Angela resumed her trek down the mountainside, this time with more purpose and less concern about her stats. Her thoughts kept returning to her great-grandfather. The man could barely move. How was he supposed to get all the way to Palmyre from wherever he had arrived?

The thought refused to leave Angela’s head as she made her way out of the rocks and into the tree line. Slowly the mountain slope levelled out, and she descended into a forest of what looked like hemlock trees. Assuming Arenia had the same type of trees as Earth, which super-duper wasn’t a guarantee.

Once Angela was into the forest, it didn’t take long for her to find the riverbank, so she started following it towards the city she presumed was Palmyre. By then, she had been hiking for a while and was getting pretty hungry (again… they couldn’t have given her a starter kit?), so she began looking around for something, anything to eat. Her eyes happened to glance up, and that’s when she saw it.

Mistletoe. Growing on the branch of one of the larger hemlocks.

Now, Angela wasn’t one of those people who just liked pop culture fantasy druids. She was a fanatic who knew everything there was to know about the real thing—the actual Celtic druids. Granted, the sum of the world’s knowledge about real-life druids could barely fill a pamphlet, but one thing she knew for sure was that mistletoe was sacred. Given that fact, Angela hadn’t just limited her mistletoe-related knowledge to the pretty shit you saw at Christmas. No, she’d learned way too much about all the other parasitic little crap as well, the stuff that was way less attractive and would definitely take down a tree if it went overboard. So even though the yellow-green stuff growing above her looked nothing like traditional mistletoe, she knew it for what it was.

Angela immediately began looking for a way to climb the tree so she could get at the mistletoe. Unfortunately, being an evergreen tree, the first decent handhold she could see was a few metres up the trunk.

“Crap.”

It looked like she would have to get creative.

After a quick survey of the area, Angela quickly concluded that there was only one way for her to get up the tree. Unfortunately, it would involve climbing a neighbouring tree that was somewhat close to the one with the mistletoe growing on it, hopefully allowing her to cross over via the canopy. Not that it was going to be easy, especially considering the drop from one branch to the other was too far for her to lower herself by her hands. She’d have to jump.

Angela ran over the plan in her head. The place where she would be crossing from tree to tree was a good five metres up in the air—more than enough to seriously hurt herself if she missed. Then again… wasn’t this exactly what she wanted? Daring feats performed in pursuit of lofty goals?

“I better not regret this,” she muttered to herself.

Walking to the first tree, Angela evaluated her course of action. She could almost touch the lowest branch if she stood on her tippy toes, so she should be able to reach it with a running start, right? Yeah, her DEX was shit, but her Strength was good—piece of cake, right?

Angela dumped out the rocks from her belt pouch and placed the textbook beside them at the base of the tree. Then she walked back a few metres and lowered into a sprinter’s stance.

Springing into action, Angela ran full-tilt at the tree. When she was only a couple of feet away, she leapt, planting her foot onto a knot that was perfectly positioned to support her foot as she propelled herself up the tree trunk towards the branch.

Or at least it would have if Angela had realized it was there. Which she hadn’t. Meaning that instead of supporting Angela’s attempt to hurl herself up the tree, it instead caused her foot to slip sideways off the trunk and do a full-speed, chest-to-trunk body slam, followed by a back-first drop onto the sharp rocks that Angela had dumped out of her belt pouch only a moment before.

Angela lay on the ground, staring up at the branches.

“Ow.”

She half expected to see a squirrel laughing at her.

“That was super-duper fun,” Angela muttered. “Let’s try again, shall we?”

Angela stood and wiped the dirt off her clothes with a grunt before marching back to her starting point. Now that she knew about the knot, this time, she aimed for it and used it as a foothold to launch herself upwards. The jump went off without a hitch, but the actual grabbing of the branch was still a close thing. Still, she somehow managed to get her arms around the branch enough that she was able to hang on, despite getting pelted in the head with another magic pebble.

Dexterity +1

Okay, that wasn’t super impressive, but there’s no way you’re going to survive this without higher dexterity, so consider it a freebie.

NEW GENERAL SKILL LEARNED!

Climbing – Skill Level 7 (Tier-0)

(What? Yeah, I gave her the extra Dex. What do you mean it invalidates my bet? I was betting against her! If anything, I should get better odds! Are you trying to screw me over, you lousy, cheap—oops, left my microphone on.)

*Since this Skill predates your arrival in Arenia, it has been set at a level commensurate with the practical ability you already possess.

350 XP Earned (cumulative)

“Yeah, yuk it up,” Angela swore as she dangled from the branch. Still… free stats.

Whether it was thanks to the extra dexterity or not, Angela managed to get one foot looped up and over the branch and, with a little effort, was able to pull herself into a sitting position on the branch. Now that she was somewhat secure, Angela took a quick pause to catch her breath, then climbed to her feet and began the process of working her way toward her target branch.

It wasn’t too hard, all things considered. Not much different than climbing a ladder, really. No, the hard part came when Angela moved onto the limb that would become her jumping-off point when she attempted to transfer to the other tree. Not only did it sag precipitously as she moved farther out, but it also bounced with each shuffling step, its strength clearly not what it had appeared from the ground. Fortunately, the branch Angela would be aiming for on the other tree looked much sturdier, so she hoped it would be able to take her weight when she landed on it. Her current branch's sagging had also bridged some of the distance, which was a plus, but she hadn’t considered how much the bushy evergreen branches that sprung out from the sides of the branch she was on would obscure her vision. Hopefully, Angela would be able to see where she was going once she jumped clear of her current branch. Although, now that she was actually looking at the other branch, she was faced with a question she hadn’t considered: Did she try and land with her feet? Straddle it? Catch it with her arms? Ultimately, she settled on some combination of the three. Aim with the feet, and if that missed, try and straddle it. If she screwed that up as well, try and grab it with her arms. One of those had to work, right?

Angela readied herself for the jump, then paused. “You got any snarky words for me, system?” When no answer came, she shrugged, bent her knees, and jumped.

As soon as Angela’s feet left the branch, the pent-up tension in the tree limb caused by her own weight bowing it down was released, causing the branch to fling up in the air and slap Angela in the back of the head with such force that she went spinning ass-over-teakettle as she sailed towards the other tree.

Completely unable to see after the combination of hemlock needles to the eyes and prodigious lateral spin, Angela was totally unprepared for her eventual crash into the other tree where she slammed stomach-first into a branch, the wind getting blasted out of her lungs upon impact. Angela immediately began to slip off, but in a desperate grab, she was able to seize a handful of side branches, barely able to prevent herself from dropping to the ground.

Angela lay on her stomach, panting as a pebble hit her in the forehead.

NEW GENERAL SKILL LEARNED!

Jumping – Skill Level 5 (Tier-0)

Oh, oh my god. I am laughing so hard right now. I have tears streaming down my face. That was amazing.

*Since this Skill predates your arrival in Arenia, it has been set at a level commensurate with the practical ability you already possess.

250 XP Earned (cumulative)

RENOWN LEVEL UP!

Level 3 Achieved

XP: 1,000

XP to next Renown: 900

“Unnngh,” Angela moaned. It was beginning to dawn on her that maybe the damage system on Arenia was the same as the one on Earth. “Can’t you at least turn down the pain settings?”

It took a good minute or two before Angela was able to get her breath back. When she did, she slowly shuffled her way down the branch, eventually finding the courage to stand up again and climb her way to the branch holding the patch of mistletoe.

Once Angela was as close as she could get, she realized she had a new problem facing her.

From the ground, Angela hadn’t fully appreciated the weight-bearing properties of an evergreen’s branches compared to the hardwoods she’d grown up around. However, after her recent experiences, it was clear that the branch holding the mistletoe would not support Angela’s weight. The branch above would probably be up to the task, though, so maybe Angela could climb out on that one and reach down to get the mistletoe?

Angela shrugged. She’d come this far. Might as well go for broke.

There wasn’t anything complicated about getting onto the higher branch, but as Angela crawled out towards the end of the limb, it didn’t bend down as much as she would have hoped. Even when she was directly over the mistletoe, her hand was almost a metre short of the target. With no other options, Angela bit the bullet and held tight with her legs, dangling by one hand and reaching for the mistletoe with the other. It took some strain, but eventually, Angela was able to grab onto the branch.

Then there was a loud cracking noise as Angela’s branch broke off the tree.

“SHIIIT!” Angela shouted as she began to drop. She tried to grab onto the branch holding the mistletoe, but as soon as she got a good grip, that one broke off as well.

Now, if Angela had been falling on her own, she might have been okay. Bruised, banged up, yes. But okay. Except that Angela wasn’t on her own. She was falling with two huge hunks of wood that were swinging around wildly every time they hit another branch, smashing into Angela like the ball in a gigantic game of ping pong; if ping pong were played with baseball bats. This had the effect of utterly destroying Angela’s sense of direction, and she hit the earth with her leg at an extreme angle, one that only became more dramatic when all the ligaments in her knee tore apart, and her femur snapped at the hip. As if that wasn’t enough, she had also put out her left hand in a desperate attempt to brace herself, causing it to snap at the elbow and collapse beneath her, pinned to the ground under her body weight.

“NGGYAAHHHHH!” Angela screamed as more pain than she had ever experienced in her entire life blasted through her all at once. Her shout was cut off when one of the branches landed on her back, the other one thudding into the ground mere centimetres from her face.

Angela lay in the dirt, squeezing her eyes shut to block out the pain. As though her injuries wouldn’t be real if she didn’t look at them. Whatever she had done to herself in the fall, it was bad. Like, really bad. When Angela was a kid, she had broken her arm running on wet cement at the pool. It was a cliché after the fact, but when you’re a 7-year-old staring at a bone that should be inside your skin, that joke is somewhat lost on you. The pain Angela was feeling right now reminded her of that moment, only multiplied many excruciating times across her body.

When Angela opened her eyes, she discovered that her vision was almost entirely blocked by the branch that had nearly hit her on the head. More specifically, her vision was blocked by the sight of a small yellow-green plant with green buds on stalks that were growing on the branch.

Goddamned mistletoe.

If Angela had a fire spell, she would have torched the little fucker.

Right now though, there were much more important things to think about than mistletoe. Namely, the amount of pain she was in. It was unbearable. All she wanted to do was die. Maybe she had a respawn left? Please, please have a respawn left.

Clearly, Angela was going to die. Of that, there was no question. But the prospect of lying on that forest floor until she died of natural causes was just about the worst thing she could imagine.

Wait a sec… isn't mistletoe poisonous?

Angela stared at the plant in front of her with a newfound appreciation. Summoning all the willpower she could manage, Angela pushed her face forward and bit down on the woody plant, sawing her teeth back and forth in order to separate a chunk of it from the branch. It tasted gross, cut up her mouth, and yeah, it was probably just the berries she needed to eat, but screw it. She wasn’t taking any chances.

The berries were acrid and bitter, exactly what you’d expect a poisonous berry to taste like. There weren’t any leaves on this kind of mistletoe, just hard stalks, but they shredded apart in strings that stuck painfully between her teeth. She continued her chewing and swallowing though, determined to eat the entire mouthful or die trying.

With about three-quarters of the plant swallowed, Angela began to feel a daze come over her, as well as an intense feeling of nausea. Whether it was the plant or plain old blood loss, it abruptly occurred to Angela that when a person’s body rejected something they ate, they did it by throwing up, and the idea of vomiting in her current state was horrifying. Hell, the pain alone might kill her.

Angela madly accelerated her chewing, desperately hoping that either poison or blood loss would kill her before finding out what vomiting with multiple unset broken bones felt like.

As her nausea grew, Angela struggled to eat even faster but instead found herself slowing. She tried to get past it, but her whole body was going hazy, and she was having trouble thinking through the fog. As she slipped into darkness, her thoughts faded into nothing.

She’d beaten the vomit. Yay.