Melly stared off into the distance as she walked down the all too familiar path towards her village. The source of all her current mental trials was following closely on her heel. Like a natural disaster, Clemiticus swaggered at an even pace, leaving destruction and confusion in his wake.

Did the man ever stop?

Melly saw herself as a normal cheerful individual. Today her glass was not half full. It was empty, shattered on the ground by a leering evil scoundrel dancing on top of the ruins, singing a song about his new boots.

"Aha!"

Clemiticus grunted as he bounded for the eleventh time that minute. He had taken up the art of lunging since they had departed ground zero, leaving one swamp ogre dead and one village girl furious.

Bing!

“Clemiticus has gained an increase in the passive statistic: Agility!”

“Clemiticus has gained an increase in the passive statistic: Stamina!”

"Would you stop jumping all over the place?”

"Why? I’m grinding my passives for level six!"

He hefted himself forward and landed beside her with another powerful groan. It was then she noticed yet another extremely disturbing thing. There wasn’t a bead of sweat on the man. Even after all the running, skipping, falling down a cliff, climbing back up that cliff, and jumping around for another solid hour, the strange man didn't have one drop of sweat on him.

"Clemiticus." She eyed him with suspicion.

He crooked his head like a puppy dog, and his eyebrows shot up expectantly.

"You have been bouncing around for the last hour."

"Yep!"

He gave her a goofy grin. "Exactly sixty-eight minutes, by my count! Ish!"

Melly clenched her jaw, then took a deep breath to calm herself. She had to make sense of all this madness.

"Why aren't you sweating?" As if to emphasise her point, she wiped the moisture off her brow and flicked it aside. It had been a rather warm day.

He gawked at her. "I dunno, maybe the stamina in my new boots?"

She stared back at the man in disbelief, studying his face for an answer. She was stunned to see that other than the swamp dirt that covered half of his face, there was not one imperfection across his entire features. It was as if he had been born that day. He was - well - too perfect.

Perfectly irritating, she thought.

"You don't sweat! And you have barely any marks on your skin," she said slowly.

He nodded helpfully.

"Well, I never go for the rough and scary looking characters. I try to go for a slightly buffer vanilla version of myself. You know, blonde hair and blue eyes. Not a tremendous amount of customisation in the creation process."

“Creation process?”

He nodded.

“I tell you what.” He looked at his arms amused. “My character looks pretty well detailed. It’s almost as if this entire game is real!”

She stared at him a long while then said, “I don’t know what you mean by game, but this is no trivial matter. This is reality and if you don’t take it seriously you may not be around for very long!”

“Yeah, yeah!”

Melly sighed. She tried, at least.

Her confusion was not easing. She was in a hurricane of uncertainty and the eye of the storm was centred on a village idiot with a god complex.

He Does not sweat. His body is perfect. He has no sense of urgency or danger. What is he?

"Halt," he said.

It was the first time she heard him sound fearful.

Clemiticus turned once more, staring into nothingness as he pointed at floating, invisible things.

The blue fairy flew into view and watched its master.

“Fairy! Is that our status window?”

“Yes, master!”

"Well shit, that was lucky!" he said, turning to Melly’s bewildered expression. "Well, the good news is - I found our HP!”

“HP?”

“Health points,” he explained. “It tells us our heath status, and well ours are well.”

“Well, what?”

“It says we’re nearly dead!"

Clemiticus sounded a lot more confident that what he should have.

"Nearly dead?” She looked at her perfectly healthy body. “How can you tell?"

"Well, you know how when we fell on the ogre in the swamp?"

She nodded.

"Apparently that fall did significant damage to the monster. And, we received the same percentage."

She shook her head. "But we look fine. We’ve got no broken bones, cuts or anything like that!"

Clemiticus shrugged. "True, but it says you are now on 4 per cent HP and I'm on 3."

"And that means?"

"We are one kidney stone away from death."

"What? How can you be so sure?"

"Hang on, hang on." He held up his arms to calm her. "Just trust me."

Yeah. Like that would be so easy, she thought as she imagined slapping him hard enough to do 3 percent damage to him. Then she remembered the ogre creature and how easily it had died in front of them with, as Clemiticus had put it, 2% hp. Her lips tightened as her brain did the maths.

"So, if I believe you. And I'm not saying, just yet, that’s the case. How would we, hypothetically, get better?"

"That’s easy. We need more HP!"

"Yes that. H. P." She cautiously spoke each letter as if they had some sinister origin. "How do we get more then?"

He smiled. "Oh! We probably need to eat and drink a bunch of potions, or food and stuff."

He fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a bunch of useless items, including the soiled food he had picked up since the encounter with the wolf.

None of which, as far as Melly could make out, could be described as potiony or edible.

"Hmmm." Clemiticus examined their surroundings.

The path beside the duo contained bushes that lay on either side. He grabbed a bunch of weeds and leaves, proceeding to mash them together into something resembling a blob.

"Those aren't edible," Melly said bluntly. "And that!" She pointed to a line of red berries in his palms. "I think that’s poisonous."

He shrugged and continued to mash the items in his hands, ignoring her look of disgust at his new creation.

Bing!

"Congratulations! Clemiticus has gained, Cooking: beginner level one!”

“Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Disgusting muck that will give you dysentery!"

He grinned. "I learned cooking!"

She stared, dumbfounded. "And what about that recipe? I'm not eating that!"

Clemiticus shrugged and took a mouthful. "Well, that's crap," he commented as he threw the rest of his food on the ground. "Only gave me one percent."

Like that matters, you idiot, Melly thought. "And the dysentery?"

He waved a hand in dismissal. "Meh!"

"Meh? What is meh?"

He answered her with a shrug and launched into making a new recipe.

She threw up her arms and gave up. Let the simpleton poison himself. Her mind flipped back and forth from desperation to outrage.

Clemiticus continued to make new food, adding things like rocks, sticks and mud as the fairy sang cheerfully beside him.

"Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Mud Pie."

"Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Dirty Salad of Dysentery."

"Clemiticus has gained, Cooking: beginner level two."

"Clemiticus has learnt the recipe: Barely edible forest rations."

"Aha Finally!" Clemiticus sounded more than a little triumphant. "It says the recipe recovers 50% of your HP over a thirty minutes. That'll do!"

Her heart dropped as she shuffled next to her insane companion and eyed the grotesque meal she would have to subject herself to. She stretched out her hand and gently clasped them around the malformed mud ball covered in random leaves.

"I hate you." She spoke as she took her first bite and immediately regretted it.

Melly closed her eyes as she forced herself to swallow the first mouthful. If anything, it was even worse than she had feared. Everything about the so-called meal was horrible. Her eyes became misty as she examined the strange items Clemiticus had pulled out of his pocket.

"What's our HP now?" she asked her newly acquired chef.

"Up around 6.5% and climbing!"

Several large oval-shaped ingredients lay on the ground. She bent down to pick one up. Clemiticus paced around in front of her as he munched down on his ball of mud.

She held the ball of mud in one hand aloft and aimed towards the idiotic man. Just one throw! She told herself. Just one easy toss and all of your troubles would go away. Father will understand.

Clemiticus turned back towards her and smiled.

"Oh, thanks!"

He swiped the mud ball from her hand and jammed it back into his pocket. "I would've completely forgotten that!"

Melly sanity was chipping away.