Chapter 35 - Behave (1/2)

The ride back to the base was uneventful even in the dark, everyone was tired and exhausted. This level of exhaustion felt different than anything they've ever experienced and even telling themselves it was just a game wasn't helping much.

Yurika was uncharacteristically quiet, she placed her hand on the bandage that was on her arm and gave it a slight squeeze and winced from pain.

"Why did you do that?" asked Gray.

"It… it just feels too real… I've never been that scared before…" said Yurika shakily.

"It's just a game, don't let it get to you. I mean, dying means you can't play anymore but it's not like you die in the real world." Said Gray.

"Yeah, but still…" Yurika said while looking down.

Gray and the others were lost in thought and Gray himself started to doze off, the tingling from his arm had stopped which was a dangerous thing since he knew he had to get it treated fast. It's not that Caleb couldn't bandage it, just that the hole in his arm was too big from the giant front incisors that tried to chomp it off completely.

Gray felt something warm and pleasant on his cheek after closing his eyes as he was beginning to doze off. He turned to look at what caused it and saw Yurika blushing slightly as she was backing down.

"That's for saving me…"

Geoff and Caleb looked at Gray with envy but remembering that he almost got his arm chomped off for that kiss on the cheek they figured it wasn't worth getting jealous over.

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Geoff and Caleb yelled for a medic as soon as they made it back to the base, the base staff came alive and pulled Gray into the same medical facility that they woke up in from the start of the game. Gray's incubation pod was rolled in to the chamber and hooked back up to the same connections that it was originally connected to.

"Private Gray Wilhelm, your body is treatable, but you will have to log off from your incubation pod here, you will receive a notification once you can log in again" said a medical assistant after examining Gray.

Gray nodded and was going to log off anyways as he felt completely drained. Looking at his HUD he saw the mission status was changed to completed so all he had to do was return to the mission board to get the reward. Gray sent a message to everyone else that he was going to log out and would have to take some time off from the game, which seemed oddly counter-intuitive since Gray like to play games during his time off. Everyone else on the team had similar ideas as well so Gray laid down in the incubation pod and then logged out of the game.

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Gray sat up in his VR Bed and felt a similar pain in his arm to when the rat bit him and he screamed a little and looked at his arm in panic. He saw a gaping hole in his forearm, the same as the one that the rat gave him, then felt himself become nauseous and fainted.

When he woke up it was late morning and he looked down at his arm and it was fine.

"Must've just been the intense memory of getting bit from earlier in the game getting brought back into my consciousness." Gray thought. "Where is Caleb when you need his brain?"

Gray ate some lunch and then didn't know what to do with himself. He thought about playing other games, but for some reason he just wanted to play Alterra Online even though he felt like he really did almost die last night. Actually if he was being honest he was still star struck from Yurika kissing his cheek, he started to compare Maven's and Yurika's kiss to himself and thought that Yurika's felt more genuine but Maven's felt more passionate.

As he started to lose himself to his own mind, he was startled when his armlet notified him of a message. Looking at it, it was from Caleb.

"Was hoping it was Yurika, or even Felicia, heck Stacia would be preferred over Caleb" Gray thought to himself as he was feeling very lucky with women lately.

Gray opened the message that was direct to the point: "Need to talk, offline, ASAP."

Gray tried to call Caleb directly but he never answered so instead he sent him a message back. "When and where?"

A few seconds later a reply came through. "Tonight, 8pm, Northway Shopping Center."

"Weird, but then again, nothing about Caleb is normal" Gray thought to himself.

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"Celeste, what is your status of tracing the credit's virtual mint?"