Nick spent the next two days foraging for food, training with his weapons, and studying the beasts on the island. He paid special attention to the abilities and tendencies of the pack, which had begun ranging further south with every day that passed.
Thanks to his efforts, he was able to raise his skills. The next time that he stopped by the obelisk, he had a pair of notifications waiting for him.
Through use, you have improved the following skills:
Foraging has increased from [4] to [5].
Size Up has increased from [5] to [6].
Nick hadn’t been able to increase his attributes despite his diligent training regimen, although he hoped that he was closing in on his next series of gains.
Yesterday, he had hunted his first swordclaw that wasn’t critically wounded. Killing the beast made him feel a bit guilty, but he needed to eat. It was his only real option, as the pickings had become slim enough that foraging was no longer sufficient to sustain him. At least the crustaceans were dumb, as Nick doubted that he would ever be willing to kill an intelligent beast that wasn’t directly threatening him.
His calculus might change if his life were on the line, but Nick would do everything in his power to ensure that such a dilemma never came to pass. The idea of eating creatures with personalities on par with the lemurs filled him with an instinctual revulsion, like someone had suggested killing a child.
While the swordclaws were relatively peaceful, they had no thoughts or emotions that Nick could perceive. Additionally, he was certain that the crabs wouldn’t think twice about killing him if they were hungry or decided that he was a threat.
Thus, he decided to treat the swordclaws in the same manner that he did regular animals. He was happy to live and let live under normal circumstances, but hunting the giant crustaceans for food was fair game. This was no easy feat when the crabs were uninjured, since their defense was strong and their weapons were on par with Nick’s own.
The biggest obstacle was getting past the crabs’ razored claws, which they swung with considerable strength and precision. Thankfully, the bulky beasts were slow, and their senses were not particularly sharp, or Nick would not have walked away from the encounter unscathed.
After several close calls, he finally succeeded in sneaking up on his victim and landed a strike from ambush. His chop was ugly, but it caught the creature by surprise, blade shearing off one of its massive claws in a single strike. He didn’t try to follow up. Instead, he darted out of reach, trailing the crab at a distance until it expired from blood loss—a trick he had learned from watching the komos hunt.
After stopping to catch his breath, Nick put the carcass into his pack and carried it back to the great tree, ready to try out an idea that had come to him. A solution to how he could convert a portion of the meat into jerky. After grilling enough crab steak to last him through the day, Nick cut the rest into thin slices and then draped them over a pair of broad branches that were sitting in direct sunlight.
He had to push past his initial disgust. By the standards of his old life, this method was far from hygienic. You didn’t eat food that had been lying on the ground or hanging from a tree for hours. He eventually decided that the five-second rule would have to be changed to the five-hour rule, using his Foraging skill to make sure that his food had not been contaminated.
Fortunately, there weren’t many insects on the island, except for the spring and the streams that ran off it. Nick turned the hanging meat over every few hours, and by the end of the day, it was dehydrated enough to store in his pack.
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He suspected that his crude air-drying method had only extended the shelf life of the steaks by a few days, rather than the weeks a true curing would add. But it was enough that he wouldn’t have to waste increasingly long hours futilely foraging for berries. At least until his store of jerky ran out. Perhaps when Nick grew more proficient in living off the land, he could figure out how to properly smoke meat and create a lasting reserve. A problem for another day. After judging his experiment a success, he put the jerky into his pack and moved onto his training.
In addition to his daily sword and dagger sessions, which were starting to shape up into a basic level of competency, Nick had begun training with his other weapons as well. Next on the list was his wand, the most powerful tool in his arsenal.
He spent long hours working on improving his draw and his aim. He had to cut the motion short before firing the device, as he couldn’t afford to squander its limited supply of charges. At present, all three gems along the base were glowing with a pale pink light, unchanged from when Nick had exited the dungeon. Until he figured out how to recharge the device, he intended to use the wand as a means of last resort. But when he needed it, the wand could save him from threats his blade could not, and he needed to be able to fire the force-flinging tool quickly and reliably.
He practiced sliding the wand free from its belt loop as smoothly as possible, positioning the business end so that it was pointed at targets arriving from various angles. At the same time, Nick worked on automatically sliding his thumb across the safety and over the trigger, until the motion was natural enough that he did it every time without having to think.
It was frustrating at first, as he had trouble drawing the wand from its loop without dropping it. Even when he did, his thumb was out of place to fire the wand quickly. In a real fight, he would have been dead before he had time to correct his mistakes. Instead of giving up, he doubled down, repeating the motion until the action became an ingrained reflex.
Once Nick had the basics down, he tried mixing it up, drawing and aiming the wand in the middle of practicing with his sword. He needed to be able to use the force-emitting device in the middle of a fight without disarming himself in the process.
While Nick trained, he pondered the wand and the strange way it had come into his possession. He was curious about the modification soulbound, which he had seen before in games, but he wasn’t sure how the term would play out in his new life governed by the System.
The wand wasn’t the only tool he that needed to master. He also wanted to increase his accuracy with his Orbs of Flashbang, as the devices bolstered Nick’s range of options when dealing with various threats. He needed to improve his throwing skills in general, as they would likely come into play later when using other weapons or consumables.
Rather than risk damaging the irreplaceable tools, Nick found a pair of rocks that were roughly the same weight and practiced throwing them instead. His aim was shit at first, but after two full days of training, his precision had improved by a fair margin. If he spent a few minutes every morning refining his throw, he should improve his accuracy enough to use the flashbangs in battle well before the end of the tutorial.
Last and least, Nick devoted a few minutes each session to training with his spear. As he wasn’t sure that he would wind up using it, he drilled with the spear for only a fraction of the time he spent learning his other weapons—just enough to be able to bring the point to bear quickly without fumbling.
Although the crude weapon wasn’t ideal in most circumstances, Nick intended to spend a few hours each week learning the ins and outs. There were some situations where a long weapon would offer him advantages over his sword. Better still, the spears were easy to make and were more or less disposable, which gave him a few options that were not practical with his irreplaceable weapons.
He practiced changing up his stance and thrusting along various angles, visualizing using the tip to drive off a charging komo. The spear’s reach was superior to his sword, and it was easier to hold at the ready for prolonged periods of time. He was experimenting with different shapes in an attempt to fashion a proper throwing weapon, but so far he had failed to create a working prototype.
All the while, Nick’s mind raced while his hands were busy. Pondering strategies that would allow him to slaughter the bonecrunchers and lay claim to their piece of the woodlands.
Yesterday afternoon, an idea had come to him at last. A means of using the pack’s constant proximity and propensity for resolving internal disputes with violence against them. However, to pull off his plan, he needed to acquire a resource that he had been hoping to find but had not yet spotted.
That all changed late the next morning, which marked the beginning of Nick’s third week on the Searing Isle.