Once I’d gotten somewhat safely out of the hall, I started rummaging what was left of the student’s packs and looking for food and drink. In one of the guy’s packs I lucked out and found a pair of gym clothes which I tried to squeeze into, but they must’ve belonged to someone younger and smaller than me. Since I couldn’t get them up to cover my rear, I jabbed and poked at them until they tore and I used them as a set of makeshift bandages on my wounds.

A bit more rummaging around and I found a few candy bars and several water bottles, but after a little thought I placed them off to the side to save for later. Carefully I peeked back out into the hallway to make certain that there weren’t any rats coming in or out of their room, and then I darted down the hall to grab one of the corpses of the rats I’d just slain and dragged it back into the classroom I’d been looting.

Sooner or later, there’s not going to be any more candy or junk food around for me to savage. Probably sooner than later, since it seems creatures like the goblin I’d killed in the other room were already collecting and hoarding it. I was going to have to find another source of food to survive on, and I figured now would be as good of a chance to learn if these creatures were edible as any. After all, I was already hurt and didn’t know how long it’d take for me to get back to full strength for fighting again, so if the meat was poisonous or something now would be the time to test it out. Having to eat it and die later, when I might be in full heath and full fighting potential, would be detrimental to my growing stronger. I didn’t want to die again – it was flaming painful – but if it was going to have to happen, I’d rather it happen now that I was already half-dead and only needed an hour to come back, than sometime or someplace else which might be worse in the long run.

I hadn’t found anything with a sharp enough edge that I could use to try and skin the rat yet, so I gingerly bit into the soft flesh on the stomach and tore at the meat with my teeth. The fur on the sides and back of the beast was hard and prickly and reminded me of a porcupine, but the soft underbelly wasn’t that difficult to bite into. Once I’d had a nice rip in soft skin on the underside, I wiggled my fingers into the hole and into the creature’s guts and tugged it apart.

I’ve never skinned any sort of creature before, and I wasn’t prepared for the suddenly glob of insides that flopped out and splattered down my chest and onto the floor. The still warm blood oozed down my stomach and dripped on the ground slowly while I tried to not to heave the contents of my empty stomach out alongside it. Hot stomach acid churned up into the back of my throat, but I made myself swallow it back down. As disgusting as this was, it was something that I was going to have to learn to do if I wanted to survive – I was convinced of that!

DING! The usual ring of a window popping up started me so badly that I fell backwards and landed on my rump again.

You can acquire the skill Harvesting (Animal) for 2 CP.

Do you wish to do so?

Startled, I said, “Yes.”

Ding!

Congratulations, you gained a new skill: Harvesting (Animal) (1)!

I don’t know what prompted the chance for me to learn a new skill, but I wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass. I’d learned the club and the spiritual manipulation skills without having to spend any points, but harvesting cost me two of my precious character points. Maybe I’d been thinking of the points all wrongly. Perhaps they weren’t just Character Points, but they were some sort of Cheat Points which a person could use to short-cut the system? Swing a stick enough, eventually learn the beginnings of a skill in using a club. Want to learn it without having to swing it over and over, spend Cheat Points on it.

It made some sort of twisted logic to me, and if I was right those CP were much, much more valuable than I’d first imagined. Who knew how great the potential to use them might extend! What if someone saved up a million cheat points and spent them all at once to turn the world back to the way it used to be? Was such a thing even remotely possible? I just didn’t know! And I didn’t know what would help improve my survivability the greatest in the long run: spend the points to improve myself on things now, or save them in bulk for larger rewards in the future!

I hated this new world, and not knowing any of the rules about it! Normally, I wasn’t the type to read a manual when I got a game, but I’ll be darned if I wouldn’t sit down and memorize the one for whatever was going on now – forwards, backwards, sideways, and even from top to bottom and bottom to top!! If I was supposed to be some sort of “Witness” for this game-reality, from what I’ve witnessed so far the system is broken!

Disgusted with my own lack of knowledge, and the situation that I found myself trapped in, I pulled the rat corpse up to my mouth and took a huge bite out of it. To hel.. heck… (Sorry, mother! I almost slipped up there!) To heck with trying to harvest that stupid rat! If eating it kills me, then it’ll just kill me! At this point, I just don’t care anymore! Quickly ripping and chewing the rat, I didn’t stop until I’d consumed a large chunk of its raw flesh, and then I just sat down and (if I’m being honest) basically pouted and watched my statues window.

From what I could tell by watching the clock and my stat window, it seemed as if I was recovering health at a rate of 10 points per hour. I don’t know if it was just a coincidence or not, but my CON was also 10, so there’s a possibility that the higher one’s CON gets, the faster they might heal. Stats were apparently quite powerful in this new reality. Strength let one hit harder and carry heavier loads, dexterity made it easier to dodge and strike opponents, and apparently constitution let someone recover from injuries faster.

And Cheat Points… Cheat Points seemed to have almost unlimited potential.

Since it seemed like it was going to take me several hours to recover my health back to full (I currently had 32 out of my 52 maximum), I decided to use the opportunity to try and improve myself a different way. If I was right, skills and stats could be improved by (at least) two different ways: either spend Cheat Points to improve them, or else repetitively push them until they improved automatically.

Over the next two hours while my health slowly recovered, I spent my time quietly lifting the corpse of one of the larger male students and then sitting it back down. I know, I know! It’s morbid as hel.. heck, but he looked like the heaviest thing around and I wanted to try and improve my strength if at all possible in this manner. Unfortunately, my health recovered and I was fully fit once more, and still no ding had occurred increasing my strength.

Deciding that there’d be more chances later to try and lift whoever the guy was, I went back out into the hallway and started to repeat the same process as earlier to try and draw out a few more rats. OH! And apparently their meat isn’t poisonous; eating it earlier didn’t kill me anyway. Strange how you think about the oddest things at the weirdest times!