Chapter 3: Nibble.

  He hiked up the grassy hill as carefully as he could. He could bleed out from these grass stalks eviscerating his skin if he fell down the hill at the wrong angle. It was like walking on thin flexible razor blades. Luckily they weren’t all that long, or it would be impossible not to get cut. That being said, if a falling pinecone or tiny little tree branch decided to hit him on the head it could end him right there.

  They weren’t actually pine trees, but it was a comfort to think of them as such. It was uncanny how much they resembled one another. He paused part way up the hill, exhausted and fatigued from a lack of food intake. Then he decided to toggle on his Soul Orb to take a look out of curiosity. Does this mean I might get to use magic? What is happening? He really wished there was some kind of tutorial or entry sequence that made more sense or had even a smidgen of guidance. Even if it were hostile guidance, at least there would be a direction to go in. It was also, so very lonely and quiet here. Sky was a social person. He was picky with who he kept company, but definitely enjoyed certain types of people in his life. His friends back home were few, but they hung out a lot. The pain of maybe losing all that he had accomplished forever was harsh.

  He inspected the one and only Glyph on the surface of his Soul Orb. As he focused on it, it glowed red and black. It was really weird that anything black could glow, but he supposed black lights existed back home so it wasn’t completely impossible. The symbol was jagged, and honestly looked like a curse. It was a mix of Oblivion, Doom, and other horror games he had played before. It was still, just one small symbol on his mostly blank and empty soul. Although, the glyph was getting stronger in some ways as time passed.

  Plink. A dull undertone notification sound chimed in his head from the interface system.

  “System Notification:

  Multiple Ailments have been cured; Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, Mild Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Caffeine Addiction, Sugar Addiction, Mild Atherosclerosis, Early Metabolic Syndrome, Chronic Traumatic (Brain Injury) Encephalopathy, Chronic Sleep Apnea, High Blood Pressure, and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.”

  His jaw hit the floor when he read all of it. He had no idea about half of that. Given his health and fitness enthusiasm in his previous life, he knew what all of these were. The Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy was a surprise. Normally only football players with repeated head injuries were known to get that, and it was discovered during autopsy a lot of the time. But, with mild strikes to the head every time he sparred during MMA practice, he supposed that made sense too. A thousand concussions have a long term affect.

  He stretched his arms, and flexed his hands. “Is this what it feels like to be healthy? Man. I’ve been missing out. How could I have been pre-diabetic?”

  He raised his t-shirt and flexed his abs in confusion. Was it just the stress? Or maybe it was going to happen because of genetics. That would have been a real downer to become Diabetic despite all that work. But, he wouldn’t have been the first. But, how were all these problems even cured? There were so many questions rattling around, but there could be no doubt about it anymore. He was Isekai’d, and magic was real. He just needed to figure out how to use it.

  “System Notification: New Tab, Quests. New Quest.”

  He selected the Quests tab which had appeared just next to his locked Stats tab. “First Quest: Kill a living organism other than a plant, fungi, or member of your own species. To fulfill this quest, you must be responsible for doing significant damage to an animal, monster, or living thing that is capable of attacking you, just before it dies.”

  Well, that wouldn’t normally be that difficult, except for a complete lack of anything alive here. He sighed. If a giant fruit fly would buzz around he might be able to wrestle it and crush it with a small rock or something with all his might, but there just wasn’t anything. He continued walking to the top of the hill, with the suspiciously similar sun in the sky getting close to setting behind him.

  At the top of the hill, a wide expanse of hills, mountains, valleys, forests, rivers, lakes, cliffs, and rock lay before him. This valley he was in wasn’t a low point, it was just a small dip on the top of a plateau overlooking an insane view. He had never seen anything like it, and he had been on the top of famous mountain peaks on Earth. He could see so much further than on Earth. Was that because this planet was bigger and less curved? Was it flat? He chuckled to himself at how ridiculous things have become that he could honestly ask that last question.

  There was a bigger problem though. He couldn’t see anything edible, and wasn’t a survivalist. He knew how to find salt given enough time due to his Geology class, but this wasn’t the type of landscape that should be devoid of animal life like this. On top of that, the evidence of that Abomination stomping through was missing. He had a thought, maybe the plant life adapted to being stepped on by that thing. Maybe that’s why things were so tough here. The density and weight was out of control though. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the constant pressure that was on him was partially air pressure. The weight of even the air was high, and he could feel a large resistance if he moved his arm back and forth. He hadn’t realized it because of everything else.

  Like an answer from a mind reading god, the wind gusted over the top of the hill and pushed him back a few feet, nearly making him fall over.

  “Woah! That was crazy,” he said to himself.

  This would be a lot more fun with other people to explore with him. He stepped back up to the top of the hill and looked more carefully at the nearby surroundings. There was a way down into the mainland a few miles to the side from the high point. But something else caught his eye. A massive creature that he originally thought was a hill or a boulder lay dead about five miles away. It was mostly obscured by a mountain and its trees, but it looked fresh. It was trampled by the Abomination earlier, if he had to guess. It was unexpected to Sky that the giant thing avoided trampling trees or disturbing the landscape, but crushed a living thing.

  Nevertheless, upon seeing a downed beast he cried out, “Food!”

  Despite his weak and frail stature in this hostile land, he took off in a light jog. He was getting used to the terrain, slowly. On the dirt though, it was just like running on a sidewalk back home. There was some cracks or debris from blown away trash to avoid, and it was a really solid running surface that he wasn’t going to budge. He had jogged on an empty stomach a few times before, but it obviously wasn’t enough to completely prevent his diabetes onset. It had to have helped though. Either way, he didn’t have anything to store water in, so he took note of the location of rivers and lakes as he slowly jogged toward the downed beast.

  Could he even harvest that thing? What if it was toxic? Oh boy, he was going to have to eat the first few bites raw for sure. But, what choice did he have? As the sun started to go down, it was getting a little cold, but not anything unbearable yet. If he had to compare weather, it was a hot day in Spring that he had just experienced. But, in this new world, that could be as cold as it gets, or as hot as it gets. With the robust plant life, the grass probably wouldn’t wilt or turn yellow if it was 150 degrees out. He started to really worry about his survival at this point, and decided not to think about the future, but his current problems of right now.

  Plink. “System Notification: New Skill.”

  He stopped jogging to check his Skills tab.

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  Sure enough there was a single entry. “Glyph of Endurance: Low effort sustained work output can now utilize external energies as fuel. This requires an energy rich environment. This is a passive ability.” He could feel another glyph being branded onto his Soul Orb. Instinctively without looking at it directly he knew it was nearby the other Glyph, and looked entirely different. Instead of jagged and red and dark, it was a condensing swirl of various colors and shades to a central point.

  With a bright smile on his face, he kept jogging toward the massive corpse in the distance. Sure enough, after another couple miles, he could feel a difference in his endurance. His heart was still pumping hard and he was breathing heavy, and would need to recover. However, he wasn’t making himself more hungry than he was prior. It was hard to tell, but the difference was somewhat noticeable.

  The corpse was larger than he anticipated. In front of him was the curved side of the body of something he couldn’t begin to identify. It had crocodile shell skin, but was just a gigantic lump as far as he could tell. It’s body continued for a mile in each direction wrapping around a mountain and into the forest where there was a clearing. A few trees were downright exploded by this thing a few hundred feet away as it collapsed. It looked like the top of the tree was tough enough to actually spear through the thick hide quite a ways, drawing some purple blood.

  “Oh great. Purple blooded animals. Is that going to be edible at all? Dammit.” He shook his head. How was he supposed to even cut into this thing?

  After much deliberation, he found another smaller tree that was sticking into what he guessed was its ribcage. It made contact after most of beast had collapsed, so it wasn’t completely crushed. Enough weight had been put on it to impale it slightly though. On his way, he grabbed a pointy broken stick that weighed over fifty pounds. It was just a small one handed fire poke stick, but this world didn’t care about size.

  He carefully climbed up the side of the diagonal tree that was pinned into the beast. It was easier than ever. None of the smallest branches would break, and even loose bark wouldn’t peel off. It was like the tree was frozen in time for him to climb all over. As he got near the beast, he realized it was still warm enough to put out some body heat. He got right up to it, and put a hand on its dark green scales.

  “I wish I could take a picture of this and show somebody,” he whispered.

  The scaled hide was textured enough for him to climb up from this point. If he tried at ground level he would have to be a master rock climber to climb a surface that was beyond vertical, and tilted back upwards. He never understood how those climbers could climb up a surface that angled back at them like that. It was one thing to scale straight up a surface, but this was scaling up underneath a cliff edge.

  He set his footing, and propped his legs against a few branches to brace himself. With a tight double-fisted grip on his little pointed stick, he took aim at the dried purple gash in the beasts side. He stabbed with all his strength into the open wound that was left by the broken remains of a branch that was probably inside the beast already. It left a cut, and that cut was target number one for his stick point. The sharp point of the stick impacted the bloody flesh, and stopped.

  “No. No, no. Come on!”

  He stabbed again, and again. The only thing he accomplished was getting the tip of the stick a little wet with the purple blood. He looked at it carefully.

  “Well, I suppose it would all be for nothing if it was toxic anyways,” and with that he put the stick point in his mouth and licked clean the freshly drained purple blood and swallowed it.

  It was a cross between a habanero and overripe pineapple kiwi. In other words, it tasted amazing. Then, it started to burn. The inside of his mouth was on fire, just like if he ate a real habanero. His stomach protested like he had just started chugging vodka. But, as he drooled off the side of the tree thirty feet in the air, he was managing to survive. This wasn’t an allergic reaction. At least, not the kind that required an Epi Pin. That was just good luck. Although, it was burning like crazy.

  He desperately wanted to drink some water or at least wash his mouth out from the insane burning.

  “I need, to distract, myself,” he struggled to say.

  He dropped his poke stick, and climbed down the tree. He decided to find a better way to harvest the meat before it went bad. If it even could go bad. He found a flat palm sized rock that was just big enough to strike the back end of the stick like a hammer and chisel. The two objects were so heavy he could hardly bring them up the tree. It was like climbing with a 60 pound weighted vest, ankle weights, and wrist weights, while the wind gusted.

  In the end, he made it back up, and his mouth was still burning a little. But, he felt ever so slightly better. He was making progress, he found something he could technically eat, he hoped. If he could manage to actually carve away a tiny piece of meat from this thing, it might be enough to completely fill his empty stomach. If it was anything like that extra dense water, he should only need one bite right?

  He was getting his stick lined up for the best strike, when the beast in front of him moved. Its flesh moved only half an inch in front of him away from the tree, but that was enough to make his eyes bulge out of his head entirely.

  He started to shake and his mind raced. What could he do? If this thing was still alive, he should run away. But he wasn’t nearly fast enough to run from something like this. It could kill him by accident and not even notice. Hell, it could probably sneeze on him and kill him.

  He frowned in determination. He needed something to eat. If he was so small and insignificant, than a tiny piece of flesh might as well be a mosquito bite. Its not like it had limbs anywhere nearby to swat him with. He just needed a tiny nibble for today. That’s all that mattered.

  He brought up the heavy stone like a 40 pound dumbell on top of his shoulder, pushed it up above his head, and then brought it down with a crack onto the back of the stick angled into its side. It went in a tiny bit. So, he brought the rock up, and with a warcry he slammed it down again. He used all his remaining energy, stress, anger, and determination to slam it repeatedly as fast as he could before the beast got up and left. He finally got a single bite sized piece cut completely free, and was able to barely catch it by pinning it with his knee to the beasts hide before it fell to the ground.

  He almost stuck it in his mouth right then and there. But, decided to eat it while on ground level. He reluctantly put the purple alien meat bite in his pocket, and then with ferocity continued to carve away at the creature. It roared several miles in the distance, and the vibration shook his mind and soul to its core. The pressure of this thing was increasing at it stirred. What he now recognized as its Aura was pressing down on him, as its awareness focused on the tiny weak parasite trying to nibble at its side. He finally stripped away a half pound of the flesh, and stuffed it into his other pocket. At this point, the tree was rocking up and down as the creature shook the earth. Presumably by putting its feet down and trying to stand up, but he couldn’t really tell. It was like a living mountain.

  Just as he stabilized himself, the beast roared even louder, and the curved side of the beast that was just next to him launched off into the distance. With that, the crushing pressure he felt before, or one very similar threatened to blow his head up with how much it hurt. He needed to focus. The tree he was on slowly crunched toward the ground, ripping more roots out on its way. He wanted to marvel at the creature he had taken a bite from, but he was focused on not being crushed by a random branch of this falling tree.

  The ground rumbled like mad, and he fell off the tree that was also shaking as a result. But he was close enough to the ground to drop the stick and stone he used and land without injury. The Aura pressure declined slowly as the rumbling faded. Then, he pulled the tiny piece of meat he harvested first from his pocket and inspected it.

  The purple meat wriggled like it was still alive, with muscles spasming and jerking in protest. He gagged.

  “Oh my God. This better taste better than it looks.”

  He was about to stuff the whole bite into his mouth, but he would probably break teeth on the dam flesh. So, he bent down, and started crushing it to paste between two rocks. The best rock he found he could hardly lift, given its small size and high weight. But, he managed to break down the flesh into strings. He picked up the lump of hammered flesh, and stuck it in his mouth with the shake of his head.

  He tried chewing for a sense of normalcy, but it was like chewing sand. It was starting to really burn anyways, so he swallowed it before he could change his mind. Plink. Plink. Two notifications sounded in his mind, and then every muscle in his body started cramping and convulsing. He wished he was unconscious for this, but he had no such luck. The cramps were worse than any cramps he had ever had in his life. His body flailed around and shook unnaturally, like a puppet master on drugs was trying to make him break his limbs on the nearby rocks for some reason. He felt like a voodoo doll being shaken by a toddler after the dog ripped its arm off. Then, when his neck flexed up and then back down, he bashed his own head against his will into the hard dirt.

  While unconscious, he still felt some pain in his Soul, which was a brand new experience for him. It felt somehow familiar, but also extremely foreign. A part of his mind was still aware of his continued struggle for survival as well, but mostly he was at peace in his sleep.