Chapter Three- Zone One- The Forest

He sat there in the cold, his back stabbed by the thorns of a bush he hoped wasn’t poisonous, what if he-it finds me, Eric thought, what do I do when- how could I- Jesus Christ I’m going to die here, I’m going to die bare foot in the middle of fucking nowhere. Eric’s’ thoughts ran rampant with him. He started to breath heavily, started to feel light-headed. Eric propped himself up with an arm. The world was closing in around him and there was nothing he could do about it.

Minutes passed and Eric’s’ breathing started to slow back down, he took one last big- shaky- breath.

[Stamina has fallen to 6]

“How?” Eric asked, almost laughing at the fact. Shit, now I’m going to hysteria, Eric supposed, giggling to himself regardless. Finally, he let out a sigh. It had already been a while and there was no sign of the monster, “maybe I did loose him? Yeah I lost him. He’s gone and I lost him,” Eric kept repeating that, each time growing jollier each time. Eric almost couldn’t believe his luck.

He drew a deep, cold, breath, through his nostrils. And he forced himself to calm down and think. On a whim he spoke to himself, “Menu.” And with a ping sound, a bright window appeared in Eric’s’ face.

The majority of the window was blank, though there were several tiles, buttons, to open. There weren’t any labels, just images and not a single one of them made any sense to Eric. He tried reaching out for a tile, sure enough, the display changed.

At the top:

NameEricRaceHumanClassN/ALevel1StatueMildly Hungry

And then there's:

Health2525Mana2424Stamina2222Attack2636 (+10)Defence2533 (+8)Magic Attack1919Magic Defence1818Speed1717 (-0)Luck2020Growth7171

Eric seemed somewhat disappointed by his lack of a class, while his race, namely a human, actually managed to reassure him. Then there was his status, ‘mildly hungry’, until he saw that he had barely noticed how hungry he had become. It was dreadful, an emptiness in his stomach that demanded satisfaction, and yet this was only mild. The inner beast that is Eric’s’ stomach to the chance to groin, I wonder how bad its going to be when I’m actually ‘Hungry’, Eric thought as he rubbed his belly in an attempt to quell the beast.

As for his stats, while he assumed they weren’t the best, without something to compare it to there was really no point in it. Still, the growth stat filled will him with a semblance of hope, but he kept reminding himself that, for all he new, this was relatively ordinary or completely spectacular.

Eric touches the display, hoping to get something more out of the page and the window ripples around his finger tips. The window slide at his touch, revealing even more information:

AffinityBaseTotalRed16%6% (-10%)Blue18%28% (+10%)Green18%28% (+10%)Yellow9%9%White10%10%Black9%9%

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Eric wasn’t quiet sure what to make of that either. So he put it away, closing the menu altogether. After a while longer, boredom caused Eric to all but forget about his fear, so he cautiously stepped out from his cover.

Almost as soon as he stepped out, the sky went red and a large black crow, a monster perched on a branch, presented itself to Eric.

This time he would not run away.

Eric readied his stick, holding it firmly with both hands. The crow made the first attack, disappearing behind the twisted branches of the trees then diving in at Eric, talons extended and primed to dig in. Eric avoided the first attack with a side step. With that he got a feel for how fast this bird could go, and honestly it wasn’t that fast. As long as Eric could keep track of its whereabouts there wasn’t much to fear from this particular creature.

On its second dive, Eric avoided it at first, only to spin on his heel, swinging as he did so. The result: his wooden stick flowed into a wide arc, crashing into the huge bird for a perfect hit. Dispite that, hitting the bird was like hitting something remarkably heavy, this was a real living thing that Eric was attacking.

A wave of guilt rushed over him as the crow recovered and flew straight at him. Distracted, Eric failed to avoid the attack, and its talons where allowed to grab and shred chunks of his hair.

[Health has fallen to 18]

Desperately, Eric batted it away, he was bleeding now, and all his guilt had been watched away with the gribble of blood. He pursued the monster crow, bludgeoning it again and again before it could recover, Eric that beat it to the ground before the notice:

[Stamina has fallen to 8]

He stopped, and started breathing heavily over the corpse. The red sky became blue again and the crow dissipated into a shining light that seemed to get sucked into Eric without him having to do anything. "I...did...the...right...thing." Eric told himself as he recalled the bloodied form of the animal.

Eric slumped back to the ground. “That could have gone better.” He mumbled, as he looked at his aching feet, they were browned by the mud and dirt, at least more so than usual.

With his free hand he felt the top of his head, studying the once full head of tight curly hair. It was still tender from where the bird had clawed at him, with one scratch going as far down as his forehead. He wiped away the blood which brought his attention to his hands, Jesus they’re purple, Eric exclaimed. “I didn’t realise it was this cold,” He said to himself, realising this took a few deep breathes, which then became moist puffs of warm air targeting his hands.

He stayed in that spot for a moment to catch his breath and regain some stamina, there was no point moving around with at least some points. His stomach growled profusely throughout the affair.

Finally, with 14 stamina points to his name, Eric got up and started in the direction he was sure would lead back to the path.