First supply box

WHOOSH

Wisps of light appeared somewhere in the dense forest, and once they stuck to each other, they created the shape of a human.

Soon the light dimmed, and Finn was standing there, surrounded by tall trees on all sides.

He remembered that he needed to find a water source and shelter first, so he looked at his map to see how close he was to the gas.

"I'm right between the gas and the middle of the map. That's the perfect spawn, so I should go find water without getting any closer to the center of the forest."

Finn chose a direction and started walking while looking around to see if he could spot something of interest.

He tried not to get any closer to the center because the closer he got, the more players he would meet.

At first, Finn thought that finding a stream or a small lake would be simple since the people in the videos he had watched always made it look really easy, but after walking around for three hours, he still couldn't find anything.

He did meet other players, but he chose to hide and not fight them because he wanted to win the battle royale tournament without showing how good he was.

If he does that, he will be underestimated in the bracket tournament, which will make winning easier.

After one more hour, he found a small stream, and after seeing some small critters drinking from it, he rejoiced that he had finally found drinkable water.

Finn then built a small shelter from twigs and leaves that he had found on the ground.

And after building a campfire in front of his makeshift tent, he set out to hunt some monsters for food.

Since the player kills in the tournament weren't awarded with any bonus rewards, he planned to stay passive for the duration of the tournament, and he would start fighting only when there would be a small number of players remaining.

Finn found two wolves, but they didn't pose a challenge to him as they were pretty small for wolves.

The monsters in the tournament were made to be weak so that the player wouldn't have a problem killing them and using them as food.

He quickly got rid of them by stabbing their necks with his new daggers, and then he set them down to get ready for the butchering process.

Finn cut open the abdomen and chest cavity and removed all of the wolf's organs.

This process made the wolf's blood flow out, which was also one of the things Finn needed to do.

Draining the blood was an important process when butchering an animal, so he flipped the wolf's body with the cut abdomen pointing to the ground, which made more blood come out.

He then started removing the wolf's hide by slowly cutting it off.

Normally one would need to place the animal's body in a colder place so that it doesn't rot, but Finn was in the middle of the forest, so he didn't have a place like that.

Finn had butchered some monsters in his previous life, and he also looked at some tutorials before the tournament began, which made him knowledgeable enough to know what he should be doing.

He then cut some meat off from the belly area of the wolf, where the meat was fatty and tender.

During the cutting process, Finn did make some mistakes and wasted some of the wolf's meat, but it wasn't that big of a deal since he had two wolf corpses.

The wolves were strong animals that had a lot of muscles in their bodies, and if Finn ate the parts that were packed with muscles, he would have to chew a lot and wouldn't be able to enjoy his meal.

Ding

As he continued cutting the meat off, a message popped up in front of him.

[Goddess of Hunt, Artemis, is impressed by your butchering skills.]

'That's the first of many. You should get used to it.'

Loki chuckled, but Finn ignored the message and continued preparing his meal.

"Yeah, whatever..."

Other players would probably bow down and start bootlicking the god who sent them a message, but Finn already had Loki, so he couldn't care less about some other gods being interested in him.

Also, the Goddess of Hunt probably sent this message to everyone in the tournament who knew how to butcher an animal, so she wouldn't even notice that one of the messages had been ignored.

Finn looked up to see if there was smoke from a campfire somewhere nearby, but he couldn't see anything through the huge leaves of the dense forest.

This meant that he shouldn't be targeted if he starts a fire of his own, and so he did just that.

He started roasting the meat by piercing it with his Last Wish sword and placing it above the fire.

'If that old man Hephaestus saw you using his disciple's masterpiece like that, he would stop the tournament to go and punch you in the face.'

Loki was laughing while imagining Hephaestus being so angry that smoke was coming out of his ears.

"I don't have a different way of cooking the meat, and if I use a wooden stick, then it might catch on fire. Also, he didn't even send me a system message, so he is probably still asleep."

When Finn started cooking the meat, he nervously looked around to see if any messages from a certain blacksmithing god had popped up, but seeing nobody react meant that not all gods had awakened from their slumber yet.

Once the meat was finished, he quickly doused the fire so that it wouldn't emit any more smoke.

After letting the meat cool down a little, Finn bit into the medium-rare piece of meat.

It wasn't seasoned, so the taste wasn't anything special, but it was food, and it gave him the necessary nutrients to survive.

"It's ironic that while playing the game, the capsule feeds and keeps every player alive, but if he doesn't eat, his character could still starve to death."

Finn chuckled to himself while enjoying the last bites of the meat that he had hunted. Food always tasted better if you worked hard for it rather than just bought it from a supermarket.

He then butchered the two corpses and tied their bones to the trees around his campsite.

Tying the bones around his camp made it look like there was a psychopath living there, so if a player wandered there and saw it, he would do a 180 and run in the other direction.

After that, he went to throw the excess meat and insides that had started to go bad away from his camp so that the other monsters would have something to eat.

Once Finn was done with the cleaning, he took his coat and shirt off and spent his time swinging his sword.

He quickly lost track of time, and after a few more hours of swinging, a sound suddenly rang out everywhere in the forest.

BEEEP

It was a loud siren that announced the appearance of the first supply box.

The supply box was a wooden crate that appeared somewhere in the forest. Once it fully spawned, it sent out a pillar of light that showed its position to every player that looked up at the sky.

The pillar of light was visible even through the thick trees, so all the players who were starting to get hungry and didn't know how to hunt their own food set out to get it.

Finn stopped his training session after hearing the siren.

His upper body was sweaty, and the sweat made his hair stick to his face.

After looking in the direction of the supply box, he shook his head and went to wash his body and drink some water.

'I do need to take one supply box for myself, but it would be one of the last ones because the first supply box will be a complete bloodshed.'

After washing up, he went back to swinging his sword because he planned to play passively.

Finn had to do something to kill time, and why not train his sword skills while waiting.

---

Short brown curly hair, short stature, and a lot of freckles on his face.

His name was Charlie.

Charlie was a casual player that played Second Life for the realistic NPCs, and while doing a simple quest he accidentally discovered a quest line that granted a lot of exp.

After he finished the quest line, his player rank shot up to 2000, which made him eligible for the tournament, but Charlie didn't want to join the tournament because he knew that there would be a lot of fighting involved.

He enjoyed questing and fighting monsters, but fighting other players wasn't for him.

So, he decided to reject the tournament invitation and continue casually playing the game.

Unfortunately for him, the invitation was mandatory for all online players, so as he was delivering some milk to an old lady, he was teleported to a waiting room.

Charlie was confused and decided to log out, but he couldn't, and the only way to leave the tournament was by losing.

This made him angry, and he cursed the game developers for thinking of such a stupid rule.

It was like the developers were telling him that if he didn't want to be there, he could just lose on purpose and get lost.

He was so irritated that he swore to win the tournament and then curse the person who thought of this tournament and its rules on live television.

Once the game began, Charlie didn't know how to butcher animals, and was forced to go for the supply box.

'Everyone will be too scared to go for the first supply box, so it will be easy to get it.'

He thought naively as he set out in the direction of the pillar of light.

Unfortunately for him, there were around 60 players that were currently heading for the supply box that had just spawned.

Charlie didn't know this fact and continued walking in the pillar's direction.

His class was Cleric, which gave him some basic healing spells.

He chose this class so that he could heal NPCs, but with his class, he was at a disadvantage if a fight broke out.

After a few more minutes of walking, he finally saw the supply box.

It was a little wooden chest that was sitting in a tree-filled clearing.

'HA! I knew it! Everyone is just too scared to go for the first one, so this should be free supplies for me.'

He started to move closer, but all of a sudden he saw another player coming up to the chest.

Frantically diving down, Charlie hid in a bush at the last second before the player could notice him.

'Damn! I was too late… Maybe I can go ambush him-'

"ARRGGHH!!!"

Before Charlie could finish his thought, the player who had now reached the box let out a loud scream.

Charlie quickly looked in the direction of the supply box, and he saw that the player had three arrows stuck in his head, one in his throat, two in his back, and one more in his right knee.

He also had a throwing knife sticking out of his left eye, and his body was splashed with some sort of acidic mixture, slowly melting his skin off.

The player looked like a grotesque porcupine and his voice cracked from how loud he was screaming.

Fortunately for him, he died almost instantly, so he didn't suffer much, but Charlie felt his hair stand on end and goosebumps spread all over his body.

'That could have been me… If I was a little faster, that could have been me right there…'

He shivered while having both of his hands on his mouth, trying not to let even a breath out.

There were about 60 players gathered around the box waiting for the ideal moment to strike, but they were all aware that whoever emerged first would draw everyone's attention, so they were at a standstill.

Charlie didn't mind dying since this was a game that would just respawn him if he died, but he could still feel the pain in this game, so he didn't want to end up like the previous player.

Pain was added to Second Life to add realism, but the gods mainly added it because they wanted their champions to get used to pain since they were going to fight in real life in a few years.

Meanwhile, Charlie wanted to run away.

He wanted to run away, but he was aware that if he moved or made a sound, all the players nearby would attack him.

As a result, he just laid there sobbing. He kept covering his mouth and started praying because he wanted to get out of there.

'I wanted to help NPCs… All I wanted was to do some quests and drink with the NPCs in a tavern… I didn't want to fight… I didn't want to join this tournament… Please let me out… Please God…'

The tears didn't stop as he kept thinking that choosing to go for the supply box was his biggest mistake in life.

Suddenly something flew out of the forest and landed near the supply box.

PSSSHHHH

It was a smoke bomb that masked the supply box, and all the players that were waiting for an opportunity rushed out at once.

"Stop him!"

"That box is mine!"

"Fuck off! I saw it first!"

The players screamed as they continued pouring out of the forest and rushing towards the supply box.

If the person who threw the bomb were to sneak away with the box, then all that waiting would have been for nothing, so once they all jumped out, a massacre began.

Spells were cast, arrows were released, swords were swung, skulls were crushed, and lives were lost.

Everyone was fighting for the supply box, but with the smoke there, everyone's vision became limited, and so they started attacking blindly.

Charlie used this moment to get up and run.

'Thank you, God! Thank you for giving me another chance! I will not disappoint-'

SWISH CRACK

An arrow that some player shot at random.

All it took was this single arrow, which unluckily hit Charlie in the back of the head and penetrated his skull.

His smile faded, his eyes dimmed, and as his body was slowly falling, he finally understood that when he decided to venture towards that cursed supply box, his God had abandoned him.