Chapter 5
Billy stepped out of the Induction Centre to see that the frogs and snizards were no longer to be seen. The corrupted beasts, it seemed, had little patience. He signaled Lorna that it was clear.
Lorna stepped out and looked around. The spear looked comfortable in her hands. Billy felt like he was holding a live snake in his sweaty palms. He knew it would take some time before he was comfortable carrying a weapon, mind using it.
Billy realized that he had not observed much in their dash towards safety. If they were going to survive out here, he was going to have to be more observant and alert. Just that flock of birds could have wiped them out earlier. There were dangers everywhere. The area around the building was clear for about a twenty-metre radius. There were more trees and undergrowth here than the swamp earlier and the ground was much more solid. It was also thankfully less humid. The sun was lower in the sky which probably meant they only had a few hours of daylight left.
“What do you think we should do?” he asked. “We could try to kill a few mobs to level up.”
“Mobs?”
“You know mobiles…game characters.”
“This isn’t a game, Billy.”
“I know, but it feels similar.”
Lorna sighed. “I think we need to get some idea of this area first. And I do not want to go back to that stinky swamp again.”
Billy had been hoping to get his revenge on a few frogs. With an actual weapon, the frogs should be easy to kill, especially as he now knew about their tongue venom. The snizards might be a different story. But he knew Lorna was right. He would have to wait for his revenge. They needed to get more knowledge of this area as well as find food. He had no wish to eat demonic frogs – even the snakes were more appealing.
So even the system wanted them to explore. Before he could act another quest appeared.
The system seemed to be getting more snarky too. Lorna and Billy looked at each other, her brown eyes searching his for something.
“You got the messages?” she asked.
“Yes. Finding food and shelter is our priority. We have two days.”
Eventually, she shrugged. “Shall we?”
“OK,” he said finally. “Lead the way.”
While everything around looked normal, green trees, green plants, and brown branches, he could not shake the feeling of alienness. This was not the Earth, but it seemed similar. The differences were as small as a different smell or a different shade of green. He had expected an alien world to feel more alien. He knew that nature had its diversity but here everything was nearly familiar – even the sky was only a slightly different blue with a subtle hint of green. If it had not been for the weird creatures that had attacked them he would have thought he was still on Earth. Maybe this place had a familiar feel because it was the starter zone. He was sure that Infernus had plenty of surprises in store for them.
They had only just reached the overgrown area when Lorna held up her hand. She pointed slightly to her right with the spear. There, twenty meters away, a huge squirrel sat in a tree watching them – a huge squirrel with massive incisors jutting from its mouth. The creature was larger than the frogs had been. It was nibbling on a red lump it held between its front paws. Billy could swear that the squirrel’s eyes were blood red. Its claws were as long as his fingers. He was tempted to throw his spear at it, but he did not overestimate his own martial prowess. Unless this body was vastly different from his old one and had superhuman abilities he was not going to hit even something that big.
It did not appear to want to move yet. Almost like it was summing up whether they were worth the effort of killing them.
He looked at it trying to find some clue until a ding popped up in his mind.
In front of his eyes, red text appeared just above the squirrel’s head.
Fiendish squirrel: level 5. Favorite food: you.
“Back away,” he whispered. “Just back away.”
They slowly edged back towards the potential safety of the Induction Centre. Billy was shaking and dripping with sweat by the time they had returned to the building even though the squirrel had not moved at all.
“Fuck me!” he said. “We are not ready for that.”
Lorna looked at him. “It was big but still just a squirrel.”
“A level 5 squirrel eating meat. Where do you think the meat came from? We are not ready for that yet, if at all.”
She nodded. “Then let’s go the other way but stick to the edge of the swamp. It looks like the ground rises over there.”
Billy knew that in stories protagonists found convenient caves to shelter in, but from his experience, caves were rarely near flat swampy areas. To find a cave they would need somewhere a little hillier. Still away from the squirrel was as good a direction as any.
“I don’t suppose you were a girl scout,” he mumbled.
She laughed. “Actually, I was for a while. There was this cute boy who was in the scouts so I joined up. I quite enjoyed the camping but the rest was pretty blah. And then I saw him kiss another girl. So ended my scouting days.”
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“Shame,” he said.
“Oh, I did learn some skills. I know to make a fire and built a basic shelter from branches and shit. But they didn’t teach me how to kill evil bloody squirrels.”
“Come on, Lorna. Let’s find something we can kill.”
They moved forward, both of them scanning around as they softly stepped on the ground. Billy could not help wincing every time a stick snapped beneath his feet.
“Hey! I’ve gained a skill.” Lorna said in surprise.
“What is it? I gained
“It is called, Soft Step. It allows me to move with a ten percent reduction in noise.”
“That will probably increase as you level it. I guess some skills can be gained from practice.”
She nodded. “I was never really into games much. Regret that now! Come on!”
Slowly they moved along. The saw one or two birds in the distance but so far nothing much. They were about to stop and return to the Induction Centre, not wanting to get too far away from the building when they heard something rustling in the bushes.
Lorna held her finger to her lips and readied her spear. Billy gripped his own spear more tightly. Crawling out from the brush with its back to them came a creature that looked like a normal rabbit except with weird-looking eyes. For a moment he lowered his spear but then he remembered his
Now this was more his style.
The rabbit still had not seen them but occasionally lifted its head to sniff the air. Billy hoped it had never smelled human before. He motioned to Lorna and she nodded. She moved forward slowly with her spear top pointed towards the ground. In one swift movement, she impaled the rabbit. She pulled back the spear and then lifted the rabbit up by the ears.
“We have food,” she said victoriously. “I got 10 experience points plus I got a soft-step skill.”
“Congrats!”,” Billy said. He looked at the scrawny rabbit. “I don’t think that will feed us for long. We will need some more.”
Before she could reply a large bird zoomed out of the trees and snatched the rabbit from her hands. Billy could only watch as the bird flew away with her prize.
Lorna let out a little scream. With a couple of deep breaths, she regained control and then said. “Let’s keep hunting. Where there is one rabbit there will be more.
It took them a couple of hours to kill three more rabbits. They would have had more but Billy missed his first few thrusts plus with his clumsy feet he has problems sneaking up on the rabbits. Fortunately, Lorna never missed. As she was the one with the better skills for hunting he left the majority of the kills to her. She had even increased her [soft step] skill to level 3 as well as gaining a [spear mastery] skill.
The sun was starting to set so they decided to head back to the centre. Billy had collected wood for the fire as well as a few long sticks that could be used for spits. Lorna carried the dead rabbits, holding them close to her. From the look on her face, he pitied any other creature that tried to steal her food from her.
They had just taken the first few steps back to the Induction Centre when a six-legged creature emerged from the undergrowth.
Billy immediately used his [analyse] skill. Mutated fox: level 2. Favorite food: rabbits.
“Level 2,” he whispered. “Let’s just back away. We have what we came for.”
The fox was much bigger than the foxes he had seen in documentaries.
The fox, however, seemed to have it’s gaze locked on the rabbits. As they backed away it stalked towards them.
“I don’t think it's going to let us go,” Lorna said.
“We could make a run for it.”
“Something tells me turning our backs is an even worse idea.”
“What if we threw it a rabbit?”Lorna cursed. “Better than fighting it I guess.”
She threw a rabbit hard. The corpse landed ten meters behind the fox. The fox snarled at them for a few seconds and then turned, grabbed the rabbit corpse and sped away.
Billy let out a long sigh which cut off when two more foxes emerged.
One look at Lorna and he knew that she would be giving away any more rabbits. He placed the firewood on the ground and gripped the spear in his hands.
“Once I get their attention, run,” he said.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You can’t fight them both off.”
“Just do it. The others need food and if I die, I will come back.”
“This time we stay together,” she snarled. She quickly tied together the ears of the two rabbits and slung them over her shoulders. “I wonder what fox tastes like?”
“OK, I will go in front and grab their attention. You stay behind me and do what you do best and stab, stab, stab!”
She looked reluctant but nodded. He moved forward. The two foxes snarled as he approached. He held the spear across his chest. He knew all he had to do was to fend off the foxes. Lorna would do the rest.
One of the foxes rushed forward and leapt to bite his thigh. He pushed it back with the butt of the spear and then cried out the other fox bit deeply into his other leg.
<-5 hit points. Bleed effect -1 hit point per second.>
“Shit!” The pain was unbearable. Even the frog poison did not feel this bad.
Luckily, Lorna was prepared and she stabbed deeply into the fox biting his leg. The fox pulled back whimpering with blood gushing from its chest.
“How’s that for a bleed effect,” Billy crowed. Still, they had to finish this quickly or the bleed effect would kill him.
Even though the injured fox had retreated, the other fox still took up his attention. It was all he could do to keep it away, moving the staff from side to side. He had not even dealt one hit point of damage. Lorna ran forward to attack the injured fox. A quick death would make this battle easier. He could only watch as she side-stepped the fox’s lunge and then thrust her spear into the back of the fox. Two more quick thrusts and the creature lay dead at her feet.
Billy however was not so lucky. The injured fox danced to one side and then another and then leapt at his face. He dropped his spear and caught it in his arms, falling to the ground. They rolled around with the fox snapping at his face and Billy trying to hold it away.
Its back claws lashed at his chest.
<-2 hit points. Bleed effect – 1 hit point per second >
<-2 hit points. Bleed effect – 1 hit point per second >.
“Crap!” He could feel his life dripping away.
And then Lorna’s spear butt flashed into the fox forcing it away from him. A second later it was dead, impaled on the ground.
“Got to stop the bleeding,” Billy said between clenched teeth. His chest was on fire from the claw lacerations and his leg was throbbing.
Lorna grabbed handfuls of leaves from the ground and pushed them against his leg, clamping her fingers tightly against the wound. Billy forced himself to move and applied pressure through the cloth of his robe to his chest wound, hoping to stop the bleeding.
A few more seconds passed when, finally, a message appeared.
Billy let out a groan and lay back. The bleeding maybe stopped but the pain was still there. He still had 10 hit points left.
<2 mutated foxes killed. 20 XP points gained>
Lorna sat on the ground next to him. “Death keeps knocking at your door, Billy.”
Billy laughed. “I am making a great meat shield.”
“Well, we have more meat now, and I did get another 20XP. I am near to leveling up. But we need to move before anything else comes. The good news is that my [spear mastery] is now level 2.”
Billy quickly checked his status screen. He had gained one new skill [pain resistance]. At level 1 it reduced the pain felt by 2%.
“Let me bind your leg up and we can head back,” she said.
She ripped away the sleeves of his robe to bind his legs and then ripped away a significant length of cloth off the bottom part of his robe to bind his chest. Billy could only imagine what he looked like in his bloodied and torn robe – more of a mini-robe now.
With her help, he rose to his feet. Using the spear to support his weight he somehow managed to balance a fox corpse over his shoulder and to carry the bundle of sticks in his other hand.
Together they slowly walked back to the Induction Centre.