I felt validated. Even had I hurried up, I would’ve still gotten stuck here. I was currently losing a staring contest against the vinebranchbushrootwall. Oh yes, there was bush in there too. Really multi-purpose stuff. Not only did my rustic chic pouch use coincidentally similar finger-long barbs as both a dual-belt hook and another one for holding down the flap, but they also held all this crap together. Firmly. The hooks weren’t blue like everything else for some reason.

From this angle I saw it thin out the higher up it went and there were plenty of branches and vines which offered opportunities to either climb or walk up the trees on the way here. The interlocking vegetation offered a path up and out but I wasn’t having any of it. Backtracking through the crab forest would be suicide, and every passing hour ended up colder and darker than the last. As if that wasn’t enough, the ground shook, accompanied by a massive crashing noise somewhere in the distance behind me. I sighed.

The observation led me to conclude nocturnal demon trees were about. My insights deserved a reward and my chosen prize landed on a cigarette. I begged the wall to pretty please with sugar on top open up while blowing smoke rings at it. Unfortunately the wall was an unreasonable sod and neglected a response to my desperate pleading.

I reached a conclusion, filterless cigarettes tasted like shit. I had a bunch of clean filters now and those would have to do. Reluctantly, I decided not to smoke another one with only half a pack left.

Instead I stopped procrastinating and got to work. The barbs were cuttable if I put my back into it, the rest much less so. I spent a good several minutes sawing at one before it gave way and loosened the wall structure enough to push some crap aside. Upon closer examination, I noticed these barbs were different from the ones before - mostly in the sense they weren’t part of a bush but rather the roots themselves. From there on it was easy going.

If you were the type of person to consider six hours of hard labor ‘easy going’. I stopped for a cigarette break and to let the soreness fade from my arm. My plan to have some maccie d’s was interrupted when the vine wall started rapidly closing up.

That led to an hours setback at the very least, mostly because I stopped to stare at what was happening. So a particularly dedicated fellow could probably get through it in five. Four if they weren’t a smoker. I ignored the constant crashing in the distance since there was nothing to be done about it. Even if there was, I wasn’t going to do it.

Glorious escape from certain death pushed me onwards until I made it through. Coughing fits followed every other breath and my throat felt like sandpaper but I held off on my midnight snack. Like a cat with a dripping faucet, I stared at a steady trickle of water droplets tip tapping down from one of the many rocky outcropping to my right. Finally, water. Once I’d recovered from my exertions, it became apparent how cold it was here, the tearing didn’t help either.

This was a fucking gletsjer. At least the bottom of the valley wasn’t a long drop. I turned a circle and oriented myself with the magic mind-weathervane. Couldn’t make out much to the east on account of the gigantic rootball I’d just escaped. To the north there were mountains, to the west there were more mountains and to the south there were yet more mountains - truly a varied landscape. I was too tired and thirsty for this shit.

In keeping with the cat simile, I lapped up dripping water like it would save my life - probably because it did. Afterwards I found myself a nice cave, there were lots of those as well here, and went as deep in as the cavern allowed. Fortunately it was uninhabited, or I’d’ve been someone else’s midnight snack. Completely exhausted and rather cold, I cast mending on my jacket and frowned.

My jacket had been black on the outside and orange on the inside - as a Dutchie you had to have some orange somewhere, usually just once a year though. It mended just fine, but the color was all off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but tired ingenuity labeled it blorange and I left it there. The saving grace was that the pockets, zippers and such weren’t messed up more than they were before. I curled up under my remade blanket and forgot to leave my interface open before falling asleep.

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My 8 mana nap revealed an even darker cave, although my vision stretched a good 10 meters just like in the dungeon regardless. Breakfast consisted of more junk food and a cigarette, after which I went outside. There were promises of sunrise over the horizon. I didn’t fancy my chances stumbling around in the dark and picked up my old habit of stargazing to kill some time. Despite having done that a lot, I couldn’t really pick out constellations. There were certainly a lot more stars than in the before times, probably due to a lack of artificial lighting all over the place. Humanity really did do a number on nature wherever we went.

This one wasn’t on us though. The moon adorned the night sky and on its surface was what looked like a very large Aztec pyramid. It had a stairway, hence not very Egyptian. Its current orientation pointed the apex straight at me and I took it personally. I’d been thrown for a bit of a loop, not so much by that, what’s so special about a moon pyramid after all? Rather, the lightshow caught my eye.

I’d been fairly certain fireworks were a thing of the past, although this rated a grade or two above. Lasers and falling stars were going to and fro. That wasn’t actually very precise, the stars were streaking towards the moon but the beams seemed to originate from it. I assumed so, since they were intercepting the starfall. Whoever coordinated this needed a stern talking to because everything happened too chaotically and quickly to follow. I tracked some bits at least.

A falling star connected with, and blew a goodly chunk off the top of the pyramid.

Reduced to base human instinct while drowning in my own cosmic insignificance, I cheered.

“Yeah! Fuck you, moon-pyramid.” We didn’t get along. It was the pointing which did it. Rude.

The show didn’t last long. A few more impacts, then calm until something happened. I didn’t quite catch it but the entire thing had cracked like an egg and shards were drifting apart. Now I wasn’t an expert, yes, I’d been humbled a little, but I recalled the moon being quite important.

Oh well, what can you do?

Not like there had been any cataclysmic events in the past due to pieces of dirt falling from the sky. Fortunately the System seemed to be on the up-and-up and decided to ‘reconstitute’ the whole thing.

I thought it did a pretty bad job with Earth from what I’d seen so far, but was forced to retract the statement. We’d gotten the gentle touch. The moon? Not so much. It just slammed all the drifting pieces together into a jagged roughly ball shaped mess and called it a day.

Godstrike: 2 - Celestial bodies: 0.

Even when fighting back, planetoids ranked a little low on the tier list from the looks of it. Well, we had something in common now. Maybe we could be friends someday. I could forgive the pointing, in time. My mind fled back to the original System greeting, about how we were supposed to be able to stop this madness at some point. I wasn’t looking forward to trying it out, so I resolved not to.

I hadn’t been into this rune-scribing stuff on account of fleeing threats to my life, but after gathering a cup of water my list of distractions ran dry. Contemplating nihilism didn’t appeal so practice it was. It ended up being kind of fun in a turn-your-mind-off sort of way.

My pen traced crisscross shapes on metal while I thought ‘burn baby burn’ at it. It left a thin lingering red trail on the blue-grey sheet, it would fade away unless I managed to complete the whole pattern, at which point it would pulse. The pictogram suggested doing this for an hour should etch the rune into the metal or something.

Hard to say for sure, because it was fucking impossible to pull off. Deviating too far from the pattern, so at all, caused instant failure. Since I couldn’t draw worth a damn because I had no natural talent or years of practice to fall back on and a history of doodling during lectures apparently didn’t count. My lack of skill led to an eventual fuck up which ruined the process, didn’t stop me from trying again though.

The sunrise took its time so I gave it the old college try, about three hours. Eventually I mustered up the energy and had a few sprints to find out if my stats did anything, and to warm myself up. The effects were starting to get pretty noticeable but I wasn’t ready to compete in the Olympics quite yet, but maybe someday soon. Technically this meant I’d improved massively compared to before, but the thing was... It wouldn’t fucking matter. Not after what I just saw. Ah, good ol’ nihilism, there you were.

I resolved to head out before I became at-risk of having independent thoughts. A last glance at my stats showed totals of 10, 23, 15, 20, 10 and 32 down the line, with 7 mana in the tank. It was progress, of a sort. In the same vein, for the first time since the world ended, I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. Not because I couldn’t go for a bite and there were plenty of hopefully clean water sources here, but I actually felt pretty sick.

I’d focused hard on distractions to avoid thinking about this stuff because there was nothing I could do. I had ignored the fact my swollen left arm hurt like hell. So really it was my subcutaneous infection making the progress, but I wasn’t above claiming credit for another’s work.

Mending was not a real healing spell after all.