making them very hard to hit. Anything else?” They both shook their heads. My feet were hurting, and my body was sore, but I needed to push myself. Before I had become a tub of lard, I had done a lot of hiking. I had let myself go, unfortunately, but I had the mindset to push through the pain so I could suck it up with the best of them.

The key thing about mental toughness was to push through the minor pain and boredom, not to ignore it. Pain was an indicator of damage or problems, but I wasn’t going to lie down and die. I hated this situation. I hated sweating from exercise, and I hated the very idea of stupid systems with unlimited power. Unfortunately, the universe didn’t care about what I hated and complaining wasn’t going to fix my problems.

We made our way through the tunnel, which was about five meters long or about sixteen feet. It was a thick wall. It made me worried about what the wall was actually for. The rough stone ground present in the city and tunnel cut off at the very exit with dirt being immediately at the exit. There was no patio or platform from where the tunnel reached the other side of the wall.

On the other side was a slight decline and then a forest. It appeared to be a pine forest and not a jungle, thankfully. The trees were shorter than the height of the wall when I poked my head out of the tunnel and looked up. The ground also appeared to be sloping gently away from the outside edge of the wall. That would make returning more tiring and retreat more difficult.

I stepped completely outside and looked to my left and right. There was only a slight clearance between the wall and the forest, which was another oddity. For a wall to be effective, the area in front of it needed to be cleared for a sizable distance so ranged attacks and observation would be effective.

With the size of the tree growth nearby, the trees had been around for quite a while. Decades, if their growth pattern was the same on Earth. That made the lack of dust in the city even more concerning. This place felt artificial. Like an amusement park or a museum where things look real, but they were all fake.

“I don’t hear any animals,” Jim whispered.

I listened carefully and there was only the sound of a slight breeze shaking the pine trees. He was right, and it was a good reminder that teammates had their usefulness in catching things I might miss. I looked at the ground. There were some isolated patches of grass, weeds, bushes, and a lot of pine needles. There were no rocks.

I used my club to poke the ground and push aside the needles. There was compacted dirt there, under the dead pine needles. I touched the dirt and there was only a minor amount of moisture.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we made our way into the forest. The terrain was a gentle downhill slope away from the city, which would make figuring out how to go back possible if the sun became obscured. The sun was clearly moving, since there were shadows, and it was no longer directly overhead.

We walked slowly for about ten minutes. That was when I heard a noise. Something like the slosh of water in a bucket. I held up my left hand, and we came to a stop. I then slowly made my way forward. It was a blue slime about the size of a medicine ball, plodding across the ground. I noted a lack of pine needles where it had passed.

The slime itself was like thick blue lemonade. Kind of translucent, but with a thick blue tint and particles floating around inside of it.

“Watch out for other monsters,” I said quietly. I then reached down and picked up a handful of pine needles. Making my way forward, I tossed the handful of pine needles at the monster and quickly took a couple of steps back right after. The slime paused for a moment as the pine needles sank into its body and dissolved.

It then moved towards me. The main issue with attacking the slime was the height difference. It would be hard to get a good swing, like a baseball batter. I went for a golf swing with one hand instead of two to keep my distance. I struck the slime with all my strength and quickly retreated.

The wood club was smoking slightly from the attack; the slime juice that had adhered to the club was dissolving the wood. The slime itself was leaking from the area I had just struck. I moved back towards the slime and struck again on a different side. It leaked even more. Two more strikes and it was half deflated and no longer moving.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

It suddenly burst into a fine dust that disappeared moments later. I blinked twice, but the dust had just vanished.

I carefully approached the kill location and saw a small crystal about the size of the end of my thumb, shaped spherically like a marble. It was a very light blue and fairly clear.

The dust from the slime monster had completely disappeared, not just dispersed. There was nothing on the crystal, even though it had been covered in dust initially. I picked up the crystal and nothing happened. I went back to my teammates and handed it to Frank first. He looked at it for a bit and passed it to Jim, who then passed it back to me.

“Probably worth some points. Not sure how much though. Could be 1, 5, 10, or 100 for all we know,” I said quietly. I was hoping it was a lot, with the damage my wood club had suffered.

“No idea?” Frank asked. I didn’t have all the answers, just educated guesses, but I couldn’t be annoyed. Keep things friendly and avoid drama.

“It is a question of scale and progression speed. Low points mean a slow progression and a need for a lot of farming or grinding of monsters. High points imply that the end-game monsters will have insane powers, like a world-destroying chaos dragon.”

“Maybe we should head back now?” Jim suggested. I looked at Frank and he just shrugged. I wanted to scream at these idiots. Just stop now?! We needed to grind. Grind as much as possible. Being afraid was fine, but going back now would lead to a slow death.

“We need more points. Once people realize about the slimes, they will come out here. Then it will be much harder to kill them. Like a gold rush. At least in the plaza, everyone is looking at each other, but out here…”

“No one is around,” Frank muttered, and I nodded.

“So, we need to get ahead of other people then,” Jim said.

At least someone was finally getting how things worked.

“Exactly. I didn’t say this before where other people might overhear, but it looks like people can upgrade themselves with points from the store. If we get points from killing monsters, then the people with the most points will be the most violent.”

“What kind of upgrades?” Frank asked. Clearly, he had not been browsing the store or asking the right mental questions.

“They were labeled Body, Mind, Spirit, Perception, and Aura. Each upgrade cost 100 points,” I explained.

“I don’t like any of this,” Jim muttered. Tough luck buttercup. There is no one to call for help. It was do or die. Cultivating a sense of urgency before you reached the die part was important. Unfortunately, most people lacked that ability.

“Well, the slimes are easy to fight. Just have to avoid getting anything on you.” I looked at my damaged club. “Hard on the club, though,” I muttered.

“Let’s eat to keep up our energy,” Frank suggested. We both agreed and sat down. We then got fruit out of our packs and ate.

I needed the break and the energy the oranges and apples gave me was an immense help. I tried not to think how the fruit would purge my digestive tract, though I would rather have constipation than diarrhea. There had been no paper products in the store. I had checked for them specifically.

“Leave our trash here, or take it with us? Leaving it means leaving a trail, but keeping the city clear. Also, we can see how the remains are affected outside the city. Taking them means trying to be stealthy,” I asked the group. Much better than ordering them. It was exhausting having to think over every interaction to avoid drama, if at all possible.

“Leave the rubbish,” Frank said.

“I also agree. Would be interesting to see if they mold over,” Jim said.

“Good idea. If there is mold, that means there are bacteria and stuff. I haven’t seen any mold or moss on the trees though. The forest is creepy in how uniform it all is,” I said a bit softly while looking around. This place was creepy.

“Unnatural. No streams, no insects, no pinecones either,” Frank brought up, and I nodded. I had also noticed that. It was good to have confirmation about my observations.

“Like a fake forest. Or what some being would do to make a forest-like appearance, but leave out all the minor details,” Jim said.

“I haven’t seen any dead wood. Have either of you?” I asked they both shook their heads and I let out a sigh. “Was hoping to carve out a bowl for water and food. Fire will also be tricky.” I felt hungry. I wanted to keep eating the last of my fruit but held off.

I needed to space out the meals. If a slime crystal was worth 1 point, then that meant trouble. We piled up our rubbish and then slowly got up. I felt sore and tired. Even moving as slowly as I was, as a fat person, it was exhausting regardless.

We kept going slightly downhill and soon came across another slime. This time Frank was the one to take it out carefully, copying my method, and got a crystal. He was careful to avoid striking the same spot as I had been, so the slime acid that leaked out didn’t destroy his club.

After that, we ran across a group of two slimes. Jim and I each took out a slime, and we kept the crystals from the slimes we killed. With a fighting rotation, it was the fairest way to divide up the crystals and spread out the effort.

We ran into slimes more quickly after that, and soon we had ten crystals each and our clubs were looking a lot worse.

“We should head back. I don’t want to be out here at night,” Frank said.

“I agree,” Jim added. He had been the most hesitant so far out of the two of them. I wanted to keep pushing for more crystals, but that was dangerous, and I was tired. My shoulders and arms were very sore from all the clubbing I had been doing. Not the fun kind of clubbing either.

We made our way back uphill without running into any slimes and found the tunnel entrance in the wall easily enough.

There hadn’t been enough open sky to the horizon to observe the sun’s movement, which annoyed me. I could use that to estimate how similar this world was to Earth by observing the time it took the sun to set over the horizon and timing the movement.

One trick was to hold up one’s hand facing the sun. Each finger from the sun to the horizon was 15 minutes, four fingers represented an hour. If there was a large enough difference, that would confirm this was no longer Earth. I was pretty sure, but confirmation would be nice.

We began making our way back to the plaza. The idea was to get close tonight and then deal with the crystals before dawn when things should be at their quietest. Thankfully, Jim had a good memory and kept track of the way we needed to go back. I wouldn’t want to get lost in this place, with all the similar-looking stone buildings. I was struggling to keep up, which made remembering the path difficult.

“The plaza should be just up ahead after that turn,” Jim said, and it was getting quite dark. There were stars in the sky that supplied some light, but not much.

“Alright, here,” I picked a nearby house, and we went up to the second floor. The stairs were just grey stone like the rest of the building. We went to the far side of the room from the stairs near a rectangular window that overlooked the street and sat down against the wall. I called it stone instead of concrete since the ground in the city was covered with stone, but it could easily be a concrete mix.

“That was exhausting,” Frank muttered as we got out the last of our fruit.

“Yeah. At least the slimes were—” A scream pierced the silence that hung over the city. There was shouting and more screaming. We just sat in silence. While it would be cool to be a hero, I didn’t have the strength or ability. This was a reminder I couldn’t afford to be weak.

A single wound would spell disaster with how out of shape I was. If I lost or had a hand crippled, I wouldn’t be able to access the store, which would be an even greater disaster. Our group of three was just large enough to dissuade people from causing trouble. At least that was my hope.

I wasn’t going to cry or complain. This was something I could do. I could live. I fell into an uneasy sleep, completely exhausted. My thoughts went to my family; I swore to myself I would make it back to see them no matter what.