[Achievements: 36/9,062 - Please speak the name of the Achievement for more details and to claim rewards for gaining that Achievement!
Growth II
Acquisition: Have one or more Stat reach 200
Reward: +2 Gold Coin, +1 to each Stat
Nimble II
Acquisition: Have your Dex reach 200
Reward: +2 Gold Coin, +20 Silver Coins
Full_Counter_ERROR II
Acquisition: Have a total of 2000 or more Absorption Points
Reward: +2000 {Full_Counter_ERROR} EXP ]
Ross glared at the achievements, face blood-stained and dour. He was cooking hunks of rabbit and squirrel over a campfire he’d barely managed to make, arms still shaking from the emotional pain he had yet to recover from. He’d needed to deactivate his shields and bash the handles together for a spark. His arms were sore from the effort, and his shield handles were laced with scratches from one another, but they'd eventually gotten the job done.
It was nearing sundown, and he had a feeling of exhaustion that ran from his body to his very soul. He’d managed to find a bar in the settings for hunger after the first few rabbits barely fed him. He’d wanted to puke after realizing he ate them raw without thinking, and his system took the liberty of reminding him how Kinetic Regeneration spared him from a few diseases he could have gotten from such an action. His mouth was so blood-stained that, upon observing his reflection in a nearby pond, he could swear it looked like he ate a handful of lipstick. He still wanted to gag at how voraciously he tore the poor animal apart, even after its fur was clotted with dirt from being smashed into the forest floor like a pancake, but he held what little food he had managed to eat down. It wouldn’t be like that anymore - he would make sure such things stayed out of his life.
He found out his shields, having a surprisingly sharp edge, could cleanly decapitate small creatures with a strong enough swing. He did this as a mercy, ensuring to bury the animal's head near a tree or bush. This would provide a sound-based warning in case the same scavengers that ate him alive last night wanted to come back - he hoped they’d go for the animal heads first. Besides, this was better than waking up and being able to see his own thigh bone through a gaping wound. Above all, though, it felt respectful to the creatures that never asked to become his lunch.
Ross looked up at the sun setting and half-grunted and half-cried. He had no shelter, and he didn’t have anywhere near enough energy to build one. He looked at his hunger bar again, and knew this meat wouldn’t even get it to a quarter of the way full. Deep down, he knew the reason he needed so much food was his idiotic Dexterity stat. If he hadn’t panicked, he could have gotten a better balance and most likely wouldn’t have needed so much sustenance to get by. “Hindsight is 20/20,” he muttered, taking a hunk of the skewered rabbit meat off of his stick and chewing on the charred cube. Ross was no chef. Nothing he cooked tasted great and was all, in fact, either quite burnt or undercooked. Having faced starvation, though, he had to admit it was far better than nothing.
Having little else to do as the sun descended deep into the horizon, Ross gazed at the darkening sky. He knew he’d need to hunt bigger game, and he’d need to do it without training because he didn’t have any food to spare for such physical exertions. Hell, one or two big cats - maybe even a few wolves - could get his hunger nearly full, if not bursting. This was assuming, of course, is math was correct. Caloric intake wasn't an exact science without reference points, and he'd never bothered to look up how many proteins were in a poorly cooked rabbit flank. If he was right and was capable of bringing down a larger animal, he’d be able to take his time and hunt back-up food without worrying about anything aside from getting used to his new body and finding shelter until his trainer found him.
A notification suddenly blinked in Ross’s face. He opened it, fully expecting another achievement barrage. He was grateful to see the day’s EXP log.
[You have killed (14) animals, and have gained EXP for each due to surviving until nighttime!
Squirrel Lv. 1 (5) 50 EXP (10 EXP Per)
Rabbit Lv. 2 (9) 270 (30 EXP Per)
Total Animal EXP Gained: 320
EXP until Hunter Specialization Lv. 7: 1,490
Overall EXP Gained for the Day: 320
EXP Points needed to Level Up {Full_Counter_ERROR} to Lv. 7: 4,770 ]
He sighed. Nowhere near as much experience as he wanted to get. It also looked like the Hunter specialization didn’t level up from anything but successfully hunting animals. Ross briefly pondered if there was a Skinner specialization, before shaking his head. He had to find a safe place to sleep, and he’d all but lost his crater. He couldn’t waste a ton of time going back to it, either. If he wasted too much time searching, he’d either starve or get caught with his pants down at night.
He then considered his Miner specialization. Having no better option, Ross huffed and looked around for a large cliff or indent. After stumbling around in the dark for a bit, he remembered seeing a cliff face that should be tall enough. He made his way to the area he remembered seeing it and, with what little fleeting sunlight he had left, he saw the outcropping. He immediately began hammering away at it with strength he didn’t know he had.
At first, the rock fractured a bit. Then, small chips began to whip past Ross’s face like he’d run over them with a lawn mower. Soon, larger and larger chunks of rock were whizzing past his head, and he felt a surge of adrenaline. Not wanting to waste it, he kept powering through. Minutes passed, then hours, but Ross kept working like a man possessed. After awhile, what with his high Strength and perpetually sharp-edged shields, he was able to carve out a tunnel that he could just squeeze through. It led into a small alcove he could more or less lay down in. He activated one of his shields, which was just big enough to cover the entrance to his little hovel. He laid with his back against it, hoping to keep any creeping animals aiming to bite a chunk out of him at bay. He felt far worse than he had after being chased, and his hunger bar was getting dangerously low. He took a shaky breath, feeling the effects far more intimately than he’d care to.
“Sleep now. Food tomorrow.” He chanted to himself, and after an uncomfortably long period of sitting still and shallow breathing, Ross finally drifted off.
____________________________________________________________________
More than once, viscous howling and clawing interrupted his sleep. With nothing but his bare hands, he’d had to kill at least a baker’s dozen of feral weasels, a couple of horrifyingly contorted goblinoid… things, and not an insignificant number of things that appeared to be auburn badgers with four sets of legs and a shark’s worth of teeth in their mouth. Those things seemed to have insanely high health for their size and level. At one point, he had to swap shields due to the first being nearly out of charge from the advances of a particularly ferocious rodent that he could only describe as his overlay had; a Formidable Gerbil. After each victory, he would skin the beasts and debone them to eat later. Except the goblinoid things. Those looked like slenderman had banged Bloody Mary and dropped the offspring they made on its soft spot. He was not about to become a cannibal for humanoid races because he wasn’t that desperate, and he wouldn’t turn into a brute-minded troglodyte and devour raw animal meat again, so he set non-goblin meat aside in a pile to be cooked.
His sleep was, after a few hours of such interruptions, deep and restful. He did not awake to the sun or a half-eaten body again, but to the rhythm of his own heartbeat. He took a breath and smiled. Sleep was no longer an issue, and from the veritable hill of meat he’d gotten from the creatures last night, he’d be able to most likely refill his hunger. He put all of the meat into his inventory, hoping it would stay fresh there, before crawling out of his makeshift cave and stretching. After glancing at the sun nearing the apex of its arc across the sky, he swiftly collected what he needed to make another fire. This time, he was able to use his shields more effectively and get a spark in just a couple of tries. The pile of dried twigs, fallen trees haphazardly cut into logs and nearly dehydrated foliage lit up almost instantly, and he happily sighed as he sat next to the fire.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Suddenly, a new prompt next to a menu he hadn’t thought to open before caught his attention, so he opened it.
[Would you like to cook all of your raw food {22 Servings} over the {Common-Quality Campfire}?]
He stared at the message for a long time. His eyes flashed traces of rage, then sadness, then pain and frustration before finally settling on begrudging acceptance. Yes, he thought. A sudden flash of heat accompanied a massive flare of the fire before him, and he blinked before checking his inventory. As he did, the fire died out.
[Inventory:
Foods:
Roasted Weasel x14
Roasted Kanpodomelis x7
Formidable Gerbil Steak x1 ]
“Damn. Really was that simple, I guess,” Ross muttered to himself. He’d never thoughtto put the meat in his inventory before, and the only reason he’d done it now was to not take multiple trips into an enclosed space he could be jumped inside of. He briefly considered looking at the Protism amulet, but decided against it for the time being. If he took everything into his own hands with zero input from someone who actually knew their stuff, he wouldn’t make it past a week. Even looking at it himself would give him ideas, so he shoved it to the back of his mind and focused on devouring the cooked meat he now had access to.
After eating every bit of roasted weasel and making it halfway through the fifth kanpodomelis, whatever that was, he’d slowed down enough to breathe. He still needed water, but he knew of several creeks and his Kinetic Regeneration prevented parasitism, so he wasn’t concerned about anything that may be in said water. His hunger bar was now nearly full, and he set the remaining kanpodomelis meat and the Formidable Gerbil steak back in his inventory. As he munched on the remainder of his meal, he checked the inevitable Achievement tab’s new alerts. He was rather sick of them at this point, but he was also becoming a bit numb to them. He shrugged as he looked over the alerts.
[Achievements: 39/9,062 - Please speak the name of the Achievement for more details and to claim rewards for gaining that Achievement !
Hearth I
Acquisition: Create 1 or more campfires
Reward: +10 Copper, +10 Adventurer EXP
Butcher Chef I
Acquisition: Cook 20 or more servings of meats
Reward: +1 Silver Coin, +10 Copper Coins, +10 Cook EXP ]
Ross blinked. He didn’t realize that he could gain the Cook specialization, but hindsight being 20/20, he supposed it made sense. He gained the Miner specialization by digging a hole. He looked to the next notification, which was marked with an exclamation point in a red triangle.
[Your trainer has been alerted to your presence here, and has begun to track you! Your Trainer is currently {331} Miles from your Location, traveling on foot! They should arrive in approximately {16.55 Days}!]
He coughed and sputtered, small hunks of pseudo-badger meat flying out of his mouth. He couldn’t have been asleep for six days. Could the system be wrong, or perhaps the mentor had taken some form of faster travel? Maybe the system was only set to calculate time before they could run here?
Ross did some math in his head. If his mentor could travel 20 miles per day, the math would check out; it would be about 45 days from 900 miles away. That meant that, unless Ross had just pseudo-hibernated, his trainer was traveling more than the estimated 20 miles in a day. It made sense that they’d be able to do such a thing if this place had stuff as unadvanced as wagons, and especially as advanced as cars. What confused Ross was the idea of him traveling over 500 miles in a single day or less. Or two plus days. Or however long he’d slept for. He’d need to talk to that trainer before coming to any conclusions, but considering he didn’t feel the effects of oversleeping, he assumed it was about 12 hours between the last time he checked his mentor’s progress and this time.
The real kicker is that the message explicitly stated this person was traveling on foot, and unless that was a default to be manually changed, it seemed next to impossible to him. Then again, if his trainer was a far higher level with far higher stats, and his own experience with a high Dex score…
The ideas sent Ross’s head spinning, and he groaned, standing up and shuffling over to one of the nearby ponds. He ferociously downed the clear water until his parched body was sated, and only then stopped to get a good look at himself in the pond’s reflective surface.
His nose was beyond bulbous, almost like a stereotypical witch’s nose being rolled up like a hunk of putty and slapped onto his face. His features weren’t exactly sharp or round, more… average? His arms and legs were oddly muscular, and his torso was chiseled beyond belief. His eyes were a vibrant and alternating orange and royal purple color within the irises, and the sclera were tinted red, bloodshot and weary. His wispy white hair swayed gently in the breeze, his handlebar mustache barely rustling. It was then that he noticed something quite odd.
His slate gray skin hid it well, but Ross saw hairs that were a very familiar violet and orange growing in his ‘stache. Compared to the rest of the hairs it was just stubble, but he noticed it as the colors between the strands - if one could even call them that - constantly swapped. It almost reminded him of a dynamic desktop screensaver, if it was covered with a piece of slate gray material that had tiny holes poked into it. He gently brushed his hand over the stubble, but it felt no different than the rest of his mustache and didn’t give any reaction. He blinked before standing back up and returning to his handmade stone tunnel.
Once he got there, however, he was greeted by a horrible sight and revelation.
What he saw was an excruciatingly large kanpodomelis, at least as tall as Ross plus a full head above standing on all fours.
What he realized was that the other beasts were nothing but kids.
Its kids.
Swallowing hard, Ross stared down the behemoth who, after a moment of sniffing the air, let out a horrifying bellow. The sound was the love child of a polar bear’s roar and a badger’s hissing, amped up to eleven. Ross held up the shields to the beast, whose frontmost arm lashed out and burnt through both shields. The impact sent him spiraling back, careening across the forest floor before finally slowing himself enough to hold up his shields defensively. He hadn’t taken more damage than his current regen could keep up with, thankfully. He poured every bit of AP he had from the shields being destroyed back into the leftmost one. They erupted with magic, their forms brighter than before. He braced himself as he saw the behemoth charging after him.
All Ross could think to do for the longest time was defend.
He kept holding up his shields, and the mother of the badger things kept pummeling them into nothing before sending Ross flying. He kept pushing all of his AP back into the shields after every deactivation, and after what felt like hours, the mother was finally beginning to slow down. The shield bars at this point, much to Ross’s astonishment, were at well over 50,000 Charge a piece. He gawked at the number, before realizing how fast it was dropping. His stomach and heart fell in tandem with it, and he swallowed hard. He let his shields be broken once again, and this time as he went tumbling, he didn’t reactivate them. He looked at his AP while the behemoth was charging after him once again.
[Absorption Points: 102,639]
Ross didn’t have the time to check the thing’s health. He didn’t have the sense of mind to use this as a training exercise, and he didn’t have the confidence to escape this thing. Instead, he glanced at his abilities and took a shaky breath. In a cracking voice filled with fear and weariness, he tried to yell a single phrase but it was caught in his throat for a moment too long.
“Come at-”
He was interrupted with a paw that felt as though it should tear Ross in half. Instead, Ross felt the small strand of health left within him cling on. Immovable Object made that one single HP feel as though it were an absolute, a truly unbreakable strand that held him to life. His adrenaline spike reached a peak, and he let out a scream at the kanpodomelis mother, and stood up. He had gained 849 more points of AP, and was suddenly back up to full. He made a silent ‘thank you’ to his regenerative ability before stepping up to the badger thing’s path. He reeled back a single foot with eyes stinging from threatening tears. Once the thing was upon him, Ross closed his eyes, praying he’d hit the beast.
A pale, grass green light enveloped Ross’s leg as he felt it move semi-automatically towards the beast’s face. He screamed as he activated Overwhelming Reversal, and connected directly with the kanpodomelis’s jaw.
Time slowed, and Ross’s foot glowed with a light orange and violet glow. The outline of his leg began to grow hotter before bursting into a white inferno, swirling the glowing colors into its luminosity and pouring itself into the point of impact. The beast’s head erupted from its chin upwards, and the skin around its head cracked and glowed with the same light that had left Ross’s foot. After a moment that stretched out for an eternity, the behemoth’s head shattered and evaporated all at once, a fine red mist erupting from where a gaping maw once sat. A perfectly severed spinal column was exposed along with cleanly severed flesh as the thing’s head dissipated into the air, powdered skull sprinkling down from the sky. Its body fell to the ground in a slow collapse, blood finally beginning to spill from and pool under the decapitated beast, before its corpse also dissolved.
The thought of bringing it back to his hovel for food never crossed his mind. The overwhelming satisfaction of beating a boss he'd normally feel were entirely absent, stress and panic taking their places. Its hulking form, now unmoving, still filled Ross with dread. He remembered the pain vividly from every hit, and his muscles involuntarily clenched. He felt his breathing grow erratic, and his eyes burned ferociously. His brain was still scanning the area, and despite a part of him fully knowing there was nothing left to attack him nearby, he continued to feel the strain of Survivor Mode. After what felt like an eternity, something within him pulled too taut, then snapped.
Whether he cried from fear, relief or a mental break, he did not know.
But he cried.
Ross cried for hours, sitting in front of what could have very well been the end of his life once again. He kept seeing flashes of his death on Earth, and he suddenly and violently screamed into the afternoon sun. It didn't last long, quickly devolving into choked sobs. The sky remained clear, without a cloud in sight. The animals nearby fled, leaving the new entity to its despair out of a fear for their own lives. The blood from the kanpodomelis seeped into his pants and footwraps, tinting the orange half-uniform crimson and causing them to cling to Ross’s legs and feet like papier-mâché. His nose ran profusely, vision blurry from heated tears. He tried to scream again, to let the strain out somehow, but broke down into a coughing fit that left his shoulders and spine throbbing with pain. He nearly gagged, but kept what food he could down as he sat and processed.
This was real, and in that moment, Ross hated it with every fiber of his being.