Fuck the high ground.

I just stayed at floor level. Some part of me had reflexively assumed I’d have to go up into the canopy. Three seconds of not being an idiot dispelled the notion however. The sun was still… in the sky. I couldn’t actually see it. The temperature, while slightly chilly, felt pleasant since it kept me mostly comfortable despite my brisk walking pace. My heading remained true west and the reason why came down to gamblers fallacy.

Overall, it was nice. The flora definitely had an exotic touch to it. The surroundings could have done with a flowerbed or two, but I’d take this any day over drab grey stone. I didn’t care much for botany so there weren’t many more conclusions to draw about the nature here other than ‘weird’. It was mostly standard fare, except upon closer inspection I could say with certainty that I’d never encountered any of these plants before.

There were little giveaways. For example, all the leaves were blue. There were barbed thorns the size of my index finger on waist-high bushes. I came across what I thought to be a normal tree yet it triggered an Errant warning, which I heeded. Couldn’t fight no trees. I’d made a habit of constantly checking the interface. Inner me wanted to scratch ‘Beware trees with no balls’ somewhere but discretion was the better part of valor and all that.

At least it smelled like a pine-forest, or an air freshener. The two were analogous in my mind. Someone had once told me heavy smoking deadened your sense of smell and taste, which I dismissed as nonsense at the time. Then again, I’d never been a picky eater either so maybe the dude had a point.

After an hour of wandering I even encountered some wildlife, seemed to be from old-earth too – so likely edible. The bunny in front of me didn’t look too odd at least. A little bigger than I thought they were supposed to be, nature was often like that though. The important parts were present. It was wonderfully fluffy, probably delicious, and entirely harmless. I gave the little white fluffy fuck a name: Breakfast. Some things just weren’t the same anymore after the end. For one, it didn’t run away.

My mood soured quickly after. The post-apocalypse sucked. All the best parts of life were ruined. Breakfast had been standing on its hind legs looking in my direction when I’d spotted it. It did the whole cutesy sideways nod too, nothing wrong with that. When it started bounding towards me, I thought Breakfast might even manage to upgrade itself from meal to friend. Yet it was not to be. Breakfast had the same thoughts I did, minus the friend part.

Not sure what exactly tipped me off, could’ve been Breakfasts body language or the look in its eyes. Maybe it was the multi-meter chitinous three-part appendage ending in a stinger rising from the base of its neck, hard to tell with these things. My interface refused to open, confirming it.

Everything was getting an Errant-check from now on. I also learned a new lesson. The Errant warning was based off my own senses. I knew this for certain because I’d spotted Breakfast right after rounding a rootball, about a second after I’d closed my interface. This led to an unfortunate consequence - we weren’t all that far apart.

Breakfast braced and its neck stinger went straight for me. My reflexes were on point though, so I flung my winter jacket at it in a blind panic and backstepped twice. Now I did the sideways nod.

Breakfast was fucking helpless. The stinger had reacted and pierced my winter jacket, and the fucker was covered by it. It stabbed around in frenzy, so twice. Then it retracted and folded the stinger at the same time, it turned out the chitinous stabber was collapsible. It tried and failed to shed the jacket. It looked stupid, but didn’t make me any less wary.

A stinger might imply venom, thus a scratch might imply death. My brush with infection taught me proper sword fighting equaled death. Instead I’d test the mind-sword. Breakfast definitely reacted to the sword coming closer, but struck next to it - probably aiming for a wielder.

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It turned out to be very helpful so I executed a downward chop, pantomiming along with two fingers due to a series of unfortunate life choices regarding what kind of person I wanted to be. Good thing this had gone down as it did, I would’ve had no chance of dodging that shit. The stinger was fast, but also fragile. After a few tries I managed to hit it and my magic sword went clean through.

It went still, as did my winter jacket. I tried to drag my jacket away with the handle of the sword but it had gotten stuck. The bunny with an inert stinger sticking out of its neck appeared dead enough. I cut the stinger off at the base, at a distance, and then freed my jacket – I also condensed Breakfast.

Distortion Fragment, 1/25, again.

Choices were 1 energy, 1 hide or manual. I picked manual this time. Some odorless smoke wafted away although the corpse largely remained. I cut up the stinger appendage into 4 pieces at the joints, then picked it up and had a look-see to figure out what this stuff was made of - white meat and segments of chitin. I put my spoils on a pile and spent about a cigarette circling to make certain there were no threats nearby. With a spring in my step I gathered some firewood, so mostly roots painstakingly cut off with my sword. Took quite a bit of effort, that.

My plan kind of fell apart there. My Bic lighter couldn’t set the roots on fire. While I didn’t know a damn about skinning either, I might’ve managed to get the skin off at least, so a stew would’ve been my only sensible option anyway. No pot. No water. Lots of thirst. Had figured I’d use my sword as a skewer, patted myself on the back and gotten to work.

My stomach growled. A cheeseburger and coke did not a full meal make. An old saying sprung to mind, civilization was just three missed meals away from anarchy at all times, now confirmed. I cut off the end of the stinger, only meat inside. My sword did a good job of slicing it open.

There were no signs of a venom sac – not that I knew what to look for but ubiquitous white meat wasn’t it. The anatomy probably didn’t check out. I chucked the stinger just to be safe, cracked open another section and cut out a little cube of white meat, then roasted it over my lighter. It took on a little glaze, then a scrunch. It smelled like seafood.

Wanting to conserve lighter fluid, I stopped roasting since I had no clue how much I had left. I used to have an entire drawer full of random lighters which I’d appropriated at every opportunity and this was one of them. I closed my eyes although I left my interface open and took a bite. Delicious, tasted like crab. I tried the next piece raw, which tasted like juicy crab. Worry made way for pride, my friend Breakfast had lived up to its name - may you rest in pieces li’l buddy. I sliced open the rest and munched on bunnycrab meat.

I had a smoke too – breakfast was a kind of dinner – and sorely missed coffee. Afterwards, I took the time to examine my winter jacket, which had a brand new hole. Shame. There was nothing to be done about it. Maybe someday I’d have the spare mana to mend it. If it could be mended, I had a sneaking suspicion the damage might get much worse before I managed to fully extricate myself from situations which bordered on certain death.

One mana later I’d come across Breakfast’s little brother, Lunch. Same tactic, same result. Better execution. Jacket got a little more torn up. I hadn’t gotten the shits yet so the meat was properly edible. This time I had something to do while plucking at bunnycrab meat.

I’d leveled up again and with that came another skill. My survival prospects were significantly improving, if skills kept coming like this then I’d be rocking quite an arsenal soon enough. I made a mistake in pondering the future though, which prompted the bad thoughts to surface once more – although the effect felt muted. So I thought about skills instead.

I needed a proper ranged attack of some sort. The melee shit hadn’t worked out and the telekinetics were underwhelming. Inventory tag hadn’t quite landed either, probably because it had nothing to do with swords. With the second tag I’d been overthinking it. Fortunately, all thoughts of risk profiles and betting strategies had long since left my mind. I had a need - to stay the fuck out of melee range. I decided to play it straight, see what happened. There was always the next skill if this didn’t work out. My annoyances with the System had somewhat subsided, the dude put in work to my benefit.

“Ranged”

It worked. Thank the System, it worked.

[Launch]

“Launch a sword you control in the direction that the point is facing, twice as hard as you can throw it. Range: 3 meters. Cost: 5 energy.”

The wording was all over the place, as usual. Pretty sure I understood how it worked regardless, which meant I had a good ranged attack. Just to be safe I would refrain from targeting anything further than 3 meters away. I had a pretty good feel for it now because of my control skill. Maybe I was getting the hang of this post-apocalyptic survival crap.

Even if this turned out to be the bluest apocalypse I could never have imagined.