Ashton remained up in the tree far past when the creature left the area. He positioned himself to be as close to the ground and let go landing on his one good leg. The injured leg was throbbing though, the pain had subsided a bit while it was still but since he started moving again the pain returned full force. To distract himself he walked over to the gruesome sight.
He looked down at the carcass of the rat. Noticing just how much damage the creature had done to the body. Bones mangled, now fully mixed around and broken. He stared down thinking about how he had almost died to this creature and now it was just gone without a trace of its strength.
But as he looked at the bones, an idea came to mind. “Could I shoot the bones?” He thought. He grabbed a few bones of different sizes, after he had gathered as much as he could he wished he had a bag of some kind.
Holding 5 bones in his hand he looked around for anything he could use to store things. Since he was naked he had no way to store anything on himself.
Thinking about how this new world operated. When he thought of the word status his statistics appeared. When he thought of the word skills, his skills appeared. So he thought of the word storage.
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Inventory
(Empty)
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He stood there satisfied and happy for a moment but then tried to figure out a way to put things into his inventory as the system called it. He looked at the bones in his arms, thinking the phrase ‘Put in Inventory’ and the next moment the bones disappeared. He opened it back up to check.
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Inventory
- Bones (Common) x5
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Satisfied, he decided to test out this new feature, he thought ‘Extract Bone’, ‘Take out Bone’, and ‘Remove Bone’ each resulting in a bone appearing in his hand. He guessed the system was very loose about the wording and it was more about the meaning of the words. He put two of the bones back, and the final bone was small so he loaded it up and shot at a tree. The bone shattered but caused quite a lot of damage.
Happy with his choice of using bone he grabbed more bones that his instincts told him were better. They seemed somewhat durable and sharp. Managing to find about 10 more.
After putting the bones away he moved on to other things he needed to test. The skill keen hearing had seemed to allow him to hear much better so he tested out other ways to use the skill. He first tried to turn it off, to see if he could, it was going to be much harder to sleep with the skill due to being able to hear much more than he was used to. It did not work. But he did find some success by intentionally unfocusing on his surroundings, it did not mute the sounds but put them more in the background. That gave him another idea, he looked in one direction and threw a rock at a tree that was decently far away. He could hear it, even if it was faint, then he did it again but this time he focused his mind solely in the direction. He heard the rock hit the tree as if he was right next to it. Again he was very satisfied by his tests.
He wanted to test out his quick reflexes skill but due to his leg he did not want to risk more damage being done.
Next up was Herbivore Knowledge, he limped over to a bush and hoped for a screen to appear telling him exactly what he was looking at but nothing came. His movement speed had drastically slowed down due to his injury but he kept pressing on. He found a bush that had berries and tested the skill out again. No screen appeared but an innate sense came about that he should not eat the berries. But it did not say the same about the leaves of the bush. He plucked a few leaves and consumed just one of them. Nothing immediately happened so he continued moving through the forest. After about 5 minutes he felt the inflammation in the leg decrease slightly, finally realizing what those leaves did but he did not know if that was just his mind doing a placebo effect type thing. So since nothing bad occurred, he took the rest of the leaves, after the time had passed the inflammation had decreased substantially. The pain was there but the heat had subsided. The true use of Herbivore knowledge gave Ashton an instinctive sense of whether or not something natural would harm or help him.
The trek through the forest was helpful to catch a grasp of his skills. Along the way he found some dark blue berries with specks of green that were different from the ones before. These gave him a good sense, so he ate a few to satiate his stomach. Also found some shrubbery that made him feel very worried to even go near.
Still he was having to move very slowly from his leg, so he took the opportunity to look at everything around him and take it all in. Due to him not having an ability to learn the name of things he solely was basing everything on his instincts, what they looked like, and most importantly his herbivore knowledge skill. But when it came to nature now, his instincts and herbivore knowledge were practically combined.
There appeared to be two different kinds of trees in the forest. One was thicker with bark that was around two inches thick. The other was a skinny tree but just as tall as the thick tree. The thick trees had vines hanging from them sporadically, but they were not very long as they did not go to the ground.
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Bushes were not too common and usually grew berries but some were barren and they typically did not trigger his instincts in any way. Even the one bush that reminded him of poison ivy did not trigger it.
But he finally made it to a small clearing that had a shallow cave-like opening. The cave was made from an overhang. It wasn’t too wide, it could comfortably fit two of him laying down and it was deep enough to fully cover him inside with a few more feet to the exit. He walked up to it and noticed some moss that had crawled up the walls which his instincts told him to eat. The leaves and the berries he had consumed taught him he could trust his instincts so he did. The floor was still grass but the deeper in the cave it went it became just dirt.
Ashton chose to make a temporary home base out of the opening, it didn’t seem like anything had used it in at least a few months so he was not too worried about something coming back home to find him. So he sat down while leaning against the rock wall.
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Quest Initiated: First Night
Objective: Find Food and Shelter to survive the night.
Reward: Common
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The screen appeared just as he became resolute about staying the night here and decided to go get food later in the day. Looking at it he was confused, it was as if the system had read his mind and gave him a quest as even more motivation.
After remaining seated in the cave taking everything in he realized Herbivore Knowledge had helped him yet again. As the pain fully disappeared, it’s not certain if it is permanent but at the moment the leg feels healed. Standing up, he had regained the ability to put weight in the leg. The real test came when he began to walk but it turned out his fears were not necessarily. For the first time since the attack he was able to walk normally, so he moved on to testing Quick Reflexes.
In the fight with the rat it was as if his body moved without him telling it to. So to replicate it he stood still and reimagined the fight, how he felt, what he was thinking, was he afraid. Trying to picture an attack coming but he couldn’t reproduce it. Whenever he tried moving it felt normal, not like how it did during the fight. That’s when the thought came to mind, “What if it’s only when I’m being attacked?”
After about 10 more minutes of trying different scenarios or situations it was not triggering again. He was still close to his shelter but he had not noticed where he had wandered and he went to test Quick Reflexes again. Though he tripped and started falling towards the shrubbery that previously his mind screamed at him not to touch. Before he knew it he had moved out of the way.
Setting with his conclusion that he had to be in danger he moved on.
It had been a few hours since he had eaten a full meal, the berries held him over for a bit but he wanted to eat something bigger. The only idea he had was another rabbit but he wanted to cook it. The raw meat was fine, the texture was awful but it satiated him without making him sick. Before it got too late he set off to find a few rabbits for the night.
Within 10 minutes of setting off, he picked up some sounds of a small animal. He snuck close to sounds and peeked around a tree. There was the Forest Rabbit he was hoping to see. A pointy bone appeared in his hand and positioned the bone in the slingshot. When he felt ready, with a silent lean around the tree he aimed at the rabbit and fired. The bone pierced straight through the rabbit's neck.
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Creature Defeated: Forest Rabbit - Level 3
Absorption Activated:
Absorbable Skills:
- High Jump - Increases jump height (Dexterity 2).
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The same option appeared, this time he actually read the description. Still didn’t really appeal to him so he moved on. Ashton lifted the rabbit’s body and pictured putting the rabbit’s carcass away and it disappeared.
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Inventory
- Bones (Common) x13
- Rabbit Carcass
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Continuing to hunt for another hour, he managed to find 3 more rabbits, the kills resulted in him gaining another level bringing him up to level 4.
He would have gotten one more rabbit but due to his lack of experience he misjudged the trajectory of his shot. It was two of them eating side by side and he managed to get the first one but the second one darted off. Lining up his shot, if the bone was straight he would have hit his target, but the bone had a slight but noticeable curve to it that made the trajectory go to the left.
Travelling back to the cave for the night was tricky since he had not given him a clear path back. But luckily he had not traveled far and within a short time he found his temporary home.
Once he was able to relax and get comfortable back in his shelter he ate 2 of the rabbits. It was gross, very gross. But he was full and ready to sleep once it got dark. He felt comfortable and safe in the cave. In all the time he had spent in and by the cave he had not seen or heard any animals. As he sat there, thoughts of the day came flowing by. One memory stood out amongst all the rest, the fear and weakness he felt at the monster that was right under him. Any mistake could have resulted in him dead or morbidly injured. But something within him from deep down wanted to defeat it. Not just to survive, but to claim and conquer the beast, overcoming his weakness.
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Quest Initiated: Gain the Power
Objective: Defeat the Monster of Whisperbark Forest
Reward: Uncommon
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Again the system had given him a quest for something he was aiming to do. Almost like a checklist, and Ashton was very task-oriented, if he had a checklist he would complete it so the motivation absolutely worked.
As the night crept in the sounds of the forest changed. The birds stopped singing and what remained was a steady silence with the sound of a distant animal here and there. This was the first night he had spent in a forest in over a decade. The last time he had done so was back in middle school with his brief stint in Boy Scouts. Let alone this forest being in a completely different world.
But he sat there calming his mind and getting ready to fall asleep. So he decided to take a look around his shelter for the night just to be safe. Stepping out, the moonlight was piercing the trees and allowing him to see more than he thought he would be able to.
Slowly he looked around to make sure, focusing his keen hearing on the direction he was looking. Once he made it all the way around his nerves calmed. Looking up he realized that there were two moons near one another, one was white while the other was yellow. Both were about the same size but that could also mean one was farther away but larger. Looking at the stars, the night sky was incredibly beautiful, and he drifted off staring at it. He noted that the sky had many more colors than his old one, purple and blue mists across large parts of the sky, stars of every color, there was another part that was orange, yellow, and red that seemed like a supernova from a textbook back when he was in school. This must be what a world without light pollution looks like.
Awestruck by the sky he noticed that he did not recognize a single constellation but he was not well versed in them by any means.
Walking back over to his home, he laid down on a soft portion of the dirt as the grass would get itchy. Far away he heard the sounds of wolves howling, they must be nocturnal in this world as he did not hear a single one in the day. Taking in all the sounds of the night, he analyzed them but focused on the day ahead.
And Just as his mind was fading into darkness he focused on a single thought;
Conquering everything means nothing if I die before I can claim it.