I stepped out of my shabby little lean-to, stretched, and greeted the new day. The unpopulated beach still looked like some picturesque travel ad but it was starting to feel like a prison. After discovering that no ship would take me on as a passenger without a fee, I was forced to try and robinson-crusoe it.

I had never been very handy even with a fully stocked tool-box. With nothing but the clothes on my back, well I was just lucky I landed in a sub-tropical zone. I’d rather deal with sunburn than frostbite.

A few sudden tropical storms caught me by surprise but they were actually pretty nice. It was the closest I could get to a shower these days and any chance to wash some of the accumulated salt off my skin was welcome.

As it was, my hair was getting close to the consistency of a brick and I had given up on trying to tame it or even keep track of what it was doing.

While the life of sitting on a tropical beach and swimming all day sounds pretty good on paper, it was wearing thin pretty quick. I could only look at the same stretch of featureless horizon for so long before I started missing sunscreen, beer, friends or any of the modern conveniences I used to take for granted.

It wasn’t all negative though. I made a point of forcing myself to remember that. One of the positives for instance: When you don’t have a razor, toothbrush, shower, coffee, or food, your morning routine gets pretty damn short.

I grabbed my new speargun and its single bolt and started my short commute to the water. There was no traffic out here either. That’s another good thing I can say about this island. Looking closely at the weapon and turning it in my hands caused a pair of notifications to appear.

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Shoddy Speargun

Damage: 2-3 Piercing

Durability: 13/15

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Rusty Iron Spear

(Speargun Ammunition)

Damage: 3

Durability: 27/30

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I would be able to get off one attack worth 5-6 damage. That didn’t sound like much but I had no idea how much HP the average fish had, if HP was even a thing. Despite my best efforts, I hadn’t been able to open up any kind of character sheet.

Walking around the island gave me a stat point so I knew they were a thing. There should be some way to figure out how many I had.

“Skills, Swimming” I muttered to myself, navigating to a familiar screen.

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Skill: Swimming

Level: 4

Increased speed

Decreased stamina cost

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I could ask Frankie about it but I’m not sure if this game system is part of his world, or if it’s a side effect of crossing over. It seems like a good idea to keep that kind of thing secret.

I took off my grimy shirt and piled some sand on top of it to keep it from blowing away. Then I remembered my inventory and willed the shirt to simply disappear until I needed it again. I hadn’t found any arbitrary limits to how many items I could store but there wasn’t any kind of magic weight reduction either. Loading up the inventory with rocks was like carrying them around with invisible hands that never got in the way.

My raw, peeling skin itched and stung as I did my best not to think about skin cancer and waded into the crystal clear water.

With only the one shot, I had to be careful. I pulled myself along the sandy bottom until I couldn’t reach anymore and then I lazily kicked. It was more important to move slowly without thrashing about than it was to get around quickly.

After an hour of pretending to be so much driftwood, I spotted my first target. A lobster scuttled along the wavy ridges of sand, leaving a clear track in its wake. I raised the speargun slowly, fitted the bolt to the rail and slid it back. The elastic-like strap stretched and I held it until the lobster was only five feet away. I released, and missed. The lobster flapped its thick tail and sped out of sight.

I missed three more targets before deciding that I might actually need to practice with the exotic weapon a little bit. After an hour of picking out targets in the sand and almost hitting them before diving down to retrieve the bolt, I got the [speargun] skill.

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Weapon Skill Gained: [Spearguns]

Increased accuracy

Increased piercing power

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Now I was able to hit the mark on occasion. I could have kept practicing until my hit-rate increased but if I couldn’t catch anything today, I lose the weapon. Not only that, I wouldn’t get any stew tonight unless I had something to contribute to the soup-pot.

I spent the rest of the day chasing small critters that scuttled along the bottom of the sea and taking the occasional pot-shot at passing fish. There was a close call when the bolt finally hit a crab, but it bounced harmlessly off the armored shell. I had a hell of a time finding the bolt again after swimming away for my life. Sure, the crab probably wouldn’t have killed me, but who wants to be anywhere near an angry crab in nothing but their shorts?

As the sun was setting, I burst into Frankie’s holding the bolt proudly for all to see. It skewered a flat, ugly looking thing that had the misfortune to camouflage itself as sand near my intended target.

That gave him the opportunity to tell the new rotation of sailors about the mighty warrior in their midst. He made a show of displaying the fish and demanding that I regale them all with the story of how I vanquished such a fearsome beast. When the truth came out they nearly blew down the shack with their laughter.