A light splashing sound flitted into Mike’s ears as he slowly woke from his medicated sleep. Sunlight filtered through the branches above him, gently warming his face.

“What a pleasant morning” he thought to himself, deeply inhaling the morning air. The foul smell that permeated his lungs roused him completely.

“Not again!” He screamed as he used his axes and enhanced strength to instantly break free of the burrow that he had collapsed in the night before. All other thoughts erased as he methodically checked his person to make sure he wasn’t wet anywhere, not caring that the culprit ran screaming towards the village. Nothing was more important than verifying his cleanliness at that moment.

Realizing that the man may give away his location, he made a split second decision and took off after him. The man still hadn’t rounded the corner of the store when Mike got to the edge of the treeline and he threw two axes at the fleeing form. As he stepped forward to throw the axes, his foot landed in a previously unnoticed pothole and his body flung forward, his head careening towards the ground. His body twisted unnaturally at the last second and he somehow ended up rolling out of it, back onto his feet and right past the town border.

“I guess this is a sign” he said aloud, and made a break for the store.

Not fully adjusted to his own strength, the back door was ripped off its hinges, and he flung it aside as he ran through the now empty hole in the wall. He rounded the corner to the merchandise area and was shocked to find that the store was packed with customers. A line 10 feet deep went out the front door, at the front of which was a kiosk where people were paying for their items, the cacophony of voices fading as everyone stared at him. What are the odds the store would be full when Bart was currently in respawn?

Seizing the quiet moment, Mike raised his hands in what he hoped was a peaceful motion. “I just need some garlic… and maybe some chives, potato sprouts and butter if it is in stock, then I will be on my way.” he said, projecting a voice that was far more confident than he felt, as he slowly sidled towards where the plants had been kept on his last visit.

“Let’s soak him!” a man yelled, ending the awkward moments and causing everyone to attack at once.

A myriad of itchy spots on his skin notified him of the nearest town members strikes and he lept backwards, not caring that his sturdy body knocked over neighboring shelves in his haste to get away.

“I guess I will try back later!” he called over his shoulder as he ran out the backdoor and into the forest.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Mike was now easily three times as fast as the majority of his pursuers and twice as fast as the fastest of them, so after only 20 minutes of running, he stopped to have a bite to eat. He had saved quite a bit of the buffalo, but his endeavors the last few days, combined with a penchant for snacking as he wandered aimlessly around the edges of the town, had led to a drastic decrease in his meat supply. The thought of going back on a vegetarian diet churned his stomach.

“I guess I will be going back there tonight.” he absentmindedly said aloud. “Certainly that situation was less precarious than being chased by a herd of buffalo.”

Deciding that he wasn’t up to the task of hunting his pursuers, he instead chose to begin training Hardened Skin. He was itching to see what skill ability he would get from getting Dodge up to level 3.

Surprisingly, the axes didn’t ricochet as often as they used too, and even though he was able to evade every single rebound, it took him two hours to get the last 50 points for Dodge.

[Congratulations! You have leveled up the skill Dodge.

+2 to Dexterity]

[Congratulations! New skill ability unlocked: Steps of the Wind

For 10 seconds, triple your Dexterity. Followed by 10 seconds of decreased Dexterity

Decreased Dexterity amount determined by Luck score.

Cooldown: 10 minutes]

Unable to hold himself back, he used the ability and took off like a rocket… for about 2 seconds, at which point he overcorrected to avoid a tree branch and found himself skidding to a halt. As he lay with his mouth full of dirt, he couldn’t help but try to estimate his speed. An average human pre-System could sprint at about 15 miles per hour, and that was equivalent to a person with about 10 Dexterity in this world. With his Dexterity now at 120, he figured he was going around 180 miles per hour. He marveled at the ability and the way Dexterity enabled him to both go faster and have better coordination. True, he had just dug a 10 foot furrow in the ground with his body, but he had avoided the branch, something he definitely wouldn’t be able to do normally at that speed. And he could feel that the Dexterity would make all of his movements faster, not just running. It would take some getting used to, but this skill would definitely come in handy.

When he tried to get up, he found that he couldn’t quite get his hands to cooperate. Checking his Character Sheet, he found that his Dexterity had plummeted all the way to 4. That didn’t make any sense. He got an increase of 3 times but a decrease of ten times? Then again, it was based on his Luck, just like every other Skill Ability he had so far. The 10 seconds quickly wore off and he was able to stand back up. Training was going to be fun today.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

A few hours later, Mike took a break to look at the requirements of other skills. He was still having a hard time getting hit by his rebounds now, which was unfortunate. He had activated Footsteps of the Wind every time it came off of cooldown and was getting closer to being able to use the full 10 seconds, but he was still having a hard time thinking fast enough to keep up with himself. He had learned that if he timed his axes to hit a tree right as the skill wore off, it resulted in a rebound every time, and with his low dexterity, he had no way of dodging it.

This got him thinking about how his attributes worked in tandem together. He knew that Toughness and Strength led to endurance, but all of the other combinations were a little bit fuzzy still. What he knew for sure was that after making Dexterity much higher than his Strength in the fight with Fen, he very rarely got a rebound from his ax. Conversely, when Footsteps of the Wind wore off and his Strength was way higher than Dexterity, he got a rebound every time. Was it possible that somehow the ratio between Strength and Dexterity determined his control? The ax description said it was based on Luck, but maybe there was more to it than that. It made sense in a roundabout way when he philosophized about it, but he didn’t know for certain. He also couldn’t help but wonder if the disparity between his Intelligence and Dexterity was causing his lack of control when he was moving at top speed–he definitely felt that it was his brain and not his body holding him back.

He had no way to prove his theories, but he liked the idea of staying well rounded and decided he would keep working up his attributes other than Dexterity for the next few levels.

Changing gears, he went over the next skills he wanted to train, and tried to format them so they would be easier for him to remember in the future. With some finagling, he had even managed to make his Dodge and Hardened Skin counters count in the same direction, which would make his life much less confusing.

Ability/Skill Ability Level Requirements:

Dodge: 1/10000 dodges

Hardened Skin: 4700/10000 hits by a blunt object

Ax Throwing: 55/1000 kills

Tumble: Fall from 10 feet on accident and recover

Beast of Burden: 10000 pounds 3/100 miles

First Aid: Amputate a limb

Damage Premonition: Raise Damage Mental Acuity

Smithing: Create a tool with a metal better than steel or of Apprentice Quality and High Durability

Hands of Healing: 0/10 life threatening injuries healed

Unflinching Meteor: 0/10 kills

True Shot: 1/10 kills

Steps of the Wind: Break 200 Dexterity

Tracking: Follow a trail for 10 miles

Foraging: Discover a new edible

Tinkering: Creative and useful piece of technology that enables you to advance

Pottery: Create a vessel of Apprentice Quality and High Durability

Gardening: Manage a garden that feeds 1000 individuals

Smelting: Refine your methods of separating metal from rock

He couldn’t help but stare at the impressively long list of things he could work on. Very few of these things had required much time to learn, having already known many of the skills before the System but almost all of them would take serious time to increase. He would have to bring his base Dexterity up 27 points to get the next Footsteps of the Wind. It was really hard to get kills in Unflinching Meteor, being that it made him immobile, and he didn’t plan on amputating a limb anytime soon.

Still, he felt that he needed to keep training, and for now, training Hardened Skin and Dodge, which had been his defaults up to this point, seemed out of the question. Especially with the infrequent rebounds he was experiencing of late. He couldn’t help but eye Tumble. It gave him 3 stat points per level, and it was just one level shy of giving him another Skill Ability. He wasn’t sure that he was ready for any more yet though, as he still hadn’t mastered his current skill set. The other one that seemed to call to him was Beast of Burden, which would help decrease the gap between Strength and Dexterity. He couldn’t help but notice that carrying the buffalo the 30 miles back to his camp had given him 5 miles. So apparently carrying 1000 pounds 30 miles was the same as 10000 pounds 3 miles.

He suddenly realized that Footsteps of the Wind could potentially help him get easy levels on both Tumble and Beast of Burden.

“But where am I going to find another buffalo?”

…………………………………………………………………………………………

“Ok, the average density of Oak is somewhere around 65 lbs/cubic foot. Juniper is probably close to that” Mike rattled off, as his axes flashed through the air, trimming off branches and creating an area for his shoulders to fit into so that he could easily yoke the log.

“1000 pounds of buffalo was hard for me, and to get 1000 pounds of tree, the tree would need to be around 15 feet long, which may be unwieldy. Say I do 10 feet long, that means I would only need to carry this tree… 1537 miles. If I found a nice level space, and I managed to use Footsteps of the Wind without falling, I could do half a mile per use. I can use the skill once every 10 minutes, that means it would only take me… 512 hours of nonstop work.” his voice trailed off and his shoulders slumped. That wasn’t going to work.

Still, he was impressed with how easily he could now do unit conversions with his high Intelligence score. “I bet even a chemical engineer that spent his evening writing internet novels would have needed a calculator for that math before the System integration.”

After a few more minutes spent moping because he couldn’t easily grind this skill, especially in hilly Montana, he decided to move on to his next venture.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

Mike crouched near the edge of the gorge and couldn’t help but feel that there were many more hobgoblins here than there had been last time.

“What is the gestational term of these monsters?”

He successfully pushed away the image of his unwatched valley overflowing with the small creatures, and focused on the task at hand.

His plan was simple: activate Footsteps of the Wind and sprint along the edge of the gorge. With his luck, he was bound to trip on something and fall into the gorge. The fall was more than 10 feet, so it should count, and should he need to bail, he had Unflinching Meteor, which would likely not allow him to get the skill, but would prevent any serious injury.

Lowering himself to a sprinter’s stance, he pushed off his back leg and exploded forward, activating Footsteps of the Wind. The gorge became a blur of brown and green as he flew across the upper edge of its quarter mile length and continued past it into the forest, where he promptly tripped on a root and flew through the air. This may take a few tries before he was lucky enough to be unlucky at the right moment.