Noah woke up slowly feeling more refreshed than he had in days, stretching and yawning, his half-asleep mind finally caught up and he remembered where he was. Not long after that unfortunate realisation. He opened his status to see what changes he could make after the quest completion earlier.

Looking at the stats he had gained after the last few days of killing things, Noah decided to put the points gained from the quest into Dexterity, and now that he was among people again, Charisma.

Bringing up his finished status screen again, Noah stared at it, having no idea how well he was doing in comparison to anyone else.

“Status!”

Level: 35

Previous

Current

Strength

21

21

Dexterity

14

16

Constitution

20

20

Endurance

22

22

Wisdom

20

20

Perception

15

15

Charisma

5

8

A hand reached through the tent entrance and knocked against a wooden support beam.

“Noah, are you awake? We would like to set your task while you are here.” A voice came through.

“Yeah I’ll be right out, gimme a minute.” Gathering his things Noah stepped outside into a humid afternoon sun. As he did so he was greeted by Dakon and several older men.

“Hello Noah, you might have guessed already, but this is the rest of the Elders. We have decided that with your skill set, and survival advantage, the best thing that we could ask of you it to patrol the border of the cleared land beyond the wall and hunt anything out there. We would also ask that as you move along the border, you place these totems at regular intervals. These totems will last roughly two days. So, you may have to place them multiple times over your stay here. Is that acceptable?” Dakon explained.

“Yeah, no worries, I’ll help out any way I can, what do these totems do?”

“They emit a decay field specifically tuned to the flora of this jungle. We won’t use fire because of the chance of it running out of control, but to live here we need to do something to keep it away. So we use these.”

“Hey that’s pretty cool, like I said no problem at all, just point me in the right direction. It’ll be good to get some levels as well.”

“If you are ready now, I can get Mathias to show you were to start?”

“Sure, sounds good to me.”

With that, Mathias walked forward and led Noah through the throng of people to the wall of the village.

“It’s pretty simple, you just need to go to the edge, kill any creature you see and put these totems down about 5 metres apart.” Explained Mathias

“Ok, sweet, I’ll get started then.”

With that Noah jogged through the gate and while being careful to avoid anymore pit traps, he made his way to the edge of the cleared area, placed the first totem and started moving along.

The minutes turned into hours, and the sun faded to night and day again. Noah had long since descended into a meditative state completing the repetitive task with ease. With how vicious the fauna in the jungle was, he didn’t even need to be on the lookout for any creature seeing as though as soon as they noticed him, they immediately attacked. These fights were often short, and viciously bloody. Half the time Noah didn’t even stop jogging as he killed snake after snake, moving in a constant circle around the village.

Some time later, his stomach began to get annoyed at him, so he cut across the no man’s land, again keeping an eye out for traps and headed to the gate.

“Hey, can you let me in! I’m hungry!”

After a few minutes of no noise, the gates started to slowly rumble open, and Noah made his way inside. Walking to the nearest communal cooking fire, he asked for and was given food by the attendant.

“Noah, that was amazing work, if we had a few people half as good as you, we could expand.” Exclaimed Dakon, sitting next to him.

“Now I’m guess you are wondering how long you are going to have to stay here? Well every month or so a shuttle from the city comes and deposits people and takes food and resources, they could probably be persuaded to take you. It would be a shame to see you go, but I know you are newly integrated, and it would be selfish to keep you here.”

“Thank you for the honesty Dakon, some people in your place just wouldn’t tell me and would use me as a creature killing machine. Of course, ill still help out clearing land while I’m here, but now I have a goal to aim for. Thank you Dakon.”

Excusing himself, Noah got up and walked to his tent, thoughts abuzz, a new desire to see the sights of this new world he found himself in burned inside him.

He fell asleep easily that night, a goal firmly cemented in his mind.