Chapter Twenty-five: They’re Real (Patreon)

There’s one good reason for me to level up as quickly as possible. Apparently I get access to a selection of Skills at specific level intervals. My first Skill selection is at level one, hence my desire to reach at least that level. After then, the next Skill selection is at level five, then level ten, level fifteen, level twenty, and then subsequently at intervals of ten up to one hundred. There’s no information about levels after one hundred making me wonder if there is anything after that point. Surely yes, but then the whole Class thing seems to be pretty artificial, so maybe not?

Anyway, just like the thought of comparing myself to both people on Earth and Nicholas’ world, none of this will be an issue if I don’t survive the next year. After all the time thinking through what to do in the future, my next step is clear: absorb the Hunting knowledge stone.

After I’ve levelled up and chosen my level one Skill, I’ll get to work on making this cave more of a home, and on developing some tools for things that will make my life here a bit more comfortable and easier. Hopefully that will be a good opportunity to earn some stat points. Another good reason to go hunting first: I’ll be able to explore the area around, hopefully identify some good places to find the various resources I’ll need. Plus, the corpses of the animals I hunt might contain some of the bits I’ll need. Sinew will be absolutely necessary for one.

I also realise during the day that my efforts with my eye have been fruitful in more than one sense – apparently using Lay-on-hands to heal an organ was enough to catapult it into the next category as it’s increased to Novice 3. I bring the message up again to look at in in more detail as I’d only quickly skimmed it before.

I close it, switching to the second message I’d received.

I close the message, musing again over the new information. It’s not really anything I didn’t know before, or at least nothing I hadn’t guessed. What I’d done before by drawing on my mana bar is apparently called ‘channeling’ and merely lengthens the healing time at the expense of needing to concentrate.

What I did by imagining how the eye works was apparently applying my anatomical knowledge, which allows the spell, or Skill, to work more efficiently – I guess because it ‘knows’ what to do straight off – but has the flip side that if I tell it to do something wrong, it won’t know any better and I could mess myself up more.

I’ll have to be careful, but if these new functionalities could save my life, they’ll be well-worth it. It’s also good to have more information on how to evolve a Skill – and why it’s a good idea. The information from the System stone was that use and evolution of the skill are key to increasing its level, and thereby effectiveness. My experience last night has proven that, and even given me a clue: evolving a Skill may require using it in a different way rather than just repeating the same action again and again. I’ll have to experiment with my other Skills later. At the moment, they’re only sitting at the first level, so they still have a good way to go.

Either way, it’s going to be significantly easier to achieve my objectives of finding resources and creatures to hunt with two intact eyes!

On that happy note, I close my eyes and drift to sleep.

******

The next day, as planned, I absorb the Hunting knowledge stone. An instant headache blooms. I’m very glad that I waited to absorb this stone as, from the wealth of information that is downloaded into my brain, I know I would have been unable to effectively assimilate it before. That said, as I go through my new knowledge, some of it does overlap what I’ve already learned, adding a depth to my understanding.

Parts of the tracking skill where a + b = c, like the depth of claw marks on a tree added to the height of them indicating the height and the size of the animal, now carry with them a greater meaning, in this case the size of the animal according to the range for its species indicated its age, sex, health, and therefore whether it would be a good idea to hunt or not. Of course, just as with the wilderness survival knowledge, some of these facts are no doubt not applicable to the creatures I’ll actually be hunting; I hope that enough of the facts are correct that the knowledge will help me more than hinder.

Other parts overlap with wilderness survival such as butchering – now I know not only how to actually separate the different parts of the animal, but I also know the signs to look for to avoid diseased animals or ones with parasites. The last bit gives me shivers: along with the knowledge of how to avoid parasites came mental images of what those parasites look like...and what they do to their unfortunate hosts. Frankly, I’ve been pretty lucky when it comes to drinking the water straight from the stream – I could easily have picked up something bad, either parasite or bacteria. I should probably boil the water before drinking if at all possible.

Some areas, however, are completely new, such as how to set traps. This particularly interests me thanks to one of my heretofore unused skills: Dominate. I suddenly realise that I can actually use that Skill now, thanks to Kalanthia’s gift of Willpower. If I can bond with some powerful creature, it will make my life a lot easier, and traps will make that prospect a lot safer to attempt. Also included in this knowledge packet are how to make and wield a number of weapons essential to hunting, something I’m very glad to have since I’d never studied archery, spear-wielding, or fletching, nor had I ever aimed to become a bowyer before being stuck here.

When preparing for the day I start packing everything away into my Inventory as has been my habit so far, but then pause. Do I really need to take everything with me? That’s what I’ve done for the last few days, but then I’ve also been travelling for that time and sleeping somewhere different every night. Plus, won’t I need the space in my Inventory for my kills and any other useful resources I find?

In the end, I leave my big orange suitcase behind, but I take my backpack and smaller lime green suitcase. I do clear a bit of space in my backpack, just in case, but I’m not keen on leaving my most precious items somewhere without my surveillance – for sentimental reasons as well as survival ones – even though I’m pretty sure Kalanthia isn’t going to let just anyone walk into her cave.

So, with nerves causing butterflies to flap around in my stomach, I set off out of the cave. Kalanthia is sunning herself outside, Lathani playing nearby.

“Just going off to hunt,” I say cheerily, doing my best to cover my nervousness at actuallygoing out intentionally to find dangerous situations. Seems counter-intuitive to my desire to stay alive, but there we are: that’s the crazy world I live in now.

Success to your hunt, Markus Wolfe, she tells me calmly. I wish I could bottle some of that and take it with me. Still, no point stalling. I walk down the hill and start searching for signs of something that I could reasonably hunt – just because I’m being illogical in actually seeking out things that could kill me instead of staying where the only thing I have to worry about is a giant predator that I couldn’t defeat even if it did try to eat me doesn’t mean I’m going to be stupid about this. Wait, something seems wrong about that sentence…

Anyway, I’m going to pick and choose my prey to minimise my risk. Deciding that the banks of the river would be a good place to begin my search, I start scanning the area. It doesn’t take me much time to spot some evidence of the passage of different animals, my knowledge from both the Tracking and Hunting stones aiding me. I dither and hesitate, dismissing the idea of following one track after another. This one looks too big; this one too small. These tracks indicate a group of animals, maybe too numerous; these a single animal, but probably a predator.

Finally, I pick at random, spinning around and pointing to an area of the river. Steeling myself, I investigate my narrowed choice. Not going for the predator, instead I pick a small group of tracks which probably belong to a small group of grazers. As I follow them, misgivings start to rise. They are bigger than I’d thought just from their prints – the branches bent and damaged to either side as they head into denser ground coverage seems to indicate that, at least. Still, I push on: I have to hunt something.

After a while, I start hearing the creatures. A snuffling, rooting sound. Actually, it’s rather familiar… It sounds a bit like the creature which woke me up the night I spent hidden in a dead leaf shelter. It’s probably not the same creature as I have moved a fair bit away from there, but maybe there are lots of this type around?

Taking more care when placing my feet, I head closer still. When I lay my eyes on my quarry, I’m surprised, I have to admit. At first I’d had the idea of some small creature with delicate paws. Once I’d seen the size of the animals and heard the snuffling, I thought of a pig. This is neither. The body of the creatures reminds me of a porcupine, though these quills are far shorter. More like a hedgehog, perhaps, but they lay like a porcupine’s. I don’t doubt that the creatures are capable of moving them to stand upright in defence.

In colour, they are more of a murky brown than the black and white of a porcupine, and their snouts are more lizard-like. So far, most of the creatures I’ve come across since arriving seem to have had either reptilian or avian influences. The majority have probably been cold-blooded too – at least, the temperature of their blood has been lower than mine. Kalanthia’s the only mammal I’ve seen so far. Well, there are also the insects which aren’t reptilian or avian. Or mammal, but that’s obvious.

My potential prey have a little horn on the end of their snouts and it’s this they are using to dig a little through the ground. I’m suddenly struck by the thought that a number of tasks would be easier if I had my own mobile plow. Although I don’t need to break ground to build a shelter at the moment, I do need to plant the samova beans. I’m also going to need clay, probably from the river, and finding some type of edible tuber would be great. Actually, since these creatures probably eat the last, they might be ideal for that task, though their definition of ‘edible’ may not match mine...

But how would I capture them? And wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of going on the hunt: to get Energy? I have another misgiving now I’ve actually set eyes on the group: its composition. I’d known from the tracks that there were two larger animals and two smaller ones, but I’d thought it was two males and two females – it’s not unusual for the different sexes to be different sizes, after all. Alas, the reason is far more contentious than that. It’s a family.

Mother, father – though I’ll be damned if I can tell which is which – and two youngsters. Not babies, not precisely, but definitely juveniles of some sort. Their colour is more faded, and they approach the task of rooting through leaves and dirt with more playfulness than their parents. In fact, as I watch, one of them misjudges how much effort it will take to uproot one plant and gets its horn stuck in the ground. Cute...

I swallow and withdraw behind a tree. Can I do this? Can I take the parents away from the youngsters either by killing them or capturing them? Could I kill the juveniles? Even when I played games which happened to centre around killing animals or people, and there were young ones in the game, I unconsciously avoided killing the children or babies. And that was when I knew that they were just bundles of code. This...they’re real.