Arrival
Page 2
“Get off,” I shrieked, my arms flailing wildly as the rat clung for its life, pushing its fangs deeper, digging all the way to bone.
Thud. Thud.
I bashed the rat against the cave wall repeatedly until it was forced to let go.
“Hheeaah… eeaah… eeaah.”
Undaunted, the rat attacked again. I backed away in fright, singeing the hair off my arms as I overlooked the fire. Backed into a corner I grabbed a thick twisted branch from my meager stockpile of firewood. The jagged bark covered my hands with minor lacerations, but it was the only thing available.
I swung. The makeshift club cracked the rat in the face and sent it sailing across the cave. The rat fell motionless on the ground but I didn’t let up.
“Take this. And this!” I took a few more swings at the large, motionless rat. Just to be on the safe side.
Brring!
The strange ringing in my ears interrupted my berserker state and an even stranger blue semitransparent textbox opened up a few feet in front of me.
You gained 7 Exp
You have learned new skill: †Hammer Mastery†
†Hammer Mastery Lvl.1 (0.0%)†
Grows with experience with blunt weapons
Damage increased by 3% while wielding a blunt weapon
Attack speed increased by 3% while wielding a blunt weapon
After a moment, the messages faded away, leaving me dumbstruck.
“Damn, I have gone insane.”
Chapter 2: Game
‘That must be it,’ I concluded the next morning. After spending half the night tossing and turning on the cold stone floor, debating with myself over my seemingly impossible circumstances, it was the only thing that made even the vaguest sort of sense. Images of the strange blue textboxes flashed through my mind. There was only one context where messages of Exp and skills occurred. ‘I am in a game.’
I considered the implications of such a state. ‘If I am in a game, there should be some sort of menu.’
“Menu,” I said aloud, feeling slightly foolish speaking to the cool empty air until another ethereal window popped up to confirm my suspicions.
†Menu†
Status
Equipment
Inventory
Skills
Quests
Options
Help
“Ha, a help feature,” I exclaimed. “This could explain what happened.”
“Help,” I called out.
Help?
†††Stop being a pussy. †††
‘Damn.’
“Status,” I tried next.
Name
†Isaac N. Stein†
Level
1
Class
None
Exp
7/50
Health
80/80
Satiety
50/100
Stamina
60/60
Hydration
70/100
Mana
0/0
Status
Confused
Vitality
8
Strength
9
Agility
10
Endurance
6
Magic
0
Dexterity
12
Energy
0
Defense
8(+3)
Intelligence
22
Level… Class… Exp… This was not Earth. This was another world, another universe, one that operated as if I was just a character in the most realistic RPG imaginable. A surge of excitement ran through me.
In a sense, this was what I’d been wishing for. I’d been trapped in a small little town, forced to endure the same boring nothing, day in and day out. School, bullies, homework, and sleep, rinsed and repeated a thousand fold. However, this place was different. Here I was free. Free to explore a world beyond my imagination. Free to push every boundary and test every obstacle. Free to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Most of all, this was a place where I felt I could prove my worth.
I looked over the other features in the menu. Under equipment, there was a cartoonish illustration of myself. Beside my visage were slots for various articles of clothing to be equipped, shoes, shirt, pants, hat, etc. My current apparel filled some of these slots. Others, like slots for gloves and a cape, were empty. Naturally, my normal Earth attire did not provide much protection, altogether only +3 Defense, whatever that meant.
The inventory was just a bunch of empty squares. I thought it was strange. I wasn’t without possessions. I had my backpack and its contents. Yet the inventory seemed empty. Out of curiosity, I retrieved a pen from my bag and brought it to the inventory window. As the pen touched the window, it was pulled from my hand and sucked away into intangibleness. The pen had disappeared but now the inventory wasn’t empty. One of the squares held the pen’s image.
I tapped the pen’s icon and it tumbled out of the floating transparent display and onto the ground. Curious of this unusual ability, I started stuffing all sorts of things into the inventory, a small tree, boulders, and a large quantity of river water. Each item that was absorbed turned into another box on the inventory screen. There didn’t seem to be a limit on the number of items or the total weight, only the total volume. After absorbing roughly a cubic meter of items, the inventory refused to absorb anymore.
Below the inventory tiles was the text: 0§. ‘§, perhaps some sort of currency.’ Eager for further experimentation, I pulled twenty bucks from my wallet and moved it to the inventory screen. Like the pen, the window sucked up the bill but rather than generate a bill icon, the text changed from 0§ to 37§.
When I tapped on the money text, another prompt asked me how much money I wanted to withdraw. I indicated I wanted it all back but rather than a crisp 20-dollar bill, a series of strange coins popped out. ‘So the inventory also contains a currency exchange feature,’ I thought as I returned the coins to the inventory and moved onto the other menu screens.
The only thing under skills was the Hammer Mastery skill I received from hitting a rat with a stick and the Quest tab was completely empty.
The options tab looked like one from any game. It had display options, a volume setting; you could even change the language. I settled on just adding a set of bars indicating my health and stamina in the top left corner of my vision. I doubted rats were my biggest worries in this new world and these gauges could help me survive the next fight.
To that end, I decided to do my best at playing it safe. No going after giant monsters just yet, for now I’d settle for small game like the rat. Offering only 7 Exp, I’d have to kill seven more to gain my first level, it’d be slow but I’d survive.
I spent that day hunting all across the woods but failed to catch anything. I could tell the forest was home to plenty of creatures. Dozens of times, I heard sounds of animals scurrying away as I approached. A few times, I saw squirrels waiting until I was only a few feet away before dashing up the nearest tree. The squirrels would then stop a few feet up, just outside my reach, and stare down, mocking me.
On my second day of hunting, I made what I thought was my first break when I spotted a brown bunny poking its head out from its burrow under a large cedar tree. I waited several minutes for the bunny to dive back into its burrow before slowly creeping towards it. I carefully placed my feet at every step to insure not even the slightest sound was produced.
At 6 feet from the den, I could wait no longer. I drew my makeshift club and charged. At the first crunch of a leaf, the bunny darted from its hiding spot. Frightened I’d lose my chance, I lunged at it. Unintimidated by my presence, rather than fleeing, as I had feared, the bunny met me head on. It dodged my club and tackled me in the chest. Caught off guard, I stumbled back to my knees. I tried to regain my footing, but the bunny was too fast. It quickly circled around behind me. Pain shot through my back as it struck me from be
hind, sending me forward, face first into the dirt, making a mud pie my just desserts for being so slow.
I would have thought a single serving fair, but apparently, the bunny disagreed. Each time I tried to stand, the bunny thumped its freakishly powerful legs, driving me back into the muck. I was at the complete mercy of the lone long eared lagomorph, all I could do was watch my health bar dip with each whack. Around halfway down, the bunny relented.
‘Run away. Run away. Run away.’ I clambered to my feet and extricated myself from the area as fast as I could. The bunny didn’t pursue. Apparently, it was satisfied with admonishing this blundering buffoon. I still ran, not stopping until I was several hundred yards away.
‘A bunny just kicked my ass. No, not a bunny, it just looked like one. Maybe bunnies are top predators in this world.’ I tried to cheer myself up, but it didn’t really work. ‘So if a rabbit is too strong, what is weaker? Hmmm…. The squirrels and rats might be weaker, but they’ve proven difficult to catch. Hmmm… I am in a game world. So what’s the weakest monster in any game?’
‘Karp!’ I recalled the most pathetic creature I’d ever seen in any game, a monster capable of nothing but splashing around in the water. After the bunny, I knew the fish here might not be like the karp from that game but at least if the fish were powerful, I could simply flee to the safety of the shore.
I moved towards the river. Time restored the health and energy I had lost during the altercation with the rabbit, but as I neared the river, a new message popped up.
Satiety has fallen below 30%. Health recovery has stopped.
If Satiety continues to drop, you will begin losing health.
I had plenty of water to keep up my hydration, but a couple days of poor hunting and little edible vegetation had reduced my satiety to dangerous levels. I didn’t care to test what happened if it reached zero.
I walked down the riverbank until I found a calm shallow spot. This gave me optimal mobility and visibility. I figured I needed something with a bit more range and lethality than a stick so I took a jagged rock from the riverbank and used it to sharpen a long straight tree branch into a spear.
Spearfishing turned out to be more difficult than I’d imagined. I spent hours in the river, waiting for a fish to go by. When they did, I stabbed at them with the spear. Most of the time, it failed to do much of anything. The fish were fast and I’m not sure if it was because the spear’s tip was dull or because the fishes’ scales were tough, but the spear would frequently bounce off the fishes’ sides failing to hurt them in any way. Only fish that I managed to pin against the ground so I could drive the spear deeper would result in a kill. In addition to experience and a reliable food supply, the fishing also gave me a new skill: Spear Mastery. Like Hammer Mastery, Spear Mastery boosted the damage dealt with my spear, making the work easier as I went. As my third day in this world ended, I reached my goal.
You gained 3 Exp
You gained a level
I brought up the status screen, eager to learn the benefits of leveling up.
Name
†Isaac N. Stein†
Level
2
Class
None
Exp
2/100
Health
67/80
Satiety
20/100
Stamina
14/60
Hydration
64/100
Mana
0/0
Status
None
Vitality
8↑
Strength
9↑
Agility
10↑
Endurance
6↑
Magic
0↑
Dexterity
12↑
Energy
0↑
Defense
8↑ (+3)
Intelligence
22↑
Unspent
5
The stats themselves were unchanged, but the screen was a little different than before. Next to each stat was an up arrow and below the stats was a new line of text: Unspent, 5.
I cheered my discovery. The level up gave me five stat points that I could assign in any way I chose. I looked over the stats, trying to discern the optimal distribution.
‘Strength will improve physical attacks,’ I guessed. ‘Magic will presumably improve magical attacks. Hmm… So this world has magic. Later. Defense and Agility are obvious. Dexterity…. probably accuracy and/or critical hit chance. Intelligence? No idea.’
Vitality and endurance were precisely one tenth of my health and stamina, so I figured that increasing those would raise my health or stamina by ten.
In most games, you chose to be either a warrior or a mage, and trained strength or magic respectively. Training both would only waste points where they weren’t always needed. I was unfamiliar with the magic this world apparently possessed. Mages might be significantly more powerful than warriors or vice versa so, I postponed that decision and put 3 points into agility and 2 into dexterity thinking that they would be more useful in my current circumstances anyway. What is the point of strength if you cannot hit your prey in the first place?
I went back to camp, although still distressed over my defeat by a rabbit, the successful fishing expedition more than made up for it. I restored my satiety with fish kebobs and went to bed early. For the first time since my arrival, I had a good night’s sleep.
Name
†Isaac N. Stein†
Level
7
Class
None
Exp
67/650
Health
120/120
Satiety
94/100
Stamina
100/100
Hydration
97/100
Mana
0/0
Status
Confident
Vitality
12
Strength
11
Agility
22
Endurance
10
Magic
0
Dexterity
17
Energy
0
Defense
11 (+3)
Intelligence
22
†Skills†
†Cooking Lvl. 2 (86.2%)†
†Hammer Mastery Lvl. 1 (26.4%)†
†Skinning Lvl. 2 (12.2%)†
†Spear Mastery Lvl. 3 (34.6%)†
I made a lot of progress the next 6 weeks. I got stronger by slaughtering numerous forest denizens. As my level rose, so did the amount of Exp needed to reach the next level. Fish, offering only a few Exp apiece, quickly became insufficient, forcing me to pursue other game.
At first, I was too slow to catch most terrestrial animals so I resorted to traps instead. I kept the traps simple, just a heavy rock propped up precariously with a twig. Under the rock, I placed surplus fish or whatever local vegetation I could scrounge up to bait unsuspecting prey. They attracted foxes, rats, squirrels and, much to my satisfaction, rabbits. The best aspect of the traps, I didn’t even need to be nearby to receive the Exp for killing the beasts. Even when I was hunting a mile away, I would get a message confirming the experience gain.
As I gained levels, I continued adding points mainly to agility and dexterity. By the time I reached level 5, my agility was high enough to keep up with the small forest animals that had eluded me and I started pursuing them directly. I especially focused on rabbits. My loss to one of them was a wound to my self-confidence that would only be restored by returning the favor. In my enduring solitude, in these unprecedented circumstances, my sense of reality peeled away. ‘This is a game world. All these creatures are just little bundles of Exp, to be collected and make me stronger.’
After taking down my 37th rabbit, I got a new type of sub-skill I decided to call a technique.
†Spear Mastery†
has reached level 3
You have learned a new spear move: †Piercing Strike†
†Piercing Strike†
A strong thrust of the spear dealing an additional 50% damage
Has a small chance of damaging enemy armor.
Cost: 50 Stamina
This skill made hunting significantly more efficient, much of the small game fell in a strike or two. It didn’t take long for my new life to settle into a routine. I began each morning by setting traps near the cave. Then I’d spend the day hunting further out. In the evening, I emptied the traps and prepared the bodies. I skinned the animals and kept the pelts for bedding and I used the meat for food or bait for more traps.
Through a lot of trial and error, I acquired cooking and skinning skills. As my cooking skill increased, I was able to prepare food that was at least to my ever-falling standards edible. Meanwhile, the skinning skill improved my chance at removing the pelt undamaged. After those few weeks, I had more pelts than I knew what to do with: 4 deer, 8 grey fox, 15 red fox, 16 raccoon, 23 squirrel, and 42 rabbit.
Thus far, I had been lucky. I hadn’t run into any serious predators. I knew they were out there. Something had to be keeping the herbivore numbers down before I’d arrived and at night, I could hear wolves howling, but I never came across them. It seemed they were only active at night and avoided my campfire.
Over those weeks, I had gotten used to my new place, but also knew it wouldn’t last much longer. The weather had grown steadily cooler and wetter. And after a particularly violent storm that kept me shivering in my cave for three days, I decided it was no longer safe in my wilderness abode. Up until then, my concerns with defending myself at night kept me near my cavern campsite. I had planned to remain until I was strong enough to deal with the wolves and other potential predators, but the storm covered the surrounding mountaintops in snow and if the temperature continued to drop, I could find myself snowed in.