16 Bloody Bunches of Rabbits

"Who is she?"

"Ah, well…you see…she, uh."

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue. My name is Emiko. This girl and I met at a bathhouse where we had gotten to know each other…quite intimately.

"Wait! Gwyn, you also had sex with her. So, I see you've been getting around."

"Well…I-I…it sort of just happened, and we didn't have sex."

"How does something like that just happen, and what do you mean you didn't have sex?"

Emiko laughing at my situation, spoke up to both of us.

"Don't worry, we didn't have sex. We just masturbated each other. I caught her staring at me in the bath, and I couldn't help but tease her because of how shy she was."

"Oh! Wow! That is kind of hot? Ok, I see now. That's sort of how Gwyn and I started too."

I could only stand there, embarrassed as the two talked. Emiko, who noticed my red face giggled.

"She does get way too embarrassed about these things, almost like a maiden. Hey little one, your name was Lenora, right? It seems like you two are planning on taking a job, how about I join you; that is if it's alright with the wife?"

"She's not my wife…she is just a friend."

After saying I noticed Lenora looking away. I wouldn't mind Emiko joining us, but I better make sure with Lenora.

"If it is alright with Lenora, I don't mind it."

"I suppose it would be all right. By the way, Gwyn, are you building a harem or something? You just going to invite everyone you sleep with to the party?"

Lenora really knows what to say to embarrass me.

"NO! I am not building a harem. Those things just happened. Besides, if I didn't invite people I've been with, you wouldn't be in the party either."

"It's ok, Gwyn. I don't mind being in your harem. Maybe Lenora would like to join as well?"

I could see Lenora blush as she turned away.

"Let's just stop talking about this. Gwyn, go pick a job so we can get out of here.

After calming myself down, I browse through the job list. There were quite a few choices to choose from, so I picked one that wanted us to kill 20 horned rabbits.

"Got one. It seems like it will be easy, and it is giving us 500 gold and 1000xp."

I get everyone into the party, share the quest, and we head out to the prairie. On our way, we talk amongst ourselves. Emiko tells us how she is practicing to be a stealthy assassin who uses dual daggers. Lenora tells me that after our last quest, she decided to go the fighter route. After some walking, we finally find our targets.

"So, I guess we just start killing rabbits then?" I ask, not knowing the best way to do this.

"Well, normally we would build a proper formation for this kind of thing. But seeing as we are killing horned rabbits, it shouldn't be a problem. With me being the tank, Gwyn being ranged and melee DPS, and Emiko being the melee DPS, we can breeze through this."

After some searching around, we finally found a horned rabbit. The fight wasn't that big of a deal as Lenora killed it with one hit. We were about to walk away when Emiko stopped us.

"Where are you guys going?"

I looked around, trying to figure out why she was asking that thinking that there might be other rabbits around.

"Finding other rabbits. Why? Are there any more around here?"

Emiko pulls out a small knife and crouches over the rabbit we killed.

"You have to collect the drops from what you kill. This game doesn't just drop the items after every kill, you have to dismantle everything. The drops are contained in the stomach."

"Lenora, you know about this?" I asked looking over at Lenora

"I didn't know this was even a thing. It was never mentioned anywhere, and since I never saw any drops, I assumed the game didn't have any." Lenora replied back while shrugging her shoulders.

A few moments later, there was one very skinned rabbit, a pair of gloves, and a few pieces of gold on the ground. Looking at all of this, my curiosity got the better of me.

"Emiko. Why were there gloves and some gold coins in the rabbit's stomach?"

Emiko trying her best to clean her blood-soaked hands, responded to me.

"I'm not too sure. I think it's the developer's way of making fun of loot drops in other MMOs. The drops I think are explained by insinuating that the monsters ate them, probably from other players or NPCs."

With that explanation, Lenora nods her head.

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Kind of wish I knew about this earlier. How did you know about it?"

"I was a beta tester, so I learned some stuff. They only hired a hundred of us, and as part of our NDA, we are forbidden from influencing any of the other players in-game. The exception for this is we can give out small little tidbits here and there."

Emiko places the loot and bits of rabbit in here inventory. We decided we would split everything later. We spend a few hours killing rabbits and collecting their drops. We had all done our share of 'collecting loot' from the rabbits. I had vomited a few times doing this as I was not used to seeing such a scene.

Emiko was quite good with her daggers, and Lenora has chosen to kill them with her fists. Said she wanted to practice her martial arts in the game, it has a certain brutal efficiency to it. I also manage to get plenty of kills with my bow, and I start to get better at hitting moving targets and firing speed as well.

Once we were done, we realized we were covered in a lot of blood and other bits of rabbit. We decided to head back and turn in our quest and get cleaned up.

"Why does this game need to be so realistic?" I had asked to no one in particular.

"I kinda like it. You can learn a lot of skills in this game and apply them in real life. I think that is pretty cool." Emiko had responded. Looking at her smiling while her face is covered in blood was eliciting a strange feeling from me that I didn't know what it was.

"Can you imagine if schools started to use this technology? You could teach more within a day." Lenora replied back. She, too, was covered in blood. It looked like we were from that one horror movie about a prom and a girl named Marie, I think. Anyway, rabbits had a lot of blood in them.

We arrive back in town, and on the way to the Adventurer's Hall, we got a few stares from some of the other players. It was kind of embarrassing. Walking in the building, we go to a kiosk and finish our quest. Since I shared the quest, the reward was split three ways, but thanks to my [Friend of Eri] skill, I got the full XP from it.

"All right! Our first group quest is done!" I yelled a little louder than I intended.

"Now we need a bath ASAP. I need to get this blood off of me." Lenora replied while looking at her bloodstained body.

We all nod and headed out towards the bathhouse.