But I’d wanted to see what I’d be up against before making a choice at all. After all, I’d picked up [ADRENALINE SURGE] in a panic, and [ENERGY DETECTION] in a fit of stupidity. Third time ought to be the charm. If this backfired same as the last time, I’d be pouring the next five attribute points into Wisdom and hope I’d get brighter.
There were still the previous skills that I could select, but I felt I didn’t want another toggle skill. Instead, I started looking for something that had a more immediate effect. As I saw in my previous fight, an immediate problem was that I had no effective way of getting the fuck out of the way once something scary was right atop me. The wolves had savaged my arm. The stalker had nearly drowned me. And the bear? Nope.
As far as offensive capabilities went, I had enough of what I needed. I had a sword and its pointy end stabbed into enemies really well. Unless something a lot bigger and meaner dropped on me—and I was getting uncomfortably comfortable with the idea of things dropping on me—I wouldn’t need anything too grand in that area.
“Why don’t I just outright ask for more bad luck?” I groaned as I realised what I’d been thinking.
I’m a big believer in not tempting fate. If everything’s going too well, it’s only a matter of time before a screw comes loose somewhere. If you think everything’s going too well, then you’re about to miss a step and probably break your neck.
“The best defence is running away.” I remembered reading that in a fantasy novel once, though for the life of me I couldn’t figure which one it was.
But the idea itself had merit. I wanted something that could get me out of claw range quickly and easily. A dodge roll or something of the sort would’ve been just the best.
Good news: I did have a combat dodge skill somewhere in the Traversal stack.
Bad news: it was a trainable skill. So I’d best get really used to face planting a few times before the interface acknowledged what I wanted to do. And I’d have to do it in combat, if any of the other skill unlocks were anything to go by.
There weren’t any other proper skills to grab that would be immediately useful, at least at a glance. No phase shift or teleport or even something reasonable as a burst of speed in one direction or another. Given how these skills had worked so far, maybe that was for the best. A speed burst from the interface would probably launch me against a tree with splattering results. I shuddered.
So, instead, I made the next reasonable decision and picked up [IRON FLESH]. Didn't want another toggle skill, so I got exactly another toggle skill.
[IRON FLESH]
[HARDEN A PART OF YOUR BODY IN ORDER TO MITIGATE INCOMING DAMAGE]
[COST: 5 MP / activation + 1 MP / second]
[3 MP to change targeted area while skill is active]
Again, I wasn’t mature enough not to smirk at the skill’s description. But it would go a long way to helping me survive. The bear had almost disembowelled me, the stalker had stabbed me, the bird had nearly cut my fingers off, and the headcrabs wanted to reenact that monkey brain scene from Indiana Jones. In the absence of armour, this was the next best thing.
As expected, my MP bar increased in size. It almost doubled. Would it stop doing that once it filled my vision? Or would it break into two pieces? Or would I be stuck with a blue bar curling in on itself?
I was going to gouge my eyes out if that happened.
“Can you explain to me how to use this skill?” I asked Eternity. “Or isn’t that basic functionality information?” The first point of insight had promised I could receive that from Eternity.
And given how literal-minded my tiny pain in the arse companion was, I figured I hadn’t been asking the right questions. I didn’t know if to expect an answer or the wall to the face.
“I can make suggestions,” Eternity said as it landed on my shoulder.
I did a little fist pump in the air. Progress!
“I would suggest testing the skill before using in any combat situation.”
“No shit,” I grumbled. “I think I’ve learned that lesson well enough.”
It didn’t acknowledge my gripe and, instead, went on. “As this is an interface skill, it will respond to your mental command. So, as you activate the skill, consider which body part you would like to harden… Please stop giggling.”
I did. I composed myself then burst out in another fit of immature snickering.
“I’m done. I’m done. Sorry.”
“A stable mental image is useful for limiting the effect. It is imperative that you maintain focus throughout use of the skill or else you might hurt yourself. Quite severely.” Eternity flew up to my face. “Eyeballs don’t do well when turned into pebbles, for example.”
Right. That was definitely as clear a warning as Eternity had ever issued me. It cut away the mirth.
“I got it,” I said, my throat suddenly dry again. The last thing I wanted was to get myself hurt in some way that would take a sense away.
I did a quick check of my surrounding and surmised I wasn’t about to be met by more wild and weird animals. The Brightleaf, here, was quiet and serene, the violence of the past hour seeming impossible and absurd. Silver leaves littered the ground and formed a mirror of the canopy above, glistening in the places where shafts of light stabbed through the thick foliage.
In short, it was just I, myself, and Eternity in that corner of the forest.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
So I activated the skill and tried to focus on my right arm, hoping some side effect of the thing wasn’t for the hardened body part to suddenly turn into marble, with the weight of marble, or something equally stupid.
What I felt was a tingling, like static in my arm, crawling from wrist to elbow. I poked my forearm and found it hard as stone. The skin was stretched taut and sounded like sheet metal when I tapped it with a fingernail.
“Neat. It doesn’t hurt.” Part of me had expected the whole thing to hurt, like a tetanus infection.
It only tingled and tickled as my MP bar began sliding down. My first test I did next was not the brightest idea I’d ever had, but it did prove entertaining.
In hindsight, at least.
I karate chopped a tree. Here’s a free lesson in physics: let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you have a lead pipe with a soft thingy—like, let’s say, a skin glove filled with bones and blood and muscle—attached to the end of it. If you swing that pipe at a tree, that floppy bit at the end will not stay put, especially when you’re discovering you’re actually stronger than you used to be. It will either fly off on impact, or whiplash against the tree.
In my test case, the latter happened. I swung. My hardened arm connected to the tree trunk. My palm, which wasn’t hardened, slammed into the tree. I may have screamed.
“Futu-?i mor?ii ?i r?ni?ii crucilor m?-tii!” I chanted like a mantra as I jumped from foot to foot, cradling my hurt hand. The wrist wasn’t broken, just sprained, and hurt like twice the trouble it actually was. To top it off, my shoulder also hurt as it had taken the backlash of the strike.
Physics is a cruel but fair bitch. Those five points in Wisdom were beginning to look appealing.
The skill did do what it said it would. Where my arm had hit the wood there was a deep gash in the tree. Well, not a gash really, more an indentation. But that was still pretty damn cool. I felt nothing but the tingling sensation in my arm, which was proof enough for me that the skill point had been well spent.
“Am I—” I groaned in pain as I was trying to massage my hurt wrist while waiting for my MP to completely drain. “Am I gonna get more technical information on skills later on? If I get the insight.”
Eternity, who’d been watching my exploits from up on a silver-leafed branch, let out a puff of smoke.
“Define technical information,” it said.
I raised my still hardened arm and pointed at it. “Like, how big of a force this can absorb before it breaks?”
“Ah. I cannot say.” It went on before I summoned up another curse. “Not everything is tied into insight. That parameter is not the only one with thresholds.”
My ears perked up at that. I must’ve gaped or something, because Eternity harrumphed and blew out a smoke ring.
“You did ask me to relay more information even if you didn’t ask for it explicitly. This tangent seems reasonable.”
“No, no, I’m glad you did. Was just thinking.” Finally my MP ran out and I staggered a bit with the drain. There had to be a better way of managing this—huh, Eternity had suggested there might be.
I waited for a moment to see if once my arm returned to normal it would hurt or not. It didn’t. Felt as if nothing had happened, aside from a vague ache where I’d hit the tree.
“Aaare… skills the other parameters that have thresholds?” I asked carefully.
“They are part of it, yes.”
“And my stats?”
“Also part of my statement.”
Hello! So, raising a stat to a certain value could include a reward? That was my read on the reveal. But… which? And what would it effect. I suspected the answer would have to do with insight as well, so I didn’t press further. Still, chalk one up to Eternity. I did appreciate the way it got around the ever-present limitation, which put a different spin on our relationship at the moment.
With my test completed and the day wearing on, I drew in a deep breath and looked about.
“Okay, time for us to find some shelter,” I said. “Better earlier than later, I figure.”
The sun was still high on up, but it would only be a matter of time before the forest got dark, and I really wasn’t keen to learn what other things came out at night. I was still far from the dungeon, given what my map was saying, but I had made progress.
I set out at a brisk walk once my MP bar was halfway refilled. I’d put a few more kilometres towards my goal, then stop and rest up for the night. I didn’t feel like I’d need to rest, but I wasn’t about to tempt fate by marching all night just to discover the limits on my endurance when another headcrab lollipopped my skull.
A shudder shook me at the idea of those things and I made it a point of checking the tree tops as I walked. I tried to keep to the less dense parts of the Brightleaf, but these were few and far in-between. The place grew eerily quiet, birdsong coming rarely and, when it did, sounding more like a threat rather than a treat. I didn’t know what sort of birds would sound like a bunch of cats being strangled with piano wire, but I wasn’t interested in learning.
I quickened my step as the forest grew darker and deeper. My map showed me still well within Carmill Hill’s area of influence, but it would be at best another day before I left the iepurrans behind. I admit that a part of me wanted to turn back at that point, but was quickly shouted down by a chorus made up of Devouring Curiosity, Brainless Wanderlust, and Pigheaded Optimism. As tempting as life was in the quaint little village, it wasn’t what I wanted out of a second chance at life.
Right?
A shift in the forest forced me to slow down and pay attention. Well, more.
The light had changed and the forest had grown darker. There were no more birds singing above, and the air grew thick and cloying.
I was still on relatively flat land, but the vegetation took a decided turn for the weirder as I reached deeper into the Brightleaf. What had mostly been moss-covered roots intermingled in a lumpy but firm road gave way to a more rolling vista of deep puddles rimmed by clusters of oddly coloured mushrooms.
I had found marshland and the missing mushrooms.
That, in itself wasn’t so weird. Marshes often came with attached fungi life. It was nearly a rule.
What was weird, however, was that the mushrooms were about the size of five human kids tied together, and taller than I was.
And they had arms. And they moved.
And when one of them pulled itself out of the ground I also noticed they had legs.
Several more turned in place, twisted in their holes, and looked at me.
How exactly does a giant mushroom look at you? I have no idea, but the feeling of being watched was overbearing. I was being seen and weighed and considered. All that rolled off the giant fungi.
“Uh… hi?” I said, raising a hand.
Finding mushroom people wasn’t an unimaginable leap in weirdness after a whole village of sapient rabbits. They had wide caps of a deep, blood red colour, dotted with brown or black spots.
However, mushroom heads that split down the middle to reveal white mouths filled with clear liquid and lined with flat, glistening teeth… yeah, that definitely ticked the weirdness meter.
Five of them came to their feet all over the place, and several others were dragging themselves out from their roots. Mouths opened. Several puffed out white clouds into the air, turning the already humid atmosphere into soup.
I took a step back as more eyeless heads turned my way. One of the creatures waking up was just a few paces away from me, and when it opened its mouth it positively belched out the white dust.
It smelled like rotten fish, and it took me exactly ten seconds to realise something was very wrong with the mist.
It wasn’t the stench. And it wasn’t the soupy thickness of it.
It was the fact that I was suddenly seeing a five-meter tall squirrel squatting among the trees. It had fangs. The forest shimmered around it. My eyes stung as I tried to focus on something else aside from the finger-long fangs.
It turned a long snout my way and a thin, sinuous tongue spilled out between its sabre-like front teeth.
Scrat, the squirrel, lunged at me.
Patreon.