I had internally debated it on the walk, but by the end, I settled on giving the .45 and all of the ammo for it to Joe. I nearly decided on switching from the .38 to the .45, but when I noticed the engraved ‘D’ above the grip of the .38, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even at the cost of firepower. I had forgotten about getting the engraving for Duck.

I rubbed my thumb over the engraved ‘D’ and took in the sight below. There was a dusty asphalt road, repaved sometime in the last dozen or so years, that stretched from the uphill perch at the mouth of the valley. The road disappeared into another set of hills before the 101 and the coast. On this side of the far hills, to either side of the road, were vineyards nearly as far as I could see, and I could see far. It was insane how clear the air was now that there weren’t constant vehicles. They were also tall as shit. It was almost a fucking jungle down there.

“Well Cap? Get a move on, you can’t come back if you don’t leave.”

I grinned and gave Joe a lazy salute. He returned it and disappeared into the undergrowth. Thank God I was out of there. My nerves were more than a little frazzled by the fact that Joe had stopped me from certain, trap-based-death, no less than 6 times on our way out. And that was after he had told me ‘stay close and you’ll be alright’. I had stayed close.

I had forgotten to tell Joe that I’d be sending ‘good people’ to their town, but Lena would tell him, right? Maybe I’d just tell them to wait before entering the forest. That reminded me.

“Display List of Possessed Qualities.” I found it near the bottom.

Salt of the Earth: First impressions are important and you can tell, upon meeting someone, or shortly thereafter, whether or not someone would be a good fit for the town of Ontiveros. You also have the innate ability to locate salt, wherever it may be.

Well, a bit specific for my taste, but at least it’d be helpful. Maybe there was even a Feat or two in it for me if I sent enough people. Also, I guess finding salt was helpful as well, but this wasn’t an isekai apocalypse and specific mineral deficiencies were pretty damn far down on my list of priorities. There were a lot fewer people and, I was sure, plenty of salt and preservable food laying around. Though, since this was technically Lena’s skill, it was probably good for town management and health. Whatever.

Were ‘Skills’ ‘Qualities’? Or did they become ‘Qualities’ sometime after? I looked at the sun, which had, by this point, fully pulled itself over the hills behind me. Looking to the west, I felt like I could almost see the ocean, but it was a faint thing. I wasn’t sure if it was the effect of the air or actually the ocean. Time to get a move on regardless.

Wait. My eyes narrowed involuntarily. Why the fuck was it so clearly laid out?

“Huh!?!” I screamed to the sky.

“You alright Cap?”

I whirled around to the sudden question, Joe’s head was horizontally poking out of the thick brush.

“No, I mean yeah. Yeah, Joe. I’m alright.”

“Yelling at Gabby again?”

“Of course I wa- What? How do you know that?”

Ol’ Joe was already gone. Dammit Joe!

One step at a time. Before I started that step, my eyes were drawn to the sight below me. A primordial overgrown vineyard, seemingly untouched by the hands of man for centuries. The vines twist and turn in wild abandon, leaves so thick and green that they seem to swallow up the landscape. Even from here, the scent of earth and untamed vegetation. For a moment, I felt like I had stepped back in time, to a place where nature was law.

One step at a time. That’s the pace I took down the road, after all, even though Joe had scalded most of my injuries the night before, they had still happened last night and I wasn’t near completely healed. I saw the overgrowth persist here as well, but the lack of trees kept it from turning into a complete jungle-based nightmare.

Small miracles. I mean, at least it wasn't a complete jungle-based nightmare,t it looked more like some crossover between 1000-year old overgrown vineyards and a dense lord of the rings style forest, and less like the thickest part of a rainforest. As long as there weren’t… Nope. No, I wasn’t doing that.

Wait. I could heal. I snapped both fingers and placed my hands on my stomach and was pleasantly surprised when remnants of pain from the Mortician’s shot healed. I felt a wash of relief churn over my gut. Then I noticed the cowboy’s pain from the gutshot, the pain I had felt from taking the wound from the old cowboy refreshed itself onto me with fresh, stabbing gut shot-wound pain to my gut. I pulled up my shirt and didn’t notice any pain on my stomach, in fact, the wound felt, and looked, pretty good.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

So I just felt the pain twice? The moment when I healed another person and again when I healed myself?

I sighed, maybe I should have just gotten the heal ‘myself’. Interestingly enough though, I didn’t notice a drain on my Fortitude from applying the heal to myself. That was pretty useful.

The real reason I had chosen Heal Thyself is because I, correctly I might add, guessed that I’d be able to store up ‘charges’ of healing. I still needed to figure out the limit of those though and it wasn’t entirely pleasant to do so since the pain seemed to carry with me until I discharged it with a heal. Where I also felt the pain a second time. Even useful skills were a pain in the ass.

Oh? And a gunshot wound was considered ‘moderate’?! That didn’t bode well for what the system considered to be ‘severe’ damage. I snapped one hand and applied it to a poorly healing slice from the Mortician’s finger-claws on my left forearm. The stabbing pain shot into my shoulder but I hardly noticed it as I saw a soft golden glow reverse the wound on my forearm in front of my eyes. The remnants of Joe’s scalding blade refreshed itself into clean, healthy skin.

So it could work with only snapping on one hand. Heal others with two, heal myself with one. Could it work without snapping my fingers? Also, could I choose what stored wound I could use? There was lots of potential to explore with this skill and, for once, I wasn’t annoyed about having to do that.

Maybe it was all the sunlight and fresh air and no near-constant Nemesis tension. That was nice, for however long it lasted until she managed to heal herself up.

Now that I approached the rows and rows of wine… trees? That didn’t sound right. The grape trees? That also sounded wrong, worse even. Whatever, the vineyard trees… Wine vines?

Sure, good enough. ‘Speaks with Animals’ was still spoiling me, most singular animals were little to no threat since a nice chunk of wood was ready and waiting to tee off on them as soon as they broke through the cover of the brush. Even groups of two or three weren’t that big of an issue. Three raccoons had gotten a pretty good thrashing before they even knew what was up. Birds were a bit more annoying.

The biggest inconvenience was the fact that I would have to switch out from my shotgun to my baseball bat.

I froze. The thing was that most animals of the same type spoke similarly, they had a similar tone. Different… accents you could say. Raccoons had a kind of a gollum accent. This group had multiple accents, the clearest being the one that included all of the ‘sss’s’, obviously snakes.

Short sentences were usually birds. I'd probably be embarrassed by how much I enjoyed swatting them out of the air on their attack runs, if there was anyone for me to feel embarrassed around. Very 'king-kong on top of skyscraper' vibes, but like, you know, armed with a baseball bat. You had to find the little moments for yourself in the apocalypse.

The conversation continued and the talk continued to grow as more and more voices joined it. I pretended that I didn’t hear anything as I increased my walking pace to a slow jog.

Damn. Why wouldn’t the animals have learned how to work together? I mean… I guess people could work together. Ish.

There was a large dirt road that progressed to the side. It looked in much better shape than a few of the others I had passed, the width and the high-quality fences seemed to hold the brush back to some degree. Visible in the distance, it could have been plucked out of some old-world European city. Large quantities of stone, dark-hardened wood, all combined with a modern steel and glass renovation. A winery, obviously. It was pretty far away but the road did look traveled.

A sign was posted on an overgrown wooden beam that crossed above the road, ‘Morrigan-Home Vineyard.” Stupid name, but I didn’t have time to be picky.

I swatted it out of the air and followed it up with a, somewhat unnecessary, stomp.

Oh come on, the snake was treading on nonsense, it was just trying to use wordssss that had an ssss. Dammit, now I wasss doing it too.

I held my shotgun, loaded and ready to use assss I… dammit. Stop that. I spun around as I took in my surroundings. The vineyard-trees were well overgrown. The susurrus continued and picked up in my surroundings. Luckily, I was experienced and knew exactly what to do in this situation.

I ran.

Sssstupid fucking ssssnake. I risked a peek over my shoulder and instantly regretted it. Raccoons, rats and mice, gerbils, snakes, rabbits, squirrels, and what I thought to be shrew, though I really had no idea what a ‘shrew’ was, were hot on my ass.

Based on their shouts of rage and threats of promised violence, I managed to keep a steady pace ahead. I checked again when a new chorus of voices joined the auditory melee. A flock of birds poured out of the trees and I didn't hesitate to blast both barrels into the mass, then turn back and, with renewed vigor, continued to pump my arms toward the vineyard buildings.

Why were they so far away? I reloaded the shotgun as I ran and managed to only spill one shell on the ground.

I looked behind me again and regretted it even more than the first time. Was that a fox? Why was it… shaped like that?

I peeled around a slight turn and sent up a spray of dusty road as my feet slipped for a moment before catching. A pack of coyotes pulled out in front of me and their little hit squad got the gift of high-speed lead from both barrels before I punched through the gap and continued to beat a trail under the path.

Birds kept dive bombing me from the side, but like, they’re fucking birds so I wasn’t too worried unless they aimed at my eyes.