I: Aberrant Corruption
1.
[Afterlife_Algorithm initializing
Downloading object(Ethan_William_Sauer)
…
Download complete.
Initializing sapience_transfer_protocol()...successful
Uploading
…
Upload complete.
Initializing skill_set_distillation_protocol()...successful
Initializing core_construction_protocol()…
Error_0078: corruption detected in entropy_core.object()
Re-initialize build from save state (warning: corruption to core with cause unpredictable aberrations)? Y/N
…N
…
Corruption may spread to system, confirmation requested. Proceed with corrupted core? Y/N
...Y
…
Initializing corruption_quarantine_protocol()…
Initializing entropy_core.cordon _sanitaire()… function executing nominally, corruption sealed
entropy_core.object() is otherwise nominal and ready for initialization
Initializing entropy_core()… successful
Initializing Fortuity_RNG(Object Name, Int Bound)
Roll Fortuity_RNG(Ethan_William_Sauer, 100)… 29
Initializing sapience_reconstruction()...successful
Initializing avatar_protocol(Ethan_William_Sauer)...successful
Constructing Ethan_Willilam_Sauer.avatar()
Uploading Ethan_William_Sauer.sapience() to Ethan_William_Sauer.avatar()
Initializing avatar_launch(Ethan_William_Sauer)
…
… …
… … …
Uploading Ethan_William_Sauer.avatar() to Iteration(2112)
Launching(Ethan_William_Sauer.avatar(), Iteration(2112))
…
The Algorithm is now synced and loaded.
Launching...Launch successful.
Iteration(2112, Ethan_William_Sauer.avatar()).init()
Iteration(2112) is synced and live]
Ethan's consciousness returned slowly. He had a vague recollection of what had happened, from his perspective, just moments before. He had been walking home from work and then... everything just went dark. He just couldn't quite put his finger on what had happened though. His mind was cold molasses and his eyes fought him as he tried to peel them open; they stuck together as they would have when he awakened from a fourteen hour depression nap. To call them naps might be a bit of a stretch, but then again, he differentiated between midday depression naps and nighttime sleep. Lord knows he had enough experience with the two.
His reverie was broken as he tried to sit up: screaming, searing pains coursed through his left side, running from his neck down to his ankle and back again. The sharp breath from the pain sent daggers of agony through his chest, and he collapsed back down into the fetal position he had originally awoken to.
Breathing was torment and moving even the slightest bit was nearly unbearable, but he knew he couldn't just lie there. Even though he very much wanted to do just that and drift away. It was pretty clear he was no longer where he knew he really should be. He should be waiting for the crosswalk light to change a block from his apartment, the only grass within spitting distance in the median of the busy road on which his apartment block was located. And that grass was mangy and half dead most of the time... so there's no way that this lush carpet of grass was in the median.
And that wasn't even the most glaring discrepancy, Ethan began to realise as he fought the murky umbral sludge his thoughts had become. He couldn't hear anything of the city to which he had grown so accustomed. Now that he really thought about it, all he could hear was the susurrus of wind through the grass and the lilting myriad choruses of birdsong.
It was time to figure out what was going on. He was fighting back wave after wave of insidious anxiety about his situation and combined with what he thought seemed to be a mild concussion, this was a recipe for disaster. Steeling himself for the inevitable pain that was to come, Ethan lifted himself slowly but resolutely to a sitting position, knees pulled up to his chest, his arms hugging them close. His left side was agony, piercing and deep, and he was shaking with the exertion of merely sitting up, but he had done it.
His whole body was shaking and a sheen of sweat had broken out along his brow, even with the cool breeze blowing over him. Through a series of slow, shallow breaths, so as to not aggravate his chest again, Ethan was able to restore some sense of agency over his body. He lifted his forehead from his knees and slowly started to look around.
He was in the middle of a clearing amidst a dense, aetheral wood. No words could do justice to what he was seeing. The forest had hues of purple and a deep, midnight blue amongst the emerald green of the leaves. The colour of the grass was a bit off, though. It wasn't quite the right colour of green, like it was a shade too bright, not quite a neon green but approaching a similar hue. The colour almost felt artificial to Ethan, like the glade had been spray painted to make it stand out against the deeper palette of the wood.
Things just kept getting weirder as he realised he was completely naked. The only thing covering his body was a coat of dried blood that covered his left side in almost its entirety, as well as being caked to his face under his nose, his left ear, and staining his chin. Ethan started shaking harder and his vision started to swim again.
What had happened? Where was he? The anxiety was rising up the back of his throat and threatening to take over. His chest, already paining him with every breath, started to accumulate the untold weight of panic, a feeling with which he was intimately familiar. He needed to ground himself or this situation was going to get out of hand.
He started to count the trees he could see, trying to ignore the aberrant colour scheme and the strange undergrowth. He ran his fingers through the grass slowly, letting himself get lost in the sensation. Slowly and carefully Ethan breathed as deeply as he could without inflicting additional pain, and he started to center himself. The shaking slowed and then stopped, and the panic started to receded back into his chest and dissipate back to a normal, for him at least, level of anxiety.
"What the fuck is going on." It wasn't a question, and he didn't expect a response, but as he said it a translucent onyx screen with block, white font popped up in front right in front of his face as if in answer:
[Welcome to the_algorithm: Afterlife. Initializing tutorial_mode]
2.
"Oh." Ethan sighed loudly. Clearly he had been mistaken about his situation and it was far worse than he thought. Not surprising, though, with the state in which he found himself. That begged a question, why the hell did he hurt so badly? Moving his limbs about slowly he could tell nothing was broken, and though breathing in deeply hurt he could still breathe reasonably unimpeded as long as he remained vigilant to not breathe too sharply. Actually, if he was dead why was he still in pain and even needing to breathe?
Foregoing further rumination on that point, he did notice while moving about that he didn't hurt as badly as he had initially. The feelings of being in utter distress was quickly abating. His breathing, while not comfortable, was marginally easier with each breath. Ethan started gently scraping the dried blood from his hip and saw no blemishes or visible wounds. The skin was tender for sure, and bright pink at that, but showed absolutely no evidence of having been marred by a fatal accident. When he went to run his hands through his hair, forever a nervous tick of his, he was disappointed to realize he had nothing on his head but dried blood.
He cast his mind back to the last moments he could recall and came to the conclusion he must have been struck by a car. The crosswalk he normally used ran across a busy road in the heart of town. The speed limit was only 25 MPH through that part of town, but he supposed that would be all it took. Either he started crossing too early or that asshole was squeezing the lemon to kick the apple and hadn't seen him absentmindedly wandering across the road. But he guessed that didn't much matter at this point.
The greeting screen was still hovering about twenty centimeters in front of his eyes, however; it had become transparent when he started inspecting himself for signs of wounds and injuries Now that he was focusing on it again it regained its translucent, close to opaque character. He didn't really know what to do as there were no additional prompts that he could see.
Ethan raised his right hand and poked at the screen and to his surprise his finger came to rest on a slick, smooth surface. It's solidity was a little shocking as it looked more like some sort of hologram or projection, but it felt like the screen of an old CRT monitor.
As his finger came into contact with the screen the text cycled and displayed a new message:
[Survive.]
His first thought was that those cuckoo people who believed the universe was all a simulation were right after all. Whatdoya know.
Secondly and more importantly, "Survive what?" Ethan ventured, hoping to get another prompt or a more detailed explanation, but the screen flickered out of existence. It wasn't until that moment everything really sunk in. He was dead (while, that is, if he was ever alive at all), and there was no heaven or hell, or at least not that he could tell. Maybe this was his personal hell but that didn't seem right. If anything this had him vaguely excited about the situation. He wasn't exactly happy about the, you know, being dead part, but this situation in and of itself had piqued his interest and he could feel the twinge of excitement starting to foment in the pit of his stomach.
Or, that was the ever-present anxiety manifesting itself in rare form, but Ethan didn't think so. Although he had some trepidation about the situation, and was concerned about what the laconic prompt from the_algorithm had said, he couldn’t deny there was a kernel of excitement blossoming. He was obviously concerned about how he was supposed to survive in an alien landscape in which he was an interloper, but he couldn’t deny that if this was death it could be worse. It felt like a second chance in a way. What happens if he dies here too?
The pain was quickly receding from his bones and body by this point, but he was still sore, and wasn't overly confident in his ability to defend himself from a strong breeze let alone anything more stout than that.
Ethan stood up slowly and found that, thankfully, it wasn't too taxing. He felt like he had worked out too hard the day before, not that he ever worked out much. He looked down at his pudgy body and was subsumed by a wave of self-consciousness until he chided himself for it; there was no one around except his crusty blood-covered self and the_algorithm, which appeared to be gone for the nonce. Though it was likely ever present as it seemed to be running the show. Ethan heaved another heavy sigh and started to case the clearing in which he found himself in death.
3.
The rest of the clearing was no different from the small slice he observed earlier. It was a perfect circle, which he found a little jarring, because it screamed unnatural. He supposed he was no longer in the natural world so it shouldn't be too surprising. The tree line was dense. The foliage was packed tight to the point very little light dappled the ground on the forest floor. Not that he could really see the ground well. The underbrush wasn’t very thick but the trees blocked out most of the sunlight. It was odd that the underbrush could grow at all, seeing as plants needed light to grow, and he started off toward the edge of the clearing to check it out. The leaves of the small bushes and ferns were not green at all, but were varying shades of deep purple, dark crimson, and a midnight blue that seemed depthless. It was impossible to tell until you got up close due to the foliage above blocking most of the light.
The trees leaves were also varying shades of purple and blue with some deep emerald greens peppered amongst the higher branches. The plants here clearly produced their energy though another means than photosynthesis. Or maybe they did photosynthesize but used different parts of the visible spectrum? Ethan knew the basics of how plants worked but his knowledge base, like it was for most things, was broad but not deep. Except, of course, on a handful of subjects he obsessed over. Unfortunately it would appear his obsession with the history of Rome would be useless here. He came to a stop about two meters from the edge of the clearing and stared into the dark, murky wood and once again sighed deeply.
He was naked. And the underbrush looked like it contained a lot of thorny, brier-patch-adjacent clusters of vines. Who knew what kind of plant life was lurking in there. If he ran into the thorns or brambles, well let's just say Ethan wasn't too keen on lacerating his... sensitive areas. Hell, there could even be this world's version of poison nettles, ivy, oak, or even sumac in there. Being barefoot, he was also really quite nervous about stepping on something that might impale his foot or bite him.
[Prepare for battle...]
[3...]
Prepare himself with what?! Was he supposed to kick and bite and paw at whatever was about to be thrown his way? This could only end badly.
[2...]
That sense of excitement that had initially flushed his system was solidly replaced by near crippling anxiety over what was to come storming out of that aetheral darkness. Or hell it could even come from the sky for all he knew!
[1]
A couple of rabbits came haphazardly hopping out of the underbrush. There were two of them, looking more like adolescent bunnies than full grown rabbits, but Ethan was no expert in that department. They looked utterly unassuming as they gingerly yet placidly hopped towards him.
Was this some kind of joke by this Algorithm thing? Was he just supposed to kick the crap out of a bunch of defenseless bunnies? What the hell would that prove?
That's when Ethan noticed some important details he had missed upon his initial inspections, and as he saw more and more of the minutia his initial absent-minded assessment missed he began backing up quickly. He didn't want to turn his back on them but he was trying to outpace their languid hops.
Their fur was mangy to the point that they almost looked like they'd been dead for a week by the side of the road. He wasn't too surprised, he supposed, this being an afterlife of sourts, but their flesh was the same colour as their remaining fur so he didn't realise until they got closer. He could now see the weeping welts and sores. The eyes of the larger of the two bunnies were the scarlet red of an albino, but it clearly wasn’t an albino. The smaller of them had eyes like pink quartz. Their teeth were not the normal overlarge incisors of rodents but fangs dripping with a shimmering green fluid framed by frothing lips.
And that's when Ethan tripped over his own feet and fell smack on his ass.
Trying to scramble backwards on all fours in an indignant crab walk he scuttled backwards. His fight or flight response was going full-bore and was screaming for him to run. They might just be two rabbits but there was something wrong with them; they carried an off-putting, corrosive aura, however minute it was, that was disconcerting to say the least. On top of that they were clearly not only rabid but undead and Ethan would hazard they were venomous from those dripping fangs.
As he continued his backwards scramble the rabbit with the rose quartz eyes leapt straight at his face from two and a half meters away with a ridiculous amount of speed. It was flying on a bee-line straight for his eyes. Ethan's self-preservation instincts took over when he saw the rabbit spring off the ground and he dropped onto his back with a thud, sprawling his arms out to the side and lying straight back onto the ground. The rabbit with the rose eyes flew over him and missed his face by mere centimeters as Ethan collapsed to avoid the little bastard.
He didn't have time to crane his neck around to check on the rose-eyed demon rabbit and just hoped that it had landed a goodly bit behind him so he’d have some time to figure out what to do. Ethan quickly rolled over onto this stomach and pushed himself up onto all fours, his phantom death wounds mutely protesting. The rose-eyed rabbit was recovering from its missed attack and was reorienting itself back toward Ethan while emanating a deep growl that no shoebox sized rabbit should ever produce.
Then the red eyed little beast slammed into Ethan's back as he was pushing himself up from the ground, sending him sprawling forward with the impact. Where the little bastard collided with him there was a hot pinch of pain, akin to a nasty spider bite. Luckily whatever the creature had done hadn't allowed it to get a real hold on his back and it had careened off to the side looking slightly dazed. Just when Ethan thought he had a moment to get his bearings straight and figure out what to do the first rabbit launched itself at Ethan's face while he was laid out prone fro the second rabbit’s assault.
He rolled over to his left, drawing another groaning response from his phantom pains; however, they were a distant concern at that point. The first beast dragged its foreclaws down the side of his cheek and the world lit up as the rabbit rent his flesh.
Forcing himself to roll over twice more he sprung up to his feet as quickly as he could. It had missed his eye, thanfully, but he could feel the blood running down his face and dripping onto his collar bone, but he had to focus.
Both little beasts had ended up in front of him this time and this was his chance to try and take out at least one without risking being blind-sided. The second rabbit had gotten his feet back under him and was settling back on its haunches for another attack, his red eyes shimmering like a pool of blood. It launched itself with a praeternatural speed towards Ethan's exposed groin.
He sidestepped at the last second, turning his body sideways, but he wasn't fast enough; on its pass it was able to score another gash, this one on his hip bone. Both wounds were far more agonising than they should have been. Clearly they were not only venomous but also poisonous which was just fantastic. By the grace of whatever higher power exists in this new world he found himself in, it seemed that the little beasts needed a couple moments to recover after each jump; now was the time for Ethan to strike.
While red eyes was recuperating behind him Ethan strode towards rose eyes as quickly as he could, covering the handful of paces in just a second or two. Rose eyes was rearing for another leap at Ethan but this time he didn't intend to let it get airbourne. Right before it was about to launch itself at him he made it within stomping distance and brought his bare foot down hard as he could on the little demon's spine. There was a satisfying crack followed by a whinging squeal from under foot. Rose eyes twitched a couple times before going still, its eyes losing their gemstone fervour.
When the twitching ceased Ethan felt a strange sensation as if energy, like a mild static shock, was directly funneling into his abdomen. It seemed to be focused right behind his navel. He would have to think about that later but he had a sneaking suspicion about what just happened. He had played enough RPGs to recognize whatever passed for experience points here. This just kept getting weirder.
Only a handful of seconds had passed but red eyes was getting ready to pounce at him again. It seemed to not regard the death of its companion as anything important, which Ethan took as a sign that it was incidental that they were together and that they were likely not very intelligent. Not that rabbits were all that intelligent to begin with, but he wasn't willing to let assumptions be his downfall. He had had enough of these rabid little freaks.
The sole living rabbit was three or four meters distant at this point, and from what Ethan had seen it was pushing the edge of its range for a useful strike. Feigning a step forward to try to entice the beast to leap at him, he prepared to quickly take a step back and to the side. The beast leaped just as he had hoped it would and after stepping out of the way the rabid little monster landed right within stomping range. Ethan took full advantage of the situation and repeated the same stomp as he had done with the first, which ended the same way: a satisfying crunch and more mewling squeals followed by that odd tickling static shock sensation behind his navel as he felt energy being funneled into his abdomen.
4.
Ethan collapsed back down into a sitting position and dropped his head into his hands. After a handful of slow, deep breaths to calm his frazzled nerves he started to check out his wounds, or the ones he could see at least. His hip had already stopped bleeding and wasn't too bad except for the inflamed red edges. It burned something fierce but it wasn't anything he couldn't endure.
Next he reached his hand up to check out the wound on his face. Though he had initially thought the little monster had sliced him bad enough that a swatch of his cheek had been left hanging he was thankfully wrong. It was just him panicking in the moment, he must have felt the blood gushing out and assumed it was worse than it was. This one was deeper and still bleeding but not badly. It felt hot and throbbed like the one on his hip but he surmised it wasn't too bad. He'd live and he’d kept his eye, but he needed to clean them so they didn't get infected. Whatever poison they had on their claws was more an irritant than anything.
The wound with which he was most concerned was the one on his back. It was within reach of his hand but just barely. It was up nearly between his shoulder blades and slightly to the right of center. It wasn't bleeding but the skin was inflamed and hot and a large welt was forming. But there was nothing he could do at this point and he didn't feel woozy or off, if you ignored the fact that he was shaking from the adrenaline rush. Ethan hoped that the venom, like the poison, wasn't meant to incapacitate, or at least not an animal his size. He would have to pay close attention to how he felt over the next few hours.
Having taken inventory of his wounds and finding himself in one piece and in no real danger, Ethan began to ponder that strange sensation that occurred when he had killed the little beasts. It felt like a strange, invigorating energy had coursed into his body and coalesced at a point behind his navel. He would have to try and get some info out of the godforsaken Algorithm but he was pretty sure that energy was something akin to experience points. As stupid as it sounded, for all intents and purposes and from all appearances this afterlife, or whatever it was, was structured a lot like a video game. It was beyond strange.
Ethan gave up on trying to figure out exactly what had happened until he had access to more information because he felt kind of stupid wildly conjecturing that the afterlife is some strange simulation. Was his life a simulation too and this was just another program that ran alongside it? He shook his head to clear it and sighed. He would have to find someone or something and ask them; he had so many questions.
That little mystery aside, he got up and went to go check out the corpses. He leaned over red eyes as he was the closest.
His fur was matted and looked just plain raunchy. It was missing large swatches all over his body and where he was missing the fur his gray flesh was mottled and weeping some foul smelling ichor. The fangs and claws were eerie on a rabbit, especially considering how disproportionally large they were compared to the size of its body.
As he was examining the aggressive little creature a screen popped up in front of him.
[Touch to loot [Mangy Battlebunny]]
"Hunh. So maybe I'm not too far off the mark."
5.
Ethan bent over and hesitantly poked out at the creature's corpse, reticent to touch its mangy flesh. It was already cold to the touch, which he found odd considering the fact that it had felt warm just moments ago when he had stomped it. When his index finger made contact a new screen popped up in front of him:
[Loot [Mangy Battlebunny]? Y/N]
"Yes?" Ethan would try answering mentally on the next one, he had a feeling the algorithm could sense his thoughts to some degree. He didn't think it made a lot of sense to have to go around verbally acceding to every situation. At some point he'd be hiding from something or someone and wouldn't want to alert them to his presence. But at this point that was merely wild conjecture.
A new screen popped to life, this one contained more than text this time, which was new. Within the window were three, thumbnails for lack of a better word, showing exceptionally detailed pictures of items as well as a counter down in the bottom right hand corner reading [13 Bits].
The first thumbnail was a picture of a pair of ratty looking... slippers, maybe? When he focused on the pair of foot gear a subsidiary window, much smaller than the main loot window, with a simple readout appeared.
[Mangy Moccasins: “They may look gross but they’re better than nothing.”]
Hm. Interesting. More and more Ethan was becoming sure that the entirety of existence was just a ridiculous simulation being run by an insane algorithm designed by who knows who to do who knows what. He wasn’t happy about it but there was nothing he could do. In the back of his mind he was cursing himself for not taking the simulation theorists more seriously. He focused on the next item in the loot window.
[Unlucky Rabbit's Foot: “Who needs luck anyway.”]
He had to chuckled at the description, if anyone needed luck right now it was him. Though, he had to admit, he was pretty lucky that that first encounter didn’t go worse. He shifted his gaze to the third item in the window.
[Battlebunny Venom Sac: Crafting reagent]
That was all it said about the last item. It was likely for making poison darts and the like, or maybe even to make some weird alchemical poisons or potions. Couldn’t hurt to have it on hand, he might even be able to fashion a spear and slather some on the tip.
Ethan thought for a moment and focused on the option on the bottom left that read simply loot all. Ethan tried thinking the command and nothing happened, so he thought for a moment and decided to try something else. He focused his eyes on the loot all option and did what he had seen a lot of characters in scifi novels do and ‘eye-clicked’ the button.
[[Mangy Battlebunny] looted. Items and Bits have been deposited in inventory.]
At the same time the window closed the corpse of the bunny pixelated and blurred and then disapeared. It looked like like those old screensavers that faded in and out between different pictures.
After witnessing the bunny dissipating into nothing, Ethan noticed that in the top right of his vision, way off in the periphery so as to be almost unnoticeable, there was a little tab that read [INV] in the same font that the Algorithm used. He flicked his eyes up to it and eye-clicked. The inventory window popped into existence in front of him. It was by far the largest window that he had seen so far; it took up almost his whole vision but it was transparent enough that he could still make out his surroundings pretty easily.
The window was a translucent gray backsplash with three tabs in the upper left. The first one was the active tab and it read [Misc], and this was were two of the items he had looted ended up. There were no delineated boxes, and from the size of the two items in there it seemed the space was capable of holding anything as long as it fit. The venom sac was about half the size of the rabbit’s foot, so he figured if he tried to stow a big log it would show up in the window taking up a proportional amount of space. That was going to be useful.
Down at the bottom right hand corner of [Misc] tab was a counter that read [13 Bits]. He could only assume that that was the currency of the realm. It made sense considering the fact that his appeared to be some kind of computer program.
The second tab read [Consumables], and was empty when he eye-clicked to swap over to it. The third tab read [Gear] and when he opened it up he saw that the moccasins were there. It looked like all three of the windows worked the same way insofar as how they held items. He’d wager dollars to donuts that a pair of pants would take up roughly four times as much space as the moccasins. And from how small the moccasins looked it seemed he had plenty of storage space.
With a flash of intuition Ethan checked the other three corners of his periphery and in the top left was a thumbnail depicting a little man. It was shaded a sickly green and Ethan had a bad feeling that that was an avatar representing his physical state. He eye-clicked the tab open and a screen popped up depicting a nearly life-size representation of his body. The avatar was shaded the same green as its thumbnail version, and in the three spots on his body he was wounded the avatar had corresponding red blotches. To the right of the avatar was a box of text and at the top it read [Physical Status] and underneath it told him he was mildly poisoned with [Battlebunny Venom]. There was a timer after the entry that told him he had almost eight hours until the venom wore off. There were no debuffs listed but that didn’t mean there weren’t any, it just meant the algorithm didn’t deign to give the specifics.
At this point Ethan sat down, crossing his legs Indian style. The wound on his back and side were really starting to burn and he was starting to feel unsteady and woozy. With everything happening post-battle he had been distracted and wasn't listening to all the warnings his body was sending him about his physical state deteriorating. His dear friend anxiety rushed back in on him and it felt like a belt cinched itself around his chest as his vision started to close in on him. He really didn't feel good, and there was just too much going on. Utterly overloaded on new information and stimuli, fearing he was dead and trying to adapt to what he hoped was an insane coma dream, Ethan collapsed. He fell over to his right and sprawled out on the thick, nearly neon green grass and his vision blurred as he passed out.
6.
When Ethan came to he had no idea how long he had been out. The sky was darkening and the suns were setting. Suns, how had he not noticed that earlier? With the speed at which everything had happened when he first ended up in this God-forsaken place he never realised that there were three suns overhead. Now that it was moving quickly into the late evening hours he couldn’t make them out very clearly, as they were setting behind the canopy of the dark, odd trees. He pulled himself up into a sitting position from where he had collapsed onto the grass and took a quick look around. There was nothing new to see, and the corpse of the second battlebunny was still lying where it had fallen to Ethan’s cavemanesque stomps. A chill was starting to set over the wood, and he was still naked as a jay bird. The wave of panic that had beset him before he passed out had receded, to a certain degree, and he was able to think a little bit more clearly now, which was a godsend. Or maybe it was algorithm-send now.
He reached up behind to his shoulder blade and ran his fingers over the bunny bite and was relieved to find the area around the wound was no longer hot to the touch. There was still a raised bump on his skin and he could feel a little scab had formed, but the fact that it had calmed down he took as a good sign. His head felt a lot clearer too which was also a bonus. His body ached but that could just as easily be chocked up to the encounter with the [Mangy Battlebunnies], as he was far from in peak physical condition when he ended up in this sadistic place. Having to throw himself around trying to dodge and stomp the little devils had likely strained muscle groups he hadn’t actively used in a while.
It dawned on him then that he could find out just how long he’d been out by checking his status page and looking at the venom countdown. He eye-clicked on the tab and launched the status page. Two hours and change left on the venom, which meant he’d been out for somewhere in the ballpark of five and a half hours. That was disconcerting, what if more of those ravenous little beasts had shown up while he was out? He was going to have to be far more vigilant and really try to keep his anxiety in check.
His hip wasn’t nearly as bad off no. It wasn’t as swollen and red as it had been, but it was still warm to the touch and the edges of the wound looked unhealthy. It didn’t look like it was getting worse; though it was sensitive and painful to the touch. It seemed that neither their venom nor their poison was too strong.
Ethan took a moment to slow his breathing and ground himself. He closed his eyes, and took some time to gather his thoughts now that he was thinking more clearly. So, what had he learned so far about his new situation? First, it was pretty clear that he was in some kind of simulation, now whether his life had been a simulation as well or not, he wasn’t entirely sure. But it would stand to reason that that was the case. Until he had more information he was just going to assume that the universe was simulated, and that when some, or maybe all, peopled died they were transferred to the [Afterlife]. That said he couldn't see his 92 year old Nana dying and ending up here trying to stomp battlebunnies after she passed. The thought was slightly amusing in its own way. Moving forward he would just have to go with the flow and try not to let the rampant panic edging into his psyche take over. And try not to die again because who knows where he’d end up then. Hell after this he might just be dispersed into bits and bytes and that was it.
Second, he was naked, which was not an optimal situation with the on set of the cooler night. Well, naked sans the blood still caking his left side. Which related to the first issue so he pushed that aside. He needed to figure something out in the short term to help him at least get through the night.
Third, he was clearly going to have to fight to survive.. There were obviously dangerous creatures out there, if his sample size was any indication. Which reminded him that this was just the tutorial or introduction to the fresh new hell he’d been tossed into. Whatever he did he was going to have to be careful and make prescient decisions. That was the bottom line, really. It didn’t matter where, what, how, or why he was here as he was going to have to do the same thing no matter what: survive. Hopefully it was all just some nutty coma dream and if he could just make it through he would wake up. But honestly, if he was sitting in a hospital bed right now he almost didn’t want to wake up and have to deal with the insane hospital bill. Hm. Maybe it would be best if he were dead, now that he was thinking about it.
Ethan shook his head, and the vertigo made his stomach turn over. Clearly the venom was still lingering; shaking his head like that hadn’t been the best idea. He sighed deeply.
The fourth thing he needed to consider were all the icons that had appeared at the edges of his vision. Before he had passed out from a combination of panic and bunny venom he was looking at his new, straight out of an MMO inventory screen. He had noticed an icon in the upper left hand corner. It was still there and the little man in the thumbnail was no longer a sickly green but a dull shade of yellow. That was good, that had to be better than the sickly green it had been before he took his… let’s call it a powernap. At this point he noticed there were what appeared to be gear slots to the left of his avatar.
As he ran his eyes over the slots from top to bottom it was readily apparent they were equipment slots. There was 12 of them, one for every major part of his body plus three for jewelry. The five for things like chest and legs had thumbnails showing outlines of the respective types of items that could be slotted there. The three for jewelry on his neck and both wrists showed a shadowy necklace and bangles respectively. Finally, there were four slots that were clearly marked for rings.
That’s when Ethan remember what he had looted off the first bunny and eye-clicked over to his inventory. The equipment/status screen shrank down to share the area in front of him with the inventory screen, splitting his vision between the two. Selecting the [Mangy Moccasins] with a blink he eye-clicked over onto the feet slot of his equipment screen and the moccasins disappeared from the inventory and appeared in the feet slot of his avatar.
At the same time he equipped the moccasins they appeared on his feet in real time. Which, Ethan thought, was pretty freaking cool. He could get used to this, if he was stuck here he may as well try and make the most of it. That didn’t stem the looming anxiety, but it helped to hold it slightly at bay. He couldn’t give into his fears or it was game over.
“I can’t be that bad off if I’m over here making shitty puns,” he mused wryly. Talking to himself had always been something he did when he was anxious and it seemed old habits didn’t die so easily. He eye-clicked to close out of the two windows. “Alright well that’s two of the four icons.”
By this point Ethan was standing, if for no other reason than to get off the now dewy grass. The last thing he needed was to be wet as well as cold. Darkness had completely fallen across the forest and glade in which he found himself. The stars over head twinkled brightly and a red, rusty moon was rising over the tree tops, casting an eerie bloody light over the night.
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Ethan came out of his reverie and listened to the night. It was quiet except for a few night birds singing their odd, lilting tunes. He couldn’t hear anything approaching from the edge of the wood, but he suspected that if a predator wanted to approach him quietly it no doubt could and would. This was their territory, and Ethan was just a trespasser. Well that, and he had no appreciable woodsman skills. So the reality was he was exposed and lacked the basic knowledge to survive in a forest alone with nothing but a pair of sickly looking moccasins. And it was getting pretty chilly.
There was still the second bunny to loot. It was too small for him to hope for anything more than another pair of moccasins. He could hope that those rules were fast and loose in that regard,and that he’d get a pair of pants, but he wouldn’t get his hopes too high. Things never worked out like that for him. Hell, if he was dead, he had died by absentmindedly crossing a street to get hit by a driver running a red. He wasn’t the luckiest man by any metric.
He crossed the intervening few steps to the second bunny and leaned over and touched it gingerly. The same thing repeated as had happened the first time as a loot window appeared in front of him.
“YES!” Ethan pumped his fist into the air as he yelped in excitement, forgetting for the moment he might attract something worse than a pair of [Mangy Battlebunnies]. There was a pair of pants in the loot window. The amount of excitement coursing through him was a bit ludicrous considering they were just pants; however, he had not relished the idea of exploring dark, completely alien woods crippled with fear wearing nothing but moccasins.
He glanced over them and their information window dropped down just like it had for the first two items he had looted.
[Mangy Capris: “Fashion at its finest.”]
He chuckled at the description. He couldn’t rightly complain as at least this way he had a chance at not freezing. There was one more item in the loot window, and it was another venom sac. Down in the corner it read [12 Bits].
Ethan eye-clicked the loot all option and quickly pulled up his inventory and equipped the capris. They looked ridiculous, with the fur all patchy and the leather mottled where it was exposed, but they were better than nothing and fairly warm for what they were. “Man, I really hope no one sees me like this, I look ridiculous.”
At his point he felt like he needed to get out of the open as he was entirely exposed to not only the elements but any fauna that might happen upon him. He was absolutely not looking for another battle right now. Swallowing the lump in his throat and consciously taking deep, slow breaths to curtail the ripples of anxiety that coursed through him he set out for the edge of the clearing. He figured he could find a tree to climb and spend the night up off the ground hoping that would put him at a better vantage if something came looking to make a meal out of him.
As he approached the edge of the clearing the incipient panic was welling up his throat and it was taking most of his conscious thought to hold down the fight or flight response. He had always hated the dark; even at the age of 22 he still sprinted up stairs if it was dark and he avoided being out alone at night even in the town in which he lived. It was a deep seated fear, and one he had been working on with his therapist, but at that thought it really hit home that that he wouldn’t have that guidance or help anymore… unless he awoke to find this had all been a terrible coma dream.
He made it to the edge of the forest without incident. The fact that his brain insisted he was going to die a horrible death as he was smothered in the dark by some horrible beast notwithstanding. He looked up into the trees that towered over him, their purple and blue foliage looking just downright creepy with the crimson light of the moon dappling the leaves. It looked like a scene out of some awful scifi horror flic; like a place a red shirt would meet his demise on some alien planet.
Ethan was thankful for the light of the moon as it was providing quite a lot of illumination, even if it was eerie. Taking a deep breath and heaving out another deep sigh he approached the nearest tree that looked climbable.
The trunk was a good two meters wide at the base, and if these trees were anything like normal trees then this one must be untold years old. Five hundred years, at least. Ethan shook his head, and this time he didn’t suffer from any wooziness or vertigo like he had a half hour previous, which was an encouraging development. Especially since he was about to climb a tree. He jumped up and grabbed onto the closest branch he could reach and began the arduous job of hauling himself up into the tree. Thankfully with the tree being as old as it was there were plenty of sturdy, wide branches.
7.
Ethan pulled himself up hand over hand, branch upon branch, until he was a solid ten meters up off the ground. He reckoned he could go higher as the trunk was still a solid meter thick and the branches were as thick as a full grown tree in their own right, but he figured that this was high enough to dissuade any land-bound predators from getting to him. If it wasn’t, well then he would likely die no matter how high he went up, so he saw no reason to waste any more energy.
The moon was almost directly overhead by this point, and it was as light now as it hand been during the twilight hours. Ignoring the fact that the light from the moon made the landscape look blood-drenched it was actually quite beautiful. The aetheral colour palette of the wood was breath-taking.
Ethan settled his back onto the trunk and lounged out on a particularly thick branch he felt confident would allow him to be comfortable while not risking going over the side. The temperature had dropped another few degrees but having a pair of pants, even being capris, and a pair of deceptively warm shoes mitigated the worst of it. If he had to guess he’d put the temperature around 14 or 15 degrees. He stared up at the bits of the sky he could see through the foliage and watched the moon as it made it’s slow transit across the alien sky.
A couple hours later Ethan snapped awake, freaking out a bit that he had let himself fall asleep ten meters off the ground when the only thing separating him from an ignoble death were a few centimeters on either side of his rear end. No harm, no foul, but he would have to be more careful going forward. He had decided while stargazing that he would make the most of whatever this situation was. There was no point in doing anything otherwise; as far as he could tell this was all very real. He had the wounds and the chill in his bones to prove it.
Thinking along that vein Ethan popped open his inventory again, committed to getting comfortable with all the interfaces that were available to him. They were clearly important to his survival. He had already gone over the inventory and status tabs quite thoroughly, but he decided to check on his physical status really quickly.
He popped open the status icon and was happy to see that the venom had dispersed. His avatar was now a grayish hue, and the blotches of red over the locations of his wounds were shrinking; the red blotches didn’t look as bright now.
Ethan eye-clicked out of the status window. He didn’t know what the gray meant, as he had to intuit what the different colors indicated, but gray had to be better than sickly green and dull yellow, right? Having satisfied his curiosity about his status he focused on the bottom right corner of his vision and eye-clicked into the thumbnail that read [STATS].
A new page opened up in front of him, this one a character sheet, once again reminiscent of an RPG.
[Name: Ethan William Sauer, Age 22
Level: 1
Race: Terran
Avatar Iteration: Sigma
Affiliation: (None)
Potency: 12
Durability: 14
Agility: 13
Perspicacity: 31
Sagacity: 16
Affinity: 16
Fortuity: 29
----------------------------------
Entropy Core: Sigma
Class: (None)
Skills: (None)
---------------------------------
Free energy: 0
---------------------------------
Bits: 25
]
“Why couldn’t this damn program use normal stat names?” Ethan mused aloud. He had some serious questions about some of the entries, and no way to get answers. Thankfully he knew what most of the stats meant, the only word he wasn’t entirely familiar with was [Perspicacity] but he could deduce that was akin to an intelligence stat. The only other stat he really had a question about was the [Affinity] stat, but with how the different stats were grouped he thought it likely to be the magical equivalent of [Agility]. But seriously, what was an avatar iteration? Also, Terran? Were there aliens here too? Finally, since when was entropy something you could collect and store?
There was a lot to process here but with no way to do anything but wildly speculate as to what half of it meant. Ethan decided to forego further conjecture and check out the [QUEST] thumbnail that sat in the lower left hand corner. He eye-clicked the tab.
Unlike with the equipment and inventory screens, which were able to share his field of vision, it looked like you couldn’t have both the [Quest] tab and the [STATS] tab open at the same time. Ethan guessed that made sense… the first two were intrinsically linked whereas the latter two were wholly separate in their function.
Once the status screen collapsed the quest screen popped opened and Ethan was greeted with nothing more than the following:
[Tutorial: Survive]
8.
Well, shit. He was really hoping for a quest objective or maybe a place he was supposed to go, or hell, even just telling him to kill x number of y beasts. It looked like it wasn’t going to be that cut and dry though, and deep down he’d known that, but it still stung.
A second moon began to rise in the sky as the first one was a little passed its apogee. This one was the same shade of blue as the largest sun had been and the light it cast mixed with the crimson of the blood moon to layer the world in a deep purple. It was pretty much the same purple that the leaves were which caused a washed out effect that made it hard to see anything. Thankfully, he didn’t need to see much at this point and his internal screens produced just enough light for him to be able to read them easily. He had a feeling he’d be able to read them even if it was pitch black out.
He sat in his tree, trying his damnedest to not fall asleep again but he was absolutely exhausted. It wasn’t from activity, not really, as he hadn’t done much but stomp a couple bunnies. It was from the shock to his system. The shock of ending up in some crazy parody of an MMO, whether it was a simulation or a dream. The shock of taking a bite and two gashes from those venomous and poisonous battlebunnies. The shock of this new reality having three suns and two moons. The shock of everything. It was all exhausting and he had been so keyed up since the moment he got here that his reserves of energy were entirely drained. And now he just had to ‘survive’ but survive what and for how long? If this was the tutorial it wasn’t doing much tutoring and he was worse for the wear at this point.
Even though he’d passed out for six hours due to shock and panic, and slept for another two just now, he felt anything but well rested. Thinking back it was a little embarrassing he’d gone essentially catatonic for six hours when all he’d had to do was stomp a couple bunnies.
Against his best attempts to stay awake, Ethan fell asleep as the blood moon set and the cobalt moon came to its apogee.
9.
The suns were a quarter of the way through the sky when he woke up. Thankfully he hadn’t tossed himself out of the tree while he slept, so maybe there was a God. Or Gods, who knew anymore. Surprisingly he felt really well rested for which he was thankful. His wounds weren’t troubling him terribly, the bite on his back was nothing more then a tiny welt and the slash on his thigh and the cut on his face were irritating but they didn’t seem to be festering as he feared they would. So all in all, except for the fact that he didn’t wake up in a hospital bed like he had secretly hoped he would, he was doing alright.
There were three suns in the sky. The most shocking was the massive blue ball of roiling flame. That was the one he had been able to make out as they set the day before, the other two looked more akin to the star he was most familiar with, the sun. They were both about the same size, about half the size of the giant blue star. The more orange one was a bit larger than the yellow but just barely. They cast a harsh light over the landscape as they crawled their way up into the sky. Ethan checked his surroundings and when it looked like he was in the clear he carefully made his way out of the tree.
Once on the ground he pulled up his quest screen, praying that it had some more information than it had when he last checked but to no avail as it was the same terse message. He looked around trying to get his bearings and figure out which way he should go, and decided to walk the edge of the clearing and see if anything caught his eye.
The edge of the wood was pretty homogeneous. There was no clear indication about which way he should go, no paths, no anything that he could tell. What made up his mind was simply the fact that there was burbling brook he could hear off in the near distance, so he headed towards it. He hadn’t had anything to drink, well since he died really. He’d awoken in the clearing late in the afternoon, the same time as when he had been struck by that car, and it was now mid-morning. So assuming time here was the same it’d been almost eighteen hours since he’d had any water.
The underbrush was thankfully not thick, but it was full of snagging, thorny vines, which was obnoxious. They weren’t troubling, just annoying, and weren’t managing to get to his skin through the capris he had looted from the bunnies. Though he did end up with some scratches on his ankles; he could only hope these thorns weren’t poisonous. Before he had made it more than fifteen meters into the woods he heard a screeching growl from behind him. Ethan spun around not knowing what to expect, choking on a scream that had tried to leap form his throat.
The creature was about knee high and twice again as long. It looked like a dog and a squirrel had gotten mashed together. Before Ethan had a chance to do anything more than glance at the furry beast, it screeched again and tore off toward him. Not knowing what to do Ethan turned and ran as every bit of him was screaming he had to get away from the creature. The trees were rushing by as Ethan ran headlong through the bruise-hued forest, leaping over fallen logs and ripping through the thorny vines as fast as he could carry himself.
He sneaked a peak over his shoulder and the beast was closing, but clearly wasn’t going all out. Was this thing toying with him? Maybe he could use that to his advantage, but he didn’t know how. While he was deep in thought and pushing his legs to their limit he came upon the brook, and in an act of desperation took the two and a half meter width in one leap, barely making it to the muddy far bank. The creature skidded to a stop, pausing for just a second before it started to back up to take the jump. It was clearly reticent about getting wet, which gave Ethan an idea.
Ethan quickly scanned around him and found what he was looking for. He reached down and picked up the thick branch that was lying near him, but to his dismay it was punky and rotted out in the middle. There was nothing for it at this point, as the beast was making its run-up to the brook. Ethan cocked back the log like he was waiting for a pitch and waited.
The beast leapt out over the brook and aimed itself right at Ethan, which for some reason surprised him. He had been expecting the beast to jump right into his swing which in retrospect was just ignorant. Thankfully he hadn’t started his swing yet and he managed to shuffle backwards just in time and bring the log through his swing, making square contact right on the beasts snout
When he made contact the log didn’t shatter as he had expected it too; it was actually far more resilient that it appeared. It had enough solidity for his purpose and Ethan heard a sick crunch as the beast’s neck bent at an odd angle and it collapsed on the bank, half in the brook. As it landed with a thud and a splash, Ethan felt that strange sensation of energy being funneled into his abdomen, right behind and above his navel.
This time there was more to it, a warm tingly heat suffused through his body with its epicenter being the spot that the energies had previously coalesced. It felt good, really good. Like big shot of heroin good. Ethan shuddered in pleasure, but the satisfaction was veiled by the adrenaline crash. He was shaking and his breathing was shallow and quick. The forest was blissfully quiet, so he let himself recover for a moment before doing anything else. He was embarrassingly winded from that short sprint.
It only took a few minutes before he had mastered himself again. The shaking was gone and his breathing was restored to normal, and shockingly the anxiety he was expecting was only floating around the periphery of his mind.
Now that he had a moment he realised his [STATUS] tab was blinking. He eye-clicked the tab and was excited to see the suffusion of energy was what he had hoped.
[Name: Ethan William Sauer, Age 22
Level: 2
Race: Terran
Avatar Iteration: Sigma
Anima: Sigma
Affiliation: (None)
Potency: 12
Durability: 14
Agility: 13
Perspicacity: 31
Sagacity: 16
Affinity: 16
Fortuity: 29
----------------------------------
Entropy Core: Sigma
Class: (None)
Skills: (None)
---------------------------------
Free energy: 5
----------------------------------
Bits: 25
]
He wasn’t sure what the baseline was for leveling but after killing the two battlebunnies the core, his core he supposed, hadn’t felt all that much different. But after killing the woodstalker his core felt like a cup running over with water. Curious, he focused inward and to his surprise he could actually see a visualization of his core.
It was a roiling ball of gray-white… something. It wasn’t very dense but it didn’t quite look like a gas; it looked more like plasma from Star Trek, just murky gray-white instead of that royal blue. He tried to reach out with his mind to the substance, which he assumed was his entropy core, and he felt like he was throwing punches in a dream. He could touch it and stir it up with what felt like a sixth sense, but he couldn’t apply much force or pressure to it. He had a hunch that this is what the [Anima] on his character sheet was; a force like an extra sense he could use to interact with the entropy stored in his core.
He could experiment more with his entropy later. It didn’t seem he could do much with it at this point anyways. This new sixth sense he seemed to have developed gave him the vague impression he could suffuse himself with the plasma, but to what end he wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem very useful at the moment. It would likely be quite useful at some point in the future, assuming this damn algorithm thing deigned to actually teach him anything. But as it stood it was like trying to catch water with a sieve, except more maddening. It felt like having a word on the tip of your tongue, but the word being forever just out of reach. This was like a self-study AP course; obnoxiously confusing with nowhere to turn for help.
As far as the free points wer
So in the end he decided that the best thing to do was throw some points into durability and hope that helped him in the here and now. Who knew what else he was going to encounter out here, and how long it would take before he even had an option to pick up a class. In the end, being able to maybe take and extra bite or claw in a fight might be the difference between life and death. Also, if stats did impact what classes were available to him, his perspicacity was so high he doubted he’d have trouble speccing into a mage class. Ethan took one last glance over his stat screen before moving on to his next step.
[Name: Ethan William Sauer, Age 22
Level: 2
Race: Terran
Avatar Iteration: Sigma
Anima: Sigma
Affiliation: (None)
Potency: 12
Durability: 19
Agility: 13
Perspicacity: 31
Sagacity: 16
Affinity: 16
Fortuity: 29
----------------------------------
Entropy Core: Sigma
Class: (None)
Skills: (None)
---------------------------------
Free energy: 0
---------------------------------
Bits: 25
]
The woods were still quiet, but Ethan couldn’t be sure how long that would last. That beast had come out of nowhere so being alone right now didn’t really mean much. The screech it loosed was the only reason he was still alive. So, he had to stay on guard but he needed to get some water into his system. His head was starting to ache and if nothing else he could account for that issue being spurred on by dehydration.
Before looting the corpse of the new beast corpse he went up stream and buried his face in the brook. The water was ambrosial and felt like heaven on the back of his parched throat. With his thirst slaked his stomach growled hungrily, and the fact that he hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours came crashing home. He looked over at the beast and knew what he was going to have to do. The fact that he hadn’t seen any vegetation that had looked edible was discouraging, and he didn’t want to trust alien mushrooms at this stage.
Mushrooms were something that was not lacking in this fey wood. He didn’t recognize any of the species he’d seen so far, but that didn’t mean much. The only mushrooms he was intimately familiar with were magic mushrooms and he somewhat doubted he’d get lucky enough to spawn in a new world and end up stumbling on some boomers. Not that taking a trip was a good idea right now, cuz you know, ravenous animals out to make him a snack.
Luckily, the beast didn’t look mangy like the bunnies had, and it wasn’t giving off any foul aromas. He was conflicted on how to go about this when he had nothing sharp to slice off a hunk of meat, but he had an idea. He just hoped that he would still be able to loot the woodstalker after he haphazardly butchered it.
Heading over to the brook, he looked around for a rock he could use to make a hand axe. After a few moments of careful consideration he picked a rock that looked to be as likely a candidate as any of the others. The rock was almost egg shaped except far flatter. He grabbed a second rock and sat down on the forest floor, carefully trying to nap the future hand axe into a serviceable tool.
He failed miserably the first try. And the second. And, of course, the third.
“Third time’s the charm my happy ass.” For his sanity’s sake, thankfully the fourth time produced a workable surface on the hand axe. Ethan slowly and inexpertly began to carve hunks of meat off the woodstalker’s corpse. When he was done he threw the three halfway decent cuts of meat into his inventory with a thought.
It happened on accident more than out of any skill or knowledge on his part. He had picked them up and stood there trying to figure out how to actually get things into his inventory as he only had experience with looting things, when they disappeared from his hands. Upon checking his inventory they were nestled neatly next to his unlucky rabbit’s foot. The Algorithm seemed to be easy to use in all the ways that mattered the least. He held his new hand axe and banished it to his inventory next. Maybe things were looking up. He just hoped that the meat would stay fresh in there. Seemed to work in video games, so hey, considering the situation he hoped that it would hold true now.
Now that he had acquired three shanks of, hopefully, edible meat, it was time to try and loot this horribly ravaged pile of guts, bone, and skin. If he wasn’t already covered in blood and gore he would think twice about having to put his hand in this pile of putrescence but seeing as he looked like a serial killer it didn’t really matter. He reached out and tapped what used to be one of the woodstalker’s legs.
[Loot [Young Woodstalker]?]
“Hell yes!” That was a small blessing. Now that he knew he would be able to feed himself a little weight was lifted off his chest. Not a lot, but a little. Dying of dehydration and starvation sounded like an absolutely God awful way to die.
Of the other two items, only one was of any use as far as he could tell. One was [Woodstalker Tail], the thumbnail looked just like the creature’s big, bushy, squirrel-looking tail. He wasn’t quite sure what use it would be, but it had neither flavor text nor anything to indicate its use in crafting so it was probably useless.
The next item in the loot window was fantastic. It was a leather gherkin, [Woodstalk Gherkin: “High fashion”]. Again with that ridiculous flavor text, but he couldn’t help but laugh. When it came down to it the more clothing the better. Down in the corner of the window there was the now familiar line that told him he would be looting [37 Bits] from the woodstalker. At this point he was now convinced that that was the currency; however, he was starting to wonder if he would ever have a chance to actually use it before he was eaten alive.
After looting the two items Ethan opened up his inventory and equipped the gherkin. Just like the first two pieces of equipment this fit him perfectly, but he looked ridiculous. Maybe if he wasn’t 30 pounds overweight it wouldn’t look as bad, but as it stood he looked like someone’s fat uncle who lived in a rundown trailer and did nothing but drink Natty Light and watch Nightrider reruns. Ridiculous.
10.
Ethan made his way up stream from where the woodstalker corpse had been before it had dissolved into pixels. Everything but the blood that had soaked into the ground had dissolved, but that was still good enough reason to go upstream. The last thing he wanted to do was drink tainted water. That might be what he was doing anyways since he didn’t have a way to filter the water from the brook but he could only control so much.
His body was now caked in blood. Not just from the woodstalker, but the blood he’d woken up caked in was still clinging to his skin in places. Since he was going to have to soak himself to get all the blood off he decided it would be best to just strip down and take a bath while he had the chance. After he had banished his equipment to his inventory he stepped into the freezing cold brook and slowly lowered himself down. The water was cold enough that his diving reflex was causing him to gasp like a fish out of water but he kept on submerging himself until he was sitting waist deep in the frigid stream. As quickly as he could manage he scrubbed away all the blood and gunk, which was satisfying even if he felt like he was going to freeze to death.
He had just gotten out of the stream when a rustling of leaves behind him brought Ethan out of his reverie. He spun around only to be greeted by the slow approach of another [Young Woodstalker]. It had clearly been trying to sneak up on him and thankfully it had made itself known with a misstep, or else he would have ended up as lunch for the odd, squirrelly wolf creature. It let loose with one of its low-timbered screeches and leapt forward.
Ethan reacted before he even had time to think and leapt back over the brook and took off toward the clearing. Not that he intended to go all the way to the clearing, he just needed a second to think. He didn’t spare a look back as he tore through the underbrush. An idea as old as time popped into his head and he started looking for a tree to climb. Rather tree’d than dead, at least for now. For some reason, even with death chasing him down, the thing he was most irritated about was his nakedness. The damn thing couldn’t have waited like five minutes?
This woodstalker wasn’t as hesitant about jumping the brook as his brethren and was quickly closing the distance. Out of desperation Ethan made for the nearest tree that even looked remotely climbable and leapt up for the lowest branch that would hold his weight.
The branch creaked loudly but held as Ethan pulled himself up as quickly as he could. He threw himself up on the branch with one final lurch; his arms screaming in protest. The woodstalker leapt just a moment too late and missed his foot by mere centimeters, but to Ethan’s dismay the creature started scrambling up the trunk. The squirrelly appearance wasn’t just aesthetic to his great dismay.
As the woodstalker made its way quickly up the trunk Ethan stood and reached up for the next branch he thought could hold his weight. He overreached. One moment he was standing precariously on the low-slung branch and the next he was tumbling through the air. An instant that felt like an eternity later his back was crashing into the loamy forest floor.
The wind was knocked from his lungs; he wheezed mightily in an attempt to get his lungs going again. He had no time to recover. The woodstalker was on the branch he had just abandoned and was making to pounce on its prey. Ethan rolled over as quickly as he could manage and pushed himself up to his feet; the woodstalker screeched exuberantly and leapt.
Scrambling madly, Ethan was on his feet and sprinting back off towards the brook; his lungs screaming at him with every breath. He couldn’t hardly think by this point. His back was aching and his lungs were in the very act of rebelling; he woodstalker was eating up the distance that separated them by the second. Back at the brook-side, Ethan made the now practiced jump to the far bank, but didn’t stop there. He tore off deeper into the woods frantically searching for a stout enough fallen branch to use as a weapon.
The woodstalker was all but within range for a final leap onto his back when Ethan found a branch that looked sturdy enough to do the job. Slowing just enough to scoop a branch as thick as his forearm up off the ground he spun around and used all of his momentum to bring the branch down on the woodstalker’s head with a resounding crack. The branch broke from the impact but Ethan managed to keep a grip on the remaining stump. The creature was stunned by the blow and its forelegs gave out from underneath. The woodstalker hit the ground face first and skidded to a halt a meter away.
The woodstalker rose slowly, clearly still regathering its wits and turned to face Ethan. Gripping the broken limb he slowly backed away as the woodstalker screeched and leapt at him once again. On pure instinct Ethan raised the sharp, broken end of the branch and dropped to a knee as he thrust the branch out and towards the creature’s throat. The impetus of the woodstalker did Ethan’s work for him as it skewered its neck on the sharp end of the broken limb. There was a gurgled attempt at a growl when Ethan pulled the branch free of the creature’s flesh, but it was done. Blood was running from it’s maw and throat as it stumbled to its left, its forepaws giving out as the creature succumbed to the wound. The strange energies flowed into his navel again, and then he broke down in tears.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was him just now realizing he could have summoned his clothes at any point during the fight with a mere thought.
11.
Fifteen minutes later the tears finally stopped and Ethan let loose with a long, sobbing sigh. This was all just too much. How was he supposed to do this? He had no idea what he was doing and all he had accomplished was half clothing himself, only to still end up running around naked with only a broken stick for a weapon. There was also the unlucky rabbit’s let’s not forget that! Speaking of he should probably get rid of that now that he was thinking about it.
But before he did anything else he needed to eat. He was absolutely ravenous and still beyond thirsty even after drinking his fill at the brook. Too much had happened today and night was closing in again, while he still had nothing to show for his efforts.
The adrenaline had left him a shaky wreck and his nerves were shot. If another woodstalker showed up Ethan didn’t know what he would do.
“You fight, you survive. That’s what you will do.” Affirmations weren’t one of his favorite things but they couldn’t hurt at this point. “You will survive. Humans have been surviving with less since we first walked out of the forests. What do you need to do to make it through the night.”
With some deep breaths he settled himself as he started to prioritize what he needed to do. His surroundings seemed to be clear at this point which was a blessing, but didn’t really mean anything with the stealthy woodstalkers about.
The brook was calling his name; he made his way toward it, but halfway there he cursed loudly. He had forgotten to loot the godforsaken beast. Crisply turning around he made his way back to the corpse of the woodstalker and bent down and tapped it. He didn’t even look at what he was looting he just eye-clicked autoloot and despondently made his was to the brook. Halfway there he finally remembered to summon his gear and dress himself; he shook his head balefully as he tossed the unlucky rabbit’s foot into woods. At least he was pretty sure that kill had put him close to leveling; he was still getting the hang of judging the inner-workings of his new existence.