Waking up with a yawn I pulled the covers tighter around myself feeling a sudden chill, must have left the window open last night. That’s odd, why’s it so dark if the window’s… oh yeah, I’m in a homemade stone coffin on the beach of a mysterious island.

I got the moths to uncover the holes unleashing golden pikes of sun into my nice, dark, cave, but like any room dweller I knew that the only way forward was to acclimatise myself. Reaching once more for that thrum feeling I’d felt last night, I cracked open my little hermit crab cave and peered out over the beach; as terrifying as the situation was the sight of the beach outside was breath taking.

The water was crystal clear, fading into a deep lapis blue, that was cupped by the black basalt of the bay like a sapphire in a giant’s palm. The sand, while black as soot, shone with all the colours of the rainbow as the sun glittered of each grain like a vast expanse of minute, glimmering, gems.

Turning around, the volcano stood stoic against the sky, a solitary shepherd amongst the flock of islands. A thin wispy, pillar of smoke slithered up from the peak and drifted through the air. The jungle clamoured at its base, deep and dark it carried every shade of green in a cacophony of colour. Here and there, splashes of colour appeared, as if painted in through happy accident, and took the form of both vibrant bursts of flowers, and expanses of aberrant leaves that reasserting the fact that this was certainly somewhere far from Earth…

Getting myself back on track, I dispersed the blanket back into the swarm, was really going to have to think of a name for this guy, and spent a few minutes shaping the stone down into a ramp that would allow significantly easier egress. With my two feet safely back on the ground I decided that I should take some of the stone with me as with [Geomancy] it could become any tool I needed to survive in the jungle.

Pulling a cube of about 50cm2from the boulder I split into 2, 20cm2cubes and placed them into my inventory, watching them sink into my fur was strangely satisfying. The remaining 10cm2, I then shaped into two armbands in case I needed to access it quicker than I could get into my inventory. I would have shaped it into a weapon, but the claws were both a weapon in of themselves and also made me incapable of gripping something with any reasonable firmness.

Finally leaving the beach I stepped into the forest and began slowly walking into the wood stopping every minute so as not to pass out. I really need to think of an alternative means of transport, hmmm, maybe?...

………………..

I dispersed the swarm back into a cloud over my head and continued into the forest, grumbling quietly to myself as I sluggish made my way between the trees.

“stupid fantasy world. stupid fat, too heavy sloth body. never gonna get to fly a magic carpet…”

………………..

I ran into my first fantasy creature after roughly an hour of stop and starting as I looked up in the trees with the thought of food on my mind. Sloths were creatures that ate very little, conserving the vast majority of their energy by moving as minimally as possible and having several chambers in its stomach leading to a digestion period of up to 2 weeks! The longest of any mammal on earth!

So I didn’t like being a sloth… doesn’t mean I don’t like sloths generally.

Back on topic, the focus of my gaze toward the treetops meant that I was ready when a sudden streak of gold leapt to the tree just over from the one I had been examining. The trees continued to appear the same as the Chilean pine aka the monkey tail or monkey puzzle tree, but the branches of one particular tree although covered in its trademark scale like leaves seemed… weaker? Maybe? I couldn’t be sure, but they appeared to be moving to a greater degree than the minimal breeze implied they should, especially when compared to those around it. My thinking was that the wood was softer than normal due to illness, leading to it being more easily pushed by the wind but I’m not an arborist, so I couldn’t do much but speculate.

Ahh God, focus, without my ADD meds I was really losing track of my thoughts every other bloody sentence. Right, the gold flash. Leaping across to a tree next to the one I’d been gawking at, it appeared to be some kind of monkey with lustrous, resplendent, golden fur. Perhaps sensing my gaze burning into its back, it turned and stared at me with pupil-less eyes of a matching golden lustre like twin coins, fresh from a royal mint.

I became drawn in to the twin molten pools that seemed to almost glow with an internal radiance. Tearing my eyes from the impromptu staring contest I took in some more details about the animal. In terms of general structure, it resembled a thin tarsier monkey just under half a meter tall and half a foot wide. A long sinuous tail was roughly the same length as its body and was currently wrapped around the branch it was clinging to for security. Its face was dominated by its pair of enormous luminous eyes that took up half of its face and appeared to be ringed in black like Kohl creating a stark divider between them and the rest of its face. For such a beautiful creature its ears stood out, appearing almost bat like and ragged, atop it’s head.

Looking back into those same eyes, I noticed a slightly worrying detail, not that it had no pupils, while unsettling it wasn’t nearly as unnatural as the fact that the same golden eyes that I’d been drawn into were actually glowing as if with a back lit, and if I wasn’t mistaken, were growing brighter by the second.

Before I had a chance to react my eyes were flash fried in my skull and I was falling backwards to the ground with a very manly yell (definitely not shrieking like a little girl).

Blind and in the dirt, I felt the swarm attack, though I was not sure how stuffed animals would help. I grabbed one of the moth’s eyes and peered through… Holy shit…

Well I was never going to fuck with my familiar that was for sure.

The underbelly of each of my cute lil’ plush moth minis had unzipped revealing smalls maws of saw blade like rotating zipper teeth and sharp stabbing tongues made of needles on the end of flexible length of string.

Yeah. I was never going to fuck with my familiar.

The monkey appeared drained by the use of its laser eyes or whatever the fuck that was and its eyes were now vanta-black, holes that warped the light around them. Worried that this was its method of replenishing for another attack I guided the swarm to plunge toward it, needles out, aiming for its face.

“Have a taste of this you little shit-slinging bastard!” I shouted from back on the ground providing moral support, as every good leader should.

Seeing the approaching swarm, the monkey fled, jumping with remarkable speed to the tree across from it, and continuing to leap away till it was out of sight.

“Yeah run pussy!” I shouted after it and then in a much quieter voice. “ahhh my shitting eyes.”

…………..

After about ten minutes my eyes had relubricated enough to continue. Deciding that rather than continuing to just aimlessly ramble till something more dangerous than a monkey crossed with a flashlight came along, I backtracked slightly to particularly large pine and began digging.

Picking a clear spot amongst the roots I excavated the material using [Geomancy] before forming it up and around the entry hole creating a slapdash entrance moving deeper I snaked between some roots while trying not to destabilise the integrity of the tree by digging directly underneath it. Also, my spell did not affect the roots of the tree so unless I could cut them with my claws, which wasn’t many due to age of the tree and thus the thickness of the roots, then I was forced to go around.

Summoning my [Miner’s Lantern] drained my mana quicker but the twists of my tunnel had blocked off any other light. Smoothing and compacting the walls I shaped a room beneath the ground over the next couple hours. It ended up being relatively circular with an arched dome roof to prevent me being buried alive, not that it would be much or an issue with my powers, but I would lose the time and work which was invaluable at the moment.

Feeling the rumble of my stomach again I returned back outside to see the sun past its peak, but not far enough for it to be less than 4-5 hours till sunset. Gazing up at the pine above my new home, I took a deep steadying breath and began climbing. For the most part the use of my binding spell was unnecessary between [Mountain Goat’s Grip] and the natural climbing advantage of the claws and arms that the sloth evolved for this exact purpose, I actually climbed it with surprising ease, taking only half an hour to climb up, cut some of the thinner branches, and come back down.

Realising I was an idiot I took the stone out from my inventory and placed it against the wall of the room. Then using the sun to guide me back to the beach, using the moths as one long thread like Theseus to guide me back to the base after collecting a load of water by wading hip deep into the water and opening my inventory till it was full. Can’t drink stone ya idiot maybe take the water next time and I won’t have to waste two precious hours.

Having returned to the base, I began scraping the leaves from the branches and placing them in a stone bucket I shaped from some spare stone left over from the excavation. I then left the branches just outside in the sun to dry and created a fireplace in the wall with a grated flue above it that should prevent anything from falling down into the fire while allowing the smoke to escape, though the precision of my control meant the holes looked they’d been punched into a piece of clay using a variety of needles and pencils.

The sun beginning to set once more outside I sealed the door leaving a few scattered holes for air, the thickness of the door gave me the idea to make the holes at an angle into the stone then have the hole turn 90o(roughly) before coming out of the other side. This meant that anything trying to see or get through the holes would need to break the stone, or be small enough to fit in the hole and turn the corner. I made the same adjustment to the flue ensuring that it was as inaccessible as possible.

Taking one of the 202cm basalt blocks, I moulded it into a shape like a hollow long thin necked vase that came to a slight point then bent the spout around 120oso that it pointed down then cut a lid from the opposing side of the stem that was now the ‘top’. With the addition of a long round handle that attached to the two sides perpendicular to the spout I had an evaporator that should allow me to desalinate the water by heating it till it became a gas that would condense on the roof of the vessel and drip down into a bucket I placed at the end of the spout that stuck out over the edge of the fire loaded with the now dry logs, I moulded a hook to hang the evaporator from then used a stick, bow (moth thread), split piece of wood and a pinch of the dry scrubby grass from outside to get the fire going.

Taking a moment to rest and breathe, moulding a chair to recline in, I noticed something at the edge of my vision, flickering, and focusing on it beheld:

Alert!

For moulding nature into a hovel dwelling deep in the wilderness, 1,000 miles from the nearest civilisation you have unlocked the [Hermit] Class.

Class automatically slotted.

At Level 1 you have gained the following:

Your focus and skill at tasks increases while alone and decreases while in the company of others.

You have a knack for bush craft.

Trait: [One with the Woods]

The creatures of the forest view you as a native to the wood, outside of the normal food chain and not to be disturbed. (Only creatures of the Normal, Nature or Earth alignment)

“A 1,000 MILES!!! THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!!”

Feeling the likelihood of seeing another person again in my lifetime disappear over the horizon, I slumped to the floor of my ‘hovel’ and gazed into the flames, but the longer I stared, the hotter my mind burned with anger at that slimy douchebag ‘Douglas’ who put me in this situation to begin with. Like HELL I was going to crumble because I didn’t have anyone here to hold my hand, I had magic MOTHERFUCKER I was a man sloth with claws that Wolverine WISHES he had and I was going to show that prick that I could thrive in this world.

Opening my status to the still blank name portion I typed in the name that would echo through the annals of this worlds history by the time I was done. When I eventually departed this world surrounded by gold and HELLA BITCHES (who I respected for their personality and intelligence), I was going to be someone the world would never forget.

I am, [Ivor Belphegor Thule], Sloth and future Hermit King of the World!!!