Red picked his way carefully through the forest. His shoes really needed an upgrade at some point. The underbrush got thick in areas and forced him to spend minutes carefully navigating through or around thorns to get passed.
He was carefully making his way eastward in the fading light of the day. Or at least what he thought was eastward. He couldn’t quite see the sky from underneath the canopy, but he was slowly orienting himself based on the rays of light that snuck through the thick tree covering.
All this was to avoid the weird moral conundrum the last loop had left him with. Fighting a rabid bear was all well and good, but if it was just protecting its sick kid? Yeah, that got real awkward real quick.
Also, the whole deal with the glowing door covered in glyphs required a little more thought. He’d sort of avoided the issue before, until he couldn’t, of course, but since the problem was persistent, he’d need to actually solve it at some point.
What were the magic doors? Would this new one start replicating out of control, or was this one different since it was locked? It certainly wasn’t sucking things through like the previous ones were. And it also had a different message.
Save a Child
On the surface, it was eerily similar to a quest from a video game. Go here, do this, and you can continue. The questions after that, however, came hard and fast. Each one was as varied and unanswerable as the next, but they all stemmed from a single burning question.
Why was he here in this time loop?
Which was a mystery wrapped in an enigma of epic proportions.
“Should be right around...here,” Red grunted as he stepped over a particularly gnarled root in favor of actually dealing with his problems. He looked up, and a brilliant ray of sunshine lit up his face as the forest abruptly opened up to reveal the base of the mountain.
[New Skill → Navigation 1]
Red grinned as he stepped out into the clearing. The rocks here had broken sometime in the past into an immense gravel slope. The peak hid beneath the distant cloud cover, which was lazily covering it. It was immensely steep. The climb would be grueling, but it was still way more scalable than the sheer cliff near spawn.
Plus, it would allow him to train his skills.
Red glanced around one last time and began his ascent upon seeing nothing interesting. The slope was unforgiving. Every step forward made the loose gravel clatter down the slope, dragging him back to his start position. He resorted to aggressive switchbacks to at least make some progress up the slope. This more than tripled the distance he had to cover, but at least it meant he made some progress.
[Athleticism 1 → Athleticism 2]
The interface pinged, and Red instantly felt a little better. He grinned in a manner more akin to a grimace as he flopped down on the slope. The gravel beneath him instantly came loose, and he slid five feet down the slope. There went his progress.
A cool wind passed by, taking with it some of the sweat on Red’s brow and he took the moment to look out at the valley. He hadn’t made it that far up the slope, just high enough to see above the treeline, but that still allowed him to really appreciate his surroundings.
[Navigation 1 → Navigation 2]
A massive valley extended out in front of him. A dense evergreen forest littered the bottom, and at the valley’s lowest point, a raging river snaked beneath the boughs. A veritable swarm of dark shapes that vaguely resembled birds flapped above the river, and even from all the way across the valley, Red could hear their chirping calls.
More mountains backdropped the valley, their ice-capped peaks obscured by lazy clouds. Each one was steeper and more rocky than the last. A bare few of the behemoths managed to sustain a sparse carpet of green on the slopes that were less steep. The rest was just a light gray rock that would have been a dream for any rock climber worth their salt.
Red’s mountain was no different than the rest. Maybe a little smaller, and it had a funky double peak. Despite not being very cold, the path to the ridge was obscured by a dense glacier of dirty snow. Red frowned slightly, trying and failing to see a clear path to the top.
The wind began picking up.
“I wonder if I can get cold resistance,” Red murmured to himself as a flicker of green passed across his iris. He turned back to the valley for one more appreciative glance before continuing.
Red froze in shock.
His eyes had been roving the surroundings up until now. The mountains were beautiful and immense but ultimately normal, and the birds in the distance were the same. But as he finally caught his breath, his eyes accidentally looked...higher.
A gigantic planet dominated the sky. Oceans and continents dotted the surface of the huge celestial object. Clouds covered some of the continents, and incredibly, Red spotted a hurricane forming near the equator of the sister planet.
Off to the side, a tiny orange-yellow star bathed both planets in light. It was utterly dwarfed by the sister planet, and even as Red watched, he slowly saw the sister planet start to cover up the sun.
“I have got to go there,” the words escaped out of Red’s mouth without him even realizing. In that moment, he didn’t know if it was even possible. Space travel was complicated even in the best of times. But he didn’t care.
He didn’t care that this was proof that he actually was transported to a new world. Nor did he care that his brain had been weirdly taken over by some gamified system. A darkness was falling over the land, but it wasn’t because night was approaching. It was because the largest solar eclipse ever was about to occur.
And given the utterly insane size of the sister planet and how fast it was moving in the sky. This eclipse occurred daily.
A warbling screech broke the idyllic scene. Red instinctively ducked, his brain shorting out as he was suddenly reminded that he was in a dangerous forest.
A massive dragon flew over the nearby peak. Greenish-yellow scales glittered in the fading light as it flapped it’s enormous leathery wings. The air shook with its passage. It circled around and coasted over to an outcropping. One that Red belatedly realized contained a well-hidden nest of woven sticks.
“A wyvern, not a dragon,” Red whispered as he noticed the lack of front legs, not that proper naming was really necessary in that moment. In the wyvern's hind legs, a small woman with a cascade of golden hair struggled with every flap of the wings.
Red stood.
Even if the wyvern hadn’t been carrying a person, Red probably would have gone to investigate. But it was carrying a person! Which meant civilization. Clothes! A shower! A medium rare steak with mashed potatoes dipped in gravy with a nice beer...
Red headed for the nest, his mouth salivating as his imagination ran away from him. The nest was on an adjacent mountain, and would take him a bit to get there. Probably too late to save the woman, but he could fix that next loop.
A manic grin spread over Red’s face as the absurdity of the situation hit him. He scrambled like a deranged maniac across the edge of the gravel slope. His movements were rushed, with little care for when he slipped and scraped his knees. A pale pulse of green lit up his eyes constantly as he buried the burn in his thighs deep, deep in his subconscious.
He sensed the end of this loop approaching.
[Athleticism 2 → Athleticism 3]
Darkness struck shortly after. The sister planet covered the sun, and dusk fell over the valley. It made navigation more difficult, but that just meant that he got to train his newest skill more.
[Navigation 2 → Navigation 3]
The two new level-ups worked wonders as Red suddenly found himself picking out paths where the gravel was more stable. His legs were also more stable in the places where the ground was unstable. All this meant that he made it to the base of the nest after three hours.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Coincidentally, this was also when the sister planet crossed its zenith, and the light of day came back.
“Wassup Dormamu!” Red stalked confidently over the lip of the wyvern nest. There was no sign of the blonde girl, and a single speckled brown egg was tucked into the corner. Red simply placed his fists on his hips and looked up at the giant reptile. “I’ve come to ba—”
[Stab Resistance 6 → Stab Resistance 7]
A nestling chirped pathetically in the distance.
Red cracked his neck and started again.
This time, he jogged directly in the direction of the nest. He got lost almost immediately and ended up still in the valley when the wyvern screech sounded. On the bright side, he’d found the river, which sparkled prettily in the darkness of the eclipse. It was beautiful and had this divine smell that...
A nestling chirped pathetically in the distance as Red tried to recall how that last loop had ended. Didn’t matter, really. It was a challenge for another day.
[Navigation 3 → Navigation 4]
The forest proved to be a bloody maze of twisting trees, and Red was starting to believe the trees moved when he wasn’t looking. Still, with the additional navigation level up, he managed to scrounge his way to the base of the wyvern cliff and started scaling it just before the eclipse began.
He arrived at the nest in the dark with a scratched knee.
“Dormamu! I’ve come to bargain.”
[Stab Resistance 7 → Stab Resistance 8]
A nestling chirped pathetically in the distance.
Red cracked his neck and went out again. He’d dodged the wyvern’s first snap, though the thing’s tail had whipped around at insane speeds. He was pretty sure it had decapitated him. An unpleasant memory.
Red’s eyes flared green.
With the path memorized this time, he arrived at the base of the wyvern cliff far before the eclipse. He began scaling up the slope and was almost halfway up it by the time the wyvern screeched.
Unfortunately, the overgrown lizard noticed him struggling up the slope and swooped down to pick him up. Without anywhere to hide on the gravel slope, he was scooped up in the wyvern’s free leg.
“Fancy meeting you here!” Red shouted into the blistering wind. “I’ve come to save you!”
The girl, who couldn’t have been older than twelve, looked at him with tear-stained, innocent, canted eyes. Red couldn’t help but notice that her ears were pointy and nearly eight inches long. She said something in a language that was definitely not English, which caused Red’s manic grin to fade slightly.
Then, the wyvern tossed both of them at terminal velocity into the nest.
“Ahh, balls,” Red muttered just before his head splattered like an omelet against the unforgiving stone.
[Crush Resistance 3 → Crush Resistance 4]
A nestling chirped pathetically in the distance.
“An elf, huh?” Red rolled his shoulders. “Cool.”
He headed out once again, taking the time to ponder the coincidence that this elf was definitely a child who definitely needed saving. Which would probably open the door in the bear’s cave.
[Athleticism 3 → Athleticism 4]
“I’ve come to talk to you about your car’s extended warranty—”
The fight lasted a whole eight seconds before Red was rudely decapitated. Unfortunately, these fights were too short to gain levels in brawling or power strike, but that wasn’t exactly why he was doing this.
[Stab Resistance 8 → Stab Resistance 9]
[Navigation 4 → Navigation 5]
[Athleticism 4 → Athleticism 5]
A nestling chirped pathetically in the distance.
By now, Red was consistently able to get to the base of the mountain well ahead of the eclipse. He also managed to scale nearly to the top before the wyvern arrived, and had found himself a convenient boulder to hide behind as the wyvern landed. Just a couple more levels in athleticism and he’d be able to get there while the wyvern was still in the air.
Red’s eyes flared green as he punched the wyvern’s whip-like tail. His wrist broke, then his forearm, then his shoulder, before the tail crashed into his chest, making him cough up a lung.
[Crush Resistance 4 → Crush Resistance 5]
[Power Strike 5 → Power Strike 6]
Several more of these loops occurred. Red could have made it to the nest earlier if he’d wanted to, but he started intentionally varying his path up the mountain. Sometimes he got screwed by some hidden terrain feature and other times he arrived at the nest utterly exhausted because he’d taken a path that was more difficult than normal.
[Athleticism 5 → Athleticism 7]
[Navigation 5 → Navigation 6]
The result, though, was that his skills leveled quickly, and he discovered a much better route up the wyvern cliff. By taking this secondary path, he managed to arrive at the nest before the wyvern for the first time.
He stood beside the egg at a little bit of a loss as the wyvern screeched in the distance. It approached and visibly stiffened when it spotted Red standing in its nest. It roared again, tucking its wings as it raced closer.
“And...up and over,” Red grunted as he tossed the large wyvern egg off the side of the cliff. The wyvern squawked and banked. Unfortunately, it also let go of its precious cargo, whose screams cut off abruptly as she smashed into the nest. Momentum dragged the body through the woven wall of the nest, across nearly a hundred feet before it was rudely halted by a solid granite cliff.
A cold wash of ice chased away Red’s whimsy. The manic thoughtless humor fueling his death runs vanished like a summer breeze as his eyes refused to look away from the red smear. The girl’s head was cracked open, and her glassy gray eyes looked sightlessly at Red as if accusing.
She was so small.
“Ahh, balls,” Red whispered hoarsely, barely even registering the wyvern coming back for revenge. His eyes flared green, but that only solidified the frosted glacier his thoughts had become. The wyvern arrived, slamming into him from behind with divine fury.
Even with his last dying breath, Red was unable to look away from the girl.
[New Skill → Slash Resistance 1]
A nestling chirped pathetically in the distance.
“This isn’t a game,” Red muttered, rubbing his chest where the phantom pain of the previous run was fading. He was desperately tempted to take a moment and process, but instead, he deaggroed the bear and sprinted through the forest to the wyvern nest. He’d have time to process on the way.
[Navigation 6 → Navigation 7]
It took a dozen more loops before Red devised a reasonable plan. Another level in navigation allowed him to optimize the route just a little more. The extra time allowed him to explore the surrounding area incrementally and set things up perfectly for the wyvern’s arrival.
“Come at me, Big Bird,” Red grimly said to himself as the wyvern crested the distant mountain. As usual, it spotted Red halfway across the valley and sped up. The faint screaming of the elf girl provided an uncomfortable backdrop that served as a reminder. The wyvern flared its wings to land within the nest and attempted a wild swipe with its free talon at Red.
The girl went flying as the wyvern dropped its quarry in favor of Red. She screamed as she flew to the ground, only for the sound to end with a muffled whumpf as she landed amidst a pile of soft leaves, moss and mud pushed up against the back of the nest.
Red didn’t even glance at her, knowing she’d have a broken leg and various scrapes but nothing worse. Instead, he dodged the predictable swipe from the wyvern and rolled to his feet beside the egg. He’d balanced it precariously on the edge of the nest and it only required a gentle nudge from him for it to tumble over the edge of the cliff.
The wyvern spun, screeching and ready to pounce, only for its beady reptilian eyes to bulge in horror as its progeny tumbled into the void. It squawked, lunging over Red and after its egg.
Red instantly raced to the girl whose foot was just visible in the mess of the landing pad. He grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her out of the pile. She cried in pain, but Red could only grit his teeth and keep going. They didn’t have enough time for the gentle approach.
“Come on, girl, I’m going to get you out of here,” Red said with a wane smile. She didn’t understand English, but nonetheless, he tried to inject as much confidence and reassurance into his tone as possible.
The elf girl sputtered, then said the same thing she’d said last time he’d done this. It was probably something like “What?” or another exclamation of shock.
[New Skill → Lufthynsth Language Proficiency 1]
Red’s eyebrows raised at the notification, but he didn’t let it distract him from the plan. With practiced efficiency, he pulled the girl onto his back and sprinted for the crack in the side of the mountain.
The girl said something else that, given his low language proficiency, he didn’t understand. A second later, though, she touched his ears, so he had a fair guess.
The wyvern landed behind him as he entered the cave. It screeched again, barreling toward him like an unbound force of nature. Red threw himself through the crack, scrambling several feet into the pitch darkness—
The wyvern slammed into the stone. A massive detonation shook the mountain, and Red hurriedly shielded the girl with his body as loose stones rained on them from above. It roared into the crack, tearing at the edges but unable to fit into the narrow crevasse.
The girl said something else, her eyes glowing like coins in the dark.
“Come on. We’re almost out of this,” Red said kindly, ignoring the wyvern and gently carrying the girl deeper. The passageway narrowed almost to the point where Red didn’t fit, but then it opened up slightly and started descending.
What followed was a long and arduous descent that tested the limits of his athleticism to the max. The darkness made navigation nearly impossible, especially when the eclipse cut off the meager light that entered. Navigation pulled through, however, and eventually, the pair popped out near the base of the mountain.
[Athleticism 7 → Athleticism 8]
“Let’s keep moving before the eclipse ends,” Red said to the girl, more as a form of reassurance than anything. To his surprise, the elf was sleeping when he looked over his shoulder.
He readjusted her, then, after a surreptitious glance at the sky, Red snuck the rest of the way down the mountain. For the first time in what felt like hundreds of loops, Red felt an inkling of peace as he got lost in the dense maze of pine trees.
[New Skill → Stealth 1]
The enraged cries of the wyvern echoed across the valley all the way until the second dawn.
Skills: Athleticism 8, Brawling 5, Crush Resistance 5, Lufthynth Language Proficiency 1, Navigation 7, Power Strike 6, Slash Resistance 1, Stab Resistance 9, Stealth 1