Couldn’t stop. The cliff tapered off a few hundred meters on one side. Pursuers on their way. The mountains would save him, plenty of place to hide.

“Onward to new adventures!” said Choo Choo as he dove pass Enoch’s head with an enthusiastic loop.

“Amazing,” said the one-legged cripple, “way to read the mood.”

He went in large crevasses, jumped over the thin ones, alternated with hard climbs for half an hour. He paused. Ate a bit. Enoch stared at his stump, immobile. His duffel bag smelled of booze. The remaining bottles beckoned him. Drinking them would hurt his reward. Bad enough that he had used a healing potion. The game would probably use this as an excuse to coral him into a quest chain. All about doubling down and all that crap.

He took a sip of beer as a consolation, dropped the canteen at his side, stayed immobile, a vacant expression on his face. His stump though. He wiggled it. Useless.

Crippled Leg | Debuff

Hinders Speed by 90% | Hinders Jump by 50% | Hinders Climb by 80% | Hinder Swim by 25%

No duration on this one, permanent. Enoch groaned, slammed the ground in frustration for the umpteenth time, pivoted, spotted something. Another stump, the creepy kind, from a dead tree, moving toward him at a snail pace, barely perceptible but constant. Slow and deliberate. It wasn’t a stump at all. More of an ambush predator. He should’ve recognised it earlier, not another tree in sight. Dead rocks. Yes. Choking gusts of dust. Yes. Skin shredding volcanic stone. Yes. Forsaken cliffs with too many overhangs. Yes. Bones breaking pits. Plenty. Trees. None.

The stump jerked. A Bark Spook, eater of rocks, and adventurers. Normally, Enoch would simply run away. But in his state, well, this was the end. The damn thing was designed as an XP bonanza for high dps (damage per second) players. Slow, easy to kite, low risk. A tank. Indecent Damage Resistance. Decent Regeneration. His Steel Spear wouldn’t even tickle it.

A piece of bark broke off from the main body, reached forward and dragged the whole thing, leaving a groove in the stony ground. It growled with the deep, unsettling sound of cracking wood. A root wormed toward Enoch, currently occupied at pounding the ground repeatedly with the butt of his spear, shouting the long, broken wail of shattered souls.

Enoch pivoted and tried to flee. One foot forward, lean on the spear, one hop and repeat. Slow, cumbersome, useless. Swears simmered in his dried mouth as he crawled, inch by inch.

“Now son, no need to take it like that, see it as a learning experience.” Tag | Mom

“Dude is done for. That’s not a good climax.”

The chat. Worst invention ever.

A strong explosion broke his concentration. [-1 Health]. A projectile hit him hard, bent him backward, propelled him forward along a shower of splinters. Enoch squirmed, patted his back in panic until he got a hold of his bag. A long spike of mineralized wood jutted from it. What’s with this game and his cursed backpack.

He couldn’t believe he’d been hit by a Bark Canon, infamous for its slow aim. A sour laugh escaped his lips. That skill was designed to kill prays tangled in the Spook’s roots. Enoch was so slow that the dim-witted monster considered him immobilized, and rightly so.

Enoch stood awkwardly, asked Choo, “this thing will snatch me up. Can you help?”

The artifact said, “already done master.”

Enoch turned. A small boulder stood between him and the monster, snarled in a bundle of grasping roots.

“Thank you, little buddy. Good thinking”

The agonizing chase continued as the chat mocked him. Only a small core of fans encouraged him, showered him with tips. Balm for the soul. The tiny drops of love meant more than the ocean of hate.

As predicted, the crawling stump gained on him. A cliff to his left, a ravine in front of him, a Spook behind him. The monster was a natural climber, great adhesion to any surface. The cliff wouldn’t save him this time. There was a tiny chance that it wouldn’t be able to jump over the ravine. Worth a try.

Enoch used Dash, cartwheeled toward the ravine and tried to pole vault over it with his spear. Choo followed him with an exited, “weeee!”

He would have made it, but a root snatched him in mid air, right over the precipice. Enoch hovered for a fleeting instant, then went down the bone breaking pit.