Hux breathed deeply, brushing the long grass with his fingers as he passed. Rabbits and the occasional fox dashed off as soon as they came into view. He could have kissed Mr. Bennet. This was more than he ever imagined when he first heard about the game.

  Running through a meadow dotted with colorful wildflowers, he knew that he was still lying in bed, hooked up to life support, but it was so easy to forget when he could feel the loamy earth underfoot, the clean air in his lungs, and the warm sun on his skin.

  That state of peace nearly broke when another wave of weakness overcame him. Hux doubled over, chest burning and legs feeling like lead. Once again it wore off quickly, but now that it had happened twice he couldn’t brush it off so easily.

  He set off at a walk again when the feeling passed, and decided to call up the one person he knew who seemed to know the ins and outs of games. It took a minute to pull up his friends list, but from there it wasn’t too different from basic comms gear.

  “Hiya Sarge! Oh, wow! You’re already out in the next zone? What’s it like?”

  Hux smiled despite himself.

  “It's one big open meadow going around a lake. Not much cover aside from the remains of a few ruins along the lakeshore, but if I keep my distance, I don’t think I’ll have to worry about ambushes and rats anymore. I left most of those kids playing army behind and I plan on putting more distance between me and them. The only problem is that I keep having these episodes.”

  “Episodes? Like little self-contained adventures?”

  “...No, I get suddenly weak and it’s hard to breathe. Do you think the game could be having trouble working around my injuries?”

  “I don’t know, but that sounds pretty serious. Should I tell Grace?”

  “No!” Hux blurted, then cleared his throat.

  “No, that shouldn’t be necessary.” The last thing he wanted was to get yanked out of the game over health concerns.

  “Okay, well, maybe I can help then. What were you doing when these episodes happened?”

  “The first time it happened, I was fighting off some thieves. Then it happened again while I was jogging across this meadow.”

  Pauline tittered in her distinctive way.

  “Oh, you had me worried there for a minute. That’s just stamina depletion, nothing to worry about.”

  “You mean I’m tired?”

  “Sorta, you can think of stamina like fuel for your body. You use it up when running, fighting, and generally exerting yourself more than normal. If you run out, then you can’t run or fight again ‘til you get more.”

  “How do I get more stamina? Is there a fuel depot somewhere out here?”

  “No, silly. Stamina will come back all on its own. If you want more to work with in general, you’ll need to improve your endurance.”

  “So I just have to keep exercising then?”

  “Not exactly. In games, there are different ways to improve, but the most basic method is to level up.”

  “What’s that, a promotion or something?”

  “Not quite, levels are supposed to be a rough gauge of strength in games like this. When you run into a monster, if it has a level a lot higher than yours, that means it will be extra dangerous, maybe even unbeatable, but you can increase your level by gathering experience through combat, quests, or even special items.”

  “That doesn’t make much sense.”

  “It’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to be fun. I’d rather go on an adventure, slay some dangerous beasts, and save some helpless villagers than sweat it out in some smelly gym all day long.”

  “Okay, well, thank you for explaining this to me. I’m glad it isn’t a problem with the hardware.”

  “No problem Sarge! Us invalids have got to look out for each other right?”

  She showed Hux how to navigate the complicated in-game menu and change his settings so his stamina and health would always be visible. While the pitiful endurance was a problem, being able to gauge exactly how tired he was and how much further he could go before collapsing could be pretty useful. She also guided him to a list of his different attributes, like endurance, that determined his capabilities inside the game. Each one started at ten and could be increased all the way to a hundred, but players could only level up sixty times, meaning that there was no way to maximize more than three of them in total.

  His stamina slowly replenished so long as he walked no faster than one meter per second, so for the next several hours Hux alternated between jogging and walking as he circled around the lake.

  Eventually, Hux noticed a blinking icon in the corner of his vision. That was all it took for a cascade of prompts to block his view.

  Hux still wasn’t sure what fame was good for, but more perception in regards to hidden dangers sounded like a good deal. Those were things he could figure out later though. Hux didn’t need fame to keep walking, and that’s all he wanted to do at the moment.

  On his trek around the lake, he spotted a few mossy piles of rubble on the shore but out here, completely exposed to the elements, there wasn’t a single wall left standing. When he eventually got to the other side of the lake, he followed one of the rivers up to the treeline.

  Hux declined the offer again and a few seconds later trumpets blared out.

  Not the most creative name, but at least it wasn’t something overly foreboding like the Gloomy Glen or something. Hux was ready to disappear into the woods for a good long hike, but a reddish film appeared at the edge of the wood as he approached. He could walk right up to the treeline, but a smooth, hard surface like glass kept him from going any further.

  Hux fished a stone out of the river and pounded on the barrier a few times just to be sure he couldn’t break through by force. It didn’t so much as make a noise when struck so Hux dropped the stone and looked around.

  He was pretty far away from the Ancient Harbor now, and there were plenty of other directions for the other players to explore. It seemed unlikely that the fighting would spill out this far, so this was as good a place as any to take a break.

  The gurgling river, the rustling leaves, the perfumed air without a hint of disinfectant in it. It all put Hux in a relaxed mood. He normally could have spent the day by this river, just dangling his feet in the water and been perfectly content, but he had spent way too long lying around lately and had to be doing something.

  His stomach grumbled, and a new notification popped into view.

  There was hunger in this game? If so, that meant that there was food too. Real food that didn’t come from an IV. Maybe not real, not exactly, but Hux was willing to find out just how good a roast rabbit tasted in this game.

  He stripped a few long thin branches from a young willow tree hanging out over the river. Taking those to a broad, smooth river stone, Hux used the back of his axe to gently pound the branches, separating out the individual fibers which he teased apart with his fingers before braiding them back together. In less time than it should have taken, Hux had a primitive kind of string. He wouldn’t trust it with his whole body weight, but for a small animal, it should be perfect.

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  Twisting his string into a small noose, he hung it over one of the small game trails cutting through the grass to the water's edge. Then he retreated to the base of a nearby tree, downwind of course, and waited with his bow strung and an arrow knocked.

  Keeping perfectly still and quiet was a skill Hux had mastered a long time ago, but he was still surprised at how soon a rabbit poked its way down the game trail. Like some of the plants at the edge of the forest, this rabbit had a little translucent nameplate hanging in the air over its head.

  Hux held his breath as it hopped right up to the snare and put its head through without noticing. When the snare went tight though, the rabbit started thrashing like crazy.

  Moving smoothly, Hux drew his bow, sighting along the arrow. To his surprise, a targeting reticle appeared over the rabbit. It looked like a circle that slowly expanded and shrank. He breathed out steadily, relaxing his tense shoulders and the circle tightened until it was smaller than the rabbit, and then he loosed.

  The arrow sank into one of its haunches and before Hux could get another one ready, it killed itself by struggling against the trap.

  All in all that went better than expected. His snare even came with its own nameplate now and he could see that it was pretty badly damaged.

  With 6 of 10 durability remaining, it should be strong enough for Hux to get another rabbit, but he decided to see if he could cook the one he had before trying for more.

  Hux used the snare to hang the rabbit upside down from a branch, and opened up its throat to let it bleed while he got a fire started. He could have cut up a tree for fuel with his big axe, but dead, dry wood burns better. Walking up the treeline, gathering fallen branches, Hux started paying more attention to the little nameplates floating over plants.

  The odd little green bulbs with fluffy pink flowers sprouting straight up from their tops like flat top haircuts were everywhere, but anytime he tried to pick them up, he somehow managed to damage them.

  While patching himself up would be nice, he wasn’t about to make himself feel sick when his HP was slowly refilling without any help. There were other plants along the treeline though, and one of them caught his eye.

  Huxley figured that a plant with a name like that couldn’t be too bad, so he popped the green leaf into his mouth and chewed.

  Not only did it heal him some, it turned out that discovering the effects of plants could improve his woodcraft skill too. By far the best discovery he made, in his opinion, was the large bushes speckled with heavy red berries.

  The side effect was even a little bit fun. Hux wasn’t stupid enough to just eat every plant he came across though. He found one particularly nasty looking cluster of rotten toadstools dripping with purple slime among the roots of a tree.

  Judging by the name and the look, Hux was willing to guess these were poisonous. Prodding one with an arrow had an promising result, though the mushroom itself seemed to deflate and the nameplate faded away.

  When Hux got his hands on enough firewood, he headed back to find a fox lapping up the puddle of blood under his rabbit.

  It didn’t notice Hux yet and he carefully put down his firewood. The branches still clattered some as he laid them down and the fox stopped to look in his direction, ears cocked. Hux froze and after a few seconds, the fox went back to its meal.

  Slowly and carefully, he unlimbered and strung his bow, taking out the arrow with the Death Bell goop on it.

  Instead of turning to fight, the fox yipped loudly and ran off into the trees where Hux couldn’t follow. Ten seconds later, he got another notification.

  Several keening cries filled the air and goosebumps ran up the back of his neck. Huxley reached up and pulled himself onto a low-hanging branch just before a pack of five foxes burst from the forest. Two were young foxes like the last one, but three of them were considerably bigger.

  They prowled around the hanging rabbit for a minute, sniffing the ground and the air while growling. Hux could have shot at them, but he only had four arrows left after the last fox ran off with one, so he contented himself with watching the angry animals. Eventually, one of the adults jumped up and grabbed the rabbit, snapping the snare Hux used to tie it in place. The family of foxes disappeared back into the woods.

  While the game showered him with praises, Hux was just frustrated that he didn’t put his rabbit further out of reach. It didn’t take too long for him to make another snare, but Hux didn’t stop until he had five, and then he went on a little hunting spree.

  When five plump rabbits were hanging from a branch, one high enough that foxes definitely couldn’t reach, he set to making a fire. Hux made a little nest from shredded tree bark and some rabbit fur, laid that down on a thick branch, and put a smaller branch between his palms, its end in the center of the fluffy nest. Rubbing his hands together as hard as he could, the small branch ground against the larger one, heating up until, with a small thread of smoke, the nest ignited.

  Hux breathed softly on it until a small flame sprouted, licking at the dry fuel. He carefully transferred the smoking nest underneath a stack of the smallest twigs he had, and when those caught he slowly added larger sticks until a merry little campfire was crackling in the middle of a circle of river stones.

  With the fire going, Hux turned to the messy task of skinning and gutting his kills. Skinning turned out to be pretty easy with his special knife. As soon as he put the knife to the first rabbit, green lines glowed to life, showing Hux where to cut, as if he didn’t already know.

  The hides still came out pretty tattered despite his best effort, though the practice officially unlocked the skinning skill, making his later attempts a bit better. The first two times he tried to take meat from his rabbits things seemed to go smoothly right up until the point that his rabbits turned to ash in his hands. He didn’t give up easily though and on his third attempt, the game awarded Hux with a new skill.

  Despite his careful work with the knife, hux only managed to get a few small chunks of meat from the rabbits, the rest disintegrating into ash. It was frustrating, but at least he proved that he could get some meat from the animals.

  By the time all that was done, the rocks around the fire were hot. Hux put one rabbit chunk on a skewer and held it directly over the flames, turning it slowly to heat all sides evenly. In less time than it should have taken, his skewered meat was golden brown and dripping with fat.

  The result hardly seemed worth all the effort. It was a little gamey and very bland too. Hux needed some salt at the very least if he was going to keep cooking. On the other hand, if he wasn’t such a piss poor butcher, he could have gotten 50% hunger reduction from this meal. After cooking and eating the rest of his meat he even gained a decent boost to his stamina regeneration, but he was still hungry so he grabbed his snares and caught another five rabbits.

  When he finished cooking and eating them all, his hunger finally faded. While his stamina regeneration didn’t get any faster, the hour-long timer on the bonus refreshed itself every time he finished a meal.

  While this was a fun diversion, the last round of hunting gave Hux enough experience to get to level 1. It was time to take this party into the woods. He could always scavenge up some berries, nuts, and fruit while on the trail if he needed more food.

  Besides, the plumes of smoke rising from the far side of the lake had him nervous that the players were starting to catch up and he’d rather not be here when they arrived. All the odd game rules aside, if Hux could see their smoke, they could probably see his.