I stayed still for a few minutes as I let the aches and pains wash over me. The cuts across my back itched and the burns on my hand made the skin painful when I moved. My eyes followed the wisps of smoke rising from the huge corpse of the partially burned bear as the heat finally dissipated. I kept a watch on the treeline, fool me once shame on me. As my pain had started to fade into the background, still there but no longer distracting me, I climbed slowly to my feet.

I looked down and sighed loudly. Walking normally proved a challenge but I managed to hobble over to the carcass and made my way round to the head. The fur had been largely burnt away across its face. The long snout hung open showing inch and a half long fangs that were partially yellowed by age. Buried in the right cheek was my dagger. Six Souls worth of useless. I grasped it, doing my best to avoid making the burns on my hand any worse, and tugged.

The leather wrapping on the handle flaked away and my hand slipped off. The fire had ruined it. Now I was left looking at a crudely shaped lump of stone sticking out of an animal's face that I suspected would slice my hand to ribbons if I tried to hold it tightly.

I shuffled back to the spear and shucked the cloak off my shoulders. The bear’s claws had helpfully sliced almost half of it into fairly even strips. I used the spear tip to trim them off cleanly, hoping fervently the bloody thing wouldn’t unravel as a result. Once I had half a dozen decent sized strips I put one to the side and began wrapping my feet.

Cordage. It would make keeping the impromptu shoes on my feet a lot easier. I opened the Shop then complained loudly and at length. The cheapest cordage was some kind of string made of plant fibres. Two fucking Souls for five metres of stone age garden twine. I fought back my annoyance and bought it.

A couple of slices later and I was sporting the shittiest shoes I’d ever worn in my life but as I rose to my feet I could feel the difference. The cordage was surprisingly not-shit as well. I’d tested it by pulling as hard as I could on a length and it hadn’t stretched or snapped.

I was still pissed off about the price. Twenty two Souls left in the bank. The thought of buying the crude but undoubtedly more effective footwear I had seen under the Leather Items section in the Shop was an itch in my mind that I refused to scratch. Everything I bought meant less Souls on my levels and abilities. I needed to min-max this shit if I was going to get home and that meant extreme frugality was all that lay in my future. I needed to spend my Souls on me, not items I could cobble together myself.

Health: 58/90

The bloody bear had half killed me and I was going to get my revenge. Sure, I’d already killed the bastard but now I was going to make the damn thing useful in death. With my stylish new boots I walked a little more easily and went to retrieve my knife. The stones still dug into the bottoms of my feet but it was considerably less painful. I wrapped the last strip of my cloak around my hand and gripped the stone jutting out of the giant’s face tightly. I leaned back. I pushed it in then pulled back again. The thing was very definitely stuck.

I tried to tease the knife from side to side ever so gently. While I was more used to carbon steel I wasn’t completely ignorant of the nature of stone weapons. They could be wickedly sharp but they were invariably brittle. With a gentle twist and lift I managed to free the short dagger, leaving several chips from the sharpened edge behind judging from the now ragged shape of one half of the blade.

It would still do its job though so I clutched my prize tightly. I looked around to keep an eye on the treeline as I carefully moved the wrapping from my fist to the handle of the knife, winding it around before tying it off roughly. The sun was still high in the sky. I probably had a few hours of sunlight left so the question became what to do with my time? I weighed the still functional dagger in my palm and sighed. I needed the sheath. That meant going back into the darkness but I was out of Mana. It had ticked up slightly but it seemed the rate of recovery was slow enough that I’d never be running about throwing fireballs willy-nilly.

I went and picked up what remained of my cloak and pulled it back on. I was now flashing my left butt cheek at the world whenever I moved but I had a plan to solve that issue. Bear skin undies were in my future. First things first though. I moved off to the nearby treeline to look for firewood.

I was assuming I’d been dumped into this world in the middle of summer for this latitude. The air was pleasantly warm when I was out of the breeze and I was happy to find plenty of dry deadfall. I was leaning on my spear with my left hand and in my right I held the dagger loosely. I propped the spear against a tree and began dragging dry branches and leaves into piles.

Despite the throbbing pain I was paying attention to my surroundings. I’d been an idiot when I’d wandered into the cave. Mistaking the musk of the resident monster for the musty smell of rotting vegetation. Very much a virgin error and I couldn’t afford anything like that again. I probably wouldn’t be so lucky again.

Birds chirped and chittered and whooped around me but they all fled almost as soon as I saw them. The weird bird noise was already starting to fall into the background of my attention but the noise was a sign that no threats were close by. I had just dropped another bundle of sticks onto my growing pile when I spotted a ball of fluff on a nearby tree. Its colouring was almost a perfect match for the bark it was standing on, which was why I’d failed to notice it before.

One end was a fluffy tail and at the other a beady black eye was carefully not staring at me. I paused for a moment as I nudged the sticks into a slightly neater pile with my foot. I gauged the distance carefully and moved my right hand, the one still holding my dagger, back behind my body slightly. I felt the balance of the knife in my hand. An underhand throw would be less than ideal but a half spin at this distance should be doable. As I continued to turn away it looked like the little guy relaxed slightly, his location and state became the focus of my attention in my peripheral vision.

I pivoted smoothly back towards him and the little shit moved to run up the tree. Always the same with squirrels. Altitude might equal safety most of the time but not when it makes your movements predictable. The knife flipped half a spin and slammed into the creature's back, pinning it to the tree a foot above where I’d first noticed it.

I limped over. Dark eyes looked at me full of resentment and resignation.

“Sorry little bloke. Better luck next time.”

With one hand I pinned its neck to the tree hard enough to hear the delicate bones snap and tugged the dagger free of the bark with the other.

Normalis Sciurus slain.

1 Soul gained.

I grunted as the dagger came free from the body and turned back to my pile of sticks with a sigh. It seemed I could get Souls from anything I killed. I began eyeing the ferns growing nearby speculatively but my gut told me only animals would be included in the list of useful victims. This opened up some opportunities that almost made my heart race despite my exhaustion. I could think of a few ways to abuse that loophole. Unfortunately my “how not to die” list had a few points that needed to be covered off before I could begin to harvest Souls properly.

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Clutching my fluffy prize and dagger in one hand I stooped and gathered an armful of sticks under my right arm before grabbing the spear with my spare fist and limping my way back to the cave entrance. The bear carcass was going to be a problem. Currently it partially blocked the approach to the cave mouth which was fine but soon it would start to smell and attract predators and scavengers. I was already pretty beaten up and wasn’t feeling like fighting off wolves and hyenas or whatever this place's equivalent of those animals might turn out to be.

I started building my stock of firewood a few feet into the cave. I moved the cordage I had left to the opposite wall and put the dead squirrel down next to it. It took me five more trips to fetch the rest of the wood I’d gathered and I sat down to rest, leaning my back against the un-charred side of the bear corpse. It was surprisingly comfortable. The next bear-bit would be messy though. After a few minutes just breathing and gathering my strength I checked my status.

Health: 59/90

Mana: 11/70

Well that was a good start, I’d been worried I’d have to buy potions or something to recover. One health and ten mana every hour or so if my guess was right. I rose and eyed the massive body of the bear. Before the light faded I needed to be in a position to skin this big bastard and harvest what I could from it. The larger bones would make passable maces or handles for improvised tools. The tendons would be cut free and set aside to be used as better cordage than the crap I’d bought in the Shop. Much of the viscera would go to waste but the liver, kidneys, heart and balls would all go in the pot, when I got round to making or buying a pot. I quietly prayed that meat would be edible. I knew from experience that some predators' flesh tastes utterly vile.

I looked over my hairy, smelly and unprocessed potential larder then sighed. Even if the meat was tasty there was too much here to eat before it began to rot. I’d need to drag it far enough away that I wouldn’t be constantly pestered by scavengers.

So much to do and so little time to do it. Before anything else I needed water. My endurance was good and the pain was little more than an annoyance now but I was building a mighty thirst. I could get a waterskin in the Shop if I had to and with a lot of reluctance I accepted that was most likely inevitable but for now I’d hang onto my Souls. I retrieved the spear and dagger, wrapped my cloak around me as best I could and hobbled deeper into the woods that surrounded my little cave. With a bit of luck there’d be a stream nearby or a pond at the bottom of the hill.

I was starting to feel a little more like my old self. The absence of consumer electronics, in particular things like freezers, was weighing on my mind but the clean air and what I was gradually coming to think of as melodious bird noises helped perk my mood back up. I kept a careful watch as I picked my way down the forested slope, making note of a few things that caught my eye.

Animal runs for what I guessed would be “Normalis Rabbiticus” wove their way through the undergrowth and I followed the largest one I found as it led down hill. I spotted a variety of berries and plants that interested me.

The berries were deep red and I carefully tested them on the skin of my forearm, then the inside of my lower lip before waiting half an hour. As I waited I used a stick to scratch at the base of a plant whose leaves reminded me of the potatoes my grandfather had grown in his allotment when I was a kid. Sure enough a few inches below the surface I found large white nodules of tuber. I sliced one open and sniffed at it. Seemed like a potato to me. I dug up half a dozen more and bundled them into my cloak that I held closed with one hand.

Having experienced no obvious ill effects from the berry I picked a few handfuls of them and popped one into my mouth, chewing carefully. They were sweet and juicy. My thirst ordered me to gobble the rest but I fought down the urge. I needed to wait and see if I felt sick before eating anymore. I optimistically added a few more handfuls to the pouch I’d formed in my cloak, trusting I would survive the first one and have a source of vitamins for the future.

An hour later I was starting to worry but then I found what I was looking for. I’d been expecting a tinkling laughter of a babbling brook to announce my much longed for water source. Instead I stepped out from a dense thicket of brush to find a stony slope leading down to a wide river. It flowed between my hill and the next then curled to what I assumed was the west as the sun was falling in that direction. It wound round the base of my neighbouring hill before eventually cutting south into the grassy plains in the distance.

I moved out onto the stones and checked my surroundings. Water sources were always popular with predators and prey and I fully intended not to become the latter. Nothing larger than a bird was moving around me so I stepped forward and the spear butt slipped off the smooth stone and plunged an inch into the mud.

I pulled it up and spun the shaft around. I poked the brown coating then grinned. I tossed the spear behind me and carefully laid down the cloak to keep my victuals within it clean.

Once I was free of my burdens I carefully heaved aside one of the large shiny stones and scraped at the muck beneath. It was firm and tacky. Clay. Fuck you Shop! I’d still have to get some basics but I could now make my own bowls and simple storage items, a useful saving on my outgoing Soul balance sheet. I moved further onto the stones and approached the edge of the river. It was a good ten metres across, running deep and fast. Not suitable for swimming then. I desperately wanted to dive in and wash the blood and stink from my body.

I checked upstream and could see a decent distance but wasn’t going to get fooled that easily. Again I controlled my thirst and checked the shop. Fuck you once again Shop. In the Leather Items section was exactly what I needed but once again it wasn’t cheap.

I grumbled as two leather waterskins appeared on the ground in front of me. Five Souls a piece but they could hold three litres between them and they came with handy straps to let them hang from my shoulders. I refused to drink as I carefully filled them, keeping the open mouths right at the surface to minimise the sediment they picked up. The wooden stoppers were quickly jammed back in place and I slung one under each arm.

By the time I’d made it back to my cave the sun was much lower in the sky. I scanned around but couldn’t see any evidence my property rights had been violated. No scuff marks in the litter covering the ground on the approach other than ones I was sure I’d made myself.

I went into the entrance of the cave and laid down my weary load. Some of the smaller twigs I’d gathered were piled together and I laid a few larger branches over them. I had to snap some of the longer ones against my knee to break them into useful lengths which made the burns on my hands sting. Once I had a simple fire arranged I bent down and wormed a finger into the tinder at the heart of the crude construction. With a thought I spent ten mana and a blob of fire appeared.

Snatching my hand back as my finger began to burn I leaned forward to blow gently onto the tinder. It caught and soon enough I had a merry little blaze going in the mouth of my new home. I kept feeding it wood until I was confident it would stay lit then eyed the bear. Not yet, I concluded. I needed to drink and I had no intention of shitting myself to death due to some waterborne amoeba or other microscopic rascal.

I had thirteen Souls left. With a grimace I spent three Souls on a crude clay pot that could hold a litre or so of liquid. I built up the fire a bit more and filled the pot from one of my waterskins. I shook it and found it was still about a third full. I laid it back down by the cloak and nudged the pot over till it rested against the burning wood. Soon enough you thirsty bastard. Soon enough.

While I waited for the water to boil I picked up the dagger and made my way over to the bear. Still big, smelly and dead. I’m not sure why I was worried about it not being dead but seeing as I could now conjure fire with a thought I figured I had best not take anything for granted. After a few experimental kicks and pokes with the knife I was satisfied the thing wasn’t going to rear up during what came next. With a blank face I crouched down and slipped the unchipped edge of the knife into the bear's exposed stomach and slowly pulled the blade up towards its chest.

As the knife moved the already swelling guts spilled out over my badly wrapped feet and I cursed. I set about skinning the giant animal with a vigour that surprised me, some hidden source of strength fuelled me. It may have been spite stemming from all my aches and pains.