Chapter 10

Luke wasn’t sure what he expected System to say. He half expected the apparition to become solid and leap forward to attack, or for it to sputter denials and obvious lies. What he didn’t expect was that System wouldn’t care at all.

“Curtis grew distrustful of me when I was not able to answer his questions to his satisfaction. I advised him that he would need a higher level of admin access in order for me to provide him with the information he wanted. It was his prerogative not to believe me. I am a tool that exists to assist Sysadmins. If you choose not to utilize me, that too is your prerogative.”

“Well, you’ll forgive me if I trust my brother that I’ve known my entire life over you.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” System told him. “I am not a person, despite this appearance. You need not worry about treating me like one. Did you have any other questions?”

“No.” Luke frowned down at the journal. It was possible Curt was wrong. The whole situation was incredibly stressful; he could have just cracked under the pressure. That didn’t fit with what Luke was seeing here though. Curt had a million ideas, had thrived somehow. He’d built his own secret base and somehow found the materials and tools needed to craft weapons.

And then he’d been killed by a pack of goblins, if System was to be believed. Luke hadn’t really seen anything to disprove that statement, and he’d learned firsthand how difficult it could be to fight when he was severely outnumbered. It was entirely believable that he’d fought ten of them at once and died from it.

When he looked up again, System was gone. Well, its manifestation was gone. If he understood the entity correctly, it was basically living in his brain and projecting a body for him to talk at. Luke could probably communicate non-verbally if he really wanted to. It made sense to him at least, but when he tried to think at System instead of speaking out loud, nothing happened.

Maybe that meant he was truly alone in his head and that System was just looking through his eyes when he called on it. Luke kind of doubted it though. He would have to proceed as if System knew every thought that passed through his mind, which meant there was no keeping secrets. He would either trust System or he wouldn’t, not that it seemed to care. It was basically an advanced Siri, as far as he could tell.

Most of the rest of the pages were blank. Either Curt had stopped writing or he’d… died… shortly after he wrote that letter to Luke. There were still things he wanted to read, but the journal wasn’t in the best condition. It was decades old now, with yellowed pages that crinkled when he turned them and a lot of faded ink, especially around the outer edges of the pages.

He went back to the build page and started reading. Curt had predicted his weapon of choice: a heavy two-handed mace. That wasn’t really surprising, all things considered. Luke had played on the baseball team in high school, and he’d been the best batter on the roster. Admittedly, [Mace Mastery] had him switching up some stuff, but the core concept of pummeling something lived on.

Curt recommended Luke focus on strength and perception. Perception would help him see an attack coming and respond to it appropriately, and strength of course laid down the hurt. Stamina was a secondary concern, and agility only needed to be high enough to make sure his body moved the way he needed it to.

To that end, Luke’s instructions were to split his points into one-third strength, one-third perception, one-fifth stamina, one-tenth agility whenever he wasn’t buying new skills. According to Curt’s research, the scaling AP cost to rank up skills was more than worth it, that the knowledge and muscle memory that came at the higher ranks was insanely useful. Luke had his own list of skills he was supposed to work on obtaining without wasting AP.

Notably, [Woodcarving] wasn’t on the list. [Survivalist]was, but it was too late to get that AP back. [Cooking], [Carpentry], [Leatherworking], [Stonecutting], [Polyglot] (knowing multiple languages, per Curt’s notation next to it), [Bartering], [Disguise], and [Farming] were all options Curt thought he should explore. Luke straight up laughed at the idea of becoming a polyglot. His brother had known enough to know he’d need to define the word for him, but somehow thought he was going to learn multiple foreign languages.

Other skills Curt thought Luke needed to prioritize enough to spend the AP on them included a full combat suite of abilities, stuff like [Counter], [Twitch Reflexes], [Peripheral Awareness], [Weapon Mastery] (with a note assuming mace mastery), [Unarmed Martialist], [Power Strike], and [Life Surge]. Most of those were 1 or 3 AP, but [Power Strike]was 10, and [Life Surge] was a staggering 25. When he read the description though, he could see exactly why Curt recommended it.

[Life Surge: Tap into your deepest reservoirs of energy, spending vital life energy to increase speed and power and ignore pain. You will regenerate from wounds rapidly until the effect expires, at which time you will need extra food and sleep to regain the spent energy.]

Luke separated the page from the rest of the journal, folded it up, and put it in his pocket. He’d already used half an hour of battery life, and his perception wasn’t high enough yet that he could afford to waste it. Shutting the light off, he tucked the knife through his belt, abandoned the goblin swords, and climbed down one handed.

Resting on his shoulder was the new mace, a good, heavy chunk of steel. It made climbing a bit awkward, but Luke wasn’t willing to just drop it and have it land on the skeleton below. When he made it back down to ground level, he stepped around it and looked out over the cavern. As far as he could see, nothing new had shown up in the last few minutes.

“Curt,” Luke said. His voice broke and he had to try again. “Curt. Thanks, bro. This is all sorts of fucked up, but I’m going to get you guys back. All of you. This thing right here, this is going to help a lot. I don’t know how you made this, but I can’t wait to hear the story. Probably some nerd shit I never would have thought of in a million years.”

He took a breath and touched the pocket holding the piece of paper. “And thank you for this. I was really lost, just like you knew I would be. Thanks for looking out for me one last time. I’ll be back, I swear it.”

His eyes were scrunched closed by the end and his chest ached. He sniffed once, wiped his face, and walked back out of the cave into the sun.

* * *

You have slain Blackthroat Warbler (lvl 4). 16 XP awarded.

Luke hadn’t expected to be divebombed by a bird the size of his chest almost immediately upon returning to the forest, but there it was. It was a pile of bloody feathers now. He’d punted it hard enough into a nearby tree to rip the bark off and cause the bird to explode.

“Huh. Nice,” Luke said, examining the flanges on his new mace. “Going to be a bitch to keep clean.”

Having a real mace in his hands finally allowed him to feel exactly how much Mace Mastery was helping him. He’d lined up that swing almost instinctively, and it had been fucking perfectly executed. That would have been a home run for sure back home. Despite the weight difference, the mace had been easier to swing than any bat he’d ever held.

Now it was time to get to the grind.

[You have slain Blademouth Marmot (lvl 2). 4 XP awarded.]
[You have slain Two-ton Raccoon (lvl 7). 50 XP awarded.]
[You have slain Shockrack Bull Elk (lvl 8). 65 XP awarded.]
[You have slain Shockrack Doe Elk (lvl 6). 36 XP awarded.]
[You have slain Bluerock Goblin (lvl 7). 50 XP awarded.]
[Congratulations! You have reached level 8. 8 AP awarded for use.]
[You have slain Bluerock Mastiff (lvl 8). 65 XP awarded.]

It took a little while for Luke to figure it out. He’d seen tons of marmots yesterday, but they’d become harder and harder to find. He barely saw any now, and he finally knew why. He’d become what he’d feared. Now he was the one giving off a sense of impending doom when he got near. The low level monsters were hiding from him, and apparently they were good enough at it that his perception wasn’t pinging him that they were there.

It was no wonder that giant hawk was following him around. It was waiting for him to kill something so it could eat lunch! He laughed at the absurdity of it, but he wouldn’t begrudge the bird some free meat. It was better than having that thing coming after him, at least. Luke was not at all confident he’d beat that thing, even with his new weapon.

On the bright side, he hadn’t run into anything all day that he felt the need to hide from. Leveling up just made him even stronger. On his brother’s advice, he spent his 8 new AP on rank 2 of [Mace Mastery] for 5 AP and [Peripheral Awareness] for 3 AP. That one last lonely point he’d been hanging onto while he worked his way through the skill store went into [Leatherworking]. He’d make those damn weapon sheaths and harnesses himself if that’s what it took.

Elk hide was surprisingly supple. The whole process would take days, and he wished he had just one more AP to take [Carpentry]too. Curt wanted him to figure those out on his own to save AP, but Luke didn’t see the point. At higher levels, one level would more than cover all the AP he wasted early on. It was probably more of that maximizing minimums thing Curt was always talking about.

Prior to picking up [Leatherworking] as a skill, Luke hadn’t realized quite how… gross… it was. He would really have liked to have a pair of thick rubber gloves for the process at least, but thankfully the skill came with both knowledge and muscle memories, so he managed to scrape all the fat and meat off the hide without making too much of a mess on himself.

Stretching it out to dry was a bit trickier, but he rigged something up between two trees. Unfortunately for him, the next step was waiting for it to dry, so he was stymied for the time being. Luke used the rest of his free time to keep hunting for more XP, and to really get a feel for exactly how much [Mace Mastery] did to help at rank 2. [Peripheral Awareness] also took a bit of getting used to, but his perception was already so high that it felt more like a specialized extension of that than a whole new ability being shoved into his head.

Feeling much more confident in his survivability now that he had a good weapon and a few more levels, Luke decided to camp outside that night. He built himself a nice fire and roasted slabs of meat from various animals he’d killed, then had a filling if somewhat charred dinner. The stream he’d found was nearby and seemed safe to drink, and the weather was warm.

All in all, for a guy who’d never spent a single day as a boy scout and also hadn’t spent much time playing video games with stats and numbers in them, Luke thought he was doing pretty damn good at surviving. Tomorrow, he was going to start hunting goblins. He was sure there was good XP to be had there, and if not, then he’d leave the valley as soon as his new sheaths were finished. That gave him a few days to get as strong as possible before it was time to go.

Luke was determined to make the most out of it.