"I'm tired. I'm cold. My feet hurt." TripleBatsuDance complained incessantly after about half an hour of trudging through the snow.

  "Your build has unlimited stamina. You have cold resistance. And you have life regeneration." AFKat countered every single complaint in a matter-of-fact tone. She was tired herself, not physically, but mentally. Her body felt perfectly alright, although something held her back from walking as fast as she could have.

  The reason for that was her lack of shoes with a movement speed modifier. She did have the [Vanguard] class skill [Juggernaut], which made her immune to slow and stun effects, so at least that prevented her from going into negative movement speed due to the snow on the ground, which would have had a chilling effect on her.

  "Couldn't you take off the [Crown of the First Martyr] and wear some movespeed boots? You got 90% damage reduction without that helmet." Puffing up her cheeks into a cutesy pout, TripleBatsuDance finally pulled out the one argument that could get to AFKat.

  "Muu... You're fine with your two layers of defense, but if anything unforeseen happens, I could die and end up back in Bluevale." Turning on her heel, she shot back at the dancer. "Or worse..."

  "What out here could kill you? This is only Act 3. The monsters only reach up to level 40. Even the act boss couldn't kill you if you had 90% instead of 100% damage reduction." Shrugging, TripleBatsuDance suddenly sped up and seemed to glide past her. She wore boots that had a movement speed modifier of 35% on them, so she could walk pretty quickly. Coupled with one of her dances, it looked like she was ice skating.

  "Another player." Replying with a pout of her own, AFKat gave a realistic answer that instantly disarmed her opposite. The dancer fawned over the little catgirl's expression with a very transparent look in her eyes, but held herself back from trying to hug her. Until she figured out what constituted an attack and what didn't, she had to refrain from physical contact.

  "Well, we're an aura slave and an immortal tank. Without any damage, we won't be killing any monsters either, and eventually, we'd have an entire map worth of mobs trailing after us." Looking around carefully, TripleBatsuDance tried to spot any monsters in the area. She did have a few offensive skills that she needed to take to progress through her class, but without putting any further points or upgrades into them, they barely did more damage than basic attacks.

  "Everything is cleared already. Maybe a player just came through here?" AFKat looked across the snow-covered plains but saw not a single monster. The respawn time ranged anywhere from one to five minutes, so it couldn't have been that long before them.

  Unless, of course, the owner of the voice, which had announced that Prison of Eternity Online had now become a real death game, made another mistake and disabled the respawning of NPCs. Then this world would become depopulated very soon.

  "What's that?" TripleBatsuDance pointed forward, where a small cloud of snow was blown up by something moving across the landscape at an incredible speed. There were race builds that allowed players to reach several hundred percent increased movement speed, but those usually dealt no damage. Their players only created them to participate in special events, and there was no such thing in this act.

  When they looked ahead to where it was going, they saw a lone monster in the form of a giant wolf. Then it disappeared in the cloud, which seemed to eat it up in an instant. Maybe a high-level player had come here to get all the content of the game before they got stuck in this world, and was now taking out his frustration on the enemies. But that wasn't the speed a regular optimized build moved at.

  "It's coming toward us." AFKat strained her eyes but couldn't see what was inside the cloud rapidly approaching their position. "I have a bad feeling about this."

  In an explosion of snow, the cloud stopped about a dozen meters away from them. As it slowly settled, a figure became visible within it. It belonged to a human male avatar, wielding a short sword that seemed to glitch out of place rapidly and irregularly. All of his equipment looked off, not at all like items one could obtain in the game.

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  When the two girls looked at him, the name displayed over his avatar read irb34ladkb4, and he was only level 33. The moment TripleBatsuDance saw it, her eyes widened, and her body tensed; she knew what he was.

  "Two level 100 avatars? Should be amazing exp." He sneered while spinning the sword in his hand in a flourish. Then he zoomed right in front of AFKat's face, looming over her with a grin that promised death, and brought down his blade in a blur.

  "Kyou-" The dancer couldn't even finish calling out the catgirl's real name when an explosion of blood occurred before her eyes.

  However, it didn't come from where the cheater's glitched blade hit AFKat, but from his own body. A countless number of tiny wounds had opened up across his entire body all at the same time, turning him into a bloody rag from one moment to the next. He then collapsed, dead on the spot.

  "Huh?" TripleBatsuDance made while blinking her eyes in utter confusion.

  "He must have hit me a million times or so in that instant." The catgirl looked down at the corpse, which didn't fade away as it usually would. That meant that he either hadn't chosen to respawn yet, or he couldn't because he didn't have enough money.

  "So even a cheater can't penetrate 100% damage reduction?" Raising her eyebrows, the dancer glanced at AFKat with a curious expression.

  "Must have been one who wasn't very knowledgeable about the game." Continuing to stare at the unmoving corpse, AFKat offered a possible explanation. The game had occasional cheaters who gave themselves impossible attack and movement speed or made overpowered items. It seemed this one didn't even know about damage reflection and didn't have an invincibility cheat.

  Usually, cheaters were banned within seconds after killing their first player in PVP. Speed-cheaters oftentimes didn't even make it through a single region, as the game servers would kick them for performing too many actions in too short a period of time. Maybe this one had entered the game moments before it turned real, and there didn't seem to be a system to deal with rule-breakers anymore.

  Neither of the girls wanted to say it, but they were incredibly fortunate that this one, in particular, didn't have an instant-kill cheat. And the rest of the now trapped player base was even luckier that he attacked AFKat here. Who knew what havoc he could have wreaked against anybody who didn't have any form of damage-reflection?

  "Your build, which can't kill anything beyond level 10, just oneshot another player," commented TripleBatsuDance with a wondrous expression.

  "He oneshot himself on me," AFKat said with a pout, thinking the dancer girl was blaming her for this outcome.

  "He was likely the only player your build could defeat."

  "Again, he did it to himself!"

  Silence laid itself over the two girls after this short back and forth. They stared at the cheater's body, covered in blood from head to toe, and furrowed their brows.

  "He's not disappearing." TripleBatsuDance picked up a stick from somewhere and carefully poked him. His eyes were rolled back in their sockets, and no steamy breaths escaped his parted lips.

  "So he's really dead?" AFKat wondered with mixed feelings. She had never seen a dead body before. Even if she was aware that this was their reality now, it didn't feel real yet.

  Suddenly, she felt warm softness press on her back before a pair of arms hugged her from behind. It was TripleBatsuDance, who forcibly turned her away from the sight with a gentle embrace as if to change the subject.

  "Oh, hey. I'm not taking damage." She muttered quietly with mild surprise in her voice, her breath tickling the catgirl's ears sitting on top of her head. It was a strange feeling to have sensation where she didn't have any before.

  "Muu... I'm alright." Trying to brush her off, AFKat complained about being treated like a child, but the well-endowed girl tightened her hug and slowly pulled her away using her ice skating-like dance.

  "Let's go," TripleBatsuDance said before finally moving away from the catgirl. Using herself to cover the view of the bloody corpse behind them, she led the little catgirl onward with a forced smile.

  They walked on for a while in awkward silence that weighed heavily on their minds. AFKat understood that her companion was looking out for her mental health, so she tried not to bring it up again. But with a barren, snowy landscape before them, there was nothing to take her mind off what she had just witnessed, and her thoughts spiraled unhindered.

  If they ran out of money, they would meet the same fate as that cheater, destined to end up a permanent corpse in this game turned reality.

  Suppressing a shudder at the thought, AFKat trudged on with a determined expression. She would survive and return to the real world so that she could hug her parents again. And then she would kick her idiot brother in the groin for pulling her into this mess in the first place.

  Her face suddenly lit up. She could do that in the game once she reunited with him in Dragonheart's Sanctum. Although it would likely do less damage than in real life.

  Fanart by oracle: