Quest Complete: Spoils of War.

New Proficiency: Harvest Fauna ready to be Claimed.

New Achievement: Spoils of War. 1 AP Rewarded.

“Oh finally” I said, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the one spot of my arm that was still free of gore. “I thought I’d never be done.” I still had dozens more to harvest, but with the 10th beetle completely harvested I had finished the first hurdle. The rest could wait.

After breakfast I had immediately set to cleaning up the massacre that dominated my camp. I had spent the better part of an hour dragging all the corpses outside of my clearing and deposited them against the sandstone that formed the small opening. After which, I had spent the next hour with a hastily crafted palm-frond rake [low durability] scraping the rest of the sand in my clearing for any chunks of congealed blood or beetle parts I had missed. Basically I had spent an hour cleaning the world’s largest litter box. I had considered just packing up and finding a new place, but I needed all these beetle components anyway, and I had grown attached to the small clearing, we’d been through a lot so far and I had unlocked a strange protectiveness within myself last night for the space. Best to just follow that.

With the camp finally clean I had then set about the grim business of harvesting 10 of the more intact specimens of beetles. With the sun now high peaking in the sky, I was grateful to finally be done and excitedly accepted the quest reward and checked what my new proficiency was.

Harvest Fauna (Basic)

Defeating a foe is only the first victory.

You have become proficient in harvesting slain or found creatures for valuable or useful components.

Repeatedly harvesting creatures of the same species will provide insight into what the components found can do and what they could be used for. Insight complexity will increase as creatures are repeatedly harvested.

Increased harvesting speed. Decreased chance of ruining components you harvest.

“This. This is why we do it.” I muttered as I stretched my back. With so many of the beetles to harvest, this new proficiency would surely yield results, not that I hadn’t been productive on my own. I glanced over at my various piles of Beetle parts that littered the sand around me. I was most excited for the pieces of carapace I had collected. They had proved tricky to harvest in large chunks, but I had learned to be careful when extracting them. I had ideas for armor plates, stronger wall barricades, maybe even a wash basin and a shield. Even the smaller pieces which had cracked or broken during harvesting had me excited. I thought about putting them on gloves or something for extra protection.

Initially, I had wanted to just be done with it and move on to other things once I had finished the quest. But I felt a resurgence of energy with this new skill and wanted to see what it could do.

I quickly noticed the effects and began to get use out of it almost immediately. It was like all of the sudden I could see the Beetle’s body in a different light. I knew the carapace and mandibles were useful, but I had failed to recognize the various edible meat the beetles had hidden within sections of tough skin. The meat within their legs, mandible joints, wing joints, and in a few other places was enough to fill a dinner plate, and I had dozens of beetles worth of it. I began harvesting that as well, getting much quicker with my mandible blade as I went, and piled it all on some palm stalks I set up to dry in the sun. Repeating the process I had begun yesterday, but not being nearly as thorough as I had been with the monkey when that ointment was on the line.

Before I knew it, I was actually starting to enjoy the work. I got a gentle fire going, and began cooking and drying some of the bug meat while I worked. I didn’t know how to tell when it was done drying, but I figured I’d just stop when it was..dry? I took some time to set aside a dozen more mandible blades just in case, and crafted a few more spears just for good measure. Here too I could really feel the enhanced crafting speed my crafting proficiencies were giving me. None of the spears I made had gained any extra effects yet, but they were pretty low durability anyways so it would’ve felt like a waste to get one on them.

I decided I had enough carapace to make a wash basin of sorts and grabbed the deepest shell I had to make a mount on a small bench in the sandstone. I propped it in place with rocks and other pieces of carapace until it fit snugly, then grabbed another deep piece of carapace to collect water with, taking the opportunity to clean the gore from my hands and arms.

With my wash basin now set up I was feeling pretty relaxed and like I had a handle on the day. I looked up to see how high the sun was now when something that had been nagging in the back of head finally made itself known. Likely because I wasn’t in immediate danger or my world wasn’t collapsing. Sun. One. One sun, not two.

I had noticed it throughout the day, but I’d grown up with one sun, so it wasn’t weird, if anything it made the day feel normal. But gone was the binary sun system that had passed by yesterday.

‘Hmm.” I said. “two suns, now I’m down to one. Does that mean there will be no suns tomorrow? Is that all I got was the 2 days of sunlight?” Or am I just on a really big planet? And there’s actually 3 stars in this system. The 1 set of binary suns and the lone sun, opposite each other?” I had enjoyed some astronomy in science and had been into space as a kid instead of dinosaurs or cars, so the thought of being in a star system that had 3 total stars was pretty exciting. It also affirmed some terrifying things.

I knew on some level that I wasn’t on earth anymore, or anywhere near it. My first theory had been some afterlife, which I had mostly debunked. My second theory was some distant weird virtual earth. Which was possible, especially with the floating interactable screen that I was currently looking at and actively jotting down notes in about the different suns. But that was also very confusing. Truth be told I really had no idea where I was, all I knew was that I wasn’t anywhere near home. I’d accepted that, but now that the sun was different, and I was imagining solar systems with 2 stars groups, it really hit me.

I’m not anywhere near home.

Which was followed by an even worse thought.

I don’t think I’m going home.

I had been so busy trying to survive that I hadn’t really thought about it. It wasn’t even like I could put up a signal fire or try to walk to an isolated town. I was in a solar system with 2 sets of stars. No matter what I did. I might never see anyone again, I might be completely alone forever.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

I stopped harvesting.

Come on Will, maybe everyone got sent here with you. Possibly. That could be true. But was that better? And did I really believe that. Maybe everyone got their own planet? The universe was huge. It had always been huge, which was what made it so cool. But now that I was somewhere other than the cul-de-sac called Earth, it was really dawning on me how huge it was. And it didn’t matter how much I had psyched myself up to get this place ready as if other people were going to walk around the corner and ask for a cup of sugar. Now that I had time to think and be still, the dark thoughts had made themselves known. The dark thoughts that had almost kept me from finishing University, from being me.

I might never see anyone again. I might be alone forever.

Alone. Completely alone. I couldn’t be alone. I had always been the strong one for Kate and Mom, but truthfully, I needed them as much or more than they needed me. Their constancy and closeness had saved me more than I cared to admit.

What’s the point of all of this if I’m going to be alone forever? What’s the point of trying to survive? Now I was falling down a darker path, an old, familiar path. A path I had one grown comfortable with. A path I now loathed.

The path of the coward.

“Damn it Will. You know better than that” I scolded myself. “You can’t think like that, you know how you get, you can’t let yourself think those thoughts. There’s a silver lining or a way out of here, you’re just not considering it yet.” I was breathing a bit faster now. Trying to survive was easy, well easier than trying to survive the existential dread, fear, and panic that an untended mind could wreck. I’d had similar thoughts before, not this specific, but same energy. I knew it would pass eventually.

But what if it doesn’t pass?

“Okay, and we’re up” I proclaimed loudly as I leaped to my feet. I picked up a few of the mandible blades. “Come on you handy little mandible blades, yikes that is a mouthful,can’t have that. From now on, I dub thee Mandiblades. Yeah that sounds great. All right, we’re going to get good at knife throwing. And we’re going to be so good at it that we’ll be like an old timey cowboy, throwing knives at the bad guys”. I began throwing the mandiblades at the nearest tree, loudly humming and whistling Old West tunes, pretending I was in some standoff.

“All right Billy the Palm” I said to the palm tree I was massacring, “ yer outlawing days are over. Hyah, hyuh!.” I threw mandiblade after mandiblade at the tree, pretending it was some outlaw and we were in a knife fight.

After 20 minutes or so of this nonsense, I felt much better. Not because Billy the Palm had been slayed. At the rate I was managing to land my knife throws, the tree had a higher chance of falling over and slaying me before I slayed it. Suffice it to say, I did not gain a knife-throwing skill or proficiency.

But I wasn’t actively panicking anymore. And that sudden cloud of darkness had dissipated.

“So there’s three suns. Who cares?” I proclaimed loudly, collecting some of the blades from around the tree.

“ Why not four? Three is nothing. My great-grandpa had six sons, and the only person panicking about that was grandma, on account of all of them coming out looking like the Michilen Man’s offspring.” Oh that poor woman.

“We’re great. Look at all the palm trees, those probably came with me, so humans did too.” I ignored the spikes on the trees for the sake of my argument.

“And I was only in the top 100 occupants. Even if those other occupants are aliens, at least they’re people.” I had walked back to where I had been throwing from, took my stance and continued to throw, only managing to sink one in five.

“And I got that great Comprehend Language skill. Oh yeah, we’re doing great.” I was not doing great. But I was doing better. And that was enough for now.

I needed to get moving. The bugs I still needed to harvest weren’t going anywhere. And the big one I had no interest in harvesting until the sand had soaked up more of the large amounts of slime and blood collecting around it. Also, I had been incredibly close and personal with it and wasn’t too keen on spending time seeing what my almost-coffin looked like.

So I grabbed some extra mandibles and a couple coconuts; I made some very basic straps with some palm string and went to walk around the Oasis. When I had looked at the solo sun, it had still been relatively high in the sky, so I had time to explore.

I stayed close to the water and tried to remain ready at all times for any source of danger. Even the one sun was still pretty hot and it seemed like most creatures were hiding during this hour. I also quickly got the hint and switched to walking mostly in the shade. Being this close to the trees made me nervous though, as I still very much remembered my first encounter here.

Maybe I could make a hat? I almost slapped myself when the idea finally came to me. I had made about 10 spears at this point and woven yards of my palm string, but had yet to make a hat. In the desert!

I had begun to think of how I might craft it from palm leaves and string, and how I could make a backpack as well when I saw one of the rabbits I had seen yesterday about 20 yards away between two large palm bushes. It had its ears up so I figured it had heard me and was on high alert, so I stayed still just so I could observe it.

Maybe I could try and hunt one later. I would need better gear for that, rabbits were way too fast for me right now. I was imagining how I might make a sling, and also get good at using a sling when it dropped its ears… uncovering a pair of small but distinct antlers.

What the heck? This wasn’t a rabbit at all. Unless I was mistaken, it was a Jackalope.

I rubbed at my eyes, thinking perhaps the heat was getting to me more than I thought, but the Jackalope remained, sniffing at the ground, hopping along carefully. I blinked a few more times, but it definitely had a pair of gleaming white antlers sticking out between its ears. It was about to move behind a tree so I shifted slightly to my right and took a step to keep it in my view, and felt a dry piece of palm stalk snap beneath my feet.

And it was gone. Not like it leaped away fast, or hopped into a bush. It was just gone. Like, Road Runner after foiling the Coyote in a Looney Tunes cartoon and all he left has a dust trail. If not for the small trail of dust I wouldn’t even have known which way it had gone.

“Jackalopes. Definitely not going to be on some random alien world.” I reassured myself as I continued walking.

Seriously though, where the hell am I?

I was getting tired of walking, and decided to work on my second quest for a bit. I had no way of knowing how many crafting components I had discovered, but I could at least harvest some plant specimens. I had gathered the palm fronds in abundance, and the coconuts, so I began picking leaves from any scraggly bush I could come across, not entirely sure if they were different, but figuring it couldn’t hurt as long as none of them were poison ivy or something.

Aside from the scraggly bushes, I eventually found a few plants that looked a lot like succulents, with bright pink flowers growing from a few of the chunky leaves.

Maybe these are this world’s version of Aloe Vera? My medical ointment supply was running low and I could use a natural solution. I took my knife and cut a few of the juicy leaves from it, they did indeed seem to be filled with a substance resembling Aloe Vera. Although, I didn’t remember Aloe smelling as sweet as the sap smelled. I plucked one of the flowers to see if it was the source of the smell and was treated to one of the sweetest, most refreshing smells I had ever sensed. It was like a fruit salad mixed with an ocean breeze with a dash of pina colada.

Maybe Aloe Vera in this world is also good to eat? Without thinking, I shoved the pink flower in my mouth and was treated to a less-sweet but still enjoyable refreshing flavor.

Two things happened at once. I saw my status change to something I really hoped was a typo, and I got a bunch of notifications in my log.