Chapter 5: Round One, Fight! (Part 2)
It almost felt as if he was a ball, and they were soccer players kicking him around. However, thanks to his high agility and evasion stat, Logan could dodge most of the attacks right in the nick of time.
'Damn it! If only I had gotten an armor blueprint from somewhere- argh!'
But it felt like his wriggling was making them even madder, and their attacks kept getting stronger. They must have all chosen the fighter class, so when their hits finally landed, they knocked the breath out of Logan.
'Why does it hurt so much? Don't tell me... they have turned the pain limiters off? What a sick bastard would do that!?'
Pain limiter was an in-built technology available within the VR pods. Essentially, it was a device that can induce pain by stimulating the nervous system of the players by sending a specific amount of electrical shocks.
The brain perceives the weird behavior of the nerves as pain and the player feels as if they're getting hurt by playing a game.
Some players used this feature to advance their 'gameplay' but in reality, most of them were a bunch of masochists who enjoyed getting hurt by beautiful NPCs.
That being said, there was a limit to how much pain could someone experience. It was called the Pain limiter for a reason.
It was a precautionary measure to prevent any trauma or death. Without illegal modifications to the VR pod, it was impossible to turn it off, but doing so often resulted in malfunction, rendering the pod useless.
But it seemed like Tartarus was going beyond the worse punishments and had turned off the limiter to make the experience as realistic as possible.
'What do I do... how do I stop them?'
[Current HP: 160/200]
Between getting beaten to a pulp, he got a look at the people surrounding him. One of them appeared to be the same man he had wanted to get away from before the round began. But his rotten luck had brought him face to face with the man.
"That's enough! Now tie him up, I want to ask him something..." The man roared and all the lackeys stopped at once and followed his order, "Two of you keep a lookout for those zombies and other bastards. Inform me as soon as you see anything move."
"As you wish, Marco." Two of them nodded and rushed towards either side of the alleyway.
"Also, take this bastard. If the zombies come, throw him in their way. That should slow them down a bit," Marco said while pointing at the man they were toying with before piling on Logan.
Once they were gone, Marco turned his attention toward his prey. "Now tell me, what were you doing there? Spying on us, hm?"
"I-I was- hmph!"
As soon as Logan opened his mouth to talk his way out of it, someone shoved a piece of bloodied cloth right into his mouth, shutting him up for good.
"Come on, speak up. I'm waiting for an answer." Marco smirked, "I'll count to five, if I don't hear a word out of your cute little mouth, I'll break one of your fingers, and then we'll start over and over and over until either you speak up or you have no more bones to break. The choice is yours."
At that moment, it was clear these bastards were simply toying with Logan. From the beginning, they had no intention of letting him talk or knowing what he was doing around those trash cans. It was just an excuse to beat the crap out of him and fulfill their sadistic desires.
These people were truly the lowest of the low. But thinking about stuff like that would not save him now.
"Eh, you're still not going to speak? Fine, don't blame me for what happens next."
Saying so, he grabbed Logan's left index finger and slowly began bending it backwards. Logan watched in horror as he snapped his finger with ease.
"HMPH! HMPH!!!"
There was no one who could hear Logan's scream as all of them grabbed onto his fingers and began breaking them, one after another. While Logan squirmed in pain, they kept having fun and laughing as if they were bursting the bubbles of a bubble wrap.
The pain became unbearable; it was so intense that everything else was thrown right out of his mind. They were relentless. Even after breaking his fingers, they weren't done and kept twisting the broken fingers repeatedly, till they all pointed in random directions.
Logan couldn't do anything to stop them as they kept piling on him, breaking every bone in his fingers and palms into pieces. His high agility and evasion couldn't do shit against them.
Marco targeted Logan's forearms once his fingers and palms couldn't be damaged anymore. But before he could break them, the man standing beside him fell to the ground with a loud thud.
"What the heck?" Marco mumbled as he turned toward the alley's entrance. "Who's there?"
"Just poor old me…"
A feminine voice echoed through the alleyway. A girl with violet hair was juggling some stones in the distance.
Behind her was a man, dragging what appeared to be two corpses with him. They were Marco's lackeys, whom he had sent to guard the entrance to the alley.
"A lady, huh... get her as well, boys. Looks like we'll have loads of fun in the remaining time of this round."
"Oh, we will have fun, won't we, Snake?" The lady winked at the men.
Since all of them were combatants and had over 10 points in strength, Marco was sure they would not lose against them. Especially since there were only two of them, but they were four. There was no way they would lose against them...
Putt!
The lady hurled another pebble in their direction. Marco was careful enough to dodge it. However, the pebble hit the one behind him, knocking him out in an instant.
"Shit, that bitch has an advantage in ranged attacks... Go on, rush them!" Marco yelled at the two remaining lackeys.
But there was something else going on inside his head.
I need to get out of here.
As they got closer, Snake jumped ahead and took down the lackeys. However, he couldn't stop Marco, who pushed Snake aside with ease and rushed past them.
The girl threw the last remaining pebble in his direction, but Marco dodged it by a hair's breadth, before disappearing in the dark.
"Tch, that bastard." She said before stomping her feet in frustration.
"What... do...?" Snake asked while pointing at the two men.
"Knock them out like the ones before and leave them for the zombies to feed on. But loot them. Maybe they would have some useful stuff on them." The lady replied before making her way toward Logan who couldn't even lift his face to greet his saviors, "Heya, I'm Izna, nice to meet you."
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone