Quest: Freefall
Objective: Survive your entrance into Terra.
Reward: Sigil Stone, 10 gold pieces.
This quest cannot be declined.
“I'm sorry, wha-” Nate screamed as the room around him suddenly became intangible, and he began to freefall. The cloud cover was thick, and he screamed in terror until he cleared the clouds, seeing an alien world a great distance away from him. His terror settled into dread as he felt the wind rush around him, deafening him.
Having nothing else to focus on, he focused on the compass at the top of his view. He had magic now. And various skills. He could do this. Just needed to think. He saw a mountain range off to his left, which his compass showed was west.
An enormous lake was to the southwest, and a vast desert was visible to the southeast. Nate found that he was falling ever closer toward a forest of leafless trees that was nestled between the mountains to the west, the desert to the south and east, and an ocean to the north.
“The ocean's too far away. And hitting water at this speed is like concrete anyway.” Nate yelled as he opened his inventory and looked over his items. Just the cloud pillow and blanket.
Adaptive Learning has added a new recipe. Recipe tab created.
His character sheet now had a fifth tab labeled ‘Recipes.’ He quickly opened it.
Parachute. Ingredients: 1 Cloud Blanket, 2 Thread.
“I don't have any thread, Quilly!”
Help: Resourceful ability can break down objects into ingredients. The amount is less than the amount used to create the object.
Frantically, he opened his inventory and checked the pillow. Breaking it down would have only yielded 5 bits of cloudstuff.
“Shit!” Nate closed his inventory and began patting his sackcloth shirt and pants for pockets. All empty.
Then it clicked. He carefully took off his shirt and it vanished into his inventory. When he broke it down, it gave him one Thread.
“I guess we're doing a Rust,” he muttered as he similarly broke down his pants. He selected the blanket and the stack of threads.
He was still several thousand feet above the ground as his newly created parachute appeared in his hands and he hastily put it on, tying it tightly against his torso and pulling the release.
His momentum fell to a slow drift. He noticed three separate towns within the dessicated forest below. All the towns appeared to be in varying states of ruin. Nate decided to try to aim for the central town.
Lightning arced in the storm a good distance off.
“You better stay over there,” Nate threatened the lightning.
Nate had never been skydiving, and it took several moments for him to mostly sort out how to direct his movement. He could just make out several creatures running through the trees when lightning arced into his parachute. It lit on fire and Nate screamed as his speed increased again.
Branches scratched at him as he entered the treeline, smashing through several of the dried and dying trees. Pain greater than anything he had yet experienced wracked his body as he hit the ground with a wet, rolling crunch and several heavy impacts. His brain, unable to deal with the pain signals across his body, shunted him into unconsciousness.
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An hour later, Nate woke up with a groan. He felt like he'd hit every single tree on his way to the ground. He could barely move, so he used mental commands to filter through several new messages that were in his periphery.
Warning! Your health is dangerously low. Drink health potions or use healing magic to recover health. He checked his HUD. Health 2/50. He navigated to his spells tab and selected Healing Touch, discovering that he could choose which hand would cast it.
He felt warmth fill his left hand and noticed a soft yellow light emanating from it. He groaned with pain as he bent his arm to touch his thigh. A soft sound like wind chimes drifted to his ears as he cast his first spell. The blue bar of his magic meter drained slowly as his health began to climb. Stinging pain shifted to soothing comfort as his injuries began stitching up one by one.
As his magic depleted, his head began to throb when it reached one-tenth of the maximum. When he stopped, the bar immediately began to refill, and his headache left just as quickly.
“Magic makes headaches, got it,” even talking was a new adventure in pain, even after healing himself to about half his total health. Nate gently tried to lift his left hand, and saw that he seemed to be covered in a thick, mostly dried crimson fluid. He hadn’t noticed before, but it smelled strongly metallic, too metallic to be blood, unless it was the blood of some kind of metallic creature.
Before healing himself fully, he figured he should go through the other messages.
Adaptive Learning has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Fatigue has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 4%.
Resourceful has increased from Novice 0 to Novice 1. Total Fatigue has increased by 1. Progression to Level 1 at 8%.
You have reached the village of Gronwood within the Dead Wood. Map updated. You have slain 3 Steelbeaks. Journal updated.
“I’ve slain what?” Nate sat up a little too fast and the pain put him back on his back. “Right. Healing.” The wind chime sound echoed through the empty wood as the remainder of his wounds healed up. As he sat up there was a final message.
Quest: Freefall complete. The Lucky Sigil Stone and 10 gold pieces have been added to your inventory.
Nate closed the window and looked around him, ignoring his once again blinking journal. He was laying on something that was soft and wet. A smaller window appeared as his reticle crossed over the corpse he was sitting on.
He crawled away from the creature, bile rising to his mouth. He threw up next to one of the dead trees, then got to his feet. It was thankfully warm as he surveyed his surroundings. He’d somehow knocked down at least 5 trees. One of which had crushed one the creatures called a Steelbeak. The other two must have been in his wake when he landed. He consulted his journal, which now had a bestiary tab.
Steelbeak. These migratory carnivorous birds follow their food sources. Their beaks look like the heads of axes, their meat is a delicacy in some places, and their feathers are strong, making them great for fletching.
“Steelbeaks are a delicacy? Interesting,” he approached the one he had woken up on and the small window appeared again. He was able to loot the beak, 10 bones, 20 lbs of meat, 40 feathers, and 6 talons. As he completed it, the creature, and the blood that coated him, dissolved into motes of light that dimmed into nothingness. “And looting monsters dissolves the body. How convenient. At least there’s no smell.”
He similarly looted the other two and walked into town. He pulled up his map and found that he could minimize it to a small window at the corner of his field of view. “Hell yes! Minimap!”
Nate could tell that Gronwood was at one point a town that thrived on a mine and likely via the utilization of the forest around it. Whatever had killed the forest must have pushed the people living there away. He reached the center of town and approached a well whose surrounding wooden structure had collapsed. He found a small footstool next to the well and tested it before sitting down.
“Three main things to start,” Nate said. He’d always enjoyed watching those survival shows like ‘Alone.’ “Shelter, food and water. We’ll deal with more as it comes.” He plucked his new sigil stone from his inventory. It looked like his Interface one, but the runic lettering was green instead.
The text drifted into the air as before, but there was no discernible shift of the lettering, and Nate found he could read it anyway. A handy perk of the Interface stone, no doubt. Lucky Sigil Stone. Once activated, you gain an increase in your overall luck and unlock the Lucky power.
Lucky. At the cost of Magic and Fatigue per second, you gain a burst of extreme luckiness. The cost depends on how hard you push the luck. You currently have one of five active sigil stones. Once the Lucky Sigil Stone is accepted, it cannot be removed. Accept? Yes No.
He accepted the stone, and like the first it drifted into his chest and disappeared. A tingling sensation began at his chest and spread all the way down to his toes. “Shiny!”
Nate began to explore Gronwood from the well outward. The town had a tavern, a smithy, a handful of homes, a small building with hand carved stairs heading underground, and a surprisingly intact stone tower on the western outskirts. Though he had recovered his smoldering cloud blanket, he needed to find clothes.
Any kind of cloth he was able to find in the ruined houses was ragged and decrepit, but he kept it anyway, piling scraps into his inventory. He saved the tower for last. As he reached the entrance of the tower, he received another message.