"Hey, would you happen to have a spare weapon for me?" I panted during another break.

We had been running for half an hour since the last rest, and Bassir had gifted me his water skin as I already drank mine. My stamina was almost empty at 9 points. Its descent had slowed down with the increase in Endurance and even regained a few points on every couple-minute break.

Although Bassir had seemed carefree as we ran, he was in reality constantly surveying the dark forest with his crossbow in hand, however, the towering trees looked so alike to each other, they could easily make anyone lower their guard.

Although I did trust Bassir, I felt a bit vulnerable without a weapon, knowing we could get ambushed at any moment, from any direction.

"Hm? Well, aren't we vigorous?" Bassir laughed in response. "From the way ya were running, I never would have guessed ya wanted more weight to carry!"

Bassir pulled something from his backpack, and the next moment, I saw a large axe flying toward my face. My eyes locked onto my impending doom, too tired to do anything about it, but luckily it landed on its side, just a few paces from my head. Okay, I take back all the thoughts of ever trusting Bassir.

I struggled to rise from my horizontal position to inspect the axe. On one side, it had a wide blade, and on the other, it had a sharp spike.

"Thanks. I don't mind the added weight for the increased protection this will give me," I responded honestly. Although it weighed about 2 kilos, I could hang it from my belt to make it less cumbersome.

"Well, suit yourself, although, like I keep saying, ya don't need to worry. Yer in the company of the best trapper in town and, the thing we're hunting is just a hatchling," Bassir consoled in a fatherly voice. "Also, I don't mean to brag, but my high perception could spot its ambush from a mile away," he bragged arrogantly.

"I've been meaning to ask about that, actually. I know this might sound odd, but could you tell me what the stats, skills, and levels are all about? From where I'm from, people never really talked about them," I asked after spotting a good chance.

That question seemed to render Bassir utterly speechless: "Ya don't even know that much? Are ya an orphan or something?" He questioned after a few seconds of silence, looking at me as if I'd asked if the Earth was round.

"Or something..." I replied swiftly. "But, I'm not joking when I say, I don't know much about that stuff."

"Huh, well ya see something new every day," Bassir muttered, disbelief still clearly etched on his face. "Okay, how much do ya know already? Also, what level are ya?"

"I know nothing, and I'm level 1," I responded instantly.

The dwarf's eyes opened wide at this, causing more wrinkles to appear on his forehead than I could count.

"Nothing?! How have ya survived until now?" He asked, his voice a few octaves higher than usual. "Lad, I was joking when I asked if ya were from the big cities, but I must've been right on the mark!"

"Well, yes. I kind of am from a big city," I answered sincerely. I wasn't lying, either, because I used to live in a large city back on Earth.

"This is the problem of being too sheltered. The moment yer out in the open, everything could kill you with a snap," Bassir sighed. "But oh well, It's not like you can choose where you're born. I'll tell you about the basics while we run."

My shoulders instantly slumped at the response. Truth be told, I was kind of hoping that Bassir would extend the break to explain the system, but no, I could only dream. That man was way too productive.

❖❖❖

Although Bassir could be annoying sometimes, he was a good teacher.

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From his teachings, I gathered that experience seemed to work a lot like nutrients back on Earth.

Different creatures acquired experience in different ways. Plants gained XP just by sucking it up from the world, herbivores leveled up by eating said plants, and so on it would travel up the food chain. If something died without being killed, its XP would just assimilate back into the world.

The major difference between XP and nutrients was that there were many rules to XP. When something was killed, only a certain percentage of the XP would get sent to the killer. The rest would be sent back into the world. If the other being's level was a lot smaller or higher than yours, you'd get a lot less, if any of its XP. There were exceptions to this rule, though. Most herbivores, for example, could gain XP from a lot wider range of levels.

As a human, in most cases, the only way you could get levels was by killing other beings with a certain amount of intellect.

Levels would grant you more power to get more levels and then get even more powerful. A pretty vicious cycle, if you ask me. The system really encourages merciless slaughter.

Skills were just that, skills. You could get them from actions, like with the Intimidate skill. You could also get skills from magic scrolls that implanted the knowledge into your brain, just like how the Direct setting does. Getting taught skills could also make you gain them.

Skills made actions more efficient. For example, when I made the Lurker stop its advance, I gained the skill Intimidate. Then the skill activated and, by using mana, it made me even more intimidating, causing the Lurker to run away. That success then gave me a level increase in Intimidate.

In theory, if you knew how to move and shape your mana flawlessly, you could use any magic-based skill in the world equally perfectly.

At some point, I had asked Bassir how he knew all of this, but he just told me this was elementary knowledge even young children knew.

Makes sense when you think about it. These people were born with this system. For them, it was as much a part of them as their sight or hearing, for example. It is only natural they'd want to explore what their own 'bodies' could do.

Once my stamina got down to 5, I had to interrupt him, as I wasn't comfortable letting it go any lower. Plus, I was literally dying at this point. I was almost desperate enough to bash him unconscious for an hour or two, just to get a breather, yet from a moral and survival standpoint, I knew it would be stupid.

This strategy actually worked as Bassir seemed to be very adamant about always keeping your stamina above 20 because then, you could still fight or run away if an enemy were to appear. He even seemed a little apologetic about making me run so much without realizing that my low level also meant I had low stamina.

To get back stamina, we just sat on the forest floor and chatted about the system and our past experiences, mine being heavily modified, of course. I had asked him about the lack of wildlife in this forest, but the answer was surprisingly simple: He'd killed the aggressive ones, and the rest knew to avoid any humanoid beings like the plague... Suddenly the excessive amounts of animal parts at his house made a lot more sense.

Once my stamina rose to 25, we continued running, but this time at a slower pace.

❖❖❖

"Stop!" I yelled out. "I think this is the spot."

At the start of the run, Bassir had used some tracking skill on the ground where I had once stood. It was my job to tell him when we were at the ambush site, so he could change his tracker skill's targets onto the Lurker.

"Alrighty. Point me to the exact spot it was located at," Bassir ordered indifferently.

Now that my stamina was always higher than 20, doing things wasn't that terrible. I walked over to the rock that the Lurker had hidden behind and pointed out: "Here... But are you sure we'll be able to find it in time? That thing has had many hours to wander," I asked curiously.

"Lurkers are a lazy bunch. They get their prey pretty easily by ambushing them. Then they just eat the same corpse for many days until they go out to hunt again." Bassir explained while using his tracking skill on the spot I pointed out. "The only problem would be if it decided to go hunt in the lake. In that case, we'd have to wait until it came out or set up a trap for it."

"Huh, so I guess it's out of food then since it tried to ambush me," I pondered out loud.

"Probably..." Bassir murmured back at me. "Okay, found it. Let's go!"

❖❖❖

As we ran, we came across a bloodstained patch of ground with a visible line of blood leading in one direction. It disturbed me a lot to know that if I hadn't noticed the beast, I'd be a splat just like that.

The corpse wasn't dragged very far, as we found it in a crack between two larger boulders. Even before we saw it, we could smell it. It was a heavy horrid odor that reminded me of the trenches. I had watched too many good friends die there...

Snapping out of my daze, I inspected the corpse. Its body was like that of a raptor but was filled with brown fur instead of scales. Its head resembled that of a rabbit with small round ears.

It had a large chunk of meat missing from its neck, and its leg was completely gone.

Just as I was about to inspect the carcass closer, I was interrupted by Bassir's cheery voice: "Ahh, and there is our little rascal!"

He was looking past me into the forest, yet when I tried to follow his gaze, I saw nothing.

Confused, I turned my head back towards Bassir only to see he was gone.

...

"I really do hate you, Bassir..."