As they walked, Aster considered where to place her two free points. Would it be better to shore up her weaknesses or put them into Agility and Toughness and reinforce her strengths?

She didn’t feel like Wisdom or Intelligence would help her at the moment at all, considering she had no magic. Vitality was never a bad option, but it was growing steadily and she didn’t want to have a build based on having more health than other people. Aster preferred surviving by avoiding hits, as opposed to surviving in spite of taking them.

Then she considered Perception. What exactly did that do? When she tried to use her Identify skill on her Status she got nothing, so she tried to logic her way through it.

What effect would having more Perception have in a practical sense? A person with more would notice more, but did that extend beyond sight? You could “perceive” with your ears, with your senses of touch and smell. And what other kinds of senses existed now?

The more she thought about it the more convinced Aster became. Boosting her Perception was likely to improve her sensory input and overall comprehension of her surroundings. That sounded like an excellent way to improve her dodging capabilities. Without hesitation, she put her two free points into Perception.

The results were… minor. Her eyesight cleared, though it had never been bad enough for her to require glasses. Did things smell stronger? Maybe… She definitely thought she could hear better.

As far as results in competition— no, in combat— would go, she would to be able to test it very soon.

--

Castle had been unsure about Aster. The woman was confusing, to say the least. One second she’d be engrossed with some indiscriminate plant, or lost in her own head and trip on a rock, oblivious to the world, and the next she’d say or do something to show Castle that same competency she’d displayed the prior night.

Sure, Castle knew about flint and steel, but not how to identify it in the wild; let alone on a magical, floating island with dinosaurs and other impossibilities on it. She’d been impressed with Aster’s makeshift pens, though without paper and ink, she wasn’t sure how she planned to make use of them.

And then there was their sparring. Castle hadn’t been completely honest with Aster. She’d enjoyed taking the edge off her long, stressful days by training in a martial arts gym near her apartment and had used a quarterstaff before. It was useful for learning how to move her body as a whole, and for learning to pay attention to her surroundings better. The act of swinging a bigass stick around sometimes had the nasty effect of hitting something with it that she didn’t want to hit, and she’d seen what sort of damage could be done by the far end of a staff swinging at full speed.

So yeah, she’d sparred with something akin to her halberd before. She’d wanted to surprise Aster after her stunt with the flintrock last night, but she’d been unable to. Castle had been unable to leave so much as a scratch or take even a foot of ground against Aster’s spearmanship.

It had been like simultaneously trying to push rope and pull on a fishhook. Everything she tried either had no effect or served to put herself in a worse position. Swing her halberd horizontally? Easy block. Hold it closer to her, dropping her stance and playing defensively? Aster had outmaneuvered her, drawing her into overextending and disarming her by catching the axe on her halberd with her spear.

When Castle had started to lose her patience and let her higher Strength stat carry the fight, she’d done better. She’d kept hold of her weapon, thrown Aster back a few times, and overall made the fight much more even—and yet she still felt like it had been a fight she wouldn’t have won. Aster had simply moved… differently. Like it was a dance she’d rehearsed instead of an improvisation.

She watched as Aster crouched by a bush with red leaves, took a few and rubbed them between her hands, leaving a dark stain. Nodding, Aster then broke off a couple of small branches from the plant and tucked them in her satchel.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Castle shook her head. Probably thinking about how to make ink, she thought. Maria had had plenty of experience with the sciences. She’d learned plenty going through nursing school, but that had been because she wanted a stable job. Aster just seemed like a distractable nerd.

A distractable nerd who fights like a devil.

“How do you know that isn’t poisonous?” Castle risked asking as she passed by Aster. ‘Risked’, because she was afraid of a lengthy answer.

“Poisonous?” Aster looked up, then back at her hands and muttered, “ah, shit. Well, it’s not burning yet, so I’m hoping I’m fine.”

Castle rolled her eyes, looking up at the sun. It was past noon now, and they only had a little bit of time before the Challenge notification went out. They’d been walking through this canyon for too long without seeing anything, and she’d begun to wonder whether they were heading the wrong way if they wanted to find something to fight.

And then she saw something move above them, on the ridge of the cliff. Something big.

Something that stepped off the cliff and landed behind Aster more quietly than anything that size had a right to.

It was huge— easily nine feet tall, and early twice as tall as either of them. A frill of feathers behind its head shook loose and spread out as the brown and orange striped, scaled monster lowered its head and prepared to pounce.

[Springclaw Raptor - Level 12]

“Aster!” Castle raised her halberd. “Move!”

--

Dinosaurs had a special place in Aster’s heart. Metaphorically speaking, of course, and she’d prefer to keep it that way. The massive theropod that had appeared behind her out of nowhere, however, seemed to want to dig her heart out of her chest and pop it like a breath mint.

Stop anthropomorphizing and fucking move.

Castle’s call had absolutely saved her life, as the springclaw raptor had both the advantages of surprise and being an absolute monster. Its tail ended in a club that went rigid as it prepared to pounce. The feathers running down its back laid flat, though she had no doubt they could be raised in a threat display of some sort. Its arms were still short and its legs stubby, but she could see the rippling muscle beneath the orange-and-brown-striped scales. The scales along its chest were wider, like those of a snake’s underbelly, though it did have visible earholes like lizards and birds. However, it was the teeth that told her the biggest difference between this beast and the hatchlings she’d encountered before.

They weren’t for crushing shells, like she’d theorized about the hatchlings’ molars. Nor were they sharp for shearing off bites. The closest approximation she could fathom in the moment was a crocodile’s jaws, meant to grip unbelievably tight before ripping bits away, and it was terrifyingly easy to imagine this dinosaur holding her down with its massively strong legs and gripping on to one of her limbs and pulling.

Aster took all this in and made her conclusions in the time it took for the springclaw to lower its haunches, lock up its tail and wiggle its hips like a cat about to pounce. But as fast as she and her improved perception were, the dinosaur was faster.

It moved so fast, clearing twice its body length in space before Aster could so much as stand— so she didn’t. Instead, she threw herself backwards, trying to raise her spear up to catch it on its underside like she’d done to the hatchling, but she didn’t have the coordination she needed to get a good angle in time.

It collided with her like a truck, sending her flying back a couple dozen feet. She gripped her spear with all her might, holding it close as she rolled to a stop. The taste of copper filled her mouth and she spat out a wad of blood, feeling at the tear in her lip where she’d bit through. It stung, but she was able to disregard the pain easily. The last year of her life had been spent in constant pain, after all.

Castle had gotten the raptor’s attention, buying time for Aster to scramble to her feet. She took in their surroundings again, noting the three-way intersection they were at. The stream they’d been following ran in from the east, running south the way they came, with the other path coming in from the north.

This is bad, Aster thought. There was no safe way to close in on the theropod, with its clubbed tail on one end and all the pointy shit on the other. If they could wear it down somehow, maybe one of them could land a killing blow...

Either way, Castle was in a bad spot and needed help immediately.

Aster tried to rise to her feet but found her ankle didn’t agree with her. Mainly due to the face that it was facing the wrong way. Surprisingly enough, the pain hadn’t hit her yet—

Ooooh fuck! There’s the pain.

“Castle!” Aster called out. “I’m going to need a second!”

“I don’t have a second!” She yelled back.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, Aster thought as she struggled for an answer. Something clinked next to her and she realized the answer was right there with her.

The leather on her satchel was worn, despite it only being handed to her days ago. A quill slipped out as she reached in and pulled out a small vial of red liquid.

It tasted like water, but the thrill that ran through her as her ankle felt like it was doing backflips? That thrill was next to none. If she’d had something like this available to her in her underclassman years? In high school?

In chemo?

This world was giving her more than a second chance; it was giving her cheat codes. And as she looked up at the freaking dinosaur threatening her and her traveling companion, she felt like fucking winning.