3 Dropping In

I arrived in an instant to the scene of the fight, where three people were fighting cautiously against a large beast.

Of the three, one held a sword, one a bow, and the last seemed to be hold nothing, instead he was keeping his distance and at one moment an arc of lightning seemed to fly from his hand to the side of the beast.

However, all of these attacks seemed to do nothing to the beast.

The creature had a body closely resembling a bear but dark with a texture alike a burnt wooden surface, small simlarly dark spurs ran all the way down it's back.

It's head was similarly bear-like from the ears to the eyes to the nose, and yet it had no mouth whatsoever, and instead had two axe-like bones coming out of each side of it's snout.

'No mouth? A Dimensional Beast!'

Dimensional Beasts do not eat any physical food, since they typically evolved in dimensional overlap regions where ambient dimensional energy was abundant.

Most were basically powerful moving plants, and they were very vicious in defending their territory. In their natural habitat the amount of territory they claimed equaled the amount of 'food' they could harvest, since a vast majority live only on dimensional energy.

Compared to other strains of beasts that could pose threats to fighters, they were usually quite weak. However, for an average person or someone who had just gained power, even the weakest among them could not be underestimated.

A man among the group ran towards it with a beginner's sword, and the beast fiercely smacked him with one of it's palms.

He flew out and skidded across the ground, before stopping a distance off. A mocking smirk could be seen on the man's face as he flew in spite of the attack he received, as the beast roared out in pain.

The man's blade had pierced through it's wrist, the beast rampaged about until the sword came out, and in a short moment one could tell how that hindered it's movements.

The man's allies had clearly been keeping their distance and weaving between the trees to try and avoid the creature's direct hits. The arrows littering the ground and scorch marks along the creature's sides gave indication of a drawn out but non-instensive fight.

'This group isn't particularly strong though.. are they also new arrivals? Or have they just been struggling to get any resources to "level up" and thus still weak?'

As the Dimensional Beast was injured the two remaining party members instantly fled, running in my general direction. As soon as it somewhat recovered from the blow, it began running after them with a limp.

'What the hell? Were they even planning to fight it out? How pathetic can you get?'

As they both ran, the archer began to quickly outpace the other group member.

"Sorry Tedd, I swear will come back for the gear! I'm the fastest, so I will give it the slip. I promise your gear will come back to you both, and I'll hold onto it until I see you guys next time, yeah?"

"Like hell!"

'Tedd' held out his hand and lightning flew out of his arm, hitting the archer who had pulled off into the distance. The man immediately shuddered and fell as the Lightning Mage overtook and outpaced him.

"Sorry! Guess I'll do you the favor of holding your gear instead, well~ who knows how long it will be before I see you again though!

It was your idea to fight this thing, so at least take responsibility. I'm not giving up any of my grace time or gear on your account! And I'm not like that dolt Briar who would take you at your word, have fun with the Dimensional Beast."

As the mage quickly escaped into the distance, the Beast quickly closed in on the archer. He tried his best to get up and flee, but at the moment he had rose up the beast was already on top of him.

He attempted to dodge off to the side, but the beast reared it's head, swinging it's axe-like tusks toward him.

I clearly saw his head fly right off of his shoulders, the anger and indignity lingered in his eyes as it landed next to his body.

'The Beast was only quickly limping.. you probably still had a good chance to defeat it thanks to the swordsman, and you both could have likely outpaced it without the infighting. How could such a useless team exist?'

The beast snorted deeply and turned in the direction that the mage had run off to, before snorting again and turning back to where it had come from.

Dimensional beasts generally would not chase down an opponent who fled too far from it's territory.

A distance away, the man named Briar struggled to crawl over and reach out for his sword. His body was terribly injured and broken in several places from just that one smack.

The Dimensional Beast also took note of this movement and snorted through it's nose. It started to move towards the swordsman.

'Since this group was defeated, it shouldn't matter if I take the kill at this point. And that swordsman isn't in good enough shape to try and bargain once I do either.'

I ran across the tree branch while looking across the layout of the canopy.

'Where is a good spot'

Despite it's lame leg the Beast was gaining speed, seemingly intent on trampling that swordsmen. I jumped off the edge of the branch, throwing out my Scarf.

----

Those two jackasses.. I knew both of them from High School, and thought they would be trustworthy, but for them to just abandon me and run off like that... well, teaming up with them was worthwhile to try, I just had bad judgment this time.

I heard the beast rampaging about for a moment after we collided, it sounded like I at least traded injury for injury?

Oof, though I'm quite certain he probably looks better off than I do right now.

Most people think of this as a game with high stakes. Losing time and resources in your debut can have a big impact on your future, but at the same time, to many it is just a competition.

Even if you are betrayed and killed by your friends in the game, you cannot retaliate or be retaliated against for that action in reality. Despite the fact that this world would often have deep impacts on your life in reality, it was effectively lawless.

Those guys obviously thought nothing of leaving me here for dead.

The tendencies of betrayal and greed in people would get more intense and deeper concealed the older they became. It was better to see through it now rather than later when it was too late.

Even more so nowadays where there can be hunts for super resources and people live such long lives.

Though such resources are far and away from Humanity's Home. But my goals were far beyond Humanity's Home, and it was worth it to test out and find good fellows.

As I saw the Dimensional Beast stumbling back towards me from the distance, I realized I was definitely going to die this time.

At the same time, I thought, it was worthwhile to lose out a bit on my debut to know their true colors.

Living on earth's moon, in the Aitken Basin's Undercity, the only resources were cheap metals, plants, food, and people. But someday I would live nearer to the Milky way Center, in the colonies, where opportunities were everywhere.

It is easier to betray someone and give in to dark tendencies in a virtual reality, where you can easily get away with it.

In the same way, it is an easy way to weed out those who are untrustworthy. As a person's true personality will reflect the actions they take regardless of the circumstances. And the loss here is much better than the loss of life later on.

Though, even if my death was set in stone this time, in respect to this beast here, there was still no way I was going to go down without a fight.

I gritted my teeth and bore with the pain coursing through my body.

'Is this what moving on broken bones feels like?'

Ignoring the pain, if I didn't get to that sword, the pain of dying unable to do anything would be much worse.

Somehow, even as my vision blurred, I made it to that sword and gripped it tightly in my hand. Then I stood up on my one decent leg, and held that sword before me.

'Wait, this is a sword, what am I doing?'

I relaxed my arm and held the sword level to my body.

"Come on you bastard!"

The enormous Beast's presence was incredibly intimidating, but I knew I had to wait for the right timing.

'If I can get it's eyes and roll away, maybe I'd still have a chance to escape. In a few hours I could recover and try again! I'll defeat it myself next time!'

'Almost.. almost..'

"Haaaaaah!!"

A loud noise from the side caused me to be distracted and I half turned to see what it was, before I realized there was still a beast charging me.

My stance had relaxed and I was a bit off balance due to that incidental distraction, and the Beast was almost on top of me.

'Oh shit!'

I swung my blade before the Beast had even reached me because of my high nerves.

And then something crashed right into it, a chunk of it's head became meat paste flying through the air, and the beast fell to the ground and skidded to a stop while something else kept on flying.

I was stunned for an instant, and fell on my back.

Was that a.. person?

----

Getting to my feet, I felt a fair amount of pain and incredibly dizzy. My shoulder, in particular, felt incredibly terrible.

When I rammed that Dimensional Beast I used my spear like a jousting pole, if not for the mage scarf which acted in part as cushioning, I'm pretty sure my shoulder would have been worse than shattered.

And if it weren't for the additional oomph I put in using a blast of my remaining mental energy, the spear would have probably gotten stuck inside of it and then my injuries may have been even worse on the landing...

Although it worked, I don't think this is a very good battle strategy. Especially considering how likely it was I'd miss a vital spot anyways. Though, I think I was lucky this time.

Looking back to it again, I could see the Beast lying on the ground. The beasts head had effectively been blown apart from the focused blast against it's head using my momentum and spear reinforced with mental energy.

The Swordsman from before was laying on his back a little ways away from the Beast.

A small grayish-blue crystal could be seen laying on the ground along with some of the meat paste resulting from it's blown apart head.

Recouping, I walked up to the body of the Beast and grabbed the small crystal and gathered some of the still-together remains of the head.

"Welp, sorry for bothering you! I was just dropping in, so don't mind me. Feel free to keep the other stuff to yourself."

And saying that I just walked off before he could say anything to retort.

'Yes! I got the best parts all to myself!'