During the last six days, my life had entered the boring pattern of consecutive cycles of my Circulation skill, binge eating, and sleeping, but that all changed as I settled in for the night at the end of day six in my hidey-hole.
Tap tap tap tap
The sound of several hurried and varying footsteps caused my eyes to snap open as my senses went on high alert.
"Hurry up, it’ll be ok, Gavin, we are almost at the Bronze Gate Safe Zone…" The first voice was that of a young man yelling in a panicked voice.
"Shut up and watch where you’re running Oliver; if you fall, I am letting those things eat you!" A second voice, that of a young woman, screeched back, her anxiety and fright apparent in her words.
"That’s easy for you to say, Gina; you aren’t carrying dead weight on your back!" the first voice, who I assumed to be a guy named Oliver, spat back at the girl…Gina.
"Damn it, I knew I should have come alone; you three are all fucking useless!" a new, childish voice aggressively spoke up, causing my eyes to narrow as I stored my pillow and blankie back in my inventory and took out my dagger.
"Shut up, Aaron; it’s your fault Gavin got hurt in the first place, for as arrogant as you are, you are the one who put us in such a compromising position," Gina shouted, allowing me to get a rough idea of how far the group was away from me.
’Based on the echo bouncing off the tunnel walls and the sound of their footsteps, they are roughly a thousand feet away from the edge of the safe zone and moving fast.
"SNARLLLL, GROWWRAWLL"
’And there’s the monsters…eh, that sound could be just about anything…’ I thought while resisting the urge to pop my head out of my hidey-hole to get a look at the idiots leading a pack of snarling, growling beasts in my direction.
Shuffling around my area, I positioned myself in a low crouch, with my head slightly scraping against the ceiling of my hideout, and angled myself in such a way that I could faintly see through the crevice. However, although I only had a thin line to peer out of, it was enough for me to spot anyone if they passed directly under me.
’Oliver, Gina, Aaron, and Gavin, the names don’t ring a bell, but then again, since they are using what I assume to be their real names, they could be just about anyone.’ I mused while running the batch of names through my mental library before coming up short.
With each passing second, the sounds of the fleeing group grew louder, along with the cries and footfalls of what I assumed to be a horde of monsters trailing the pitiful excuse for a group of rankers.
’Hmm, they must be rich as hell if all four of them were able to purchase the token for which I spent almost a year getting the money together.’ Contemplating my next moves, I silently equipped my battle gear, boots, and lightweight leather armor and closed my eyes to focus on the incoming enemies.
Biding my time and waiting for the four young people to reach the safe zone and then cross under me, I listened in on the annoying chatter they prattled on with.
Apparently, from what I could gather, the four were the ones who lit the torches nearly two weeks ago, and due to the idiot named Aaron, they ended up biting off more than they could chew.
Wandering around the Caverns, they stumbled onto an underground spring, where a hord of Subterranean Ferretmoles congregated to drink when that Dipshit Aaron decided to launch a surprise attack on the monsters to earn easy XP.
What he didn’t realize, for some reason, was that the majority of the monsters were High-Alpha rank. To make matters worse, the leader of the pack was Low-Beta…as a result, they ended up not only pissing off the pack of fiendishly big beasts but had spent the last few days on the run from the keen noses of the Ferretmoles.
This information was more than enough to key me in on a very important detail: they were rookies, or at least they had been in the Origin Timeline.
One of the first things Pro-Rankers learned to do was feel the particle strength radiating off a person; by using this method, it was relatively easy to determine a person or monster’s strength, and although you wouldn’t know what talent your opponent had if it were a person; in the case of monsters, so long as you had a general knowledge of the races in the Instance you were diving, you could figure things out from there with relative ease.
Since not a single one of these idiots had done that, the only logical conclusion I could come up with was they were peons, or complete wastes of space in the Origin Timeline, suckling at the teet of stronger rankers for free benefits.
Given the opportunity to come back in time, they must have gotten some wealth, and with their strength rapidly growing by using the knowledge of the future, their heads swelled until they believed themselves to be invincible.
Thus, without any real-life experience, no matter their age, they felt it would be an easy ride on the leveling bus to jump into this level of Instance.
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Yet when shit hit the fan due to their lack of preparation, they were quick to throw insults at each other and place the blame instead of understanding it was a joint effort that had gotten them to this point.
Between my overly paranoid personality, and my need to be ready for any situation, there was never a time that my family had ever been in a position like this group of morons.
That thought caused me to scoff mentally.
’It’s a shame my perception isn’t what it used to be since my Intellect stat is under a hundred, but once they get within 50 feet of me, I will know how strong they are…and once that happens, hehe, well, I guess I should go and have some fun.’ Licking my lips in a sadistic manner, I couldn’t help but feel the rush that came along with being a battle maniac.
It had been far too long since I had a good fight, and it was time to stretch my limbs.