As I sat against the cave wall, shivering from the cold and blood loss, I wondered what I did in my past life to deserve all the shit I've been through. I was a big asshole in my childhood, yeah, but did that really deserve being shot to death by loansharks, getting lost in oblivion, being kidnapped by a crazy god before dropping me on top of a frozen mountain, and then getting my throat torn out by wolves?
Well, maybe some deity out there thought I was shitty enough to deserve all that. God knows how much lunch money I stole from Eddy during elementary school. If I find out that every suffering I experienced was because of Eddy's lunch money, I swear I'm gonna grovel at his feet and kiss his ass. Maybe then the powers that be will forgive me.
I was brought out of my daydreaming when I felt a nip at my foot. One of the wolves was trying to take a small bite at me.
“Fuck off!” I shouted as I threw a stone at the mutt. It quickly retreated beside its companion. Probably frightened of how I killed one of their own.
Without a watch, I had no idea how much time had passed after I killed the wolf that tore my throat, but by my guesstimation, about an hour had already passed. During that entire time, the wolves had been nipping at me every now and then. Probably to see if I was still alive. Well, too bad, doggies. Assholes like me take a bit more than a torn jugular to kill.
In the past hour, my knees and neck had already finished healing entirely, although I was still extremely weak from blood loss. As much as I wanted to stand up and wallop the two remaining wolves to death, I was still too weak to do so without putting myself at any more risk. At the very least, I was able to defend myself if the wolves tried to eat me again, and I was sure I could take one of them with me if I did go down. Fortunately, the wolves seemed to know that too.
[Minor Regeneration has leveled up to Lv.2]
Well, would you look at that? It looks like good things do happen to me sometimes.
After another hour of sitting around, I finally gained enough strength to stand up. My legs wobbled like an old man with arthritis, and actually felt like it too. But as much as I wanted to bitch about it, I pushed through the pain and walked over to the wolf carcass. The healing took a toll on me, and now I felt like I could eat an entire wolf.
I wished I was kidding at that last part.
I kneeled over the corpse, heedless of the puddle of blood that had gathered around it. Gripping the skin beneath its belly where it was weakest, I tore it with my bare hands and exposed the pink flesh beneath.
The two wolves in the cave growled menacingly as I skinned their former companion, but one glare was enough to keep them away. I guess killing one of their own was enough to make them wary of me.
Once I had skinned enough of the wolf, I crouched down and started eating like a fucking zombie. I was sure I looked utterly savage, but at that moment, I couldn't care less. I was tired, hurting, and hungry. The taste of coppery and stringy meat didn't register that much on my mind as I focused on feasting.
At some point, I ended up giving the innards to the two wolves waiting on the sidelines. I worried that their hunger would tempt them enough to try attacking me while I ate, so I went ahead and gave them something to munch on while I took my fill.
By the time my stomach felt like it was about to burst, I had eaten an entire quarter of the wolf carcass. With how big the bastard was, that was a lot of meat.
With my stomach full, I sat back down against the cave wall and started considering my next course of action. Priority Number One was to return to civilization, because there was no way in hell I'd keep on eating raw meat like some deranged antithesis of a vegetarian. The problem was that I had no idea where the nearest city was. In this kind of weather, I'd be lucky to last more than a few minutes out there with nothing but a shirt and cargo pants to protect me from the snowstorm.
So I decided to stay in this cave until the snowstorm abated. There was the issue of the two wolves residing here with me, but that brought me to Priority Number Two: gaining levels. Thanks to my earlier level-up, I dodged certain death by a hair's breadth. That was enough to convince me that I should do everything I could to get those levels ASAP if it meant keeping death away.
That meant these two wolves were walking bags of ‘experience,’ and I wasn't known for letting resources go to waste. The only issue was my lack of weapons. I doubt they'd just willingly let me rip their tongues out like I did with their friend.
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I stared at the wolves as they munched on the food I gave them. Then I glanced at the wolf carcass, whose ribcage I pulled apart to get at the innards. Then I looked at the ribs lying scattered on the ground.
An idea came to mind.
I walked over to one of the ribs on the ground and stepped on one end. Then on the other end, I gripped it with two hands and started pulling upwards with my entire might. The bone was extremely hard, but eventually, it snapped in two halves.
I now had two pieces of bone with sharp, serrated ends. They made quite a nice pair of daggers, though only if you disregarded the bits and pieces of flesh still sticking to it.
I took a peek at the two wolves and saw that they were almost done with eating the food I gave them. I had to make a move now while they were distracted.
I picked up the wolf carcass by the tail and started dragging it over to the two wolves, who started growling at me threateningly. I pretended to offer them the wolf carcass. “Here, you can have your friend back.”
The wolves remained wary of me as I stood patiently beside the carcass. But eventually, their hunger won out. The one on the left began inching forward slowly, and just as he was about to bite into the carcass, I lunged forward and stabbed at its face.
To my amazement, the mutt had a very quick reaction time. It dodged my first stab by leaning out of the way before retaliating with a bite, latching on to my arm with its sharp teeth.
“Gah! That hurts, you shit-eating bastard!”
The rabies-carrying motherfucker may have dodged my first stab, but it was too busy gnawing my arm off to see the second stab heading for its eye. By the time it did, the bone was already digging into its eye and stabbing into its brain.
[You have slain a Frost Wolf. Experience gained.]
[Congratulations! You are now Level 2.]
“Hell yea—”
My celebration of the level-up was interrupted when the second wolf pounced for my neck. Traumatic memories of bleeding out of my neck came to the forefront of my mind, and my body instinctually reacted with inhuman reaction time.
I raised my right arm to let the wolf gnaw on it instead of my neck, and with my left hand, I started stabbing the bastard's belly repeatedly. “You're not tearing my throat out again, motherfucker!”
The wolf whimpered in pain and let go of my arm, but I wasn't just gonna let it walk away. I gripped it by the scruff of its neck like scolding an unruly dog and pushed its head against the ground. It slashed at my legs with its sharp claws, but I ignored the damage and began stabbing at its head with the bone repeatedly. “Die! Die! Die! Die!”
My stabs missed its eyes repeatedly, instead landing on its thick skull. Frustrated, I threw the bone away and resorted to punching it again and again.
It took five whole minutes of walloping the wolf's face before it finally succumbed. At that point, my legs were completely shredded by the wolf's claws, and I was panting harder than a dog in heat.
[You have slain a Frost Wolf. Experience gained.]
[Congratulations! You are now Level 3.]
“Take… that… you damn… mutt…” I huffed as I let myself fall to the cave floor. The adrenaline was wearing away, and now the pain was coming in full force. My legs and arms felt like they were on fire.
To distract myself from the immense pain, I brought up the blinking notifications and read them. Then I sat up in alarm. “What the fuck?! Where's my Skills?!”
No Skill choices appeared no matter how long I waited, not even an explanation as to why there was no Skills. I was fucking cheated in broad daylight!
Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do. It's not like there was a customer service for this video game bullshit I was experiencing. If there was, I'd have shoved the wolf carcass down their throats.
“Well, no use in crying over spilled milk,” I grumbled as I laid back down on the cave floor. My thoughts kept thinking of the possibility that only one Skill could be picked by a person in their entire life, but I quickly disabused myself of that notion. It was called Skills with an ‘s’ in my Status for a reason.
“There are probably other ways to get Skills. I just have to figure it out.”
With nothing else to do aside from waiting out the storm, I laid back down on the ground and closed my eyes.
Soon enough, sleep came to me easily.
••••
I had no idea how long I slept. All I knew was that when I woke up, the storm outside the cave had already abated. The air was still frigid as fuck, but not as cold as before.
It was time to leave the cave.
Before I left, though, I made sure to fill myself up with wolf meat. Who knew how long the travel would be? I even planned on bringing some of the meat with me, but with no bag to carry it with, I decided to just find some food along the journey.
Once I was full enough that I felt like I was gonna start shitting wolf meat right there and then, I stepped out of the cave.
When I first landed on this mountain, there was practically zero visibility because of the storm. But now, the skies were clearer than my future, as if the storm had been nothing but a dream. The sun shone its warm light over the land, giving me the very first glimpse of this foreign place.
And what a beautiful place it was.
I was standing near the peak of a massive snow-covered mountain, and the high elevation gave me a breathtaking view of the surrounding environment. The mountain itself was a pristine white because of the snow covering its surface, but at its base, the snowy terrain slowly transformed into a lush green forest as the ground surface leveled out.
The forest was huge and expansive, and gazing at its flourishing and healthy state gave me the peace of mind that living in a concrete jungle took away. The majestic sight honestly made me wonder why people would prefer to live in cramped, concrete buildings than being one with nature.
Then I remembered how I almost got eaten alive by wolves.
Yeah… I think I understood why people don't want to live in the forest.
Beyond the forest were vast rolling plains that stretched as far as the eye could see. And to my joy, I saw what looked like a city right in the middle of the plains.
It seemed like I now had a destination in mind.