The encounter with Panzer resulted in a bit of paranoia, Ryan first realised. Whether it was a healthy bit of paranoia or whether it would prove to be detrimental had yet to be seen. As they walked ever further east Ryan carefully scrutinised his surroundings instead of the lackadaisical observation of his surroundings he had performed before. Every movement was identified and the constant state of hyperawareness wore on him. His imagination painted vivid pictures of possible threats. Could that hawk eviscerate him with its wings in a rapid fly-by? What was the range of that Zebra snakes spit? How toxic was its venom? Could that beetle bury into his flesh? Wait, could the thorns on that bush be covered in deadly toxin, they glistened suspiciously.
The previously comfortable bushveld had become a terrifyingly unfamiliar environment, fraught with unseen and unknown dangers. Unknowable dangers as who could say what mutations anything had undergone? Identify often provided only the most basic of clues. Species where simplified to their common denominator, Ryan could clearly see the difference between different birds of prey, but whether its base form had been a lanner falcon or a peregrine falcon, they both identified simply as falcon. Adjectives such as swift, sturdy, armoured, stalwart, voracious, silent, toxic and quick often hinted at their capabilities but where not present in all cases. Worse yet, Ryan identified several instances where individual representatives of a species had been named in a different fashion, generally those of a higher level although that was not always the case.
Puzzling over the system’s naming conventions distracted Ryan from the welling paranoia but wasn’t helpful in determining what was and what wasn’t a threat. So enmeshed in solving this seemingly unsurmountable problem before him Ryan didn’t even consider contacting his guild members and ask for clarification. He forgot that others might have had far more exposure to the vexing issue before him. His attempts to logically solve the situation failed miserably, so eventually, after fruitlessly pummelling his poor brain for a perceived eternity, Ryan resolved to use engineer’s logic to solve the issue. The slaughter that resulted wasn’t pretty and beyond unethical. Ryan felt guilty, dirty, knew that he would have considered his actions unconscionable only a few months ago. He justified them by internalising his desperate need to find a simple method to determine the threat level of any encounter. The fact that he levelled in the process exacerbated the guilt he felt so he just shoved the knowledge to the back of his mind and decided to allocate the points when he made peace with his wanton killing spree.
By the time he felt more or less certain in his conclusion his arm was throbbing, his back a source of uncomfortable twitching warmth and his buttocks cramping unpleasantly. Although the evidence was anecdotal in nature, after killing near a hundred critters, the results were, on a balance of probabilities, conclusive. There was clearly a causal if non-absolute relationship between Level and threat. Higher level targets were more difficult to kill than those of a lower level. In fact, once he found out that Fury occasionally perceived a different Level when she identified the same target Ryan came to the tentative conclusion that perceived levels where possibly not static and more of an indication of the relative level of threat. How that interacted with the System’s allocation of experience and John’s deduced algorithm was a matter Ryan refused to consider. That was a problem for smarter minds to figure out.
Ryan wondered whether a Level 4 Leopard and a Level 4 housecat would prove to be an equal threat to his life but that was one experiment that he wasn’t willing to volunteer for as a test subject. Before further spiralling into endless musing Ryan elected to take his new understanding at face value and assign threat based on Level. Even if it might not be the most reliant method this approach would prove better for his peace of mind. It would also allow him to remain effective in this world if it could quieten his crippling paranoia.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
Four hours after his encounter with Panzer Ryan had finally survived the existential crisis engendered by the little insect and once again felt ready to take on the bush. Not in any way or manner with the same level of confidence he had before, but moving more carefully and with a greater appreciation of possibly deadly lurking threats.
As he stalked along the pathways through the bush he remained aware of his surroundings, training himself to Identify any animal he encountered, taking care to move untouched by any vegetation and scanning with Graviton Sphere for any large sources of movement in his vicinity. Initially it took an immense amount of focus to keep up the various threads of awareness but slowly it became easier, if barely so. Correlating the information his diverse threads of awareness provided proved to be the biggest hurdle and he often failed to keep up with what his individual senses or skills were telling him but the longer he remained in this state of awareness the less those instances became.
Slowly but surely his confidence grew until Ryan finally internalised that he was the predator, not the prey. Yes, a predator had to remain aware of threats to its life, and no, prey was not defenceless and could be deadly but the difference was in their approach. A predator was on the hunt, looking for an opportunity to kill for sustenance. Prey was ever aware of the fact that it was destined to be food unless it could detect and defend or escape from the predator’s threat. The internalisation of this acknowledgment might not have been the fundamental step Ryan thought it was but it shifted his outlook on the bush to an intimately familiar perspective. Ryan realised that he had always considered himself the predator ever since his first successful hunt in the bush. He had always acknowledged that there were threats, even deadly threats, but simultaneously had considered himself the apex predator that he truly was.
While the latter didn’t necessarily hold true anymore Ryan remained a predator rather than prey and consequently needed to tailor his approach with that perspective in mind. Yes, life had become more deadly but he remained the hunter and not the hunted. Confident in this new state of awareness Ryan moved through the veld constantly searching for sign of the large mammals he expected to be present. Fury, uncharacteristically quiet for a significant time now, followed in his footsteps. Her thoughts were shielded by the opaque bubble Ryan visualised whenever she veiled her mind but Ryan could still sense that she was wrestling with the same dilemma he had successfully conquered earlier. The encounter with Panzer had also forced her to re-evaluate her stance on life and no matter how much he wanted to help her Ryan instinctively knew that she would need to fight this battle on her own. He could only hope that she would emerge stronger from this experience.
Once more focusing on his new state of awareness Ryan continued with his mission. The lack of large mammals was perplexing as he was fairly certain that the Guild hadn’t had the opportunity to hunt this area as it was more than half a day’s hike from the fortress. Unlike him, the others did not have the luxury of continuing a hunt this far out. Portal really was convenient he once again acknowledged. Even shifting the both of them to highly elevated ridges and hills to search for suitable prey resulted in dissatisfaction. Carefully tracking through usually heavily frequented areas showed that larger mammals such as Kudu, Zebra and Oryx who used to be prevalent in the area hadn’t frequented any of their usual haunts in quite a while. The tracks, if any, where faded beyond reasonable recognition. It was somewhat puzzling but Ryan surmised that either another group of humans had thoroughly cleaned out the area or that a significant amount of powerful predators had hunted here. He tended toward the former interpretation because although he hadn’t found any tracks the absence of remains led him to believe this the more likely scenario.
He couldn’t have been more wrong.