Chapter 4: [4] : The Predator's Coat, Hunting the Hunters
Declan stood in the freezing rain of the Weeping Thicket. His finger hovered over the glowing system prompt. He had exactly twenty-five Origin Points.
Enhancing an item to +10 cost ten points.
For any normal player, this would be a massive waste of resources and a guaranteed way to destroy their gear.
For Declan, it was just Tuesday.
"System," Declan said. His voice was quiet in the fog. "Enhance the Tattered Trench Coat ten times."
A bright flashing light enveloped his body. It was so bright he had to squint. The system chimes rang out in his head and overlapped each other in rapid succession.
[System Enhancement]
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +1. Defense increased.
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +2. Defense increased.
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +3.
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +4.
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +5.
The light shifted. The familiar warning popped up telling him that the item had reached the normal cap and would shatter.
Declan just grinned. His SSS Rank Talent, Boundless Enhancement, kicked in and ignored the game's core rules entirely.
[Host Information]
↳ Talent: Boundless Enhancement activated. Cap removed.
[System Enhancement]
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +6.
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +7.
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +8.
↳ Tattered Trench Coat +9.
With every chime, Declan felt the coat changing against his skin. The cold wet sensation of the rain bleeding through the cheap fabric vanished. The rotting holes knitted themselves closed.
The nasty smell of wet dog faded away and was replaced by the scent of fresh high quality leather. The coat grew heavier and wrapped around his body like a second layer of muscle.
Then came the final chime. The light turned a deep shadowy purple.
[System Enhancement]
↳ Tattered Trench Coat has reached +10.
↳ Triggering Conceptual Mutation.
The purple light soaked into the fabric.
Declan looked down at himself. The coat was no longer a tattered gray rag. It was a sleek pitch black duster.
It looked like it was made from some kind of high end tactical material. It was completely dry despite the heavy rain pouring down on him.
A new status screen floated over his chest.
[Item Information]
↳ Name: Predator's Coat +10
↳ Tier: Scavenged (Mutated)
↳ Defense: 45 / 50
↳ Trait Unlocked: Shadow Meld
↳ Functionality: Grants absolute invisibility when the user is standing perfectly still in darkness or deep shadows. Moving, attacking, or taking damage breaks the effect instantly.
Declan whistled softly. "Defense went from four to fifty. And I get an invisibility cloak. Not bad for ten points."
He looked at his remaining balance. He had fifteen Origin Points left. He could save them or he could start upgrading his basic burlap pants. He decided to save them for now. He wanted to test this new toy.
The Weeping Thicket was incredibly dark.
The rotting trees cast long deep shadows everywhere.
Declan walked over to a massive hollowed out tree trunk. The inside was pitched black.
He stepped into the shadow and pressed his back against the wet wood and completely stopped moving.
He held his breath.
A tiny buff icon appeared at the bottom of his vision. It looked like a little black eye.
[System Ability Active]
↳ Shadow Meld
He looked down at his hands. He couldn't see them. He looked at his legs. Gone.
He was completely invisible and blended perfectly with the darkness. The moment he twitched his finger, his hand flickered back into view. He stopped moving and it vanished again.
"This is ridiculous," Declan thought. A smirk crept onto his face.
Before he could step out of the tree, he heard the squelching sound of boots in the mud. Multiple pairs of boots.
Declan froze. The Shadow Meld icon stayed active.
Four men walked out of the thick fog. They were wearing a mix of scavenged gear. The guy in the front had a rusty iron breastplate and a massive two handed club. He had a scar across his nose and looked like the kind of guy who robbed convenience stores in the real world.
"I'm telling you Garret, I heard a boar squeal over here," one of the men in the back said. He was holding a flimsy wooden spear. "A big one."
"If someone took down a Level 2 boar already, they probably have decent drops," Garret grunted. He was the leader with the club. "And if they just fought a boar, they are probably at low health. Easy pickings."
Player Killers.
Declan rolled his eyes. It hadn't even been an hour since they all dropped into this hellhole and people were already forming gangs to rob each other.
It made sense though. The tutorial voice said to trust no one. Some people took that to heart.
Garret and his crew walked right past the dead Razor Boar. They saw the massive pool of blood and the giant carcass dissolving into pixels.
"Look at this," Garret said. He poked the dissolving meat with his club. "Somebody definitely killed it. Check the area. Spread out. If you see some weak looking idiot limping around, break his legs and take his inventory."
The three goons nodded and started fanning out.
One of them walked straight toward the hollowed out tree where Declan was hiding.
It was a skinny kid with a rusty dagger.
Declan didn't blink. He didn't breathe. He just stood there and gripped his +10 Chipped Cleaver tightly.
The skinny kid stopped literally two feet away from Declan. Declan could smell the guy's bad breath. The kid peered into the dark tree trunk and squinted.
Declan was completely invisible. The kid saw absolutely nothing but shadows.
"Nothing over here Garret," the skinny kid yelled. He turned his back to Declan. "Just mud and dead trees. This place sucks."
"Keep looking you idiot," Garret snapped. He walked over to join the skinny kid. He passed right in front of the hollowed out tree. "The guy can't have gone far. Look for footprints."
Garret stopped right in front of Declan. His back was turned. He was looking at the mud to find tracks.
Declan smiled. The game was simple. You survive, you hunt, you evolve. These guys wanted to hunt him. That meant they were just walking loot bags.
Declan stepped out of the shadow.
The Shadow Meld icon shattered. Declan instantly materialized right behind Garret. He didn't say a word. He didn't make a cool speech.
He just raised the mutated meat cleaver and brought it down hard across Garret's exposed back.
Schwing!
The blade sliced through Garret's cheap leather shirt like paper. It left a shallow jagged cut from his shoulder to his waist. It wasn't a deep wound. It barely did any base damage.
But Declan didn't need base damage. He had the Hemorrhage trait.
Garret let out a confused grunt and turned around. "Hey, what the"
He didn't get to finish his sentence. The shallow cut on his back exploded! A massive spray of dark digital blood erupted from the wound. It was like a high pressure hose had been turned on inside his body.
"Aaaaaagh!" Garret screamed. He dropped his club and fell to his knees in the mud while clawing at his back. "Help! Help me! What is this?!"
His health bar appeared over his head. It was draining at a terrifying speed. Fifty HP a second. Garret only had about a hundred and twenty health total.
"Garret!" the skinny kid yelled. He backed up in pure horror. The other two goons froze.
Their eyes were wide as they stared at the man screaming in the mud.
Declan stood over Garret. His black coat was completely spotless and the bloody cleaver rested casually against his shoulder.
He looked like a nightmare that had just stepped out of the fog.
Three seconds later, Garret's screaming stopped. He face planted into the mud totally drained of blood. His body began to dissolve into blue light.
Declan looked up at the three remaining goons. He didn't run at them. He just took one slow step forward.
"Monster!" the skinny kid shrieked. He dropped his dagger and bolted into the fog as fast as his legs could carry him.
The other two didn't hesitate. They threw their weapons in the mud and ran in the opposite direction while screaming for help.
Declan didn't chase them. He had a base agility of 5. He wasn't catching anyone who actually wanted to run away. Besides, he didn't care about a bunch of cowards.
He looked down at the spot where Garret had died. There was a small pile of loot sitting in the mud. Declan knelt down and picked it up.
[System Resources]
↳ Origin Points: +15
↳ Item dropped: Rusted Iron Breastplate
↳ Item dropped: Heavy Wooden Club
"Declan crouched, collected the loot, and stood back up without a word.
He checked his system. He now had thirty Origin Points. He tossed the breastplate and the club into his system inventory. They were trash but maybe he could sell them later or use them for spare parts.
He stood back up and pulled the Predator's Coat tighter around his chest. The rain was getting heavier and the fog was getting thicker.
It was time to find a place to rest. He was overpowered sure, but his stamina was starting to dip from the adrenaline crash.
He needed a safe spot to sit down before he did anything else. He gripped his cleaver and started walking deeper into the Weeping Thicket.
-----x-----
Chapter 5: [5] : The Campfire Encounter, Real World Bleed
Declan walked through the muddy twisted forest for what felt like an hour. The Weeping Thicket lived up to its name. The trees constantly dripped oily water and the wind blowing through the branches sounded like people crying.
His stamina bar was flashing a dull yellow. It was down to twenty out of a hundred. His stomach was also rumbling.
"Of course this game has hunger mechanics," Declan muttered as he stepped over a massive rotting log. "Because getting eaten by giant pigs wasn't stressful enough."
Through the thick gray fog, he saw a flickering orange light.
He slowed down. Light usually meant people. And as Garret and his gang had just proved, people were currently the most annoying monsters in the Grid.
Declan triggered his Shadow Meld and pressed himself against a tree trunk. He became invisible and watched the light.
It was a campfire. It burned with a strange magical orange flame that didn't seem to care about the heavy rain. The system threw a small text box into his vision.
[Location Discovered]
↳ Type: Neutral Campfire Safe Zone
↳ Effect: Monsters cannot enter a 10 meter radius of the fire.
↳ HP and Stamina regeneration increased by 50 percent while resting here.
Sitting on a wet log near the fire were two women.
One of them had short messy brown hair and was wearing a white tunic that looked a lot like a nurse's scrub. She was furiously poking the fire with a stick.
The other woman had her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. She wore a green archer's vest and held a basic wooden bow across her lap.
Her eyes were darting left and right and stared into the fog. She looked like a coiled spring ready to snap.
Declan watched them for a full minute. They didn't look like Player Killers. They looked exhausted and terrified. That was the standard mood for Sector 4 Blight.
He stepped out of the shadow. His invisibility dropped.
Kendra the archer reacted instantly. She snapped her bow up and pulled an arrow back to her cheek. She pointed it straight at Declan's chest.
"Stop right there!" she yelled. Her voice was shaking but loud. "Don't take another step!"
The woman with the short hair jumped up and dropped her stick. Her name was Sloane. She held her hands up and they glowed with a faint green light. It was a healing skill probably. She stared at Declan and her eyes widened in pure horror.
Declan stopped at the edge of the firelight.
He raised his left hand slowly and kept his empty palm open. His right hand still held the cleaver but he kept it pointed at the ground.
He looked down at himself. Oh right.
He was wearing a pitch black trench coat.
The bottom half of it was caked in thick mud.
His face and hands were splattered with dark dried blood from the Razor Boar. A fresh spray of bright red blood from Garret was painted across his chest.
He looked like a serial killer who had just finished a very busy shift!
"I'm not looking for a fight," Declan said. His voice was calm and flat. I just want to sit by the fire."
"You look like you just crawled out of a meat grinder," Sloane said. She didn't lower her glowing hands. She had a sharp cynical look on her face. "Whose blood is that?"
"Half pig. Half idiot," Declan replied honestly.
Kendra didn't lower her bow. "Put the weapon away. Then you can sit."
Declan looked at the rusty mutated meat cleaver in his hand. He willed it into his inventory. It vanished into blue pixels.
"Happy?"
Kendra hesitated and then slowly lowered the bow. She didn't put the arrow away though. "Sit on the other side of the fire.
Keep your hands where we can see them."
Declan walked over and collapsed onto a wet rock on the far side of the campfire. The warmth hit him immediately. His stamina bar started ticking up slowly. He let out a long breath and wiped the rain and dried blood off his forehead with his sleeve.
"I'm Declan," he said while staring into the flames.
"Sloane," the medic said and sat back down on her log. She pointed to the archer. "That's Kendra. She has trust issues. I have issues with guys who show up looking like a horror movie villain."
"Fair enough," Declan said.
Sloane reached into a small burlap sack at her feet. She pulled out a piece of charred meat on a stick and tossed it across the fire.
Declan caught it.
"Eat," Sloane said. "It's rat. Or something that looks like a rat. Tastes like burnt tires but it fills the hunger bar."
"Thanks," Declan said. He didn't care what it was. He took a bite. It was tough and tasted like ash but his stomach stopped hurting.
For a few minutes, the three of them just sat there. They listened to the rain hiss against the magical fire.
"So," Sloane said to break the silence. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. "How much of this do you think is real?"
Declan stopped chewing. He looked at her.
"What do you mean?"
"The game," Sloane said. She waved her hand at the dark forest around them. "The Grid. Whatever this is. Don't act like you haven't noticed."
Kendra kept her eyes on the fog but she was listening.
"The pain is too real," Kendra muttered.
"When that slime monster hit me earlier, it felt like my skin was melting. Virtual reality isn't supposed to bypass neural safety limits like that."
"It's not just the pain," Sloane said. She rubbed the back of her neck. "Before I got thrown into the pod the physical pod in the real world the metal felt hot. Like burning hot. Like it was drawing way too much power."
Declan narrowed his eyes. He thought back to his own dive. He remembered the blinding white light and the feeling of his body being ripped apart. He remembered the system error messages.
[System Remark]
↳ Memory fragments fractured. Core data corrupted.
"Here's the crazy part," Sloane continued.
Her voice dropped lower. "I was in a car crash three years ago. I've had chronic lower back pain ever since. Real physical nerve damage. The doctors in Sector 4 said it was permanent."
She stood up straight and twisted her torso left and right.
"Since I spawned into this mudhole the pain is completely gone. My avatar doesn't have nerve damage. And when I check my system settings, there is no log out button. There is no pain dial to turn down."
Declan stared at his hands. He flexed his fingers. He had spent five years eating nutrient paste in a prison cell. He was malnourished and weak in the real world.
But here? Even with a base strength of 5, his grip felt solid. His muscles felt tight and responsive.
'It's physically rewriting us,' Declan thought silently. 'This isn't a simulation. It's a transfer.'
If dying here fried your brain in the real world, maybe surviving here upgraded your body in the real world. The megacorps weren't testing a game. They were testing an alien dimension.
"Maybe the game is just really advanced," Kendra said. She didn't sound like she believed it though.
"Yeah, sure. Advanced," Sloane snorted.
She looked at Declan. "What about you serial killer? Notice anything weird before you logged in?"
Declan chewed the last piece of rat meat and tossed the stick into the fire. He decided to play dumb. The less people knew about his glitched entry and his SSS Talent, the better.
"Just the usual corporate threats," Declan lied smoothly. "They told me to sign the waiver or rot in a cell. I signed. Now I'm here."
Sloane sighed and looked disappointed. "Right. We're all just desperate rats running in a maze."
"Speak for yourself," Declan said. He leaned back against a rock. "I'm just trying to farm enough points to buy something better than rat meat."
Kendra suddenly stiffened. She pulled the bowstring taut again and aimed past Declan's head into the dark woods.
"Quiet," Kendra hissed.
Sloane froze. Declan didn't move but he opened his inventory menu in his mind.
The sound of the rain was heavy but underneath it there was something else. It was a low guttural growl. It sounded like metal scraping against stone.
"Something's out there," Kendra whispered.
Her hands were shaking slightly.
Declan slowly stood up. He looked out into the thick fog beyond the ten meter radius of the campfire.
Pairs of glowing yellow eyes began to appear in the darkness. One pair. Then three. Then five.
They were surrounded.
-----x-----
Chapter 6: [6] : The Iron Jawed Hounds, Testing
The glowing yellow eyes moved closer to the edge of the firelight. The low scraping growls grew louder and echoed off the dead trees.
"Get behind the fire," Kendra ordered. Her voice was tight with panic. She kept her bow drawn and her eyes darted between the pairs of glowing eyes. "They can't come into the safe zone. The system said so."
Sloane backed up. Her hands glowed with that faint green healing light. "Yeah, but we can't stay by this fire forever. If they just wait us out, we'll starve."
The monsters stepped out of the fog and into the dim orange light of the camp.
They looked like wolves but their biology was completely wrong. Their bodies were covered in thick matted gray fur but heavy plates of rusted iron grew directly out of their shoulders and spines.
The worst part was their mouths. Their jaws were disproportionately large and their teeth were jagged interlocking pieces of solid steel.
Floating text appeared above the pack leader.
[Biological State]
↳ Name: Iron Jawed Hound
↳ Level: 4
↳ HP: 400 / 400
Declan counted them. Five hounds. Level 4.
That meant they were twice as strong as the Razor Boar he had killed earlier.
"Level 4," Kendra whispered in despair.
"We're Level 1. I don't even have a combat skill yet."
"Shoot one," Declan said calmly.
Kendra glared at him. "Are you crazy? If I aggro them, they might figure out a way past the barrier!"
"Just shoot it," Declan repeated. "Let's see what we're working with."
Kendra gritted her teeth. She adjusted her aim and let the arrow fly. It sliced through the rain and hit the lead hound squarely in the forehead.
Clang!
The wooden arrow shattered into splinters against the iron plate on the hound's skull.
The beast didn't even flinch. A tiny pathetic number popped up over its head.
[-2 HP]
[HP: 398 / 400]
Sloane let out a shaky breath. "Oh we're so dead. We do two damage and they have four hundred health. This is a wipe."
The lead hound snarled and grew angry now.
It paced along the invisible ten meter border of the campfire and snapped its steel jaws.
The sound was like a bear trap slamming shut.
The other four hounds joined in. They paced and snarled as they waited for the players to step out of the light.
Kendra lowered her bow and her shoulders slumped. "We can't fight them. We just have to log off and hope they despawn."
"There is no log off, remember?" Sloane snapped.
Declan ignored them. He was staring at the hounds and doing the math in his head.
His base HP was still 100. He hadn't bothered spending any of his unspent Stat Points from leveling up yet; he wanted to see what stats he actually needed before locking them in.
His base defense was basically zero without his gear. But he had the +10 Predator's Coat. The system said it gave him 50 defense.
In a normal RPG, 50 defense at Level 3 was an absurd mid game stat. He wanted to know exactly how that translated to the physics of the Grid.
If he was going to survive in this meat grinder, he needed to know his limits.
"Stay by the fire," Declan said.
He took a step forward and left the warmth of the camp.
"What are you doing?!" Sloane yelled. "Get back here you suicidal idiot! I can't heal you through that kind of damage!"
Declan didn't listen. He walked right to the edge of the invisible barrier. The five hounds stopped pacing. They all turned to face him and their yellow eyes locked onto his dark coat. Drool dripped from their steel teeth.
Declan stepped over the line into the dark mud.
Instantly, the lead hound lunged. It crossed the ten foot gap in a fraction of a second. It leaped through the air with its jaws opened wide and aimed straight for Declan's throat.
Declan didn't dodge. He didn't pull out his cleaver.
He just raised his left arm to protect his neck and let the beast hit him.
The hound clamped its massive steel toothed jaws directly onto Declan's forearm.
The force of the jump pushed Declan back a foot and his boots slid in the mud.
Kendra screamed. Sloane covered her eyes.
Declan braced for the agony. He waited for his arm to be ripped clean off.
Instead, he heard a loud violent CRUNCH!
It wasn't his bones breaking.
The hound let out a high pitched yelp of pain and dropped off Declan's arm. It tumbled into the mud. The beast was pawing frantically at its own mouth. Three of its jagged steel teeth lay in the mud completely shattered.
Declan looked at his left arm. The Predator's Coat didn't even have a scratch on it. The black fabric was totally intact. He felt the pressure of the bite like someone had squeezed his arm really hard but there was no pain. No blood.
He checked his health bar.
[HP: 98 / 100]
The Level 4 monster had done exactly two damage to him.
"Well," Declan smiled. A cold dangerous look appeared in his eyes. "That answers that."
He reached into his inventory. The +10 Chipped Cleaver materialized in his right hand. The jagged crimson edge gleamed in the dim light of the campfire.
The other four hounds saw their leader injured and attacked all at once. They rushed Declan from the front and the sides.
Declan didn't bother defending. He didn't need to. He let one hound bite his thigh. The teeth slid off the thick leather of the coat.
Another hound slammed its paws against his chest. Declan just leaned into the impact and completely ignored the monsters hitting him.
He raised the cleaver and swung.
He brought the blade down on the neck of the hound biting his leg. It wasn't a clean chop. Declan's strength was still too low to cut through their thick muscles. The blade just scored a shallow gash across the beast's shoulder.
But the Hemorrhage trait activated immediately.
A geyser of dark blood exploded from the hound's shoulder. The beast shrieked and instantly let go of Declan. It collapsed into the mud as its health bar drained by fifty points a second.
Declan spun around. He slashed the cleaver in a wide sloppy arc. The blade grazed the noses of two other hounds.
Boom! Boom!
Both hounds erupted in fountains of blood.
They thrashed wildly in the mud. They completely ignored Declan as the unblockable bleed effect melted their health pools.
The lead hound was missing half its teeth and tried to run away into the fog. Declan stepped forward and casually dragged the tip of the cleaver across its hind leg. Three seconds later, it was dead.
The entire fight took less than twenty seconds.
Declan stood in the middle of a literal bloodbath. The mud was dyed entirely red.
Five massive hound corpses lay around him and slowly dissolved into blue pixels.
System notifications spammed his vision.
[Experience Points Gained: 300]
[Experience Points Gained: 300]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[You are now Level 5.]
Declan shook the blood off his cleaver and dismissed it back into his inventory. He turned around and walked back into the light of the campfire.
Sloane and Kendra were frozen like statues.
Kendra's bow had slipped out of her hands and was sitting in the mud. Sloane's mouth was hanging open. They stared at Declan as if he were a ghost.
The jaws of both girls dropped as they stared at Declan as though he had run mad!
They had just watched a guy tank five Level 4 monsters without dodging. He wore a coat that literally broke their teeth and killed them all with paper cut wounds that made them explode!
Declan sat back down on his rock. He wiped a drop of hound blood off his cheek.
He looked at Sloane and Kendra.
"So," Declan said casually. "Got any more of that burnt meat?"