The word, survive, hung with Matt. Even his over-heated brain couldn't get the idea out of his head. Even though no one would probably notice another death in this barren wasteland, he liked having a body that wasn’t betraying him. The time with the truck being was nice. He liked living without some invisible timer hovering over him and counting down.
Now, he was on the same kind of timer for a different reason, and he hated it. He wanted to live. He wanted to survive.
His thoughts turned to tools. Shovel, stick, dynamite? He had none of those to help him get the water out. But what he did have was the word survival and a class search bar. It would have to do.
[Survival Guide]
Warriors destroy enemies and win battles, but your talents get them there safely in the first place. You know what berries to eat and what water is safe to drink, as well as a thousand other things that keep everyone safe wherever you go.
Stat Emphasis: VIT, WIS
The class wasn’t bad, but Matt didn’t fail to notice the emphasis on party dynamics. Survival Guide seemed less like a self-sufficient class than a type of grease that lubricated parties, maintaining the fighting force during travels. It was almost like someone a party would hire when they didn’t know where they were going. If the actual class was anything like the flavor text indicated, Matt would be safe right until he ran into the kind of trouble that bit or slashed, and then he’d be out of luck.
Luckily, the search had returned two results, and the second one was a doozy.
[Survivor]
If you are seriously considering this class, something has gone terribly wrong for you. Other classes level up by making things or killing things. You level up by surviving, which is subtly different and infinitely worse. You get stronger when you live through terrible things, and every skill you have is built to give you a fighting chance in a bad situation.
Stat Emphasis: DEX, VIT
That’s the one. There were no mentions of parties or support. The pessimism in the description was worrisome, but it seemed appropriate for a guy who was hours from getting into serious dehydration trouble on a burned-out rock planet.
Survival Guide seemed like it had a better chance of giving him a skill that would help with water extraction, but water was the biggest problem he had now, not the only problem he’d ever have. He couldn’t afford to get tunnel vision and only focus on his immediate problem. Choosing the Survivor class would be a disaster if it didn’t cover his immediate needs, but it was a bet he’d have to take. He closed his eyes and willed the acceptance of the class.
Congratulations, you have chosen the [Survivor] class. Enjoy!
A cascade of system dings sounded on top of each other. Then, for a few moments, Matt felt as if he had become a god.
—
Matt shook the dizziness away and picked himself off the ground.
“System, what in the ever-loving shit was that?”
For a moment, his muscle had grown. Not gradually, but with the speed of a gunshot. He was a chiseled roman god. He could lift mountains, move faster than lightning, and felt invincible. He was smarter and more knowing as well. He stood in a barren landscape, filled with almost unlimited knowledge and power. It wasn’t an illusion; he knew down to his bones that this was real.
He tensed his muscles and pointed a finger at the stone, ready to issue a word of command, to drive his will into the very workings of the thing until it erupted in the torrent of water he desired.
And then, just before he spoke, all that strength was gone. He was just Matt again. His muscles deflated like a popped balloon, and he was left standing in the middle of a nothing landscape, pointing his finger at a rock like an insane person.
Several achievements were granted at once. Please check your notifications.
Wincing, Matt pulled up his notifications page. There hadn't been too many new messages in the past few days. The early notifications were all related to his arrival on the planet, and not particularly helpful. After dismissing those, he took a look at the alerts that had set off the most recent set of dings, and immediately understood what had happened.
Class awarded! You are now a [Survivor].
Class Loot Pack [Basic Survivor Kit] awarded.
Class skill [Survivor's Instincts] granted.
Class skill [Survivor’s Combat] granted.
Class skill [Eat Anything!] granted.
Matt could sense he could zoom in on any of those skills for context but set them aside for the moment and moved on to the other notifications first.
Achievement: [Sole Survivor: District]
You are the last living survivor of your home district. We apologize for your loss but applaud your tenacity.
Reward: 50 VIT
Achievement: [Sole Survivor: Continent]
You are the last living survivor of the Sarthia continent. There’s a good chance you need help rowing away from whatever happened, so enjoy your reward.
Reward: 200 STR
Achievement: [Sole Survivor: World]
Somehow, you lived through a world-ending apocalypse. You are the last sentient being alive on the planet. Hopefully, an improved internal state will help you pass the time.
Reward: 500 WIS, 500 INT
There were dozens of notifications like this. Once all the sentient beings were gone, the system started awarding achievements based on being the last survivor for non-sentient species, then animal classes.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Achievement: [Sole Survivor: Mammalian]
Every mammal is gone, save you. How did you survive where rats couldn’t? We don’t know, but enjoy your reward.
Reward: 300 STR, 300 VIT
The notifications went on and on. That explains why I felt like I was a god, Matt thought. But where’d all those stats go? He scrolled down as quickly as he could to the last notification, hoping that would shed some light on the subject.
Achievement: [Absolute Survivor]
Somehow, all life on Gaia was eliminated. All of it. Fish? Birds? Gone. All the bacteria is dead. It’s debatable whether or not viruses are alive, but they are gone too. But not you, somehow. You live on. The system isn’t supposed to ask you questions, but if it could, they’d try to figure out how you somehow survived.
Rewards: All previous survivor benefits removed and consolidated into increased authority over Planet Gaia.
Without knowing much about the leveling system, Matt had to assume that a few hundred vitality points might not be a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. And that anything that could survive or cause a worldwide apocalypse would probably be at a very high level. They might not mind trading out those stats for whatever “increased authority” was or did. But Matt was still at level one. He silently mourned for the lost stats.
Unlike his new skills, authority didn’t appear to be something he could get a description of. But still, Matt assumed it must do something, and it happened that he was still standing right over a part of the planet he cared about very much. He mustered all his will, pointed at the ground, and willed it to give up the water, just as he had tried to do before his new powers had all evaporated.
Nothing.
“Produce water! Release water! Water go!”
After a few minutes of trying various combinations, Matt had made no progress except increasing his feelings of inferiority. Either the skill wasn’t activatable or worked in a way he couldn’t guess at. The system was no help. It wouldn’t respond to any queries regarding the matter. That left good old-fashioned stats and his new abilities as possibilities for water, and not a whole lot else. Matt crossed his fingers and brought up the expanded windows for each.
Matt Perison
Level 1 Survivor
Class experience: 0 / 10
Health (HP): 30
Mana (MP): N/A
Stamina (STAM): 15
Strength (STR): 5
Dexterity (DEX): 6
Perception (PER): 5
Vitality (VIT): 6
Wisdom (WIS): 5
Intelligence (INT): 5
Class Abilities: Survivor's Instincts (LV1), Survivor's Combat (LV1), Eat Anything! (LV1)
Matt’s dexterity and vitality stats had both improved slightly, and vitality seemed to come with a slight increase to his HP and stamina. Despite that, he didn’t feel much different. He was probably felt a little sturdier, but that could easily be placebo effect. There wasn’t much around to be particularly dexterous with for testing purposes, either. He’d do more in-depth testing later, but for now, it didn’t seem raw stats would be much help.
Survivor’s Combat - LV1
A boxer would beat you at punching, and you will never be as good with blades as a swordsman or rogue. But when it comes to improvising with whatever is around, you have an edge, as well as an improved sense of when to dodge, when to stand your ground, and when to run away.
Survivor’s Instincts - LV1
You’re a bit better at staying alive now. If there’s a wall to climb, you have an improved idea of how to climb it and if there’s an enemy to fight, you can roughly estimate your chances of winning. You also have an increased baseline knowledge of survival methods.
Eat Anything - LV1
You get more out of food, and there are more foods you can eat. You gain resistance to ingested poisons, can stomach mildly spoiled food, and get nutrition out of a slightly increased range of foods.
Neither of those two skills seemed very relevant without enemies to fight or food to eat, and neither held much promise of helping him with the problem at hand. The third was slightly more promising.
“Survival methods” was vague, but it was possible that it might help. Matt turned to look at the water-stone, hoping something would spring to mind. He grabbed another rock and considered just beating the thing for a bit, hoping he’d get lucky and the thing would at least spill some water on it’s way to ruin. But the risk was too big; he let the rock drop limply from his hands without doing anything with it.
A deep feeling of desperation came over Matt. He looked at the water-stone confused and a part of him wondered if he would die here. If only, he thought, he had any knowledge of magic devices at all. Or, hell, even non-magical tools; he would happily settle for an evaporation still.
Wait. What’s an evaporation still?
Suddenly, a wave of memories regarding evaporation stills surged through Matt’s mind. They were essentially tents built around water sources that funneled evaporation to a container. He somehow knew how to build one, without ever having thought about them before. He guessed that was the “baseline knowledge” increase the system had mentioned, and it was definitely cool in a sense. But it didn’t do him much good without anything to build the still out of.
The loot box!
Matt glanced around, but no such box was lying around. Doubtful that it could have been stolen, he focused in on the loot box notification itself, only to have a secondary window pop up.
Open Basic Survivor Kit? Y/N
Yes! He thought.
You found: survival dagger, survivor’s pack, instant torch, survivor’s garb, rope, double-fill canteen, simple tent, and signaling mirror.
From nowhere, the mentioned items materialized and settled on the ground. Matt’s Survivor’s Instinct immediately flooded his mind with information. The survival dagger, rope and survivor’s pack were pretty self-explanatory: a pretty good steel dagger, a length of hemp rope, and a sealable bag for holding food and other items. Useful, but nothing special.
The instant torch was similarly boring. It was a torch with a built-in lighting mechanism to set it aflame. Not much use in a world without night.
The survivor’s garb was a bundle including a shirt, pants, a coat, boots, and a masked hood that looked somewhere between a ninja outfit and a raincoat. Survivor’s Instinct told him it offered little protection from physical damage, but was optimized for protection from the elements and terrain.
Matt had ridden dirtbikes during his youth. The fabric of the garb reminded him a little bit of endurance suits, the kind that were meant to protect you from scraping yourself raw on branches as you rode. He gladly changed into the superior clothes, especially glad to replace the sandals with the much more protective boots.
The double-fill canteen apparently worked just like a normal canteen, except with twice the capacity its size implied. It wasn’t exactly a wand of fireballs, but it was the first honest-to-god magic Matt had encountered. He quickly checked to see if it came pre-loaded, and was disappointed to find the system hadn’t been so kind.
Under normal circumstances, the tent and signaling mirror would have been the least exciting items to Matt. Even in his weird circumstances, they would have been except for two things: the tent came with a transparent tarp meant to act as a base, and the mirror was another mildly enchanted item that reflected more sunlight out than it had coming in. Between those two things, he had something to work with.
Matt ran around for a few minutes gathering rocks, which he used to anchor the tarp down to the patch of dirt that was damp. Using various stakes and poles that came packed with the tent, he soon built a small structure over the majority of the ground, shaped at the top into a sort of rudimentary spout leading into his canteen. He then angled his mirror to direct the sun into the enclosed area and sat down to wait.
He gave a slight prayer. Please let this work. Please.
Evaporation stills worked by trapping heat from the sun in a tent, using it to evaporate water, and then funneling the water to some kind of container. With the signaling mirror, it was only a few minutes before Matt saw the first signs of condensation forming on the sides of the tent. Soon, a few drops of water condensed, combined, and rolled downwards through the spout into the canteen.
It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. Matt was still hungry. He was still alone. There were probably any number of ways he could still die. But now there was one less. He had a source of water and a way to store it. He was doing a little bit better.
In a small way, he had survived.
Ding!