Now I had a side quest. This was exactly what I had hoped. But that Lord guy seemed terrible. I hadn’t given much thought to Lords or nobility outside of knowing they had a king. I had seen the coins.

  I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t thought about it. Likely hoping this game for all its brutality could let the peasants live in pastoral peace.

  I should not have been surprised.

  The mood of the festivities was ruined. I watched the men ride away. I was tempted to give their retreating backs the finger. But there were children around. Did they know what that gesture meant? When did flipping someone off become a thing?

  As I packed up to get ready to go. The townsfolk all came by to thank Dekka and me. I got so many packages of food that my inventory was almost full. A few even pressed copper coins into my hands as they bade me good luck.

  This time, we headed west when we got to Road’s Cross. I didn’t pick up the quest for Rivermore. The next time I did that one I was going to make sure nothing slowed me down.

  We headed towards Seabrooke, which is were this lord had his manor.

  I looked down at the hoofprints in the road. Clearly, the game had mounts. Why couldn’t players have mounts? The issue wasn’t that the game asset wasn’t there.

  The haughty nobles could look further down their noses at people on the ground, and the bandits looked more menacing on their fine beasts. So maybe it was for effect.

  Or the game dev was a sadist.

  Or both.

  Walking everywhere sucked. Especially when you had to use your own two legs and they got actually tired.

  As we walked, the air changed, and so did the land around us. The forest here was full of rocks and crags and tall, narrow pine-like trees. The underbrush was thick with brambles and sprawling bushes. Not the sort of forest you want to leave the road to go pee in. The air got cooler, but smelled very fresh. Was that? I had only been to the ocean once and it was when I was a child. But this smelled like sea salt air.

  I guess that made sense with the name and all, still I marvelled at the realism this game brought. Just how long had the time been since that last scan they took of my mind, and now? There were no games anywhere like this when I was ‘alive’ in the real world. Not that I played that many games, but Rodney would have talked endlessly about a game like this, even if it had only been teased.

  It was more than a day’s walk to Seabrooke. That seemed a far way to have peasants. Lord Ashford was likely a greedy bastard. Though maybe it was nice to have a lord whose minions would have a hard day’s ride to come harass you.

  Dekka, of course, was quite pleased to trot alongside me, loving every moment of the greatest ‘walkies’ of all time. Unlike me, her preferred locomotion was her own four paws. She did not like cars nor did she like being carried.

  Suddenly, there was this massive crashing that came from the north in the woods.

  I had slid my pack off and had my club ready when an elk burst through the underbrush to come galloping at us. It was huge. But then weren’t elk big to begin with? I had never seen one in real life. But this one had horns for days. I don’t know how it didn’t get hung up in all the branches.

  It snorted-a wet, angry bellow.

  Dekka was already rising, shadows pooling around her, flowing into bulging muscles and fangs.

  “Good Girl,” I said.

  The elk didn’t slow as it leapt over fallen logs with ease. It landed on the road in front of us and lowered its head, a rack of polished bone and sharp points aimed like a dozen spears straight at my chest, and charged at me.

  The ground vibrated with the fury of its hooves, shaking my bones all the way up my legs. This wasn’t just tall, this was the thickest elk I had ever seen; it was a monster, a force of nature given flesh and fury. If the deer genus had a Mr. Universe pageant this guy would be a contender.

  My wooden club suddenly felt woefully inadequate. It felt as menacing as a toothpick in my hand.

  Its multiple pairs of black eyes were pools of pure malice, glistening with an intelligence that felt utterly wrong for a simple animal.

  I waited for some sort of a message saying this was a special creature, a mini boss or something. But for once the system didn’t blind me with information.

  I threw myself to the side, swinging wildly, and felt the thunder of its hooves as it pounded past me. Those antlers gouged deep furrows in the tree trunk behind me, sending bark and splinters flying. The elk wheeled around with surprising grace for something so large, already lining up for another charge.

  Dekka met the charge with a guttural roar that was more felt than heard. She flowed to the side, a thing of living darkness, and lunged for its hamstring. Her jaws, now large enough to crush thick bone, clamped down. There was a sickening crunch of tendon and a bellow of pain from the elk that split the forest and made all the birds go silent.

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  It pivoted with shocking speed, its heavy body whipping around. One of its antlers, a long, dagger-like tine, caught Dekka in the side of her hellhound body. It dug in at least an inch into the shadow flesh and flung her away like a ragdoll. She yelped, a quick, sharp, sound that cut through me, and landed in a tangle of shadows and fur against a rocky outcrop. The shadows started to melt away as she lay there.

  “Dekka!” I screamed, my fear for her overriding my own terror.

  The elk turned its hate-filled gaze back to me. It ignored the dark blood welling from its leg. Did the thing feel no pain?

  That just wasn’t fair. If Dekka felt pain so should it!

  Hefting my club I started to feel angry. This was a tank, but then again so was I. Or that was the role I was supposed to filling.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dekka getting up. I felt better, but still I was going to make these elk pay.

  Heat rose and my face flushed, and an eclectic rage prickled down my arms. My precious little dog had been minding her own business, having nice walkies, and then this fucking thing comes out and tries to curb stomp her!

  I screamed at it and rushed forward. The elk was not expecting that. I was starting to learn that screaming, while perhaps not that surprising to these monsters, was unusual when coupled with a human running AT them. It almost always causes them to stop and re-evaluate their life choices that brought them to this moment.

  It stopped for a moment then deciding I was not a real threat it continued forward, not a full charge this time but a deliberate, stomping advance. I kept running at it and swung my club with all my might at its front leg [Crippling Blow].

  The impact jarred my arms to the shoulders, the vibration a painful buzz that ran all the way up my teeth. It was like hitting a tree. The elk barely flinched, but it did take the weight off that leg and shake its head, the massive antlers whistling through the air. It seemed more annoyed than in pain.

  I ducked under a swing of its head that would have taken my head off and scrambled off the road to put a gnarled pine between us. My plan was to use the underbrush to slow it.

  However the elk simply bulldozed through the smaller tree, splintering it with a sound like a gunshot. A shard of wood caught my cheek, and I felt the warm trickle of blood.

  How dare it? Running straight through a tree just wasn’t fair.

  My mind raced, searching for a strategy, a weakness. The eyes? Too small, too well-protected by the bony ridge of its skull.

  Dekka staggered to her feet, her form flickering but growing again. Inside the hellhound form I could make out blood splattered over her white fur, but her hackles were up and her teeth bared. She was damaged but undeterred.

  Dekka darted in from the side while the elk focused on me, going for its back legs, but the creature kicked out with devastating precision. She dodged at the last moment and with another subsonic snarl, she leapt, latching onto the elk’s neck, her shadowy teeth sinking deep. The beast screamed and bucked, trying to dislodge her. It was the opening I needed.

  I darted in, ignoring the danger, and swung again, this time using [Targeted Hit], I felt my arm swing, locking on and aiming for the same leg I’d hit before. Crack! Another solid hit. This time, the leg buckled. I think I broke it.

  This only pissed it off. The elk, enraged by the indignity of having the human fight back and not just let herself be gored and likely embarrassed at having a terrier, albeit a very large one, hanging off its neck, gave a massive, convulsive heave and slammed itself sideways into the thick trunk of a pine. There was a choked whine as Dekka was crushed between tonnage and timber. Her shadows dissipated, and she fell to the ground, unmoving.

  “No!” The cry was ripped from my throat.

  The elk, now free, took a stumbling step, its injured leg clearly broken. But its fury still raged.

  Pure rage flooded through me. I charged the elk while it was turning, bringing my club down on its muscled shoulder with everything I had. The impact jarred my arms and shoulders, but the creature barely flinched. It felt like hitting a tree. Was this thing made of wood some how. Surely real creatures weren’t this solid.

  It saw me, alone and vulnerable. It lowered its head for the final charge. There were only ten feet between us. Nowhere to run.

  Stupid game. I had levelled up and found an extra quest. I wasn’t trying to speed run anymore.

  Time seemed to slow. I saw the mucus stringing from its nostrils, the flecks of blood and bark caught in its antlers, the deep, intelligent hatred in its eyes. .

  I braced myself, club raised.

  It surged forward.

  I didn’t even see the blow land. One moment I was standing, the next I was airborne. A searing, white-hot agony exploded in my side. The world tumbled in a blur of sky, trees, and road. I hit the ground with a force that drove all the air from my lungs. My club splintered and landed beside me.

  [-27HP] [Gored-bleed affect]

  I felt dizzy. That was a lot of HP to lose. I still hadn’t found a stat that gave me a number; there was just a bar if I pulled up my HUD. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that bar looked like even if I wasn’t busy.

  I tried to push myself up, but the pain in my ribs was fire raging across my torso, stealing my strength and my breath. I collapsed onto my back, gasping. I looked down. A deep, ragged gash tore through my tunic, and blood was already soaking the fabric, spreading fast.

  [Severe Bleeding - Movement Impaired]

  The elk stood over me, its chest heaving. It snorted, a hot, bloody mist spraying across my face. It lowered its head again, the points of its antlers aimed at my throat. This was it. This was how I died. Not to a dragon or a dark lord, but to a pissed-off digital elk on a side road.

  As I looked down. Awaiting death I saw one of the long splintered pieces of my club. It hadn't been able to withstand the beast.

  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, but in many situations, size does matter.

  I was going to die and have to walk all the way back here; the least it could do was die too. At the last second I lurched forward and grabbed the longest piece of my shattered club and drove it toward the elk's neck, aiming for the gap behind its jaw.

  Blood went everywhere. Hot and red.

  20XP!

  The elk bellowed in anger and disbelief. And then fell on me, pinning me to the ground.

  I was thinking that death wasn't that bad. It was disgusting to be covered in gore and smothered by a reeking elk carcass, and that, by comparison, materializing clean and dry on the stones in the plains wasn’t the worst thing that could happen when I heard an oily wheedling voice.

  “Excuse me miss. On the off chance you are still alive, could you use some assistance?”