I woke up not dead, which was great. However, my body was a mess, and my health bar was most of the way gone. When I pulled my stats, I saw I had one more HP. All of my bleed debuffs were gone, but I had stamina debuffs which I learned would go away after I ate, and I had health recovered debuffs that would go away once I got food and rest in me. They would improve as well if I was able to treat the wound. Lastly, I had a movement debuff, or at least that is what I took the icon of a limping man.

I slowly stood where I was. The sun hadn’t moved very far, and so I knew I had time to make it home before it got dark. The thing was, I was messed up, and I didn’t know if I was going to live long enough to make it home. Nor did I think I would be able to make the climb around the ravine. The last thing, I needed to find a geson before I was healed because that would be it.

I gathered my pack and reclaimed my spear, and headed over to a rather large tree. I wanted to see if I could get up into it to recover. I had brought a little bit of food with me, and I saw some leaves that my skills were telling me would help me recover. So there was a chance that I was going to pull out of this.

It took me the better part of an hour to limp around and get the leaves that I felt would help me heal. I packed them in and around my wounds, binding them on with some thin vines that I found. Then I climbed ever so slowly up into a great big tree. Once I pulled myself up, I got as comfortable as I could and started to eat the little bit of food I had.

Two hours later, my health had climbed back up to being full, and my stamina debuffs were gone. However, the limping was still something there, and it had gained a 2d timer. So my guess was that it was going to be 2 days that I was slow. I was far from happy about that, as it meant that for the next couple of days, anywhere I went, I was going to be easy pickings.

I settled in for the night as best as I could.

By your actions today

You have increased your level in

Spear

Survivial

Tae-kown-do

I was back in the jerk’s study. I was unable to move at all except for my eyes, which took in everything in there again. The fire was behind him as last time, and the shelves looked like they had been cleaned some. Most of the trinkets were gone. A grandfather clock was on the wall to my left, his right with a slow, steady click. Sam himself looked less arrogant and snooty and more mildly angry. He was filling out by hand what looked like forms, and there were stacks of them that he was working on. I just stood there since I couldn’t move. The clock was just clicking. It was almost a clank and less of a click. Every second click… Click… Click… Just standing there watching the pendulum swing back and forth as it caused the gears to click. I could hear his quill scratching on the paper as he wrote scratch click scratch, scratch click. I wanted to yell at him, and I wanted to bash the stupid clock. Digital clocks were great; this thing was killing me.

While I knew that I lacked patience and since I came to the new world, everything has been go go go. I also knew that he took three hours before he looked up at me and answered the question I asked. Three hours of Click click click click click. Three hours of watching him fill out paperwork and never get anywhere. I hate paperwork, and that was part of why I was so stressed at my job. They made up paperwork to do just because they liked to control people. Just like Sam and his click!

Sam finally looked up at me. He drew a deep breath in that lasted three clicks and released it in a sigh that sounded like pure hate. “Arn, to use the Necklace of Cores you must feed your Necklace and then command it to create a core. Now go away you have wasted enough of my time today,” Sam said as he waved a dismissive hand.

I slept poorly because of both visiting Sam and because I was in a tree. I kept worrying that I was going to fall out or that something would come along and try to eat me.

When I woke up, I was stiff and mad. I wasn’t one that tended to get songs stuck in my head throughout life. It didn’t happen much with me, likely because I couldn’t remember lyrics very well at all. But that morning, when I woke up, I did have something stuck in my head. Click… Click… Click… It almost sounded like I was still in that stupid office.

I was still not happy with the answer that I got from Sam. It was uncalled for to not fill in the implied question and only answer the explicit question. Sure feed my necklace, whatever that meant. Yeah, I would end up asking him how to feed it. Which I’m sure would be missing something, and then I’d get to ask him yet another question. He had the gall to say that I was wasting his time when he could’ve just answered my question directly the first time and not made me come back again.

Yesterday I was tired all day, and then today, it seemed like I was tired again when I woke up. Granted, this was the second day in a row that I woke up after getting my butt kicked the day before. But, I was grateful to be alive but hurting now that I was moving.

I got out of the tree and headed home using my spear as a walking stick. I got nothing out of the fight yesterday as I was almost dead when it was over, and the dogs were gone now. So something had come at night and cleared them out. Which was all things to be considered kind of scary to think.

When I got back, I was even more sore. My limping had made my back hurt and so climbing back up to my lean-to wasn’t easy at all. I spent the rest of the day recovering the best I could. Finally, I got washed off ate from my meager supplies.

I was beaten and worn down. In the past few days since I came to this world, I had been attacked by giant bugs, dogs twice, an evil burning raccoon, and chased by a wolf that looked like it would fall apart. This place was a mess. Add to that the whole day I got this stupid click click click in my head.

The following day when I woke up, my leg was feeling better. My timer was down to one day, so I wasn’t too worried. There were things that I could do where I didn’t have to climb down. I had tools to make that just took time to do. First, though, It was time for me to have that egg that I found.

I pulled the egg out and set it by the stove, and started up my fire. The rocket stove didn’t take much time to heat up as it was a small contained fire. As I reached for the egg to crack it, I saw that it moved on its own. It fell over, and then I heard it crack. I saw it shake again and a crack formed. My breakfast was hatching, and there wasn’t a thing I could do. I should’ve known that things were too easy when I found the egg.

I backed up a little to watch, not knowing what type of animal would come from an egg this big. But, heck, I had magic, so this could be anything… The egg rocked again, and then I saw a section of the egg break out.

Then I saw a claw, no, not a paw, a claw all scaly and sharp. Then it went back in then; this little snout with a huge egg tooth bashed the eggshell making more pieces fall out. I watched as my breakfast turned into a black, gray lizard about the size of a six-week-old kitten. It was all gooey and dripping with egg on it. It looked up at me, and I heard this cute little squeak like it was trying to bark or roar.

I heard a hiss from it, and it bit into its eggshell. So I sat there for the next few minutes as I watched this little lizard eat its shell and then start to lick itself clean like you would see a cat do.

After about ten minutes, it stood on its own, turned towards me, and jumped. I fell back off the rock that I was sitting on as this cute little monster started to nip at me and try to crawl up. I couldn’t tell if it was attacking me or trying to get in my lap.

I stood up and took a step away, and it pounced on my foot, biting at my toes until I picked it up. I held it up about head height with one hand in the middle of its belly and my pointer finger under its chin so that it couldn’t bite. The scales were surprisingly soft, almost like fur, and when I looked at its eyes, I saw that they were little bulbs on the side of its oversized head, each moving in different directions.

As I was looking at it, I noticed the black and gray scales were changing to match my tan arm and my brown fur tunic. The lizard turned its head slightly, and one eye looked at me and got bigger. Then the mouth turned to a smile, which I thought was both cute and odd.

It was a sly smile, almost smug like the little one knew some tremendous and funny secret. It then snapped its mouth open and licked my hand. Between that and the pop-up that jumped in my vision, I fumbled and dropped the lizard on the ground, where it hissed and pounced on my foot as a kitten would.

Ropola Hatchling has bonded with you

Care for your bonded to increase bond.

Bonded Stats added

“Crap!” I yelled as I jumped back with both feet. “That hurt!”

I looked down, and my big toe had blood coming out of it, and the Ropola seemed ready to jump on me again. Once again, I picked it up, and this time I treated it like a kitten and started to pet its head. I sat back down on the rock and heard it start to purr just like a cat. I pulled or, more correctly, tried to pull up its stats but couldn’t, so I pulled mine and saw a tab for its stats, but it was grayed out also saw another pop up that showed up asking for a name for my bonded.

I looked back down at my new lizard and asked, “What should I name you, little one?” The lizard just looked at me, and slow blinked its quarter-sized eye. When I say slow blink, I meant it was one of those that took two seconds to close, held for half a second, and then it sighed at me before opening its eyes and looked back at me. I knew people who didn’t have as much sass in a blink as this little one.

I sat staring at the lizard’s eye and found that I was losing the staring contest for what felt like a good two minutes before it gave me yet another slow petty blink.

“Well, that settles it,” I happily said. I smiled back at the lizard and filled in the name prompt.