Jessica definitely needed a moment to get her thoughts together and let the shock of seeing actual dinosaurs leave her system. Fortunately, she had the perfect coping strategy for just these occasions.
Overthinking things to avoid actually engaging with them on an emotional level!
So, she now had enough evidence to reject the hypothesis that she was having some sort of delusion or hallucination. She couldn’t rule out a full sensory delusion, but she was filing that under the ‘fantastic’ category. She now had two new hypotheses: physical transportation and simulation. She was certainly going to treat the entire situation as if it was absolutely real, but she was currently leaning on this being some sort of artificial simulation. The ‘character sheet’ she was experiencing would make the most sense if it was something with a human like intelligence had added to the UI of a simulated reality.
Whether technological, supernatural, or her own brain in a coma, Jessica would have to look for evidence to support or disprove these hypotheses. At the moment she did not really have enough information to speculate on whether she was in a different time, world, or universe if she was physically present. She also had no idea if she was intentionally transported or not. However, if she was in a simulation that was designed, then she could better prepare to observe and evaluate the evidence if she had a framework for why she had been placed in this simulation.
There were multiple possible reasons, ranging from hostile to benevolent. On the malevolent end, she could be a brain in a jar that some being was using to examine human behavioral responses. She could be stuck in some sort of unethical mind-machine-interface experiment. This could be some sort of game gone wrong. It could also be some sort of experimental therapy she had actually consented to designed to help her get over issues by presenting challenges tailored to her needs. She could come up with all sorts of explanations, but at this stage what was most important was how those different angles would allow her to study the world and look for seams.
The mutagen system was however very peculiar. It seemed to run parallel to the typical skills and feats system, and introduced extensive changes. Why it was there was a big question, alongside just how much it was actually changing. Jessica supposed that some of the more malicious possibilities might be introducing transhuman elements as part of an experiment, or this was a very strange uplift process by some inhuman entity. Her only real option was to continue to engage with the system and see what happened as she continued to make choices.
Speaking of choices, she was about ready to get moving, but she wanted to check her status again. She had a suspicion that getting out of that sinkhole had probably earned her some experience, and with freaking dinosaurs out and about she was going to need every edge she could get.
[ S t a t s ]
Talents
Physical
Mental
Social
Physique 8
Cognition 21
Charisma 5
Grace 7
Reaction 12
Empathy 12
Vitality 6
Focus 14
Willpower 8
Skills
Physical
> Athletics 4
>
> Breathing Control 3
>
> Climbing 5*
>
> Driving 1
>
> Endurance 1
>
> Jumping 3
>
> Pain Resistance 3
Mental
> Craft (electronics) 2
>
> Computing 4
>
> Engineering 5
>
> Knowledge (biology) 1
>
> Knowledge (chemistry) 3
>
> Knowledge (physics) 8
>
> Knowledge (pop culture) 5
>
> Language (English) 5
>
> Mathematics 5
>
> Meditation 3
>
> Research 8
>
> Science 10
Social
> Autohypnosis 2
>
> Presence 2
>
> Persuade 2
>
> Teaching 4
Feats
> Child Genius
>
> Scientist
>
> Thesis Defender
>
> Philosophical Doctor
>
> Natural Athlete
Special Abilities
> ???
>
> ???
>
> ???
>
> Additional CNS Nodes I
>
> -Proprioception Learning I
>
> Improved Digestion I
[ G r o w t h ]
Available Upgrades
> 1 Talent Points Available
>
> 1 Skill Points Available
>
> 1 Feat Selection Available
>
> 0 Mutagen Points Available
Current Growth Modifiers
> Child Genius
>
> Scientist
>
> Philosophical Doctor
>
> Natural Athlete
>
> ???
>
> ???
>
> Temp: Pure Survival
Again, a few things stood out to Jessica. While the big obvious one was more free Talent and Skill points along with another feat, two incongruities stood out. The first was that her Cognition of all things had gone up, and the second was that there was a star next to Climbing. The Climbing problem was easy enough to work out, as a close inspection showed that it was over leveled and would have a slowed growth until other skills and talents rose to meet it.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Cognition, fittingly, required a bit of thought. Scientist and PhD both provided bonus experience when making new discoveries, so finding that she was in the same world as non-avian dinosaurs probably counted. Possibly also her discarding her psychiatric episode hypothesis in favour of something fantastical actually happened.
Finally, Desperate Survival had been downgraded to Pure Survival, with the bonuses and penalties being of a lesser degree. Jessica was still fundamentally focused on not dying, but now she was more concerned with not starving or being eaten rather than having only a day to escape before she was too weak and would die a slow and horrible lingering death at the bottom of a hole. It still focused the mind, but not quite to the same extreme extent.
Speaking of surviving, Jessica felt well enough to get on to that. She dropped her free Talent Point into Vitality, which would hopefully give her a bit more cushion room for getting enough food, eating bad food, and all the various ways she could get hurt. The Skill Point and the Feat she decided to keep in reserve for the time being, as she suspected that she would need to boost things she hadn’t learned yet.
Outside of her own head, Jessica had also been surveying her surroundings, and had come to the conclusion that descending into the valley right now was a bad idea. While she was exposed to the elements and to predators up on these hills, she would be prime ambush meat if she went into the forest. Fortunately the sinkhole she had found herself in suggested that the local geology was prone to the formation of such features, and if she could find a more accessible cave then hopefully she would be able to use it for shelter.
A protected place would give her a place to store food and water, and to practice making tools. Given the rain last night and the clouds in the sky, she probably wasn’t in too much danger of dehydration anymore, but she had no idea how the seasons would go. Food was going to be her biggest problem overall, since anything worth eating would attract the attention of other animals, which presented all sorts of dangers. Still, despite the obscene amount of calories she must have burned getting out of the hole; Jessica still felt that with enough water she could probably go a few more days before she got into trouble again.
Actually, thinking of food, the tree nearby had probably contributed most of the leaf debris to the sinkhole, and eating that hadn’t caused her any real problems. Also, sizing it up, Jessica decided that it could probably contribute further to her survival by donating a branch suitable for turning into a walking stick that could also be used as a pry bar or walloping staff.
So fortified with something for her stomach to work on and a big stick to aid in her travels, Jessica set out for the nearest fold in the terrain where it looked likely that she might discover caves suitable to providing protection for her. Maybe she would also find something to eat or a spring for a reliable supply of fresh water. Hopefully she wouldn’t find any hostile dinosaurs.
After about an hour of walking over sharp scree and other bare stones heated by a summer sun at noon and wondering just how much skin she would have by nightfall, Jessica of course discovered hostile dinosaurs.
Well, okay, what she actually discovered was what looked like half a turkey sized feathery animals clustered about a pair of nests. After a moment the shape of their heads and posture clued her in to the fact that they were definitely raptors. Given that they were nesting the best bet was to stay well away from their territory as while she was bigger than them she could likely. This however meant that she was going to have to perform a considerable backtrack to get away from their territory, which was an extra pain given that she had gone this way because it was near a promising looking ridge.
A breeze kicked up at that moment, the air hot but the motion cooling as it blew Jessica’s hair in front of her face. While for a second she felt some measure of relief, once the wind blew over the raptors they all perked up. Two of them had been eyeing her warily before, but now the full attention of the entire pack was focused on her. The two sentries even stretched up and started calling out in a hostile sounding way, a sort of combination of hiss and chirp.
Now incredibly freaked out, Jessica began her retreat while still facing the animals, but a full half of the pack took off in pursuit, chirping and warbling like hell’s own flock. Jessica immediately assessed that she had no way of outrunning these things, and she was in not turning her back on them, which left fighting them. Jessica also quickly assessed that she was in fact too panicked to panic properly, and thus she just sort of started swinging her walking stick in a warding fashion.
The lead raptor didn’t even slow down, but instead launched itself at her a good three meters out, flapping its arms and setting its tail to stabilize and control its massive bounding leap. Its approach would have it landing with its outstretched talons, including its insane sickle claws, right on Jessica’s face. If she were just another animal she would be screwed, but the raptor had badly underestimated the range of motion of human arms swinging a staff.
The raptor realized its mistake and put in an admirable effort to change course, but that only managed to make it easier to actually hit as its forward momentum decreased slightly as it twisted and flapped. The impact was more than enough to snap the walking stick, which also meant that it was more than enough to shatter the raptor’s bones. Unfortunately for Jessica she was not able to kill all of its forward momentum along with killing the dinosaur, and the still breathing corpse slammed into her. Already off balance from her wild swing, Jessica was knocked over by the collision.
Despite her kill, being on the ground with two raptors rushing in was not exactly the best thing for the situation. Scrambling to disentangle herself from the mass of twitching limbs, Jessica had managed to get on all fours when the other dinosaurs slammed into her. One went for her side, its wicked talons digging in around her ribs as it clawed and bit, while the other went for her neck. Lacking any better options, Jessica abandoned trying to get up and instead put her arms up defensively around her neck and face.
Screaming in pain and terror, she thrashed and rolled about on the ground to try to the animals off her, which turned out to be a half successful measure as it did make the one on her side hop off, but the one trying to get to her throat that was actually punching her with its talon was able to shift about. However, even as her panic was robbing her of the ability to think through the situation, Jessica also felt her senses accelerating and sharpening, seeking out something to save her.
Her eyes caught upon the jagged point of her shattered walking stick, and she lunged out for it out of pure desperation. A claw caught on her cheek as she left her face partially exposed and she felt something grind against her teeth, but she managed to get the piece of wood in her hand. Fuelled by adrenaline and mad desperation, she stabbed at the raptor on her head. It was only a glancing hit, but it was enough to get it to hop off.
Rolling about got the other animal to abandon its perch and let Jessica regain her feet, but in the time that took the one she had scared off came shrieking back at her face. A sickle talon cut into her lip, but she managed to get her left hand to grip into the flailing thresher of claws and feathers that was trying to tear her face off. The animal did not quite have the capacity to understand just what was happening to it before Jessica introduced it to the brutality opposable thumbs offered by slamming her impromptu stake into a target that couldn’t dodge because she was gripping it.
Tossing the impaled animal aside, she then reached back to grab the final raptor that was attempting to scale her back and presumably claw or punch her neck. While she couldn’t get a particularly good grip on it, she could do one particularly unpleasant move that involved dropping her body to the ground and positioning the raptor beneath her. Given that she was probably five or six times more massive than the animal, the body slam to bare rock was more than enough to shatter limbs and ribs.
Covered in wounds and blood, Jessica drunkenly staggered to her feet. The other three raptors looked at her in the distance for a few moments before they scurried back to their nests. She watched them do something before they then abandoned the location, running off towards the forests. She kept her vision on them long enough for them to disappear, at which point she collapsed.
Curling up into a ball as the adrenaline wore off and the combination of exhaustion and blood loss took over, she screamed and wailed from what had just happened. The pain that had mostly been shoved aside now made itself known. Her body was covered in locations that varied between being hot and electric and cold and tingly in the nature of the agony. All focus lost, Jessica could only come to the conclusion that she was going to die here.
In that moment, in that surrender to inevitability, she felt something come over her, something unpleasant and oily and alien. A passenger in her own body, she screamed in pain and horror as whatever had assumed the driver’s seat moved her limbs in spite of the pain and went over to the impaled raptor. The animal was still weakly breathing, but it was clearly not going to live much longer. Jessica’s body accelerated the process by ripping out the stake and burying her face in the wound, sucking up hot blood from the massive gaping hole.
By the time Jessica returned to her senses she had drained and partially eaten the now thoroughly dead raptors, which had somehow translated into the blood loss stopping and much of the pain fading away. Utterly numb emotionally from the frankly bizarre behavior, Jessica felt her character sheet tugging at her awareness due to new changes.
[ S t a t s ]
Talents
Physical
Mental
Social
Physique 8
Cognition 21
Charisma 5
Grace 7
Reaction 13
Empathy 12
Vitality 8
Focus 14
Willpower 8
Skills
Physical
> Athletics 5
>
> Breathing Control 3
>
> Climbing 5
>
> Driving 1
>
> Endurance 1
>
> Jumping 3
>
> Melee (grappling) 1
>
> Melee (staff) 1
>
> Pain Resistance 4
Mental
> Craft (electronics) 2
>
> Computing 4
>
> Engineering 5
>
> Knowledge (biology) 1
>
> Knowledge (chemistry) 3
>
> Knowledge (physics) 8
>
> Knowledge (pop culture) 5
>
> Language (English) 5
>
> Mathematics 5
>
> Meditation 3
>
> Research 8
>
> Science 10
Social
> Autohypnosis 2
>
> Presence 2
>
> Persuade 2
>
> Teaching 4
Feats
> Child Genius
>
> Scientist
>
> Thesis Defender
>
> Philosophical Doctor
>
> Natural Athlete
Special Abilities
> ???
>
> ???
>
> ???
>
> Additional CNS Nodes I
>
> -Proprioception Learning I
>
> Improved Digestion I
>
> -Mutagenic Scavenging I
[ G r o w t h ]
Available Upgrades
> 1 Talent Points Available
>
> 1 Skill Points Available
>
> 1 Feat Selection Available
>
> 0 Mutagen Points Available
Current Growth Modifiers
> Child Genius
>
> Scientist
>
> Philosophical Doctor
>
> Natural Athlete
>
> ???
>
> ???
>
> Temp: Pure Survival
This time, what really stood out to her was the fact that she had somehow picked up Mutagenic Scavenging I during her fugue state. That had had a cost of three MP, which implied that she had somehow obtained three more MP, presumably one per raptor she had drained and ripped apart. Whatever episode she had just had drove her to consume the dinosaurs and get that upgrade; almost as if something inside her had a goal it was striving towards.
What the fuck?