Chapter 7: Oh God, burn it, burn it with fork!

Lucky for me, I don’t need to know, since I’m a hitchhiker. Ferdinand navigates the busy streets of the city until he finds the place he’s looking for. I figure I can train and be practical at the same time, so I keep up a telepathic link with him until I get below thirty psi, then wait for it to refill before doing it again. Not that I say anything.

Y’know, thinking about it, we need to talk about some sort of signal. I mean, keeping some for emergencies is all well and good, but what if he needs to urgently ask me something? He wouldn’t be able to do anything but wait for me to say something. Meanwhile, Ferdinand deposits his equipment with the blacksmith, and walks out again.

“How long will the repair take?” I ask, mostly for something to say.

“A few hours. A blacksmith always has work to do, after all. Nearly everyone has a weapon or two, even if they don’t have armour, and all that equipment has to get repaired regularly. Not to mention making new equipment for sale.” He says.

“Hey Ferdinand, I’ve been thinking, I’m keeping a small amount of psi that I don’t usually use, in case of emergencies, but I got to thinking, what if you need to talk to me when we aren’t connected?”

“What, you thinking some sort of signal I can do to tell you I want to talk? Like what?” He asks.

I dunno. “Dunno.”

“What’s dunno?” He asks, confused.

“It’s short for don’t know.” I explain.

“Oh. How about when I scratch my head?” He proposes.

“Sure, but what about when you actually need to scratch your head?” I say sceptically.

“It doesn’t cost you much psi for a few seconds to confirm whether I actually need to talk, right?”

He has a point there, and it's not like I have anything better to do. “True. We’ll go with that then.”

If I can remember it, that is. And if I’m not doing anything else that distracts me.

“So what now?” I ask.

“Food.” He says. Makes sense, it is morning...

“I wish I could eat…”

“Sorry.” He says awkwardly.

“Don’t worry about it.” I'm used to it, after all.

I can kinda eat, but I can’t taste. Right now, I would be happy if I could taste water. Well, it is what it is.

We walk out the open gate. Well, I’m… Is there some sort of adjective for this situation? This explanation is getting repetitive. Anyway, he’s joined up with another few people to hunt some monsters that are getting close to a nearby village. By the sound of it, a common occurrence.

The same old ground, same old grass, same old figures walking along. That’s what it looks like to me. Speaking of mana sight, it’s slowly gathering proficiency, at about thirty percent. I suppose that’s because I always have it on. I imagine that even if say, a human, had mana sight, they would rarely use it, because it would overlay on top of their normal vision, and make them a bit queasy and confused. They… can’t turn off their sight, can they?

If they could do things like that… If they were fighting an enemy with sound based attacks, couldn’t they just turn off their hearing? That would be strange. But then again, it would be annoying if I got some sort of light-based vision and couldn’t turn it off. I would still like to use mana sight, after all.

Travelling seems very boring. Honestly, all the journeys I’ve been on so far have looked the same to me. But again, that’s due to my vision. Hey, that’s not boring. A spider. Wait, how can I see it so easily? How big is… HOW IS IT THAT BIG!

“Big spider nearby!” I shout into Ferdinand’s head.

“Where? How big?” He asks.

“Look to your right!” I shout again.

(POV Ferdinand)

I look to my right and instinctively shiver. Its leg hairs are thicker than my sword! Dear god, why is something like this so close to the city? I have to alert the others!

“Prepare for battle, giant spider to the right!”

The archer starts speaking, then is at a loss for words as he looks to his right. “What, just a giant…”

The scout looks casually over, then starts bolting in the opposite direction, shouting behind him. “ FUCK FIGHTING, I’M RUNNING!”

The mage looks over and falls over sideways in a dead faint.

“Damn, she’s fainted, we can’t fight even if we wanted to anymore, just run!” The last member of the party is a bit better, but he, too starts to run, and I call after him.

“What about her!?”

“Forget her!” He calls back without turning.

I can’t just let someone die like that! But, I might die too! What do I do? This is no time for hesitation, damn it!

Hoisting the limp body of the woman over my shoulder, I start running in the opposite direction of that monstrosity. It was a good distance away, but who knows if it saw us!

Boom. Boom. Boom boom boom boom… Echoing rapidly in the distance alongside the sharp sounds of snapping branches, I hear it getting closer. What do I do!? What can I do!?

At that moment, Gerald’s voice popped into my head. ‘It’s getting closer, fast. How’s your throwing arm?’

‘Throwing arm? Not bad, but how does that help me!?’ I think back, still furiously running away.

‘You’ll have to do everything I say if you want to live.’ He says.

Like he can do anything, he can’t touch anything! Besides, I don’t trust the thing one bit.

‘Why should I trust you?’ I think back anyway.

Unlike me, he’s irritatingly calm. ‘You’ll die if you don’t, now cut the chat, put that person down and open up your pack!’

I don’t really have a choice, do I? I drop her on the ground and sling my pack off my back. As I do so, he talks again.

‘This will sound crazy, but take out that mithril fork you found in that strange ruin!’

‘That does sound crazy! Hey, how did you know I found it in a ruin? It was mithril?’ I think back.

Although I said that, my hands were frantically searching through the bag as the sounds grew louder and louder.

‘Explain later, just get it out! And this will sound even crazier, but when you find it, I need you to chuck it at the head of that spider as hard and accurate as you can!’ He says quickly.

‘That is crazy! You are crazy! And I’m crazy for listening to you!’

‘No, I’m not, I even have a title saying how sane I am!’

What is he even talking about! Ah, there it is! Grabbing the damn fork, I get up again and put my arm above my head in preparation to toss the thing. Looking forwards again, I can see the monster rushing towards me. Don’t they say the bigger ones are slower!? Who said that, I want to punch him!

Its eyes are the size of my head! Taller than the trees, I can now see its legs weaving around the trees, not minding the branches its torso is ripping past and shaving the tops of the trees off. This should be close enough, right. Don’t mess this up!

“Dear Gods, please let this work!”

Shouting out a prayer, I throw the fork at it with all my strength. Feverishly I watch it whirling through the air towards the spider, my body covered in cold sweat and my heart beating louder than the drums in my village’s festivals.

My eyes strain as it flies out of sight, the wall of dark hairiness that is the gigantic spider covering most of the scenery in front of me. I brace myself for death.

Then it stops. That can’t have worked… right? Why would throwing a fork at it stop it?

Then, it falls over. Its legs curl, looking like the skeleton of some long-dead behemoth.

…It actually died. How did it die!?

His voice pops into my head again, sounding a little distracted. ‘I know you want an explanation, and that’s fine, but first, do you have a piece of cloth or something like that?’

‘I always carry a few pieces of scrap cloth to repair my clothes with, will that do?’ I ask, still unable to believe what just happened.

‘Should do fine. Now find a long stick.’ He says.

A stick? Why does he only ask strange things? Looking around, I find one that could almost be a walking stick. Not hard when you’re near a bunch of trees.

Gerald’s voice sounds in my head again. ‘Now again, this will sound strange. The fork you just threw at the spider is currently underneath its head. Can you use that stick to get it out from underneath it? Some sort of liquid is dripping down from the spider’s head, and it’s probably poisonous, so try not to get close to that.’

‘It IS strange!’ I shout mentally back at him. ‘But you saved my life, so I can retrieve the fork.’

I edge closer to the body, wary of any movement. When I reach the corpse, I look under the head of the thing. The spider is so large that its head is a short way off the ground, so I can see the fork, and the clear liquid dripping down onto it. I’m not stupid enough to think that’s water.

Grasping the stick, I use it to scrape the fork along the ground until it’s well away from the head.

‘Don’t touch it, it’s poisonous! Use the piece of cloth to pick it up and wrap it in. And probably don’t put it near food.’

Of course it’s poisonous, poison was just dripping on it. Taking out a scrap of cloth, I use it to pick up the fork, then wrap it around it carefully, then tie it up with a piece of twine.

‘Okay, now, EXPLAIN!’

(POV Gerald)

Well this will be fun, if only for his reaction. That was one hell of a level up, though. Don’t have time to look now, sadly.

“Okay, I’ll explain, but bear with me, because this will be the craziest thing you’ll ever hear in your entire life.”

“That’s a bold claim. Well, get on with it.” He says.

“Well, you know how I said that I didn’t remember anything? Sorry, I lied.” I admit.

“Okay, still not crazy…” He says, taking it much better than I thought.

“I just couldn’t trust you. I’m not really sure I can, even now, but whatever.” I say, continuing. “I wasn’t lying when I said my status screen said I was eight months old, but that’s not the whole truth. I used to be human.”

“Okay, getting stranger, but still not really crazy. People die and turn into vengeful ghosts occasionally.” They do? This place is weird.

“That’s not me. For starters, the place I lived doesn’t seem to be in this world.”

“How can you be so sure?” He asks.

“No mana, no monsters, nobody carries weapons, there aren’t rats running around the food stalls.” I explain. “Anyway, I died in that world, and I seem to have been reincarnated into this world.”

But he seems more caught on my first sentence. “There are rats running around the food stalls!?”

“…Seriously?”

“What’s reincarnation?” He asks.

I sigh internally. “Reincarnation is a concept from my previous world, no clue if it’s in this one. I wasn’t lying when I said you were the first I had talked to. The concept is that after you die, the deeds you did in that life would be judged, your memories would be wiped clean and depending on how good you were, you would be reborn as another being. Murderers and thieves and such would be reborn as insects or something, while saints and those who donate to charities would be reborn in a human body full of potential.”

Ferdinand says, “Okay, I think I get it. So how about you?”

“I wasn’t the best of people, but I didn’t do anything bad. I have no clue what I did to warrant this.” I say.

“What do you mean? What were you reborn as?” He asks curiously.

“This is the crazy part. You’re holding me.”

“What? I’m not holding anyone?” Ferdinand says, confused.

“No, I’m that fork you’re holding.”

“What? I’m not holding anyone?” Ferdinand says, confused.

Oh great, Ferdinand.exe has stopped responding. Let’s try turning it off and on again.

“The spider woke up.”

He shot a good meter into the air as he frantically looked back at the spider. Understandably, facing towards the corpse of a gigantic spider while resting is not good for your mental health.

“No it didn’t! Why!? Why would you say that!?” He shouts.

“You were repeating yourself.” I explain.

“What?”

“After I said that I’m the fork you’re holding, you just kept repeating yourself.” I repeat.

“You can’t be serious.” He says. I assume he means the fork, not the repetition, because that would be scary if actually…

“Deadly serious. And I can prove it. I have a skill that lets me absorb substances at a very short distance away from my surface. It’s what I used to kill the spider.” I explain.

“The fork could be enchanted to do that.” He argues.

“Fine.” I say. “You remember that prophecy you got before, what was it, ‘you are what you eat’?”

“Yeah, what about it?” He says.

“The other effect of the absorb skill is that I have a small chance of gaining traits and skills from what I absorb.” I explain. “In other words, I get stronger depending on what I eat. Strangely similar, right?”

“How do I know you aren’t just making all this up?” He asks suspiciously.

Man was this taking a while. My psi could only hold out for this long because he’s holding me, and the distance between us is almost zero. “I talked about the ruin where you found me, right? That should be proof enough. I got my mana sight skill from an ooze, my telepathy from an id ooze variant, one of the ones you killed and were eating, by the way, and another boost to my telepathy skill from when you ate those mind flayer tentacles.”

“Why would I eat mind flayer tentacles?” Ferdinand protests. “That’s disgusting, they’re people too you know!”

“That is disgusting.” I agree. I don’t want to eat people. “You did eat it though, just a few days ago at a food stall on the street.”

“Wait, you mean that fresh octopus he was selling was actually…” He asks, dreading the answer.

“Yep.”

“Let me just vomit a bit…” He trails off.

He vomits a bit. After cleaning himself up a bit, he starts talking to me again.

“Say I believe you. What then?”

“Nothing, really.” I say. “I’m poisonous now, so you can’t use me to eat, but you can still throw me at monsters, when nobody else is around, of course.”

“Why when nobody else is around?” Ferdinand asks.

“I can’t move. Therefore, those who know about me effectively control what I do.” I explain. “I would rather be unknown. To be honest, I only talked to you because I was worried I would go insane again.”

“What do you mean, again?” He asks.

Well, if you really want to know…

“Do you remember the hole in the cave that let you find the ruin that I was in? I was in that cave for at least five months, with not a single other being. Imagine staring at an unmoving picture for five months. I went insane, recklessly used absorb on the ground, tunnelled down and luckily managed to land on top of one of those robots in the ruin, which gave me a trait that got me out of the insanity.”

“You are weird. Very weird.” He says.

“Yes, very. Now if we are finished here, I’m going to go take a look at what I got for killing that spider.”

“Sure…”

Finally. The anticipation was killing me that whole conversation, just remembering those windows that came up…

Brain matter of lvl 83 Spider Matriarch absorbed

Experience gained: 213.26

Skill proficiency increased: Absorb 0.4%

Skills gained: Body of deadly poison (Basic)

Traits gained: Poison Resistance (Huge)

Lvl 83 Spider Matriarch killed

Experience gained: 57570

Level up! You are now level 27!

68 stat points gained.

Yeah. Should it have been that easy? I mean seriously, that’s, what, twenty-one levels? By getting thrown at something? I know I have absorb and all, but shouldn’t there be some sort of counter to that? Wait, there is I think. I can only absorb mana and matter, so if someone uses another type of energy to attack me, I can’t do anything about it.

Sixty-eight stat points! Such an increase! Let’s just have a look at my status…

Status

Name: Gerald

Race: Living Fork

Level: 27

Experience: 4308.26/5400

Gender: None

Age: 10 months (local time)

Allegiance: None

Fame: None

Strength: 1.0 (10.0)

Intelligence: 14.0

Dexterity: 1.0

Wisdom: 13.0

Charisma: 3.0

Luck: 10.1

Hardness: 17.8

Durability: 10.4/10.4

Mana: 280/280

Mana regen: 2.60/min

Psi: 113/130

Psi regen: 1.40/min

Unspent stat points: 68

Titles

Traits

Skills

O.o

The exp to level up really shot up… So much I can do with these! Okay, first, Dex, Str and Cha. I know I don’t use them, but… I hate having them at one. How about I increase them to five each? That leaves me with 58. Half that is 29. Dump half in Int, half in Wis.

Status

Name: Gerald

Race: Living Fork

Level: 27

Experience: 4308.26/5400

Gender: None

Age: 10 months (local time)

Allegiance: None

Fame: None

Strength: 5.0 (50.0)

Intelligence: 43.0

Dexterity: 5.0

Wisdom: 42.0

Charisma: 5.0

Luck: 10.1

Hardness: 24.6

Durability: 16.2/16.2

Mana: 860/860

Mana regen: 8.40/min

Psi: 407/420

Psi regen: 4.30/min

Unspent stat points: 0

Titles

Traits

Skills

…Funny how my effective strength is above my magical stats. That skill is OP. Shame I can’t put that strength to use. Putting that aside… I wish I had a magic skill. That mana pool is absurd. And my psi! I can talk for ages now!

Really though, this is ridiculous! Look at my stats! Look at them! Compare them to before! The difference is crazy, right!? And yet, I still have the exact same combat potential… Why, Damnit.

Well, let’s see that new skill and trait, I only got a brief glance earlier…

Body of deadly poison (Basic) (High rare, passive) 0.00% – Deadly poison courses throughout your entire body. So potent is this poison that even touching you will cause great sickness and partial paralysis for a short period of time. Potency of poison scales a small amount with proficiency.

Poison Resistance (Huge) – You are completely immune to weak and ordinary poisons. The effects of more potent poisons on you are greatly reduced.

Does this even help me? I’m made of metal, I can’t BE poisoned. And how the heck is there ‘Poison coursing throughout my entire body’? Again, solid metal. I can’t even be used as a fork like this! Although, thinking about it, that isn’t such a bad thing. As long as I’m still with Ferdinand, that is. Anyone else would throw me away after getting poisoned, right?

Hm. I’ve looked at everything, I think, so back to what’s happening. Oh, he’s carrying that unconscious person again. Surely that just decreases his chances of surviving? Not that I mind him helping people, but can he protect others and himself at the same time? Wait, is this even a dangerous area?

“Hey, is this area known to have dangerous monsters?” I ask Ferdinand telepathically.

He responds a few moments later. “As long as you don’t attract the attention of monster packs, even an ordinary person could get through this area if they are careful. Why?”

Oh, never mind then, totally fine.

“So that spider wasn’t normal?” I ask.

“If that spider was normal, there wouldn’t be anything except monsters living on this world.” He says grimly.

I try to lighten the mood a bit, “Nah, I’m sure there would be a few who could survive. Desperation can motivate people to do amazing things, you know.”

“Maybe, but desperation can be bad too.” He counters.

“Oh sure, there’s plenty of people who make terrible decisions because they’re desperate.” I admit. “Anyway, we should probably keep quiet about killing it.”

“Really? Why, haven’t we done something amazing?” He asks.

“We sure have. Which is why we should stay quiet about it. If people think you killed something strong, they might think you have some rare item that let you do it. If you have something that is worth anything, there will be people wanting to take that from you. And the tactic of throwing a fork at them won’t work on a human, you know. They’ll dodge it.” I say dryly.

“When you put it like that, there’s not much I can say…” Says Ferdinand.

“One of the best ways to avoid strong enemies is to make them think you aren’t worth their time, you know? Being low-key isn’t such a bad thing.” I reassure. “Anyway, onto other matters, I’m poisonous for the foreseeable future due to a passive skill I just got. Best be careful about that. Oh, and now what do we do?”

“We should probably go back to town. The group will have to share the fee for failing the commission, and I suppose that the other members will get there before us and report about the spider.” He says in resignation.

“Okay then.”

Now let’s see… how far can I see? 43*42=43*40+43*2=1720+86=1806, 1806/2=903… Nine hundred and three metres? Wait, that can’t be right. Let me do that calculation again… It’s right. I can now see almost a kilometre. Seriously? Seriously. That’s OP as well! If I could move, the things I could do…