"What do you mean he vanished," Thomas said. "Was he another player?"

"I don't think so," Loran replied. He was pale and sweating. "It was the way he was dressed and... He disappeared. Right in front of me."

"He was tanned and had strange clothes. And... A knife, a big knife," Loran said. He was slowly catching his breath, but Crow could still not understand why he was so shaken.

"Maybe he found it in the city," Thomas said.

Loran was shaking his head before he had finished. "It was too good, everything about him. And he just smiled and went invisible when he saw me!"

"What was he doing there?" Crow wondered. He still thought it might be a player, but finding a knife, invisibility spell and making it out here this quickly? "Maybe it was an npc?"

"He picked up something from the slime that we left behind. We should have checked more carefully." Loran was pacing now.

Crow still didn't see what had rattled him so. Perhaps he just had weak nerves. "He didn't do anything bad then. We left it behind after all. We should just press on and try to level up more."

"I will go and look," Thomas said and hurried away before Crow could react.

"Are we really not going to get any food today? I'm getting hungry," Mel said.

Crow knew the question would have risen sooner or later. "When you start doing things like foraging for food and firewood you get stuck doing those things. They take a lot of time at level one, which is why we should level as fast as possible. I'm not familiar with the skills, but we should get a lot stronger in a few levels." Or so he hoped. He was getting hungry too, and they had no waterskins, so they couldn't stray that far from the river. They wouldn't get lost either. The others didn't look convinced.

They waited for Thomas for a while and it didn't take long for him to return. "Let's press on then," he said cheerily and started walking along the river, which had narrowed down now for some reason to maybe five paces across as it wound its way through the grassland.

"Did you find your mystery man?" Crow asked.

"Nope, not even a track."

Crow grunted. "Maybe a complex NPC." Those could be worth the time it took to figure them out. Maybe he could point out some plants that were edible for instance.

They walked in silence, taking in all the strange new sights, sounds and smells. It had grown a little cooler, but the warmth still made Crow sweat. The feeling that more strange creatures might come crashing through the brush intensified. Blue flowers with thick stalks rose from the depths of the river and they heard the occasional splash from fish, but no one managed to see what lurked beneath the surface. Finally, they crested a rise which also marked the end of the forest and looked out over a sea of slime.

There were three groups of similar size to the first one and it sure was a sight to see all of them surging around in the little valley. The river they had been following took off to the right sharply to avoid the hill up ahead, but maybe they didn't need to go farther.

"We should have brought more spears," Mel said laconically.

"Now we can level up in no time," Thomas said with a grin. "Let's get started."

Crow wasn't so sure. These were low-level monsters. For how many levels would they give experience? He wondered briefly how experienced the others were. Thomas was obviously a beginner, and Loran as well, but Mel hadn't given much of an indication. He glanced briefly at her. She seemed composed no matter what she did. Now she was examining the slimes with no more surprise than if they had been a flock of sheep, but then, Thomas had handled the slimes fearlessly.

The number of slimes made it harder to isolate a single one, but they obviously weren't clever enough to employ any tactics, so it was just a matter of time before they caught one. With so many slimes around it also meant that they had to run back occasionally to avoid being poisoned. Thomas got hit despite their caution, and so did Crow, and it stung like hell, even if it had just been a few drops. The sun was standing low in the sky, but it still worked them over pitilessly from a cloudless sky, and every little surge of air felt like a blessing. They kept taking turns with the spear, and soon they discovered that they couldn't get past level three. Some slimes were larger than others and were presumably higher level, but they gave up with little more than half of the slimes down.

Crow was drenched in his own sweat, and his breath came raggedly. He wasn't the only one who was tired. They must have been at it for an hour now, but they had all leveled up to three. He really needed to find a good skill now to make up for the slow leveling. What had Thomas said? At the bottom of the agility stack, he had found the sprint skill. He brought up the stat screen again and this time he searched more carefully. There was nothing at the agility stack, but beneath intelligence he found... Something. A shield? No, more flexible than that. It could be shaped somehow, he was sure. A warm sensation rose from the bottom of the stack of spirit when he honed in on it. A heal? Self-heal, he corrected. He kept searching, but nothing more made its presence known.

"Crow!"

The warning came too late.

Something splashed against his leg and a familiar burning sensation worked its way up his thigh. Crow screamed and staggered away from the offending sludge. The others came quickly to the rescue and drew it away, but the damage had been done. His right leg felt like it was about to melt away, and he sat down heavily. He groaned, well aware that the first scream hadn't been very manly. He was always so careful, and here he got hit by a low-level mob. The stat screen had nearly blocked all his vision, he should have been more careful.

"I won't let you be our leader if you keep doing dumb things like that," Mel said from his right side. She was like a wisp, suddenly just appearing without being seen first. "Now stand up and stop whimpering. Loran handled it alot better than you."

"I was just resting," Crow muttered. He leaned forward onto his good leg and barely managed to get up with the help of his hands all the while clenching his teeth.

"It gets easier," Loran said, but he had obviously just lost some respect for Crow.

"Shouldn't you be used to this?" Thomas asked. "You are a pro aren't you?"

Crow was, and it didn't make things feel better right now. There were plenty of prizes to be had in some games and he had somehow gotten a little too comfortable in his home, having put on a few pounds. or fifty more the like.

"How did you know?"

Thomas shrugged. "Just had a feeling."

"Only masochists plays with the pain threshold at 100%," Crow said. Suddenly he remembered what he had seen just before he had been assaulted. "I saw a self-heal, and some sort of malleable shield. Beneath the spirit and intelligence stacks."

"Shield?" Thomas asked, eyes gleaming.

"Not like that," Crow said. "Have you seen any new skills?"

"One that makes me tougher for a while. Strength-based."

"But how come--" Crow began. Of course. Intelligence and spirit, the only stats that exceeded ten for him. He told the others as much.

"So that's how it works," George said. "I thought they were just difficult to see. Constitution gives you a steady run at high speed, agility a sprint."

Crow nodded, but none of them sounded like something that might catch food. He looked over at Mel.

"No," she said flatly. "I made my pick. I want the heal."

Crow glanced down at his leg and then at the others. "Anyone gonna pick the shield-thingy?"

"I picked sprint," George said. "I haven't tried it yet though. He looked over at Thomas who caught the meaning.

"Race you to the other side?" he said with a smile.

They made a big show of it, George even bending over with his bony frame like an olympic sprinter.

"Wait, how do you activate it?" Thomas asked.

George had apparently found out and took off with great strides down the little valley. Or more like one great stride that ended with an "Oof", as he fell on his face.

Thomas laughed and started running slowly down the hill. Halfway something happened because his stride grew longer and he ran nimbly, at least until he slipped in a puddle of goo and fell over.

"At least you got cleaner," Mel shouted as they laughed at poor Thomas.

"You wanted that skill because you think you can catch food with it, didn't you?" Mel said.

Crow nodded slowly and tried not to grimace at the throbbing in his leg. The more you focused on the skill the more it showed you, and he had seen some sort of invisible barrier. Something that could potentially be used to catch food. He brought up the stat screen again, and after a last longing glance toward the self-heal, picked the barrier. He limped over to the forest's edge where the clucking of the river could be heard. At least he should be safe here.

He sat down on the slope and turned his gaze inward, or rather, to observe his own mind in a way he hadn't before. It came so naturally that he hadn't questioned it before, but now he was starting to wonder. Something seemed intrinsically different with how he viewed himself. How had they managed something like that? He shook his head slightly and brought his mind back to the task. It was like his mind itself had learned how to form it somehow.

He raised his hand, palm up, and focused on the skill. It appeared over his hand. He felt it, even though it was nearly invisible, but it remained pitifully small, like an invisible baseball in his hand. Keeping it steady proved to be a challenge as well, but he kept struggling to maintain it, and after a while, it steadied. So there was room for training at least. He sat there and worked with it for a while, then when the sphere had grown to the size of a football, he allowed himself some rest and walked toward the river. Catching fish would be the best bet, but how was he supposed to--

"...didn't understand a thing of what he--"

Thomas and Mel turned to stare at him. Guiltily.

Crow hadn't heard anything interesting, but it seemed they thought so.