Chapter 13 - Stage Boss

*Modern day: 4050 August 31

Location: Hearth; City: Zion; Population: 2,107,257 Inhabitants.

Back at Jaspreth's basement…

Switching on the lights in the basement, Mathilde Harris shook her head at her son, still fast asleep on the couch. His phone was on his chest, covered by his hand. He must have been texting before he fell asleep.

On the corner beside the stairs, she watched the three girls who were all daughters of big shots whom her husband sometimes disliked.

Sighing, she approached her son and tapped him by the shoulders.

"It's late, get up Jay. You and your friends need to eat." There was no response. She tried to shake him.

Jaspreth remained unconscious. Mathilde grabbed her son's hand and checked for a pulse. She breathed a sigh of relief, but began to worry.

"Jay!" She shook him harshly now. His phone fell on the floor, but Jaspreth never opened his eyes. Horrified, Mathilde ran towards the tent where the three girls were still fast asleep, too.

She checked for pulses and was glad to find that they were alive. However, like her son, none of them had woken to her nudging them.

"What's going on?" She muttered as she got on her feet. Cupping her hands over her mouth, she screamed her husband's name. The forty-year-old police officer, who was already in his uniform, came rushing upon his wife's frantic screams.

"There's something wrong with the kids. They're not waking up. Call the medical staff now."

Daniel Harris stared at his wife's worried face for a moment before pressing the call button on his wristwatch. A translucent screen popped up from its mini screen, providing him with his list of contacts.

"Call medics." He prompted. The dialer forwarded him to the medical center's number. On the second ring, they picked his call.

"What may be the matter, sir?" A voice sprung forth from the small speaker of the watch he was wearing.

"I need an ambu-car in my house as soon as possible. My children and his friends," he paused and looked at his wife.

"I tried to wake them up, but neither of them are responding. They're alive though. I checked for pulses."

"They seem to have fallen into a coma." Daniel Harris walked towards the girls by the tent. He knew each of their parents and he was not liking what was happening.

The closest to him was the governor's daughter, Zera. Her hair had grown over her shoulders. He remembered meeting her for the first time some three years ago when Jaspreth brought the three girls over.

She was nothing like her father.

"Sending a team of medics in ten minutes, sir."

With the call coming to an end, the small translucent screen also disappeared. Daniel Harris crouched and gently took Zera's hand, putting his index and middle finger over her wrist, verifying that her wife had spoken the truth.

"What is going on, Dani?"

"We cannot tell yet, but we need to let their parents know."

–

"Holy crap." Jaspreth muttered, the full size of the stage boss was larger than the previous winged beast they had faced in the former stage and it had taken five of them to finish the stubborn monster off.

"It's a big mama bear." Zera muttered, noting its not so pointed ears, the white fur and its feet and hands resembling that of a bear.

Zera stood beside him right where they had been a little while back when they had to face off with the other players. It was only a few feet away from the beast. The monster was busy lashing at the other team to notice them, though.

"Plans?" Zera asked. She was trying to make her brain work on how they can defeat the stage boss without dying first.

"First off, what the hell is that?"

[BorZ Gen4560; HP: 110,000]

"What? It has that many health points!? Dang!" Jaspreth knew it would most likely take them forever to take it down if it was just him and Zera trying to tackle the humongous beast.

"It's just stage 2 too. Imagine how big of those health points we'd be needing to deal with in the next rounds."

Jaspreth shook his head.

"We're dead."

"We can't die. Under my watch, no one is allowed to die."

Jaspreth scoffed.

"Alright. Let's not die, Z. But with our combined attack points, we need to make sure each of them counts. If we missed, we'd be delaying finishing it." Jaspreth paused for a minute, eyeing the big bear up and down.

"Or we can let the other team attack it too, finish them later and ta-da, win-win."

At that moment, Zera wanted to smack Jaspreth in the head with a hammer. Although his logic wasn't far off, there was still some danger with that decision.

"If we let that happen, they might have already thought of ways to take us down."

"Yes. But come to think of it. It would be faster to kill the stage boss if all of us worked together."

Zera bit her lower lip. Jaspreth was making a hard case. In the first place, Zera didn't even want to harm anyone. If she can help it, she'd prefer to fight monsters than their fellow players.

"Let's just focus on figuring out how to deal with the big boss and the other one later."

Jaspreth let out a sigh. He stared at the large enemy, who continued to search the trees, throwing a few away from its path like it was paper. Its health points had decreased as the other team retaliated, guns fired and their cannon balls too.

"Oh, well. At least. Would you look at that? It's losing health points. Yay." Jaspreth glanced at Zera. The latter only rolled her eyes.

"Come on." They both trudged on their way to the enormous bear, their weapons raised.

"I've been wondering if we have completely disappeared from our reality or if we just came here as souls. I mean, did our bodies remain in my house's basement? What we are seeing can be nothing but shells of our souls that were somehow sucked into this game."

"Let's hope the second theory is right. I don't feel so confident about swinging a sharp sword against anyone we encounter. The thought alone is making me shiver."

Without knowing what was on their way, Jaspreth stepped on a stiff branch but for some reason, despite it being under the snow, a sound of it snapping echoed in their surroundings.

The beast seemed to have caught on. Its red eyes had turned towards where he and Zera were standing.

"Um, should I be scared now?" Zera muttered, her eyes never leaving the beast as it opened its wide mouth and let out an ear-splitting roar.