Then I dreamed.

It started as soon as I was there. The first thing I noticed in Sam’s study. Click… Click… Click… I still couldn’t move or couldn’t move again. I also couldn’t see Sam. Click… Click… Click… It was a good fifteen minutes of looking, not blinking but hearing before I heard a door close. Sam came around from behind me, holding a book in his hands. Click… Click… Click…

“Arn, I wasn’t sure I was able to answer your question,” Sam smoothly spoke. “Not that I want to answer your question as that doesn’t matter. What matters are rules and your question wasn’t something that should be answered. The questions you should be asking are things related to the rules and general knowledge of the world that you should already know.”

Click… Click… Click… He just sat down and read the book he was holding, not even letting me see the book’s title. Three hours of Click click flip, Click click click flip. Three hours of him breathing like the thought of talking to me was the worst thing in the world.

SLAM! Sam closed the book and looked at me. Then the jerk spoke again, “However, since the item is a gift because of things breaking the rule I was told that I had answer your question about this item also I must let you ask follow up questions tonight. So to answer your question. The Necklace of Cores should be fed from the world around you. You must give it mana, and materials. The higher the quality the better the cores. Now do you have any questions?”

“Yes!” I shouted before I even realized that I could speak. “How do I feed the Necklace, and how do I have it make a core and what do I use cores for, and how do I use a core?

I felt myself freeze in place again as Sam started to speak, “To feed the Necklace you must activate it while it is on the item that you want to feed it. When you have fed it enough then it will create a core for you. As to how to use a core that is about the world and is not about the Necklace. I’ll answer one last question for you.”

I felt myself unfreeze and asked, “What are the step by step actions needed to take in order to activate the necklace of cores so that it will feed?”

I heard Sam suck his breath in like I’d hit him. I knew that I’d to treat these questions like he was an evil genie that would grant wishes based on the wording.

“First you must think Activate visual interface. Then you must press the Necklace to the item that you want it to consume. Then you must think Menu Interface for The Necklace of Cores. Once you have entered into the Menu interface for the item then you must select using your eyes and thought the growth tab. When you’re in the growth tab you must then select consume and you’ll see the choices of everything touching the Necklace. Then select what you want it to consume and it will take as much of it as it wants.”

With that, Sam shooed me with his hand, and I felt like Mike Tyson hit me in the gut. I folded over and flew out the door behind me.

I woke up with a start and set right up, which woke up Blink, who was sleeping on my gut. Blink did what every bonded Ropola would do and clawed her way onto my shoulder, hissing all the way. Then she jumped down with an even louder hiss. When I turned, I saw that she had settled down into my bed where I'd been sleeping, and she was tucking her head under her front leg, curled in a ball to go back to sleep.

You have been clawed by Blink

1 point of claw damage

Healing slowed for 30 seconds

Bleeding 1 point every 10 seconds

I looked at my pop-up with amazement. I was bleeding out my shoulder where Blink’s claws got me. I took a point of damage from my pet, and she slowed my healing. I watched, and every 10 seconds, I took another point of damage.

I’d a red bar showing now in the top right of my vision, and were two timers going. One was a 10 second that looked like a drop of blood from a Red Cross sticker. The other was a yellow plus with a count down from 30 on it.

My red bar was down about a 10th by the time the healing counter ended, and then I saw the yellow plus turn to a red plus, and a count down of 10 started. I watched as the bleeding count down got to zero, and my health dropped. Then when the healing counter got to zero, it went up one.

I took my hand, pressed it down on my shoulder, and tried to do compression. While I was holding it, I saw that the bleeding count down jumped to 15 and not 10. So I waited to see if I’d stop bleeding when I got to max health. It turned out being at max health didn’t stop the bleeding; however, being there for 10 seconds did stop it. Either that or holding a press on it for a length of time…

The whole time I watched and learned how this bleed counter worked, Blink just lay there, happy to be asleep where I’d been. Did she care that I was now bleeding, likely but not the care of worry as she seemed to have a slight smile in her dreams.

Now that I was done bleeding, I went down to the river to wash the blood off. I wanted to make sure to get things clean because I didn’t want an infection to happen. Once I got everything washed, I noticed that the scratch marks were all gone. Not even lines were there anymore. It was just a mess to clean off of me but no long-term issues. I guessed that infection only would happen if something got stuck in the wound and then only till it got pulled out.

The quick and seeming total healing brought up the question of why my left hand had a scar if this didn’t even leave faint lines. It might have to be a race thing or the fireproof nature of my hand. It was just one of those many things that didn’t add up to me.

I got set for the day next and went through my normal morning. Blink stayed around and watched me do my practice, and then I climbed down and ran down the river to the slope up and then ran back.

I free climbed the twenty-foot section and then the ten-foot section of the waterfall. I spent a good bit of time going from side to side on the ten-foot wall. I then found a tree on my landing where I could jump up and grab a branch, and so I started doing pull-ups. I wanted to make sure that I worked as many of my physical skills as I could each day so that I’d be moving them all forward.

Then I worked on moving more stones to my house. I’d a two-day pile in the middle row and the first row all the way around. Next, I needed to start digging clay out so that I could use it as mortar, as I had no idea how to make mortar.

So I got my hoe and started to remove a section of topsoil near the house area to get to the red clay. I knew that I could likely take the clay and bake it in molds. That being said, I wasn’t sure how to make the mold or the oven or how long to bake it or get something out of the oven without having an oven mitt.

When I was done moving the topsoil, it was time for lunch, and I saw that Blink had started without me. She had another bird that she was happily chewing on. I, on the other hand, had a fish salad. It was nice to have the greens, but I noticed they were wilting some because I didn’t have a refrigerator. So that meant that I needed to eat them today so that I’d get the nutrients but not have to worry about them going bad.

Then it was time to see if I could feed this necklace of mine. I picked up one of my two mana stones and laid the necklace face onto the stone. Then I went through the process to activate the eating. Activate visual Interface. With that, my world changed.

The red, green, and blue bars that had been showing up when I used one of them popped up full on the right side of my vision. When I looked at my campsite, I saw brackets around things. My lean-too, when I looked at it, showed a red bar that was full. I looked over at Blink and saw three bars over her head. I noticed at once that if I glanced at something, nothing showed up, but if I looked at it intently for about a second or two, I got the bars if there were any. The mana stone I was holding had a full blue bar. This changed everything. I’d know how badly I was hurting something just by looking at it.

Next, I thought Menu Interface for The Necklace of Cores. I got a menu pop up in front of me with two tabs. The first said General the second Creation.