Day 3, 8:20 PM

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.”

— Mark Twain

I wait until they are on top of us before I pounce. The club seems lighter in my hand, and I think its whistle may have grown louder, but then it smashes into the stunned man’s face, and I forget about the oddity. The bandit’s skull cracks and his face caves. Teeth and blood spray a gory shower while I look around.

Two. A weight the size of a mountain disappears from my shoulders when I see only two still breathing bandits, then I realize they aren’t wielding clubs.

Swords!? Their blades are longer than my forearm, curving two-thirds of the way up to the tip. A part of me knows they are meant for slashing, not stabbing, but the realization means little with cold steel pointed towards me.

The duo and I snap out of shock at the same time.

“Kill him,” they shout simultaneously, hacking at me.

I panic, the left one is closer to me, and I move to block his slash with a sweep of my club, only to realize too late what happens when wood meets sharp steel. Unlike in the movies, the sword doesn’t sever the club in one smooth move. Instead, the blade acts more like an ax in a log and gets stuck before cutting half way through the hard wood.

Like in a cartoon, my strike throws the mustached bandit out of balance, and he falls on his ass, dragging me down with him. The other sword screams above my head, and I realize the fallen bandit just saved my life.

I don’t reciprocate. His curved blade stabs into his shoulder, and he screams. I use the chance and bash his nose with my forehead with all I have. He lets go of his weapon, and I roll off him just in time for his buddy to sink his sword into him.

The stabber is stunned, and I bash the life out of him, accidentally cutting him with the sword stuck in my club. The whole thing was messy, clumsy, and ended in several seconds. Maybe even two.

I clench my teeth and look back.

If this were a movie, the chick from the dynamic duo would have stabbed him in the back. Then we would have wild and passionate sex, growing close after facing adversity together. Unfortunately, the chick is not the least bit interested. She’s still cowering in the shelter. And there’s hardly a together here. It feels like it’s me, myself, and I dragging her incompetent ass around.

“Let’s go, we have to leave,” I tell her while frisking the bodies.

I collect a dozen copper coins depicting plows and over a week’s worth of rations for the two of us when I suddenly stop, gazing at my trembling hands.

I could have died just now, the thought hits me like the reincarnation truck.

I swallow a lump, and my surging adrenaline suddenly evaporates. That was so stupid, and so dangerous. If I ever come across the remains of a camp, I should steer the fuck away from it. Especially if the camp almost certainly belongs to armed men pursuing me.

I look at the young miss, my emotions churning.

She’s useless, I realize, not for the first time, but I don’t know what to do with that piece of redundant information. I can’t abandon her. She’s my ticket to wealth after we escape the forest, and if worse comes to worst, she’s a useful distraction. If I run away from her when we come across a gang I can’t defeat, they will probably ignore me to catch her.

The young miss looks at me, and I nod with a friendly smile. “Here’s some bread and jerky, in case we become separated.”

She accepts the belt-sack with provisions and keeps staring at me.

“I would like to change my clothes, Little Missy. I’m hardly decent the way I am.”

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She nods and turns around as I strip the corpse of the first bandit I killed. He’s a bit bigger than me, but I cuff his pants and tighten the string belt around my waist. The shirt’s even looser, and after cuffing the sleeves it’s still sloppy, but suits me just fine. The two swords around my belt do their best to undress me as I stand, so I don another belt, just for the swords.

“I’m ready,” I say after ten minutes, and we leave the corpses behind.

I must look ridiculous, like an over-prepared kid costumed like a pirate. I carry the third sword in my hand, but I don’t use it as a machete to cut a path for us. We’re probably easy to track, but there’s no reason to clear a path for our pursuers.

The night catches us without a shelter, as expected. But thanks to my looted flint and tinder, I start a fire quickly enough, and we have dinner.

The young lady keeps eyeing the flame nervously as she chews, but I smile.

“The bandits had a campfire, meaning they didn’t worry about wolf attacks, and neither should we. Who knows, the fire might even scare beasts away.”

She doesn’t believe me. Can’t blame her, I don’t believe me either. But I can tell she’s feeling safer than last night. We have a massive tree against our back, big enough for both of us to climb, should another wolf-attack happen.

The young lady falls asleep right after dinner. Makes sense. She must have spent the whole night awake, hugging a tree.

I’m sleepy, but I decide I should keep watch, even though I spent the last evening sleeping surrounded by dead wolves.

I feed and stoke the fire to stay awake, and I recall reading that chewing forces humans to stay awake. I use the excuse to stuff myself, but at some point I still doze off.

Glowing embers greet me in the morning. I glance left and see the young miss still sleeping. She snores softly, her body bent in a rather uncomfortable sleeping position, and her mouth open. I guess my hunched half-squat isn’t much better. I stand up and stretch, popping my joints and reviving my muscles. It takes a while before I realize my muscles aren’t that sore. I’m no longer pushing forty, working a desk job, creaking with every move I make. I’m a kid, and I recall getting drunk and passing out on benches in my youth, my joints and muscles never complaining.

Overjoyed, I check my wounds and find the angry redness has receded. Even the scratches and bite-marks have become dark-brown scabs. Itchy like hell, but soon to heal.

God, it feels good to be young again. I grin and examine my body. Washed and clean I don’t look half bad. I also seem bulkier than when I first woke up. My appetite is terrifying, and I constantly feel hungry.

I summon my blue screen of death and see that there’s been a change. The red letters are gone, replaced with regular white writing. I still don’t know what it says, but I guess it has something to do with the Godly trait I got as an achievement.

I guess I’m bound to become a hero with a trait like that. Still smiling, I crack my neck and back. The violent barrage of snaps startles the young miss awake.

“Sorry,” I grace her with a winning smile, and she seems less hostile than yesterday.

Well, it makes sense. She had something to eat and a whole night’s worth of sleep. Meanwhile, I’m not covered in blood, grime, and gore, I hope I stink less, and I’m much more handsome. Hmm… I could use this moment of good will.

“Can you tell me what this means, Little Missy?” I pick up a stick and copy the first series of five glyphs from my death screen in the ash.

The letters are uglier, drawn in a hand unfamiliar with writing, but still readable, and the young lady looks at them with fascination for a moment before coming around the fire. She nods after checking them from the right side.

“It says, ‘neɪm,’ and a character signifying end of a word.” Just as I thought I could get a lesson in letters, she immediately changed the topic. “We should have breakfast and move. At this pace, we may need more than a week to leave the forest.”

I’m disappointed with the wasted opportunity, but I agree. I can learn to read in a week or a month. The important thing right now is our survival and the return to safety.

Besides, I can try to decrypt the whole screen based on those four letters.

I compare the sounds - ‘neɪm’ with the glyphs ‘ß∆£π’, and realize I’m not a linguist. It could be a one-glyph-per-sound language, or multiple sounds per glyph, and some silent glyphs which aren’t pronounced, but should be written. I read through the whole screen, searching for more clues. Unfortunately, cracking an alphabet in my head with a very limited sample as a pass-time proves beyond my ability.

However, what I do realize is that my mouth had used the chance and devoured four steaks while my brain was otherwise occupied.

I stare at the young lady, burning with shame. She’s looking at me, and I don’t think there’s resentment in that surprised gaze, but I still feel the need to apologize.

“I’m sorry. My body is healing, and I’m starving. I…” I don’t know what to say, but suddenly a thought strikes me. “I have weapons now. If we come across an animal I could kill it, or we could forage for food?”

She doesn’t seem convinced, and not even my best reassuring smile helps ease the situation.

“Don’t worry. We won’t starve.” I know the words are weak and lack weight, but I still mean them from the bottom of my heart. I really don’t want to starve.

She nods, hopefully because she believes me, and not because I brutally murdered three men and a small pack of wolves in her presence.

“I’ll protect you,” I smile, meaning the words from the bottom of my heart yet again, and my assurance seems to work. The young lady blushes, and turns to the side, avoiding my gaze.

I guess there’s too much fire and lust in my eyes for a decent young lady from a good family, but I hope that burning desire will subside once I bend her over and sate my basic urge. Oddly, I’m certain a woman seeing that desire in the eyes of her husband, years after getting married, would appreciate his devotion.