Waking up he checked his trap surprisingly full of energy this early in the morning for him. He would check again later and hopefully get something, but for now, it was empty.

“ I was hoping to have breakfast today, looks like I won’t”

Is it breakfast, the sun still hasn’t moved much from its earlier position? He’ll have to create a shadow clock, maybe he might figure it out, all he knew is that it required a stick. He had plenty of sticks, a blue stick, a red stick, a yellow stick, and one black stick. The black stick was dead wood but it would still work if he put it into the ground.

But he would also need a way to keep track of time, like a clock. But he couldn’t make a clock out of vine and wood, he can’t do magic.

“ Magic clock, magic clock, please I want a magic clock”

That didn’t work, all he did was embarrass himself in the middle of a forest. Why was he talking anyway wasn’t he supposed to be quiet, or was he supposed to be loud. Anyway, he used his pulley as a make-shift ladder and climbed up his tree.

Using it as high ground, he looked around his general area.

Lots of mountains, rivers, and a huge swamp separated by a huge lake near the forest. And then he saw the mass graveyard, bones of various sizes and shapes. Skulls of different animals, and a huge mass of rotten flesh jelly moving around.

The flesh jelly was sort of interesting but also mildly disgusting, it even had some eyeballs in it. Maybe it was friendly but he sure wasn’t going to find out if it wasn’t. The graveyard was located inside the swamp, and in the forest, he saw a small lake. He couldn’t see the lake as it was surrounded by vines and heavy foliage.

Going back down his tree, he checked his non-fatal trap. And he found a squirrel? It was huge and muscular.

“ Mister squirrel can you let me eat you, please?”

He swore the squirrel almost laughed at him, this might be a symptom of psychosis. Anyway, Mister squirrel here was built for strength and quick bursts of speed. It was kinda nervous when Hendrik inspected it, but it was probably just a trick of the eye.

Hendrik grabbed a couple of rocks and chucked one at its head. It dodged, so he kept throwing, letting it tire itself out.

When it was completely exhausted he started stabbing it with his spear, nothing pierced it. So he did something he considered cruel, he shoved the spear down its throat and started suffocating it. The squirrel squirmed and gagged but he shoved some more sticks up its nose. And then he grabbed one of the bigger rocks and started tying it in place with vines.

Then he lifted the rock and bashed its skull in, after a couple of hits it passed out.

After a while, he made a decent hole in its head, and ripped the sticks out and the spear. Using the spear he managed to skewer its brain and left it there. Then he grabbed its paw and angled the claws towards its back, it was very flexible even with all that muscle.

Then he made an incision along its spine, it took a while as he had to be careful. But then he slid the skin off, and using the brain he started tanning the skin.

If the night got cold, he could have a blanket made of squirrel fur.

Harvesting the squirrel became the priority today, as the muscles were incredibly firm and elastic at the same time. Making harvest troublesome for Hendrik, all animals either have gamey or tough meat from the evidence so far.

“ SHIT this meat is tough, it might as well be stone”

Exasperated he sighed, this would take all day plus he would also have to cook it. He only had so many bowls and hands and he wasn’t ambidextrous, maybe he could use his feet. That was something to explore, anyway after managing to skin a leg of muscle he set about cooking it.

After eating it he started writing down how it tasted and what it could be paired with.

Then he started taking out all its organs very carefully to not puncture anything that could ruin the meat. He was a smart boy, who knew a little about harvesting meat and skinning an animal.

He had a little trouble emptying the poor animal of its organs as he was starting to feel sore from his fall. He didn’t feel it for quite some time and the berry helped ignore some of the pain, although it did have some drawbacks.

It made him hallucinate, which left him undefended for quite some time as his body started to slowly metabolize its effects.

Maybe he could crush the berry to make it digest faster, that was a good idea.

Crushing the berry released some sort of gas so he held his breath and tied his shirt around his mouth and wet it with water. This allowed him to continue working although he was feeling a little bit faint and light-headed. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea to let this continue getting worse while on the ground.

FIlling one of the bowls with the paste he made his way up the tree using the branches so that if he fell unconscious he wouldn’t fall to his death.

He managed to make it to the top before he passed out, and got inside his hut and laid upon his leaf bed.

__________________________________

The situation had stabilized, for now, his good friend Will had figured out a way to distract the goblins. Nasty little things they were, they used group tactics and poison, and neurotoxin.

“ Could you hurry up Olson” Will whispered

“ Shut up and let me think Will” he whispered back

The goblins had led a group of trolls to their location, and they weren’t nearly armed enough to deal with a single troll. Number one they regenerated way too quickly, even bones and brain tissue. Number two they were as strong as an enraged ogre and as crafty as goblins. And the final most important reason is that they were acidic, sweat, spittle, blood, and skin could melt you when touched.

And they had night vision, and because they regenerated quickly they almost didn’t seem to tire.

“ Fuck we might just die, I have no clue on how to deal with these things”

“Well think of something or we really will” Will whispered

“ Maybe we can lead them to the goblin pack and hope they switch targets”

“ Good idea it might just work, but just to let you know I was about to think of that”

“ You cheeky bastard, try not to die when we get back to the tavern drinks are on me”

They split, Will went right and he left thoroughly distracting the trolls for a precious few seconds. Then they started to spring and the trolls started chasing their prey, they were quite dumb but learned quickly.

Leading them towards the goblins was a hassle, they kept throwing stuff ahead of them so that they had to turn and slow down.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“ Come and get me, you ugly thick-skinned bastards!”

The troll in the lead screamed and they started chucking spitballs, one almost hit him. Some stone shards clipped him while they were stomping after them.

WIll gave the signal and they headed towards the cave, Will and he knew the cave system better than those goblins. So they would lose the trolls in there and have them take out their anger on the poor hapless goblins. And hopefully, they would both kill each other, the goblins could at least cripple some of the trolls using poison and the trolls could make pancakes out of the first-tier goblins.

“Will you level up yet, even a boost to intelligence would be useful right now”

“Not yet Olson I’m close maybe a couple of points off”

So they continued kiting the trolls, surprisingly a couple of game tactics proved useful against monsters. Kiting for large-sized and medium-speed monsters was massive as it allowed you to lead them into traps assuming they were angry enough. For small high-speed enemies, you used traps and blockades to make sure they went in one direction.

For really large siege-like monsters there wasn’t anything you could do, even if giants were easier to kill than trolls it was easier said than done. For one their blood was magma and occasionally some of them had different types of blood with varying effects.

Not much you could do about them, don’t even get him started on large reptilian monsters. Wyverns were annoying and their flames were hard to put out, and their scales were as hard as iron at a minimum when they were a newborn.

Adults were disaster class monsters, something to run from if you could.

“Will you ready I can’t outrun them any longer”

“Ready!”

Luring them into the cave and collapsing the entrance behind them, the trolls kept following them. The plan was a success so far, after a couple of rights and lefts they knew they were coming upon the exit.

“SCURK SCRIK” a troll screamed but it was too late.

Letting it collapse they got under the falling stone and dirt with room to spare. The trolls screamed and pounded against the wall until they heard goblins coming to investigate. That's when things got quiet, that was good it meant the trolls were hunting.

Quietly to not disturb them they left the area, looking around for more monsters so they weren’t ambushed.

They eventually made their way back towards the refuge, it was called monochrome. As it was one of the leading monster tamer towns when dogs mutated some of the people in town didn’t want to get rid of them or the cats.

A couple of the birds had mutated to be massive, and they helped scout.

Looking around Olson saw a couple of Level:15 and lower levels gathering around the guildhall. It was an old abandoned church that had been renovated to serve as a guildhall.

Guilds had been established as a sort of militia everywhere, it was a neutral force, and individuals were all held accountable for their actions. You had to take a quest and get permission to conduct your operation from a town mayor or chief, this allowed more people to help out. And by offering a reward for your quest more qualified people would come help out, everybody needs to be paid for your services.

“ Hey Billy we did the goblin quest and they helped out against the troll pack nearby”

“Have you seen Karl, he is always scouting way beyond the wall and where he is supposed to, can’t complain as the information is valuable but he could die any day out there”

“ No we didn’t but we completed the quest”

Billy reached behind the counter and gave us a couple of silver and one gold coin.

“ Olson, Will you always do a good job I gave you extra for helping with the trolls”

Helping meant they had either led them somewhere dangerous or killed them. As long as the trolls wouldn’t be a problem for a while everybody was happy. Billy especially so as he was the head guard and also a guild receptionist.

“ Hey Billy could you give me another quest,” Karl said as he walked in getting blood and mud all over the floor.

“ Karl you know how dangerous it is to get wood now can you stop ruining it!” Billy replied jokingly

Karl took off his shoes and gave Billy a bunch of hob-goblin ears and a chieftain head. Karl was at least a gold rank adventurer even though his badge was a silver one.

Karl always blamed himself once Hendrik was reported missing, but not among the dead. He was a close friend of his, but his regret always dragged him into dangerous situations as if to prove something. He had gotten a little better once he single-handedly killed a troll, but he still scouted almost all day and occasionally had to be told to take a bath.

Even though nobody could have helped, apparently Hendrik had just disappeared somewhere in a city during the parasite attack.

He wasn’t dead; they had listened to the radio for days waiting for his name to come up. Karl thinks that if he was smarter and stronger he could have protected Henrik. Right now he was training to be able to search the world for him, if you were at least a diamond adventurer you could.

So for now Karl had to rank up three more times before he could. Karl also would get a 40% discount on everything when he was diamond rank.

Karl was an assassin counter tank-type build, it meant he had a high attack, was hard to spot, and couldn’t be put down easily.

Olson ran an agro tank rogue, to grab attention from Will who was a hard-hitting mage cannon. Healers were rare, singular healers because most people don’t entirely dedicate themselves to healing. Not even the doctors, instead of using knowledge of biology and cataloging various diseases and illnesses while also being able to defend themselves.

Fragile healers would pull a whole team down if they died, most parties who tried this either lost most of their members or went missing.

Monsters weren’t that dumb, lizardmen for example were almost a fully functioning primitive society.

“ Billy I need another quest, or can I undergo the rank-up test now!”

“ Two more quests and then you can” Billy relented

“ I’ll take a quest about a newborn wyvern and the mind slaver shadow quests”

After Karl left Billy took those quests down and put them under the counter.

“ Dammit Karl we all lost someone but you don’t have to be suicidal, which is why I put up a fake quest”

Turns out the quest Karl had taken was a troll quest and a rescue quest, and once you take a quest you have to complete it or you are unable to rank up for a month. This way Karl wouldn’t take a har-

“You two stop wasting my time just take a quest or leave!”

Will and Olson left and went to the tavern, then they split and went to their separate rooms.

Before his next quest Olson wrote another letter to his family somewhere in Canada, Canada got hit hard with ice-type monsters. But thankfully they were all mostly afraid of fire so not many people died.

Russia also got hit similarly, London got hit by far the worst lots of shadow elementals and vampires roaming the streets at night picking off people.

Brazil had to become refugees as it was overgrown with poisonous plants and dangerous mosquitos. And North America got hit with all sorts of things, most governments still weren’t properly functioning. Most of them had to watch out for undead or risk it snowballing out of control and killing everyone in a city or town.

After he finished the letter he decided to take a nap before he went out to buy groceries.

______________________________

When he woke up he felt awful like someone had dipped him in acid. He still vaguely tasted the squirrel meat and went down the tree using the pulley. Checking his trap again and finding nothing he continued striping the squirrel of meat and making a small mound of picked clean bones. It had been a couple of days since he had passed out when he woke up he started smoking some more meat to make it last.

Since he didn’t have salt that was all Hendrik could do, he would have to find some later.

He didn’t see anything interesting from his position at the top of the tree, but almost thought he saw an ocean.

“ Why does everything here taste so good, but always try to kill you?”

The only edible berry from the color on them was the hallucination berry. Which sucked as after a while it tasted bland, fish would be good right about now. But he almost knew that the fish would probably kill him and wouldn’t be small.

He could now almost see something at the edge of his vision, it was like when he ate that berry.

It was probably some of the residual effects of eating a berry every day, at some point he would have to stop as it could cloud up his vision. But at the same time, he didn’t want to go through one of his episodes and not be conscious because he passed out from the pain.

Maybe it was even dumber to eat potentially harmful berries every day, but hey it was either that or being lit on fire.

He found an apple-like fruit and mixed it with the berry paste. The fun thing he found out about the fruit here was that they didn’t rot. It was almost like McDonald's but tasted a little better. Nothing could beat those french fries though so tough luck.

The apples he started stocking up on for bait for his traps, by mixing with berry paste he could keep the prey passive until he managed to kill it. Setting up some of that along with his different traps that he had started working on, even if they didn’t work the paste would maybe be just enough.

Off in the distance, the jelly was still eating skeletons and rotten corpses. The swamp still didn’t seem to have any activity or the river.

Going up to his tree, he looked for the huge eye tree he fondly remembered where it was but it seemed to have moved. Which was very concerning as that would mean the forest layout could change and he might get lost.

Getting lost in this forest would potentially lose track of base camp, and with all the dangerous animals he might not make it back.