I felt a little blue. Perhaps because all the greenery, except for the grass, was now bluery. It might’ve been the lack of other people. Not a good sign. Could’ve been the creeping implications I kept repressing. Water was blue, and I was thirsty as hell. The sky was blue, not that I saw more than little hints of it through the canopy. Maybe the silence of it all got to me. There weren’t a lot of rustling leaves or other forest noises. It might’ve been that I felt a little under the weather. It certainly didn’t help my jacket got all torn up. The temp had gone down and cold was blue, right? These were all things to be a little sad about.
But the main thing was figuring it out. On my way here I’d come across three more bunnycrabs, hence the ruined jacket, and thus I’d been alternating inhaling juicy meat and cigarette smoke on the road. I even conserved my mana, which sat at a pleasant 10 now. I fingernailed the last one since the promise of a small coke appealed, a lot. I refrained from spending my reserves right away, one of my increasingly rare wise decisions.
Less wise was neglecting the world around me by employing one of my many life skills and refusing to think about anything which failed to qualify as an immediate issue. Otherwise, I might’ve picked up the pace.
I’d been going at a brisk walk. Since I was a chain smoker, for now, that wasn’t entirely accurate. The average person might perhaps describe it as a ‘leisurely stroll’ or ‘fucking slow’. There were a few hints scattered here and there and my subconscious worked overtime piecing things together until it all fell into place.
I spotted another bunnycrab coming towards me at a dead run. It tried to close the distance by running through a knee high bush and would’ve caught me if not for the finger-sized barbs digging into it. If I’d been in a more lighthearted mood then I would have laughed. I’d previously determined my jacket throwing wasn’t going to be very effective anymore, so when all this happened I employed every bit of tactical knowhow in my possession.
My response had been calculated and measured - I fled for about 10 meters and put my back to a rootball out of sheer cowardice. No idea why, it made sense at the time. This didn’t trigger my revelation, but rather what happened immediately after.
There was a second hybrid crustacean, a fact which completely escaped me. It ran full tilt at the stuck bunnyboy and used its stinger to stab it in the head. The Errant rabbit went still after a spray of oddly dark blood. Then bunny two began rubbing against bunny one in a dissonant display of affection.
Despite my previous insane internal rambling, it turned out theft was a great superpower.
Bunnycrab two became twice the crab it had been before. My prospects didn’t seem all that great when it started bounding towards me. Its dual-appendage assisted loping must’ve been a sight to behold though not my cup of tea. I pushed myself through the roots in a scramble and hid inside the rootsphere hollow.
This turned into a bit of a predicament. It didn’t quite want to force itself through the roots, but still kept trying to stab me through the earthy cage. Mind-swording like a pro, I chopped off one of the appendages after a try or six. It took a while because I flailed blindly at the appendages instead of trying to time my attacks. Unfortunately the creature, now once again half the crab it was just before, wizened up to my deviousness and stopped stabbing the air.
The half-fluff half-monster proved impressively clever. Being no slouch myself, I noticed this hollow didn’t have a convenient staircase leading down, something I should’ve perhaps been curious about earlier. Returning to the dungeon didn’t seem so bad to me anymore until I remembered the wrestling bone golems. So long story short, I was trapped.
It wasn’t the end of the world, that was in the past. But despite my overbearing brainpower, I couldn’t figure out what to do. At least it couldn’t reach me, since the hollow provided enough room to stay out of range. Shuffling sounds shortly demonstrated the bunnycrabs intellect matched my own when a little head pushed through the roots. I mind-stabbed it a time or fifteen, then patted myself on the back for a job well done and the System agreed with me since I could open my interface again. I condensed the bunny and proof presented itself, 2/25. I took the mana nail and absorbed it, then sighed in disappointment.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I’d reached level 5, but no skill selection prompt appeared. I’d come up with a few possible tags but it seemed those would have to wait. A new tab appeared which read ‘System Message’, chatty fellow. Not the good kind though but one of those people who talked at you rather than with you, like a yes man or a really drunk person. That had a technical term, ‘dipshit’.
Another technicality which came to mind involved the System’s use of grammar, which turned out to be on the same level as its adherence to the definition of words, loose. It spared me from any speed reading this time. But I had enjoyed me some literature once upon a time and there was no time like the present - so might as well see what he had to say.
“Greetings. This is an automated message. Considering your present circumstances, it was determined best not to distract you from the Errant threat and allow you to focus on acquiring class skills first and foremost. As you have now acquired all of them, you might be looking towards broadening your scope. As a society excelling at applying tools towards creating innovative solutions, you will be happy to know it is one facet of life left unchanged. To help you along, I have provided a ‘care package’ towards this. End of message.”
My heart sank. No more skills? Fuck. Only a new prompt, ‘select care package’. I could do with some supplies. Maybe a bunch of food, water and a giant pile of mana nails. That wasn’t really the theme here though. My choices were a ‘class-optimal’ care package or ‘select other’.
The System’s actions left me conflicted. It clearly tried to be helpful and the first hint towards that might’ve been the whole resurrection thing. While the idea was on point, the execution left much to be desired. I had bigger fish to fry and reluctantly placed my faith in it.
A rectangular pouch the size of my foot appeared in front of me. Very rustic chic, it seemed to be made of well cared for leather, with a light green shade of soft, coarser stuff overlapped by harder and smoother dark green panels where it didn’t need to be flexible. The contents consisted of a green metallic chisel shaped like a triangular pencil, 5 metal plates and a very out of place single page blue and white pictogram akin to a blueprint. Touching it brought up my interface, asking if I wanted to ‘stat-link’ ‘rune-scribing’. I selected yes and it let me choose between physical speed, magical power and magical speed. I picked physical speed because I had no clue what the hell magical power or speed did since I wasn’t exactly casting spells here. Linking made the stat go up by one. That was it.
After I pieced together the pictogram, I became fairly certain I’d just been handed a desk job. The gist of it seemed to be that I was supposed to draw a certain pattern over and over while thinking at the pen. It only gave one example but there was writing under it, ‘hardening’. It looked like diagonally crossed lines with minor embellishments.
Great, a promising future as a struggling artist awaited me, scratching the same thing over and over again on plates of metal. The steel industry probably wasn’t quite at its peak anymore either. This would have to wait. I extracted myself from my hiding place and remained cognizant enough to note the other bunny corpse had mysteriously disappeared. I didn’t ponder it for long though.
My more immediate concern was the prospect of more multi-legged bunnycrabs, and only the System knew what they might turn into, prematurely ending those lofty career aspirations. I set off at a run towards the west, at least that’s what I told myself. Light jog might have been more accurate.
Fear was a hell of a motivator though, so I managed to keep at it and only slowed down to an actually hurried walk long enough to catch my breath every few minutes or so. I hadn’t found any more Errant-trees on the way here and the overbearing dome of the canopy angled ever more downward. On the plus side, I only came across one more, thankfully single-appendage, monster-rabbit about 3 mana later. Dusk settled in too, I assumed so since it was getting darker. And colder.
Out of breath and out of patience, I launched my sword at the tasty Errant once it braced to strike. I aimed my blade by telekinetically holding the sword almost against my face and sighting down the flat. Launch was my kind of skill. The sword pierced through its braced fluffy back, always aim for center mass, and pinned the corpse while the blade sank into the ground, almost to the grip.
The System might have overestimated my throwing skills but I wasn’t complaining. Condense, manual. I wanted more meat. Didn’t need to run anymore either, I’d caught up with the curve of the canopy and faced a vibrant vertical wall of bluery, branches, vines, possibly roots and System knows what else, but on the bright side there were no bugs.