An angry growl made Robert immediately stop any movement and carefully look around his surroundings. Sunset and cloudy sky prevented any clear sight, making him half-blind. Still, Rob strained his eyes to capture the direction of incoming danger. The tip of the spear was already doing circles in midair, ready to intercept the threat. Despite the nascent fear, he was ready to meet it head-on. The experience he had in the past week told him that sometimes running away would only make everything worse. Still, he didn’t throw away such an option, wanting to see his opponent first.
A new growl came from the nearest bushes, but nothing more. Robert made a quick glance around him to capture possible obstacles and focused again on the unknown creature. The dense plant five meters to the left started to shake as the possible predator approached Rob’s location. However, its speed and another roar made it look as if this animal wasn’t totally sure. Therefore, to quicken the unavoidable outcome, Robert directly made a few steps back. In the next moment, a big shadow rushed to him, baring its maw with sharp fangs.
Rob’s mind managed to capture an image of a short-faced bear with yellow stripes on its brown fur before his body started to move. This one was much smaller than his first one, giving Robert more chances to succeed. He didn’t invent anything new, pointing the spear into the animal’s muzzle. Its other side was already tightly planted on the ground. When Rob felt the impact, he immediately jumped to the side, not even bothering to try to stop a heavy creature. The clawed pawn of a bear cut the air in mere centimeters (inches) from his body, before impaling its owner on a sharpened stick. Inertia was too huge for the wooden weapon to endure pressure, breaking it instantly. The fall was accompanied by painful whining, but Robert didn’t stop to celebrate his win, as the bear tried to stand up.
Rob noticed a bloodied stick, still stuck inside an opened maw when his boot sole crashed right into the bear’s ear. The hit wasn’t strong, but it was enough to put the trembling and wounded animal back to the ground. A pitiful sound similar to crying came from it as if it wasn’t an aggressor in the first place. However, it didn’t stop Robert even for a mere second. Knowing what that monster could do to him, he fully aimed to finish it without giving any chance to retaliate. He struck with his leg a few more times before stepping back to pick second half of the broken spear. Steeling his heart, Rob tried to make a lethal hit, but the bear also didn’t want to give up.
Roaring with pain and rage, it pushed itself up. Standing on back paws almost at the same height as Robert, covered with blood, it made fearful scenery directly from horror movies. Unfortunately for the animal, a flash of such an image only accelerated Rob’s actions. The tip of the spear pierced its jaw and went inside the palate, making it impossible for the bear to close its maw despite all efforts. Therefore, the creature decided to redirect the latter to the source of this wound. Roaring again, it pounced on Robert, trying to shove him under itself.
By sheer luck, Rob managed to bounce back, escaping the bear’s hugs. Still, it left them with a deep red mark on his chest. Cursing the unyielding vitality of his enemy together with his own physical weakness, he threw another half of the spear into the predator, before quickly turning back and trying to escape. Poor physique could be compensated with a good weapon, but he didn’t have one, and hand-to-hand combat with a bear was quite a dumb idea.
Robert made only a few steps before he felt a tremble behind him as the animal went on four limbs. A new portion of adrenaline rushed through him, accelerating his mind to find possible solutions, but his body already acted on its own. Seeing the nearest tree, he mindlessly jumped onto it in an attempt to create any obstacle between him and the bear. Survival instinct not only gave him a boost in speed but also in strength as he never climbed that fast. Or that was what he thought.
The bear’s body crashed under him with such force that the trunk of the tree almost crumbled. The impact was so strong that his fingers unclenched just for a moment. However, that was enough. Robert found himself flying backward to the ground, right on the angry creature. He only managed to brace himself, before his buttocks hit something solid. That didn’t stop his inertia, making to do a full backflip before planting his face onto the ground. His clenched teeth made him bite his tongue, so he could only groan in pain in expectation of clawed paws. Ten seconds later nothing came after him. After a full minute of silence, Rob realized that something had happened.
Only willpower helped him to get up only to find that the predator was lying motionless near him. His fall went directly on the head of the bear. Under the weight of Robert’s body, it pushed the earlier stuck spear further into the brain of the animal, immediately ending its life most stupidly. On the other hand, it was very luck for Rob. The luck that he lacked for the full week of previous wandering. At least the duration of each day felt like only a little longer than the familiar 24 hours.
Firstly, his chosen direction down the stream had ended in two days with a small lake. Robert made a full circle around it only to find no traces of humans or any other sapient beings. So, he had to make a return trip, wasting a lot of time for nothing. During it, he had to make a hasty escape from a group of boars, with whom he crossed the path accidentally. For an unknown reason, his running away made creatures even angrier. Rob spent the next ten minutes sprinting a full speed. Flaming pain in his legs and constant lack of air made him feel like dying. He couldn’t even curse loudly being out of breath. The obvious thought of possibly climbing on the tree was thrown away because he didn’t know if the animals would leave him or stay – their aggressive behavior surprised him, and he didn’t want to gamble with his life. So he ran as fast as he could. Luckily, the first obstacle on his way was a fallen trunk that helped him a lot to increase the distance between them.
That event hadn’t ended his misadventures. In the night it rained. No, it RAINED. Together with a rising wind, the temperate dropped by a good margin. Having only pants and boots, Robert couldn’t even cover himself from the raging downpour. His attempts to find cover failed, as tree crowns in this forest were not dense enough to stop the falling water while handling the task of obstructing a vision with ease. Once again, there were no caves, huge roots, or abandoned houses. Only rain and coldness.
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Moreover, the situation with food was deadly. Literally deadly as almost everything seemed to have poison in it. Both their strength and lethality differed between plants, but even leaves made his mouth burn. Rob thanked his precaution in choosing adaptation ability, as with any other he would already be dead. Hunting wasn’t an option for him, so he relied only on this power. Fortunately, it gave visible results, especially when he understood how everything worked for him.
After any stress to his body, be it physical from long walking or harm from poisoning, his Adaptive ability kicked in, using available mana to change his body so next time it would be easier for it to overcome the stress. The difference was in the speed of activation. Exercises needed a few minutes of pause while fighting poison didn’t have any delay. Robert guessed that it probably depended on the degree of harm and complexity of change. When all mana was spent, ability stopped working, fixating everything and even stabilizing his condition so he wouldn’t die. Even with lethal poison inside his veins, he would stay on a brick of death, not crossing the dangerous line. Then he had to wait until he regenerated his mana back to be full. Only after that, his wounds would start to heal from his Spirit Body ability. The obvious assumption was that this power used his excesses of mana as energy to restore his body, not even trying to dig in a main “storage”.
A noticeable problem lay in this time gap between empty and full mana level. Rob understood that the more mana he had, the better and quicker he would adapt to repeated stress. However, with less mana capacity he could restore himself faster. Maybe even to heal during future battles. On the other hand, if his body was acquainted with stress, he felt his Adaptation ability maybe wouldn’t even work. It meant for survival in the first place, and therefore it definitely needed some minimal level of stress to activate.
Therefore, his plan was somehow to increase mana regeneration, placing a bigger part of his soul through Anchor in between-dimension. In that way, he could make more cycles of Adaptation, compensating for its weakening from lower capacity, and shortening the time needed to recover from wounds. However, Rob didn’t have the slightest idea how to accomplish it. He couldn’t even perceive the mana, only feeling strange emptiness when he had none of it. At least Robert got some other results from his adventures. His tattoo with God’s logo was invisible on his forearm until focusing on it and still was a source of concentration to summon the status screen, which now showed a small progress.
Envoy of Wepwakor (candidate) – Tier 0
Strength 3/23 Agility 5/17 Endurance 5/25 Toughness 5/15
Vitality 6/16 Perception 9/14 Mind 40/50 Core 13/20
Mana regeneration (7): 1% in apr. 107 seconds
Current level of mana – 73%
Abilities: Adaptive
Traits: Remolded, Envoy, Spirit, Anchor
His Strength, Toughness, and Vitality had increased by 1 point, and Endurance even by 2. It looked a lot for around ten days of wandering, but taking into account his pathetic physique, it wasn’t anything special. Constant moving with unnatural recovery and super adaptation increased his muscle strength by around 10% and endurance by 21% if he needed to be precise. That definitely decreased the feel of growth when a jump from 2 points to 3 seemed like a 50% addition but was much less in reality.
Except for scars, Robert didn’t see any change in his body at all. Hell, he looked even skinnier with his malnutrition. Rob was sure that proper training, eating, and resting with newly acquired powers might have given him much more in the same period. Maybe, not Toughness though – that most likely came from meeting with the bear’s pawns. Poisoning might affect Vitality but without any tips from the System, he needed more tests, mostly painful ones.
Still, there is progress, no matter how small it is. I haven’t died and even made my first kill. Of course, there is no reward for that – no experience points, no achievement, no free stats. Guess, the real God doesn’t need the soul of an ordinary bear. Now, I can try again to make a bonfire. Hope this time I won’t waste a few hours for nothing. Next, I will need something sharp to get meat, better without fur, and don’t want to jinx it, but there is a huge possibility that you, Robert, will get a proper meal finally… I deserved it!
His thoughts were interrupted by a wolf’s howl, which sounded not far away. In a few moments, another one responded from a different location, shattering all Rob’s dreams about a pleasant evening. He didn’t even have the mental strength to curse. His luck was roller coasting up and down all the time. Being alive made it net positive, but that gave no pleasure to Rob.
Okay, mushrooms again. Last time I vomited only once and had a short fever. Maybe soon I could eat them as non-poisoned average food. That would be great…
Trying to be optimistic, he quickly got up. Glancing one more time on the bear carcass, Robert sighed and turned around. He was around a hundred meters (300 ft.) away from a river in search of berries, so spending a few seconds to remember the correct direction, he hastily moved to the water. The latter might help him to hide his traces and especially smell from predators. Still, Rob hoped it wouldn’t be needed and meat, that was left behind, would be enough for wolves to fill their stomachs. They were scavengers and maybe would abandon the unneeded hunt. At least that was his hope.
I need a new spear. Also, while near the river I can finally try to search proper stone to make some kind of knife. Better two, to have spare. Don’t know how long it will take me to find sapient beings. I need to start preparing and not just aimlessly wander in the hope of finding a settlement… The first part of my name is the same as Crusoe had, so I can’t spoil the honor of it! If the strategy with the river doesn’t work, I need to come up with something new. And I need to do it right now and not put aside it for the future.
Preparations are crucial, Robert, you know it. Remember how many times you fought with higher-ups for proper repair of your battle machines because of the same reasoning. Maybe it is good to set a deadline for a search. I can’t spend months traveling – a change of season can kill me. So, I need to be attentive to finding possible locations for my future shelter. Hope that it would be a useless precaution, but better to be safe than sorry. No wishful thinking about lucky encounters, help from God, or from my system. I am on my own and can rely only on myself! I can survive and I will do… What? Wait, is that smoke?