Fight. Level. Survive.

The origin of the world’s economic structure dates back to when the first few looting abilities started appearing.

The Majority of the money in the world comes from looting farms. These are farms where Beasts known to drop the most coins are bred, killed and looted. The value of the coins in circulation is decided by how often the looting farm produces them, with Copper being the most often produced and Gold being by far the rarest.

Each coin seems to retain a tiny amount of Chaos Magic after they are looted. This allows the coins to never rust and makes them very durable.

-Excerpt from, ‘Economics for idiots’. Chapter 2: Loot Farms.

Chapter 18 - Genocide!

“What the actual fuck.”

With his head peaked around a corner, he stared at what was apparently called a Crack Hen. Who named these things? To himself, he whispered, “I mean, sure, If I had the chance to be a Phoenix and ended up as a fucking chicken, I’d be pissed off too…. But a Crack Hen? Really?”

It was massive to the point that Mason couldn't figure out how it had got the cave in the first place. Apart from that, it looked like a chicken… except for the eyes, which were huge, bloodshot and twitchy.

He had seen eyes like that before.

Living in London, you get to know where is generally pretty safe and where is not. Mason had been walking around Brixton after his then-girlfriend forced him to go clubbing. Brixton was usually a definite no-go area for Mason, but in this case, he had been convinced. He had stepped outside to get some fresh air. He hadn’t ventured far from the club when he was approached by a skinny man with his hand in his pockets. The Man had asked Mason if he had any money, and of course, Mason had said no. The man either didn’t believe him or didn’t care and pulled a knife. While Mason had gotten away unscathed, the memory always stayed with him and stopped him from ever trying hard drugs.

That had been a man addicted to crack, this was a giant fucking chicken. He was about to turn away and just leave when he remembered the quest reward. A Magic KFC box. He did really like KFC… and they apparently didn’t eat chicken in this world. This could be his only chance. Fucking hell.

The Basilisk he had killed was level 43, and this chicken was only Level 36… but he didn’t think the giant chicken could swallow him whole, so that got rid of his get-eaten-and-wing-it strategy.

It was just a chicken. What was it going to do? Peck him.

Turns out, yeah. It did peck at him, a lot.

He had crept towards the giant chicken, with dagger in hand and camouflage activated. He had coated his dagger in Basilisk Venom, which would allow him to finish this quickly.

The moment he stepped into the cave, the chicken’s head whipped around and stared at him.

The tunnel behind glowed blue as a forcefield popped up, making it impossible to escape. Mason wondered whether this would be a common thing when facing bosses or if this was an ability of the Crack Hen. Interrupting his thought, a vibration ran through his hand, the strongest he had ever felt.

He threw himself to the ground, narrowly missing the thing’s beak splitting him in two. Looking at where the beak had impacted the floor, there was a huge crater. Mason started to regret his life choices.

Jumping to his feet, he threw caution to the wind and shot a Magic Missile at the fucker's face. It hit and exploded, blocking the beast’s face from view temporarily. When Mason could see again, he saw that the Missile hadn’t as much as made the thing flinch. He doubted it had even blinked.

He ran.

He bounced off of the forcefield, landing on his ass. “Oh, shit, I forgot about that.” He muttered to himself. Jumping again to his feet, he ducked as the chicken shot a flame in his direction with a “Buckarrrrk.”

“Of course, it breathes fire. Why wouldn’t it breathe fire.”

Mason searched the cave for anywhere he could take cover, but there was nothing. It was completely vacant, apart from him and the giant crack-addicted chicken trying to kill him.

Once he had the chance, Mason took out his bow and shot off three arrows hoping at least one would hit. Sure enough, one did!

Crack Hen has been inflicted with Depression. Depression has no effect on the Crack hen's drug riddled brain.

Though the arrow did not affect the chicken, it did annoy it. Its response was to shoot a dozen of its feather at Mason. Confused, Mason saw no reason to dodge the feathers until he felt the ring’s vibration intensify. It had been going off since he entered the cave, but with the feathers heading towards him, it reached a new high.

Dodging, he avoided the majority of the feathers. Three managed to hit him. One in the thigh and two in his stomach. They were razor-sharp and shot straight through his body.

You have been inflicted with the rage of the Crack Hen. For the next 20 seconds, you will be blinded by rage and attack the nearest enemy. Your willpower has lowered this to 15 seconds.

Mason didn’t manage to finish reading the first word of the prompt before he found himself unbearably angry, running towards the chicken.

The rage of the Crack Hen was an ability that was supposed to make the inflicted party reckless and unable to control themselves. It was successful in doing this to Mason. He ran towards the chicken recklessly and jumped onto its back with surprising speed, slashing away at the chicken with his dagger.

However, the blinding rage that accompanied the recklessness allowed Mason’s Emotion Wreck skill to activate far more effectively than it was ever intended to.

By the time the 15 seconds were up, and Mason returned to his senses, he was covered head to toe in chicken blood. Breathing heavily, he was bucked from the chicken’s back.

He hit the floor and rolled, pushing himself to his feet. Turning back to look at the chicken, he watched the overgrown pigeon regenerate. Within a minute, it seemed as good as new.

Out of frustration, Mason shot Magic Missiles at it. It just stood there and tanked the hits. One missed its target and hit the ceiling. A chunk of rock fell from the ceiling, harmlessly hitting the chicken on its head.

Mason narrowed his eyes, a plan formulating in the back of his head. A plan Mayry definitely would disapprove of.

Aiming his hand at the ceiling directly above the chicken, he shot a few Magic Missiles. As planned, the chicken just stood there, intending to tank the hits. The shots passed by its head and cracked the ceiling. A few chunks fell, but the dumb bird just stood there, not understanding what Mason was attempting.

“I’ve always wanted to know,” Mason shouted at the chicken, watching the crack getting bigger. “once and for all,” he shot another missile and saw the crack deepen further, “people have been asking for decades.” He fired one last missile and saw the mass of stone fall, he asked, “Why did you cross the road?”

Just before the stones hit, the chicken answered with a confused, “Bukark?”

Tonnes of stone slammed into the Crack Hen, squishing it so thoroughly that not even its power of regeneration could save it.

The problem with this, of course, was that the crack didn’t stop growing. In fact, it kept getting bigger and bigger, with more of the cave becoming unstable.

Seeing the blue forcefields were gone, he ran.

He ran the way he came, hundreds of tons of stone and dirt crashing down behind him, crushing anything caught under it.

Dozens of notifications popped up accompanied by a load of annoying *DING*’s, but he immediately waved them away as he ran, not wanting a repeat of his incident in the forest.

Making it to the first massive cavern he had seen, he saw the dozens of spiders that had been there had returned. He was halfway to the next tunnel when he thought to reactivate his Camouflage. Chancing a look behind him, he saw the spiders had started to chase him. Fortunately, they started their attempt too late and were squished just as their boss had been.

The cave-in was getting closer and closer to him as he reached the opening he had entered the cave from. Just as he could start to smell the fresh air, a stone slammed against his head. He somehow managed to keep his balance. He jumped towards the opening with all the strength his stats could lend him. His body was 90% out when the mass of stone hit him. From his knees down, he was trapped.

With a deep sigh of relief that he wasn’t dead, he started shifting the rocks that were piled on top. After about 5 minutes of meagre progress, he felt the world shake. Ignoring it for now but increasing the speed of his self-rescue attempt, it took him another 15 minutes to be completely free. His legs felt numb all over, and the rest of him was in no small amount of pain. Taking out a health potion, he downed it and relaxed as he felt the brief high that came with the potion.

Feeling an incredible amount better, he checked out the notifications he had been ignoring up until now.

Notification 1/4

You have slain – Beast – Level 13 Stone Eater Spider X4

You have received 520 XP.

You have slain – Beast – Level 4 Stone Eater Spider X7

You have received 280 XP.

You have slain – Beast – Level 3 Stone Eater Spider X10

You have received 300 XP.

You have slain – Beast – Level 2 Stone Eater Spider X12

You have received 240 XP

Notification 2/4

Level up

Level up

Level up

Notification 3/4

You have reached Level 11

Stat points allocated

Skill Selection available.

Notification 4/4

Achievement unlocked! Genocide!

You have single-handedly killed an entire colony of Monsters. Good job! Each of those spiders had hope and dreams, and now they don’t!

Reward: All spider beasts or monsters will now go out of their way to attack you. All your attacks do 20% more damage against spider beasts and monsters.

“Jesus fucking Christ!!” Mason exclaimed after reading all the notifications. “Three Levels? And an achievement? I need to do this sort of shit more oft- wait.”

He paused, noticing something. He had caused the cave-in, so he had gotten the XP for the deaths of the spiders. That was kind of Hacks, but he wasn’t going to complain about free levels. What was bothering him was he didn’t see the death notification for-.

A massive rumble from below caused Mason to cut that thought off as he looked around. A giant wing shot out of the ground like a zombie’s hand in a horror film. Slowly the Crack hen pulled itself out of the ground and turned to look at Mason. It had been full of rage before. Now it was seething with unadulterated hatred and pure homicidal rage directed straight at Mason.

The chicken ran towards him.

Overcome with a soothing calmness, Mason opened his menu, took out the Eye of the Basilisk and said, “Fuck that.” If Mason remembered correctly, the Basilisk Eye should kill anything under level 30 The chicken was level 36, but it looked pretty rough, so he hoped it would still work.

Holding the eye up, the chicken froze momentarily, cocked its head and exploded. Showering Mason in blood, guts, and feathers made him look like he had just been the victim of a grim prank.

*DING*

You have slain – Monster – Level 36 Crack Hen

You have received 360 XP

Level up!

You have reached Level 12

Stat points allocated

Level 10 skill selection available

Level up!

Would you like to loot Crack Hen?

Y/N?

Sitting down in a puddle of blood, Mason gave the nod.

Loot Received:

Baggie of Crack x5

Chicken Feather x50

Wish Bone

Crack Hen’s Iron Beak

1 Silver coin

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with crack?”