Falling: How to Survive as a Cannon Fodder

HTSCF CH 034 Distance never made me stronger...

After an afternoon of killing monsters, killing monsters, and, oh yeah, killing some more monsters, Jun finally reached level 99, which was something like a benchmark. Although the current level limit was 119, very few people had reached it. Those that did only made up 1% of the players. The reason for that was that starting from level 99, it became exponentially harder to level up, so he had caught up with the majority of players by reaching 99.

Now he could focus on trying to fix his luck. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any point in doing quests or dungeons, which is why he had been avoiding them. He had no plans to log back into the game for the rest of the day, though, because he was pretty worn out from the nonstop monster grinding.

The day ended quietly with Jun sending a message to ADAS's development team with the suggestion to allow gender change. He was just testing the waters, not making a serious attempt in trying to complete the Hidden Mission. Other than the zombie apocalypse world, Azazel and Elior always found him right away, but this time he had yet to see a shadow of them.

What if they weren't in this world?

At night Jun curled up in bed to sleep, unused to having so much extra space, and decided to not log into the game for a week. Playing an MMORPG made him realize how lonely he felt. More so than being by himself in real life, being surrounded by many strangers in VR felt worse.

During the week, Jun looked over Fei Lan's coursework from the previous year. He hadn't been in school for nearly 40 years now, so he needed to refresh his knowledge. Five years was enough to finish the last year of high school and college. This time, he should finish college, right?

There was a lot he had forgotten, but he felt he would be able to catch up by the time school started again. What he needed to do was to make himself a schedule and not get absorbed in playing ADAS now that he didn't have to.

A week was enough to forget about him since he wasn't a god-tier player, so when Jun logged back onto ADAS he was pleased to find no one trying to accost him. Oriana saw that he was online and immediately sent him a message.

[Boxers or briefs?: Sweetie, where have you been all week??]

[no milk tea, no life: I had to study.]

[Boxers or briefs?: You're a student? How old are you?]

[no milk tea, no life: 17.]

[Boxers or briefs?:  Ahhhh~!!! So young! You should call me older sister.]

[no milk tea, no life: ...]

[Boxers or briefs?:  What's the point of the ... Just don't respond! Anyway, want to do a dungeon run? You haven't done one right? We have an open space in our party right now.]

[no milk tea, no life: Ok.]

Even though he knew his drops would be worthless, he was curious and needed the experience anyway. After accepting Oriana's party invite, they entered the dungeon. Dungeon runs required a party with a minimum of 3 players and a maximum of 6 players. The one they'd be doing was a mid-level one. With Oriana there, 6 people weren't necessary, but it would be a nice cushion for Jun, who was still new to the process.

Dungeons usually lasted about 5-15 minutes and had at least one boss, at the most 5. As they moved through the dungeon, they ran into many monsters and traps but easily took care of them. The first boss was a man-eating plant capable of spitting poison. Their party consisted of Oriana and Jun, both long-range DPS, two healers, a tank, and a support who could also provide buffs and deal some damage.

The second boss, a giant turtle, took a little longer because of its defense and massive HP. As for the third boss, a giant tree thing, it was annoying because it released a lot of negative status effects. When it froze him for the nth time, Jun was so fed up he put away his bow and arrow and went straight to doing direct physical attacks despite the Damage Received x3 buff, slapping, punching, kicking, and biting. One of the healers secretly recorded this while everyone watched with open mouths.