We are careful when our feet touch the ground, not making any sounds, just looking around.

It’s dark. I try to see through it, but the black curtain is too thick, all around me.

“I wish I could see anything,” I say to myself and feel Zan’s hand patting me on the shoulder, maybe only to make sure that I’m there.

“Me too. I don’t even see you,” he says in a hushed voice.

The gust picks up the strength, swooshing between the trees.

I remember something I was told during orientation, and without much hope, I try it out as I say, “List Sight Improvement Options.”

The blues screen blinks, surprising me completely as it reads,

Skills - Abilities:

Primary Skill - Ability: None

Secondary Skill - Ability: None

List of Skills and Abilities Available for Acquisition:

Sight Improvement Options: Night Vision

Close-up Microscopic Vision

Far Range Telescope

[Choose Your Option]

Great, I have options now.

'Night Vision, of course," I say.

Your Unused Earnings of 1 Round - 10 Notches allow for the Activation of the Night vision Improvement of 20 percent

“I’ll take it,” I say readily, all excited of the option, not sure yet what that would imply.

[Say, Authorize Ability Improvement, if you wish to proceed with the transaction. The transaction is not reversible,]

“I Authorize,” I say it out loud.

“What are you saying?” Zan asks me from behind, but I ignore him.

There is a little jolt I feel around my temple, and my eyes twitch a few times. I feel an itch around my eyelids, and I rub them with my fingers. When I open them, I'm shocked to notice how shapes suddenly emerge from the darkness.

I can make out dark shapes all around me, trees, Zan, low growth, a snow-covered path, even a large stone sticking out.

“I’ll be darned!” I say to myself with excitement.

Update: Transaction Successfully completed

Your Updated Balances:

Bank: 6 Rounds

Last transaction: The knife acquisition worth 1 Round

Unused Earnings: 0 Rounds - 0 Notches

“Oh, I think I’m starting to like this,” I say as I look around and can even make out the confusion on Zan’s face who stands but a few feet away from me.

“What are you talking about?”

“You better follow me.”

“But I can’t see shit,” Zan says all frustrated.

“Then put your hand on my shoulder. I can see just fine.”

“Okay, I’ll trust you,” he says and moves his hand up, feeling the air. “Oh, there you’re, he says as he finally notices me.

“We’ll take it slow. We go up over the ridge. I saw some boulders and what might look like a cave on the far hill.”

“Yeah, I saw that too.”

We progress slow. I can walk fast, but Zan keeps hitting the rocks sticking out of the snow and tumbling down, cursing now and then.

My shoulder seems too high for him, so he has his fingers touching my back while his other hand is holding a spear he made, using it as a blind man’s stick. Yet, as we are walking up the slope, that stick helps him now and then and he finally can match my speed.

“How come you can see so good?” he asks me after a while.

“Let us come to that cave and find a safe place, and then we’ll talk,” I promise him, paying more attention to what is around me than caring to go into a lengthy explanation that might be too much for him to understand as is.

As we climb to the top of the ridge, I stop to catch my breath and turn around. I cannot make shapes more than twenty, twenty-five feet away from us, but back there where we came from is a little spark in the sea of darkness. I know what it is.

“It seems our friends have been able to start a fire,” I say.

Zan turns around to look at it as well. “Care to go back to them?”

“Nope. Not at all.”

“Yeah, I think you were right.”

“Well…” I was going to say something, but the sound of growling suddenly freezes me cold. I see branches move, see shapes not too far away from us.

“We can climb up a tree,” Zan whispers in my ear.

I look around. “Nothing suitable here. Besides, we’re on top of the ridge. The wind is even harder here. We’d freeze. No. Let’s run for it.”

“I can’t run,” Zan says. “I can’t see shit.”

“What do you think you weigh?” I ask him. But I already know. Whatever it is, it’s not more than a military service pack and armor I used to carry on my back in the days.

“I’ll carry you,” I tell him and he looks at me suddenly surprised. “We’ll go faster that way. Climb up,” I add as I see two of them moving through the bushes, flanking us.

“They’ll circle us in a minute, and then it will get harder,” I warn him and he jumps on my back, on top of my rucksack, putting one hand around my neck, almost leaning his cheek next to mine.

“If someone was to tell me two days ago that I’d be giving a Zan a piggyback ride, he’d lose a lot of teeth,” I mutter between my teeth, but there is nothing left to do. Either leave him behind or carry him.

So, I turn around and run over the ridge right away, one hand holding the knife, the other three spears I sharpened while I was in the tree. The goat path goes sharply down, and soon, I can’t run as I’m already going down too fast. I just move to a side and slide down on my toes, let inertia and slippery snow take me down, moving my legs up and jumping now and then so as not to get stuck and fall face first. I have to tilt my body here and there to avoid tree trunks and undergrowth, but fast down we go.

The wolverries follow close behind, one racing to the right of me, ready to cut our path down.

“We won’t make it like this,” I warn Zan and look for the tallest tree around. I pass next to a few good options, but I’m going down so fast now I can’t stop myself without falling on my back and Zan who is holding tight around me.

The slope suddenly becomes even steeper, and I’m losing control.

“Have to stop,” I say and I try to slow us down by digging my heels in the snow. But I can’t dig in too much because my upper body and head lean too much forward and I’m ready to fall face first.

Then I see a bit of a clearing and a big tree right in front of me. I know I won’t be able to miss it or stop before hitting it, so I lower myself to my left hip, and with those spears in my hand, I push us slightly away, Zan hitting the snow right behind me.

My legs hit a side of a tree trunk and spin us around, and I dug my heels in and stop.

“Up you go!” I scream at Zan who is suddenly slow to get up, the face of the closest wolverrie coming from the darkness but mere feet from us.

His mouth is already gapping wide-open, his big fangs ready to sink in Zan’s shoulder.

I throw a knife straight in his mouth, and in the same movement, pick Zan up and throw him to the tree branch.

Have to forget about him, not even time to see if he caught a branch and pulled himself up as the knife bounces of wolverrie’s teeth and the beast comes down straight at me. I just have enough time to move those three spears in front of me and put a boot under them.

They go through the wolverrie neck and his jaws move to bite me but only get air as I duck away.

I let the wolverrie fall to the ground, now squealing, and I jump three feet to where my knife is, getting it and rolling back to bury it deep inside, right behind wolverrie head, tilting it up and sideways till I find his brains.

Then, he stops twitching and making sounds right away.

I have no time to enjoy my victory as growling gets louder, all around me.

I jump up and pull the knife out. There are four of them around me, probably another one on the other side of the tree. I do not have enough time to even dig the spears out of the dead one’s neck but I spin the rucksack from my back and use it as a shield in one hand, the other holding the knife.

With their teeth showing, they slowly start to approach me.

“Here,” Zan’s voice reaches me from above and he drops his spear right next to me.

I open my mouth and a raw warrior’s cry comes from the bottom of my lungs. Its loud, does not sound human at all. I don’t feel human.

But wolverries suddenly stop advancing, start to measure me better as I move my feet, staying on my toes, waiting to see the first one who is going to charge me.

“Give me another blade too,” I ask Zan, and he obliges without protest as I hear a knife hit the snow right next to my left boot. Then a second later, another one hits the spot to my right.

“Do you want to get up because I ain’t coming down?” he says determinately.

“Fuck them. I won’t freeze up the tree. If Pick can kill three of them, I can do three dozen if needs be,” I say even though Pick is a head taller than I and good fifty pounds of muscles ahead. Still, in the old days, I was capable of taking a man down like Pick before you could say sex. But those days are long gone, and here on this planet, what the fuck do I know?

One of them steps a bit away and howls.

“He’s calling his friends. Now that they know two of us might be too much for them. He’s calling for help,” I say, getting madder by each millisecond.

Then I drop my rucksack down, pick Zan’s spear, and attack before they know what is happening.