It turned out, to no one's surprise, that the bear meat tasted bad. Once my pot of water had boiled for a few minutes I let it cool then drank my fill. I’d peeled and chopped the potato-like tubers then cooked them in the remaining water with a couple of handfuls of berries while I held chunks of bear meat threaded onto a green stick over the hotter parts of the fire. The bear tasted like licking the insides of an old man's slippers. Not that I’d ever done that back on Earth but it was how imagined that would taste. Long story short: it tasted like shit.
Uncle Hunger and Daddy Thirst both backed off and despite the lingering pain from my fight with the now partially disassembled monstrosity I felt a lot better. I put some more wood on the fire and went back to work. I’d found some kind of bush in the treeline that had weird leaves. They were broad, almost a foot and half long and waxy. I’d gathered a pile of them while I took a break from butchering and wrapped the squirrel body in one, neatly bound up with a short length of cordage. I was being stingy with that stuff; I wanted to get my money’s worth from it as it was vital to my near future plans.
As I stripped meat from the bear I carefully wrapped it in the deep green leaves and stacked it in the cave behind my fire. I kept having to stop in order to feed more wood to the fire and keep the orange flames dancing as the light went away and the stars came out. I began to fret that I hadn’t gathered enough wood to last through the night. Nothing I could do about it now and the alien stars were deeply unnerving. Navigating by the night sky was something I knew only too well and the unknown patterns above me drove home the fact I was no longer in Kansas, as Dorothy might say.
The viscera of the bear that I wasn’t interested in was placed in leaf parcels and carefully carried to the edge of the forest. If it was still there in the morning I’d move it further into the woods, far enough that anything coming to have a look wouldn’t be a direct threat to my little homestead. I got back to scraping the larger bones clean with the knife. I’d rigged a tripod over which I’d draped the bear skin to dry by the fire. The stuff I was keeping was placed in leafy envelopes next to my cloak.
The air grew colder as the night dragged on but it wasn’t uncomfortable and the physical activity kept me warm. I was grateful when the moon rose and added some extra light. I carefully ignored the unknown patterns that marbled its surface. When a second moon crept above the horizon an hour later I just shrugged and continued my work. Of course there was a second moon, why wouldn’t there be?
I had no idea if this place had a twenty four hour day and keeping track of time was tricky when you were splitting your attention between slicing, dicing and watching your surroundings. At around what I guessed to be midnight-ish I moved the last of the unwanted bear parts to the treeline and returned to feed my fire.
Health: 65/90
Mana: 70/70
Another day or so and I’d be healthy as a brick again which was distinctly unnatural. I should be recovering for days or weeks from these kinds of injuries. I put some strips of meat on sticks that I propped up on tripods and positioned them to sit well above the flames but in the smoke. Not the most effective method but hopefully it would help preserve some of the huge pile of meat I’d harvested. Tomorrow I’d gather some green branches and set up a better smoker for the rest. I had a sneaky suspicion most of it was going to get burned or disposed of as it began to rot but I’d do what I could in the meantime.
The night was filled with noise that I hadn’t noticed while I was busy. Now I found myself huddled quietly by the fire wrapped in the remnants of my cloak, the ambient nocturnal sounds began to stand out against the crackling of the wood as it burned. Shrieks and cries were the most common sounds to break the quiet. Followed by strange clicking, whirring noises that flew through the darkness just outside the cave entrance. A howl split the night and I reached instinctively for the spear next to me before my brain processed that the noise was from some distance away. I relaxed ever so slightly.
There’s nothing worse for a man than to have time to think. That was according to my ex-wife so I’d always taken it with a pinch of salt but now the words rang true. I was stuck in this wilderness, no money, no connections and most importantly of all no bloody weapons other than sticks and pointy stones. Were my five competitors trying to survive in the wild as well? I remembered one of the place names for a starting location had been some kind of legion camp. That suggested an army and all the infrastructure that went along with it. Therefore… there must be organisations that approximated civilisation of some sort kicking around in this world. If Patricia had been dumped in the outback she’d be dead already which would make my job easier.
Surviving Souls: 6/6
Fucking system. Ok so everyone was still alive and if the pissy god that briefed me was being honest they’d been here longer than me. Why should I kill those pricks anyway? Sure they’d all been responsible for some deaths according to Poseidon but she was a lying bitch. I could honestly see the fighter and soldier having blood on their hands and I knew damn well Morty did but the Tik-toker and Patricia would be hard pressed to kill a spider.
Health: 73/90
Mana: 70/70
I wanted to get home. The feeling rushed over me suddenly and I took a moment to stoke the fire to try to calm myself down. It wasn’t that I had much going on back home. I killed a few people a year so I could live an easy life. No friends, no living family. None of the things normal people used to justify their pointless existences. I’d lived to do my job as well as I was capable of doing it. The fact my job was killing people for money didn’t matter. I was the same as any professional who strove to be the best in their field.
Hardly my fault that life and genetics had led me to being a hitman. That green eyed bitch… Aside from the obvious motivation of not becoming collateral damage as one of my rivals sought to get home I wanted revenge on the woman who had claimed to be a god.
As I considered the long term situation I could see a couple of the other competitors becoming a real problem if they managed to get their feet under them. They’d go out of their way to hunt the rest of us down so I’d probably have to deal with them sooner rather than later. The longer I could make them wait the stronger I’d be but the soldier and I were going to have it out, I was sure, and he would be dangerous when I finally found him.
The others were a different issue. If I wanted to find a way to stick a knife between that wavy haired whore’s ribs, assuming that was even possible, I’d have to be the last man standing. Then I could take my time and figure out how to kill a “god” when I got home.
My thoughts rumbled round and round in circles as I dozed in my cloak and fed wood to the fire until my pile ran out. I’d smoked a few kebabs worth of bear meat but the vast majority of it was still neatly wrapped in waxy leaves in a pile slightly further into the cave.
As the moons began to set in the sky the cold became sharper and I huddled closer to the embers of my fire. I didn’t fancy stumbling about in the dark looking for more fuel, that was an easy way to break an ankle or get eaten by whatever the fuck was making that whirring noise.
“Piss off already!” I yelled and the sound of something flying nearby moved away.
I don’t think I got any real sleep that night. At best I dozed fitfully, constantly jerked awake by some unexpected sound or that weird feeling of falling you get on the edge of true sleep sometimes. As the sun began to lighten the sky I lurched upright and glared around. Nothing out of the ordinary. Except for the whole new world thing.
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I staggered into the treeline and relieved myself downslope of my new home. As the steam from my piss rose into the air I began planning the day’s activities. It would be another busy day but hopefully I’d be able to sleep properly tonight if things went well.
My feet felt much better but when I sat by the remains of my fire and peeled the wool strips away they were painted red. Oh right. The bear guts. Hope I don’t get an infection. I poured a little water into my pot and used another scrap from my cloak to rinse the worst of it off. Beneath the mixture of my own and the bear’s blood lay clear skin. I stood up tentatively and shifted my weight from foot to foot. Much better.
The bear skin had toughened somewhat overnight as it dried but the flint knife was sharp and I soon had a pair of crude foot coverings, furry side in, that I bound up with the cordage I recycled from the rank woolen strips I’d used yesterday.
The fat on the skin side of the boots would begin to go rancid soon, just like the rest of the hide I’d harvested but I’d deal with that later in the day. For now I wouldn’t split my feet open on every rock and thorn which was good enough for me.
I went out and scoured the nearby woods for more firewood. I spent an hour building a decent pile, nearly the same size as I’d started the night with, then laid a new fire and ignited it with a finger poked into the centre of the wigwam of wood.
I poured some water into the pot to rinse it then added the rest to boil once the fire got going. A handful of berries and some badly smoked shit-tasting meat served as breakfast. The Foodstuffs section of the Shop called out to me but I resisted. Maybe tomorrow I’d splurge if today worked out how I hoped… No you greedy bastard! Souls are for levels and abilities! If you can hunt and cook you don’t need to waste them on food!
Four relatively straight year old saplings at the edge of the woods were marked for harvest and I carefully cut them down with the knife. They were a good three metres long, perhaps half an inch thick at the bottom. I laid them out just beyond the bear's final resting place and tied them together at one end with the shortest length of cordage I could spare.
After that I returned to the forest to find more green sticks about a centimetre thick and at least a foot long I returned and began weaving. With the four longer rods bound at one end I moved down, clipping any leaves and smaller offshoots from them. Then I spread them out in a fan pattern and began threading cross pieces between the staves. Over one, under the next I worked my way down the length of the four sticks. It was like making a wicker fence. The first cross piece was a bastard to get to hold in place but once I had a few done it got easier. I ended up with a litter that was a meter and a half long and maybe half a metre across at the widest point where it would drag along the ground.
I’d have to be careful. I’d trimmed the cross pieces down as much as possible but bumping into trees and bushes could undo the depressingly fragile transportation I’d thrown together. I stopped for another drink, finishing off the last of my water before I dragged the litter to the pile of neatly wrapped viscera I needed to dispose of. I loaded up most of it but a few packs wouldn’t stay on. I moved them back into the cave because I’d had an idea for using them later, piled up some more wood on the fire and prepared to step out.
The cordage and the spear gathered up, I’d be leaving the rest of the hide to continue drying on its tripod as well as my wrapped food supplies hiding deeper in the cave. Hopefully the smoke from the fire would keep any pests from investigating too closely. Even species that have never stumbled upon human beings know to fear the smell of smoke and I’d just have to trust it would be the same here.
I pulled what was left of my cloak around me and returned to my litter. It was awkward and unwieldy to drag the damn thing. I had to walk almost sideways with one hand behind my body to keep it steady but it let me carry far more than I could by hand. On balance it was a fair trade.
The other hand held my spear and the knife rested at the top of the pile of semi-wrapped body parts I wanted to dispose of. I stopped regularly as I made my way down to the river. Whenever another animal run intersected the big one I was using I’d put down my burden and walk a few metres into the bush along the secondary trail. A few twigs and a short length of cordage were quickly transformed into a snare waiting for some unlucky furry thing's throat.
A dozen snares later I arrived back at the river and stopped to catch my breath. I wasn’t going to dig a six foot hole with my bare hands to dispose of this shit safely so it was all going into the water. I carried the parcels a good distance downstream before tossing them as far into the river as I could manage. I wasn’t sure how my physical strength stat worked but I was pretty sure I was able to lob the offal a lot further than I would have been able to back home. A few dozen trips later I had an empty litter and the bulk of the unusable chunks of bear had been disposed of. I refilled my waterskins and sat down to watch the river rush by.
I carefully removed my bearskin slippers and massaged my aching feet. The cold stone felt good against them as I laid them flat on the riverbank. I shrugged out of my tattered cloak and set it to one side before carefully slipping into the water. The mud squelched between my toes as my feet sank into the bottom of the river.
There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going swimming but a little paddle and a wash would be just what the doctor ordered. I’d watched as the offal went into the water and the lack of frenzied splashing suggested this unknown waterway probably wasn’t chock full of piranhas. I dunked my head into the icy water and scrubbed at my skin with some sand I pulled up from the bottom. Feeling better I got “dressed” then went back to my litter and began loading large flat rocks onto it. I wouldn’t be able to carry much of a load, the stones were a lot heavier than the offal but I managed to get half a dozen balanced so they’d hopefully survive the trip back home.
It looked to be about noon at this point and I needed to drink and eat again so I set off up the hill dragging a bunch of rocks in my wake with sloshing waterskins bouncing off my sides. Birds did this world's equivalent of tweeting contentedly in the background and while I heard the odd rustle of leaves as something slightly larger moved away from me; nothing leapt out and attempted to eat me. All in all Day Two was shaping up a lot better than Day One had turned out.
The column of smoke helped guide me back to the cave and I found the fire had mostly died out. It was reduced to glowing embers as I dropped my litter of stones. I stacked up some more wood and blew on the golden ashes until the fire caught again. No point wasting mana after all.
I wandered around the woods nearby, gathering more dead wood and three more saplings that I carefully cut down with my increasingly worn knife. I wasn’t entirely sure how the hell you sharpened a flint knife and was worrying I’d soon be wasting more Souls on a replacement.
Once I’d built a pile of firewood three times the size of the one I’d put together last night I began sorting through my stony loot. One of the simplest traps you can make involves two big stones, three strong twigs and some bait. You can make do with one stone but if you want a solid splat you need a solid base. The leftover offal would be my bait and I had my stones neatly lined up. Time to make the sticks. A figure four trap is pretty simple if you understand where you need to cut the notches on the sticks so they would sit together just right.
I trimmed and carefully gouged notches into six sets of sticks. I took one set in hand and collected two of the rocks I’d dragged up from the river. I walked along the treeline until I found a likely looking spot and carefully set up the deadfall trap. The horizontal trigger stick got a blob of guts on the end to serve as bait, the end that sat directly beneath the centre of mass of the largest stone. Should something come along and nibble hard enough to disturb the trigger stick it would find itself crushed under the stone propped up by the other sticks. It was a beautiful way to kill small animals, if viewed dispassionately, and had been known for thousands of years back on Earth.
I repeated the process, carefully laying out six deadfalls around my camp to complement the dozen or so snares I’d deployed on my way to fetch water. If I really did get Souls from everything I killed with a bit of luck tomorrow morning I’d be a richer man and have access to meat that didn’t taste like ass. If nothing else it would serve to reduce the population of small pests that might invade my home and threaten my food supplies.
I settled down near my fire and took a drink of recently boiled water. Assuming I was going to get an influx of currency overnight I needed to figure out what to do with the ten Souls I had left on hand. I couldn’t afford any upgrades to my fire spell and the Shop could fuck right off for now which left me only one option. I mentally selected the level up option and my last ten Souls vanished.
Level 2
Primary Stats: Body: F Mind: F Soul: F
Available Souls: 0
Secondary Stats
Physical strength: 9 Reflexes: 9 Health: 90
Magic strength: 6 Focus: 7 Mana: 70
Affinity: Fire
Summon fire: Range- Touch, Intensity- +4%,
Fire Resistance- +2%
You have two stat points available to spend. Level two upgrades to Affinities are now available.