“What do you need me to do?” He asked her as he walked over in the water. Having already removed most of his clothing to clean it, it felt very different. Having already spent intimate time with beastfolk before, it was hard to put those feelings away.

“Ryn tarn var.” She had a requesting tone, not like asking him a question but more asking for something. As she was sitting in the water, trying and failing to reach her back with her hands, he took it as she needed help cleaning herself properly in the harder-to-reach places.

He did his best to clean her fur, especially places like her back. It wasn’t a problem as most of the gore was on her front side. Using water and moss he got it as clean as he could, accidentally putting too much pressure on things and had her wince at the sudden pain, having him ease up on the pressure. In the end, he found a good balance of enough pressure to clean but not enough to hurt her more. Her purring returned and save the odd errors in the process, she seemed to like it.

She moved her tails to him as he was done cleaning, he took it as a request to have them cleaned as well. Given their fluffy nature, it could be that it was somewhat problematic getting through them properly, which wasn’t an issue for him, manifesting Psyhands in addition to his normal hands made cleaning the rest of the places she struggled with, a breeze. Though she initially seemed startled when nonexisting hands moved across her fur, she was fine after confirming ‘Sa shirin’.

After they were done, retreating into the cave they dried by the fire before going to bed. Realising that he only had one bed he opted to have her take it, as the wounded member of the party.

As he led her to the bed she climbed into it, but as he left to sit down by the fire she let out a dissatisfied ‘Yap’. “Sa sark!”

Grabbing hold of his hand she pulled him into the bed, repeating the ‘sark’ word.

He assumed it meant rest, sleep or just bed.

Accepting to take the bed, he was tired after all, he lay down in the padding and got comfortable. It didn’t take long for her to snuggle up against him in a ball like a pet wanting the warmth. He didn’t mind, it felt rather nice being with someone all calm like this on the island, even though they couldn’t understand each other.

Tomorrow he would have to decide what to do, but for now, they could rest.

Waking up the next day he found that Dia was still snuggled up next to him in a ball of sorts. She had a slight purring sound on her breathing, looking quite content. As he tried to get up she woke up, lifted her head and looked at him with sleepy eyes. She didn’t say anything but got out of bed as Sam did, sleepily strolling outside.

By the time he had reignited the fire, she came back in, looking a bit more awake, happily vocalising his shortened name. “Sa!”

He couldn’t help but be affected by her enthusiasm as a smile drew on his face. A glance at his HUD also listed her health up to 63, so it seemed she had healed overnight! Though he didn’t know how healing worked for Beastfolk. Taking a second glance at the rest of her statistics he saw that her XP had capped out at 171 / 171, since the contract they had locked her to 5 levels below him, it wouldn’t trigger the level up.

They spent some time eating and washing up, getting ready for a day without a plan.

[ Quest: The Island

Dominant forces: 3 ]

A glance at the quest had lifted the number to 3, it was 2 when they spoke with the man last night. This either meant that the man had shared some rumours about Sam and got him recognized, or the Bloodfang Marauders had picked a new leader. In either case, this meant that he would need to take out at least two leaders, and most likely a gaggle of others surrounding them. He needed information, he had to wait for nightfall and skulk about again, this time around the other camps. The possibility of capturing someone for information was also promising, especially as the other groups would perhaps not know about Sam at all.

The positive thing was that this gave him the day to try and communicate with Dia, though he hadn’t been alone on the island that long, just having a friendly face to try and talk to was surprisingly nice. As they sat there, trying to learn more words, pointing at things they had at least two of to allow for a comparison explanation like parts of the body or items, the rain started falling outside. It was incredibly heavy and dense, much like he expected tropical rain to be, though the temperature still wasn’t warm enough to make wearing pants, a shirt and armour problematic.

She opted to sit next to him instead of across the fire, as pointing and examining became easier, at least that was the thought Sam had. He learned a few more words and found it interesting that he remembered the words he learned yesterday. Usually not being that good at remembering smaller things, he chalked it up to the System helping him or just a different motivation. She also kept referring to Sam as ‘Zar’, but he wasn’t able to understand what this meant, he found it kind of weird how her expression changed when she said it, almost questioningly or like she was testing his reaction to it, looking slightly sad when he reacted with confusion.

As the day dragged on, he noticed Dia acting a bit different. In the moments they didn’t have anything specific to do, like talking, eating, making or preparing something, she would make a point of sitting against him. Either leaning against him or just lying on the floor with her tails draped over his lap. He found it strange and weird. Though this wasn’t entirely uncommon for animals to do, at least as far as he remembered dogs growing up, given that she was sapient and humanoid, it came with strange undertones. She had known him for only a few days, so it had to just be some animal instinct of gratitude.

Nightfall was creeping in, it got dark fast on the island so in good time before that happened they set out. He had a rough layout from when he scaled the mountain, so he knew roughly where to go. Gearing up, confirming that Dia’s health had increased since last night once more, they set out right as the rain stopped.

Trekking through the jungle was not a huge problem, his Player stamina made it about the same as walking across the city before he awakened, so though it would tire him eventually he was amused at how much better even his meagre Stamina made him than a normal person. He remembered the chaos surrounding most competitive sporting events when the System first came to Earth. Given their power boost, they were instantly banned from normal competitions, but people wondered just how different they were, so some special competitions allowed both to go against each other. And... as Sam experienced first-hand with the intruder at the corner store... There was no chance for a normal person to go against a Player, at least unassisted.

Since they were going to one of the further away camps, it took a while to get there. Especially since they were sneaking the whole time. Though Dia was extremely adept at it, Sam needed to make a more conscious effort. They could, in theory, have just walked over there and started sneaking once they got there, but since he didn’t know exactly how far they spread out, or if they’d pass anyone on the way, it was safer to just expect them anywhere.

After a considerable time of sneaking in the night after it fell, Dia suddenly stepped in closer, pulling his hand to make him stop.

“Var fruk shan.”

He knew that ‘var’ was a reference to self, like ‘I’ or ‘me’, ‘fruk’ meant nose... or perhaps smell? It at least referred to the nose or sense of smell somehow, though he didn’t know what ‘shan’ meant, he understood it as her smelling something. Given that she stopped him and they were sneaking, she probably smelled someone or something they should be wary of.

He stopped as she requested, letting her take the lead. Though it was a bad situation, he loved that they were able to at least very, very crudely communicate. It was heavily contextual still but anything is better than nothing!

She led them forward, taking a sharp turn to the side before continuing around something he didn’t perceive. Often stopping to smell the air, ears twitching as she pointed and tried to explain something with her hands, using a sign-language-like thing he had never seen before. In the end, she managed to lead them behind two men who were hiding behind a boulder, looking the other way.

This was an amazing event, not only were they turned away from them but, Sam and Dia’s crude communication worked fine! They did have their weapons drawn but that wasn’t a problem yet.

Sam pulled out his weapons, he used spare hands and Energy to Force Pulse their eyes, as it’s a good tactic so far, before he sent the weapons flying towards one of the men, given the time he had to line up the attacks there was zero chance for him to survive. Many of his attacks became critical and though there was no triggering of anything meaningful the man fell before he knew what happened.

The other man turned towards the sound of his friend being cut but didn’t seem to properly be able to notice what it was before Dia landed on his side, forcing his body into the forest floor. She bit the wrist of the hand holding the dagger, forcing him to drop it with a pained yell. His vision seemed to return shortly after as he started pleading for his life. Dia seemed to understand that Sam wanted him alive, as she stopped attacking at that point, after kicking the dagger further away, snarling at the man she was now standing on top of.

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“I’m sorry. I think. Just.. don’t kill me..” The man hadn’t seen Sam yet, he was looking straight at the angry Beastfolk standing on him, both his hands up in a defensive position. Looking around frantically he saw his dead friend and panicked more.

“No, stop, please. I... What... what do you want?” He panicked, seeming to struggle with knowing what to say.

Sam assumed this was a response to knowing that the Beastfolk didn’t speak English.

“I want information.” Sam chimed in, having the man’s stare snap at him.

“Oh, you... She.. she’s with you? Thank fuck.” His panic calmed down considerably, it seemed having some form of communication was helpful.

“She is, yes. But so are these.” Hovering his weapons over to the downed man brought back some of the fear. “Now, I wonder about your camp and your leader. Please share anything you might think is interesting.” Sam smiled as he crouched down out of reach of the downed man, though with Dia standing on him, his bleeding wrist and the floating weapons were more than enough to keep him down.

The man rambled on, explaining and answering anything Sam asked of him, with the only request that he let him live once he was done.

He explained that the closest camp to here was for the Shadowclaw Syndicate, their leader, Viper, was a mage who specialized in electricity. He got his nickname for his swift and sudden attacks, ‘attacking like a viper’ before most people could react. Sam knew that spellcasting took a brief few seconds, this meant that this Viper either had some casting-boosting skills or was just that good. In his panic, he just kept sharing anything Sam might want to know, though the only interesting part was that Viper was fast in combat, and electric attacks seemed hard to defend against given how most organisms’ nervous systems were particularly vulnerable to electric attacks. Blocking with a shield or armour could still have you affected.

The rest of the information was camp-related, though located differently they followed a similar structure and concept as the Bloodfangs. Most of the people there weren’t there by choice, just being pulled into this place by the System and from fear of getting murdered or fed to some creature, they joined to at least live... Most there had killed in the sense of survival, but they had an understanding of the others being in similar situations.

This sounded more and more like the leaders, and the twisted individuals who liked this kind of thing, being the main problem. Most of the people were just random men and women roped into this by the System.

“If I’m to kill Viper, what would be the best way of doing that?” Sam asked bluntly.

The man’s eyes widened a bit as he processed the situation. “You... you can do that?” There was a strange hope in his eyes. Sam expected him to be defiant about that but he looked surprisingly on board.

“You’re... ok with that idea?” Sam confirmed, wanting to make sure.

“Well... he doesn’t exactly treat us well.” Reaching for his crude armoured vest, stopping his movement as Dia reacted he made an open hand motion before he continued, ending up pulling his vest aside and showing a nasty scar. It looked like a lightning bolt etched into his chest, having burned the skin enough to engrave itself in his body. “I tried being defiant when I was taken into the camp the first day... I... learned my place...” His eyes lowered just thinking back before they rose again to meet Sam’s.

“Most of us just want off the island, sure... there are some fucked up people who like killing but... We just want to go home...”

“Well, that makes things easier.” Sam responded. “Then how would I go about killing him?”

“C... can... can she get off me first?” He nodded at Dia who still looked like she was ready to go if he just twitched wrong.

Sam nodded, the man had a point. “Dia.”

As soon as he said her name she slowly stepped off the man, not turning to Sam before she was out of the man’s reach. She seemed to be quite aware of the danger of looking away while in an enemy’s range. Sam smiled and gave her an approving nod even though it felt like calling off an attack dog, she seemed to enjoy the response.

The man sat up and inspected his wrist wound, it had stopped bleeding but still looked like it could get severely infected if not cleaned. The Player Constitution would probably help him, but it still looked bad.

“Viper is the attack first, ask questions later kind of man. Makes it a bit hard to talk to him. He sleeps in a cave that’s both guarded and locked up, I don’t even know what it looks like in there. I think the best option might be sneaking up on him somehow, or publicly challenging him.” The man seemed uncertain, he was on board with the idea but seemed to struggle with finding a good way to make it easier.

“Will that work? Challenging him?” Sam didn’t feel confident doing that, but it was at least an option.

“He’s an arrogant and proud man, if you talk shit to him at the same time he will most likely want to prove you wrong.”

This had Sam consider a lot of things. The best for him would be some surprise attack, safety and whatnot. But if it came to that then a challenge is a possible backup. Electric attacks were a problem, any attack could be like getting tased, and tasers were effective for several reasons. He wanted off this island as well, and if this man went back without his friend, evne if he lied and said that it was one of the other groups, they would be on higher alert.

The best might be to go right away, which was a terrifying sentence. But it felt appropriate. If nothing else he could scout the area, Viper, and then head back.

“Where’s the camp? Is Viper there now?” Sam asked the man.

“Oh, if you go that way, you’ll get there in less than half an hour... or so...” He pointed in a direction and Sam could understand his lack of time management, it wasn’t easy without technology keeping track for you. “And I think he might be there? He was there before I set out at least. You’ll recognise him right away if you see him.”

Sam again considered this, should he go right away he might get the drop on him, but he wasn’t entirely sure about how to do things. The more he thought about it the more he felt like it was a good idea to go now and get some intel. Though his armour might stand out, nobody knew him so perhaps he could get in a first move through pretending to be a recruit that just got some neat loot?

“You might want to stay here a while.” Sam commented to the man. He had decided to go if for no other reason to scope out the place. Worst case scenario they can just run and come back later.

Getting Dia’s attention, Sam started jogging in the direction the man pointed, moving through the thick jungle for a few minutes, covering some of the distance before he started sneaking again. Dia seemed to understand what was going on, running on all fours as they made their way and changing her pace once Sam started sneaking.

Sneaking the rest of the way it took a while before they, or at least for Sam to hear things going on. He wasn’t stopped by Dia so she probably didn’t notice anyone hiding. Luckily enough there wasn’t anyone who noticed them, or at least nobody paying them any attention as they neared some bushes and trees leading into the clearing of the camp.

The camp itself was very similar to the earlier one, just without the peninsula in the opening of the 9-lake, completely landlocked they had a more roundish shape to their camp. People wore mostly leather or some remnants of modern clothing, everyone was armed with some simple weapon, and there were tents, boxes and stacks of wood.

And there he was, the man who stood out like a sore thumb. By modern standards, he looked surprisingly normal, decently muscular, somewhat slender, with short brown hair, perhaps a bit dirty. He wore mostly the same leather clothing as everyone else, but his main difference was the teal blue robe.

Sam and Dia observed him for a moment as he moved around in the camp, he walked about, talking to the men. Sam couldn’t hear what he said and even if Dia could; she couldn’t translate. Sam waited for an opening to do something, alternatively for some good info for a later plan.

Even though Sam was hiding in a bush, looking at them through its branches, Viper’s eyes suddenly snapped to the side, locking with Sam’s.