Chapter 13

Luke spent the next day taking it easy, or at least as easy as a person could take it in a forest full of murderous wildlife. Red was actually kind of comforting to have around, even if the bird did give Luke the occasional searching, hungry look. He appeased his avian overlord with a steady offering of raw meat, courtesy of several different types of animals that tried to take a bite out of him.

Sometimes Red accepted the meat, sometimes it didn’t. Luke built himself a small fire and committed cooking atrocities on the leftovers. [Cooking]was on the list of things Curt thought he should learn for himself and save an AP, but Luke wasn’t sure it was worth it. He’d once set spaghetti on fire in a pot of boiling water, and that hadn’t been the worst of his kitchen accidents before he’d been unilaterally banned.

Having the knowledge of how to prepare meals would not only give him an instant boost to the standard by which he lived, it might have the practical effect of not accidentally giving himself food poisoning too. While he suspected his stamina might just be too high for that to even happen at this point, there was still something to be said for the idea of being able to properly prepare a meal.

The injuries on his back were the most troublesome and painful, though he was pretty sure they were also the least life-threatening. He’d suffered a number of lacerations, which, thanks to [First Aid] he recognized as being mostly dangerous as an infection vector, and not because they were deep wounds on his own.

[Survivalist] came with the knowledge of a few plants which could be used in rudimentary forms as pain killers or disinfectants, but there weren’t any around. The best Luke could manage was to thoroughly wash his shirt and put it on backwards so that the part that was still whole would cover them up. His coat was also shredded across the back, something he was kind of pissed about.

The puncture wound in his leg was a different story. That was deep and he needed to keep steady pressure on it or it didn’t stop bleeding. It needed stitches, but he lacked the equipment to do it. The best he could manage was to shred some of his clothing into strips using a knife to bandage it. Since his shirt was already pulling duty on his back after he tied a knot at the base to keep it as tight as possible, that really only left one choice.

Using his belt as a stop-gap measure, Luke washed his boxers in the stream and hung them to dry near the fire, then cut them into strips of cloth with the tiny scissors on his multitool. He wrapped his leg and stuffed the leftover cloth into his grocery bag, then put his jeans back on while being extremely careful about zipping them up.

Despite the XP gain, which nearly doubled his total, Luke couldn’t count the last twenty-four hours as a victory. He’d gotten too cocky and made mistakes. Those mistakes were costing him some of his very, very limited resources. As much as he wanted to level up quickly, he was starting to think it was time to find the trail leading out of Tenebrous Valley and make his way towards civilization.

It was still going to be a day or two until the leather finished drying, and since his grocery bag was becoming more and more torn, he decided to wait for that project to finish. He wanted a harness of some sort for his weapon and a more durable pack. If those water bottles broke, that was a whole new kind of screwed he’d be with no way to transport water.

No matter what he was doing, the mace stayed close at hand. His perception was high enough now that almost nothing caught him completely unaware as long as he was paying attention, but that level of paranoia was exhausting, and he often found himself drifting away from vigilance. It was a mental effort to drag his brain back on task.

There was also always the risk of something like that spiked cat, the system notification had told him it was a level 9 Sliver Lynx, and he figured it had some sort of [Stealth] skill or something. He hadn’t seen another one, and good riddance, but as he’d learned, despite the numbers and game rules, he wasn’t in a game. The pain was very real. So was the fear.

So Luke didn’t push himself. He’d overextended, made a mistake, and gotten his nose bloodied for it. It was costing him literally the clothes off his back, plus he was now high-risk for future problems until he got himself back to a hundred percent. That cat could have killed him if Red hadn’t swept in and taken it off him. Next time he might not be so lucky.

Back on Earth, he’d expect to be sore and healing for weeks. He couldn’t get a good look at the cuts on his back, but he sure felt them. Those would keep him from doing any sort of twisting or bending motions until they fully healed, else he’d risk tearing them back open. Hell, he imagined he’d probably have a hundred stitches back there. Thanks to the miracle that was 13 stamina, he was sore, but still flexible.

If he had to guess, another two days would be all it took to close them up enough that he didn’t need to worry about them tearing. The puncture wound on his leg would need longer, but he could already walk on it without limping. It hurt, sure, but not enough to slow him down, at least not right away.

Luke spent his time gathering firewood, braining anything dumb enough to invade his camp, and dozing with his mace held in one hand. Day faded into night, and he woke up to Red’s screeching caws. The pile of dead animals he’d built up over the day was severely depleted, but he wasn’t worried. He could always find more.

The hide still wasn’t ready for use yet, which was frustrating but not surprising considering the size. Luke left it strung up and set about replenishing his supply of firewood, then wandered a little ways from his camp and waited for something to come by and attack him. As soon as it did, he gave it a solid thump, dismissed his kill notification, and dragged the body back with him.

Then he skinned it, skewered some meat on a roasting stick, and planted it at an angle over the fire. It wasn’t pretty, the food didn’t taste good, and sometimes it fell into the fire when he wasn’t paying attention, but it kept his belly full. Red, of course, took the remainder.

Finally on the next day, the hide was ready for use. [Leatherworking]guided him through the process, which was once again just plain weird. He’d noticed it in combat as well, but the more he fought, the less that feeling of having something else correct his movements had occurred. Luke took it to mean he was learning from the skill and getting better on his own.

Actually making something out of the hide was completely new to him however, and it felt really fucking weird, like someone was holding his hand and guiding the motion, except it came from inside and it affected him right down to how his fingers moved instead of being just a general direction. Luke tried not to fight the sensation, and he actually found it easier to just zone out and think about something else while his hands worked.

When he was done, he had a new rawhide bag stitched together with thin leather strips. He gratefully transferred the contents of his eviscerated plastic grocery bag into. The plastic was falling apart, and Luke didn’t trust it enough to carry it around anymore. Once he’d emptied it, he looked down at it stupidly for a minute, wondering what to do with it.

Close to twenty years of being told littering was wrong made him feel like he couldn’t just throw it away in the woods, but there wasn’t really anywhere else to put it. Shrugging to himself, he balled it up and stuffed it in the bottom of his new leather bag. It wasn’t like it took up any real space or weighed anything. Once he made it to civilization, he’d find a place to toss it out.

His other creations were a sheath for his skinning knife and a harness to strap his mace to his back. The sheath was actually a wooden frame he’d carved with the leather stretched over it, but he thought it looked nice. The whole get up was a bit primitive-looking, but it was also unbelievably cool to him that he’d made it all with his own hands.

The harness had some straps to tighten or loosen it, which allowed Luke to fit it over his coat, tug it snuggly into place, and tie it there. The mace itself was held with the handle poking up over his right shoulder and the flanged head down hear his hip. The head rode in a pocket with a stiff piece of leather going up the length to where it was all fastened to the harness at his shoulder, allowing him to still maintain full flexibility without having the mace smack him in the ass with every step.

Luke’s biggest concern was being able to draw the weapon quickly. He lacked the tools to do anything complicated, so the handle itself was held in place with a simple tied loop. He could pull it free just by pressing on the loop, which was great for a quick draw, but maybe not awesome for keeping it from coming free when he didn’t want it to. It was the best he could do with his limited knowledge, skills, and materials, and it was miles ahead of carrying it in his hands everywhere.

Armed and equipped, Luke bid his temporary camp home farewell and abandoned it. He had one task remaining before he left the valley permanently. There was a cave, and in that cave was a skeleton. He’d made a promise to give it a proper burial, and even though he lacked the means to dig a full grave, Luke made the effort to at least make a shallow one.

Then he ventured into the dark and, over the course of the next few hours, carried Curt’s remains out in his bare hands. One after another, he laid the pieces down in the grave, keeping them in order as best he could. Then he scooped the dirt back over the bones and flattened the ground out. There was no headstone to place, but he didn’t figure Curt would mind.

“I’m not good at speeches. Sorry, I don’t have a eulogy for you. Couldn’t read you your last rites if I wanted to. Never learned anything like that, you know? I guess you’ll have to forgive me, Curt. You can bitch me out for not doing it right after I bring you back. All of you. Maybe… Do you think Mom too? I know she didn’t die here, but that’d be nice, huh?”

He stood there for a little while, lost in thought, but the world wasn’t content to leave him alone for long. A stray marmot, apparently far stupider than the rest of its kind, wandered through the grass, spotted him, and diverted on a course straight to him.

Red swooped down from the sky and grabbed it in its talons. Luke could hear the crunch of bone as the bird punctured its brain through its skull in mid-flight. “Thanks, buddy,” Luke called after it.

He stared down at the fresh grave for a long few minutes. There was nothing else to say. It was time to go.