In all his walking around, Jordan hadn’t managed to find a stream, pond, or any other source of fresh water. Though he had made a point to start collecting the corpses of Rabbits, and had already thrown a few of them into his pocket space by now. Who knew if they would last long in there or if the meat would soon go bad like normal. Guess there was only one way to find out, and that was to wait.

But without being able to secure any water here, he began to make his way back toward the treeline. With how dark the forest was from all the giant trees there, Jordan would be lying if he claimed that it didn’t seem unnerving. However, between the moving and around and high-adrenaling fleeing from before, his mouth felt dry with thirst. If it meant getting a drink sooner than later, he would just have to take his chances.

While he waded through the tall grass though, he did finally receive a notification that he’d been expecting.

Experience Earned!

+11 EXP

Level Up!

Level 2 to Level 3

As soon as it came, Jordan opened his Status and immediately dumped all the Free Points into Wisdom. Once that was done, he just gave his Status a brief once over to make sure that everything was in order.

General Info:

Name: Jordan Joyner

Species: Human (Earth)

Guild: N/A

System Info:

Class: Combat Engineer

Subclass: N/A

Traits: Tech Savvy

Titles: Initial Merger

Level: 3

EXP: 2/900

Grade: E

Resources:

Tech Points: 10.02/18

Tech Points Regen: 4.86/Min

Stats:

Strength: 13

Dexterity: 16

Vitality: 18

Endurance: 15

Intelligence: 26

Wisdom: 30

Will: 14

Free Points: 0

General Skills:

Active: Appraise-E5

Class Skills:

Active: Summon Air Drone-E1

Active: Zap-E1

Active: Overcharge-E1

Passive: Tinker-E1

Between the five Free Points and one for free from his Class, the increase in Wisdom had led to a nice jump in his TP regeneration. Along with the free point from his Class toward Intelligence, because if even only by a little, it also helped. But all in all, he was now much closer to the goal of always being able to keep his drone constantly summoned.

If Jordan hadn’t been certain of his goal before, he absolutely was now. Having to waste critical seconds just waiting for his resources to regenerate enough for him to recast the Skill could have cost him his life. So the sooner that never became a worry again, the better.

As the sun only continued to edge closer to the horizon, however, he stepped up his pace toward the forest. By the time he left the tall part of the fields, his drone only managed to kill one more Rabbit. Then as he traversed through the shorter section, he continued to have it fly around, but it didn’t seem to find anything by the time he reached the treeline.

Now standing right at the boundary, Jordan took a good look deeper into the woods. The trees had already seemed massive from afar, but somehow managed to feel even bigger up close. With how wide their trunks were, a Grass Panther could have been on the opposite side of the nearest tree, and he would never have been able to tell. At least not with his eyes from just looking around himself, that is.

Assuming that he cast it from full TP, Jordan’s drone could now last for just over 13 minutes before his resource ran out. Then it would be about three minutes and 42 seconds until his TP was fully regenerated. It was the in-between period that Jordan couldn’t help but feel a bit nervous about.

He raised up his Energy Pistol and looked down at the screen. The charge currently read at 100%. As it turned out, recharging the gun was actually about as simple as it could get. While he’d been walking through the grass, he had just intended for his TP to go inside, and that’s exactly what happened next.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Since it took only ten TP to get it back to 100%, that basically meant that even when emptied, it would take less than three minutes to fully recharge his Energy Pistol. Assuming his drone wasn’t being summoned at the same time, anyway.

Jordan took a deep breath as he braced himself. He made sure that the Resources section of his Status remained in his vision for him to keep track of. Then he cast Summon Air Drone, and gave it a command.

The drone had a max range of 25 miles before it would automatically get desummoned. Before now that’d been kind of overkill. For a scouting mission, however, that would actually be perfect. Since the drone could fly at a top speed of 100 miles per hour, if his math was correct, then it should be able to fly 22 or 23 miles before he ran out of TP. So pretty dang close to the max range.

When he then sent out the drone, he ordered it to desummon itself the moment it spotted an animal. While having it immediately start blasting was tempting, this was just for information. And he figured that this way would give him the most accurate measure of how far anything was from him. Or at least anything that the drone was able to spot anyway. Because as the Grass Panther proved by being hidden until he already knew where to have it look, the drone’s ability to notice things wasn’t infallible.

Jordan smacked his lips, really still wanting an ice-cold glass of water. But after taking the time to think about it, it turned out that the steady and cautious approach was the best. Way better than his original plan of just walking in a straight line until he found something; he didn’t need to walk in at all until he already knew where said something was.

First he would start with three missions for animal finding. One in a straight line down the middle, and then two more off a bit to the left and right at an angle. If the drone didn’t find anything for all three, then Jordan would have spent a bit under 50 minutes on getting to know that there at least wasn’t anything it could find in the area ahead of him. Since that’d be roughly 40 minutes for the actual flying, and about 8 for TP regeneration between flights, then rounded up for neatness.

Then the next step was to repeat the same procedure, but with finding water. Where he’d tell it to just fly until it found a lake or stream. Unlike a regular machine whose code would first need a lot of teaching what was considered a big puddle versus a lake, Jordan had the benefit of a mental connection with his drone. One where it simply read his intent to instantly work off his personal understanding of the difference.

Finally, one more animal check in the direct line between him and the freshwater source. The shelter part of food, water, and shelter would still be missing. But once he could make a campfire to boil his water and cook the Rabbit meat with, Jordan could look for the nearest source of natural shelter. Perhaps there might be a cave somewhere, or since these trees were so monstrously huge, one that was dead and hollow would be big enough to accommodate him.

As Jordan waited, he sat on the grass. Though with the Energy Pistol still in hand, he didn’t fully let down his guard.

Almost 50 minutes came and went. Almost, because the third patrol ended with the drone desummoning itself toward the last few minutes. Yet even so, it’d managed to get just over 20 miles away before that happened. So, for the length of the total area ahead of him that it’d explored, that was an all-clear in the drone’s mechanical eyes. At least for exploring the first 20 miles.

Now came part two, to repeat the process. After Jordan summoned his drone and gave it the respective order, he looked up at the sky. His estimate of the time until sunset still felt accurate, as he’d been given plenty of time to watch it steadily move. As such, he still believed that there was only another two-ish hours left before things would begin to get dark.

Up to half of his remaining daylight could go by with the search with water. Maybe even more if he got unlucky and needed to do additional trips for the drone. To the point where Jordan wasn’t sure if he necessarily wanted to look for shelter in the woods after darkness came. At least here in the fields of grass, there should only be Rabbits left. Perhaps he could return to the platform they’d started on and build a campfire there. It’d be super exposed as the main downside, but at least it’d be a spot where he could build a fire without needing to manually clear away a section of grass.

Mmm. Is there something wrong with me? Jordan suddenly asked himself while waiting. I watched people die today, and stared at… too many corpses… up close. But now I’m just acting like this is some typical survival scenario again. Shouldn’t I be traumatized to the point of barely being able to do anything? Especially not just sit around and patiently wait like this?

Granted, Jordan knew literally nothing about how someone was “meant” to respond to a traumatic situation. It wasn’t like it stopped bothering him. In fact, he still felt rather squeamish when picturing some of the more gruesome deaths in his mind just now.

But if he stumbled upon at least one more corpse in the woods from another group, it probably wouldn’t bother him as much as the first time. He would at least maintain a grip and prioritize the grabbing of another Advancement Crystal while checking to see if whatever killed the person was still close by. Maybe that reaction would be considered abnormally cold. Or perhaps it was normal for someone to quickly start getting numb to death. Who knew?

Jordan let the thought stew for a bit. If doing nothing but wait was good for one thing, it was giving him time to just reflect and be with his own thoughts.