Chapter 9

Orion - Day of Landing 2

Population of Unnamed Settlement - 6

If there was one thing I hated doing, it was meeting new people. I just never knew what to say to them. What’s worse, in my meeting with the doctor and the pharmacist, I quickly forgot their names and only thought about how useful and able-bodied they were. How terrible it is to meet new people and immediately think about how I could make use of them around camp, but that’s exactly what I did.

“Are you two… together?” I asked.

“No, no, no, no, no,” the chemist said, waving her hands in refusal. It seemed like she had hurt the doctor’s feelings with how ludicrous she thought that comment was and how quickly she refuted it.

“Did you just arrive now? Like washed up on shore, I mean,” I asked.

“No, we were here at this camp for… it felt like minutes, but I don’t know. Before that, I honestly don’t know how long I was out on the beach. I stayed put hoping to spot people washing up on shore or signs of the plane crash before I started to move,” the doctor said.

“Ethan and I met on our way here. I think by the setting of the sun, it was maybe four hours before we came here that we met on the beach,” the young woman said. “Bianca told us you arrived yesterday.”

I nodded. “Yep, so it looks like it’s three people per day, at least so far.”

“Three?”

“Me and Cass,” I pointed to the sleeping figure of my tuckered-out brother, who was beside another sleepy figure, induced into sleep by a skill called “Anesthetic Touch,” as I would find out later.

“And… Bianca,” I tried to recall. “And then there’s you three who came here today.”

“ALEX, ETHAN, ANIKA,” the angry red-haired girl growled. I didn’t turn to face her wrath at almost forgetting her name again.

“It’s not personal, I just met you guys a few minutes ago. I’m really bad with names,” I apologized.

“Three more people,” Anika the chemist rubbed her chin. “Hmm… and three of you already have your classes.”

Ethan the doctor, Bianca the angry red-haired girl, and I pulled out each of our class cards like we were at a Magic convention showing off our rarest card. I learned so much more just by listening to Ethan’s story about his class. If I had been less panicky and more scientific like Ethan, I would have learned more about the cards through the interaction with the Stranger. Since Bianca had prepped the two newcomers for how different the new world here is, they were more ready.

Ethan told us that he met the strange card dealer, but he was wearing a white cloak instead of my black cloak. The first card he would present upon meeting would be his class card. It was his main skill, the thing that defined his class. Ethan’s class card was Doctor; his job specialized in healing. The rarity of his class was B-grade. He would draw one random card out of three, like me and Bianca later, which would be his legendary skill card.

Ethan showed us his legendary skill card, “Anesthetic Touch.” Ethan can administer a deep sleep and reduce pain in a person for a short while. The doctor said the card was currently blacked out, which meant he couldn’t use it again and didn’t know how long until it would be usable again. I didn’t realize it at the time, but each of us had one unique legendary skill card, or at least we hypothesized. Mine was “Soul Food,” which granted me buffs when I ate food I cooked myself. Bianca’s was “Familiar: Golem,” which gave her Slate, who was still knocking away at trees in the background as we theorized about the card system.

The new arrival also had two skill cards, “First Aid: 1” and “Diagnose: 1.” The number marked the level of the skill he had. I showed him and the group my Crafting skill, which was level 2.

“Two… Oh, oh! I think I have a two too!” Bianca pulled out her Build card, which showed a 2 on it.

“So, you can level up skills,” Ethan nodded and rubbed his chin in contemplation. “Indeed it is like an RPG.”

“Do you feel yourself getting better at building?” I asked Bianca.

“A bit… I don’t know. Look, I built this drying rack!” Bianca proudly showed off her wooden drying rack, resembling a nest of logs hastily thrown together. It didn’t look pretty, but on top of it was my blue hoodie.

“Hey! What did you do to my hoodie?!” I cried, picking it off her contraption. It was still damp, wrinkled, and smelled of soot, sweat, and vomit.

“Well… look, that’s not important,” Bianca said. “Anyways, so there will be three more newbies tomorrow. What do we do?”

“We don’t know if it’ll be three, it might be zero,” I said, holding my hoodie in my arms in mourning. Truthfully, we didn’t know anything. We were guessing based on the pattern so far.

“He’s right. It’s fortunate we even stumbled onto this place, and there’s no telling what the warp mechanism intends for this place or if there is even a warp mechanism,” Anika said. “Though we still have to prepare for more people, and let’s face it. We aren’t that well off ourselves.”

At that, we all looked at our dwindling water supply and the carcass of a dead bird, then at the bare-bones hut we built. Our empire. Everything we had in this world plus the clothes on our backs.

“I think tomorrow you have to set your golem to build a kiln and gather clay,” Anika said. “The clay pots you have look like they’re going to break any minute.”

Bianca nodded in agreement and then her face looked overwhelmed. “I don’t know how to make that, though…”

“It’s just a giant oven,” I said, nodding at Anika in agreement. “I’ll help.”

“What about food?” Ethan asked, his stomach growling in response.

“We can survive with food for some time, but we need clean water, to finish this shelter, and start another. If a storm hits, we’re doomed.” Anika said.

“That’s true, but… food is good for your soul, you know? We need energy, and it’s good for morale,” Bianca said.

“Then Ethan and I will work on the kiln and new pots with you, and Orion can work on the food situation. We do have more hands now. Doctor, how about Alex?”

“I’m not a doctor yet,” Ethan corrected with a sigh. “It’s a cut, he might be in some pain and there will be scarring, but it’s not like a fracture though I'm not sure without seeing any x-rays. We’ll need all the hands we can get, though.”

“He and my brother can braid rope and work on the fire,” I said. “Rope and string are so important to everything, and he can do it without moving much.”

I initially dreaded getting new people, but it seemed we lucked out with Anika and Ethan. More people meant we could get more done. I thought about the cards that we all drew and the people we all drew, and for the first time since I’d been here, I dared to hope. They had their tasks, and I had mine.

“I’ll prepare dinner then,” I said, getting out my knife.

"Be careful with those and save them, they might be useful," Anika said as I started plucking the feathers from the carcass of the red pheasant I caught earlier.

"What? What can you use feathers for?" Bianca asked.

"Quills for writing. I think you can also put them in pillows and bedding," Anika pondered.

"Still trying to get your paper done?" I joked as I piled the feathers neatly onto the floor.

"You can use them for arrows too," Ethan suggested.

My eyes lit up at that suggestion. I was so thankful I had these two.

"OH! Is this like a game? I know! I know! You can use them for hats too. Like, don't some knights have a feather on their hat or there's like an expression for a cap on your feather or something like that?" Bianca blurted.

"Hmm… if I can get some charcoal from our kiln tomorrow, I can make ink, and then… what would I need to get paper…" Anika murmured to herself.

"Wait, you aren’t serious about writing a paper out here, are you?" Ethan asked.

"We can write signs if we have ink and paper. We can also start mapping some of this area out," Anika said.

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"Ohhh… good idea, Anika. So people don't get lost and new survivors can find us," Bianca said, nodding in agreement.

While they brainstormed about making signs and paper (with our best suggestion being to use bark for now), I finished plucking the pheasant. The raw body looked more like something that left white marks on my car than a raw chicken at a grocery store, which, by the way, is probably bred and pumped with corn or soy feed to be as plump as possible. This animal looked like it constantly moved and ate nothing but roots. The breasts on my catch of the day lacked meat, the thighs looked stringy, and, to be honest, I did a terrible job of butchering the carcass. I cut off the head, feet, and wings from the body to save for soup later. I rummaged through the leaf basket of herbs and wild forage that Cass brought with him for some aromatic leaves and one of those citrus fruits, stuffing them inside its carcass.

Finding a branch from the stockpile that Slate was accumulating, I noticed how neatly they were piled by the golem, organized by trunk size in a line across the stockpile. When I stood there watching the giant, I somehow felt a great sense of envy towards Bianca. She had an amazing legendary skill and class, and I was a… cook?

I was too busy trying to survive to think, but when I started sharpening the end of one branch with my obsidian knife, I felt like I got shafted by the system. Unlike Ethan, I wasn’t a cook in real life. I liked food, I liked cooking, but it wasn’t my profession or even my passion, really. I was studying computer science in school. Why didn’t I get a cooler class than cook? Was it just because I cooked first on the first night?

It was pretty stupid to be so caught up in it, and I should feel lucky I even got these magical powers, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel envious of Bianca and Ethan.

When the branch looked like a spear, I wandered to the beach to wet the branch roughly before I skewered the entire bird onto it and spit-roasted it over the campfire. The fat of the bird started dripping onto the fire, making it spark and flare as we all watched in anticipation. I would have to remind myself to catch the fat of bigger and more fatty animals like boars; fat would be useful for soap, lighting, and cooking. The pheasant didn’t look like it had much skin or fat on it, so I wasn’t too concerned about the loss of what should have amounted to a spoonful.

The three others still awake were busy talking and laughing in the hut, chatting about small things related to their “real” lives back home while I turned the spit round and round, ensuring the bird cooked evenly. When the bird was decently brown and the juices coming out were clear rather than cloudy, I took it off the fire and allowed it to rest on a clean, flat stone. I brought the "tray" of the golden bird centerpiece to the camp to applause and cheers. Then, I separated the breast meat, which the girls took, while I gave a leg to Ethan and saved one for myself. As I chomped on the leg, I checked the card that spawned from my Cook card.

Herb Roasted Scarlet Fowl - F

Flight of the Scarlet Fowl: 5% increase in top sprinting speed for 1 hour

It looked amazing, a mahogany fire-roasted bird that seemed like it belonged in a grocery store's hot foods section.

It smelled amazing; the charred wooden skewer and smoke gave it an applewood scent, while the herbs inside imbued it with garlicky notes and hints of sage and black tea.

It tasted terrible.

Well, not terrible per se. If you were starving, you wouldn’t gag at it, and clearly, Anika and Ethan were hungry. It just needed salt. A lot of salt. It’s crazy how much salt it needed. Not to mention it tasted… musky and gamey and somehow bland at the same time. When the others took bites, they nodded and smiled in that way you smile when you eat something terrible at a friend’s house and just want to be nice.

“It’s pretty good,” Ethan said shyly in a way that made me want to play poker with him.

“It sucks,” I said, breaking the silence that came after. “It needs salt.”

“Phew…” Bianca said, putting down her breast meat. “I thought I was the only one. I didn’t want to be the one to say it, Rye, but… yeah, it’s not great.”

“It’s really not that bad,” Anika tried to comfort me. “We can make salt easily; we have an ocean full of it.”

I nodded. I knew I should have made salt, but there were just so many more important things to do. Sensing the dour mood as we sat around eating silently, trying to swallow the awful food, Bianca perked up and stood tall.

“Alright, whatever! I’m still happy our plates are full and we aren’t stuck here alone, am I right, guys? Food is food!” Bianca said, putting on a brave smile. “We’re thankful for the meal. We’re thankful for the company.”

“Thankful for the meal, thankful for the company,” we all repeated in unison.

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It wasn’t a surprise no one wanted to pick the bones clean of the carcass that was left. The group made a huge show of thanking me for the meal as they, Ethan, Bianca, and Anika, continued to talk about little things that I wished my mind would let me care about. I put the remains of the roasted bird in our two last remaining open clay pots along with the uncooked legs, wings, and head. I’d save it later for broth for breakfast, but first I needed to make salt. Not feeling tired in the least, I made a quick makeshift torch and set out for the ocean with the last remaining clay pot to gather salt water.

When I came back, the group was foraging around the camp and stockpiling leaves and other foliage they could use for bedding. Bianca pulled out her Gather card and ordered Slate, her rock golem, to gather more of those surfboard banana leaves further in the forest to place over newly foraged prickly leafy branches. These branches resembled green cotton candy over a brown lung bronchial tree that provided decent support but was uncomfortable to lay flat on directly. I lent them a hand after placing my clay pot of salt water on the campfire to start evaporating.

After moving my brother onto his own “bed” and making my bed next to him, I checked on the pot, which had started smoking. When I came back to the fire, a quarter portion of the clay pot from the lip to the belly had cracked open and scorched black. Using two branches like makeshift tongs, I took the pot out, revealing the grey mineral at the bottom, though it was more apt to call the pot a plate at this point. My first batch of salt came out salty but also bitter to my taste.

“It’s calcium,” Anika said when I asked for her opinion.

“How do I get rid of it?” I asked. “I just want salt.”

“Calcium crystallizes first, so when the calcium crystallizes, you get rid of it and then continue boiling,” Anika answered.

Not having any pots left, this bitter salt would have to do for now until we had more pots available; the other two were being used for fresh water.

Upon placing the beds, we realized it would be quite cramped, and some of us would have to sleep almost next to each other. Bianca suggested the boys sleep on one side of the hut while the girls slept on the other, and we shifted our beds accordingly. Ethan went into the darkness to take care of business while the girls got ready for bed. There was something unsaid that we all felt in the back of our minds: we all wanted to hop into a shower and get deodorant. It smelled at camp. Our clothes were drenched in dirt and sweat, and our bodies were now getting musky without deodorant. Anika mentioned being able to make soap from wood ash and fat, and I think we all needed a long shower.

It was hard to sleep. I was a kid just a few days ago, used to a comfortable bed, a shower, a toothbrush before bed, and, when I woke up, a phone next to my comfortable bed, ice-cold water whenever I wanted, lights at my command. In the night, it struck me how foreign sleeping on the literal ground outside felt—the feel of ants crawling over my body, the smells, the lack of a blanket, the odd noises in the background. I heard crying coming from the female sleeping area of the hut. I didn’t want to guess who it was, but it sounded like Bianca. I wanted to cry too, but I would never do it in front of my brother, sleeping or not. If I felt hopeless about this situation, he would feel bad about it too.

Getting up after an hour of lying down restlessly beside my brother, and nearly cheek to cheek with Ethan and Alex, I came by the campfire to stare at the stars. The night air was warm, but a soft cool breeze hit my face. I grew dizzy watching the flickering of the campfire, and in a moment’s flash, the light of the campfire went out, replaced by a void and a table.

Not being as surprised this time, I prepared for the mysterious card dealer. He appeared out of the void, his face still hidden in the shadows. The specter pulled a foil-wrapped card-shaped package tied like a present with a red string. He presented me with the package, and before I opened it, I examined the board this time with an open mind.

Cook - 5

Soul Food - S

Crafting - 2

Forage - 2

Tracking - 2

Firewielding - 1

Pottery - 1

“Do I get a gift every time I level up five times?” I asked the specter. I would try to get as much information as I could out of it.

“Not a gift. A choice,” the specter answered.

“Can I change my class? I don’t want to be a cook. Is there an engineer class?” I asked.

“The cards have already been dealt. Pick your perk, holder,” the specter requested.

I opened the card package and it revealed three new cards:

Knife’s Edge - C

Your knives are never dull. The most dangerous tool in a kitchen is a dull knife.

Health Inspector - C

When preparing food, your hands and tools are always clean. Greatly reduces the chance of food poisoning.

Well Salted - C

It takes twice as long for your food to spoil.

Before me, the Cook card was near the top of the table, the other cards branching off like a family tree beneath it. The Soul Food perk card was directly beneath the Cook card, and one open slot beside the Soul Food card was lit up with a glowing blue rectangle, indicating its openness to accept a new card. The rest of the slots on the cosmic circle next to the Soul Food card were blacked out.

“I can only pick one?” I asked, dreading the impending decision.

“A choice must be made. The cards are dealt. A choice must be made,” the specter said.

“Why? I need all of them, please,” I begged.

“A choice must be made. The cards are dealt. A choice must be made,” the specter repeated.

I agonized over my decision. Between the three, I was stuck between Health Inspector and Well Salted as perk cards. I liked Knife’s Edge, but I could always sharpen my knives myself; it would only save me time. If I could prevent food poisoning and extend shelf life, though, it would be so helpful to the camp. My ego wanted to take Knife’s Edge, thinking maybe I would need it for combat, but… why? There was a small part of me that thought that maybe I would need it in a magic-infused world, but if someone got sick or if people starved because of me, I would never forgive myself.

There were ways I knew of to preserve food, like salting, curing, drying, and smoking. At the same time, there were also ways of preventing food poisoning, but it was harder to avoid cross-contamination in this environment and to have clean surfaces in this kind of environment. When stuck, I thought about Cass and which skill would keep him safe, and took Health Inspector, placing the card in the open blue rectangle on the table. The card lit up and made itself a part of the table, and I watched in regret as Knife’s Edge and Well Salted disappeared.

“The cards have been dealt. Until we meet again, fellow holder.” And with his proclamation, the specter, the table of cards, and the cosmic void vanished, leaving me back in front of the campfire once again.

I held my new perk card in my hands, hoping I didn’t make the wrong choice.