Myles’ POV

Contrary to Myles' expectations, Seeng and Beero needed little convincing to let Myles and Atakarr take their place. Instead, they’d both given him looks of amazement when Atakarr had mentioned that he could use his ability to bring back their catch, and then words of gratitude after.

If Myles was being honest with himself, it felt nice, being helpful, even if he did feel sort of guilty because he felt like he was lying, and even if the looks of amazement he got from nigh everyone made him uncomfortable. He’d never really had people to do things for, or with, before; his life back on Earth had been a rather solitary affair. And a fair bit of it had been by choice.

After meeting with Seeng and Beero, he and Atakarr had gotten a few spears each—all but one hidden in the inventory of course—and set out for the exit tunnel, and Myles was currently stabbing his spear repeatedly at thin air, in the hopes of getting a related skill.

“Trying to get a skill for it?” Atakarr asked after he’d gone on for about a minute as they walked.

“Yeah.” He thrust twice more. “No success yet though.”

“Maybe there isn’t one?”

Myles gave her a dry look. “Atakarr, there’s a skill for lying.”

Atakarr nodded in acceptance, then stopped walking, which caused him to stop walking too. “Maybe you need to try something different.”

“Like what?”

Atakarr held up her spear in a guarded stance. “Attack me.”

Myles gaped at her. “With my spear?”

She rolled her eyes fondly. “That’s the general idea, Myles. Yes.”

Myles looked at the weapon in his hands, it was one of the straighter ones, with the end scraped down to a rather impressive point, especially considering the spear itself was a branch from one of the stone trees that dot the island and had been sharpened by scraping it against rocks.

“Don’t worry, Myles, you won’t hurt me. Just be careful.”

Myles nodded, then took the best stance he could manage, and attacked with a simple thrust.

Atakarr swiped his attack aside with her spear, then struck him in the chest with its butt. Myles coughed.

“Did I hurt you?” Atakarr asked, worried.

Myles rubbed where her spear had struck him, it was barely even sore, the hit had mostly just surprised him. “No, I’m fine,” he said. “Let’s continue.”

It took exactly two minutes fifteen seconds, and interestingly enough, Atakarr got it first.

Ding!

Congratulations! You have unlocked the skill [Spear Handling Proficiency].

Spear Handling Proficiency_ Lv. 1/150

Type: (passive)

Increases your aptitude for spear handling per skill level.

You have no available skill slots.

Myles mentally scanned through his skills, wondering which of them was expendable enough to unslot to make space. [Regeneration], [Tough Cookie], [Nimble], [Physical Exercise], [8th Sense], [Parkour], [Tongue Of The Deran] and [Mental Fortitude] were indispensable. While [Bio-clock], [Sense of Direction] and [Pain Resistance] made life with the Seena more bearable. [Storyteller] and [Showman] were useful too, even if not for battle. Which really only left [Rush] and [Fleetfooted].

It would have to be [Rush] then, because Myles would rather unslot the skill that came with a warning label than the one that didn’t.

With a thought, [Rush] was unslotted and [Spear Handling Proficiency] took its place.

They continued down the tunnel, past the first and second guards (both of whom were people Myles didn’t know by name and were understandably curious why Myles and Atakarr were going out instead of Seeng and Beero) and on to the third, at the entrance/exit, and Myles saw it was Cott.

Cott was a guy who looked to be in his mid to late-twenties, he was the only Seena Myles had seen who had facial hair; a wisp of coarse, brown hair that sprouted from his chin, and objectively speaking, he was rather handsome. Cott made Myles very uncomfortable.

Eighty-five percent of it had to do with the meaty, no less than nine inches long (while flaccid! Flaccid! Like seriously, dude, is it a weapon or something?) appendage that dangled between Cott’s legs, while the remaining fifteen percent had to do with the fact that Atakarr used to date this guy.

In hindsight, the latter really shouldn’t have been surprising, after all, in a society as small and as open as the Seena’s was, practically everybody had slept with everyone else at some point.

“Atakarr?” Cott asked, surprised. “What are you doing here? I thought Seeng and Beero were supposed to—”

“They were,” Atakarr interrupted, but not impatiently, then launched into the by now familiar explanation, to which Cott had the expected reaction.

“Myles, thank you,” Cott said. “Koffa knows we need all the help we can get.”

Myles just shrugged awkwardly, eyes roaming the tunnel.

Atakarr dropped her light-rock (which Myles had learned was the actual name for them), and Cott said “Stay safe,” as she and Myles took the last two bends out of the tunnel.

It was strange, being outside again. Especially since the outside was actually much darker than the tunnels, and also since he’d subconsciously expected to see a big, blue sky with clouds and a sun.

The sight of space hanging above him, dark and alien, was a jolting reminder of where he really was; it was one thing to see it from that tunnel Atakarr had taken him to, but it was another entirely to see it in place of where the sky should be.

“You have a skill that senses danger, right?” Atakarr asked as they walked, she leading and he following, even though he didn’t exactly know where she was taking him.

“Yeah, [8th Sense]. It’s only at level five though, so I don’t know how much good it’ll do.”

“You said it saved your life at level one,” Atakarr pointed out.

“Fair point,” Myles conceded. Then: “so, what exactly is the plan here?”

“Get meat, get skills while doing it, and hopefully, don’t run into anything that’ll kill us.”

Myles blinked. “Well, that’s as um, good a plan as any, I guess.”

Atakarr smiled. “We really do need to be careful though, even with the System. The stick bug you ran into almost killed you, and they’re at the bottom of the food-chain, it’s why they never leave the trees.”

She had told him this before, but he didn’t really mind her repeating it. Myles still had nightmares about his encounter with the stick bug, only, in his dreams, [8th Sense] was always a second too late, or he was too slow to move.

Honestly, between the hard ground and the night terrors, Myles was really lacking on sleep. At least with [Pain Resistance] and [Tough Cookie] steadily climbing in levels the hard ground wouldn’t matter for much longer. Hopefully.

“So we’re hunting stick bugs?” Myles guessed, after all if they were trying to be careful then it would make sense to go for the easier targets.

Atakarr confirmed his guess. “Yes. We usually avoid hunting them because of how sneaky they can be, but—”

“—with [8th Sense] they’ve lost their one advantage,” Myles finished.

“Exactly. We’ll be staying on the ground though. Your [Parkour] skill sounds great but it’ll be best not to take them on in their own territory.”

Myles nodded. “True. Besides the last time I almost fell to my death about as many times as the damn thing almost ate me,” he said.

“But even on the ground, and with [8th Sense], don’t get complacent; keep your eyes open. We’re not going anywhere near the Bridge so ideally, we shouldn’t run into anything too dangerous, but even then never relax your guard,” Atakarr warned and Myles nodded.

Myles watched her as they walked; this Atakarr was new to him, or at least unfamiliar. He had grown used to the woman who listened to him tell stories with a girlish twinkle in her eyes; the one who listened with rapt attention as he talked about his uninteresting life back on Earth; whose ears twitched in that maddeningly cute way when she slept.

That Atakarr was gone now, or at least, pushed to the passenger seat. The Atakarr at the wheel now was the hunter. The woman who had mouths to feed and would risk life and limb to see it done, while also keeping him alive. This was the Katniss version of Atakarr, and honestly, the poise with which she switched from one to the other was the sexiest thing Myles had ever seen.

But for a small part in the south-east (Myles still thought of the Bridge as north), the forest almost ringed the island, making the large, treeless, boulder-filled centre a sort of massive clearing. And knowing what he now did about Ahunna and how nothing in the realm was native to it, Myles had to wonder just what kind of planet the island had come from, and what had happened to it after a portal had ripped such a huge chunk of it out.

The forest felt exactly as Myles remembered it; creepy and foreboding, with shadows that seemed to move and branches that didn’t. His eyes scanned his surroundings, from the treetops to the shadows, searching, knowing that something was there, sneaking and skulking and waiting for him to let down his guard.

Atakarr placed a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Myles. Being alert is good, seeing threats in shadows is bad.”

Myles nodded, taking a deep breath as his heartbeat settled and his breathing calmed. He had no idea his close shave with that stick bug had gotten to him that much.

Atakarr, seeing he had calmed down, said, “okay, here’s the plan; we’ll walk around, make ourselves look like easy targets, hopefully that’ll draw in a stick bug or two. As soon as you sense them, attack. I’ll follow your lead until I—” Atakarr’s eyes widened, and then a split second later she ducked to the left.

A sharp, bony appendage misses her head by scant centimetres.

Maybe it was because of [Mental Fortitude], or maybe it was because Myles was already on such high alert, it didn’t matter, what mattered was that Myles reacted instantly, throwing his spear at the stick bug like a javelin.

Miraculously, it hit. Not dead centre, so it only left a glancing wound on the creature, but he drew blood, or whatever that slimy, sickly fluid was.

Ding!

Congratulations! You have unlocked the skill [Snipe].

Snipe_ Lv. 1/75

Type: (passive)

Increases your natural ability to hit your intended target at range no matter the weapon.

You have no available skill slots.

The stick bug fell to the forest floor, wounded but not down, until Atakarr put her spear through its head.

The whole event had taken six seconds, and if not for the pounding of blood in his ears, Myles would have found it eerily silent.

“I thought you could sense danger?” Atakarr asked, breathing heavy.

Myles said nothing, simply staring at her instead. Atakarr had almost died. Just like that. Jesus, how fucked up was this place?

“Myles, focus,” Atakarr said, snapping him out of his spiralling thoughts. She lifted the stick bug with her spear, straining under its weight, then offered both to him. “Put it in your inventory,” she said.

Myles quietly obeyed, then felt disgusted as he got an in-depth perception of the bug in his inventory. He pushed the awareness of it to the back of his mind.

Atakarr eyed their surroundings, pulling another spear out of her inventory. “That shouldn’t have been out here,” she said.

“What?” Myles asked, finally speaking.

“Stick bugs don’t usually wander this far out,” Atakarr said.

“So what does one being here mean?”

Atakarr stared at him. “Hopefully nothing.”

“Meaning it’s definitely something then.”

Atakarr almost smiled, but then her expression turned grim. “It’s possible something’s hunting them.”

Myles eyes widened at the implications of something such sneaky creatures. I mean, he and Atakarr were too but that wasn’t the point. “That’s bad, right?” He asked.

“Very,” Atakarr said. “Let’s go back. We have meat.”

Myles was only too happy to oblige.