Chapter 32: How do you deal with temporary retardation?

“Anything else? Good. Then we all agree that they have to die. Good,” Fernando said.

All major groups inside the gameworld were gathered in a big circle around the center of the stone plaza.

Fernando was standing. He wore black jeans, a white tank top, and gold chains. He had many tattoos. And a few teardrop tattoos under his eyes. He was a very big and tall man.

He had forced this conference and gathered everyone here.

He looked over at Eugene. Expecting some kind of response or protest. Eugene remained neutral.

Howard was on the sidelines, looking outwardly neutral as well.

“This meeting is done. Everyone get back to work,” he said, as if he was the leader of every group.

One of his gang members went over to his ear and whispered in Spanish: “Somebody finally snitched. We have some important information about the boogeymen.”

…

“Awww fuckkk I’m gonna be dead, die. Aw, fuck, hey! Miranda…”

When the ritual collapsed, Jack’s mind started to feel like jelly. He was scatterbrained. He couldn’t maintain any stream of consciousness. But the extreme pain in his stomach kept drawing his attention back to it.

He dropped to the ground, holding his stomach in a fetal position.

Instinctually, he tried plugging the input that maintained the rapidly dissolving mana blueprint. He managed to do it, but then he dropped his focus and it started dissolving again quickly and the cycle repeated itself.

Lucas and Brian rushed over to him. Trying to talk to him and ask what was wrong.

After a long time of this, and a lot of internal damage, it finally stopped. It hurt a lot, but he wasn’t dead.

“Jack! Please tell us what’s wrong!”

“The fucking circle broke. Shit. Fuck. It hurts. And then…”

They kept trying to talk to him but he couldn’t say anything coherent.

It was night now so they couldn’t do any grinding or anything.

Lucas and Brian treated Jack like a baby and fed him and made him sleep, while they took shifts taking watch. Because of the state Jack was in, each of them got less sleep than normally. And Jack kept moaning in pain throughout the night, keeping them awake.

The next morning the pain started wearing off. Enhanced Healing: Rank 1?” Jack said.

“I think you got a skill last night for doing the healing?” Brian said.

“Oh, yeah I remember…” Jack said, and then stared off into the distance.

“Aww, my stomach hurts,” Jack said.

Lucas whispered to Brian, “Yo, how long is he gonna be like this?”

“Maybe many hours. The same amount of time he spent in the focused mode. That ritual name was sacrifice. It means he borrowed future focus,” Brian said.

They decided to grind in close formation at a very slow pace with one person keeping watch of Jack and treating him like a baby.

They discussed exiting the game together. But that had too many risks. So they decided to just stay until he recovered. And slowly grind.

“When you gonna try that insect control skill? It should work by now,” Brian said.

“When we see an insect. We’ve been stuck in this shitty place forever. There’s no insects here man,” Lucas said.

“Dude. What about this butterfly monster?” Brian said

“Oh… yeah,” Lucas said.

He pointed his hand at an incoming butterfly monster and said, “Insect Movement control!”

He felt something activate and mana being drawn from his core. For one moment he felt like he could control the butterfly. But that control instantly broke. It was as if the giant butterfly was too big.

“I am 100% sure this would work on something smaller like an insect back home,” Lucas said.

“Cool shit! Also, skill crystal!” Brian said.

He handed it over to Lucas since it was his turn.

Lucas crushed the yellow crystal and yellow energy flowed into his hand.

Juggling: Rank 1

“I think the system is calling you a clown,” Brian said.

“Shut up.”

…

“I wanna shower. I want Miranda. I want cake. Where is the sun?” Jack said.

Jack started mumbling to himself afterwards. His intelligence was not reduced. But he completely lacked the ability to focus.

More hours passed like this. Slowly grinding. Taking breaks. Jack also seemed to slowly be getting better, but he was still mostly in the same unfocused state as when the ritual broke.

“You think he is slowly getting better or if he will just snap out of it suddenly?,” Lucas said.

“I’m really not sure how this stuff works. If that shit was like magic borrowing. Or like, if it was using up chemicals in his brain? I have no idea,” Brian said.

“You wanna try the ritual out? We have the recording,” Lucas said.

“Fuck no! Not unless I have an exam. And I dropped out of high school a long time ago,” Brian said.

Jack was staring at the ground and ripping out grass.

“There you retards fucking are! Takes forever to find you shitheads,” Eugene said.