image [https://imgur.com/pqcoNSS.jpg]

We finally reached the cliff with the rock overhang. Unlike we'd predicted, the rain cleared up a little and it just got really overcast.

We got a really decent look at the valley from here. The evergreen trees were so plentiful, like grass on the mountain sides from this distance. The nice pine smell drifted around, soothing my anxiety a little bit. I see why lumber jacks liked to live in places like this.

Huge glaciers were just beyond the mountains. Their icy blue look contrasted with the green and gray of the mountains.

In a way, this spooky valley was almost pretty, it reminded me of a work of art a painter might make. All it was missing was a little log cabin sitting next to a river, and maybe a little sunshine too. Something about it felt a little prehistoric, but maybe that's because my dinosaur monster books looked a lot like this.

Oh boy, could you imagine a T-rex type monster? That thing would probably be really strong...

"It's a good view," I commented.

"Oh shoot. Forgot my camera at home," Indena said in a sarcastic tone.

We both spotted some glassy looking formations coming out of the ground. It was right under the overhang. They were like big spikes of black. I scanned it and discovered it was mainly made of silicon dioxide.

This was obsidian.

"Hey, check this out," Indena called me around the glassy obsidian. "Pictures."

There were old carvings on the obsidian. It looked simple. Some of it was coloured in somehow.

One of the pictures looked like a man riding a red horse. I think the man was aiming a bow and arrow upwards, but it looked like a stick with a shovel shooting out of it. He was chasing yellow wolves with blue marks like lightning around them.

Just above him was something that looked like an ghost, but with black wings, and its eyes were red. Whatever they used for colour here was impressive to last this long.

You could barely make out one of the mountains in the background. It was the one near the glacier.

"You think these cave paintings mean anything?" Indena asked me.

"These aren't cave paintings, they're carvings."

She scoffed, leaning on the obsidian.

"Yeah, whatever...know-it-all." She tapped the carvings with her knuckles. "I think I get what's going on."

She did? It looked like the man was running from the Boogeyman while following wolves.

"What do you think it is?"

Her explanation was that the man was being chased by his dead ex-wife, and that she'd turned into a hannya to haunt him forever.

"But you see, this all happened in the past." she continued. "That's why he looks like a caveman. It's really a timeless tale of the horror of marriage."

She looked really proud of that story.

"Is that really what happened?" My eyes narrowed, suspiciously.

"Yep," She sighed. "Trust me, Shrimp, stay away from guys. Or else, you might turn into a hannya and haunt your husband."

Who knew marriage could be so scary?

I didn't want to be a hann...wait, what's a hannya? I had no idea what that was, but I didn't want to be one regardless!

"Nah…" she chuckled. "I'm just playin' with you."

Oh, that's a relief. I mean, Exceed don't get married, so I guess I was safe either way.

"Don't lie to me like that!" I puffed up my cheeks and pouted.

"You're fault for being so gullible," she laughed. "Although…" her face turned serious, "I'm guessing this picture is probably a warning to watch the skies."

Things didn’t look too bad right now, but I had a feeling it could easily take a turn for the worse if we gave it time. This place had a weird curse vibe.

“Do you think that’s the boogeyman?” I scrunched up in fear, keeping my hands close to my crystal heart.

“Who knows? Looks like it, based on that pic,” she shrugged. “Good news is, this is old, so it’s probably not even a thing anymore. Plus, this guy has a bow and arrow. I got fire magic. If he survived to make this, we’ll be fine.”

That was a little comforting, but I couldn’t completely shake the unease. For now, the coast was clear at least.

Our next goal was to set up a little bit of a base of operations here in the overhang and find out what we need to do next.

~☆☆☆~

Indena set up a small little campfire pit in the soil, it was just outside the rock overhang so the smoke would be going up when we actually lit a fire.

I asked, “Why go through the trouble of making a fire if you have fire magic?”

“My magic keeps me warm, but this is actually for you,” she said. “Incase you need to build a fire on your own, do exactly what I’ve been doing.”

I didn’t need to be warmed up. My body temperature remained the same no matter what the environment was.

“So, do we need to use this fire for something? I’m not cold.”

“You’re not? Huh…” She gave me a curious look, then snapped her finger. “You’re hungry, right? We need this fire to cook food.”

That got me thinking about food. I was really hungry, and it was almost dinner time.

I could hear Indena’s stomach growling, it actually had been growling since she started setting up the campfire pit. I’m pretty sure that was what triggered her setting this up.

“Alright!” She triumphantly clapped her hands together, sending a spark into the wood and setting it ablaze. “Looks good. Now we just need food to cook.”

Where were we going to get food out here? We were in the middle of a forest, and Uncle wasn’t here to synthesize food for us.

Indena had an idea. "We can go get the monster bodies, then cook em'."

"Yuck." Eating monster sounded yucky. They were probably all bitter and chewy. Plus, they looked like rats.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Listen, in the wild, you take what you can get." She started walking to where we killed the monsters, snapping her finger and magically putting out the fire. "They're safe to eat too. So come on."

I guess as long as they aren't poisonous, I'll try it out. Still, eating monster sounded bad. But I have eaten vitamin rocks before, so it couldn't be worse then that.

~☆☆☆~

We reached where the Lizzarat's were defeated. Some of them seemed to have disappeared, others were still on the ground. The weird thing was, the remaining ones were glowing with a small rising pillar of light.

"Hey, why are those glowing?"

"What's glowing?" She looked in the direction I pointed. "You see somethin'?

I tried to be more specific, but she couldn't see what I was seeing. That's odd…

I walked up to the glowing pillar above the Lizzarat and an interface popped up in my vision…

-Collect dropped items?-

-(Yes)-

-(No)-

Ooh! Item drops! Life really was like a video game!

But, what on earth was calculating this to work in reality? Uncle said life wasn't exactly a video game, just that my body was able to translate things in reality like that...

-...-

-...-

You know what? This was a mystery for another day. I wanted to see the items this thing would give me…

-Lizzarat meat-

-Bone material-

-Chewed up ring-

All of those items entered my virtual inventory in the INVENTORY menu. I had a five by five grid to place items in. Anima, the renegade AI from before, was in a chibi form, sleeping in the last item box. So I really only had about 24 slots.

I wondered if I could bring these items into reality…

"What the…?" Indena picked up the Lizzarat. "Why'd it go all flat?" She waved the limp body around like a rug.

So, I guess I was digitizing whatever was collectable in the monster, and putting it into my inventory. That explains why it looked flat now, because it was empty.

"Hold on...I got the stuff out of it."

I opened up my INVENTORY and selected the meat. It gave a little description saying it was edible, but poor quality.

Good enough for me, I guess.

I held out my hand and a thin chop of meat spawned in it, all nice and wrapped up in plastic.

Indena was flabbergasted. She jumped over to me and inspected the meat with a neanderthal-like expression. Then she looked at my hands, trying to figure out what sort of trick I just pulled.

"You just did that?" She pointed to the meat.

"Yeah," I nodded. "This is the meat from those things."

She slowly reeled back into an upright position, gaining some of her normal composure. Then she put a hand over her chin and lips.

"You really are something special," she said. "So, how'd you do it?"

I explained the situation of my inventory and the dropped items, and she started laughing.

"I'm not good at video games, but dang Shrimp, that must be pretty handy."

I sure would rather be playing video games than living one. It's more fun because in most video games you can respawn. I don't think I could do that in real life. Not that I wanted to find out...

Anyways, the other dead monsters also had some items, nothing special though. One did have a single gold coin called a...Pier Token?

The coin had a woman's face engraved on both sides. The heads side was her facing forward, and the tails was her profile. She had a short bob cut and was pretty. Maybe this was the local currency or something.

"Hey, Indena." I showed her the coin. "What's this?"

She looked disgusted. "Oh yuck. I hate those," she barked. "Those useless coins are everywhere, and they do absolutely nothing. Get rid of it."

It was made of a gold alloy, just under 9 karats or so...so it must have had some worth. I held onto it just in case.

A little dialogue box appeared and said I had 1 coin to my name. It didn't tell me it's worth, but it looked like this was in fact worth something. The amount of money I had was permanently fixed up in the top right of my stats screen.

Once all the bodies were empty, they vanished into a haze of mana. Even the one Indena was looking at disappeared.

Now I see! Monsters with items didn't disappear. But they would leave once the items were gone.

We ended up with about a full meal worth of meat for the both of us.

~☆☆☆~

Back at the camp, Indena prepared the meat over a fire. She made a makeshift grill with rocks and cooked it that way.

"Where'd you learn to do all this?" I asked.

"I'm a fire mage. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's grill something."

One of the meat chunks cooked all the way. It looked like a stake, but smaller. She gave it to me on a thin rock plate.

It tasted...chewy. That was the most interesting thing about it.

Well, my teeth are stronger than diamonds, so I can chew through it.

"Yuck." Indena bit into a different piece. "Oh, this is horrible. Sorry, Shrimp. I did my best, but Lizzarat's not my specialty."

"It's okay. It wasn't great quality to begin with."

I couldn't help but wonder what was next on the menu. We had to keep eating, otherwise we'd starve. Well, I'd live on, I just wouldn't grow. She would probably not make it though, since she was human.

It looked like she still had a little piece of meat left to cook. It wasn't much, it almost looked like jerky. She only cooked it a little over rare, then handed it to me.

"The snake's probably hungry too, right?"

Oh, she was worried about Samael! I was so foucsed on us that I forgot he was here too.

He actually just had a big breakfast this morning, so I didn't think he was…

Samael raced off my head and snatched up the meat in his mouth!

Wow, he sure was hungry. I'd never seen him eat so quickly. He must really have liked rat...oh, duh! Snakes love eating rats! Lizzarat, in this case.

After he finished, he returned back to my hair for a nap.

Indena and I both noticed it was getting dark. Night was almost here.

I'd never slept outside in the dark. That sounded too spooky. Uncle and I camped out one time in the garden, but there was a lot of light around from The Hive, so it wasn't too spooky.

"I'll keep the fire up tonight. That way we'll be able to see."

"But, Burney says that's dangerous," I commented.

She gave me a funny look.

"Who the hell's Burney?"

"Burney's the Forest Ferret that warns people about putting out their campfires. He has his own TV show."

Indena didn't know who that was, but she said her magic would keep the fire from going crazy.

"Burney says that fire magic can be unpredictable, so you shouldn't rely on it to keep the fire from burning down the forest," I said.

"Well, Burney ain't here right now," she sassed. "So unless his weasel butt wants to keep first watch, he can deal with it."

She'll regret this when Burney shows up with a camera crew and a pair of handcuffs...

Anyways, Indena decided to take first watch of the night. There wasn’t a very comfortable spot to sleep, since we didn’t have a bed or sleeping bags. I just gathered up some twigs with soft leaves and used that as a pillow. Not really comfortable, but it was something for my head.

Before I fell asleep, I did my nightly prayer.

“God, I hope that we can find better shelter soon. And some food. This place is really scary, so please protect us. Amen.”

Indena curiously peeked over at me.

“Who you praying to?” She asked.

“God.” I said.

“Which one?”

Which one…? There’s only one God, and the rest were gods. That’s plurality for you.

“Just God.” I reaffirmed.

“So, you're a Deula?”

I'd never heard that term before.

"What's a Deula?"

"It's a name for anyone who worships Deus. Well, actually God." She spun her hand up in the air toward the clouds. "Not everyone calls him Deus, but the term Deula isn't supposed to be respectful."

I thought God's name was...well, God. But Deus was a cool name too. I made a note of that.

"So, why is Deula not respectful?"

"It's basically a way for people to group up monotheists together, not really paying much attention to whatever religion they actually come from."

Monotheism was believing in only one God, and that was it. I worshiped one God, but I believed all of the other ones existed too. So I can't really say I was a monotheist. I wasn't going to confuse myself trying to label it though. If she called me a Deula, that's what I was.

"Okay, so what do you believe in?" I asked her.

"Huh…" she leaned back in the grass, looking up at the dark clouds, "what do I believe in?" she snickered. "Honestly, the gods really haven't done me any favours. So if they want me to worship them, they gotta' do something for me first."

That seemed a little selfish, but maybe there were too many for her to pick from. She’d probably want to narrow down the nicest one and pick that one.

“God helped me a few times,” I said. “He’ll help you too, if you ask.”

“Heh, I’ll keep that in mind.” She had a sarcastic tone. “Go to sleep, Shrimp. I’ll wake you up in a few hours.”

I won’t call this place comfortable, but I managed to close my eyes and catch some sleep.