"Oh I'm gonna be sick" I groaned as I stuck my hands into the monkey in a repeated attempt to complete this "Quest".

Even though I still hadn't encountered anyone yet, I knew that there had to be some kind of higher power orchestrating this. But, that didn’t mean it was a nice higher power. No, this higher power was the kind that got some sick enjoyment from watching confused humans root around in dead bodies like a racoon in the trash. Or a crow digging through a junk pile looking for something shiny. That’s how I felt right now, like some trash animal searching for a gold coin.

The only thing getting me through this was the hope that this would follow typical game tropes and that at the end of this disgusting tunnel there was a Potion of Healing or a Fire Sword or something cool. Though just getting the promised ointment and not dying from infection would be good enough for me.

In the video games I had played, typically the heroes just tapped the dead creature and items would appear. Or maybe it would cut to a quick skinning animation and then you would walk away with a pelt. Easy right?

Unfortunately, that was not the case so far. After finding a safe hollow behind some trees that backed up to a tall sandstone wall I had tapped, poked, and prodded every part of the creature I could think of. I even hit it with a rock a few more times to see if that would do anything. Despite my efforts, I still had not received any “loot” and still had a very incomplete quest.

My arm had been really stinging at that point, and my shoulder didn’t feel too hot either, even though it was such a minor graze. I was close enough to the water to clean it as much as I wanted; but, as before, the refreshing effects of the water were fleeting. Shortly after walking away from the water the pain would return. By this point, I had had enough.

“Screw it”. I had found a flat pointed rock and sharpened it further by hitting it with another stone until I got a sharp, albeit jagged, edge. With this in hand I had steeled myself and began to “harvest the remains”.

Its scales were tough, but grew softer near its underbelly so I was able to pierce it with my impromptu knife. I had slowly cut it open, expecting a loot box or something equally ridiculous to spawn. That was not the case. What did spawn was guts, curdled blood, and a great deal of dry heaving. That last one was me, the monkey was still dead and pretty incapable of puking. To be fair, currently so was I, hence the dry heaving; there was a nice pile of vomit sitting a kilometre from here that contained all the bile and food my body could produce without more food.

Which brought me to where I was now, rummaging around in a dead animal like a psycho.Some fun things I quickly learned. Freshly killed animals are still very warm, even warmer in the desert sun. The blood didn’t flow like mine had when cut, rather it moved slowly, like slowly-drying paint. I became very familiar with this sensation as I ran my hands inside, desperately looking for the reward that I hoped was there.

"Come on screen! I'm doing the thing! Look! I'm looting the dead thing! Where's my sword or coins?" I shouted to the blue sky, realizing after the fact that shouting to the air about not finding a sword in a corpse wasn't helping my image of not being a psycho. The Quest screen was still up. I had figured out how to hide the whole damn thing while searching for a place to regroup. Like everything else I just had to think for it hide. There had been a few moments of panic where I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get it back up; but as before, saying or thinking “Quest” or “Skills” brought up the relevant screens.

Looking closer at the quest I reviewed the wording and came to a realization. In my haste I had read the description and just used the words "loot" in my head, but it said "harvest". I exhaled slowly, trying to calm down my mounting annoyance and rage.

“YOU WANT ME TO SKIN AND FIELD DRESS A LIZARD-MONKEY!!!” I screamed at the sky. Calmly of course. I groaned and had to consciously stop myself from rubbing my head with my bloodied hands to alleviate the sharp headache my day had been.

“Screw it” I didn’t have much of a choice. The floating screen wanted me to harvest a lizard-monkey. Sure, why the hell not? I need that medical ointment, I didn’t want to lose my arm to infection or something worse.

But I couldn’t do it with my sort-of-sharp rock. I would need a better knife and maybe some sticks to hang the whole thing on. I looked around my small clearing I had set up in, I was tucked close to a wall of hardened sandstone with a dense patch of palm trees and a large red boulder creating a mostly blocked-off clearing. It hadn’t appeared to be inhabited when I found it, and the shade from the trees was helping me think clearer; despite what my current actions might suggest. There wasn't much for loose sticks, but I found some palm leaves that were sturdy enough. I might go look later for some sturdier sticks or branches, but could make do with what I had. Just beyond my clearing there was a small bench of shale that I had taken my first “knife” from. With a bit of searching I was able to find a sharper one there.

I still wasn't sure what the screen wanted from me, but I wasn't playing games this time. I pulled my shirt up around my nose and mouth, squinted my eyes for extra safety and dissected that creature for everything I could think of and find in it. I was happy to discover that the organs and everything seemed more or less in the same structure as my limited dissecting experience had prepared me for. I removed all the organs I knew were bad, being very careful not to nick any of them, one of the few lessons I remembered from fishing with my grandpa. I also decided to toss everything else that didn't look like edible meat in the pile I was affectionately calling “gross shit”.

Once most of the fleshy bits had been removed I finished skinning the thing. Which was unsurprisingly very slow with only a sharp rock for a knife. It sliced better than I had thought, but lacked the refinement a knife had. Regardless, the skin and scales were incredibly durable and seemed fairly forgiving of my shoddy skinning, though I still removed it in pieces. I had been hoping to have a full pelt. Damn it.

Once that was done I removed what remaining meat I had missed, both from the removed skins and the remaining bones of the creature. I took this and the meat I had already collected and laid it on some palm leaves to dry out, I put the skins there as well.

“That seems correct,” I said, looking sideways at my collection of gore. I checked the floating screen, no change. “What? Really? Ugh, you’re really going to make me remove all of it?” I guess I wasn’t done yet. The issue was I didn’t know what else to remove.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

I looked at the creature's hands and feet, not much for claws, but his teeth were jagged and sharp, and I knew from personal experience the damage they could do. Feeling truly foolish, and a little grave-robbery I removed all of its teeth, using a pointed rock and another rock to hammer them out, I set those aside and checked the quest again, still no change.

“Seriously? What else do you want?” I looked at the creatures bones, they were sturdy, and the rib cage bones could maybe be wrapped around an arm or something to protect against other bites? Maybe? I was really just shooting in the dark at this point. I remembered learning in school about the Cree and Blackfoot and other nations of people that used to roam the continent. Times were tough, and they had to be resourceful, so they used everything from every kill. I knew there were plenty of parts to use from every creature, but I didn't think anyone used every single part these days. But, we had houses and grocery stores and running water now so there wasn’t much point.

“I don’t have those things though” I reflected. I would need to be more resourceful, just doing the bare minimum wouldn’t be enough. Was that why the screen wouldn’t let me just be done? It needed me to use everything to my advantage and go beyond? Whatever the reason, I still hadn’t received my reward so I slumped my shoulders, but got back to it.

I began removing the bones and setting them aside one by one with absolutely no idea how I was going to use any of them. I sorted them from smallest to largest, trying to keep all the curved ones facing the same direction and stacking the straight ones in nice little piles where I could. Once I was finally finished separating all the bones I had a pile of guts and gross parts I couldn't identify, a couple small pieces of meat and an assortment of skin pieces sitting on the palm leaves in the sun, and I had a pile of various bones.

I felt a slight shift within when placing that final bone in its pile, that gentle humming in my head had returned. It was so soft, so subtle, but with literally zero distractions it was noticeable. I smiled expectantly, and was pleased to see that I had finally gotten the last quest to change to [Complete].

"Hah! Take that screen!" I yelled triumphantly, pointing at it with my blood-caked hand. Thoughts of disgust or reproach at my own situation were lost in that macabre moment of joy. The quest disappeared as the other one had, but was then replaced with another message.

INVENTORY UNAVAILABLE. [CLAIM REWARD]

I paused for a second, unsure of what it meant that my inventory was unavailable.

Do I have an inventory? I thought and said “inventory” a few times to test this, the screen remained unchanged.

“It said inventory unavailable moron, that means you don’t have one.” I scolded myself, then selected the [Claim Reward] with my finger and was rewarded with a small refreshing feeling rushing through my body.

Nothing like a reminder that you’re definitely a lab rat. I thought grimly to myself. This time though, instead of another menu popping up, a small image showed up beside the completed quest. An image of a metal tin with a First Aid plus on it. I clicked the image and it grew to take up the whole screen, now with words above it that read [Claim Medical Ointment]. I clicked again, but this did nothing, except giving me an unpleasant vibration in return.

“Claim” I thought to myself to see if that would work. Nothing.

"Claim Medical Ointment" I said out loud. Still nothing. Getting a little pissed off now honestly. I reached out to grab at it, mostly out of frustration, and was surprised when my hands closed around cold metal, exactly where the image was.

I almost dropped it in surprise, having never had an image become 3D and physical in the blink of an eye before, but this day was full of surprises and I was slowly starting to roll with the punches.

I dismissed the screen and opened the tin, bewildered but grateful at the medical-smelling goo that was inside. I made my way back to the water, checking my peripheral all the while, washed off my wounds as best I could, reveling in the cooling sensation, then applied the ointment. I thought about wrapping my arm in a palm leaf to act like a bandaid but decided against it for now, worried I'd just make the healing worse.

The areas I applied began to itch almost immediately, but that was quickly replaced with a potent cooling sensation, much deeper and more effective than the lake water had been. As I walked back to where I had dissected the creature, I could visibly see the skin begin to seal itself, stopping the flow of blood completely.

“Miraculous” I gawked at my arm, amazed at the speed the bite marks were healing at. Once the wounds were sealed, the rapid healing levelled out, seemingly only concerned with open wounds. I guess the scars will heal in their own time, though I’m sure the ointment would speed that up.

I still had about a third of the small tin left, but I wouldn’t be using it for something as superficial as scar repair. Who knows what strange creature will pop up next to take a bite of me.

I took the pile of guts I wouldn't be using some distance away from my camp and buried them. Not deep, just deep enough that I couldn't smell it. The sand, luckily was incredibly easy to work, and a few minutes with one of my sturdy palm leaf stalks and I was done.

With that quest complete, I took some time to sit down and rest, allowing the healing to continue unabated. That healing ointment was doing wonders, the throbbing in my arm had completely passed and most of the open bleeding had been reduced to small red scars.

I checked the position of the sun, suns - kept forgetting that. I thought 2 suns might mean a longer day, but my earlier thought of a binary star system seemed to be accurate, they had stayed together throughout the afternoon, and looked like they would set in a few hours.

I knew deserts could get dreadfully cold at night, so now that I had a moment of respite, I needed to think ahead.

I had food; there was the meat I had harvested and I had noticed coconuts on the ground and in some of the trees. So I didn't think I would starve to death tonight.

For supplies I had a t-shirt, a long-sleeve button-up that I had kept open, some light pants, my sneakers, a necklace, and a bracelet. Additionally, I seemed to have kept the contents of my pockets, which may have been my biggest boon so far. The lighter I had been practicing with my entire trip was still with me.

I gave it a flick and it lit right up. Perfect. It wouldn't last forever, but the striker would work indefinitely. No sitting on a beach trying to rub wood together until it lit. Luckily, I could avoid that survival movie trop. Maybe I could still have a sporting-goods sidekick though, the day is young.

Other than that, I had a few coins and my hotel key which consisted of a key ring, a key card and a real key for the pool. Not sure how any of that would be useful here. Once again I cursed myself for dropping my phone.

On the off chance I wasn't dead it would've been nice to try and get a signal, despite the likely futility of that.

It didn't matter anyway. For the time, I was content with my pitiful inventory of gear.

I sat down and confronted the strange new piece of equipment I had with me.

The floating screen.

It still had some quests for me and, hopefully, some answers as well.