The rain outside hammered away against the pavement, lightning cracking overhead and bathing the entire valley in momentary light. It had been hours since the rain had started, yet it still showed no signs of letting up.
Desmond sat silently in a destroyed cafe, knees pulled to his chest and arms wrapped around his shins. He couldn’t remember what it was called, but he knew that his mother enjoyed the coffee brewed here. He also remembered that she often brought home muffins from this same cafe on good days. He’d already looked around, though, and there was nothing left.
With hindsight, he thought that it was pretty likely that the demons had eaten everything. After seeing that gluttony demon eating even the metal of the fountain, he wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d gorged on everything edible in town before moving on. The one left behind had no sources of food left to recover after the battle, so it resorted to eating less nutritious material so that it could heal up and follow the rest of the pack.
It also explained why Desmond hadn’t found any bodies left behind, alive or otherwise. If his mother hadn’t hidden him in the crawlspace, then...
Desmond shivered, shaking the thought away. It was getting late, and he’d gotten soaked in the rain earlier before he managed to find solace in the cafe. He was cold, tired, and could really use a change of clothes. But for as long as it continued to rain, it wasn’t safe to go back out. If he got sick, there was no one around who could take care of him. He had to depend on himself, and that meant he had to be careful when it came to his already poor health.
His stomach grumbled and he was painfully reminded of the fact that he hadn’t eaten now in days. He had drained his Father’s watering can of its leftover water after he’d killed the demon. It was now sitting outside in the rain, collecting rainwater. Desmond hoped he would be able to find his Father’s water filter back home, but he didn’t get his hopes up.
To distract himself from his sorrow and his hunger, he thought about his stats again, and the visual of the interface returned to the forefront of his mind.
Desmond Whitechapel
Race: Human
Age: 8
Class: Village Boy - Lv. 5
Generic Skills:
⦓Small Blades Proficiency - Passive⦔ - Lv. 1
Stats:
Stat Points Available: [15]
Strength: 10
Finesse: 5
Endurance: 5
Insight: 5
Self: 5
Personal Skills:
⦓Eye For Detail⦔ - Lv. 2
Available Skill Slots: [5]
He’d panicked and put all five of his previous points into Strength so that he could jam the knife into the gluttony demon’s throat. He didn’t regret doing that, though, because it probably would’ve gotten him killed if he hadn’t. Now that he had time to think, though, he wanted to put more thought into what he put the rest of his new points into.
Gaining three whole levels off of killing the demon wasn’t expected, but Desmond was happy to take them for the minimal work he put in. If he wanted to be strong and to survive, he would need to level up a lot. So he was glad to just take whatever he could get, especially now.
‘But...’ he thought, frowning as he looked between the five stats listed before him. ‘...I don’t know what to put my points into.’
Strength, Finesse, and Endurance, those were self-explanatory. Desmond flexed his arm experimentally and could feel a difference in how strong he was now. Finesse, he figured, would probably be speed related, and Endurance would probably have to do with his toughness.
Insight and Self, though, confused him to no end. He didn’t really know what either of them did and, unlike his skills, simply thinking about them didn’t tell him anything, either. He guessed that Insight probably had something to do with knowledge, and Self had something to do with...himself. Putting it that way, it made even less sense.
Desmond sighed, rubbing his eyes with the butt of his palm. For now, he simply decided that splitting his remaining points as evenly as he could was probably the best. That left him with three which, after a brief moment of hesitation, he simply put into Finesse, Endurance, and Self.
Desmond Whitechapel
Race: Human
Age: 8
Class: Village Boy - Lv. 5
Generic Skills:
⦓Small Blades Proficiency - Passive⦔ - Lv. 1
Stats:
Stat Points Available: [0]
Strength: 10
Finesse: 9
Endurance: 9
Insight: 8
Self: 9
Personal Skills:
⦓Eye For Detail⦔ - Lv. 2
Available Skill Slots: [5]
Once he was done with that, he tentatively tried to see if his stats had changed much about him. He figured the easiest way to do this was to get up and jog back and forth in the cafe. He had to admit that he probably looked pretty stupid from someone else’s perspective, but there wasn’t anyone around to see just how dumb he looked, so it was a small worry.
During his run, he realized that he felt a little lighter on his feet than before, but it wasn’t a very drastic change. Along those same lines, he felt like he could run a little longer, too. There wasn’t much he could do to see what his Insight or Self had done, but he was sure they had done something at the very least.
With his test over, he eventually returned to his spot near the door. The rain hadn’t let up just yet, so he couldn’t do much except wait for it to stop so he could go looking for food. Despite the conclusion he’d come to earlier, he still didn’t have much proof of it being true. He was hoping that he could scour the village and find something at least to prove himself wrong, but he would simply have to wait until he could actually check in the morning.
Until then, he decided to just start using ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ on random things in the cafe. Using its previous form constantly and on the same things had leveled it up, however slowly, and he’d even leveled it up again after using it to kill the gluttony demon. So maybe if he kept using it, even for no reason, it would eventually level up again and help him along.
Still, though. He had a feeling it would take a long time for that to happen. It wouldn’t stop him from trying, but he was sure this would be a boring night...
►⚉◄
The rain continued through the night, and Desmond eventually got tired of inspecting the remains of chairs and tables without ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ leveling up, so he eventually went to bed. When he woke up the next day, the rain had finally stopped and the entire town was covered by a thin sheet of moisture.
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Desmond left the cafe sometime in the afternoon, sleeping much longer than he’d intended, and returned home to grab his Father’s thankfully undamaged water filter. It didn’t take him very long to figure out how to use either and, within the hour, he had perfectly drinkable water, even if it wasn’t the best tasting.
Following that, he rummaged through his own house and some of the nearby ones, trying to find a change of clothes. This proved a much more difficult task than just finding the water filter, though, as he soon came to discover. His own room had been in the direct line of fire and had been razed during the attack. From there, all he could find were his old pair of traveling boots, which he was happy to switch into after his others had been assaulted by the viscous black goo in the streets.
It took him another seven houses before he was able to find a durable enough pair of black pants and a white shirt that fit him and didn’t have any holes or tears in it. Alongside that, he managed to find some shorts, a couple extra t-shirts, and a shoulder bag that was slightly too big for him, but that he could carry with ease thanks to his newfound strength.
With all of that figured out, his next goal became to find food, but that proved to be the hardest task of all.
Originally, he decided to travel out to the farms on the outskirts of Calcheth and hope that literally anything was leftover, but his hopes were soon dashed. Much like he’d expected, every farm out there had been systematically cleaned out. The fields were empty, with empty holes dug out where the vegetables had once been, and any farm animals that may have once lived there were gone, alongside with all the people.
Much like the inner city, he found no bodies. Just more dried blood and the vestiges of a fight. The sight sickened him, but Desmond moved on without lingering too long. His hunger was beginning to gnaw at him.
From there, he moved back into the city and sweeped as many houses as he could before night fell again. At night, he went back to trying to level ⦓Eye For Detail⦔, but to no avail once again.
The next morning, he set out looking for food again. The trip, however, ended much the same as the first, and he went to sleep that night hungrier than ever before. He continued this routine for two more days before he saw any change in his day.
On the eve of the fifth morning, as he was exiting the cafe, he groaned in exasperation and, in a fit of rage, punted a flower pot. It went careening into a brick wall between the cafe and the next building over, where it promptly shattered, spilling the dirt and flower seeds inside it all over the ground.
Desmond huffed, shaking his head as he meandered over to clean up after himself.
“This is impossible.” He muttered to himself, squatting down as he collected the seeds back in his palm. “The entire village is probably empty by now. I’m gonna starve if—”
He paused, his eyes traveling up into the alleyway between the buildings. Sitting wedged in between them was the corpse of the gluttony demon. He forgot that he had dragged it there before the rain to get it out of the street and, until now, had completely forgotten about it. Strangely enough, it hadn’t seemed to start rotting yet; in fact, it’s body seemed in the same condition as it was when he’d killed it.
Come to think of it, the majority of its body was bull-like...meaning that it should theoretically still be edible, right?
A shiver ran through his body. Desmond stood up, quickly shaking the thought away, chastising himself for even thinking of it in the first place. It was ridiculous. Unheard of. Demons ate people. Not the other way around. It was stupid. Dumb.
He quickly backed out of the alleyway, but paused, looking back hesitantly. The corpse hadn’t moved, as corpses were known not to do.
But...he was also quickly running out of options. Just because people didn’t eat them didn’t mean they couldn’t. It just...hadn’t been done yet. The thought of it put him on edge, so he walked away from it again before picking up his bag and heading back out into the city, determined to put the idea past him and just find regular food instead.
But if he had no other options and would starve without it, then...he’d consider it.
►⚉◄
Days went by, each one worse than the one before it. Desmond would venture out in the morning, search a new section of the city for food, and then return in the evening, each time with no food and less hope than the day before it. With each passing day, Desmond found himself gazing wistfully into the alley with less and less disgust as well.
A week passed, and fresh rain rolled over the town, filling Desmond's watering can once more and giving him something to at least sustain himself. Yet the thought of the demon corpse was still fresh on the forefront of his mind. He had dragged it into the destroyed backroom of the cafe before the rain came in to try and keep it safe from the elements, and now its proximity taunted him daily.
To distract himself from it, he dove into his skills again for the next week. Without a suitable target to practice with his knife, he didn’t think he’d be able to improve his ⦓Small Blades Proficiency⦔ skill, so he settled for trying to raise ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ instead. Unfortunately, it seemed even more difficult to level than Study, as it only leveled up once during the week-long attempt at growing stronger. The information it gave was a little more useful now, at least when used to just look something over, but he hadn’t tried to use it for much of anything else just yet.
After the long two weeks had passed and Desmond had failed to find any food left in Calcheth, he found himself defiantly staring at the demon corpse just a room over from where he slept. He stared at it, as if it was offending him just by being there and he was expecting it to do something.
It was still a corpse, however, and continued to do nothing. Somehow, that seemed to upset Desmond even more as he put his head in his hands and groaned aloud.
“I can’t believe I’m even considering this...” He quickly shook his trepidation away, his resolve climbing. As bad as it could potentially be, he had no other options anymore. It was either eat the demon meat or die. And Desmond was determined to live, no matter what.
So, with his mind made up, he stood up and walked over to the corpse, kneeling down to it cautiously as he looked it over. Sure, it was mostly a bull’s body, but that didn’t suddenly mean he knew what he was doing. He’d never done something like this, and had only seen cows on a handful of occasions before. Luckily, though, he had a nifty skill that would hopefully make up for his lack of experience.
He activated ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ and watched as purple lines—much more clean than the wispy purple energy from before—appeared all over the corpse. It fed him information, most of which he already knew, about its current state but he sifted through all of that to try and get to the more minute details about its body as a whole, not just its current state. The only new things he seemed able to get out of it, though, were its weight and approximate height if it were standing on all fours. It would’ve been at least an entire foot taller than Desmond himself if it hadn’t been heavily weakened when he’d found it.
When it returned nothing else useful to him, though, he grit his teeth and tried to probe deeper, pushing past the things he already knew. Like before, instead of trying to focus on it's entire body as a whole, he focused on it’s loin, which was relatively undamaged save for the long gash down it’s back.
‘Come on..! Don’t just show me what it is, show me where it’s weak!’ He pressed forward, trying to force the skill into working harder. For a long, drawn out moment, it didn’t seem as if he was making any progress. Suddenly, though, the lines seemed to condense on themselves, shrinking to cover a much smaller area than before. Desmond watched as the lines formed a grid, encompassing just the loin he had specified. A smile spread across his lips.
As soon as it finished, though, Desmond felt a sharp pain shoot through his head, enough to make him reach up and clutch it in response. His temples began to throb as he took a deep breath to steady himself.
“I guess I’m...pushing the skill to its limit to do this sort of thing, huh?” He reasoned, reaching over to grab his knife. “Well...it’ll probably get easier when I raise the skill level some more.”
With his knife in hand, he leaned in and got to work. Following the grid with his eyes, he tried to keep the knife as steady as possible as he cut deeply into the demon’s flesh. It was surprisingly softer than he’d expected, but he guessed that maybe it just felt that way because the demon was already dead. He had no way to either confirm or deny this, but he also didn’t care at the moment, so he spent minimal time thinking about it.
Admittedly, the process of separating the meat from its body, then from the skin, took him much longer than he’d have liked. He had to move slowly, to make sure he didn’t mess up and ruin the meat or something like that. But at the same time, the meat inside was somehow tougher than the demon’s skin, making it even harder to cut through. After a grueling, almost hour-long process, Desmond was eventually able to tear the chunk of meat free from the demon’s body with a bit of effort.
The Voice rang in his head about something, but he ignored it in favor of immediately looking over the meat to try and see if there was anything obviously wrong with it. A part of him was almost hoping that it would be very clearly dangerous to eat; so much so that he would have no choice but to stop here and not cross that line.
But...as far as he could tell, it was a perfectly normal chunk of meat that just so happened to be from a demon. He even checked it over with ⦓Eye For Detail⦔, and it practically parroted that information right back to him.
It seemed as if, for all intents and purposes, the meat was perfectly edible. There was just one small problem.
Desmond didn’t know how to cook it. Hell, he didn’t even know how to start a fire to cook it with, leaving him sitting there with just a raw slab of meat in his hands. If he weren’t desperate, he might’ve taken a little more time to think about how to eat it without harming himself.
But he’d been without food for two, almost three, weeks now. Once he had the meat in his hand, he dove into it like he was a ravenous animal, tearing it apart with his bare teeth. It wasn’t the best tasting thing in the world—far from it, in fact. But Desmond clearly didn’t care about how it tasted at the moment.
In mere moments, he had torn the thing apart and eaten just about every part of it that was edible. His hands were covered in demon blood, which he promptly tried to rub off onto his old pair of pants. With his stomach filled and his head pounding from stressing his skill, a sudden wave of lethargy washed over him. It wasn't just regular exhaustion, either; it felt as if something was compelling him to sleep and, without the ability to resist it, Desmond gave in.
It took all of his strength and willpower to stand and stumble back toward his sleeping spot in the corner of the cafe before he collapsed into it almost instantly and fell asleep even sooner.
Darkness descended upon the world around him, and similarly clouded his mind at the same time as slumber quickly took hold.