“Are you done being stubborn?” Julius asked as Cillian threw the hatchet for the umpteenth time. It bit into the stump they’d set up for target practice, dead in the center, and Cillian stretched.

He was leaner. Muscles were more pronounced along his shoulders and upper arms, and there was the first form of abs on his stomach. Barely there, but noticeable. He was skinny to begin with, but now he was built more like he could handle himself.

“Is that a real question?” Cillian asked and glanced over at the cat, who was paws deep in a deer carcass. “Hey, asshole. Save some for me. Fuck.”

“It’s been 38 days, Cillian.”

“I’m aware, Julius,” Cillian replied snidely and marched across the grass to yank the hatchet out. “And aren’t I getting valuable training time?”

“You haven’t leveled up in the slightest,” Julius pointed out. “Deer don’t give you any XP.”

“Well, that’s fine by me. That just means I’ll level up faster when they realize they’re wrong,” Cillian said confidently. “And if I get stuck on this level forever, so be it.”

“This is not the hill to die on. It’s just a cat.”

“What, are you some kind of psychopath? Did you kill cats as a child?” Cillian demanded.

“No, I just know how to survive Babel, and you are clearly doing everything wrong,” Julius snipped.

“Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“That’s your luck counter, not you.”

“Well, I’m still not killing the cat---” Cillian abruptly cut himself off as the cat crunched down on a bone. “Hey! You’re gonna choke! Get that out of your mouth!”

“I cannot believe you’re treating a black sabertooth like a housecat with plastic,” Julius drawled as Cillian drew himself up, marched over, and took the bone away. The cat yowled at him, but Cillian ignored him as he cut off a huge chunk of meat and shoved it in the cat’s face.

“Eat that,” he ordered, and the cat chomped down, its teeth narrowly avoiding Cillian’s hand.

“... Well are you at least going to name it?” Julius asked and Cillian looked back at him.

He looked different today. Dressed down, in a button down and jeans, looking more like an office worker than anything else. Did he not have a busy day or something? He was normally in really nice linen suits.

“No? Why would I? I’m going to have to leave it,” Cillian replied and rolled out his shoulders before getting up to pick up his shirt.

His sports bra was still torn. There were scars all over his body, from the fish and the cats. His face was now scarred, but that didn’t bother him so much. Personally, he thought it made him look rugged. It was a good look on him.

Even so, it was weird looking down at the raised scar across his breasts, the frayed edge of his left cup, the way his body was so incredibly different now.

“Are you going to go get water?” Julius asked, and Cillian sighed and pulled on the shirt.

“Yes,” he replied.

He had fallen into a routine over the past few weeks. First, he figured out how to patch the roof. He had to research how thatching worked for a story before, though he couldn’t recall which one it was, he was pretty sure it was never published, but he retained the information. In the early morning, he got up and hunted. It had taken trial and error to figure out how to preserve meat, as he had always made jerky with his dad in an air dryer thingamajig. But, he eventually worked it out. After he hunted, he worked on training. Running, going through the forms Julius had taught him to correctly wield the hatchet, throwing it, things like that. After that, he gathered edible wild fruits and herbs and vegetables for dinner, and checked his snares.

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It was vastly different from his past life of takeout and ramen, low energy one-bowl meals, peanut butter jelly sandwiches, but it felt… better in a way. Though it was incredibly annoying that animals that were not targets didn’t butcher themselves. Julius had to teach him how to do that, too.

But he felt better. A bit more stable, even. Which was weird, because he was technically off his meds, and he felt like he should have been feeling the effects of missing testosterone by now.

“Hey, Julius?” Cillian asked as he knelt in front of the half-wrecked deer that was going to be a nightmare to break down.

“Mmm?”

“Is the Tower…” Cillian trailed off, not sure how to phrase this. “Does it do things to your body?”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’m stronger, and faster, but…” He never went through the withdrawals of abruptly going off of antipsychotics.

“Oh, you mean medication?” Julius asked as he watched Cillian start breaking down the body. “The Tower maintains past medications. Otherwise it would never be able to kidnap diabetics. Which it has done.”

Diabetics was suspiciously specific, and Cillian looked up at him, squinting. He had noticed the gleam of a medical ID bracelet under his cuff from time to time, but he had never asked. It seemed impolite, and didn’t apply to him. Julius would sometimes abruptly disappear mid-conversation, and Cillian had figured he just woke up in the middle of the night, but… He may have woken up due to a sugar drop.

“I see,” Cillian settled on, because it wasn’t his place to say anything else. “That’s good to know. No wonder I haven’t had a mental breakdown yet.”

Julius stared at him with a completely blank face, and Cillian had a brief flashback to the multiple times Julius had caught him screaming at the sky like that was going to solve his current predicament. It was becoming a thing.

“Those are normal mental breakdowns, not off my meds breakdowns,” he said immediately and then shot Julius a wry grin. “Off my meds breakdowns involve a lot more online shopping mishaps.”

“I see,” Julius said drolly, and Cillian turned his attention to the hack job of a deer.

“I should just leave the whole damn thing to this cat,” he muttered. The cat in question was now laying out in the sun, fat, happy, and purring.

Even after a month of eating well, it was still a bit skinny. The coat on it looked a bit better, and so did its gums. But its hip bones and ribcage were still pronounced. There was a bit more weight in its cheeks, and Cillian felt a bit proud of its progress.

“Alright, buddy,” he said as he decided to throw the entire carcass into the item box. “Do you wanna go get some water with me?”

The cat let out a little inquisitive ‘mrrp’, his ears flicking up in interest, and Cillian stood up, wiped his bloody hands on his pants.

“Let’s go,” he said, and turned to where he thought the river was.

“Wrong direction,” Julius said, and Cillian promptly turned again. “Also wrong.”

“Right,” Cillian muttered and fully turned around to venture into the forest.

It was nicer on this side, away from the city. Birds were chirping, insects sang, and it wasn’t altogether awful so long as he remembered the bugs wouldn’t cross the river. There was a stream going through the forest he preferred to get water at. Going near the river made him anxious in more ways than one. He didn’t want to remember what had happened last time.

Congratulations!

You have completed the hidden quest: befriend the King of the Black!

Rewards: Title: Owner of the King. Skill: The Owner of the King

The notifications came out of nowhere, and Cillian stared at it for a long, long moment.

New hidden quest has unlocked: Sacrilegious.

Burn down the Holy Tree.

Cillian stared at the notification for a long, long moment, his mouth open and gaping, as Julius pursed his lips. A million and one emotions built up in Cillian’s chest, and he let out a borderline hysterical laugh, because there was nothing. No building up to it, no nothing. Never mind that he randomly got the damned cat’s loyalty. Never mind that there was no great quest mark or event to win the cat’s heart.

This was insane. It was just thrown at him. This was terrible game design, and also?! What the fuck was this? What the actual fuck?!

“... Are you fucking kidding me?!”