I walked back the way I'd come just two days ago. I was on the lookout for a way up and still a little on edge about the wild dogs. I knew there was no way in this section of the river to cross, but I wasn't sure if the dogs would go down the river and then try to come back up this way.

Hearing the dogs close by made me extra careful to check for ways across the river. What I liked was that in this area, the river was both deep and swift. There were large rocks that I could climb but required hands to move up to, and no way to make it all the way across.

It was about thirty minutes from my new home when I saw a passable ascent on my side of the river. It looked like I could pick my way up and out of the steep valley. The ascent angled downstream, which was why I missed it before. The path looked like it wouldn’t need climbing, as I saw animal tracks.

My tracking skill kicked in, and I felt that the tracks I was looking at belonged to a two-foot-tall hairy goat-type creature. It was an odd feeling to know that geson are one-horned long-haired mountain goats with sharp canine teeth and like to hunt small rodents.

I chucked dryly and said, “Miniature carnivorous goat unicorns. Sounds fun.”

As I started to track the geson, I saw that it moved up the main game trail. I was on the path for a good thirty minutes, slowly going up while still heading downstream. I wasn't genuinely tracking at this point since I was just scouting the area. I should've been tracking as I'd have realized that there were more than one set of tracks and that they were new.

However, I learned about the tracks the hard way. That being, I took a horn to the right calf. The horn pierced into the muscle from outside of my leg and went in till its head slammed into my muscle. The surprise attack dropped me to the ground and also caused the geson that gored me to fall.

I seemed to have trapped its horn inside my leg, which was both a good thing and an excruciating one. I was down and so dropped my spear since I was too close to use it anyway. I was screaming in both rage and pain. Didn’t even know what all was coming out of my mouth. Then I swung my left hand over my body and hit the goat on the head with a hammer fist which was both painful and ineffective. My hand bounced off the geson head as it struggled to get up. Its head turned sideways because of how I landed, and so as it pulled, it yanked more flesh out of me.

I was in a bad place with worse things happening to me, and I needed somehow to keep from bleeding out from a horn. So I stood up as soon as the geson pulled its head back. It looked confused, so perhaps the hammer fist rattled it a bit.

It was then that I saw the second one running at me. As I was trying to figure out how to get out of the way, it ran the first one through from the side. I was shocked that it took out the other evil thing and not me.

The first one being down was good, but the one that made the kill got all shimmery silver and backed up looking at me. My heart sank, this guy just leveled up from the kill, and now it was looking at me. I would be its next one. A quick check of my health confirmed that I was at 50% with a bleed icon as well. My leg had a hole from a two-inch horn, and now I'd this other one.

As the second geson charged me with its stubby legs, I dove and rolled to my spear. I came up and around with the spear held, ready to see the tiny aggressive hunter coming back around to finish me off. My right leg gave out which dropped me to my knee.

My spear angle changed as I went down and dropped fast enough for it to scrape off the side of the geson's head and spear the back right leg. As the thing was only about two feet tall, that strike pinned it to the ground.

I was in pain, crying and yelling as I started looking for a way to finish this thing off. It was trying to pull itself up the spear shaft to get to me. Then I found a loose rock nearby and smashed its head in. I fell to the ground and wrapped my hands around the hole in my leg.

END OF COMBAT

You have survived to the end of combat with several foes able to cause you harm

4 damage taken bleeding!

I was panting hard, “Oh that hurt! Ain’t right for something that small to hurt so much!”

The bleed icon slowly blinked out of my vision, and my health bar stopped going down at about an eighth left. I looked down at the wound, and while I knew it should be deep and bad, it looked like a shallow gouge and not an impaling wound.

I looked around and my skills which had helped me in the past kicked in again as my breathing slowed down. I saw a plant that I felt should help keep infection away and speed up healing. I knew that I needed to chew it and pack it into the wound. I also saw another plant with large leaves that would be good to put on top of the paste of the other one, and it would keep things from getting in.

As I was chewing the plant, I started to ask myself if any of this was smart. I was trusting in a skill called either survivalist or herbalism. Neither sounded much to me like being a medic, or a doctor. However, with some of the odd things I’d seen, they might work to save me. Once I got the paste into my leg and the other leaf over the paste, my red bar started to go up. It wasn’t fast, but it was filling up.

As I sat there thinking about how dumb I’d been knowing that I was on the same trail as a hunter, I wasn’t paying attention. I got the feeling from my skills again that I needed to get up and move before something else came around looking for food because of all the blood. I had planned on making a scouting trip but today turned into a fight and a hunt. So I grabbed up my kills and dropped them both in my pack. It was odd how heavy they were for such little guys.

Leaning on my spear, I hobbled my way back to my campsite. It ended up being painful and bloody to get back up to my landing. Even with the ladder, I still ended up reopening the hole in my leg, but it wasn’t too bad. When I got to the top, I could press it back down and stop it again, but my health bar stopped going up. I looked like I was almost full but not quite there.

After taking a few minutes to recover and drink water, I let my skills start up, which guided me on how to butcher the small game. As I was working on it, my mind wandered back to why the second one attacked the first. It made no sense to me until my skill brought me the memory of me being told that they always fight when they see each other. They are very territorial, and the males will attack each other over attacking other threats.

As I was peeling the skin off the meat I chucked a little, “If you weren’t so mean, I’d say you were cute, but that cuteness went out the door when you gored me. This world is out to kill me… I’m sure of it. I just got to do a better job at paying attention.”

If I were in a straight-up fight, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt, but I let myself get ambushed. That was something that I needed to change. I’d to make myself more aware of what was going on around me so that I’d be ready. With everything I’d been through, I needed to make sure that my home ledge was both secure and that I had a second way out. That second way out right now is looking like a pretty steep climb right up the cliff face, but if I could plan it out, then it might not be too bad.

By the time I was done with my kills, the sun was going down. I’d buried the parts that I couldn’t use because I lacked the other things I needed. I’d stretched out and scrapped the hides and was smoking the meat. It was a long day and one that, while I got injured, the whole day ended up being productive. I ended up with about thirty pounds of meat between the two gesons.

I climbed into bed as the sun was going down. That was something that I was getting used to. I wasn’t staying up late reading or playing a game. Once that sun was down, that was it, no more light and so no more activities.

By your actions today

You have increased your level in

Staff (level 5)

Herbalism (level 1)

New knowledge has been granted to you!

Fitness Training (level 5)

Tumbling (level 3)

Nice two more skills from Earth that I brought over with me. I guessed the falls and rolling got me tumbling, and the stretching and other calisthenics got me fitness training. I took a look at the new skills.

Fitness training, Skill Grouping non-combative:

Fitness training is the skill of working your body in ways to make it grow stronger. This skill as it levels will reduce stamina use for all physical activities and stacks with other stamina reducing skills. For these benefits this skill must be practiced at least every three days for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Tumbling Skill, Grouping non-combative:

Tumbling is the skill of jumping at the ground without getting hurt. As it levels it lets you fall without as much damage, lets you cover ground in a roll and even dive into rolls while picking up objects. As it levels, other ground movement opens up. This skill is a required skill for others and has sub skills.

That night I dreamed…

I was standing in Sam’s study. The room now had a fireplace behind the desk, which Sam set. I could smell the wood burning and could feel the warm air from that side of the room. Behind me, I felt cold, almost damp. Sam looked up at me from his desk like a principal about to give you three days of in-school suspension for shooting a spit wad at the class bully who took your lunch money the day before.

Then the jerk looked down at his desk and started to write. He used a quill and jar of ink along with sand to finish his work. I went to move to the chair to wait for him to speak, only to find that I couldn’t move. I felt peaceful waiting, so I just stood there. I don’t know how long he scratched at the documents, but to me, it seemed like forever.

When he spoke to me, it was in his nasally rude, better than you voice. It reminded me of Ben Stein with a stuffy nose. “Arn, Arn. Your necklace makes cores, after all it is the Necklace of Cores.”

I went to ask how it worked, but nothing came out of my mouth.

I woke up at dawn when the birds started singing as always.

“That man is a jerk! He knew I was asking what cores were and how it makes cores but he just answered the word for word question that I asked! I don’t know what I did to make him like this but I’m sure he is one of the most petty people I have ever talked to!” I yelled to no-one as I woke up.

I kept ranting, not even in full thoughts, just anger, “and I couldn’t move or speak. Sure it felt peaceful! I hated that!”

I activated my spell again. I felt my body force me to stand. My arms reached up above my head, and I yelled as loud as I could, “Oh great and mighty greeter Sam, I the lowly Arn beseech you to answer my question. How do I use the Necklace of Cores,” I asked. I then felt my knees start to buckle again, and my face made contact with the ash in my fire pit.

When I came to, I went to the river even before eating and washed my face off and my mouth out. I hated that the spell took me over so much and that it would drop me to the ground after it used me. I looked up and right and saw that the blue bar was once again empty and now filling.

“Got to get more mana I hate falling over,” I grumbled.

I was tired. As I checked my leg, the hole was gone, and my health was full. It looked like sleeping was just enough to put me over what I needed to heal up. This was all something that was kind of odd for me. To go from having a deep wound that was bleeding to being fully healed with only a light scar that looked like it was years old was amazing. I could just imagine that most of the people here looked great. No major scarring from something like this would mean that if acne was something here, it didn’t leave a big impact. I’d expect that sicknesses didn’t mess with people as much, either.

I started my day again, using the same routine as yesterday’s combat training, moving rocks, eating, then other projects. Once again, I would try to find out what was around me. This time I would be more careful. I knew that there were things out there that wanted to eat me, and so it meant that I needed to watch. I had heard the dogs again this morning, but they sounded further away.

I quickly made it downstream to my assent location and started to go back up. I was being careful to watch for new tracks and was happy that I didn’t find any as I got close to where I’d been attacked. I saw small tracks near the dried blood, but nothing that kicked my skills up to worry about.

It was a few minutes later that my game trail ended. I was looking at a washout. I could see the tracks of the geson that went up and around, but that path was all of two inches wide. Mountain goats were great at climbing, and geason were smaller so they could fit on an even smaller ledge.

I muttered, “I got to figure out a way to keep ‘em from getting to my ledge. I don’t want to wake up to getting gored by a little brute.”

It was just like any other run-off crevasse that I’d run into when hiking in North Carolina as a young man. The ground was loose, and I could see where the path had been. Unlike when I hit a crevasse, there was no going up and around; to my right, there was a steep rock face.

“Can’t go up so down it is.” I said with cheer.

When I was most of the way down, I noticed that a large bird had made a nest here as there was an egg that was at least as big as an ostrich’s. As any sane and slightly hungry man would do when they saw such a prize, I reached out and snagged breakfast right then and there. After so many issues that I’d been having waking up in this crazy place, it was like something worked out just for me. I slipped that giant chicken egg right into my sack and kept moving so that whatever laid it wouldn’t find me close by!

It took me another fifteen minutes or so to climb up and out of the hole, but I was happy. I made it across, found food, and was now only about another mile from the ridgeline. Finally, I got to the top of the ridge and started to head back to the falls.

I was happy to see another trail that went both ways down the ridge. It looked like game came through often with how beat down the grass was. It almost looked like a hiking trail as there was even a little rut in the middle. As I hiked, I was still looking for tracks. I knew being on a trail that was wide enough for me and used enough to show the dirt meant I was likely to find something else. What I wasn’t counting on, however, was finding a little spear.

“What’s this?” I mumbled as I picked it up.

It was all of three feet long. I almost passed it by, thinking it was just a stick, until I saw a fixed stone tip at the end. It was crude even for me, but still, it was a spear. I’d have called it an arrow if it had feathers; it was so thin. The shaft was also broken, which was likely why it was here.

I looked for prints of something other than animals but couldn’t find any. However, I did find three more tiny broken spears. Then, one of my skills kicked in, which I figured was my survivalist, making me a little wearier.

“Now I have to find out if the guys using these are nice or out to get me.” I said dropping the spear and hiking on.

It only took me another twenty minutes or so before I got around to the top of the falls. When I came out of the woods, I saw that the river was wide in this place. It was about sixty feet across, and then it narrowed in because of some big boulders to the thirty feet that I was used to seeing. So while it was fast-moving, it was also about half as deep.

The other side of the falls had a nice sand bed, and then it went into trees. I didn’t know how that side would get to the top, so I wasn’t sure if I needed to be worried about dogs right now. But, on the other hand, I knew they could swim, and so they might try the crossing here.

I looked around from the edge of some trees, and I saw a large Unnt herd. It had to be at least forty strong, and then I also saw other creatures I could hunt. I could see a good mile of the river from where I stood, and I saw lots of trees and animals. I saw what looked like a bear fishing and birds flying. I even saw from my spot what looked like a field that you could put a town in.

I stood there in the peaceful scene taking in the wonder of the world. The crashing of the waterfall just a hundred yards away drowned out the stress of my thoughts as the light breeze on my back brought a slight spring chill. This place was beautiful. As I scanned the landscape in front of me again, motion to my right caught my attention.

There, on the other side of the river, were six dogs, all barking and running out of the tree line.

“Crap,” I said as I looked for a good place to make a stand.

My eyes flicked over to the boulders that narrowed the river. I hadn’t had time to explore anything up here, so I didn’t know if I could get up on the boulders, but they would at least give me a wall to put my back to. I set off at a sprint to try to beat the dogs, who were already crossing the river.

As I got close to the boulders, I saw that I would be able to easily make my way to the top of them. Which was both great and bad. If I didn’t have much of a problem, then it was likely that the dogs wouldn’t either.

When I got to the top, my area spread out to a surface of about twenty feet. The huge rock was rounded on top and shaped like a lima bean. The inside curve of the boulder was facing the cliff and the outside in the river narrowing it before it went over the cliff. About half of the rock was damp and looked slick, so I knew I needed to stay away from there. The last thing I wanted to do was go over.

As I took this all in, I saw that the dogs were over on this side and coming at me like a whirlwind. I could actually hear the barking over the crash of the river. I couldn’t tell if they were the same pack or another one, but it didn’t matter much either way. They were here and, for some reason, wanted to fight me.

I shrugged off my backpack and gently placed it away from the ascent. I didn’t want to risk losing my pack or cracking the egg since I still wanted to eat it. Then I spun my spear a few times to get my muscles loose and moved to block the path the dogs would need to take to reach me.

As the dogs came around to start coming up at me, I yelled a joke in hopes of calming my own nerves. “It’s over dogs, I have the high ground!”

The first one jumped up the short path just as I dropped the tip of my spear down. I had leveled my skill and gotten used to this weapon since last I fought them. My spear made contact with the front of the dog and slid in.

The weight of the body pulled me off balance, and I staggered towards the rest. I yanked my spear out just as the next one latched on to my leg.

I yelled and cursed as I felt the teeth break through my skin, and it started to try to rip me off the rock.

My arms were over my head from the force of yanking my spear out of the first dog. I drove the butt of my spear down on the head of the dog that was using me as a chew toy. The cracking sound of the wood making contact was accompanied by the pain of its head being forcefully ripped off of my leg.

I stepped back as two more made it to the top. This wasn’t going the way I wanted. When I’d last fought them, I could take one at a time, and I wanted to repeat that process. However, now they were two wide, and I was limping.

The two dogs barked and leapt at me, which forced me back, and the last two were now on the boulder with me.

Four against one was not the way that I liked to do things, and since I was already wounded, this was going to get ugly. There was a big brown one on the far right; he looked like a bruiser of a dog. Next to him was a smaller one with a gray coat and floppy ears. On my far left was a dog that looked like it had seen all the fighting in the world. Its black and brown fur showed scars across its face and sides. Next to scarface was an all-black wolf-dog with the meanest looking teeth of them all.

There was a kind of understanding that pack hunters had with each other. It was what let them work so well together. It was undoubtedly what they were using as they came at me without a look at each other. Just a lurch from the big brown one on the right caused me to move my spear that way. Then the other three barreled into me.

The all-black one leapt right for my face. Scarface checked my left leg and the gray coat jumped at my body as the brown one stopped its attack, leaving my spear in the wrong place.

I was able to whip the head of the spear and catch Gray-coat in the hindquarters before Scarface hit my leg. If I was going to thank one of these monsters, it would have been Scarface. He likely saved my life as the black wolf went over my head because I went down.

I knew there wasn’t much room behind me, so that meant that the wolf was now back on the ground and coming around again to get up. So I only had the three up here. One that had my spear in her legs and was trying to remove it. One that had just knocked me over onto my front and so was behind me. And the brown one that faked me out.

None of this was good as I didn’t have much to work with. My advantage had been my reach, now that was gone. Their advantage was numbers, and they still had that, and teeth, they still had those too.

As I was pushing myself up, the brown one-hit biting my right shoulder. I rolled to my left, pushed my feet under the dog, and launched it over the side of the boulder back to the ground. It held on and so didn’t go but tore at my muscles.

Scarface bit down at that point on the same leg that the other dog took a bite out of, and I screamed in more pain. At this point, there were no battle plans left, and it was down to just guessing how I’d survive. I reached my left hand up to the brown dog who was trying to rip my shoulder out, and I drove my thumb into its left eye.

The dog tried to close its eyes, but I forced my thumb in as it was trying to remove my arm. Then, finally, it let go with a yelp and jumped back just far enough that it went off the boulder towards the ground, only five feet down.

I sat up and used my left leg to axe kick scarface. It was a wasted strike, from what I could tell, as it didn’t bother moving at all. It just bit me even harder. By this point, I was sure my leg was ruined, and I had blood running down my side. My red health bar had lost a third of its length, and I had several bleed debuffs and other icons that I didn’t recognize that were flashing.

I pulled my body closer to Scarface and started to punch its head. The attacks were once again an overall ineffective attack. I couldn’t generate enough force to damage it, and it was still tearing at my leg. I knew the other two would be up at any second, so I did the same thing I did to the other dog but with both hands.

I grabbed its head and shoved my thumbs into the eyes, feeling both of them pop. It was one of the grossest things I’d ever felt, but in combat, I just kept going. The dog yelped, which was enough for me to get my leg away. I saw Gray-coat just a few feet away, and my spear was lying there. Looked like when it came out, it brought with it more than the dog counted on.

I grabbed my spear up as the wolfish one came back up with One-eyed brownie behind her. She was all snarls as she rushed me again. This time, however, there were no other attackers, and I was able to slash her face with the stone tip, which sent her jumping back. One-eyed brownie was all but foaming at the mouth as I saw its muscles get bigger before my eyes.

“Shit!”

This dog had magic or something and was turning into Hulk. I drove my spear forward to it as it was growing, and I felt my right leg go out from under me. The strain was too much with the injuries that I had taken. Where I had been aiming at the dog’s head, when I fell forward, the tip dropped several inches and caught right into the hollow of the chest. Because of the angle, I bypassed all the bones and felt the whole spear go in.

The dog collapsed, but I lost my spear. It was stuck in the beast, and its two friends were still up here with me. There was the wolfish one and her friend Blind Bert who both wanted a piece of one legged me.

I wasn’t ready, and I wouldn’t have been ready even if I saw her coming, but Wolfish landed on me as I rolled over. She was straddling me, snapping at my neck and face. I got my arms up in front, and she started to bite and tear at my wrists.

I felt myself blacking out from the blood loss and felt the desire for my skills to kick in. I let myself go to the draw of the skill and felt my hands snap forward and grab her neck. I rolled over, trapping her under me, and started to pound my fists down on the same spot over and over.

I saw the light in Wolfish’s eyes go out, and I rolled off of her only to see that Blind Bart fell into the river. I smiled and started to pass out. I had won, but I wasn’t sure that I would live.

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 HP left. All of my bleed debuffs were gone, but I had stamina debuffs which I had already learned would go away after I ate, and I had health recovery 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 how 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 was to run into a geson before I was healed, because that would kill me.

“I hate dogs. I hate this place.” I mumbled

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 could pull through 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 full, and my stamina debuffs were gone. However, the limping was still there, and it had gained a two day timer. So my guess was that it was going to be two 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 (7)

Survivalist (6)

Tae-kown-do (11)

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.

I knew that I lacked patience and since I came to the new world, everything had 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 hated 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 clicking!

Sam finally looked up at me. He drew in a deep breath 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.