Chapter Two

Having finished what passed for dinner, Jason was ready to spend some time working out more of the rules of this world.

“Interface,” he commanded.

Once again the partially transparent blue screen sprang up in front of him. This time, it opened directly to what he assumed passed for his character sheet.

Name: Jason Elric Race: Human (Outworlder) Gender: Male Primary Class: Alchemist 1 SP: 15/100 MP: 100/100 Might: 10 Agility: 14 Intellect: 16 Endurance: 11 Charisma: 10 Spirit: 8 Fortitude: 18 Awareness: 15 Appeal: 10 Magic Resistance: 14 Resolve:14 Luck: 12 Advanced Herbalism, Rank 3 Advanced Survivalist, Rank 3 Analyze Ingredient, Rank 1 Basic Cooking, Rank 1 Basic Transmutation Earned Titles: Expand Achievements: Expand Accumulated Points: Expand

While many of the specific terms weren’t the ones Jason was most used to, the first set of values seemed simple enough to understand. Assuming that a 10 was average for humans, his stats reflected that he was passably fit, had moderately good coordination, was an excellent student, and had little interest in religion of any kind.

As for the second group of stats, Jason wasn’t totally sure about them but he could make guesses. Fortitude would likely relate to his physical resistance to poison and disease. Magic Resistance seemed fairly self explanatory, as did Awareness and Luck; all three were pretty standard derived statistics in a lot of games. Resolve was a bit more nebulous. He supposed that it might function as some kind of mental defense, or affected things like focus and concentration. Possibly it even stood in for a mental attack stat if such things were available. Appeal was, well, probably for a lot of things; ‘Charisma’ was the usual term in games, and was almost always a kind of a catch-all stat relating to both personal magnetism, physical attractiveness, strength of willpower, and other such things. Apparently the system found him painfully average in that department, which stung a bit, but Jason felt he couldn’t really deny it if he was being honest with himself.

Apart from that, Jason was relatively pleased with the stats he’d been assigned. His fortitude especially seemed unusually high. Since it seemed to him like the second group was all composed of derived statistics, and his Endurance was only slightly above average, he suspected that his class had something to do with it. In addition to the Fortitude, he also seemed to have better than average luck and reasonably good Magic Resistance and Resolve, which meant that he might at least have a leg up on surviving things that weren’t gunning for him physically.

Jason briefly examined his list of skills. By focusing on each one, he received a brief explanation. The descriptions were fairly unhelpful unfortunately. [Basic Transmutation] for instance simply said that he had the ability to transmute the most basic elements to and from their complimentary states, but failed to say anything about what that entailed or what its effects would be. [Advanced Survivalist] was, quite literally, ‘You posses a detailed knowledge of how to survive in the wild for an extended period of time.’ That was it. Only the entry for his class skill seemed to have useful information.

Analyze Ingredient - By carefully studying naturally occurring ingredients obtained from flora and fauna, you can discover the innate alchemical properties of any substance. Rank 1: Able to analyze up to one trait by consuming the item.

Jason groaned inwardly. He’d played games that used Alchemy systems like this. He knew it would be a real pain to get the most out of the skill, because you effectively had to keep eating random things you found in order to find traits that would go together. The greater the variety of similar things you mixed together, the greater the effect. You could, with time investment and a fair bit of luck, usually turn it into either a cash cow or a means of providing high-end buffs and healing. The drawback of course was that you had to start off by just eating random things and hoping it didn’t kill you.

He wondered if maybe [Survivalist] would help with that. Between that and [Herbalism], if he mostly stuck to plants he should at least know ahead of time if something was likely to poison him or not.

Oh well, I guess I’m committed now, Jason thought. A quick tap of his primary class seemed to confirm it, he didn’t have any other options available at the moment

Might as well get started. Mushrooms are a common alchemy ingredient in games, right?

He ate one of the smaller boletes raw while trying to focus mentally on activating his skill. He wasn’t really sure how it was supposed to work.

King Bolete Trait Discovered: Restore

Restore? That’s it? Jason wondered. Not Restore Health, or Magic, or Stamina? Just Restore?

It wasn’t too far off from what he’d expected, seeing as it was a type of food, but the vagueness bothered him a little. With some additional poking around, Jason found that he did, in fact, have a list of discovered traits, but there didn’t seem to be any explanation at all as to what each one individually meant.

Jason shrugged to himself mentally. Well, maybe it’ll become clear later.

He returned to his examination of his character sheet, selecting the option to expand the remaining entries. Unsurprisingly, he lacked any titles, and the only entries under achievements were the two he’d been awarded earlier.

The final section, [Accumulated Point Totals], expanded to show him several new categories.

Character Points Available: 0 Class Points Available: 0 Stat Points Available: 0 Skill Points Available: 6 (+) XP Accumulated: Alchemist - 0%

Jason noticed immediately that he had more skill points than the single one he’d been granted when he selected Alchemist, so he decided to explore that first. Selecting the entry gave him the option to spend his points on either ranking up existing skills, or to purchase new ones. The purchase option expanded into a truly massive drop down list with a search function and some different filters.

Jason spent several seconds just scrolling through the list. He didn’t even get through a fraction of the A’s before giving up. The list must be miles long; it seemed like any kind of basic civilian job or life skill was in there, as well as quite a number of blantantly supernatural ones. It would probably take him hours and hours to go through it all properly, if he was so inclined.

He decided to conserve his skill points for now. While Jason didn’t know the exact time, he guessed that it was probably well past midnight because he was beginning to have trouble keeping his eyes open. He had already been at the end of his day before ending up here, after all, and then he’d spent hours setting up camp and cooking dinner on top of it.

In short, he was completely exhausted.

So Jason closed down his Interface and prepared for bed. He would have preferred to douse the fire before sleeping, but he was concerned about predators and he had neither a shovel to smother the coals, nor water to douse the logs. He could spend another hour trying to dig up dirt with a shaped branch, but he didn’t have the energy. Thankfully, there was no wind, so he thought he’d be safe as long as he took precautions.

Jason double checked that the area was clear of any ignitable debris, broke up the fire a bit with a remaining small branch so that it would burn itself out more quickly, and finally scraped together a pile of leaves some distance away, to serve was a pillow. Then he lay down, and was fast asleep.

When Jason awoke the next morning, it took him a few moments to get his bearings and remember that he was most likely trapped on some kind of alternate fantasy world. He’d honestly sort of hoped that he’d wake up in his bed and that it had all just been a particularly vivid dream.

No such luck, apparently. He only had a 12 in that stat, after all.

The morning air was crisp, and slightly cool. His fire had mostly gone out during the night, but a slight wisp of smoke still escaped here and there. Jason spent a few moments just inhaling deeply, reveling in the smell of the forest around him, free the normal pollutants of modern cities. He had always loved having a chance to get away from city life.

After reigniting his fire and roasting some more mushrooms, Jason returned to his previous night’s activity of examining his Interface. He figured out how to access some of the customization options, and changed the opening command to ‘Status’. Then he set the screen to only show him his MP, SP, class level, and skills. Everything else he placed under an expanded character sheet on a separate screen. As for the status screen itself, he turned it nearly completely transparent, and had it float off to his left side, a little bit in front of him, where it wouldn’t block his direct vision much but he could still access it with an outstretched hand. Jason had once died in a game while fighting off a pack of dinosaurs because a screen had popped up in front of him to ‘helpfully’ inform him about the creature now that he’d slain one, only for the others to quickly finish him while he was struggling with trying to close the window.

He had no desire to have such an experience in real life.

After customizing things to his liking, Jason opened up the skill menu again, this time with a specific purpose in mind. He’d given it some thought, and while going straight for magic had its appeal, right now he knew there were two things he needed, and needed badly.

The first was some sort of weapon. If this world was at all similar to the fantasy RPGs of his games, he would need a weapon, fast. After that, clothing and armor would be a must. He had no money, and the jeans and T-shirt he wore currently wouldn’t last long if he remained out in the wilderness. He would also need a way to carry things around with him, and it was unlikely that whoever lived here accepted American credit cards. That meant he needed to earn money, which to Jason meant crafting skills. In fact, he considered that the right choices might find some amount of synergy with his class; the skill list was massive.

While poring through the skill selections, Jason noticed something else: few skills cost only 1 Skill Point. Most of the useful sounding basic level ones cost around three points, while a few of the more powerful sounding ones cost as many as 6.

Now that’s interesting, Jason thought, I don’t see any that cost more points than I have available. And yet there are clearly cost differences. I wonder if there are really expensive skills that I can’t see because I can’t afford them, or don’t meet the prerequisites?

After a few more moments of consideration, Jason shrugged, and made his selection.

Congratulations! You have acquired the skill, [Improvised Weapon Crafting]

The skill selection didn’t tell him exactly what the skill did before purchase, unfortunately, but at least this one only cost him a single point. It didn’t seem to have a rank, either, much like [Basic Transmutation].

Then again, Jason reflected, there’s only so much you can do without proper tools, I suppose. Maybe it’s upgradable later?

Leaving the rest of his points unspent for now, Jason gave some thought to his immediate needs: water, shelter, and some kind of weapon.

The first would be the hardest, but it was also the most important. Jason had no idea what the terrain here was like, other than, well, forest. Without knowing anything about the region, he might just have to settle for doing his best to move to lower elevations if possible, and just keeping an eye out. Unfortunately, the trees here didn’t seem to have much in the way of lower branches, so there was no way he was going to be able to just climb one and take a look around, like what people always seemed to do in movies.

Jason knew he could rig something up to catch rainwater, if he was lucky enough for rain, but he didn’t have anything to use as a container. He supposed at worst, he could just take his shirt off, let it get soaked, and then twist the water into his mouth, as gross as that sounded. If he could get some clay, he might be able to make some kind of bowl maybe, but he wasn’t sure how well a campfire would work for firing. Usable clay would most likely be found near water anyway though, so it was kind of a moot point.

Berries would help in a pinch, but they weren’t really a substitute. If he got really desperate, it was disgusting but certain kinds of animal blood would work as a liquid source. However, that came with some serious risks of its own, so it was more of an emergency measure. It also meant he’d have to hunt, and he didn’t have any kind of weapon yet.

Thinking about his water needs was making him very aware that he hadn’t had anything to drink in nearly half a day.

At least shelter would be easy, he felt. He was in a seemingly temperate forest, one of the better terrains to be lost in. It provided relative shelter from the elements, with obviously plenty of wood for fire to fight off cold, and it provided plenty of food if you knew where to look. He could, with effort, even simply build himself a wooden lean-to shelter if he couldn’t find a suitable other location, like a cave or a large, hollow oak.

Although he was eager to try out his new skill, Jason would need to scavenge for what he needed first, and water was his top priority. So he decided he would strike camp, and go in search of a river or stream, and just keep an eye out for any kinds of useful stones, particularly straight branches, or other materials that he came across. If something happened, he could always use his knife to defend himself, though it wasn’t really made for combat.

Jason used one of his remaining branches to scrape up a large amount of dirt to thoroughly bury the ashes of his fire. He didn’t want to leave it behind and risk a stray branch falling in and igniting the forest; having left it overnight had been bad enough. The work was hard without a shovel, and further reinforced Jason’s desire to find water first before anything else.

His task finished, Jason set off in search of water. He hoped that his [Survivalist] skill would come into play here, but he wasn’t sure how to activate it, if that was even a thing. In the RPGs he’d played, Survival as a skill was usually just something you used, and then magically came across food and water in some fashion.

Jason highly suspected that wasn’t the case here, but he tried anyway as he traveled along, poking around at his skill list just in case. Unfortunately, tapping away at the screen, he couldn’t seem to figure out how to activate any of his skills, and the Interface was very unhelpful in that regard.

“Ask an adult, indeed,” Jason muttered.

It took Jason the better part of the day before he actually found something of use, and coincidentally, discovered at least one way his new skills worked.

He came across a game trail.

Before his arrival here, Jason had known vaguely that game trails were paths that animals frequented regularly to get from one place to another, and that was about it. Tracking wasn’t something he’d learned, nor hunting, during his time orienteering. But when he came across the line of packed dirt carved through a stand of tall grasses, only a single glance told him a great deal.

Simply by looking, Jason knew with a strange, jarring certainty that this was a trail frequented by species of large herbivores called a Moschus. It was apparently like a very large goat crossed with a deer, which possessed a massive pair of rather dangerous horns instead of antlers. The trail led southwards, most likely away from the creature’s den and towards a source of food or water. Jason also could tell that this trail was used by more than one of the animals, to judge from the hoof prints he found here and there in the dirt.

All of this information was suddenly just there, granted by his [Advanced Survivalist] Skill. It seemed to just plant the knowledge directly into his mind as he examined the path, as if he’d always been an expert woodsman. Jason found the whole experience extremely surreal. He even knew it was his Skill at work, as if there was some sort of context at the back of his mind, labeling the information.

Idly he wondered what would happen if something suddenly blocked or removed his skill. Would he just forget all that stuff as suddenly as it had came? He didn’t know, and found it vaguely disturbing that his mind was being messed with somehow, even if it was to his apparent benefit.

Shaking himself all over and breaking off his line of thought, Jason decided to follow the trail. It had a high degree of likelyhood to lead him to a source of water eventually, because after all, animals needed that too.

Along the way, Jason began collecting small vines and particularly long grasses he passed. Now that he knew at least some of his skills worked like some kind of passive knowledge, he could put his [Improvised Weapon Crafting] to use.

First, he fashioned something that would pass for small lengths of twine by braiding grass and vines together as he walked along. His skill showed him the best kinds of grass and vines for the task once he actually began trying to make some. He’d work until he had something about as long as his arm, then tie it off and the drape it across his shoulders and start again. Soon, he had a good half dozen lengths of twine close to a meter long. Next, Jason used his skill to ferret out what kinds of stones might be useful for crafting tools, namely flint and chert, and put the larger or flatter ones into his pockets for later use.

Eventually, hours of hiking later, he came across an important find: a small stand of river cane. Knowing it was generally found near water, he stopped crunching his way along the trail and stood still, listening. Ever so faintly, he heard the sound of moving water in the distance.

Excited and painfully aware of the dryness of his throat, Jason hurried onward, only to stop short a few minutes later as the game trail crossed a wide, packed dirt road.

This was excellent news. Not only could Jason hear moving water close by, a road meant civilization, and with it, people. He immediately decided that after locating the nearby water source, he would set up camp here alongside the road, on the off chance that passing travelers might come across him while he got himself better equipped.

He found a deep, slow moving stream not too far from the road; the game trail led directly to it. It wasn’t the cleanest, but it was still water, and at least it was relatively clear and wasn’t stagnant. He caught glimpses of the occasional fish darting away from shores as he approached.

Lacking any options to boil or purify the water first, and with [Survivalist] informing him that his Fortitude made it probably fine, Jason simply crouched down, cupped his hands, and drank deeply from the stream. He also took a few moments to wash his face and made an attempt at rinsing the dirt and twigs out of his hair.

As he was finishing up, his [Survivalist] Skill suddenly screamed a warning to him. Jason froze, taking in the sudden quiet that had fallen around him. He scanned the area, searching for signs of any animals. His Skill wasn’t giving him any specific details, but a dozen tiny factors he barely registered seemed to all be screaming at him that there was some kind of predator nearby, possibly in the stream itself.

Visions of his life being swiftly ended by a sudden crocodile attack flashed through his mind, and Jason rapidly backed away from the stream. When he was a good several feet away, he turned and quickly ran back to road, where his feeling of imminent danger quickly faded.

Jason leaned heavily against a tree for a few moments, taking deep breaths to steady his nerves. Once he was sure nothing was coming after him, Jason decided to return to small stand of river cane he’d seen, as the stalks could be fashioned into serviceable spears.

It was definitely high past time he had something to defend himself with.

Jason found that the task was surprisingly simple, although it took him a fair amount of time and effort. [Survivalist] and [Improvised Weapons] worked well together, providing the basics: how to use a thick piece of soft wood as a mallet for his knife, so as not to break it while trying to cut the cane, how to split the cane in order to form the best shafts, and how to use the stones he’d found to chip away at each other, forming them into flat spear heads and spikes.

Over the course of the next few hours, Jason worked away at crafting some weapons and tools. First, he fashioned three relatively short [Crude Stone Spears]. While he didn’t have any skills for using them, spears were so basic that he didn’t really think he needed one, at least not for simple self defense.

Next, he relied on his Survivalist skill to try and make some basic stone tools that would make future tasks simpler. Upon completing a [Crude Stone Hammer] and a long, three-pronged [Crude Fishing Spear], he receive a new notification.

Congratulations! You have fulfilled the requirements to learn [Basic Stonecrafting] at a reduced cost. Would you like to purchase it now for 1 Skill Point, Y/N?

Jason put his tools down, and sat back, considering. Apparently it seemed there was some sort of system for earning discounts.

Yet another oddity. It’s strange, Jason mused, how similar and yet how different everything is from the RPGs I’m used to. It’s like everything is designed to be as opaque as possible.

Jason decided that [Survivalist] seemed to be helping him well enough for now.

“No,” he said, dismissing the notification.

A thought occurred to him. “Status,” he said, navigating to his skill selection menu. Typing in [Basic Stonecrafting], he saw that the skill was now listed as ‘Cost: (1)’ to purchase. He assumed the parentheses indicated the reduced cost. Checking the filters, sure enough there was a flag for ‘Earned’ which brought up [Basic Stonecrafting] as the only entry.

Excellent, he thought. I don’t have to accept things right away. All the more reason to not spend points unless necessary.

Another thought occurred to Jason. He needed armor, didn’t he? Or at least something to carry his stuff with. Maybe he could try and earn a discount for something deliberately.

So Jason made several additional, longer lengths of twine, and tried rigging himself a sort of harness, a rope belt with an over-the-shoulder loop that he could slide his spears into so he could carry them all with one hand. It took a few attempts to get it right, but with the skill he wanted firmly fixed in he mind, he was eventually rewarded with a [Crude Carry Harness] and another notification.

Congratulations! You have fulfilled the requirements to learn [Basic Tailoring] at a reduced cost. Would you like to purchase for 1 Skill Point, Y/N?

“Yes,” he declared happily. He hadn’t been sure it would work, but despite the lack of needles or cloth, thinking of his task as making a sort of clothing item seemed to have convinced the system to grant him what he’d aimed for.

Well, that or woven belts counted as cloth and not, say, leatherwork, but it worked out either way.

Jason finally set aside his new tools as his stomach rumbled. Dusk was approaching, and he’d gone nearly an entire day without eating. Thankfully, he’d spotted another cluster of mushrooms while he’d been cutting away at the river cane, so he quickly set to work making a new campsite. At least this time he could just set up his fire alongside the road, away from the trees.

He received another surprise while he did so: he came across a small sprouting of wild onions. While they’d be rather bitter, they’d at least they’d be something else to eat besides just roast mushrooms. His [Herbalism] Skill informed him that it also meant it was early to mid spring, which was good, since it meant he probably wouldn’t have to worry about potential snow.

Between [Advanced Survivalist] and Jason’s new tools, setting up camp went much faster than the previous night. It took him only about an hour to clear an area out and get a campfire assembled. Soon enough, just as the last of the light was beginning to fade, he found himself once again sitting on a log, holding mushroom-and-onion skewers over an open flame.

He didn’t get the chance to eat though, because that’s when all the yelling started.