Chapter 3: I am not eating that!

Melly stared off into the distance as she walked the familiar path towards her village, with the source of all her current mental trials following closely behind. Like a natural disaster, Clemiticus swaggered at an even pace, leaving destruction and confusion in his wake.

It took them well over an hour just to get out of the swamp. The steep climb and jagged brambles were almost impossible to circumnavigate, yet Clemiticus led the way and with his sheer dumb luck found the easiest path out of the stinky hell hole. The mud still clung to her skin and by the time they reached the top, most of it had dried.

Melly was normally a cheerful lady. Today her glass was not half full. It was empty, shattered on the ground by a leering evil scoundrel dancing on top of the ruins, singing a song about new boots.

"Aha!" Clemiticus cheered, for no apparent reason.

He grunted as he jumped and bounded for the eleventh time that minute. It was if the man was practising using his limbs for the very first time and he had taken up the art of lunging since they had left the swamp.

Bing!

“Clemiticus has gained an increase in the passive statistic: Agility!”

“Clemiticus has gained an increase in the passive statistic: Stamina!”

"Would you stop jumping all over the place?” she asked. His weird movements were making her head spin.

"Why? I’m grinding my passives stats before I hit the next level," he replied.

He hefted himself forward and landed beside her with a powerful grunt. It was then she noticed yet another extremely disturbing thing. His skin was perfect. There wasn’t a spot of mud on him nor a bead of sweat on the man. Even after all the running, skipping, falling down a cliff, climbing back up that cliff, and jumping around for another solid hour, the strange man didn't have one drop of sweat on him. His clothes were in complete tatters, yet his body had not been affected by today’s little adventure at all.

"Clemiticus," she said, eyeing him with suspicion.

He crooked his head like a puppy dog, and his eyebrows shot up expectantly.

"You’ve been bouncing around for the last hour," she said.

"Yes." He gave her a goofy grin. "Exactly sixty-eight minutes, by my count. Ish."

Melly clenched her jaw, then took a deep breath to calm herself. Her brain fought to make sense of it all.

"Why aren't you sweating?" As if to emphasise her point, she wiped the moisture off her brow and flicked it aside with a side of swamp muck. It had been a rather warm day.

He gawked at her. "I dunno, maybe the stamina in my new boots?"

She stared back at the man in disbelief, studying his face for an answer. There wasn’t one imperfection. No moles, freckles, blemishes, nothing. It’s if he’d been born that very day. He was - well - too perfect.

Perfectly irritating, she thought.

"You don't sweat! And you have barely any marks on your skin," she said slowly.

"Well, I never go for the rough and scary looking characters. I try to go for a slightly buffer vanilla version of myself. You know, blonde hair and blue eyes. I don’t spend too much time on customisation in the creation process."

“Creation process?”

He nodded.

“I’ll tell you what.” He looked at his arms amused. “My character looks pretty well detailed. It’s almost as if this entire game’s real!” He laughed and shook off the idea.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

She stared at him for a time then said, “I don’t know what you mean by game, but this is no trivial matter. This is reality and if you don’t take it seriously you may not be around for very long!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said dismissively.

Melly sighed. She tried her best. Unfortunately, none of her questions had been answered. She was in a hurricane of uncertainty and the eye of the storm was centred on a village idiot with a god complex.

He Does not sweat. His body is perfect. He has no sense of urgency or danger. What is he?

"Halt," he said.

She flinched. It was the first time she heard him sound fearful.

Clemiticus turned once more, staring into nothingness as he pointed at floating, invisible things above them.

The blue fairy flew into view and watched its master.

“Fairy! Is that our status window?”

“Yes, master!”

"Well shit, that was lucky!" he said, turning to Melly’s bewildered expression. "Well, the good news is - I found our HP!”

“HP?”

“Health points,” he explained. “It tells us our health status, and well.”

“Well, what?”

“It says we’re nearly dead!" Clemiticus sounded a lot more confident than what he should have.

"Nearly dead?” She looked at her perfectly healthy although dirty body. “How?"

"Well, you know when we fell on the ogre in the swamp?"

She nodded. How could she forget?

"Apparently that fall did significant fall damage to the monster. And, we received the same percentage. And apparently, leveling up in this game does not reset your health."

She shook her head. "But we look fine. We’ve got no broken bones, cuts or anything like that!"

Clemiticus shrugged. "True, but it says you are now on 4 per cent HP and I'm on 3."

"And that means?"

"We are one kidney stone away from death."

"What? H-How can you be so sure?" she stammered.

"Hang on, hang on." He held up his arms to calm her. "Trust me."

Yeah. Like that would be so easy, she thought as she imagined slapping him hard enough to do 3 percent damage to him. Then she remembered the ogre creature and how easily it had died in front of them with, as Clemiticus had put it, 2% hp. Her lips tightened as her brain did the maths.

"So, if I believe you. And I'm not saying, just yet, that’s the case. How would we, hypothetically, get better?"

"That’s easy. We need more HP!"

"Yes that. H. P." She cautiously spoke each letter as if they had some sinister origin. "How do we get more then?"

He smiled. "Oh! We probably need to eat and drink a bunch of potions, or food and stuff."

He fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a bunch of useless items, including the soiled food he had picked up since the encounter with the wolf.

None of which, as far as Melly could make out, could be described as potiony or edible.

"Hmmm." Clemiticus examined their surroundings.

The path beside the duo contained bushes that lay on either side. He grabbed a bunch of weeds and leaves, proceeding to mash them together into something resembling a blob.

"Those aren't edible," Melly said bluntly. "And that!" She pointed to a line of red berries in his palms. "I think that’s poisonous."

He shrugged and continued to mash the items in his hands, ignoring her look of disgust at his new creation.

Bing!

"Congratulations! Clemiticus has gained, Cooking: beginner level one!”

“Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Disgusting muck that will give you dysentery!"

He grinned. "I learned cooking!"

She stared, dumbfounded. "I'm not eating that!"

Clemiticus shrugged and chomped on the muck and swallowed. "Well, that's crap," he commented as he threw the rest of his food on the ground. "Only gave me one percent."

Like that matters, you idiot, Melly thought. "And the dysentery?"

He waved a hand in dismissal. "Meh!"

"Meh? What is meh?" she asked.

He answered her with a shrug and focused on inventing a new recipe.

She threw up her arms and gave up. Let the simpleton poison himself.

Clemiticus continued to make new food, adding things like rocks, sticks and mud as the fairy sang cheerfully beside him.

"Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Mud Pie."

"Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Dirty Salad of Dysentery."

"Clemiticus has gained, Cooking: beginner level two."

"Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Barely edible forest rations."

"Aha Finally." Clemiticus sounded triumphant.

"That recipe recovers 50% of your HP over thirty minutes,” said Fairy.

“That'll do. Here, Melly. Grab a bite.”

“Do I have any other option?” she asked the floating creature.

It shook its head.

Her heart dropped as she shuffled next to her insane companion and eyed the grotesque meal. She stretched out her hand and tentatively clasped her fingers around the malformed mud ball covered in random leaves.

Melly took her first bite. It tasted as bad as it smelt.

She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, and forced herself to swallow the first mouthful. If anything, it was way worse than she had imagined. Her eyes became misty as she fought to keep the rations from coming back up.

"What's our HP now?" she asked.

"Up around 6.5% and climbing!"

Several large oval-shaped ingredients lay on the ground. She bent down to pick one up. Clemiticus paced around in front of her as he munched down on his ball of mud.

She held the ball of mud in one hand aloft and aimed towards the idiotic man. Just one throw! She told herself. Just one easy toss and all of your troubles would go away. Father will understand.

Clemiticus turned back towards her and smiled.

"Oh, thanks!"

He swiped the mud ball from her hand and jammed it back into his pocket. "I would've completely forgotten that!"