“How goes the hunt?” she wrote.
She watched the periods float and pulsate across the screen, which obviously meant he was typing a response but she couldn’t help but feel anxious. It would be good if he found it but also annoying that she hadn’t found it first.
“Not yet, but I’m gonna crash soon, can’t keep my eyes open” came the reply, followed by another. “I’m almost sure it exists. I saw another pic but you know, these days… Even if someone had the collector’s guide, I would still need to see it with my own eyes.” She took some time to digest, and something in her brain flickered. “What about the game websites?” she asked. “Yeah but that’s lame, nobody goes there.” he swiftly replied, fully engaged, while running to various websites and forums on the Internet again to triple check. He saw more websites that used the same photo and labelled it unverified.
“Fuck,” he wrote. “I just had a little check. Nobody has verified the sighting. It’s really annoying, surely someone has the collector’s edition, but they just aren’t sharing the info!”
And then she remembered. “Well,” she said, looking over to the shelf where her gold plated collector’s edition stood, sealed, in mint condition, albeit collecting dust, “they probably have it in mint condition, sealed, sitting on a shelf, covered in dust, you know how these collectors are. Anyway, it’s more fun discovering stuff, isn’t it?” she said. Marvin had nearly fallen asleep waiting for this reply and it seemed to be turning into a wall of text, which was nice, nobody had written that much to him before. “And we’re still leveling up,” she added, “we’re not technically wasting time.” There just was no way in hell she was breaking the seal just to verify some random creature. In the meantime, she certainly was wasting it, as the resident monsters were evil and yet way too low level. She should leave but the Idea of a rare creature kept her fixed to the spot. The fever to chop was spreading, once again, over her body. She just ran around in a vague circle, chopping up monsters, hacking at some trees to gather materials, running to the village blacksmith to forge items, selling them at the market, buying an apple if she had been injured, and repeating the cycle, over and over. It was not exactly fun but so addictive. It was now 3am. She needed to get up in the morning, and the prospect of that monotonous cycle of work filled her with dread.
She took a random spin again in the forest, just one more time. As she entered the darkened undergrowth, something jumped out the bushes. The shadowy figure sparkled and then revealed its true form, a large purple peaky mushroom monster spewing out poisonous spurts! She had no time to message Marvin. It’s here it’s fucking here was all she could think. Her body trembled at the sight of it. She needed it in her collection right fucking yesterday. She was cautious, and circled around it, trying to analyse its attack pattern; it was then she saw that there were five other players trying to snare it. One of them was trying to communicate, no doubt to concentrate their efforts, so she threw several grenades and dispatched the remaining players with a shotgun, before turning her attention to the monster. She swapped out her gun for a fire sword and leapt into the air, uttering between gritted teeth “you’re mine!”
Kevin woke up thirty minutes before the alarm was due. He suddenly remembered he had never implemented a ‘friendly fire’ feature, so that players would be impervious to damage from others. Meh, he thought, gamers are generally good people.
The morning finally arrived. Marvin got out of bed, he hadn’t slept. He shuddered, and still couldn’t understand what had happened, as he flailed his arms around to try to communicate the obvious desire to work together, only to end up being showered in shrapnel and then looking up to see the end of a sawn off shotgun going off in his face. He would never forgive this, ever, and swore never to try again to help other players.