By now it was approximately noon, based on the familiar sun hovering high in the sky. The heat of the day had been rising steadily for the past thirty minutes, but Damon was too preoccupied with the System scrolls to notice.
"Unique Lifeform?"
But, what is that even supposed to be based on? I mean, aren't we all; in a way?
"Hah."
Joking to yourself was awkward.
But seriously, what the hell does that mean? Is the System actually saying I'm not a human?
Damon was starting to feel rattled, so he decided that gathering more info without delay was the move.
First things first, he summoned his Chronicles page:
Chronicles
Explorer ID: Damon Bishop
Explorer Class: level 25 - Specular Duelist (dormant)
Explorer Race: Unique Lifeform
Ratings
Strength: 80 (72)
Perception: 28 (18)
Mana: 51 (54)
Grace: 17
Dao Path:
Dogma Key of the Hero
Sacrifice Strength Mastery
Titles:
Groundbreaker, Primus Explorer, Fruit of the Origin Tree
Wow, how did I get to level 25? And when? But dormant?
As usual, no gift of the System was straight forward.
This feels like the Aspirant situation all over again, do I just not have an actual level in my new Class?
Lacking any source better than the tight-lipped System, Damon had no choice but to swallow the bitter pill of having leveled without actually gaining the stats to go along with it. Moving forward had led to answers materializing so far, so rather than get hung up on the robbery, instead Damon hiked to the top of the dune, hoping to not see an endless black desert or thirty foot sand worms when he reached the top—and he was in luck.
Grassy fields and the occasional meadow covered a range of hills, large and small, as far as the eye could see… Just about better than a desert. Barely, with how the cold wind was blowing firmly. Thanks.
Seriously, what happened to our building?
If the nights turned even colder then Damon would have to hurry and prioritize finding shelter. Damon stood there for quite a while, looking for some sign of where to go or what to do. When nothing sprung to mind, he decided he would simply need to go searching for opportunities or clues.
As he stepped off the sand and onto the grass leading downhill, he was stopped in his tracks by yet another System message, but this time it was a new map notification.
[Welcome Explorer, to the Verdant Black Hills.]
Oh, cool.
I guess it does that for each separate area.
He took a step back onto the sand, just to check, and sure enough:
[Welcome to the Black Hills Alluvial.]
Huh, it lost the Explorer tag. Guess I’m not really exploring by going this way any more. That’s fair enough.
When Damon brought up his UI scroll again there was a tab he’d never noticed before, perhaps because it hadn't popped up yet before he became too occupied by the discovery of his stat ratings, or the long list of new Classes, that he still had no levels in.
It was a small map, and a pretty lousy, low pixel one at that. But at least it showed Damon where he was looking in relation to the cardinal directions, and it also seemed to save a basic description of the named areas he’d been in. He tried walking over to a new spot, and true enough the map grew larger and got filled out more and more as he turned around and took a better look. It was not very large yet, but the small circle of pixels showed a clear border in differing colors where the map went from grass to sand, but surrounded by a dark fog of war.
Huh, that's nifty.
All these hills made it hard to see very far, and even at the few points where you could see further, there was a lot to potentially miss in between due to all the dips and valleys.
Left with no other choice but to start hiking, after failing to spot a tree tall enough to climb anywhere in sight, in the end he chose a direction at random. North, according to the map. Damon was expecting an aimless, draining journey. And true enough, it was a pretty grueling trek, going uphill and downhill with barely any flat interruptions. "Wait, I can just—"
And like that, Damon got busy discovering the seemingly unlimited energy of his new Mana infused body. Using the blue flames to charge up a hill barely tired him at all and cost barely more than ten minutes of recovery time, and he spent at least five of those just looking around from the top and filling the map out each time.
The power of his sprint was incredible, and the awkward rocket feeling from before was now all gone, like his body had had all the time in the world for getting used to the changes, and what changes they were; his whole body was rejuvenated from his week of hardships.
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Within minutes of starting the journey Damon had begun cartwheeling downhill and using the momentum to make it halfway up the next, charging the final bit in a blaze of glory. He'd never experienced movement with such lightness and ease. And every mistake he made—every bad wipeout from pushing the limits—only served to remind him of his newly enhanced skeleton.
He was feeling indestructible.
That was when one of the hills moved.
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The river meandered out of sight beyond the hills, the birds gathered straw.
And the turtle rose.
The latest hill which Damon had been calmly scouting from suddenly shifted, causing relived trauma by making his mind believe he was back in the Shuffle. The rest of the landscape remained still however, and the hill also stopped once it had risen upwards a few, maybe dozen feet.
Which was when the turtle's head rose up, far higher than the height of the 'hill', making Damon stumble back and fall off in sheer surprise. What the F's is that?
Feet dislodging off the tilting ground, Damon tumbled backward and fell to the bottom, crying out in a panic and landing heavily in the muddy puddle that the giant creature had left behind.
Did I wake it?
No. The mighty being was already moving off into the distance, ignoring his presence entirely and immediately casting shadow on that notion.
Maybe I reminded it of somewhere it needs to be?
"Hah."
The giant creature was an unbelievable sight, especially when appearing so suddenly in the middle of such a calm grasslands. The spike-lined shell had been hidden away seamlessly, meaning the turtle must have been buried for ages, with ancient grit, moss and grass now falling off in chunks, dropping off its unexpectedly mobile form.
"Uh, I'm in danger."
This giant, clearly magical creature drove home how Damon was in a place that was entirely foreign. He hadn't seen anything larger or more magic-looking than a circling hawk prior to this encounter, lulling him into a false sense of security. Seriously, where the hell am I?
At least I've found water…
The brown, watery sludge all around did not look appealing, yet it appeared wet enough to do in an emergency, which this definitely counted as.
The giant turtle was moving out of sight in between two hills, but before it could entirely disappear Damon was reminded of another addition to the UI scrolls which the System had briefly mentioned at some point.
He fired off a mental command at the creature, providing him with an instant, severely lacking report, as a new scroll materialized:
[Leatherhide Rex Turtle – lvl ???]
Oh, wow. It's the turtle king. Damon felt a sudden urge to bow down, since he was a huge childhood fan of the guy's ninjas.
Instead he just chuckled to himself, before reluctantly looking back towards the dirt colored water.
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Meeting such a beast—and getting lucky enough to not be eaten—really served as a wake-up call. Damon decided that he needed shelter and a safe place for hiding away before anything else, which was how he ended up going back to the sand pit to start digging himself a hidey-hole.
The chance that the next giant animal he ran into being something predatory and territorial was just too great to take the risk of roaming around aimlessly, the way he had been with no safe retreat.
Even so, Damon could have never gotten the digging done before evening fell, not without exhausting- and leaving himself vulnerable, certainly not pre-Integration. Frankly he didn't know enough about the structural integrity of digging makeshift sand caverns to do any part of the task efficiently… but Damon made up for that annoying fact with sheer grit and determination.
When it all kept collapsing, Damon ignored the setbacks, stomped down all around in order to turn the excess sand into part of a solidified base, and then just kept digging.
Eventually he must have gotten lucky and found some naturally sturdy section, because the walls suddenly held up, for a bit. Once Damon had made his way inside slightly, he was then able to get the angle he'd been looking for to start packing it in harder, creating a solid 'cave' opening that could now be expanded upon.
Damon kept his efforts going past sunset, convinced he'd be able to finish once the whole process started going faster and faster. It was still ridiculously hard work, even with his new and improved energy reserves, the task remained fit for a whole team of skilled laborers, equipped with tools, and actual know-how.
Damon did it with his bare hands over the course of ten hours, digging like a demented mole, all while sweating like a mad man.
In the end he was forced to sneak back to the turtle pit to drink his fill, and spend a minute fashioning a crap waterskin by removing his jacket and scooping the brackish water up into the leaky double-layers, before he ran back for home base, and finished the job.
By midnight Damon had carved a true bat cave out of the black sand, one worthy of the name.
One that also hid a secret.
If you stood at the opening peeking in, the cavern would look only a few meters deep but with a shadowy incline at the end where the wall seemed to reach all the way up and end in a wedge where it met the dark roof, and so it did.
For now.
Tomorrow Damon planned on expanding that part into a second, defensive cavern. One meant for squirreling away, in case of emergency. If something in pursuit was determined enough to follow Damon inside, then they would need to crawl in on all fours ro reach him in his 2nd cave.
And by then he would be waiting for them, ready to kill.
So long as it wasn't the size of a king turtle.
But in that case he was screwed anyway.
Damon finally felt finished and went outside to cool down and watch the moon, and finally just sit there, sipping on his shitty water.
He turned feverish and delirious within hours.