I have to fight my doubts away

And be on guard against my fears;

The feeble croaking of Dismay

Has been familiar through the years;

My dearest plans keep going wrong,

Events combine to thwart my will;

But fighting keeps my spirit strong,

And I am undefeated still!

'The Fighter' Samuel Ellsworth Kiser

****

There was quite a bit of controversy about death in Gods' Nature. On the one hand, it was somewhat harsh, every time you died, all experience is lost, and one equipped item will drop. The system meant that if a player was high enough level, it could cost them months of hard work and a good weapon or armor could be even more valuable than that.

It was also worse if the item dropped is the bag, since there was no inventory system, then an expanded bag was all players carried around. The thing would never disappear so; theoretically, a player could find their death site and reclaim it. But if somebody died out in the frontier then it would take weeks getting back to the location.

In other ways, it was reasonably lenient on players. It was only one item, no matter what, and no skill experience ever lowered. Not only that but if the player had recently leveled up, then the loss was barely noticeable. Some people used this to their advantage in suicide tactics while facing bosses out in the wild.

While this system did spark some discussion, and more than a few people disagreed with it, it was not the primary source of the controversy. That blame solely at the feet of what happened to the player after death. Once a player died, and some believed NPCs as well, they were not ejected out of the game for a length of time. It was the opposite.

Players were forced to spend a length of time in what the community around Gods' Nature had come to all 'Purgatory.'

It wasn't the official name, as there was none, but rather a description of the experience. Dead players were stuck in what could only be described as a void of everything. This did not mean an endless darkness or a barren plain, nothing existed at all but the player. This included the player's body and senses.

There was no darkness because there were no eyes to see. There was no sound, sense of touch or smell. There was no pain or pleasure, merely existence at its most basic form. It couldn't even be described as a floating conscience because there was no sensation of floating.

This was controversial because of the sheer alienness of the experience. Humans interpret the world using their senses and to be suddenly bereft of that can be horrible to people. Some players panic upon their first death and quite a few describe it as the worst experience of their lives.

Players can always log out, the only option on the menu available, while dead. But as soon as you logged back in players had to continue their sentence. Standard time is an hour, though it can be extended under various conditions, like being cursed or being killed in a territory that views you as a criminal.

It should be noted that, after the initial panic, many players came to see the experience as enjoyable. Like a sensory deprivation chamber, only more complete than anything in reality. But most people just were not able to get used to it, too different than their day to day existence.

Nero felt the panic most people experienced the first time they died. It wasn't painful, but jarring and when he tried to call for help nothing happened. Kaesar attempted to move his body or open his eyes, but the sensation wasn't there. He imagined it was a bit like phantom limb syndrome. Where people lost limbs but still felt like they were there on a purely mental level.

Eventually, the panic passed, and Nero was able to calm down. He did not know how much time had passed, nor how long he had left in 'purgatory.' So, he just existed there, with no real concept of time, space or anything.

It suddenly struck him how revolutionary this experience was.

He was the epidemy of Descartes 'Cogito Ergo Sum.' The philosophy of 'I think, therefore I am.' Stripped of all senses so they couldn't lie to him, he became a mind in the purest sense. This existence had been a thought experiment before, but now philosophers could actually undergo it. While man-made, it could still provide a whole new realm of study.

It was only now, removed from the hustle and bustle that was Gods' Nature, that Nero fully realized the implications of virtual reality. The ability to stimulate various environments, situations and experiences was immensely useful in a variety of fields of study.

Theoretically, with enough data and artificial intelligence whole cultures could be stimulated in a virtual world for study. Take ancient Rome for example. Due to the writings of various figures throughout its heyday, such as Cicero, Ceasar, Cato, Seneca, Markus curious and other characters, people now have a rather good idea of what their lives were like. But if those entities, and what was understood about the culture, was simulated and tested, a more complete grasp of history could be uncovered. And that was just history, it did not cover fields like combat in the past or the future or possible societies or even mythology.

Once Nero thought about all this, he felt a little underwhelmed that virtual reality was instead used for a video game. An impressive one, but still not living up to the technology's full potential. After thinking about it for a little more, Nero shrugged. Or he would have if he had shoulders. It was probable that somebody had already seen the potential he did and was, even now, trying to bring it to fruition.

Instead, Nero turned his mind to a situation closer to home. Like his slightly inglorious death. While death at the hands of mice was a bit embarrassing, and mice riding rats was weird, it wasn't what was occupying his mind. Instead, it was a few minor details that stuck out to Kaesar, the most prominent being the completion of the quest.

Nero and Jorry had only killed eighteen Desperate Rats before the mice had shown up, of that Kaesar was pretty confident. It was always possible that he had miscounted, but if that was the case then missing three was a rather large error. So, how had the quest been completed?

There was a possibility that the rats the mice were riding were the ones in the quest, but if that was the case then why was it listed as killed. Furthermore, there were a total of six mice with rats, three more than those who were unaccounted for.

Nero had three theories. The first and a bit unlikely was that he had merely miscounted. The second was that only three mice were mounted when they arrived and helped capture the other rats for their brethren. This was even more unlikely as it takes a significant amount of time to train any mount to respond to orders adequately and the mission counted the Rats as dead. It wasn't impossible due to the existence of magic and skills, but Nero classified as the least likely.

That left the third option, and one Kaesar saw as most probable. The mice, arriving while he was hunting the Desperate Rats, had killed three of the rats themselves, for whatever reason.

Nero had no idea why they would do something like that. He was a little curious but shrugged it off as something he would never know.

Kaesar was a bit put out that he died, and he held a small desire to take revenge, but at the end of the day, he did not care enough to go hunting for those mice who had likely left the shop already. He had just leveled up, so not much experience was lost, and he had no item of particular value on him. The worst that could happen is he losses his bag and all his money in it, which he could always retrieve.

Eventually, his time in purgatory had to come to an end. It started with a general tingly feeling, like a wind passing over his skin. The next moment Nero was standing in a vast open field.

Nero knew the area, it was the sacred ground on top of the hill in the keep. It was in the center of the city for defense purposes, as once it was lost nobody would be able to respawn safely. As Kaesar watched, a few more people were spawned near him.

It started as an outline, then the next second the person appeared in full. A few of the people looked despondent or sad, others were angry.

"Fuck! So close! Now I have to do it all over again." One particularly excited man yelled as he spawned.

Nero had no business in the field after he came back to life, and so he decided to take his leave of the area. The item he dropped appeared to be the shirt he was wearing so he quickly pulled out a spare from his bag and put it on.

His death had cost him an hour of time before he was supposed to go to Ground Sheer, but he still had another left. Enough time to go back to the restaurant and get paid as well as pick up a few items for what he had planned for Jorry.

Speaking of the little snake, he was nowhere to be found, he hadn't appeared with Nero. He was a bit worried that they might get separated. Kaesar decided to check on The Nest to see if the there had been any change.

The Nest (1) "To grow strong does not mean to grow solitary." Allows for the recruitment of NPCs into The Nest. NPCs in the Nest receive stat boosts while fighting with other nestmates. Upon death, NPCs will revive around the player. NPCs disappear upon logging off and reappear upon login. Synergistic skills can only be used with other nestmates. Current Number of Nestmates Allowed: 1 Current Number of Nestmates: 1 Nestmates: 'Jorry' (Deceased, time until respawn: 4 hours and 56 minutes) Stat boost to Nestmates: 0.01%

So he was still dead. It made sense after the serpent had been killed by the bird it had taken more than a single hour to reappear. Until then Nero was by himself. It felt a bit weird being alone. Jorry had been a constant since early in the game, and now Nero was noticing his absence.

It did not take long to reach the restaurant again, and Nero went straight to the storage area. He was careful in entering, ready to leave at any second, but caution was unneeded. It seemed like the mice had vacated the area. His shirt had also disappeared, though whether it was the mice or something else that was responsible for that, Nero did not know.

Now knowing the area was clear, Nero reported to the owner of the successful completion of the quest. Just because he had died did not mean Kaesar felt he did not deserve to be paid.

Finished with his work, Nero went about setting up his plan. His first stop was a tailor. In this world, due to skills again, personally created apparel gave stat bonuses, so mass production never took off. If somebody wanted any clothes, they either had to make them or buy them from somebody who owned a shop.

What Nero needed wasn't anything fancy like dress clothes or armor; instead, he bought a leather jacket. It could also be called a coat as the interior was lined with wool. The leather was from some sort of animal that Nero couldn't identify as it wasn't a cow. It cost a pretty penny, about fifty silver in total, but it was not only necessary for what Nero had planned but also useful in the long term. Fall was well on its way, and winter was coming.

"Do you do commissions?" He asked the woman who was fitting him for the coat's adjustments.

"We do, they cost a bit more, but you can also provide your own material if you like?" She answered.

"I, unfortunately, do not have any material. But it shouldn't be difficult. I need you to make me a stuffed snake."

"A stuffed snake? What do you mean?" She asked, looking confused.

"Basically you take some cloth and shape it into a hollow snake, and then you stuff it with wool or something like it." Nero had expected something like this, the middle ages did not have stuffed animals after all. "It needs to be small, like a gardener snake and realistic."

"All right, I think I can do that." She said, looking a bit unsure. "It will cost you though. Come back in a few days, and you can see what I have."

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Thank you, I'll see you then."

Taking his leave of the store, Nero had enough time for one last stop before he had to go to work. He traveled to one of the higher ends of the city and stopped before a rather large building.

When he entered a foyer, Nero was assaulted with a cacophony of sound, as people talked over each other and the occasional blast of force resounded. This was the local mage association. People came here for certification as a mage, to hire help or for specialized instruction.

Kaesar did not need anything particularly special, so he went to the front desk where a man was sitting and reading a book, completely ignoring the hubbub around him. At Nero's approach, the man looked up and asked him his business.

"I need to know how much it cost to hire somebody to cast an enchantment?"

"Permanent, semi-permanent or transitive?" The man asked.

"Transitive." The names were self-explanatory.

"Which spell?"

"Animation, I need for it to move around on its own." The man looked at Nero for a second.

"You making a puppet then?"

"Something like that." He answered.

"For something like that I would recommend a permanent enchantment, it is more useful and won't disappear on you in a fight."

"I just need it to work for a few hours, and it doesn't need to do anything fancy." The man judged Kaesar for a second and then answered.

"Most apprentices can do it. If you don't mind shoddy work, it can cost about a gold and a half." Nero frowned, it was more expensive than he initially expected. He had the money though so he eventually nodded his head in acceptance.

"Alright, I'll be back in a few days, I was just checking the price at the moment. Thanks."

"No problem, have a good day." As Nero took his leave, the mage returned to his book.

****

"You're a bit late. Nevermind, we'll get started now." Rob said as Nero approached.

"All right, what do you want me to do."

"Nothing, right now you are just going to watch. Follow me."

The old man led Kaesar back into the building of Ground Sheer and through the hallways. Eventually, they came to a double steel door. It was markedly different than the other wooden ones. Rob pushed open the doors, and Nero was hit with a blast of cold air.

"This is the cold room. We store meats and other food here, so they don't rot." Indeed, the room was filled to bursting with a variety of meat and other products. Some were still animal shaped without skin, like a deer carcass hanging from the ceiling and others were already cut into appropriate sections.

"What you'll eventually be doing," Rob continued as he led Nero to the back of the room where a long table was full of intact animal and beast bodies. "Is disassembling these animals. We usually get them whole and take care of them ourselves, it saves money. We got these at a great price so don't worry if you botch a few, though try not to destroy too many. We have mostly deer, wild birds, a few bears and two Ratman, though save those for last."

"I'm going to be doing this on the expedition then?" Kaesar asked, catching on.

"You'll also be fighting, though not as much as the other trainees. You are still a little too green for extended combat in a team. One idiot making a mistake can cost a group of hundreds their lives. But yes, you will be in charge of disassembling the ratmen. Your primary focus will be getting their hides off, we will be selling them this winter, and if you do a good enough job, we can give you a small cut of the profit. Still, there is no reason not to learn the whole process. I'll show you a few times then leave you to it. Experience is the best teacher after all. Take off any clothes you do not want to be ruined and put on an apron."

Nero nodded and removed his new jacket and dropping his bag, the cold air fogging up his breath. The instructor reached for a buck and hauled it over to a table with one hand. It was an impressive sight for an old man, though his level was probably rather high, as was his strength stat.

"It's usually easier to do something like this on an incline but needs must." He said as he grabbed a knife and put his cane down, leaning over the table. "First thing you want to do is remove the genitals, or the udder if they have one. Some people like to eat them, and if they are prepared a certain way then they can be good, but for our purposes, they just get in the way."

His knife moved with skill as he cut at the groin of the buck. Nero winced at the sight.

"Next you are gonna need to remove the musk glands. Not all animals have them, and they can be in a variety of different places, especially on monsters. For deer, however, they are around the knee, see it? You cut those off. Next, you split the animal from bottom to top, all the way to the throat. Make sure your blade is sharp. Tougher monsters have thicker hides, and I had a friend who had to drag a wyvern carcass for months because his edge wasn't sharp enough. Be careful not to cut too deep and get your knife under the skin. Peel it back slightly, try not to get hair on the meat."

As he talked, Rob kept his knife flashing. It cut and peeled its way up the body, exposing the red underneath.

"Next you are gonna want to cut open the chest cavity. It's easy to do, just cut between the ribs. Most animals have either ribs or cartilage that acts like it. You then reach inside," Nero blanched a little at the ghastly image, "and grab their windpipe. It's best if you cut it as close to the skull as possible, less of a mess that way."

Once the windpipe was cut and put to the side, Rob reached to the cut near the stomach and pulled, opening it up further.

"This is the trickiest part, one misstep can spoil the whole operation. You are going to want to work your way down the carcass, removing organs as you go. Try to use the blade as little as possible and always be careful when you do. A pierced organ, mainly the bladder, can ruin the meat of any animal. Some animals have venom sacs, and so on, they can be tricky. Many organs can also be sold for food. Particularly the heart, liver, and kidneys. If it is a high level or magical monster, like a wyvern, chimera or gods forbid a dragon, then everything can be saved for alchemy.

Once all the organs are removed, you remove the anus. Not all animals have it, some are weird like that, but those are rare. You cut around it from the outside then pull it through the chest cavity. Now roll it over to drain the blood." Rod did so, letting the deer's body rest belly down. The blood pooled under it and flowed to the floor where a grate lay under the table.

"You follow the general gist of that for pretty much most monsters. There are differences between fish and birds, as well creatures with scales, but those can be learned at a later date. Now we reach the part that is really important for the expedition."

The trainer grabbed his cane and traveled over to another table where a ratman carcass lay. It was an ugly thing, precisely what you would expect if you heard the term 'ratman.' Like a giant rat, four feet long and thick had decided it liked the idea of walking on hind legs. Its chest was already opened, and all its innards had been removed.

"Our primary task will be the fur, we can make a good profit by selling it this winter. Ratmen can be skinned like any animal, once the guts have been removed. I don't know of anybody who eats them though, so their meat is generally useless unless you are starving or want to feed it to an animal." Rob took up another knife, this one thinner and more curved.

"You want to keep the hide as intact as possible. Cut one line from head to tail, on the back if you have to, though skilled skinners can use the chest cavity. You cut around the feet to free it, and then you slowly work your way all over the body, cutting the membrane that connects the flesh to the hide." It took the old man barely any time to completely remove the hide from the beast, long years of experience coming in handy.

"Try not to ruin the fur and try to not cut into the meat. It will take some practice, but this is generally one of the easier parts. We'll start you on a few deer, their hide can also be sold, but it is mostly used for leather rather than fur so there is no real benefit to selling it now when we can use it ourselves. Once you get the skill, you should improve rapidly at least enough for something low leveled like ratman."

Walking back to the original table, Rob dragged the carcass he had been working on to the side, the blood only a small trickle now. He grabbed another body and put it on the table. This one was female, not a buck like the other. Rob held out a knife to Nero.

There was a moment of hesitation before Nero did what he always did when faced with a conundrum. He shrugged his shoulders and went with it.

What followed was a study in human habituation. There was a bit of nervousness at first as the new and somewhat gruesome task proved to be a challenge. Nero's hands were a bit unsteady, not used to handling a knife as well as hesitation. He had some basic experience, high school dissection, but there was a significant difference than a classroom where everything smells of disinfectant and a meat storage with relatively fresh corpses.

The first body he messed up in many ways. His cut was too shallow and then too deep, piercing the stomach. Stomach acid flowed out, and a stench rose that had bile rise in Kaesar's throat. He pushed it down and continued, even though the carcass was now ruined. He cut the windpipe too far down, leaving a bit of it dangling from the head.

Nero managed to remove the organs without problems but had trouble with the anus, nicking bone. He put aside the body to drain and moved on to the next. While during the first try Rob was quiet, the following ones he offered up advice. The second deer, Nero forgot to cut the umbilical cord and the bladder emptied all over him and the body. The stench was horrible, and Nero would be throwing this set of clothes away as soon as he was done. It certainly did not help that his enhanced sense of taste allowed him to get a taste of the particles in the air.

But, as with all things, practice makes perfect. By the fourth body, Nero wasn't making mistakes. He was nowhere near as quick, clean or efficient as Rob had been, his cuts were curving and occasionally too deep, but he no longer ruined the meat by piercing organs.

After the sixth deer, Rob had him try on the ratmen. It was the same principle and, while his hands were still a bit unsteady due to their humanoid nature, Nero managed to keep from ruining their bodies. Once those organs had been removed, and the corpses put to the side to drain, Nero went back to the first deer to start on skinning now that it had drained sufficiently enough.

Like with the organs, Nero made quite a few mistakes though not as extravagant in scope. He cut into meat and bone quite a few times. Sometimes he put too much force and cut the hide. Unlike the organs, however, it was a more repetitive task, and Nero let his mind wander as his hands slowly but surely peeled back the skin.

The skill to disassemble monster and animal corpses was useful in Gods' Nature. Like most things, the game mixed with reality whenever it could. When a player, or anybody, killed something their bodies did not disappear, dropping coins or items. Instead, players had to take apart the corpse, or bring it to somebody who could, and then have those turned into objects.

This angered a lot of people, used to not having to work as hard for a good sword. Like in the real middle ages, metal was expensive. You either had to mine it yourself or buy it. Thus most people wore leather and carried bone weapons. This wasn't all bad as the bone was a lot tougher in the game than in reality. Boss monsters, large ones, in particular, could be turned into many strong weapons.

From what Nero had read in his studies of the game, many people actually liked this system. It gave a real sense of accomplishment and meant that players were not subjected to random loot drops. It had been compared to the classical 'Monster Hunter' games of the twenty-first century.

It could be inconvenient though, any large body had to be dragged back to civilization, so any noteworthy expedition had to bring carts as well as specialized personnel to take the carcasses apart. It was work that was well paid, even if the player did no fighting.

The exception to this was when players or NPC's who used equipment died. They always dropped one piece of equipment. If they had others, it would respawn with them. In this manner, it was better to go after 'intelligent monsters.' Monsters who used tools were generally harder to face than those that merely moved by instinct.

Killing a bandit chief boss could get some proper equipment, but the bandits could plan, lay traps or use poison. There was always a risk or reward for any adventure. It also made player killing a viable way to play, though most high-level players did not. For the simple reason, that senior players were almost all pioneers and were out on the frontier where players were scarce. Not only that, but most other players just do not have any worthwhile equipment compared to what they could gain by raiding an undiscovered dungeon or beating a high-level boss.

That left player killing for those who were strong enough to hunt the highest levels, or if they just enjoyed the activity and did it for fun.

"Good job, you should have gotten the Disassembly skill by now," Rob said as Nero finished the last of the ratmen.

Sure enough, when Kaesar checked his skills menu, a third had shown up.

Disassembly (1) "We all fall apart eventually." This skill allows for the preservation of materials during and after the disassembly of bodies. You can harvest what you will from them, though you make mistakes.

This seemed less like an active ability than the other two skills he possessed. Instead, it was passive, more a numerical representation of his actual knowledge of taking apart bodies.

"We'll stop here for the night, now that you have the basics. You can use the bath behind the building to clean up. You got other clothes?" Nero nodded. "Good, you are gonna want to change into them, you smell like a pile of corpses after a week in the sun."

"Thanks, I'll see you tomorrow." Nero left, picking up his jacket and bag on his way to the bath.

The bath behind Ground Sheer, walled off from the courtyard, was a mixture of simplicity and luxuriousness. It wasn't a bath in the traditional sense. More of a small and shallow pool that at its thickest, only came up to Nero's navel. For all its simplicity, it probably cost a significant amount. It was enchanted to keep the water warm, even during the hight of winter, and to remain clean. Nero guessed that it cost a good number of gold coins every month to keep the enchantments up to date.

Still, it was nice. After having scrubbed himself furiously to remove the gore and urine from his body, Nero just lay in the warm water, staring up at the sky. He found himself yawning, relaxed as he was. Kaesar realized that it had been a few days since he had slept and he was overdue. That was fine with him, he could not proceed with his plan for another few days because he had to wait for his stuffed snake.

Speaking of the stuffed snake, Jorry should have respawned by now.

Checking the Nest, Nero realized that he had to summon Jorry once the time was up for the snake to respawn. Doing so, Nero was greeted with a small light as the serpent's body reformed in front of him, only for its eyes to comically widen as it fell into the water.

Chuckling to himself, Nero grabbed the small snake and lifted it up onto his shoulder.

"You alright?" He asked, apparently not getting a response from Jorry.

"I was worried for a second there. You did well though, I don't think we could have beaten those mice. They were fast and did a lot of damage, we just weren't prepared for them. They were probably of a higher level as well. If we see them again, we'll run until we are strong enough to fight them."

Nero felt no shame in running away from a losing fight. Pride could get you killed, in Gods' Nature it might not be permanent, but it still was not good. He also did not have enough competitive spirit to really desire revenge. He shrugged his shoulders in apathy once more at the thought. If they met the mice again and he and Jorry were at a high enough level, then he would fight them, but otherwise, there was no reason to risk it.

****

Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

King James Bible, Proverbs 27:17