Todd throws off his tangling accommodations like a moth escaping a cocoon.
Confused and groggy, he enters the fray with his ixwa in hand. The scene is chaos. The five regroup. Skills are loosed. Weapons flash. Beasts die.
At the end of it, Todd wipes the blood off his blade-point onto the plumage of a crow-leopard. For once, his weapon had been particularly effective. The wounds in the beast are all ruptured and burst internally: it’s noticeable. He starts to wonder if the short spear has some kind of special trait, like Candra’s scepter or Joe’s sword. He isn’t sure. He’ll watch out for it.
Joe raises his sword in salute to Todd, then swallows a skin mending pill. His leather bracer has teeth marks in it and blood drips down his fingers.
Sue Ann holds her gory sword in disbelief, as if ready for more creatures to arrive. Candra grabs her by the shoulder and shakes her. She surfaces from her thoughts like exiting a dream, and then she mechanically eats the mending pill that Candra feeds her.
Randall wipes tears from his face and apologizes again and again. He’s ashamed of his performance during the fight, and it’s affecting him deeply to have to be saved.
Todd raps him in the ribs and reminds him that everyone will be okay.
“Hey, relax. Nobody got eaten, so I’d say we came out ahead.”
Randall doesn’t laugh. His expression stays gloomy, and his mood withdrawn.
In fact, everyone except for Joe is in foul spirits. Their truncated sleep and the stress of frequent ambushes have got them ill tempered and morose.
Joe calls them all together. He throws his arms around the group and squeezes them.
“We’ve made it so far, guys. I hope you know that I trust you. Now! Let’s clean this place up. I’ve gotta get my beauty sleep on.”
Just like always, they complete the chore of clearing out the killed monsters. They go in pairs. The routine of it is making Todd numb.
Once that is done, Joe takes his turn to visit slumberland. Since the boys’ tent is ruined, he takes the girls’. In broad daylight, everyone wishes him a good night. He crawls inside.
The day is stripping away the cold in increments. The sky above is clear, and the sun is yellow-gold.
Stepping away, Todd takes a deep breath to clear his head. He feels internally at his cosmic energy reserves and notes they’re more than half replenished. He checks his body, cringing at the pain in his left arm and at the lingering cramps in his leg.
Finally, he opens his status. As he does, he sees a welcome improvement there.
He glares at the hovering display in surprise. Apparently, sometime last night he missed his last level up. He should have checked, he could have used that extra point of dexterity.
Todd considers how to spend his new statistics. He knows he wants to move faster and hit harder with his spell, but he knows there’s limits to its effectiveness. He hems and haws for a bit. However, the rate at which he’s getting hurt is worrying. He decides that he would be better off with stronger skin and bones. For a moment, he wonders if he should confer with his friends – but satisfied with his choice, he applies his free points and confirms them.
An uncomfortable tingling sensation spreads over his body and settles into his tissues. It makes him feel itchy, and he shudders as it passes.
After a heartbeat of thought, Todd realizes that his intelligence is higher than he expected. He checks and so is his endurance and strength. At first he just assumes that his stats had ticked up naturally, but a single line in his status catches his attention.
What is adventurer? He inspects it.
Well that’s a nice perk.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Todd waves down the others and motions them over. “Hey. What level are you?” he asks.
“Shit,” Candra cusses, “level thirteen, I forgot.”
Randall’s eyes glaze over before he answers. “Level ten,” he says.
“I’m just barely level ten now,” Sue Ann whispers.
Todd gives them a gentle hint. “I’ve been forgetting to assign my points. I just remembered now.”
Randall thanks him and Todd recommends the other young man take some points in dexterity.
“But I’m min maxing my intelligence!”
“Listen, man. Until you have the cosmic energy to use your spell over and over again, you need to have some way to protect yourself. You know I’m right.”
Randall sighs. “I know. I just, what if I miss out on something special because I spread out my stats?”
“Special, like what?”
“I don’t know. Like a new ability, or a specialization.”
“Anything you might hold out for, it’s not worth the risk,” Todd definitively states.
The conversation ends, and Randall goes to chop more wood. Sue Ann goes to restart the fire, and Candra heads over to take her place guarding over the right flank. Todd resigns himself to long drudgery and takes the left.
Todd slays a pink badger that morning – he kicks it into a tree where it is impaled on thorns. He puts it out of its misery with a single thrust. The body pulses when his blade enters it, and the blood surges out in a swell. Curious. Gross, but curious.
The four break for a brief meal. They are interrupted by a pack of four feathered minks. Todd uses his [water spear], and the others fight back to back around the fire. There is a brief confrontation in which three of the minks are injured. At first, Todd is feeling confident, but then the beasts suddenly break off and escape into the woods. Todd grunts in annoyance. He tells the others he recognized one of the animals from last night from where he’d shot it before.
No one wants to chase down monsters into the woods, but they know that intelligent monsters can only be a problem. They don’t come up with any good solutions. Their only thought is to wait for Joe.
The sun continues to rise. Randall takes over for Todd. Todd finally approaches the corpse of the horned pangolin from last night. He refers to his harvesting manual and starts carefully peeling away a section of scales, starting from underneath. He scowls as he works, complaining to himself and petitioning the universe to make his efforts worth the trouble.
Beast attacks are infrequent. The creatures are mostly happy to feed on their dead competitors out in the woods. But every so often a more ambitious group of monsters will make an attempt on their lives.
In particular, a large swarm of giant centipedes crawls towards them, looking for live prey. They have a scant few seconds to plan. So, Todd scampers in herding circles around the mass of enemies with Candra, guiding them into a larger clump until Randall can emit an [igneous bouquet] and char them all. Todd’s legs burn with exertion. He feels alive.
The forest floor nearly catches fire after that stunt. The four of them watch with trepidation as they dig around the embers to make a firebreak. They laugh with relief as the smoke dwindles.
In the aftermath, Randall levels up and applies two points to his dexterity as planned. There’s talk of heading back to the stream after Joe wakes up. There’s talk of moving camp to get away from all the bodies. Scorched like this, they can’t really be transported anywhere.
With nothing better to do, they point at the sky and discuss the weather. Todd squirms in his gambeson, conscious of the rising heat.
Discussion has ground to a halt. Todd wants to start a conversation, but he doesn’t know what to say. Before long, a traitorous part of himself starts longing for the interruption of a beast attack. Anything to break the tense boredom.
Randall breaks the silence again. “It’s just gonna be three days of this, huh?” he says. It’s the third time he’s said it.
“Yup,” Todd says.
This time Randall continues. “When do you think we start getting new abilities?”
Todd wipes his forehead carefully. A fleck of fatty tissue sticks in his hair. “Well, we can buy them for nexus coins.”
“But they’re so expensive!”
“I guess we just have to save up and be patient.”
“Lame.”
Todd finds himself chatting with Randall, and soon, Candra is talking with Sue Ann. The gender divide is real, and Todd deeply regrets being unable to breach it. Still, they cover most of the same topics. What to do if certain types of monsters show up, what to call them, what was happening with the other groups, what was going to happen after the tutorial was over.
Randall thinks they are going to become superheroes: using their powers for the good of mankind. Todd asks if they’d even be considered special when so many others had been granted new abilities as well. Randall accuses Todd of being a pessimist.
Todd swallows his concerns and keeps them to himself. “You’re right, we are basically superheroes now.”
Randall beams.
Another horned pangolin wanders into camp and accosts Candra. In the end, they make too much noise. Joe wakes up twice before he gives up on sleeping longer. He exits the tent with bags under his eyes and a scratchy voice.
Once all together, they survey their surroundings and take in the stink of singed bug. They have a brief vote on whether to change locations. The ayes have it.
Packing up their camp and tying up a load of wood, the five return to the little stream and refill their canteens. They run into a goat beast at the waterside and Joe baits it with his shield. He is nearly thrown off his feet, but the creature is stopped in its tracks. The gang jumps in from the sides and hacks the beast down. Candra takes a knock to the head. The durable animal lasts a long time before it ends.
Newly invigorated, the search for a new campsite takes the five downstream. They travel until they find another small clearing and park themselves much like they did before. They use a shaped [mercury rod] to reinforce the splintering wood ax and they cut down another tree. They build a fire and lay out their remaining tent.
Beasts come in ones and twos. A flat faced shield beetle with mantis arms. An owl-headed black bear. Todd and Sue Ann hit them from a distance, and the others surround them. Sue Ann screams in unleashed anguish as her katana slices flesh. Randall grunts in exertion as he batters exoskeleton.
Todd darts in and out, avoiding strikes and stabbing unprotected backs. Deep scratches appear on his shield, and tears on the chest of his gambeson. The beetle has a nasty reach with its spined forelimbs. The bear hits hard with its dense muscle and thick claws.
Joe’s shield splinters and breaks.
But the five of them coordinate. They communicate. They warn one another, and they cover each other when one of them is in danger. They wear down their enemies, bit by bit, and take them apart like their ancestors hunted the mammoths.
Todd puffs and heaves. The bear-beast lies in the dirt and its tongue lolls out of its beak.
“You’d better have gotten a level for that,” he says.
Joe traces the flap torn out of his leather cuirass, and the line of split skin underneath it. Red wells up from the long scratch and Joe applies pressure to his chest.
“Level fourteen,” Joe declares. “I think I’m going to put some points into vitality.”
The others nod. Todd once again holds back his opinion that it’s better to not get injured in the first place.
Joe winces, then laughs. “Alright, who wants to lug this thing away?”
It takes three of them to carry the heavy carcass out into the woods.
Hours turn. The routine continues like that. Todd is on constant high alert, with low sleep. When beasts come, he does his part. He’s no warrior, but his body is strong and so is his will to live.
When his cosmic energy starts to run low, he starts to ration it. He becomes more comfortable with his little ixwa, more confident. More bold.
Evening arrives. The five of them huddle closer and closer to the fire. Light cloud cover obscures the moon. A chill descends.
They’re down to eleven healing pills out of their original twenty five. They’ll have to last.