Reflexively, Jay looked over at Sarah, wanting to protect his little sister. She met his eyes and shrugged.

“Don’t look at me. I can’t log out until the Tumult Corp. henchmen get me out of here. I doubt they’re going to do that before my diagnostics finish.”

Jay opened up his game menu, biting the bullet on checking for the logout button. The button was clearly there and didn’t seem to have any issues. He tried activating it and was signed out of the game.

Waking up inside of his full dive harness, Jay muttered under his breath. “If anyone gets their character deleted, I hope it’s Carlos. He made me panic for no reason.”

Jay re-activated the dive link, appearing right where he had left the game. Even though he had been gone for a full minute, people still laughed at him when he returned. He let them get it out of their system, entertaining himself by making faces. Which backfired, making them laugh more.

When everyone settled down, Sarah glanced at where the Scyllo creature was last seen. “What are we going to do about that creature? We probably can’t tank it, even switching between Lester and me. With only two healers, it’s going to be difficult to keep us up. Besides, that thing was flinging us around like rag dolls. That’ll make it hard to keep aggro, and I don’t want to know what would happen if that thing hits one of you.”

“Most of my healing is over time, anyway,” Jenny said. “Carlos would have to try spam healing you and hope the creature didn’t take a chunk out of him.”

“Normally, I would comment about how I’m not afraid of some silly little snake,” Carlos said, hand on his hip. “But I don’t want to mess with that thing.”

He paused momentarily and added, “Well, maybe a little.”

Lester looked over at the tangled-up campsite. “The problem is, we can’t set up a full camp without the tent. We have items for doing portable crafting, but those items require a working campsite with a fire.”

“We didn’t bring an extra tent?” Jay asked.

“I only brought one tent,” Lester shot back. “I don’t suppose one of you brought another?”

The party went in a small circle, sounding it off, but nobody else had brought another tent. Jay wanted to needle Lester, but there wasn’t really any point. Also, Jay hadn’t brought a tent, so anything he could say would bounce back at himself. He hadn’t even known there were portable crafting items, let alone considering what it took to set one up.

There was something Jay could do to help the situation, though. He was swift, especially in combat. His Speed statistic was nearly one hundred, but beyond that, he had a 35% boost to movement speeds during combat. The snake was fast, but he thought he might be quicker with all his increases.

Jay checked through his inventory, hoping for a movement-boosting potion. Sarah hadn’t provided anything like that if such potions even existed. She did restock his novice perception potions and damage-reducing potions. Both of those would be valuable in luring the snake away.

He also had spiderwalk potions. Those seemed highly useful, but he couldn’t think of a way to use them on the wide-open rocky beaches. It might be worth climbing one of the palm trees once they started scouting, now that he thought about it.

“Jay?” Lester asked. “Are you paying attention? We need to figure out a way to get the tent back. It’s the only one we brought, and I don’t think we’ll be finding a replacement any time soon. Not on the island.”

“I have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it,” Jay said.

“We’re not exactly drowning in ideas,” Lester replied. “So try me.”

Ignoring the drowning reference, Jay glanced around the group to gauge their reactions as he explained. “I think I can kite this thing away from the tent. I only need to hit it with a bolt or two to get its attention. I’m very fast in combat, but beyond that, I just got a dodge ability I can use in the air. It’ll help me avoid the creature’s swings if I time it right.”

Sarah and Casey’s reactions were neutral, although he could tell Casey wasn’t thrilled. Ken looked a bit excited by the idea, but his sister was nervous.

As far as Lester, his body language tensed up, and he sighed. “You’re just full of good ideas today, aren’t you? It’s not going to be easy for us to jump in and save you. None of us can match you step for step. I don’t suppose you have a solution for what to do if you get in trouble?”

“That’s not really even a problem for me,” Jay said, unable to stop himself from being a little smug about it. “Worst case scenario, I’ll drop my vine shield ability. You’ve seen what it can do. It’ll poison the creature, and I can run away while the healing buff is active. There’s no way it can burn through all that healing while I try to run away. It’s not that far from the beach to the trees.”

“That is actually a pretty good point,” Lester said, seriously considering the opportunity.

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Taylor Lynn shook her head, thinking of past moments in her shared gaming history with Jay. “He is probably the best person to try insane moves, and it wouldn’t even be the first time. I’ve seen him pull off weirder.”

“Alright,” Lester finally agreed. “It’s settled. Jay will lure the creature away so we can reclaim our tent. But first, we ensure he’s as buffed up as possible for the fight. I really, really don’t want to be stuck on this island forever. And for all we know, we need a Monster Hunter to get out of here.”

Jay hadn’t considered the possibility that the compass was uniquely Monster Hunter related and that the class might be intrinsically linked to the island. The game was sometimes insane enough for things like that to be the case. If true, that would be another serious design flaw on Tumult’s part.

The party entered a phase of making Jay as robust against damage as possible. Carlos added his shield to protect Jay from any incoming damage. Jenny was able to add her tag ability that healed over time, as well as her defensive tag. Casey offered a boost to his armor through one of her Beast Magic spells.

The preparations ended with Jay downing a damage reduction and a perception potion. Stretching like an anime character, even though his avatar didn’t need to stretch, Jay quickly took in his target.

He didn’t see any ripples in the water where the snake had sunk below the waves several minutes previously. But he also had little time to waste since his buffs were ticking away.

Jay jogged out onto the rocky beach.

The party stayed behind him, watching with a range of expressions. Some were nervous. Some were excited to see how the battle went; Ken was curious to see what Jay could do under pressure. Some even took bets.

“Ten gold Prints says he gets himself killed,” Sarah said. “Anyone think he’s going to make it?”

“I do!” Jenny said excitedly. “I’ll take the bet. Ten gold Prints he survives the snake.”

Jay moved quickly over the rocky surface. When he was halfway to the shoreline, the creature surged out of the water. The Scyllo glared down at Jay defiantly. The gaze seemed to wonder how he got the harebrained scheme to challenge it. If a lion was the king of the jungle, then this sea snake was the king of the sea.

Or maybe Krakens. He wouldn’t put it past Tumultua Online to have Krakens.

Jay was fast enough to avoid the creature’s first lunge. The slam attack landed on the rocky surface, though impacting the rocks didn’t seem to damage the beast. The next attack came as another slam, weakened by the shorter distance. Jay sprinted forward, managing to outrun the body of the snake.

The sea monster adjusted, sweeping its body out toward him. He had only a split second to decide what to do, so he leaped straight into the air. He quickly realized the vertical leap wouldn’t be enough, so he activated his Aerial Dodge to push himself higher and create horizontal distance.

So far, the creature was long enough to reach him without too much trouble. The move saved him from the sweep attack but, unfortunately, left him in midair. The air dodge wasn’t infinitely usable, requiring a short cooldown.

Following instinct was great for experienced players, but when it came to Tumultua Online, Jay was just cracking the surface of understanding his abilities.

Another sweeping attack came through the air, crushing into Jay. He watched his health bar dip below the halfway mark from the single attack. Even with the shield, the attack was destructive. As he rolled across the rocky surface, he summoned a potion from his inventory. The potion quickly disappeared down his throat as he tried to distance himself from the creature.

Fortunately, the snake had bashed him hard enough to create a gap. The creature was finally moving away from its original location, chasing after Jay. He sprinted and made use of his full speed boost. The sea monster quickly whipped at him again, but he could dodge that attack by simply rolling out of the way.

Jay thought about flying, which would have made the escape more manageable. But he dismissed it for the same reasons he had earlier. Plus, in all likelihood, the sea snake would just give up as soon as he took off.

Glancing over his shoulder, Jay realized the creature wasn’t chasing after him. The sea snake was postured straight up in the air but had paused several feet away from him. The confusion slowed him down slightly, but he continued running, glancing over his shoulder for the sword to fall.

The decision to keep his eye on the snake immediately paid dividends. The creature swung its body forward again, sending a globule of green poisonous acid hurtling toward Jay. The Monster Hunter used his air dodge to avoid the projectile, which promptly started to eat through the rocks he had left behind.

Jay continued the deadly chase with the monster, dragging it away from the tent. The snake didn’t pause when moving, preferring to wade violently, lunging forward to make up the missing space. He almost made it free and clear.

After air dodging out of the way of another acid glob, Jay was struck by a slam attack that came way faster than he anticipated. The move crushed him into the ground. Through happenstance or learning from its mistake, it didn’t try to sweep him again, which would have created distance. Instead, the creature pulled back to rapidly slam him again.

Jay knew he wouldn’t be able to run away in time, and his air dodge was on cooldown since it was just utilized. His health was blinking red from the blow that wasn’t blocked by any shield.

He activated Maragon’s Blossoms, praying the move would buy the party enough time to collect the tent.

When the vine shield expired, and he felt the powerful healing energy coursing through him, Jay sprinted back into the line of trees. He quickly circled back to his party, who were already setting the tent up in the trees.

Jay watched as Sarah handed over ten gold Prints to Jenny, but nobody explained it to him. He was too distracted and pumped full of adrenaline to care. He started helping with the tent.

The party worked to set up the camp. The tent far and away took the most time. After the tent, Taylor Lynn could quickly create a fire from fallen branches using her fire magic. The portable crafting stations simply popped into being when activated. The hardest part of setting them up was finding a proper place to put them in the camp’s radius. The stations couldn’t collide with a tree, an immersive element Jay was actually grateful for. Nobody wanted to try and craft inside of a solid tree.

Once the campsite was fully set up and the crafting machines were ready to go, the party sat down to work on some crafting. They worked at this in the middle of an island. An island they were stranded on. A land where death would result in permanent character deletion. An island where a recently antagonized sea monster lurked nearby.

But they crafted with a purpose.