Mike was abruptly awakened as a message blared across his consciousness.

[Warning: Due to assimilation difficulties, you have been classified as a monster. Others will try to hunt you for experience. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience.]

Panic started to creep in, as he was unable to get the strange text out of his field of vision. Thankfully, after a few more seconds, the message slowly dissipated, and he was left wondering what had caused such a weird hallucination. He had been quite sure that the mushrooms he had cooked with his roast and wild onions had been the same ones depicted in his copy of “How to Survive in Montana: Plants and Wildlife”. Admittedly, the book had seen better days. Multiple river crossings and several unexpected downpours meant that the book’s coloring could sometimes be a bit questionable.

Even with a bad trip, Mike was happy he was out here, surviving on his own. After growing up in a more rural town and then going straight from High School into the Navy Seals, he had never been much of a techy guy. And while the world had continued to become more technologically advanced, he had always felt that a simple life, where his progress could be visualized and his body utilized, brought much more comfort at the end of the day than any amount of technology ever could. At 65, it almost seemed too late to catch up to technology even if he wanted to. This trip to Montana had seemed like the only thing he could do to get away from it all and keep honing the skills he had worked so hard to learn.

“Well, I should probably get back to sleep. I might be waking up sooner than I want to if those mushrooms decide to express themselves in other ways,” Mike thought, even as he rolled over and began dreaming about the many possibilities of russet potatoes, carrots, a rump roast, and some basic seasonings. One thing was for certain, Seal training had made falling asleep quick and efficient.

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Mike rolled off of his cot later than he would have expected the following morning and began putting breakfast together–some quail eggs and day-old bread made from acorn flour. Delicious. It was astounding that so few people wanted to try his acorn bread back home. It wasn’t until about half-way through making breakfast that he realized something: his neck didn’t hurt at all. The motorcycle accident that had split him from navel to neck and armpit to armpit had only been the start of his injuries. Once he was no longer on active duty, he had gone to university and joined the rugby team. A few rough tackles in addition to the motorcycle accident had been enough to keep his neck hurting for the last 40 years.. But today he didn’t feel a thing.

The next shock came when he went to grab his ax and the following notification appeared:

Dayton Ax

Quality: Crude

Durability: Low

Rarity: Common

Attributes: Rebound-this poorly made ax has a 1% chance to rebound and hit the bearer in the face. Percent chance increased with a decrease in the Luck stat.

Upon seeing this display, Mike immediately started forcefully expelling the contents of his stomach, all the while ruminating on how the mushrooms could still be affecting him 6 hours later. While not an expert on poisons, he knew enough to know that getting the poison out of his system was the first step to surviving.

Seconds later, the notification disappeared, but Mike wasn’t taking any chances. Finally, with his stomach now completely empty, he chanced another glance at his trusty ax and was relieved when no more text was floating in his vision.

“Stupid mushrooms… Not even the decency to properly categorize my ax. I put all my love and attention into restoring it, even going so far as to hand carve this new handle from oak. I guess not even drug trips appreciate old fashioned hard work these-”

Mike nearly keeled over when yet another notification popped up as he reached to pick up his trusty felling ax:

Felling Ax

Quality: Low

Durability: Mid

Rarity: Common

Attributes: None

Fighting back panic, he quickly gathered the bare essentials as he left camp and headed straight for the nearest town. It usually took him almost two full days of hiking, and he just hoped he would be able to survive the trip.

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Six hours blurred past before Mike’s training caught up to him. He wasn’t sweaty, his stomach didn’t hurt–in fact he was quite hungry and could go for some homemade biscuits and gravy right now–and aside from energy loss caused by rushing into a long hike before finishing his breakfast, he wasn’t feeling any amount of extra fatigue. On top of all of that, his bum leg hadn’t acted up once during the last six hours and he was making faster time than he normally would. Probably those mushrooms wouldn’t kill him, although he was still certain that they hadn’t worn off. Notifications had assaulted his field of vision numerous times over the last six hours, and he was almost getting used to them.

With the extra speed he could muster due to both legs being functioning, he realized he was already at the halfway point into town–cutting his usual time in half. At this point, he figured he should probably go the rest of the way. Even if those mushrooms wouldn’t kill him, he should still see a doctor or get some medicine or something. Besides, he had been trying to justify the trip into town for a while now–while he wasn’t too savvy with most technology, he had been eyeing that solar powered crockpot for a while now, after all, dutch oven roast was second only to a tender crockpot roast, lightly salted and slowly cooked for a full 6 hours.

Mike’s attention was drawn to the view in front of him as he ascended the far side of the mountain pass. From here, he could see the rolling hills stretched out in front of him that would eventually give way to civilization, a highway, and finally the town. Looking back over his shoulder, he was again amazed how far he had come in the last six hours. He was camped in a very pleasant sort of valley that only the most devoted nature enthusiasts would enter, and he had not only left that valley, but traversed the larger valley and this mountain pass in that time. The only time he could remember covering ground this quickly had been back in ‘Nam in the mid 70s, and he had had much more incentive to move quickly then with the 500 angry Vietnamese soldiers chasing him pell-mell through the jungles.

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No longer in a state of panic, the duration of the trip had Mike learning some interesting things about his current mental state. For whatever reason, only certain items caused text to appear in his field of vision. What’s more, he had noticed that he only saw the text once for each item. By far, the weirdest hallucination had been prompted by that Whitebark Pine Tree. He had recognized the tree from his book, and had been surprised when it had been correctly identified in the strange floating text–furthermore, both the book and the hallucination had used the same name for the small tree, and both had called it rare. He had been so focused on the weirdness of their agreement, that he had stumbled over a small root. On instinct, he tucked his shoulder and rolled back to his feet. That is when things had really gotten strange:

[Congratulations! You have learned the skill Tumble.

+1 to Strength, Toughness, and Dexterity.

It takes a lot to successfully make a mistake look purposeful.

Continue training hard to develop even more skills]

What’s more, following this message, he felt like he actually was just a hair stronger and moved slightly easier while hiking.

As Mike approached the town, a few drastic changes stood out to him. Usually a very quiet, rural community, the town had apparently grown exponentially since he had last been here. It seemed people were everywhere, and nearly all of them had swords and other dated weaponry on open display about their person. Although usually very interested in weaponry, he rolled his eyes at the abysmal cultists, how medieval festivals had grown so large was totally beyond him. While he had actually specialized in the crossbow as a Seal (when guns weren’t available), he had a hard time understanding why people would want to sword fight when they could practice real life-saving skills, like axe crafting. Now there was a perfectly suitable skill that everyone would need during the apocalypse.

His annoyance only mounted as he made his way to his favorite store in town, ‘Bart’s Food, Clothes, and Everything Else’, it seemed that everyone was giving him strange looks, like they wanted to fight him for some reason. One punk teenager even straightened up from the wall he was leaning on and fingered his sword hilt as he passed. Hopefully Bart, the storekeeper, could give him some idea of what was going on.

His vision swam with white text as he entered the store. It seemed every item in the store was screaming at him in that strange white text. He was used to migraines from his neck injury, but this was something else. It took several seconds for his head to calm down, and it was through watery eyes that Mike examined the inside of the store.

It seemed Bart wanted to appeal to the festival going on in town–the cereal aisle now held basic baking ingredients, the gun wall displayed only very crude swords, knives, bows and armor, and the usual camping gear was replaced with some freshly cured animal hides. Weird. Apparently these cultists took things very seriously. Alarm was suddenly evident on his face as he rushed towards the back corner of the store. His shoulders slumped in defeat as the truth stared him in the face: the solar powered crock pot was gone too.

“Hopefully Bart just put it in the back of the store for now,” he thought, ever trying to be the optimist his Mother had tried to raise, “I’ll go talk to him now”.

Even the front desk had been replaced, now a sturdy oak table, which Mike could definitely appreciate. Fine oak was hard to come by and it was both strong and weathered well. Yes, he hoped to have a nice oak table like that one day–of course, he would make his table himself. That was, after all, the only way to get anything decent these days.

“Bart, it is good to see you my friend,” Mike said as he made his way up to the table.

“Mike, always… a… pleasure to see you” Mike couldn’t help miss how Bart had stumbled over his sentence or the fact that Bart was looking at him in the same way that the people on the street had. This had to just be the mushrooms, Bart had always been good people. Surely he would help him out in this instance.

So Mike decided to start at the beginning, “Last night I was craving deer rump roast with some onions and mushrooms, which is really quite easy to do. You take a roast…”, and he began telling him everything. Bart didn’t seem to be as enthralled as he usually was by his recipe, but he did seem to perk up when Mike mentioned the notification that he was a monster, which only solidified that Mike’s choice to talk to him was correct. About the time he was talking through his breakfast recipe, Bart accidentally knocked a bag of coins off the desk. This only muffled Mike’s description of how to cook the perfect egg while he bent over to help tidy up.

It was his training that saved him in the end. Mike had felt that alarm bell go off many times in many different situations, and he allowed his instincts to take over. He slid his left shoulder forward and sideways while lifting his left palm to deflect Bart’s wrist, just two inches below the hilt of a dagger that was aiming straight for his upper left back. It was with some dismay that he realized his right hand was also acting on muscle memory, it had slipped his dayton ax from its loop at his side and he watched in horror as it approached the space right between Bart’s eyes.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

It was a three-way tie for what grabbed Mike’s attention only a split second later. On the one hand, he felt a euphoric feeling and a notification popped up:

[Congratulations on your first kill. +100 Exp]

[Congrations! Level 2 reached!

As a monster, you receive 3 stat points to assign per level.

Although your luck score will never be altered]

On the other hand, his eyes were watering, his head hurt, and his nose was most certainly broken. Finally, Bart’s face was in even worse shape than his face.

Mike’s adrenaline calmed brain tried to piece everything together. Based on the front of the ax blade and, well, Bart, he had killed Bart. Based on the back half of the ax blade, it had somehow rebounded and hit him in the face, probably leading to his broken nose. There was no way that anyone was going to believe that he had fought back only in self defense since this had happened in Bart’s store, so he needed to get out of there as soon as possible. Luckily, it seemed Bart had taken down all the camera’s thanks to the medieval festival in town. Walking to the front door, he moved a bucket of iron ingots in front of it with the side of his foot, hopefully that would prevent anyone from entering in the next few minutes. He then walked back over to the front counter and bent down to grab hold of Bart’s body, causing his left shoulder to scream in pain. It was only then that he noticed that Bart hadn’t completely missed him with the sneak attack. It wasn’t a life threatening wound, but it was going to make using that arm hard.

After dragging the body around the corner and wiping his face and ax off with a stray rawhide shirt, Mike grabbed some various herbs he recognized as medicinal for his arm and left through the back door, hopefully, no one would remember they had seen him.