Over the next seven days, Nick spent every waking moment tempering his body and honing his mind for the ordeal to come.
He needed to grow faster, tougher, stronger. Become powerful enough to survive a life filled with constant bruises, falls, cuts, and the occasional exposure to unknown drugs and toxins. To his immense satisfaction, now that he was a part of the System, he was able to grow more powerful at a remarkable rate.
With nothing trying to eat him, Nick soon fell into a loose routine.
He would wake up a few minutes before dawn, then eat breakfast and begin his Strength training while waiting for the sky to lighten. Three sets of pushups, crunches, and back lifts to exhaustion, followed by squats and a round of tossing stones to improve his aim and strengthen his shoulders. Sometimes Nick would intensify these sessions by wearing his backpack and filling it with rocks to its maximum one-hundred-pound capacity.
As he cooled down, enjoying the burn that came with pushing his body to new heights, Nick would move on to his Dexterity training. He had set up a primitive obstacle course where he could balance on logs and leap from rock to rock, then hone his footwork by using a vine as a jump rope. Then came yoga and other stretches to enhance his flexibility and widen the range of motion of each joint.
Nick ended his morning routine with a session of Toughness training. Wind sprints and long leaps to fortify his lungs and heart and enhance his overall endurance. He suspected it would be even more effective if he injured himself in the process, but that ran counter to his goal of keeping his blood inside his body.
He performed these exercises in front of his cave so that he could retreat behind his barrier if he was attacked while he was exhausted. Once he recovered from his morning workout, it was time for his daily skills training.
Heading out of his cave, he completed a series of exercises that he was calling “Survival 101.” To begin, Nick would forage his way south across the woods, grabbing up any stray berries or mushrooms that he discovered along the way. Thanks to his experience with the creepers’ pollen, he knew that the white caps were indeed safe to eat and had reluctantly added them to his diet, even if they came with an unwanted side order of bad memories.
Throughout the day, Nick sized up every beast and animal he saw, dangerous or not. He was unsure to what extent this helped to train the skill, as the only time he had seen it improve was after sizing up a new creature for the first time. But every sliver of a skill point was a vital acquisition. Not only had Size Up saved his life on numerous occasions, but it was also growing more useful over time. Early on, the skill had only given him a general impression of how dangerous the creature in question was, but as it grew, it had started to provide a bit of extra information related to its evaluation.
The lemurs were dangerous because of their group tactics and ability to use primitive weapons; the spiders because of their trap webs and all-around combat prowess; the komos had their camouflage, endurance, and stubborn tenacity. Nick had eventually realized that Size Up could be used to identify dangerous terrain as well, although fortunately, there wasn’t too much treacherous ground along his little slice of the forest.
In addition to working on boosting foraging and Size Up, Nick was determined to adapt to living in the wilderness. Although this part of his training was unrelated to the skills on his profile, he considered it to be equally important. This portion of his regimen focused on three main areas: listening, tracking, and stealth.
He called the first part listening, although it was really his attempt to take in and become more aware of useful information gathered by all five of his senses. In the shadow-ridden woodlands, his ears were generally more useful than his eyes.
As the days went by, Nick began to notice how the birds and bugs went to ground whenever a predator was stalking nearby. The ambient music of their chirps and cries had come to mean that everything was okay.
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Thanks to the enhancements to his sensory perception that came with raising his Mind, he was gradually learning how to tell the difference between subtle sounds that he would never have been able to pick up on before. The scrape of stray leaves blowing across the forest floor became distinct from those disturbed by animals passing by. He learned to judge the timber of an abrupt crack to tell which belonged to an old branch falling from a tree and which had been shattered by a predator’s mass.
Although Nick’s nose was no match for the island’s beasts, he had begun to identify the scents of various animals as well—their body odor as well as the stink of the shit they left behind. The musky fur of the lemur tribe, the reptilian funk of the komos, the acrid stench of the lurk’s droppings. While he was out practicing his listening, he stopped to train his tracking whenever he came across anything interesting.
Tracking meant learning everything that he could about the animals on the island from the evidence they left behind. As the days passed, Nick gained a better grasp of which trails were laid by which species. He followed them to learn where the animals hunted and foraged. Where they took shelter for the night.
He had devised a series of questions to help further his fledgling ability. “Are these tracks fresh or old? Was the creature unhurried or running for its life? Was this shit left by carnivores, herbivores, or something less discriminate, and what was the last meal they ate?” Poop and prints, tracks and trails, Nick began learning how to read the stories written by the animals and beasts. Outlining their behaviors and habits. Their tendencies and territories.
No matter what else he was doing, he always practiced hiding at the same time. This began as an attempt to learn how to move silently, inspired by the consummate stealth exhibited by the lurk. Through trial and error, Nick figured out which leaves would slide silently when swept by his foot and which would crackle. He taught himself how to step down and transfer his weight mindfully, only committing to each footfall when he was confident that he knew what lay below his boots. How to arrange his gear so that he could move his body without rattling his tools against each other.
In addition to muffling the noise he made, Nick worked on reducing his visibility. He tried to be mindful of what he looked like from any likely angle. He made himself harder to spot by breaking up his profile. Stopping to rest beside a tree trunk or after crouching behind a brush. To lie flat on his stomach when approaching a ridgeline, instead of announcing his presence by walking along it. To pull himself up into the branches of a nearby tree at a moment’s notice without making a racket in the process.
By the end of the week, he was starting to get the hang of it. Although he wished that he had a skill that would help him improve his stealth, rather than having to teach himself the basics from scratch. Even still, it seemed to be working because Nick had an easier time evading random komos as he improved.
By now, he was able to spot the lemurs’ scouts from a distance, before they reacted to his presence with their “a friend is coming” call. However, he was utterly unsuccessful at evading their notice up close. To the point where Nick was sure that the furry sentries were watching his failure with pity.
Every few days, he would climb to the top of the great tree. This was, in part, to test his progress. To see how far his body had come since arriving on the Searing Isle. And in part because it was the only way to view the highlands without climbing up to that terrain, which Nick was unwilling to do until he was certain that he could avoid the lurk.
Scaling the immense tree had begun to feel less dangerous with his enhanced Strength, Dexterity, and Toughness, and the view from the top was phenomenal. Gorgeous enough to let him forget his worries, at least for a moment. To his surprise, he caught sight of the thing in the sea on two separate occasions, and he decided that the colossal beast must be laired somewhere nearby.
Eventually, Nick received a pair of notifications that he had been waiting for.
Through rigorous training, you have conditioned your body and improved the following attributes:
Strength has increased from [5] to [6].
Through use, you have improved the following skills:
Foraging has increased from [5] to [6].
And then, a few days later…
Through use, you have improved the following skills:
Foraging has increased from [6] to [7].
He had less success in improving his baseline Dexterity and Toughness, although he was optimistic that he was making significant inroads toward increasing them as well. Nick’s rate of growth was getting faster by the day; he just hoped it would be enough to let him endure the tutorial’s final phase.