Chapter 23

A few times in Luke’s life, he’d ended up napping for a few hours in the evening, only to wake up and have no idea what day it even was. That intense feeling of disorientation from being off his normal sleep schedule, not knowing if it was day or night, or how long he’d slept, was something that had stayed with him.

That was how he felt when he woke up. It didn’t help that he was sleeping inside a cave that never saw a single ray of sunlight. It didn’t help that the more his stamina went up, the less he was sleeping each day and the more his normal rhythm got messed up. And it certainly didn’t help that he’d never felt more exhausted than he did when he laid down.

He knew he was starving, and that he was parched. There was no food, but he did have two plastic bottles left that had survived through everything. He forced himself upright and rummaged through his homemade backpack for them. Drinking both made him feel a little bit better, but he needed food.

Luke took stock of himself. The injuries were not precisely gone, but he was feeling a lot better. His foot was tender, but he could walk without limping. While he wasn’t at a hundred percent, he felt a lot more confident now than he had during yesterday’s fighting. Or maybe it was two days ago now. He couldn’t rightly tell and since there was no one to consult with, he guessed he’d never know for sure how long he’d slept.

Or wait, yes there was. “System, how long was I asleep?”

“Twenty-one hours, Luke.”

“Thank you, System.”

“You’re welcome.”

That little mystery solved, he checked his status to make sure he wasn’t cursed, though he had no idea how something like that would even happen. It had become reflexive while he was fighting goblins, and it seemed like a good habit to be in, so even though he knew there was logically no way a goblin had snuck in, cursed him, and then left again, he didn’t judge himself too harshly for confirming.

The bodies had disappeared from the ravine, which didn’t surprise Luke. He thought the cave monsters might be cannibals, since he almost never saw anything else in the cave. Even if he was wrong, something was absconding with the bodies he left behind every time they attacked him. He hadn’t ever actually seen it happen, but all things considered, it seemed like a reasonable explanation to him.

Idly, he wondered if he could find his own shockrack elk. Those were probably about the best type of meat he’d had so far, even with his limited cooking skills. It was kind of like beef, only a bit sweeter and it made his mouth tingle. He imagined if he ate it raw enough, it would make his hair stand on end.

It was with the utmost caution that Luke walked out of the cave. He half expected goblins to pop up from behind every single bush and shoot him again, but it looked like his efforts to protect the location of Curt’s workshop were successful. Still, he reminded himself that it was better to assume it had been compromised and that the goblins simply hadn’t struck yet than it was to assume they couldn’t find him.

He needed a full 2,000 XP to level up again, and Luke was determined to get it before he started going after the goblins directly. The next level would give him what he needed to finally have a way to heal himself, something he’d proven he was in dire need of. After that, he was going after those little fuckers hard. Maybe they’d give him the levels he needed to beat that stupid-big earth elemental and finally get the hell out of this place.

Luke took some game trails that led in generally the direction of the pass with frequent detours into fields or even just through some brush. While he walked, he gathered up some dead wood to use for a small fire and kept an eye out for something furry to eat. As usual, most of the low level monsters avoided him rather than attacking, but eventually he stumbled across a family of bark ripper squirrels that tried to swarm him. [Unarmed Martialist] proved once again that Luke had been foolish not to take it sooner, and he killed all four of them in moments with his bare hands.

[You have slain 4 creatures between levels 2-5. 63 XP awarded.]

“Huh… Cool.” Luke looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers. His knuckles stung a little bit, but that faded immediately. The squirrels were big enough that he thought they’d still be fine to skin and eat, something he wasn’t sure he’d be able to claim if he’d used his mace. That would have gone about three steps beyond tenderizing the meat.

Twenty minutes later, the squirrels were almost done cooking, and Luke felt a familiar tingle in the pit of his stomach. He looked up and smirked at the sight of Red swooping down to land nearby. “And where have you been?” he asked the bird. “I could have used some help against all of those goblins the other day.”

Red, perhaps feeling no need to defend itself, simply cocked its head to the side and turned its gaze to the squirrel meat. Luke was determined not to burn it this time, but it was difficult to get it cooked evenly without burning anything, despite how diligently he attended it. “You want some? I don’t think birds are supposed to eat cooked meat.”

Red screeched at that, and Luke shrugged. “Up to you, I guess. Don’t blame me if you get sick.”

He took the rawest squirrel of the batch and stuck the stick it was on off to the side. Red hopped forward with a quick flap of its wings and landed on the ground, where it picked at the meat and tore it free.

“I’m with you there, bud,” Luke said. He didn’t even wait for the meat to cool before he started eating it. “Not too bad.”

It wasn’t too burnt, and starvation was a spice that made everything taste better. Luke scarfed down two of them and was eyeing up the third when he caught Red watching him. “What?” Luke said. “We gonna throw down over this squirrel?”

The hawk flapped its wings in a few powerful beats and lifted itself back into the air. It circled once overhead and then flew off over the trees. Luke just snorted and shook his head. “My squirrel,” he muttered, taking a bite.

The basic necessities of survival met, Luke made a beeline for the pass leading out of the valley to get his morning ten or twelve elemental kills in. The entire time, he kept checking his status screen and watching for ambushes, until finally when he was almost there, he said, “System, can we just set it up so that if there’s a change in my status, I’ll get a notification to alert me?”

“Of course, Luke. It’s done. Would you like to use a different audio tone to mark this as a priority notification?”

“Uh, yes. That’s a good idea.” It would have been better if System had recommended a status change notification itself without Luke having to think of it first, or if the system just did that by default without it having to be changed. Though, come to think of it… “Is this something anyone could change?”

“I’m afraid not. Only someone with SysAdmin access can customize how they interface with the system.”

“Ah, I see. And that’s not common, I’m assuming.”

“Nobody who has been born on Aros has ever had the bloodline you possess,” System told him. “Only the other off-worlders who came before you did.”

“Well I guess that’s why they call it a bloodline.”

There was some bullshit going on there that Luke wasn’t smart enough to figure out, but wasn’t stupid enough to miss. That was a problem for Future-Luke though, as Present-Luke had his own issues to deal with. He approached the trail at a run, wary as always of possible ambushes, though he was also a lot more confident in his ability to dodge five or six bolts coming at him all at once now.

The first elemental pulled itself out of the ground a minute or two after he arrived, and Luke promptly smashed it to pieces. A ding sounded in his mind. Thirty seconds later another elemental appeared, this time from the cliff wall.

“Why do you guys do this?” Luke asked it as it approached him. “I mean, you weren’t that strong when we were the same level, and now I’ve got a few on you, but you always just keep running in like lemmings. No hesitation, no retreat, no strategy. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate you delivering XP to me, but I mean, why?”

It was kind of frustrating. He wanted to leave the valley, not fight goblins. Even with their recent ambush, if the elementals would just let him go, he would leave. If he’d thought he had a chance against that big one, he’d be on his way out. The only reason he wasn’t trying was that it hadn’t yet failed to arrive and try to kill him every time he set foot on the trail.

It must have been sleeping today though. Two elementals turned into five, and Luke started to backpedal closer to the base of the trail. Five turned into ten, and he hovered near the boulder, ready to make a break for it. Ten turned into twenty, and there was still no sign of it. At twenty-three, he was considering the wisdom of making a run up the pass when the ground shifted and it started to emerge behind him.

“No you fucking don’t,” Luke snarled. He broke into a sprint and leaped over its still forming head to land feet-first against the boulder at the base of the trail, then push off that and roll across the dirt into the valley. Luke was back on his feet in a flash and already putting distance between him and the giant earth elemental, just in case today was the day it decided to follow him down.

As always though, no elemental crossed that invisible line past the boulder, and that included the big one. It didn’t make sense to him, but he was content to abuse the fact as much as he could. In this shithole of a world where everything was a life or death struggle, Luke had no compunctions about cheating or abusing video game logic to get ahead.

Once he was back in the cover of the trees and sure he was safe from any goblin hunting parties that might happen to be nearby, he checked his notifications. As expected, his level up was there.

[You have slain 23 creatures between levels 9-13. 2825 XP awarded.]

[Congratulations! You have reached level 16. 16 AP awarded for use.]

Finally, he could take it. He spent all 25 AP on [Life Surge], then immediately triggered the ability. For about thirty seconds, he felt like he could jump to the Moon, knock over a tree with his bare hands, and run a hundred laps around the entire valley without stopping. All the aches and pains he’d accumulated from the fight were gone; all of the half-healed wounds from the other day sealed closed.

Luke felt fantastic for that entire thirty seconds. Then he crashed.

It was like he hadn’t eaten in a year, and he was all the sudden so hungry that he was considering gnawing on some leaves or tree bark. He tromped through the forest, uncaring about stealth and in fact hoping that something would attack him. He guzzled down any sort of berry he could find, hardly even aware of the idea that they might be poisonous. All that mattered was getting food in his stomach.

While he foraged like a rampaging bear, Luke was reminded of the second half of the skill’s warning: that he would be tired as well. He kept enough of a presence of mind to turn his path back towards the cave, though he knew he wasn’t going back without getting something to eat.

He came across an apple tree, and even though the fruits were stunted, bitter things, he ate two dozen of them before it even started to take the edge of his hunger. That cleared his mind up enough to realize that his stomach was not going to thank him for the last hour or so of his life.

He wasn’t feeling as tired as he’d been afraid he’d be, so he diverted course towards his favorite stream and started gathering supplies to cook another meal. He just needed to find it first. Then he was going to spend the rest of the day hanging around his favorite tree, which had wide, thick, flat leaves, and hope for the best.

His stomach gurgled, and Luke started walking faster.