I went back down the stairs.

This was a bit of a shame. It took me some time to reach the top. I would have guessed multiple cigarettes worth but I hadn’t smoked during my climb up the steps. They were incredibly awkward, mostly because they were equally as high as they were long and pretty big too. It didn’t help that I got winded on top of my mounting exhaustion. An earthy smell and shafts of light greeted me at the top, and roots, just so many roots.

The exit, or entrance depending on how you looked at it, ended up in a tree hollow, or root hollow to be pedantic. My software engineer buddy would be proud. My entomophobia kicked in but I couldn’t find any bugs anywhere. I almost started pushing myself through the thumb-thick roots but changed my mind after I yawned for the third time. Exhaustion won the war against survival instinct. It had been close to midnight when the world ended and worse yet, I’d been drinking.

The problem was that it wasn’t safe, possibly anywhere. I didn’t want to do this, but I had few alternatives and probably couldn’t fight anymore soon - not with any sort of confidence at least. I needed a nap. I descended for a minute or two and then shuffled around in an attempt to find a position which would let me sleep. The curve of the walls made it something of a challenge. It also made the hallway narrower. I ended up half curled in a diagonal position, in an awkward belly-down arrangement with my head in my arms. Uncomfortable, but I was well past caring.

How to avoid dying in my sleep? That was the big question. I wanted a nap but I knew myself, most likely I’d be out for a lot longer. It had been on my mind for a while. There was really only one precaution I could think of. I closed my eyes and opened the interface. I still saw the black and yellow panels even with my eyes closed. If a beasty neared it would trigger the warning and hopefully wake me up. Gambling used to be more fun. I resolved to think of absolutely nothing, especially the mental breakdown circling my vulnerable self, ready to strike at any moment...

I jarred awake, on high alert immediately, right after a sharp intake of air. My sword appeared in my hand and then it took me a moment to realize my interface hadn’t closed. A few heartbeats passed before I realized that I had a nightmare about getting stabbed in the face. I knew a thing or two about psychology – which meant I had read a few articles online. Thus I proceeded to self-diagnose PTSD, possibly of the complex variety. I let out the breath I’d been holding and checked my manabar; I’d slept for 3 hours. I survived so a snooze couldn’t hurt. It took a bit before I dozed off.

I woke up naturally this time, again with my interface still open so I closed it. I stretched and immediately changed my mind as everything hurt like hell. It got my blood flowing, which, to my great detriment, made the headache resurface in full force. My left arm was especially sore. The lack of any immediate threats, an assault of blandness notwithstanding, allowed me to reflect. I decided against it. I wasn’t opposed to the concept in general but I had more immediate concerns. Not dying made it to the top of the priority list for some reason.

A few dozen winces later I’d pulled back and rolled up my slightly ruined and bloody sweater sleeve. On the positive side, the wounds were definitely smaller than before, but not by much. Sadly it didn’t really weigh up against the negative here. A pit in my stomach punctuated the fact I was going to die, for real this time. I wasn’t no doctor but it didn’t take a specialist to recognize the early stages of an infection. Although the signs were quite subtle, even an expert might’ve missed ‘em. Who’d think to look for pus and green-white stripes on an open wound?

Thoughts of cutting off my arm were quickly interrupted by the fact I couldn’t. Not just because my magic sword was friendly, but I simply didn’t have the cojones to do something like that. I also liked my arm. We’d been through a lot together. We survived the end of the world, side-by-side. Did it actually count as survival if you died but pulled a Jesus shortly after? I decided it did, which mattered since I’d recently become an authority on the subject.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I checked my mana, 13. At least I would die well-rested. A short bout of staring later, I’d learned you could not think away a medical emergency. Still, it calmed me down. After I centered myself again, I decided there was no need to be dramatic. I had time, maybe. Ultimately my medical knowledge was vast, at least compared to a medieval peasant. I couldn’t think of any other favorable comparison.

It was high time to focus on the task at hand. I probably had a couple of options. Amputation was out. Cauterization would be a gamble, trading a few open wounds for a couple of third degree burns. Made for good cinema but bad medicine, I knew that much at least. Bloodletting maybe? I strongly suspected it wasn’t a real medical treatment. I only had an idea almost guaranteed not to work. Might make things worse. No choice. Dumb idea. No choice. Fuck it, no choice.

First I had to clean the wound. Only one method seemed viable while keeping step two in mind. I scraped the wounds with my magic sword. It caused more bleeding, so a little bit of bloodletting too. It felt like scrubbing with a cheese grater. I removed a fair amount of... nasty shit. Bloody. Nasty. Shit. After that, I wanted to cauterize but pussied out in the end, still didn’t have the stones. It took a surprising amount of determination to hold a lighter flame against a body part which already hurt a whole fucking lot.

Next I had to gamble. My life involved an awful lot of high-rolling with no fallback lately. Alright with money on the table, but less so with my life in the balance. One could always get more of the former but the latter was limited in supply – I didn’t count on the System bringing me back a second time. I cast mending.

Now, there was a reason I thought of this as a gamble. Mending – at least in D&D – had been a repair spell. Not a healing spell. An enterprising mind might argue. What was really the difference between repairing fabric and repairing skin after all? If you had a particularly patient dungeon master, a question like that might spark an argument at the game table. It had happened thousands of times across the globe. Well, any arguments could be shelved. I had the answer. The difference was pain.

Step 3: Scream.

Step 4: Wake up.

I hadn’t really passed out, but recovering from mind-rending pain was quite similar, or so I learned. My clothes were soaked in cold sweat, headache had been overruled and the argument sustained. The effect was instant as far as I could tell, even though the hurt lingered. An examination of my forearm showed remarkable consistency across previously broken skin. A good chunk of my forearm also felt rather raw. Like I’d been enthusiastically peeling off sunburn, or been doing so pre-emptively - without the sunburn.

I resigned myself to a cigarette – with filter this time, I earned it – and a heartfelt promise to never do this again. I got up in hopes of setting out and making any kind of progress, right after checking my stats.

Mana totaled to 3.

Physical power: 10.

Physical Speed: 16.

Physical Endurance: I deserved at least 50, but only had 13.

Magical power at 16.

Magical speed still 10.

Magical endurance: 29.

Hatred of the post-apocalypse: 99.

Hope for the future: Zero.

I thought about giving up. I just wasn’t built for this shit. If I wanted to patch wounds and treat infections, I’d have gone for medical school and failed to get in like a proper aspiring doctor. Had to hope the mending fixed my arm and continue onward.

I went up the stairs, again, and was greeted by... still daytime. It hadn’t even crossed my mind until right before the spiral of the staircase evened out. I took a deep breath and relished the scent of lingering cigarette smoke mixed with shiver-sweat and an earthy breeze. I pushed myself through the roots towards the west, since that had been working out so far.

My efforts were rewarded by a scene of grass, daylight, bushes, trees and rootballs. They weirded me out a little, because all of the trees were on top of the rootballs. I turned around and saw my rootball was the same. They made a half sphere, with the apex four or-so meters off the ground and a big fat tree on top. It made no fucking sense, there was no way the roots could support their kind of weight. After looking up I figured it out.

The trees obscured the sky. Instead a latticework hung overhead, of what must have been giant branches spreading in every direction – up, down, diagonal, horizontal, and everything in between. There were so many I couldn’t see through the tapestry all that far, mostly because they blended together. The forest surroundings had given me hope, but I had a sinking feeling this was going to get complicated.

I wasn’t big on heights.