Excited to find out what changes it would bring, Nick made his choice and saw the confirmation prompt appear on the screen.
He quickly sat down in case the alterations knocked him off his feet like the others he had experienced. But what happened this time was unlike anything he had felt before.
Nick’s attention was drawn to the periphery of his senses, the place where raw data was filtered into clear concepts. It was like the forefront of his mind was a window, a portal through which he viewed the world around him.
Meanwhile, a buzzing tingle built between his temples, becoming a roar that was formed from all five senses combined, along with bits from sources that Nick had as of yet no words to describe. Five minutes later, the pins and needles faded away, and a great wave of clarity spread out from his brain, coursing along his nervous system and into his sensory organs.
It was as if someone had taken a clean cloth and wiped it across the window of his mind, clearing away a layer of grime that had been there so long it had become completely invisible to the people looking through.
It reminded Nick of getting laser eye surgery, but instead of just sharpening his vision, his other senses had been enhanced as well. He could feel the input from his sensory organs with a crisp precision, shocking in its vibrancy and intensity.
When he looked around in wonder, everything was clearer and brighter. Every swath of color and every swirl and crevice forming the carvings on the obelisk were sharp and distinct. Nick had to pull himself back before he became lost in contemplating their intricacies. He could taste the salt of the ocean in the air he breathed. Feel the sea breeze caressing every inch of his body. Hear the cries of gulls circling high above. When he inhaled through his nose, he could smell the green of the forest. The earthy scents of soil and loam.
It wasn’t that the raw data from his senses had been dialed up a notch. Rather, Nick was able to pay closer attention to them. Tease out subtle distinctions that had blended together before. In addition to his perceptual changes, he felt incredibly lucid as well. It was as if he had been reunited with his long-lost love, caffeine, without any of the jitteriness or body load that came with consuming the drug.
If anything, he felt… more like himself than before, as if it were easier to travel down the familiar roads formed by his own thoughts and tendencies. Nick hoped that boosting his Mind would ultimately improve his ability to plan and analyze, although that would be harder to subjectively measure.
All in all, raising his Mind was fucking awesome. He would seriously consider investing heavily in it once he had unlocked the primer on the attribute and knew exactly what he was doing. Armed with a new and improved nervous system, Nick was ready to tackle the next item on his agenda, studying the pack in the hope of uncovering any weakness that he could exploit. Then it would be time to track them back to their lair so that he could begin working on a plan to remove the crunchers from the board, staking his claim on this section of the forest at last.
With a spring in his step, Nick left the obelisk behind him, marveling at the sensory wonderland buffeting him on all sides. He hiked east until he passed by where the shipwreck had come crashing into the forest, then turned to head north. He angled toward the strip of ground he had come across a few days prior, where the crunchers’ tracks were laid thick across the soil. He was increasingly certain that the trail had been formed when the pack ventured from their lair to hunt within the southern forest.
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It took him the better part of an hour to locate the area in question. Only seconds after Nick arrived, he decided to call his mission off until tomorrow. The tracks were fresh, and beside them sat steaming piles of shit. The pack had passed through only minutes ago and was still somewhere nearby. He had missed his chance to hide in the trees and observe, and tracking the crunchers on foot was a terminally bad idea.
That was when he heard a yipping bark coming from somewhere to his east, then another to the north. Yup, definitely time to go.
Heart racing, Nick crept back the way he had come, every snapping twig and falling leaf sending a surge of adrenaline coursing through his bloodstream. He realized that he needed to build a better model of the pack’s behavior. A way to anticipate their movements so that he could place himself in a suitable vantage without risking being caught before he could conceal his presence.
So far, none of the tracks he had seen had been left in the early morning, so he would try again at dawn. At least he had spotted a suitable tree before fleeing the area.
He made the journey to the great tree with one eye over his shoulder, afraid that the brutal bonecrunchers had caught wind of his intrusion and were hot on his heels. But through luck or mere coincidence, Nick made it back to the tribe’s section of the woods without running into the brutish hyena-boars.
He spent the rest of the afternoon foraging from his original berry patch, the one that had been picked clean several times over. Although it took him three full hours, Nick finally managed to gather enough food to get him through the rest of the day. He had been forced to penetrate deep into the heart of the brush to secure his meager haul.
He emerged covered in scratches from head to toe for his trouble, even with the aid of his sword. It made him wonder if there was a way to dry out the meat that he harvested from the swordclaws, as even a single crab would provide him with enough to eat for a fair portion of a week.
Nick eventually decided that he would try to make jerky if he had the opportunity to butcher another swordclaw. Other methods of preservation required specialized tools and techniques that were beyond his means for now.
When he made it back to the tree, he spent the rest of the evening conditioning his body. This was the only place where he could safely exhaust himself. Nick could pull himself up into the branches before anything hostile could reach him, even if he drained his stamina dry during his workout. As his arms were still sore from a morning full of weapon training, he focused this session on increasing his flexibility.
After making his decision, he began going through all the yoga poses he knew, then tossed in some of the exercises he had learned back in school. As soon as he started, Nick knew he had chosen wisely. It felt amazing to stretch out. To separate the knots that had been pounded into his muscles from the various trials he had survived thus far. He threw himself into his workout, groaning as he gradually began to relax, pulling overlapping muscle fibers apart to their natural resting length.
He split his attention between focusing on his body and prioritizing his time for the next few days. Nick had approximately two and a half weeks before the tutorial entered its third and final phase.
He had a lot that he still needed to accomplish if he wanted to survive to see its end, such as surveying the interior of the island. The looming mountain and the highlands surrounding it. He was certain that if there were any clues that would reveal the true nature of the Searing Isle, the dangerous central biomes were where he would find them.
While he worked out, he spotted a few wispy green clouds on the horizon, which were thankfully not heading his way. Their presence renewed Nick’s resolve to drive away the cruncher pack because he needed to find a suitable haven before the next searstorm broke over the island. However, that would have to wait at least a little longer. Moving into a shelter on the ground with the bonecrunchers patrolling the region was like asking to be ambushed and eaten.
Nick had discovered a few less-than-promising solutions to use as a stopgap storm shelter, such as boulders with hanging protrusions. But he was not even remotely confident that they would offer sufficient protection from the boiling rain. Not with the howling winds he had felt during his desperate sprint to the bay, which had forced him to enter the dungeon earlier than he intended.
With his thoughts on the future, Nick climbed into the branches to watch the sunset. He planned to wake up well before dawn, then stake out the crunchers before finalizing his plans to remove them from the board.