Free A New World (Gamer, Book 1) by Kenneth Guthrie

in
rage as Axel snatches it away and crushes it in half.
    "You have to be kidding me? Quest accepted?"
Harry says.
    They both pull out their quest books and open
them up.
    There's a new quest sitting at the very top
and they both stare at the details in shock.
    "30 gold," Harry says.
    "It's a huge amount of money for something
like this," Axel agrees.
    They both look back to the exit behind them
and start to run. 400 tentacles, slimes and blobs await them.
They've just managed to get themselves a timed kill quest and they
only have 5 hours and 59 minutes remaining.

Blob Killer Amateur
    Level 7, 6 Gold, 3 Copper. 2 hours
remaining. 67 blobs, 43 tentacles and 89 slimes dead.
     
    “ 200!” Harry screams, hacking down
another slime with sweat pouring down his face.
    “ Half way,” Axel wheezes as she
fires another arrow half heartedly at a blob before falling to her
knees to vomit from the severity of her exhaustion. Harry holds her
hair, while she does and pulls her to her feet afterwards. They are
both exhausted beyond the limit of their in-game bodies. Both have
more aches and pains than they would care to admit and have died a
few times already (Harry: 8; Axel: 2), which has thankfully been
offset by a reasonable drop rate of coin. The situation is getting
desperate and they have no choice but to keep on fighting if they
want to win the prize.
    "We are never going to make it at this rate,"
Harry mumbles as he leans up against Axel, who can barely hold
herself up.
    "I know," she mutters. "It's just too many at
our level. We can't kill them fast enough."
    They look to the advancing blobs, slimes and
tentacles with a look of worry on their faces. Even if they don't
complete the quest, they will still have made a reasonable amount
off grinding away at these mobs, yet to succeed would net them
thirty gold split two ways. It is a very nice payday and both of
them desperately need it.
    "We can't stop," Harry says, pushing himself
back up, but stumbling slightly as he does.
    He grabs hold of his Pig Sticker, which is
already melted from the sheer amount of damage it has sustained and
stumbles forward to whack out at a slime. It wraps itself around
his weapon and the extra weight forces him to drop it to the
ground.
    He looks at it in disgust and stomps down on
the slime, so it falls off. He grabs up his Pig Sticker and slaps a
tentacle away that is reaching for his leg.
    Axel joins him and they hack and slash and
chop their enemies to death. Time is slowly trickling away and it's
not long before another hour has passed. With one hour left on the
clock, which is ticking away in both of their visions, they are
running low on options.
    "How many are we up to?"
    Harry checks his display and groans
loudly.
    "280. 120 more to go."
    Axel groans and falls to her knees and it
seems like she is almost wilting. Her arm, thankfully, grew back
after her first death, yet her skin, much like Harry's, is
pockmarked with dozens of little painful burns. It seems that after
awhile the healing rate gets so low that the injuries they
experience actually begin to appear on their bodies. Both of them
are dripping pixilated blood and have strange brownish looking
marks on them that could be burns if looked at from the right
angle.
    Harry stumbles forward and falls to the ground
as a tentacle whacks out and knocks him from his feet. It strikes
down on his back once, ripping away a good chunk of health, before
he can spin around to force his Pig Sticker in the way of the next
strike. Several blobs jump on top of him and he tries to force them
back, yet he is so exhausted that it is too heavy for
him.
    Axel tries to reach out to him, but she is
just too weak and falls limp to the ground. She tries to move her
body, yet it's so weakened that she can barely move.
    Harry looks back at her in concern and then
stabs straight up into the top most blob. It doesn't do much and
even more jump on top of him. Soon a dozen blobs are weighing down
on his body and