This mountain is bullshit. Who builds an arena this high? The cold alone...ok, I am an Idiot. Wulf churned his thought as he waltzed through snow as high as his breast, all the while trying to find the next slippery stone of the, more than rudimentary, road that led down from the top of the mountain into the hills and woods.
He was no stranger to snow, of course not. He had played in it, he had thrown it, he even had built many a snowman, but snow up to your breast and air as thin and cold as this...only happenstance had kept him alive, so far. A single misstep would spell his doom.
“And is that not just fucking fantastic?“ Wulf yelled, listening for his echo and the echo of the stone he threw off the side of the mountain. It was a little underwhelming yet satisfying at the same time.
He half awaited fate, or his ridiculously high Wyrd stat, to throw him a curveball and let his screams release an avalanche to bar his way, but the gods were kind to him today. Whoever they might be.
No, he was just a grossly out of shape man trying to descend a mountain with no gear but a stinking pelt on top of his head. What could go wrong?
Well, there was a way, a fairly even one and built out of carved stone, but there was so much snow that it was hard to even find. All in all, last days not counting, walking down a mountain with nothing but a medieval peasant costume + fur was the hardest thing, Wulf had ever done in his life. And it showed.
One time he just let himself fall down into the smooth, welcoming white of the snow as his muscles gave up and the cold got to him. Just lying there, waiting for it all to end already. To return to his messy room and his stupid computer and be done with this shit. But then again...
Dying would suck. And so he crawled on. Until, after a curve around a rock-formation aggressively jutting out of the otherwise rather pleasing surface of the mountain, he found one of these strange cabins again. They were not strange in themselves; their existence was. Exactly like the one at the top and, conveniently, half a day march from the first one.
The prickling pain of his warming muscles as he brought them as close to the everlasting flames inside the hut as he could never felt so good. Every goddamned second of the day had sucked. Every step. Every pound of snow he had displaced as he had waltzed through it had hurt. And yet....and yet...
With a belly full and his body warm, sweet exhaustion dragging at his eyelids…he had fun! Good, old satisfying fun. And was there...pride? That he had done something that was not the easiest way out? He was not sure. He was not familiar with the feeling, after all.
Despite being in the cold and snow for almost ten hours, by his estimate, there was no new Path unlocked. He would have jumped on it in an instant. Everything to lighten his load and let the torture be over sooner.
But Farsight had improved, if not quite to level two it sat now at 23 %. Looking over mountains had its merit. He swore to focus on that more, he had nothing else to do while out there anyway. He was thinking that his progress bars of strength, vitality, resilience, and willpower had improved, but if he was right the changes had been so minimal, that he would need dozens of days like this to even increase a stat by a single point.
Man, why could he not just put points into it and be done with it? Instead he had to train like a real human. But he was curious what would happen after he had exhausted mundane methods of gaining strength. What number would the winner of a strong man competition have in strength and how would he train that further? Beyond mortal limits?
He did not let sleep take him just now. It was just the afternoon, and he needed to sleep the night, because he needed light to find the way the next morning.
But if he stayed here a second longer, sleep would have him. So instead, he stood up, ate more jerky, moved around, and even jumped a bit. Everything to keep his mind busy. His whole body was a sore mess, so he did not overextend himself physically. But he played with his throwing axes, failing to make them stick into the wooden wall of the hut even after dozens of tries. They just were shaped so strangely that they did not fly straight or even. They began to flutter and move around in the air unpredictably, inevitably slapping against the wall with the wooden shaft or the blunt side of the head. Sometimes they stuck.
In the end he was too exhausted, but warm enough to brave the cold again, tightly packed in way too many pelts and furs. He had a wonderful view, one he took advantage of, letting his legs dangle on either side of a rock right at the edge. The woods were dark, from up here, they were missing the lighter green tones of the Middle European forests he was used to. But together with the funny white snow hats on every tree and every branch, the scene had something serene, like Christmas.
Here and there he could see smoke curling out of the trees, so there had to be fires or houses, but the woods were too thick to remember any landmarks down there. Once the hills rolled down to the see, there were a few houses here and there and ships in the fjords and sails on the horizon. He thought to see a couple of houses closer together far to his right, on the top of one of the cliffs above the sea. A settlement?
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What he absolutely did not saw was any kind of fields. No golden wheat, no watered rice. There was no agriculture to be found, as far as his eyes wandered. And wander they did. He focused on the houses on top of the cliff, studied them, their color, musing what wood would make for such a dark log. A couple of them were clearly smooth and painted, with one dominant color, usually a deep red, and some form of pattern he had no way of seeing clearly from this far away.
But he remembered the voice. It is in the details. He saw the block behind one of the houses and a pile of wood. Could he see the axe used for chopping wood or did his mind fill in the blank? He tried concentrating on the scene, really take it all in. The footsteps in the snow. The curling of the smoke. The sun reflecting off the roof in dull patterns, changing as the clouds event by...
[Path of Farsight leveled up to 2! Choose a perk or an ability! Infuse it with one of your Spheres if you wish to]
Wulf waited a while, even prodded at the prompt with his mind, but nothing changed. He seemed to have to make this choice now and to make it blind. But it was kind of self-explanatory: Did he want a passive buff or something he needed to activate. And because the Path in question was his Farsight, and he would have his eyes open most of the time, a passive boost would be the best choice, he thought. As he had no Sphere, or even knew what that meant, there was nothing he could infuse the perk with.
Immediately he was presented with three choices.
[Sharp Eyes: Your eyesight is slightly improved.]
[Eagle Eyes: Your eyesight is moderately improved in good lighting.]
[Owl Eyes: Your eyesight is moderately improved in bad lighting]
So, he could improve more but he had to specialize for it, or he could take just a slight, passive, overall buff. He almost took the general boost to his eyesight but then he hesitated. His eyesight was fine. Good even. He never felt inadequate when it came to just seeing stuff. At night though...all humans were shit at seeing in the dark. It would make a real difference, maybe, shoring up one of the weaknesses every human was born with.
It even was a step to break out of his mortal bounds. He took it. Of course, nothing changed because the sun was up but suddenly, he could not wait for it to go down.
Of course, it turned out to be a bit underwhelming. It just had to be. He did not even feel a difference, up here everything was bright, thanks to the giant moon and the snow all around. And yet, he felt somewhat safer, the sharpness of the shadows somewhat dulled. Rocks that could have hidden unseen foes now revealed nothing but wind and shadows in their cracks. And that was a good thing.
He went to sleep, feeling better than he had felt in a long time.
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Time passed in a craze of hiking, falling, cursing, throwing snow around, having a miserable time all around, and then eating dried meat until Wulf’s belly threatened to burst, throwing axes at a wall, staring at the beautiful nature below, creeping closer and closer with each day, watching the miniscule changes in the progress bars of his attributes, as well as training his awareness at night, concentrating on the new forms and shapes he could see. At night, it was all about interpreting shades of grey, no pun intended, and he had a couple of new ones his brain needed to learn.
Farsight improved and improved, but after the leap from level one to two, it slowed down to a crawl - not even 10 % after 3 days.
Wulf thought that to be a feature of the system. It was very easy to Unlock a Path to begin with, then you had to prove that you understood the principles before you could walk it for real, with a perk or ability to prove it. It would be a shitty system if you could get an ability just by choosing a Path. The first level seemed to be the true test of earning it.
Then, he fell down a slope.
At the fourth day, just a couple of hundred meters above the trees, he slipped and fell, sliding down a frozen, rocky path, bruising his elbows and hips, scraping the leather of his behind and more - painful, awful, tiny scraps of a little bit more - skin shaved off his bones.
He landed on an even field of snow, thankfully cushioning Wulf’s tumble with a calm, silent, and very much not bone breaking embrace. There was many an insult on his clattering lips, as he crawled out of the snow, but he fell silent immediately as he stared into eyes, just above the snow on exactly the same height as his were. Eyes on sticks, it looked like, eyes that moved independently and...impassively. Cold. Snakelike.
Wulf’s heart stopped a beat. Just a pair of eyes on tendrils above a calm layer of snow, what could go...
Wulf yelped a strangled yell, grabbing both eyes with his fists faster than either he or the thing with the eyes had any right to expect, surprising himself most of all. The reaction time was fueled by panic, by the immediate understanding that something was off.
To a stranger in an alien world everything seemed dangerous. There had been no need to think or debate, instincts just made him move.
Wulf grabbed and pulled, squeezed, eyeballs bursting between his gloved fingers, all the while trying to shove himself away, backwards into the snow.
Hissing, a head rose through the snow, somewhat snakelike, but with white wool along the...neck? It ended in a wickedly, craggy beak, which flailed around in blind pain. But there was more. The whole mount of snow moved, rose, fell off, to unveil a turtle like body, with white, wooly knots on top, effortlessly blending into the snow around. A wooly, bird-turtle-snake?
The sound it made came from another world, gurgling, screeching, and hissing at once as the creature wildly swung his long neck around, hacking at the place where Wulf had been seconds ago.
There was no escaping it, the snow was too deep to run, and the thing would get lucky sooner or later, so Wulf grabbed one of his axes and threw it, all the while trying to get his other axe free. His axe tumbled through the air, as always, but his practice paid off as it hit the thing straight on the beak. Not with the sharp side but with the blunt head first, at least.
The beak shattered nonetheless, dull red blood flying all over the place as the creature flailed once more.
With a scream of his own - he just hoped to be more menacing than it had felt, which was rather panicky - Wulf hacked at the exposed and very long neck, parting wool and leathery skin, letting more of the red blood sully the impeccable white of the snow.
That’s the thing with snakes. He thought as he cut off the head. You can choke or cut anywhere you want to...you are still getting the neck.
[Snow Shell Lurker level 5 defeated! Rewards: 56 XP!]
[Path Unlocked: Axes. A simple weapon and yet versatile. Hard to master and even harder to beat in a fight. Hit them with the heavy part.]
Requirements: defeat a higher leveled enemy using only axes]