29 Hunter's Paradise

A week had passed since the incident in the danger zone and everyone was finally starting to calm down. Since then, in order to cross the barrier you had to apply for a teacher to follow you and usually they only accepted those who were carrying out critical missions. Given that no one in their right minds would give freshman critical missions, this meant that John, Steven, and Mike were stuck inside the barrier that weekend.

"Argh.." Mike moaned as he woke to the pounding on his door. "Go away!" He yelled, picking up his pillow and throwing it at the door as hard as he could. Closing his eyes, he went to lay back down when he realized he'd just thrown his goddamned pillow and had to get up. "Fuck am I stupid." Mike said under his breath as he stood up, glancing at the alarm.

"What's the rush, it's only 10 am!" Mike yelled as he opened the door scratching his bare belly lazily.

"We're doing the Hunter's Club challenges, get dressed!" Steven said.

"Fine, since I'm already up..." Mike slammed and locked the door, picked up his pillow and lay back down on his bed, closing his eyes to sleep. Just as he was drifting off he heard a hissing sound and looked up to see Snakey looking at him hanging from the ceiling.

"Hey Snakey..." Mike closed his eyes again before opening them and jumping out of his bed in shock. "What the fuck are you doing in here?!?!?!" Mike yelled as he heard gales of laughter from beyond his door. "God, I hate you people!" He grumbled to himself as he quickly got dressed and opened the door to find Steven and John rolling around on the floor.

"You done yet?" Mike asked after a moment.

"Yeah," John said, holding his hand out to pick up Snakey who settled down on his shoulders. "That was the funniest thing ever!"

"Agreed." Steven said as he stood back up trying to get over his belly cramp he'd laughed so hard.

"What's this about challenges?" Mike asked, now that he was awake he might as well do something.

"Well, I don't have any classes until 1900 and we can't go hunting so I figured we should check out the challenges at the Hunter's Guild." John said.

"I don't remember hearing anything about challenges at the Hunter's Guild." Mike said, confused.

Steven just sighed and shook his head, "Come on, lets grab some food." He turned and walked down the corridor as he continued talking, "They talked about them in the video about Academic Credits. They're designed to be increasingly more difficult and every time you clear a level for the first time you get credits. I think the Hunter's Guild Challenges are in Hunter's Paradise. Figured it'd be fun since we can't leave the campus anyway."

Mike perked up when he heard Hunter's Paradise, that game was awesome. "Sounds good, lets go!"

An hour later, they were all stuffed to the gills as they walked into the Hunter's Club slowly. Walking up to the bartender Mike asked, "Hey Griffen, how do you go about taking the challenges?"

Without bothering to look up from wiping the already clean glass with the dirty washrag Griffen said, "Basement level 3, Hunter's Paradise."

"Cool, thanks man!" Steven said, and the three of them walked to the door leading to the basement levels.

Walking in, Steven and Mike lead the way the gaming room. "There's a ton of these capsules underground." Mike said as Steven laid down in the only capsule visible. "You get in it, and the capsule goes underground placing your body in a kind of suspended animation while you're in the game. When you're done, it takes you to another room where you can leave. They did this to save space since there will be several hundred or thousands of us online at any time."

Pointing to a screen showing 1,256 to the right of the capsule Mike continued, "That's how many are playing Hunter's Paradise right now."

With a swooshing sound, the capsule Steven had just gotten shot forwards and into a bend heading to yet another basement level in the club.

"It's also a hiding area," Mike explained, "if a monster wave too powerful to fight off attacks the school, everyone enters suspended animation and can wait up to two years for help to come or for the monsters to move on allowing the teachers to lead an outbreak. There are formations that make it nearly impossible for the monsters to find the capsules."

Another capsule shot up, and Mike jumped in saying, "See you in the game!"

A minute later, John jumped in and closed it. "Unknown users detected, commence scan?" A monotone voice said.

"Commence." John said, remembering that the game needed to scan his body's condition to create his avatar.

The capsule shuddered as it accelerated suddenly and John nearly puked as he felt weightless, the capsule hitting the bend and shooting deep into the ground. While this was going on, formations came to life examining him and Snakey down to the molecular level. He'd heard that the Tamer's Club has special capsules designed to hold massive monsters so tamers can use the program to train as well. Thankfully, Snakey was small enough, and the AI advanced enough, that John didn't have to worry about getting a special capsule for her.

"Scan complete, uploading data.... uploaded. Start Hunter's Paradise?" The scan had only taken a minute and the capsule was still moving.

'Guess that makes sense, if it's designed to be a final hiding place for the students and teachers it wouldn't makes sense to have it in such an easily accessible place as the Hunter's Club.' John thought. After a moments contemplation John said, "Begin." and the world went white...

Looking around, John found himself in the middle of a cave with several paths leading in different directions. Snakey hissed suddenly from his right, and he turned to see her on the ground. John felt her fear through their mental link. Snakey was unable to understand why they were suddenly standing in a cave in the middle of no where.

"Don't worry." John said, sitting down on the floor and picking Snakey up. He placed her around his shoulder and started petting her soothingly until she'd calmed down and stooped baring her fangs at everything around them. "That's right, we're safe."

John stood up and started looking around. He was in a cave with several openings, words carved into the wall next to the openings. Turning around in a full circle, he read all of them. "Log out, Leader Boards, Shop, Quick Play, Team Play, Ranked, Tournaments, Challenges." Finishing the full circle, John was surprised to find a desk with a computer on top of it. Sitting down, he saw a mail icon flashing so he clicked on it. The first message was an invitation to join a chat group sent by Mike so he accepted it.

"You made it!" Mike said loudly, "The first time you log in you're stuck in the cave, but you can buy a house if you make enough in-game money."

"I'm inviting you to our team, we can do team challenges later." Steven said.

Another message hit his inbox and John saw an invitation Dread the Rifle, Mike and Steven's group from the Hunter's Club Trial. He snorted as he accepted the invitation saying, "You need to change the name."

"HELL NO!" They both yelled.

"We're not changing the name, forget about it." Mike said

"Mike's right, it's the best name in Gallandwell High." Steven said with a grin on his face, "You should just explore Hunter's Paradise for a while. Do as many of the solo challenges as you can. Thankfully, you don't have to worry about gearing up. They can your real life gear for the challenges, they want it to be as close to reality as possible."

With nothing better to do, John shrugged and started walking towards the challenges path while saying, "Guess you're right, I'm going to check out the first challenge."

The connection went dead, cutting off whatever Mike was about to say as John and Snakey disappeared from the cave with a flash.