Not only had some asshole installed Excel in my brain: the system seemed to like to work in decimals. Only health and mana were out of the single digits on my starting status. I mentally reached out and clicked on my health to spend a stat point.

Health: 76/100

Ok. So I'd get ten points to health, and presumably mana, per point. I wasn’t terribly interested in improving my mental stats at the moment. Maybe it would bite me in the ass in the future but right now I felt like I was living on the ragged edge. Magic was great and all but making a slightly hotter flame or… Huh. being able to summon it a metre away from my body might actually be helpful. Ah shit. The level two upgrades to my Affinity all cost ten Souls.

Right, so stat points were limited to stats. Kind of obvious really but it had been worth a try. That meant I was looking at improving my physical strength or my reflexes. What difference would each stat make? Who knows! I sure as hell didn’t. With a sigh I put one point into my reflexes and checked my new status.

Level 2

Primary Stats: Body: E- Mind: F Soul: F

Available Souls: 0

Secondary Stats

Physical strength: 9 Reflexes: 10 Health: 10

Magic strength: 6 Focus: 7 Mana: 70

Ok, now my body stat was an E minus? What the fuck did that mean? I didn’t feel any different. With a frustrated sigh I set aside the total lack of supporting information I’d been given by the bloody system… I waited hoping for the god-voice to appear in my head and be a dick as it explained some apparently basic shit to me but nothing happened.

Never mind. I retrieved my knife and pulled the remains of the bearskin off its tripod. Moving into the cave I cleared away the detritus to create a relatively clean area to work. Then I sat for the next few hours and scraped the fat off the inside of the skin. Everything I scraped off went into a neat pile on one of my favourite types of leaves, the broad waxy ones, to be rendered down once the pot was free. I took a break in the middle of the job, just as the sun began to set, to cook some more meat and gobble down a handful of berries. I drank the rest of the water in my pot and began throwing the fat into it to render down.

The fat would be useful as a combustible and to waterproof leather, among other things. I poked at it with a stick as it started to sizzle in the pot. I listened to the snap and crackle as the last of my drinking water met the boiling fat and I glanced back into the cave. I still wanted the sheath that had come with my dagger back.

Using some sticks I carefully levered the pot over and let the hot fat drain out onto a leaf I had propped up into a bowl shape between three sticks. Once the fat cooled and solidified it would be much easier to handle. I didn’t want to leave anything boiling or cooking while I probed the darkness so I left the pot off to one side and I added more fuel to the fire to keep it going.

I took up a bundle of dead wood and advanced into the abyss that had very recently contained the shining jaws of the giant bear. Taking up my spear in my spare hand as I passed, I moved carefully forward, ears alert for any unusual sound until I had rounded the corner and the light began to fade. I was confident the cave was empty, nothing had emerged since I’d been here after all, but I was still nervous of a repeat of last time I held the sticks away from me and summoned fire at the far end of my bundle, snatching back my fingers and immediately thrusting it deeper into the void.

Nothing snarled. No yellowed ivory gleamed as the sudden light danced on it. I was alone. I moved forward until I found the sheath, stooping to pick it up and checking it over in the flickering light. Bone dry and exactly as it had been. With a little cordage I could attach this onto a belt or one of the straps on my waterskins. I wrapped it roughly around the spear shaft and held it in place as I pressed on.

The cave didn’t extend much further, thankfully, It curled on for perhaps five more metres. There were a few piles of bones, the half eaten carcass of what I assumed was a deer of some sort accounted for an increasingly unpleasant smell, but otherwise the rest of the cave was clean, dry and safe. I returned to the entrance and took long, deep breaths of fresh air. I’d need to clean the place out if I was going to stay here long term and I honestly felt like I should.

Maybe it was just the human affection for the familiar but despite only having arrived here yesterday it was beginning to feel a bit like a home. Minus the mod cons and easy access to supermarkets of course. The air was pure and I hadn’t had to dissemble once since I arrived here.

My life on Earth had been one of concealment. Other than Jimmy and the occasional client who required a face to face before they forked over the cash I was pretty much unknown. It wasn’t that no one knew me, shop assistants, people I bumped into on my street occasionally and other assorted random encounters all had some idea of Raymond but none of them knew the truth. Keeping my professional life separate from my day to day existence was simply a necessity.

I hadn’t had to lie to anyone since Poseidon had dumped me here and it felt strangely refreshing. Liberating. The masks were falling away and leaving me feeling more relaxed than I had in a long time. I was almost at peace in a way I hadn’t been for over a decade back home other than a few hours here or there in my workshop. What that said about me as a person I had no idea, I assumed it wasn’t good, but that was how I felt as the sun began to set and the first moon rose while I scraped fat off the inside of a giant bear pelt.

Once I was fairly confident I’d gotten as much of the fat off the pelt as my stone knife was likely to manage I set the pelt aside and looked over at my grisliest trophy. I’d removed the beast's head while I was cleaning it and decided not to dump it in the river. I vaguely remembered reading a book a long time ago about using brains and piss to tan leather. So I had kept the head.

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I picked up a rock that fit snugly in my hand and walked over to stare down at the monster's remaining blank eye. I don’t want to dwell on the details but soon enough the bears teeth were neatly stored away in a leafy envelope and the pelt was in a shallow hole coated in it’s own brains while I stood above and released a stream of golden righteousness down on the last recognizable remains of the animal that had tried to kill me.

There was something cathartic about the moment. Whether my improvised curing process would set me on the path to not having to pay in Souls for leather or not, it kind of felt like I was pissing in the eyes of the assholes who’d dumped me into this crazy world.

It was getting late again so I added plenty of wood to the fire and settled back with the remains of my cloak wrapped tightly around me. Bedding and a bed were making a rapid climb up the “shit I want now” list but there was nothing I could do about it for the time being. Clothes would have to come first but to even get what I needed to wrap my privates I’d have to see if any of my traps found victims in the night.

Pulling over a long sapling I’d cut down I began smoothing off the base, carefully slicing away the splinters where I’d broken it free from its roots. Once I had it reasonably smooth, I trimmed the top and took off the side branches. I was left with a metre and half of slender wood. It wasn’t perfectly straight but I’d selected this trunk, and the two similar ones, because they were the least crooked of my options.

I added a splash of water to the pot and swilled it around then I threw the mixture onto the fire where it spat and sizzled for a moment. I topped the slightly cleaner pot up with water and set it next to the fire to boil as I began stripping the bark from my stick. It came off in clumps and chunks, not the elegant ribbons I was aiming for but as the water reached the boil I had a slender rod of pale wood that gleamed in the flickering light.

Sighting down the length of the stick I rotated it to spot as many of the curves as possible and began holding the slight deviations in the steam of the boiling water. Once I'd bathed a section in steam for a few minutes I carefully bent the stick across my knee, cursing at the pain of the hot wood the first time I tried. I covered my knee with my ragged cloak and tried again, holding the rod until it kept the new form. Over the next hour I stripped and straightened three short spears.

As I reached for my knife to trim the thinnest ends to points there was a faint thump from the treeline nearby and I received a notification.

Normalis Mus slain.

1 Soul gathered.

I grinned as the writing flashed across my vision. My plan to cheese some Souls by trapping the local wildlife looked like a winner. Not only would I get meat that I wouldn’t have to hold my nose in order to eat, I’d be keeping down local pests and filling up the old Soul wallet.

As I sat and sharpened my spear points I received two more notifications. I smiled happily as I lay the points of my short spears in the embers, turning them carefully to make sure they didn’t burn too much. Fire hardened throwing spears might help me get some bigger game over the next few days. Bigger game meant bigger rewards, I hoped, and I would be able to supplement the low numbers of Souls I would collect from my traps with yet more Souls.

Then I scraped them against a patch of exposed rock until the hardened points were painful to press a thumb against. It was all positively mediaeval. In fact the average mediaeval person would sneer at what I had to work with. It was palaeolithic, but it was little steps in the right direction.

“And I didn’t have to buy anything from your bloody Shop!” I called out.

The sound of my voice was startling. While I had never been big on conversation for its own sake I had rarely gone more than a day without speaking to someone. Loneliness was going to become an issue at some point. The only people I was confident existed in this world were all tasked with killing me so I didn’t hold out much hope of making friends with any of them. Not that I wanted friends. But the occasional polite chit chat might start to seem appealing sometime soon.

Once I was done with my improvised throwing spears I set them aside and waited for the water to cool. The second moon was riding high as the first one fell towards the horizon. The moonlight cast a lustrous glow across the forest stretching away down the hill and the hoots and squawks of the local nocturnal birds were almost comforting as they broke the eerie silence.

I drank the rest of my water and went to piss on my bear pelt again. As I walked back another notification popped up:

Vilis Lepus slain.

Two Souls gathered.

I had no idea what a Lepus might be but it was apparently worth two Mus in terms of Souls and could be killed by a snare. I was up to five Souls again and the night was still young. The effort of setting up the snares and deadfall traps had been time consuming but it essentially gave me a passive Soul income so I resolved to expand the area I covered tomorrow.

I checked the Shop. It was time to hide my shame. A pair of simple woollen shorts would cost me three Souls. They looked crude and would probably be scratchy against my nethers when I moved but being “tackle out”, while refreshing at first, was starting to lose its appeal. With a grimace I purchased the shorts and pulled them on.

They were dark green and surprisingly comfortable, no scratchiness thus far. They reached down just above my knees, were tied in place with a cord that had come as part of the price, and matched the cloak I’d wrapped around my shoulders. I fed more wood to the fire and tried to doze.

It was yet another restless night. I woke up regularly as the heat from the fire died down and it needed more fuel. I received a slew of kill notifications as the night wore on as well which added a significant boost to my mood but failed to temper the creeping feeling of exhaustion. I wouldn’t be able to manage many more nights like this.

As the light began to sneak back into the world I had eighteen Souls ready to spend. I put the last of my water on to boil and stretched. I watered the pelt once more to relieve my bladder and put some chunks of the foul bear meat onto a stick to roast over the rebuilt fire. Damn. I’d forgotten to set up a smoker. That was amateurish and it filled me with irritation. I sniffed at some of the meat, carefully unwrapping it from the green protection I’d used to seal it up. Happily none of it had started to turn yet but that wouldn’t last much longer.

I decided to buy some more cordage, two Souls wasted but the return on investment was good as long as I could find some more animal runs.

Back down to sixteen Souls, I checked the option for decent footwear. My bearskin booties were starting to fail across the bottom after just one day and while I wasn’t unfamiliar with a rank odour emanating from my feet this was considerably beyond my previous experience.

The cheapest footwear was three Souls. Crude wooden soles, a bit like topless clogs with some leather straps to hold them in place. I stamped my feet in my new shoes and grimaced. There was certainly no comfort in the design but I’d now be immune to the thorns and sharp rocks that had been able to poke into my delicate skin with almost every step I took today. It seemed a silly thing, to be so proud of having an extremely basic pair of shoes, but it filled me with a faint feeling of optimism as I drifted in and out of sleep while I waited for the sun to rise.