The Okanagan tended to be dominated by valleys, but it also had steep hills. Behind Martin’s Convenience, there was a secret path locals took that led to a cliff that hung over the water. Directly underneath the cliff, the lake had a fjord fall, a drop of thirty feet, easy, but the drop was so narrow that if you jumped and landed on the sides, you’d be paralyzed, or worse.

Back when he was a teenager, Logan remembered a boy his age who jumped and snapped his neck. The authorities had tried to close the cliff jump—but try telling teenagers they couldn’t cliff jump.

All of that to say, Logan knew that a unique feature of the area around him was cliffs, cliffs, and more cliffs.

When Logan stepped off the edge, he didn’t know if he’d survive, but he knew he had a chance, and best of all—he’d take the spider rat with him. His luck was either with him, or not. But if he had a chance to save Jack while surviving, he’d take it. It was karma playing it back. After all that Jack had suffered, how could he not?

The cliff fell sharply at the top, nothing but jagged, sheer rock for about ten feet that made him feel weightless as he fell, but then he landed onto the ground at an angle, and the cliff turned into a hill. Logan tumbled, his bare legs tearing open on the jagged rocks. He lost the baseball bat as his arms knocked into rocks, his body rolling end over end. A dying tree with a withered and brittle trunk clung to the hill, roots exposed and rotting, limbs drooping to the ground. Logan slammed into it, a twiggy branch slicing his side before snapping as he continued to tumble.

Then his wrist went, twisting unnaturally, then the tip of the baby finger on his left hand sliced clean off when his finger caught in jagged rock.

[Idiot’s Paradox is Level 5!]

He couldn’t feel the pain through all the adrenaline, his torn fingernails getting even worse as he scrambled to get a hold of something—anything.

He needed to grab something!

His forehead knocked into a tree stump on his last tumble before he came to a stop in a cloud of dust and rocks. Logan coughed, blood stinging his eyes as he floundered. He wasn’t sure if he could trust that it was over.

The spider rat.

Oh fuck, where was the spider rat?

Using all his willpower to stay conscious, Logan scrambled to a sitting position, blinking his eyes rapidly and trying to see through the dust. Dirt, dirt, and more dirt. He’d fallen at the base of the hill, ground covered with pine needles, pine trees all around. He couldn’t see any signs of the spider rat around him and up on the cliff face—

On the cliff face….

What.

The cliff at the top had a sheer drop off before it transitioned into the hilly ground he’d tumbled down. Nothing grew on the top of the cliff—in fact it was nothing but sculpted rock—but ten feet from the top, there was a ledge about the size of a round table. And on that ledge, the spider rat scrambled, spindly legs crawling up the sides of the cliff-fall, before falling, climbing, falling. It kept trying to climb out of the ledge, but the stone was smooth. Nothing to hang onto, nothing to cling to.

Didn’t spiders have sticky shit they could use to climb? He’d seen spiders on top of his ceiling, climbing the walls, and dropping down on top of his head with sticky webs.

It had to be the claw at the end of each leg. They were great offensively—it could swipe at something and do real damage (the evidence of that could be seen on the back of his thigh)—but they were curved in the shape of an overgrown nail. They had no climbing capabilities.

For the first time, Logan considered that the System gave, but it also took. Combine a rat and a spider into a mutated monstrosity and you might lose the best features of each animal. If he was able to figure out the vulnerabilities of each leveled entity, then he might have an advantage.

But what a fucked-up spider.

Logan collapsed, the tension he’d been holding releasing as his adrenaline dropped like a stone.

“Logan!” he could hear Jack at the top of the cliff, but it was faint. He likely couldn’t approach due to the spores.

“I’m fine!” he tried to say, but his throat croaked, and his voice came out like a dying parrot. Was he fine? Logan hacked and spit, clearing out dirt. There was no way Jack could hear him from all the way up there even if he managed to shout.

Logan rolled over and pulled out his smartphone from his back pocket, dreading what he’d find. Cracks ran through the screen from his fight at the cabin, but now—oh thank fuck. It still worked. The corner was fuzzy as if he’d dropped it in water, and he couldn’t see anything on the top right, but he could still pull up text messages.

Logan to Jack: I’m okay! I fell, obviously, but the spider is trapped and can’t get to me. Or you.

It took a minute before Jack responded: Your luck attribute must be crazy. I thought you were dead for sure. Can you make it back up?

Logan peered up at the cliff face. Yeah, that wasn’t happening.

Logan: I’ll have to find another way. Go back to the boat and I’ll meet you there. … It might take a bit.

Jack: Will do.

Well, that had been fun.

Logan made an inventory of his injuries. He had multiple gashes on his legs, and no clean water or disinfectant to sterilize them. His forehead was bloody and tender, his scalp was missing patches of hair, and he’d lost the tip of one finger.

Numbly, Logan stared at the blood before tearing off a strip of fabric from the bottom of his shirt. He hissed. His wrist was either broken or strained—probably strained. Struggling through the sharp wrist pain, he wrapped his finger, staunching the blood. After losing his toe, this was child’s play. He’d lost the tip, skin only. It would grow back.

He was a little worried about his side though. A brittle tree limb had scratched him before puncturing his side. He didn’t know how deep it went, or how far his constitution attribute would take him. Would it heal internal injuries?

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Logan might be able to do something about that. For the first time in a long time, he reviewed his full stat sheet:

Name: Logan Hart [Hidden Name: Idiot]

Rank: 115,028 out of 7,469,271,442

Level: 6

Class: None

Grade: F0

Species: Human

Skills:

* Deepwater Idiot Lv. 1

* Idiot’s Paradox Lv. 5

* Idiot’s Inspect Lv. 1

* Life Cycle Lv. 1

Titles: Eager Beaver

XP Progress: 2,400/12,000

Karma: 156/156

Intelligence: 26

Constitution: 20

Strength: 13

Agility: 9

Dexterity: 8

Endurance: 7

Perception: 7

Wisdom: 24

Luck: 22

Free Attribute Points: 5

KarmaCoin: 0

He had five free attribute points. The smart decision would be to throw all five points into constitution, but he didn’t like how easily the spider rat had withstood his hits. If a shotgun had hardly dented it, imagine what a level twenty monster could withstand. Logan needed to get stronger, and he couldn’t wait for his daily cheat increases.

Decision made, Logan allocated four points into strength and a token point into constitution to give himself a healing pick me up.

[Strength: 14]

[Strength: 15+]

[Strength: 17]

[Constitution: 21]

The changes were immediate. Logan stood up straight, his head clearing, the pain growing fuzzy. He still had injuries, but he could ignore them as his body got to work. As far as strength, Logan lifted his shirt and goggled at his newly formed abs. His slight belly fat was gone, and the sleeves of his shirt were snug.

And he had the means to grow even stronger. But first, he needed a weapon in case something attacked. The baseball bat had been in his hand when he fell off the cliff, so it had to be around here somewhere. Logan was worried at first when he couldn’t find it, but he stumbled over uneven ground and practically landed on top of it. He had a weapon. Now he could get to work.

First, he’d start with agility. Logan walked away from the impact of his fall until he found a clear area filled with nothing but gravel. Then he sketched his agility ladder with a stick.

Lara would think he was earning his system name to do this while injured, but the monsters weren’t going to wait for him to recover. He needed to grow stronger now.

One step, two, Logan powered through the ladder exercises until sweat drenched his forehead and stung his eyes. It took more effort than yesterday, but eventually he received the anticipated confirmation.

Ding!

[You have earned one Agility point! Agility daily limit capped for the next 24 hours.]

The rush of the attribute increase made him feel as if his feet were weightless. Elated, he felt as if he could do another twenty agility ladder exercises, easy.

Instead, Logan eyed the forest around him. With no bucket, he would have to figure out another way to increase his strength attribute. Why not increase endurance and strength at the same time? There were boulders all around him, and he needed to make his way back to the resort anyway.

Logan found a trail with pine trees on either side of it. This was going to be tricky. Try stumbling around in the woods with no major landmarks and he’d end up walking off another cliff.

Wait a minute. GPS still worked.

At 25%, his dwindling battery was a problem. His phone was his only connection to Jack. Logan glanced back at the cliff and the still scrambling spider rat. He could figure this out. The resort had to be in the opposite direction and the trail would lead him there.

Next to the trail, he had his pick of boulders and large rocks. Too ambitious to start, he flailed while trying to pick up a rock that had to be a hundred pounds. The next one was manageable, and he lifted it over his head and then ran all out. Pausing, he threw the rock down, picked it up, then started the run all over again. After twenty repetitive runs, rock throws, runs, rock throws, his hard work paid off.

Ding!

[You have earned one Endurance point! Endurance daily limit capped for the next 24 hours.]

Although the endurance boost made him feel like running another mile, Logan came to a stop and became a rock maniac for the next five minutes. Lifting, dropping, lifting, dropping.

Ding!

[You have earned one Strength point! Strength daily limit capped for the next 24 hours.]

Yes! He first pumped and then marvelled at his bicep. Jack’s shirt could hardly keep up.

His strength attribute was now at eighteen, a respectable score if he said so himself. His endurance… not so much. Logan snorted. At level nine, he’d finally surpassed Jack.

But he had one thing going for him that Jack didn’t have.

Logan studied the sky, trying to judge the position of the sun. Tons of light. Jack could hold on for another hour.

He was doing this. Growing stronger didn’t just mean an increase to his attributes. He had a skill that the System seemed to rate highly. He needed to figure it out.

Logan scanned his surroundings until he found an area bereft of trees. He swept away pine needles and then dug a hole the size of a coffee mug. There were tons of pinecones around, but he figured he’d have a better chance with one that was mature.

There. That one looked dried out, its scales wide open. Logan gently tapped it against a flat rock to get the seeds out. A small pile fell onto the rock, and he grabbed a handful before he lost them to the wind. Logan wasn’t a gardener, so he had no idea if he was doing this right. One summer, he’d tried growing baby tomatoes and he’d forgotten to water them… so he had a record of zero. Still, the System had to call a ‘skill’ a skill for a reason. He could make this work. Logan just wished there were an instruction manual.

He gently placed the seeds into the hole and then covered them with dirt.

Okay, so he’d planted the seeds. That had to be the first step. Now, how the hell did he activate his skill?

“System, activate [Life Cycle].”

Logan blinked at the dirt.

“[Life Cycle], grow!” He studied the hole to the point of eye strain. In addition to feeling like an idiot, he was also getting a headache.

This wasn’t working.

All of his other skills were automatic. He’d received level increases to the [Idiot’s Paradox] skill just by causing himself pain. The [Idiot’s Inspect] skill had also shown up as a consequence of him being an idiot, and the underwater skill…

He was starting to see a pattern here he didn’t like.

The [Life Cycle] discovery had been from pure luck, by laying his hand against the weeping willow… Huh. That could be it.

Logan crouched in front of the buried seeds and pressed his hand against the dirt. The skill wasn’t going to activate because he vocalized it. This was a growing skill, a nature skill, and if anything were going to do it, it wouldn’t be through a command.

Logan closed his eyes and opened his senses. Around him, a breeze rustled through the tree branches, insects buzzed, and ants crawled through the dirt. In the ground, the seeds were waiting for him. Many of them weren’t viable and would never sprout, but there was one seed, one seed waiting for him. Logan pictured that seed growing, roots burrowing into the ground, a green stalk of a seedling reaching for the sun.

Underneath his hand, there was a minor crack in the dirt. A movement.

Logan got to his feet.

In the dirt, in the middle of his palm print, a small, green sapling breached the earth.

Ding!

[You have successfully deployed the skill, Life Cycle, at the sprout level! Calculating carbon reduction… 10 KarmaCoin awarded.]

Logan whooped. That was a rush. And kickass! All of his other advancements had a direct physical correlation. Run, increase your endurance. Lift weights, increase your strength. This skill was on another level. There was only one thing he could equate it to—Logan could do magic!

Flush with success, Logan pulled up his stat sheet, excited to see his money. It listed what he expected: KarmaCoin: 10, however, there was something odd. That strange Karma stat had been reduced:

Karma: 146/156

They had to be related. Did it cost ten Karma points to sprout one tree?

Ding!

[You’ve received a Quest: Tree Novice! Sprout twenty trees in the next 90 minutes.]

[Reward for completing the Quest: 5 bonus points to all attributes.]

[Penalty for not completing the Quest: You will lose your other big toe.]