Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Nick stepped back from the corpse and then hurried to retrieve his spear and the ratman’s dagger.
Although he was shaking with fear and exertion, he was immensely relieved to be armed with a metal blade for the first time since the tutorial had begun. He looked down at his body, making sure that he hadn’t taken anything worse than scrapes and bruises. As his gaze ran across the wand resting in a loop on his toolbelt, he noticed that one of the gems was glowing with a pale pink light. A mystery for another day, or at least another hour.
While he wanted to run straight back to the dungeon’s entrance and freak the fuck out, Nick ruthlessly suppressed the urge long enough to wrap up the encounter in a manner that would maximize his odds of survival.
He needed to obtain a better understanding of his enemy, so he set down his spear and used the dagger to cut away a section of the creature’s rag armor. The body beneath was bloated and twisted, riddled by what appeared to be hulking tumors. The deformities look unnatural and explain the rat’s lurching steps.
He considered trying to take the armor for himself, no matter how disgusting it was. However, he discovered that the fabric was fused with the ratman’s flesh, portions running below the surface of its skin. Deep veins of crimson bulged beneath its fur, which continued to pulse even though its heart no longer beat. He was careful not to touch them while he finished looting the body.
Beneath its robes, the creature was wearing a thick leather toolbelt. It was similar in design to the belt Nick was wearing—although it didn’t have a self-maintenance modification, judging by the decrepit condition of the leather.
Not letting himself think about the fact that he was in the middle of stripping supplies from a dead body, he started rummaging through the pockets. Most were empty, although two contained piles of white powder that smelled caustic enough that he was reluctant to touch them. But the last two pouches held genuine tools, which he recognized from games, although he had never used them in real life.
The first was a simple block of chert, with a deep groove worn across the middle of the stone. It’s a whetstone. That explains why the daggers are so sharp. Following that thought, he wondered where the creature had stowed the weapons between battles. He found the answer when he took a closer look at the ratman’s belt, where two sheaths were secured to the leather strap by a pair of slits that threaded it.
He cut the belt in half, then slid the sheaths off, attaching them to his own toolbelt before sliding the dagger inside. At last, he had a basic cutting tool that could double as a short-range weapon. Nick would be able do some basic crafting once he was back on the island.
The last item in the ratman’s pockets was a crude flint and steel, so worn that he doubted he could use it to light more than a handful of fires before it crumbled into fragments. It was still a great find, as any ability to start a fire was a godsend at this point. He transferred the tools to his pouches and then stepped away from the stinking corpse.
Shaking with the adrenaline-charged exhaustion that arose in the aftermath of fighting for his life, he left the body behind him and staggered back to the dungeon’s entrance. He was lucky that he had already cleared the floor. He couldn’t bring his thoughts into focus, grappling with the shock of having killed another person for the first time in his life.
It wasn’t a person anymore, Nick, and you didn’t have a choice. That body was just a shell for the parasite living inside, even if it was more responsive than you expected. If the rat was still self-aware, your Gift of Tongues trait would have allowed you to communicate.
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That realization did little to assuage the sick feeling that had risen to fill his chest. Even if these creatures had been reduced to animal intelligence, supplemented by ingrained reflexes and muscle memory, the encounter had driven home the understanding that he would have to kill thinking beings at some point. Maybe even others of his own kind, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it.
After all, humans had been killing each other since long before the dawn of civilization. Integration into the System would provide ample opportunities for those with predatory proclivities. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about it until after he escaped the island.
It was a chilling reminder that the world Nick knew no longer existed. Even if he made it back to the planet of his birth, the presence of the System would change everything that he had ever known.
He hoped that he would be able to return as soon as the tutorial ended and that his family would be waiting for him. He hated to think that they were stuck in their own survival tutorial, forced to endure the same trauma and hardship that he’d faced over the last week. Assuming that they are still alive…
He pushed the thought aside. He couldn’t afford any distractions if he wanted to live long enough to make his way out of the dungeon. With a heavy heart, he continued walking back to the entrance of the level.
After passing through the final tunnel, Nick sat down beside the portal and set watch over the chamber’s only entrance. He was still too keyed up to sleep. Too shaken to plot and plan. Instead, he kept replaying the fight in his head, realizing just how close he had come to being gutted by the blade of his newly acquired dagger.
He wasn’t just ruminating. He was trying to decide how he could have handled the encounter better and what he would do in a similar situation going forward. Not that he intended to let an enemy get the drop on him like that ever again. From now on, he would spear-check every pile of rubbish and debris before deciding that a room was safe.
None of this changed the fact that he had a decision to make. Should I keep going? Or should I leave through the portal when it reopens tomorrow afternoon? Is it more dangerous to explore the next level of the dungeon or to risk being caught out in the searstorm?
While Nick was terrified of running into another ratman, he knew the battle would have been more manageable if he hadn’t been caught by surprise. For all its speed and ferocity, the infected creature was clumsy and easy to predict. On a brighter note, he had obtained a weapon that he could use to land a finishing blow, although he longed to find a sword or something with comparable reach.
While he was deeply disturbed by what he had experienced in the dungeon and earlier in the tutorial, he realized that his multiple traumas weren’t impacting him as significantly as they should. By now, he should have developed PTSD or something similar. Many of his experiences had been intensely frightening, and he’d come close to death on numerous occasions. But he hadn’t suffered any nightmares, flashbacks, or uncontrolled thoughts.
I wonder if the System is shielding me from my trauma. Or maybe it’s a change related to my attributes. Regardless, while the old Nick would never have been willing to risk his life in order to grow stronger, it turned out that the new Nick was. Going forward, his decisions needed to be geared toward maximizing his odds of survival in the long run instead of avoiding every danger that came his way.
Thus, he was reluctant to abandon this unique opportunity. Successfully delving the dungeon would improve his chances of living through the tutorial and whatever awaited him after its end. A single battle had yielded him a dagger, two sheaths, and a pair of useful tools. It had taken him closer to leveling up again too.
He could only imagine what he would be leaving behind if he abandoned the dungeon without even cracking open a single chest. Even if completing this quest proved to be too dangerous, there should be ample opportunity to grow stronger along the way.
In the end, the decision was simple. While every step into the sewers would be fraught with peril, it was also laden with possibility. On the other hand, getting caught in the heart of the searstorm was guaranteed to be fatal. Ultimately, he was more afraid of being boiled alive than of being forced into another fight, and collecting more gear would help him survive the days ahead.
His choice made, Nick settled down to conserve energy and steady his nerves, intending to enter the sewer early the next morning. Or whatever passed for morning within the sunless depths of the dungeon.