“The other day, I got a notification that said I’d survived a week on Devil’s Nest,” August said, “It unlocked the [Runecrafter] skill tree—that’s a menu in this HUD that allows me to accumulate points and then unlock specific skills. The whole sensing people thing is one of them, but that’s in the [Survival] skill tree.”

August placed the nail down beside the stump and started on the second one—just like he’d said, the process was easier now, bolstered by the knowledge of the blueprint and the confidence it brought with it—not in the exact method he was using, but in the shape of the nail itself, the width of the head and where the taper would best begin.

“So it was a reward for surviving?” Kalter said, carefully sawing the last of the post in half. “How do you get points?”

Rittan had likely shared everything that he’d told the Voithos since he first summoned him with the others, and both Kalter and Haiko had been present for a handful of conversations about the topic or things that were adjacent to it—all of which meant that she should already have some idea of how it worked and that he was gaining levels by way of survival. Either this was her attempt at making small talk, or she was curious about how it actually worked on a more fundamental level—something which Rittan probably didn’t have the context needed to explain to her. Kalter watched him silently as he worked, looking like she was unsure about his silence. He worked through three bars, whittling them down into nails in a fraction of the time the other one had taken, and when he’d finished, he finally spoke up.

“The experience points seem to come from doing things, and I haven’t exactly narrowed down everything that gives them yet, but these are the ones I’ve figured out; surviving, summoning, unlocking blueprints, crafting things, collecting materials, doing physical labour, using skills, interacting with people or creatures, taming creatures, and fighting,” August said, listing off some of the ones he was relatively sure about. “There are also those quests rewards that we just talked about; they give experience as well—and I have a couple more quests, but I can’t see the rewards for them.”

August glanced up at her for a second, just to check her reaction, but he could only see the side of her face. The saw in her hand cut through the last of the post, leaving her holding two different planks in her lower set of hands, the saw in another—it reminded him once again of how useful having another set of arms would be.

“I get a skill point every time I hit the threshold for the level up, something which is getting more difficult every time,” August said, “The first level required five-hundred points, and once I got there, it reset back to zero, and the threshold increased to six-hundred points.

“What is it at now?” Kalter asked, straightening up.

“I am currently sitting at one-thousand-one-hundred-and-thirty out of the one-thousand-three-hundred experience,” August said after actually checking it. “I didn’t realise I’d earned so much yesterday, so maybe add travelling long distances to that list—or was it proximity to monsters?”

August couldn’t really be sure, but he’d figure it out eventually. Kalter placed the last of the planks on the stack, leaving them with twelve of them—more than they needed, but whatever they didn’t use would simply become the basis for the next project.

“You’re being incentivised to do things that will keep you alive, and they’re even rewarding you for it,” Kalter said, “If they want you to survive, then shouldn’t they give you all of the blueprints and everything else right at the start? Why make it difficult?”

“I don’t know, but are we sure there is a they?” August wondered. “From what you’ve told me about the Gaians, they wouldn’t act like this.”

“They wouldn’t act like this back on Hekaton, not with everything they would ever need right at their disposal,” Kalter said, frowning. “But we aren’t on Hekaton, and no one has come looking for us yet—this feels like some kind of experiment.”

“Abduct an alien from another planet, dump him on a monster-filled island with a strange system that allows him to summon a race of beings he never even knew existed in the first place?” August said, starting on the next set of nails. “It sounds more like a reality show or a death game they’re putting us through for their own entertainment than an experiment.”

He placed the fifth nail down with the others, already moving onto the sixth, keeping half an eye on his mana as it began to dip below the midway point. It was getting close to midday now, which meant that they could try and summon Melon—if she didn’t have the answers to solving his mana crisis, then he’d just have to start experimenting for real.

“The Gaians are a worthless race, but they’ve never done anything like this for entertainment,” Kalter muttered. “If there was something important to be learned from it, they might have done it—but they wouldn’t want to showcase their failures to the world.”

August frowned at the framing of her entire race as a failure; even if she was doing it through the eyes of a Gaian, it still rubbed him the wrong way. The creation of a sentient race of on the level of a Voithos should have been something to be celebrated.

“I don’t see how anyone could consider the Voithos a failure at anything—you’re exactly as intelligent as anyone I’ve ever met, and you have way better multitasking, considering how you use all of your limbs at once,” August said, glancing over at his mana bar again. “Every single one of you is beyond attractive, so either the summoning skill is prioritising supermodels, or it’s a universal trait all Voithos share by default.”

He finished the ninth nail and reached for the next bar, attempting to speed up a bit to match the rate of mana depletion that the spell was greedily stealing from him.

“You’re taller, stronger, faster, more durable, and you must have a bottomless well of stamina because you don’t even seem to get tired after dragging massive trees around all day,” August said, eyes narrowing as the mana fell, “You don’t even age, so you have hundreds of years to learn whatever you feel like and then master it totally—the Gaians must have a completely skewered outlook on what constitutes a failure because, from my perspective, you’re just about perfect—fucking—”

August shook his hand out, the tip of the eleventh nail he’d just accidentally cut in half, having left a red line splitting the pad of his thumb from tip to halfway to his palm. It was already starting to bleed, red liquid sluggishly climbing out to crawl down his skin.

“Maybe you should focus more on what you’re doing instead of talking to me,” Kalter said, watching him. “If you keep getting hurt whenever I’m near you, Haiko is going to get mad at me.”

“You started talking to me,” August said, breathing out a burst of air from his nose. “But if that’s your weakness, then maybe I’ll tell her you pushed me into another thornbush.”

The pain must have given him some kind of false confidence because the words came out of his mouth before he’d even thought about them, and he adamantly refused to face-check her because that confidence had been a fleeting thing, at best.

“I didn’t push you the first time—” Kalter said, a bit startled. “You better not tell her I did.”

August said nothing in response because it seemed like the safest path forward. Instead, he tore off a strip of his leafy vest and then curled it around his thumb to cover the cut. He pinched it down in place with the side of his index finger, ignoring the stinging pain that rose up in response, and removed a piece of twine from his inventory. He took a moment to wind it around the leaf, tying it down tight—

Bandage Blueprint Unlocked

—it wasn’t exactly a good material for a bandage, but it was all he really had. The pressure would give the blood a chance to coagulate, and it should stop bleeding; at least, he hoped so. Going off for a nap to kick-start his regeneration wasn’t something he was willing to do in the middle of the day, so he’d just have to deal with it until tonight.