Tilly moved at a decent pace for a while, until he had put enough distance between him and the possible danger that he felt good about coming up with a plan. With the dead Jakalope over his shoulder, he knew his first priority was water, then food, then shelter. So he decided to make his way through the forest going perpendicular to the slope at an easy and cautious pace. He hoped to find a stream or river at some point if he kept circumnavigating the mountain he was on.
If Bear Grylls had taught him anything it was that water liked to flow downhill. Plus moving water meant the ability to clean, and whatever infection this jackalope had, he really didn't want to catch it. Hopefully, after butchering and washing the edible parts of the animal, it would be safe.
He continued to distract himself with practical and goal-oriented thoughts as he walked for a few hours over rough terrain. He would be lying if that first encounter had not stirred an acidic anxiety that churned his stomach. Had he made the right choice coming to this world? He knew he had banked some stat points, but until he had taken care of the basics, he wasn't ready to start working on his "build."
Every rustle of a bush froze him in his tracks and set his heart racing. Despite all this, he thought he was coping with his new circumstances surprisingly well. He had always been pragmatic, you needed some sort of go-with-it attitude to last any period of time in the Fire Department. Need a guy to keep calm and carry on, no matter how crazy things got? Tilly was your man. He swallowed down the churning worry and kept hoofing it.
He was on foreign soil with little to no knowledge of this world or its inhabitants. He had left behind a life spent ignoring the pain in front of him by coping with alcohol and escapism. He had run a few tabletop games as a DM and had read every kind of fantasy there was. That experience was already helping him to cope, but he had no clue how the concepts in those games and books would play out here.
Luckily even with his nerdy hobbies, he had spent enough time camping with crazy family and coworkers to have some common sense out in the wild. He wouldn't exactly call himself a wilderness expert, but he wasn't going to die from exposure if he could help it.
As he walked he kept trying to Identify things, but none of the trees and rocks seemed to want to activate the ability, looking at them closely didn't pop up any new notifications, nor did looking at his gear give him anything new.
He needed to find a way to gain some sort of advantage or he wouldn’t last long. Sighing to himself he shifted the weight of the dead Jackalope. He had exhausted all of the normal concerns he would have, being lost out in the woods… so his mind reluctantly turned back to the words the Administrator had used when describing this place.
“This is the world of the dreams and myths of men, and I fear lately that the dreams have grown quite dark.”
He really hoped they didn't include everyone’s dreams… if his coworkers were anything to go by, things were going to get gross, fast.
His thoughts were interrupted by a faint rushing sound at the edge of his hearing, and he smiled to himself and picked up the pace.
“Where there are mountains there is water,” he whispered with a smile.
He finally broke through the tree line and found a large stream. It looked to be a few feet deep and had a rocky pebble-strewn shore, like something you might find on the Appalachian Trail. The canopy was fairly thick but not tropical, and one or two of the trees nearby were climbable. What made it perfect was the large rock outcropping that jutted out of the shore making it a passable place to set up a fire and protect his back from any encroaching dangers. Tilly looked around suspiciously for a second before making his decision.
He would make camp on this side of the brook, but ford it and find a tree to climb before dark to sleep and hang his stuff. It would be rough restless sleep, but it is not like he would sleep any better on the hard ground, completely defenseless.
He couldn’t be sure, but this didn't seem like an environment with many predators that prowled the tree canopy. The temperature was temperate, and as long as this world followed some loose ecological rules, this place probably wouldn't have a bunch of monkeys or crazy insects. There was no way his campsite would be safe, but hopefully, any potential threats would pass him by once they lost his scent in the water.
He dropped the Jakalope near the stream and knelt down to drink and wash off some of his accumulated grime. While he reveled in the icy cold running water he pulled up his notifications which had started flashing the moment he had decided to make camp.
Congratulations! You have found a moderately safe place to camp! You have learned the skill Forestcraft.
Forestcraft - You are at home in the wilds, many fumble through this environment, but you have committed to blending into it and folding yourself into its ecosystem.
Your Forestcraft level has increased. Adjusting for previous experience…
Forestcraft level 1.
Forestcraft level 2…
Forestcraft level 5.
'Okay, so skills are a thing I can learn by demonstrating any beginner level of competence. Then once I demonstrate a skill somehow, the system seems to factor in my past knowledge and calculate a level based on the combination of the two. Whereas abilities seem to only be gained through other means, like class-level rewards or something.'
So far the Son of Flame class seemed like a real mixed bag. Supposedly amazing gear but no starting abilities to speak of, and the same average 3 assigned stat points that his other class options had, that is of course assuming they would have all gotten the base five points to assign at every level.
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Now that he had a seemingly system-approved place to camp he got to setting up the basics. Tilly worked with enough “country” firefighters in his time to know the basics of processing an animal. That plus his general medical knowledge and comfort with the natural mechanics of a living being made figuring out how to strip the animal of skin, head, and organs moderately painless. While crude, his two Primitive Hatchets were plenty sharp and made decent forestry tools. He made a pretty good mess of it, but in the end, he had a skin laying over a nearby bush drying, and a mostly cleaned animal ready to cook and run through a spit.
He then arranged some of the larger rocks into a fire pit on the side of the rock outcropping and gathered some fallen wood from the surrounding area, before starting a fire. He had only ever watched the friction fire-starting method on TV but he could feel the influence of his Forestcraft skill kicking in as he rubbed the dry stick between his fingers into a pile of fat lighter, over and over until smoke started to show. He enthusiastically blew on the little pile of dry kindling and it caught, all in a few minutes.
'That was way easier than it should have been.'
That wasn't the only way his new skill was making itself known. Things like how to find and burn a strong-smelling plant from near camp to disguise the presence of his cooking, also just came to him.
He set up the cooking spit over the coals with the smoldering fragrant herbs off to the side and finished up by washing off in the stream and hunkering down near his fire with his hatchets out, in case something wandered across him even with his meager precautions.
He was also rewarded with another skill as he finished processing and skinning his kill.
Congratulations! You have skinned and processed your first animal. You have learned the skill Animal Processing.
Animal Processing- You know your way around the creatures of this world and you honor them by taking all they have to offer upon their deaths.
Your Animal Processing level has increased. Adjusting for previous experience…
-Animal Processing level 1
-Animal Processing level 2…
-Animal Processing level 5
“4 skills and I’m not dead yet… Not a bad day I guess,” he grumbled as he hunkered closer to the fire.
Night was beginning to fall and in the distance, Tilly heard a howl, answered by others even farther away. A shiver ran down his spine and he hoped he was right about his tree idea. Before any creature came calling Tilly wanted to have the meat cooked and packed away. He eyed the haunch that was slowly beginning to brown and willed it to hurry.
“Ok, this isn't going to happen any faster for me by worrying. Let's assign these five stat points,” he said, rubbing his hands together. He wordlessly called up just his basic stats to give them another look.
Stats:
Health: 100% (+.8% per minute)
Mana: 100% (+.7% per minute)
Constitution: 8
Endurance: 12 (13.2)
Dexterity: 8 (8.8)
Strength: 9
Wisdom: 7
Intelligence: 5
Huh, so no charisma or stamina… He didn't really know what that would signify for this world. What exactly was Endurance? Was Dexterity the same as in DnD? Did strength make him hit harder or do more damage in general?
Not for the first time Tilly wished there was some sort of basic primer or description that came with all these new terms. Even the descriptions of skills were more flavor than help.
Well, nothing to it but to take what he had been given and Minmax the hell out of it.
He saw that his class heavily favored Endurance with an additional emphasis on Dexterity, especially with that percentage increase on the weapons. As a DM he had hated when players tried to play too balanced in their stats, trying to avoid paying the cost of power that any game offered to those who were willing to work around the drawbacks. He resolved to lean into whatever benefits Endurance would give him, betting that his emphasis on Dexterity would somehow end up working well with the weapons that came with this class.
Alright. 1 point in Constitution to get himself to 9, health was health after all. Then 4 points in Dexterity to match it to Endurance and get the most out of his percentage increase. The strategy wouldn't do much for him now, but if he kept it up, he would hopefully see some crazy gains in the future. He just had to live long enough to see them.
The Jackalope had just begun to sizzle, clear juices emerging from the haunches.
Congratulations! You have cooked your first meal.
Your Cooking level has increased. Adjusting for previous experience…
Cooking level 1
Cooking level 2…
Cooking level 12
Twenty years of coming up with meals out of whatever was in the firehouse fridge had paid off. Tilly smiled, no salt, no tent, and surrounded by a forest filled with creatures that probably wanted to kill him.
Hell of a way to start his new life.