When I came about I was laying on a fairly rocky bit of terrain. Sitting up and gaining my bearings I observe my surroundings. I landed in a fairly bleak island with few trees and a fairly large sand bank. My mind throbs like I had a incredibly bad hangover causing me to sit back down. Taking it slow I feel a few things that have not been there before. It's actually quite hard to describe. Like a feeling that feels like it's always been there, but you completely understand it hasn't. Closing my eyes and focusing on this strange feeling, I began seeing a incredibly thin creature. Startled I open my eyes only to notice that the place the creature was siting was fairly similar to where I am currently siting. Closing my eyes again reveals the creature, but this time I decided to swing my left arm. The creature swings his right arm confirming not only that I am the creature, but I now have a mirrored top down perspective. I know the others called me a skeleton but I'm surprised they actually treated me as human. But since this feature is probably a video game based feature I zoom out. Now the skeleton is a small pathetic creature under my view. I take a bit to admire the ugly beauty of the island. The rocky place I woke up is a small hill like fixture with strange spikes coming out the ground. This area has 4 tree like things with some form of fruit. After this hill is just more fairly sharp rocks, dirt, and brush until the beach. This in-between area has a few shrubs and some sort of bird like species making their nests. The beach itself is full of round blue slimes, quite stereotypical, but what exactly did I expect. My Associates are split of doing their own things. Blackjack is on the beaches beating slimes to death with his bear hands. I almost had to do a double take with the image of a old man one sidedly beating a beanbag like creature. With the creature fighting for dear life it paints quite the terrifying image. I also notice a little stash of all the things he has collected. With litte round orb like things that are probably magic stones. The sand is baked with slime fluid which I guess is a form of blood. With a flash of light another slime apparently spawns. Only to be beaten with a driftwood club by David. I thought he wanted to abandon his violent life but, well, warband is quite a violent game isn't it. Ignoring my mistake I find Lord and Darkhare moping around near some birds. Lord looks to be attempting to capture one of the birds well Darkhare rests and teases Lord a bit. I don't really know the full story, but it looks like darkhare is a lot happier than my short time with him in the meeting hall. He must have had a really tough life if this deary island is better. Although it could just be teenage angst, even I have lied a few times to promote pity during those years. Rook is currently looking down standing on top of one of the spines on the top of the island. He seems to be doing some sort of weightlifting or something like that. Opening my eyes I am immediately disorientated with a quezzy feeling in my stomach. Staying still for a while I fought back the feeling and finally got up. Since my body is that of a reanimated flesh skeleton it was quite difficult.

Slowly I reach the edge of the spire that Rook was atop and called up [hey, "wheese" Rook, "huff" how long was I out] Rook was staring at me for a while now with a extreme look of pity. But now I'm near his spire he jump down from the 19' foot tall spike right next to me. I almost had a heart attack as I was spooked to the ground with a tad bit of shrapnel painfully scratching me. Being on the ground is probably better for me anyways, but as I was pitying myself Rook said [Well you have been out for about a day or two, it seems time flows differently in between worlds. Actually David and Blackjack got here first 7 days ago so if you consider that I guess 9 days.] I respond [so you got here two days ago? How's your halo superpower or whatever] Rook states explaines frustratingly [My superpower is strange as it's somewhat a flat buff. It provides me with a sheild and super-strength and that's about it. What strangest is that I can't seem to build muscle anymore.] I respond curiously [Why were you weightlifting then if it does not really do anything.] Rook responds frankly [I used to exercise as a form of stress relief, so I guess it's a habit more than anything.] Suprising, I thought he was some sort of athlete or something. Letting him know my thoughts I say [I thought you exercised for a living, what job did ya do to gain so much stress] Rook thinks for a bit, seemingly mulling over if he should say so or not. He then decides responding with [It Actually has to do with my death. I work as a aerospace engineer and was working on a missile artillery system for a goverment contract. There was a unfortunate and, painful, misfire. You could probably get it from that.] Rook looks somewhat cleansed, before continuing on about exercise [But anyways it seems like my powers grant me a form of superstrengh and increased agility. Although it seems like I can't do anything anymore. No matter how hard or how much weight I lift I never get stronger or even get a burn.] I try and find a solution to my partners problem. But first I ask about how exactly he knows all of this. [You know muscle growth doesn't happen over night. How would you know this over two days] Rook accepts the question with a acceptable answer [I weightlifted till my muscles where torn and when I stopped I was neither weaker nor stronger. I actually did it until my sheilds were down, and my body seemingly regenerated back to the same state. So I concluded that I could not change myself] I question [So the sheilds don't just counter external threats, they mess with internals as well?] Rook kindly answers my question [Yea, I mean I think you should look at the powers from the perspective of pure mechanics. In lore it might have been a literal sheild but in this reality and in the game it was just a regenerating health pool that nothing could get past. Think of me as a first person shooter protagonist without the guns. I can probably take quite a few hits and might have a few superpowers, but I'm not much just by myself.] Ok so he seems to be weak, although he probably has quite a will to be doing this for so long. I ask him [what are ya planning on doing if you can't really do anything] Rook nodded, although he had a slight look of irritation from the question. [honestly I was waiting for you, I know factorio has some guns you can create so getting those is the next step to power.] Rook looks a bit shifty before asking [anyways so how is your powers chugging along] I honestly, and bluntly, reply [I just got here so I used some sort of top down camera thing] Rook frustrated, states [well get to it, or are you going to be more of a deadweight than lord.] I question [lord? I know Blackjack gave him quite the stern look, but is that game really that terrible] Rook responds snidely [Blackjack was absolutely right, lord gains power once every week and the power gained is pathetic. Right now he quickly understood this so he is just messing around, a deadweight. If we were not under contract from some mysterious being I might have done something about that. Although since I can't weightlift that probably means others can't as well. So Skelly you should probably try and find a method to walk around. Because I'm not willing to carry you.] With that Rook finally exits the conversation walking down the hill. Thinking about it Rook might not be as nice as a first thought. Or maybe it's just that he is the type of guy to talk behind someone's back. Nonetheless, if he is willing to go to such lengths for lord; how much would he go for a pseudo-cripple? If he actually acts on those actions, anyway, Now back to being alone.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

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Lying down on the ground for a moment makes me think a bit about what exactly went wrong. I may have been a bit dense at first but it really seems like I am weak. I have never in my life been this hopeless and alone... scratch the last part, I have been alone for most of my life. Maybe being barely able to function may highlight those types of things. Insecurities perhaps, anyway, what exactly made me so weak. I never really cared for exercise so that is probably a factor. Thinking about it I have not really been outside my apartment in months. I'm a bit surprised that I am not immediately burning to a crisp in this island habitat. But that might just be something to do with how Rook can't exercise. I wonder if our body's are paused, or made of magic. Magic might be a interesting thing to look into. Although you would need to choose a game with those types of things. Actually how exactly does my weird game powers work. I have only really played with the camera a bit so I don't really know if I can be useful. Focusing on the same strange feeling that offered me camera abilitys I try to do something different. In factorio I should be able to mine things so I try and mine my surroundings. Looking around It seems like there is nothing obvious to mine like a node or anything like that. So I decided to just try and mine the ground maybe it will work. Focusing on the ground I give myself the command of digging the ground. It was actually quite strange, to watch myself punch and claw at the ground without my input. A small bar at the bottom of where I was digging appears slowly raising. It was pitifully slow raising almost 1% each minute. At the 30 min mark I started to feel pain in my hands. Actually not necessarily started so to say, more like a slow rising throbing sort of pain. Since its going to take a few hours before the bar completes it's starting to get quite boring. Looking at what the others are doing, they are doing mostly the same things as when I first got here. Although Rook is exercising at the beach rather than where I am. And Darkhare is taking a nap well Lord is collecting sticks for some reason. Focusing on lord for a while he seems to be trying to make a trap of sorts, I am guessing for the birds. But it is quite funny to see him constantly fail at making it. Especially when he tries to test them. One of the more recent traps was a box trap like you would see in a cartoon. The trap had a bait of fruit from one of the trees and a large stick keeping it open. A bird decided to try and eat the fruit, so it just used its large Beak to snach the fruit from the trap. The look on Lords face was quite amusing. Although I'm slowly getting more and more distracted by this growing pain coming up from mining. It's actually getting to a point of complete annoyance. Looking back at the progress for the mining I see 95% so only about 5 minutes left until I can end this suffering. I spend the next 5 minutes just focusing on the pain. I feel it in my hands mostly but my entire body is currently in pain. I feel increasingly exhausted thinking about it. And with a unceremonious +1 obsidian I finally got something from mining.

Coming back into my body the first thing I saw was incredibly brused and scarred hands. I realize that I was basically punching a smooth bit of rock for almost 2 hours. Thinking about it, this rocky bit of the island is full of sharp spikes and obsidian. If I am not paying attention when I do this sort of thing I might get hurt. But ah, what exactly will I do with a piece of obsidian. Technically it's a stone, 5 stones in factorio make a furnace. But does that mean I will have to be out here for a few days to get enough for just a simple furnace. Not only will it take days, my hands are ruined with the acquisition of one simple piece of stone. Frustrated I open up the top down perspective to try and find the crafting menu. Similarly to how mining works it popped up after focusing on it. Looking though the menu the first thing I notice is that everything is a lot more complicated. Water pumps need a pumping mechanism. Boilers need a boiling chamber and a few other knick knacks. The furnace apparently just needs stone although the price is raised to about 30 pieces. Looking at the part section I see that all the parts have "any material" next to them. One of them "rods" only needs one piece of material. Out of curiosity I decided to make a rod out of the piece of obsidian I currently own. After a symbol pops up representing a crafting queue it was gone right after I noticed it. It seems like mining and whatnot has changed but the crafting system has not really. Assuming I have a inventory I open it and see a symbol representing 2 obsidian rods. Taking them out I "drag" the rods to somewhere close to me. Hearing a bit of a thump I return to my body to find the rods laying where I left them. Picking up one of the rods they are quite heavy. To the point that can barely lift them with my scrawny arms. I decided to try mining again with the rod to see if it's more efficient. Commanding myself to mine again the progress bar quickly fills up. It took about 30 seconds for my mining to be successful. With such a increase in efficiency I decided to mine for the rest of the day.