I walked in a semi-circle around the fence and spent some time looking at the drawbridge — in the narrowest spot in the fast-flowing river, the villagers had fashioned a solid wooden bridge on stilts, a section of which could be raised up using a special pulley. Right now, the bridge was down. Pan was standing near the mechanism. He explained that he was waiting for a group of hunters to come back from the other bank, but by nightfall they always lifted the bridge to keep the night beasts out.
“But actually, the most dangerous area isn’t here,” the oldest inhabitant of the village willingly shared. “If we light the torches here on the bridge at night, then the beasts don’t appear at all from that side of the river. The night beasts usually appear on that side over there,” Pan pointed at a distant edge of the island, deserted and stony. “As soon as the darkness thickens, that’s when they appear. We’ve tried to light torches there, but then the bastards appear lakeside and attack the palisade in unpredictable spots. At least this way we know which side to expect an attack from.”
Both the watchtowers were also on that side. So that’s why they built them facing that way! I also noticed a deep ditch full of cinders and tarred branches. It looked like they planned to light a barricade of fire in the darkness to hold back the night beasts.
At that moment, two women with baskets full of laundry approached us on the bridge. One was around forty, dark-haired and plump, barely able to move for her huge belly, clearly in the final few days of pregnancy. The second was a young girl with light-brown hair, slim and very cute. Only she was dressed strangely even for this new world; in a clean, but very worn and much-patched military uniform. Looked to be from World War II.
Varya Tolmachyova. Human. Female. Level 32 Scout.
A Scout? And level thirty-two! How long had Varya been playing? And her strange clothes… Somehow, I doubted she’d robbed a history museum. But then who was she? An actress from some war film who died during filming? A reenactor killed during a costumed battle? There must be some explanation for this strange sight.
The girl smiled at me warmly, rolled up her sleeves, got to work on the laundry. I wanted to go up and introduce myself, but Pan rather unceremoniously pulled me away by my sleeve. What was up? I didn’t understand the old man’s behavior. Nonetheless, I obediently followed Pan. When we’d walked twenty paces away from the washerwomen, the old Hunter turned on me.
“Are you out of your mind, Sergeant? That’s Engineer Dubovitsky’s daughter! He told you in no uncertain terms not to approach his daughter! Our Engineer has a real bee in his bonnet when it comes to her — he’ll kill anyone just for looking at her wrong, or for telling a suggestive joke. And worse, he’ll chase you out of the village before you can blink! Keep that in mind and don’t anger the Engineer. Avoid Varya. Anyway… It’s dinner time soon… If I were you and your sister, I’d be praying!”
What was wrong with dinner..? After those words from the sole survivor of the first group of settlers, nightmarish thoughts of cannibalism came into my head. What if they ate newcomers..? It wasn’t quite that bad. But it wasn’t good, either. As it turned out, there was a rule at Pan’s Landing; every new settler had to be a guinea pig for a newly-discovered plant, mushroom or berry with unknown properties. The food could turn out to be perfectly edible, or it could be sickening or even deadly poisonous. But naturally, someone has to be the first test the effects of unknown food and add to humanity’s knowledge of this new world.
In the large dining hall where all the villagers gathered toward the evening, rough plates of burnt clay were set before Julie and me. On one was a handful of long pale-gray berries that smelled sharply of sour cabbage and overripe tomatoes. It wasn’t clear what was on the second: finely cut roasted medallions of… something. Could be a vegetable, could be meat. They smelled like burnt plastic. Julie looked at me with worry.
“I’ll try both!” I declared confidently, moving aside my younger sister and sitting at the table.
The hubbub of voices in the hall seemed to approve; the villagers liked that I wanted to protect my sister from something potentially dangerous and unpleasant.
“As you wish, Sergeant,” the huge Grip came closer and sat at the table opposite me to see the consequences personally. “On your left are stinkberries. The hunters discovered them a few days ago. On the right are cooked slices of black nightshroom; mushrooms that grow on both sides of the river and glow slightly at night. Anyway, time to dig in!”
I carefully took one berry and put it in my mouth. Well, what could I say..? Almost tasteless, just a little tangy. Fleshy, with a big flat stone. I spat out the stone and, with renewed confidence, took a whole handful of the berries and put them in my mouth. The food wasn’t great and it barely filled up my character’s satiety bar, but my stamina bar recovered a lot. I reported the effects to the villagers of Pan’s Landing as they watched with bated breath.
Engineer Max Dubovitsky was the first to react. He carefully gathered up all the fruit stones I’d placed on the table and spoke to the hunters on their bench, telling them to bring back more of the berries tomorrow.
“Let’s try to grow these stinkberries in the village. Not much use as food, but it’ll really come in handy for our fighters and watchmen to refill their stamina. Uh… Are you okay, Rita?”
The hefty woman had started groaning. She slowly slid from her bench to the floor.
“Looks like it’s starting…” Her smile was pained, as if she was apologizing to the others.
Everyone started talking at once. Healer Anna and Scout Varya helped the grimacing Rita rise. Each held the soon-to-be mother under an arm, led her out of the big hall. My ‘little sister’ Julie wanted to go with the other women and slipped out through the closing door behind them.
“Looks like today is going to be a tough night…” Grip murmured, stroking his spiked club and staring through an arrowslit at the scarlet dusk, his eyes wide.
“It might not be tonight,” Pan commented, also looking at the sun with alarm as it sank behind the horizon. “Takes time to give birth. Might be a few hours, especially for the first time. But in any case, soon it’ll get harder to defend the walls.
The other men were on edge too, frowning. I understood their fears completely. Once born, the child would be the twentieth resident of the village. And that meant that today, there would be more night beasts. Worse, they’d get a second alpha. The defenders would have it tough. They might even find a place in the line of defense for me. Why not? Even a level four character could be useful for fetching ammo or patrolling the less dangerous side of the perimeter.
But first I needed to finish my current job — testing unknown food. My ginger kitten Whiskers chose that most inconvenient moment to jump up on the table, approach the plate, sniff the mushrooms, flick his tail in disgust and turn away pointedly.
I understood the little guy perfectly; the dish smelled repulsive. Like a burning plastic package. Nonetheless, they needed testing. Without further nudging from Grip, I pulled the plate of mushrooms toward me, picked up a carved wooden spoon, tasted the unknown dish. Not bad… Although… Damn! Just one small bite made my stomach growl loudly. A game message appeared before my eyes:
Attention! Your character is poisoned!
Physique check successful!
Debuff reduced.
Penalty received: -2 Agility and -2 Strength. Stamina points halved.
Duration: seven hours.
My stomach turned painfully. Ugh! Like a bullet, undoing my belt as I went, I ran out into the yard toward the wooden cabin toilet nearby. Only just made it. I shuddered, imagining how embarrassing that could have been if it weren’t for the debuff reduction from my high Physique. What were those mushrooms called? Black nightshrooms? I’d have to avoid them in the future. And it seemed the village defenders would have to do without me tonight…
Chapter 11 [Kitten]
Second Alpha
HOW THE HELL was I supposed to get through to that big dumb oaf? My an
imal senses just screamed at me that the stinking scraps on that plate were poisonous. I tried as hard as I could to warn Sergeant not to eat that crap, but the human ignored my pantomime and shoveled the stinking stuff into his mouth. Good thing he survived. That ‘food’ would have killed me on the spot. Although I wouldn’t have so carelessly experimented with my health. I recalled that vegetables weren’t suitable food for cats, and that included mushrooms.
“I have a feeling the toilet is going to be occupied for most of the tonight,” Grip chuckled. The other leaders laughed.
The villagers discussed Sergeant’s incident a little more and made more fun of him (not even nastily, much to my surprise), then started to eat. A few scraps of fried fish fell down for the ginger kitten. Although, the miserly portions the people had on their plates surprised me and put me on guard. That spoke to a problem at Pan’s Landing. From their conversations, I learned that the hunters had come back empty-handed, and according to them, it was lucky they came back at all. They had a dangerous encounter in the woods with a very high-level pack of flesh-eating chimeric monkeys. The whole group was lucky to be alive.
“I threw away my wonderful metal-bound spear,” Washington the level 33 Hunter said, shaking his head sadly. “All the others threw down their bags of loot, spears, snares and spare quivers of arrows. We ran as fast we could, like the wind. And still the monkeys didn’t let us leave. They pinned us to the riverbank. We had to kill their aggressive pack leader with arrows, then jump off a big cliff into the water and swim away from the enraged beasts. I don’t have the Swimmer skill, but our friends kept me afloat. At least that was lucky. Apart from that, it was a dark day…”
“Don’t worry, Washington. The main thing is that nobody died. I’ll make you a new spear. We have enough metal in the workshop,” the Engineer consoled the old Hunter.
All the same, the mood in the air was despondent. I couldn’t figure out why at first. Then Pan spoke up:
“That means the eastern woods are closed for hunting for a week at least,” the old man sighed heavily and shook his head, defeated. “Shame. Was a good spot. But the chimeric monkeys are crafty, and they bear grudges. They won’t forgive us for killing their leader. Before the pack leaves, showing up there would be nothing but suicide. We’ll need to look for other hunting spots.”
Grip interrupted further discussions. The village leader looked out the window, stood up decisively, threw his heavy club over his shoulder.
“It’s time. Pan and Washington, to the towers. Magomed, Yarik, Rumbler, with me to the ditch. Everyone else rest. If we need you, we’ll call for reinforcements. Tonight is gonna be hard…”
* * *
Through blood, sweat and tears, using my claws and trying not to put weight on my injured leg, I finally hauled myself over the watchtower’s flat roof. The sun had set already and an abundance of unfamiliar and unexpectedly bright stars appeared in the sky. And a broad strip of millions of nearby stars created a shining scythe that cut through the night sky, splitting it into roughly two equal parts. No moon again. Maybe this planet that now served as a new home of humanity had no such satellite. Strange, funny. I’d read some pretty authoritative scientific articles that said quite clearly that the presence of a large satellite is a required condition for life to arise. Something to do with the tides, the mixing of bodies of water, the probability of the first two simplest organisms spontaneously coming into being and so on… This world was literally living proof of the contrary to that very convincing theory.
Choose the learnable skill Astronomy for your character?
Choose the learnable skill Bookworm for your character?
No, no. I couldn’t rush something as important as choosing my skills. What kind of Astronomer could a tomcat be? I couldn’t use a telescope, even if I found one. And I couldn’t write notes. Bookworm? What kind of skill was that anyway..?
Bookworm allows you to obtain new knowledge of the game world, spells and experience by reading the texts of scrolls and books. The skill also allows you to add to your geographic map by adding information about new areas from scrolls and books you read.
Oh, wow… If I was a human, I’d have definitely taken that skill. But it didn’t seem much good for a tomcat. I couldn’t carry items because I had no inventory. Couldn’t draw a map with my cat’s paws either. So I turned them down, although expanding my extremely humble arsenal of skills was certainly tempting.
Some new skills for my Whiskers were alluring — right now I had only chosen four skills of the six possible at character level three. I was practically decided on the fifth skill — Stealth. I’d seen Julie using it and I liked the look of it. Just like the young girl, my kitten needed to stay unnoticed to aggressive creatures. And therefore…
Level one Stealth skill learned!
5 of 6 possible character skills at level 3 chosen.
Ooh! At the bottom of my vision, next to the Curse Magic button, another button had appeared in the form of a translucent kitten. I activated the new skill at once and switched to stealth mode. Right away, beneath my health, hunger, fatigue and mana bars, another bar appeared. The game hint helpfully informed me that it was my detection bar. If it filled up completely, then that meant that my character had been seen and was no longer in stealth. Then the skill would be on cooldown; I wouldn’t be able to use Stealth again for another five minutes. Leveling up the skill would reduce its cooldown and lower the penalty to movement speed while in stealth, and on the whole it made the character harder to spot.
Right now, the stealth meter was bouncing between five and twenty percent — people were walking beneath my tower, dumping new dry branches into the ditch on a bed of straw. The villagers couldn’t see me, and in the meantime, the skill gained experience before my eyes, its progress bar filling up. Four minutes later, I got a satisfying message:
Stealth skill increased to level two!
Great! And I was only a little way from character level four. Still, I didn’t have time to get it before darkness fell. A message appeared before my eyes; Soundless Step had activated. Then, in the distance on the opposite side of the island, I saw creepy shadows appear, burning with blood-red eyes. Among the twenty incorporeal night beasts, I could clearly see two glowing red clouds. Engineer Dubovitsky, unfortunately, had been right. As the population of Pan’s Landing went up, so was a second alpha added to the night beasts’ pack.
To make matters worse, the humans were somehow slow to light the firewall. From the swearing under the tower I heard that Pan hadn’t brought the torch, having left all the lit ones by the bridge. So Grip, swearing and hitting himself with the firestriker more than the flint, tried to light some sparks and set fire to a frayed cloth. In spite of all his efforts, the fearsome level 44 Warrior failed to light the fire. The night beasts were fast approaching. Their creepy howls echoed across the island. And the two alphas were not only larger, but also faster than the rest. I could already read the stats on the nearest one:
Level 8 Alpha. Night Beast.
Just level eight? Although the color of the nameplate was an alarming orange, which meant ‘very dangerous creature, significantly stronger than creatures of its level.’ I tried to slow down and weaken the nearest Alpha with the spells from my Curse Magic.
Yes! It worked! One dangerous bloody cloud had noticeably slowed, and I’d successfully spent mana on the second spell too. Now I had to weaken the second alpha, which had already overtaken the first and had reached the ditch of branches! Especially since the second alpha was a little stronger than the first — level eleven!
Curse Magic skill increased to level three!
Mysticism skill increased to level four!
Your character is now level four!
Reward: three skill points (total available: nine) and one mutation point (total available: three).
My mana bar, which had just emptied completely, refilled to the maximum. And now that I’d leveled up, I had not nine, but twelve Magic Points! Perfect timing
! I took advantage and weakened the second alpha too, which had already jumped over the still unlit ditch and knocked over Rumbler, a big ginger Warrior at level 39. A monstrous maw full of teeth shot out of the blood-red cloud and latched onto the man’s left shoulder. He emitted a bloodcurdling scream. The awful beast shook its head like a dog and threw Rumbler toward the oxbow lake. He slapped into the mud. His arm stayed with the creature. Damn… a level eleven monster had just torn the arm off a fighter three times its level! No wonder they were so afraid of these alphas!
I saw the mangled, now one-armed man find the strength to rise in the shallows. He even tried to stem the blood gushing from the stump of his right arm. Only the dark water near him suddenly started to bubble up. A mighty twenty-foot crocodile put an end to Rumbler’s suffering. The new world never ceased to amaze me with its variety of danger. Minus one defender of Pan’s Landing…
Sharp thrumming sounds told me that the archers on the watchtower were wide awake and helping the defenders on the ground. The murderous alpha was now already writhing in the agony of death, pinned to the ground by two spears at once and peppered with arrows. In the meantime, Grip threw away his useless flint and steel, nimbly dodged the other alpha as it descended on him, kissed the level 8 alpha with his spiked club as he passed. I heard the crunch of broken bones clearly. The monster howled and writhed on the ground, losing its usual camouflaging cloud. The alpha turned out to be a sinewy reptile around nine feet long, with a mouth full of teeth and long clawed feet. Two arrows stuck out of its broken and bloody head at different angles. The beast looked close to death.
Only the pack of night beasts was more than just its alphas. Twenty Feelers ranging from level two to twenty eight were already just ten leaps away from the ditch of branches. I spent all my magic to cast three spells at once and slow three of them, but the dark wave would still overwhelm the scant defenders of Pan’s Landing at any moment. But then…
A Cat and His Human (League of Losers Book #1): LitRPG Series Page 9
