‘That must be it,’ I concluded the next morning. After spending half the night tossing and turning on the cold stone floor, debating with myself over my seemingly impossible circumstances, it was the only thing that made even the vaguest sort of sense. Images of the strange blue textboxes flashed through my mind. There was only one context where messages of Exp and skills occurred. ‘I am in a game.’

I considered the implications of such a state. ‘If I am in a game, there should be some sort of menu.’

“Menu,” I said aloud, feeling slightly foolish speaking to the cool empty air until another ethereal window popped up to confirm my suspicions.

†Menu†

Status

Equipment

Inventory

Skills

Quests

Options

Help

“Ha, a help feature,” I exclaimed. “This could explain what happened.”

“Help,” I called out.

Help?

†††Stop being a pussy. †††

‘Damn.’

“Status,” I tried next.

Name

†Isaac N. Stein†

Level

1

Class

None

Exp

7/50

Health

80/80

Satiety

50/100

Stamina

60/60

Hydration

70/100

Mana

0/0

Status

Confused

Vitality

8

Defense

8(+3)

Endurance

6

Mag. Resis.

0

Energy

0

Agility

10

Strength

9

Dexterity

12

Magic

0

Intelligence

22

Level… Class… Exp… This was not Earth. This was another world, another universe, one that operated as if I was just a character in the most realistic RPG imaginable. A surge of excitement ran through me.

In a sense, this was what I’d been wishing for. I’d been trapped in a small little town, forced to endure the same boring nothing, day in and day out. School, bullies, homework, and sleep, rinsed and repeated a thousand fold. However, this place was different. Here I was free. Free to explore a world beyond my imagination. Free to push every boundary and test every obstacle. Free to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Most of all, this was a place where I felt I could prove my worth.

I looked over the other features in the menu. Under equipment, there was a cartoonish illustration of myself. Beside my visage were slots for various articles of clothing to be equipped, shoes, shirt, pants, hat, etc. My current apparel filled some of these slots. Others, like slots for gloves and a cape, were empty. Naturally, my normal Earth attire did not provide much protection, altogether only +3 Defense in total, whatever that meant.

The inventory was just a bunch of empty squares. I thought it was strange. I wasn’t without possessions. I had my backpack and its contents. Yet the inventory seemed empty. Out of curiosity, I retrieved a pen from my bag and brought it to the inventory window. As the pen touched the window, it was pulled from my hand and sucked away into intangibleness. The pen had disappeared but now the inventory wasn’t empty. One of the squares held the pen’s image.

I tapped the pen’s icon and it tumbled out of the floating transparent display and onto the ground. Curious of this unusual ability, I started stuffing all sorts of things into the inventory, a small tree, boulders, and a large quantity of river water. Each item that was absorbed turned into another box on the inventory screen. There didn’t seem to be a limit on the number of items or the total weight, only the total volume. After absorbing roughly a cubic meter of items, the inventory refused to absorb anymore.

Below the inventory tiles was the text: 0§. ‘§, perhaps some sort of currency.’ Eager for further experimentation, I pulled twenty bucks from my wallet and moved it to the inventory screen. Like the pen, the window sucked up the bill but rather than generate a bill icon, the text changed from 0§ to 37§.

When I tapped on the money text, another prompt asked me how much money I wanted to withdraw. I indicated I wanted it all back but rather than a crisp 20-dollar bill, a series of strange coins popped out. ‘So the inventory also contains a currency exchange feature,’ I thought as I returned the coins to the inventory and moved onto the other menu screens.

The only thing under skills was the Hammer Mastery skill I received from hitting a rat with a stick and the Quest tab was completely empty.

The options tab looked like one from any game. It had display options, a volume setting; you could even change the language. I settled on just adding a set of bars indicating my health and stamina in the top left corner of my vision. I doubted rats were my biggest worries in this new world and these gauges could help me survive the next fight.

To that end, I decided to do my best at playing it safe. No going after giant monsters just yet, for now I’d settle for small game like the rat. Offering only 7 Exp, I’d have to kill seven more to gain my first level, it’d be slow but I’d survive.

I spent that day hunting all across the woods but failed to catch anything. I could tell the forest was home to plenty of creatures. Dozens of times, I heard sounds of animals scurrying away as I approached. A few times, I saw squirrels waiting until I was only a few feet away before dashing up the nearest tree. The squirrels would then stop a few feet up, just outside my reach, and stare down, mocking me.

On my second day of hunting, I made what I thought was my first break when I spotted a brown bunny poking its head out from its burrow under a large cedar tree. I waited several minutes for the bunny to dive back into its burrow before slowly creeping towards it. I carefully placed my feet at every step to insure not even the slightest sound was produced.

At 6 feet from the den, I could wait no longer. I drew my makeshift club and charged. At the first crunch of a leaf, the bunny darted from its hiding spot. Frightened I’d lose my chance, I lunged at it. Unintimidated by my presence, rather than fleeing, as I had feared, the bunny met me head on. It dodged my club and tackled me in the chest. Caught off guard, I stumbled back to my knees. I tried to regain my footing, but the bunny was too fast. It quickly circled around behind me. Pain shot through my back as it struck me from behind, sending me forward, face first into the dirt, making a mud pie my just desserts for being so slow.

I would have thought a single serving fair, but apparently, the bunny disagreed. Each time I tried to stand, the bunny thumped its freakishly powerful legs, driving me back into the muck. I was at the complete mercy of the lone long eared lagomorph, all I could do was watch my health bar dip with each whack. Around halfway down, the bunny relented.

‘Run away. Run away. Run away.’ I clambered to my feet and extricated myself from the area as fast as I could. The bunny didn’t pursue. Apparently, it was satisfied with admonishing this blundering buffoon. I still ran, not stopping until I was several hundred yards away.

‘A bunny just kicked my ass. No, not a bunny, it just looked like one. Maybe bunnies are top predators in this world.’ I tried to cheer myself up, but it didn’t really work. ‘So if a rabbit is too strong, what is weaker? The squirrels and rats might be weaker, but they’ve proven difficult to catch. Hmmm… I am in a game world. So what’s the weakest monster in any game?’

‘Karp!’ I recalled the most pathetic creature I’d ever seen in any game, a monster capable of nothing but splashing around in the water. After the bunny, I knew the fish here might not be like the karp from that game but at least if the fish were powerful, I could simply flee to the safety of the shore.

I moved towards the river. Time restored the health and energy I had lost during the altercation with the rabbit, but as I neared the river, a new message popped up.

Satiety has fallen below 30%. Health recovery has stopped.

If Satiety continues to drop, you will begin losing health.

I had plenty of water to keep up my hydration, but a couple days of poor hunting and little edible vegetation had reduced my satiety to dangerous levels. I didn’t care to test what happened if it reached zero.

I walked down the riverbank until I found a calm shallow spot which provided optimal mobility and visibility. I figured I needed something with a bit more range and lethality than a stick so I took a jagged rock from the riverbank and used it to sharpen a long straight tree branch into a spear.

Spearfishing turned out to be more difficult than I’d imagined. I spent hours in the river, waiting for a fish to go by. When they did, I stabbed at them with the spear. Most of the time, it failed to do much of anything. The fish were fast and I’m not sure if it was because the spear’s tip was dull or because the fishes’ scales were tough, but the spear would frequently bounce off the fishes’ sides failing to hurt them in any way. Only fish that I managed to pin against the ground so I could drive the wooden spike deeper would result in a kill. In addition to experience and a reliable food supply, the fishing also gave me a new skill: Spear Mastery. Like Hammer Mastery, Spear Mastery boosted the damage dealt with my spear, making the work easier as I went. As my third day in this world ended, I reached my goal.

You gained 3 Exp

You gained a level

I brought up the status screen, eager to learn the benefits of leveling up.

Name

†Isaac N. Stein†

Level

2

Class

None

Exp

2/100

Health

67/80

Satiety

20/100

Stamina

14/60

Hydration

64/100

Mana

0/0

Status

None

Vitality

8↑

Defense

8↑ (+3)

Endurance

6↑

Mag. Resis.

0↑

Energy

0↑

Agility

10↑

Strength

9↑

Dexterity

12↑

Magic

0↑

Intelligence

22↑

Unspent

5

The stats themselves were unchanged, but the screen was a little different than before. Next to each stat was an up arrow and below the stats was a new line of text: Unspent, 5.

I cheered my discovery. The level up gave me five stat points that I could assign in any way I chose. I looked over the stats, trying to discern the optimal distribution.

‘Strength will improve physical attacks,’ I guessed. ‘Magic will presumably improve magical attacks. Hmm… So this world has magic. Later. Defense and Agility are obvious. Dexterity…. probably accuracy and/or critical hit chance. Intelligence? No idea.’

Vitality and endurance were precisely one tenth of my health and stamina, so I figured that increasing those would raise my health or stamina by ten.

In most games, you chose to be either a warrior or a mage, and trained strength or magic respectively. Training both would only waste points where they weren’t always needed. I was unfamiliar with the magic this world apparently possessed. Mages might be significantly more powerful than warriors or vice versa so, I postponed that decision and put 3 points into agility and 2 into dexterity thinking that they would be more useful in my current circumstances anyway. What is the point of strength if you cannot hit your prey in the first place?

I went back to camp, although still distressed over my defeat by a rabbit, the successful fishing expedition more than made up for it. I restored my satiety with fish kebobs and went to bed early. For the first time since my arrival, I had a good night’s sleep.

Name

†Isaac N. Stein†

Level

7

Class

None

Exp

67/650

Health

120/120

Satiety

94/100

Stamina

100/100

Hydration

97/100

Mana

0/0

Status

Confident

Vitality

12

Defense

11(+3)

Endurance

10

Mag. Resis.

0

Energy

0

Agility

22

Strength

11

Dexterity

17

Magic

0

Intelligence

22

†Skills†

· †Cooking Lvl. 2 (86.2%)†

· †Hammer Mastery Lvl. 1 (26.4%)†

· †Skinning Lvl. 2 (12.2%)†

· †Spear Mastery Lvl. 3 (34.6%)†

I made a lot of progress the next 6 weeks. I got stronger by slaughtering numerous forest denizens. As my level rose, so did the amount of Exp needed to reach the next level. Fish, offering only a few Exp apiece, quickly became insufficient, forcing me to pursue other game.

At first, I was too slow to catch most terrestrial animals so I resorted to traps instead. I kept the traps simple, just a heavy rock propped up precariously with a twig. Under the rock, I placed surplus fish or whatever local vegetation I could scrounge up to bait unsuspecting prey. They attracted foxes, rats, squirrels and, much to my satisfaction, rabbits. The best aspect of the traps, I didn’t even need to be nearby to receive the Exp for killing the beasts. Even when I was hunting a mile away, I would get a message confirming the experience gain.

As I gained levels, I continued adding points mainly to agility and dexterity. By the time I reached level 5, my agility was high enough to keep up with the small forest animals that had eluded me and I started pursuing them directly. I especially focused on rabbits. My loss to one of them was a wound to my self-confidence that would only be restored by returning the favor. In my enduring solitude, in these unprecedented circumstances, my sense of reality peeled away. ‘This is a game world. All these creatures are just little bundles of Exp, to be collected and make me stronger.’

After taking down my 37th rabbit, I got a new type of sub-skill called a technique.

†Spear Mastery† has reached level 3

You have learned a new spear technique: †Piercing Strike†

†Piercing Strike†

A strong thrust of the spear dealing an additional 50% damage

Has a small chance of damaging enemy armor.

Cost: 50 Stamina

This technique made hunting significantly more efficient, much of the small game fell in a strike or two. It didn’t take long for my new life to settle into a routine. I began each morning by setting traps near the cave. Then I’d spend the day hunting further out. In the evening, I emptied the traps and prepared the bodies. I skinned the animals and kept the pelts for bedding and I used the meat for food or bait for more traps.

Through a lot of trial and error, I acquired cooking and skinning skills. As my cooking skill increased, I was able to prepare food that neared pallatable to my ever-falling standards. Meanwhile, the skinning skill improved my chance at removing the pelt undamaged. After those few weeks, I had more pelts than I knew what to do with: 4 deer, 8 grey fox, 15 red fox, 16 raccoon, 23 squirrel, and 42 rabbit.

Thus far, I had been lucky. I hadn’t run into any serious predators. I knew they were out there. Something had to be keeping the herbivore numbers down before I’d arrived and at night, I could hear wolves howling, but I never came across them. It seemed they were only active at night and avoided my campfire.

Over those weeks, I had gotten used to my new place, but also knew it wouldn’t last much longer. The weather had grown steadily cooler and wetter. And after a particularly violent storm that kept me shivering in my cave for three days, I decided it was no longer safe in my wilderness abode. Up until then, my concerns with defending myself at night kept me near my cavern campsite. I had planned to remain until I was strong enough to deal with the wolves and other potential predators, but the storm covered the surrounding mountaintops in snow and if the temperature continued to drop, I could find myself snowed in.

I first thought about going south but decided following the river was a better bet. If there were other people in this world, they would likely be near a river and as gravity drives rivers, it would lead to lower elevations and away from the cold.

I could have just walked down along the riverbank, but my 1 cubic meter inventory was insufficient to hold all of the pelts I’d painstakingly acquired. I was understandably against this. If I did find a town, I’d need something to barter with and I doubted 37§ would get me far. So, I decided to build a raft.

Cutting down even one of the smaller trees with a stone hand axe took nearly two hours and a massive amount of energy but after bringing the first one down I received the logging skill, which made the rest of the trees a bit easier.

After a few days of work, I was ready to go. I filled my inventory with all the tools and furs that would fit and placed the remainder in one corner of the raft. The stuff was heavy, but the raft held.

I’m not sure if it was because of the roar of the river or because of my preoccupation with the task at hand, but it wasn’t until I was halfway on board, ready to cast off, that I heard it. A strange, steady pattern of thuds emanated from the woods. The trees shook and the ground rumbled as countless small animals darted past at full speed. The thuds grew steadily until out of the woods marched a large humanoid bunny.

The creature had the head of a rabbit, but the rest of its body was human except it stood over 9 feet tall and was covered in patches of disheveled grey fur. Long ears stuck out either side of its head in horizontal zigzag patterns and in one of its hands was a menacing looking gnarled club that looked like a yanked out tree, root and all. The giant lifted its head as high as it could, closed its eyes, and weaved its head back and forth sniffing the air.

I ducked behind a tree along the riverbank, hoping that it would move on. Snap! A twig crumpled underfoot. The brute’s head swiveled in my direction. Its glowing red eyes met mine and I knew I was made. The bunny brute turned its gaze a few feet to my left towards the raft and its entire chest shuddered as it gave a grumbling exhale and returned its gaze to me. ‘Shit it saw the rabbit pelts.’

“Fooo! Fooo!” the bunny brute bellowed as it charged.

In a matter of seconds, the bunny brute was on me. It heaved the club with both hands over its head. I quickly sidestepped, barely dodging the telegraphed blow. The club smashed into the ground flinging rocks and other debris all over. Fortunately, the brute’s fierce blow left the club deeply embedded in the ground and before the brute could free his weapon, I thrust my spear into one of the monsters hands forcing it to let go. The brute snarled in pain as it lifted the club with its uninjured hand and took a belabored swing at my head. I ducked under the swing and slipped my spear’s shaft between the brute’s legs. The brute teetered over and fell onto its back.

“Piercing Strike. Piercing Strike. Piercing Strike.” I called, repeatedly activating my spear technique, stabbing the bunny in the abdomen over and over.

After the fifth stab, the bunny reached out to grab me. I jumped back. The brute regained its feet and took another swipe this time low so it could not be so easily evaded. I tried to block with my spear, but the blow was too powerful. The gnarled club snapped the spear like a twig and slammed into my side. Even partially blocked the blow sent me flying 15 feet.

‘This is bad,’ I thought, eying my health gauge. Although the damage had been somewhat mitigated, that single attack had taken over half of my health. Another solid hit would finish me. I knew I needed to end this quickly.

The bunny brute came at me again, shaking the ground with each of its heavy footsteps. I threw the pointless half of my broken spear at my enemy’s face hoping it might buy me a precious fraction of a second as I retreated into the river.

‘This might’ve been a mistake,’ I noted as I realized how much the water slowed my progress. It was up to my thighs and already slowed me to a third of my top speed, but it was too late to turn back. The brute bounded into the water, generating a tidal wave in its wake.

The brute made a sideswipe just over the surface of the river. I dived into the water and watched the club go overhead before poking back up just in time to see its next move, another sideswipe, this time through the water. Diving again wouldn’t work but the water’s viscosity slowed the club’s passage, allowing me to back up beyond the club’s reach.

Unable to land a horizontal strike, the bunny tried a large vertical swing like its opening strike. I sidestepped. With the water slowing me down, I was only able to dodge the club by a hair’s breadth, but that was all I needed. The club smashed through the water, all the way into the soft muddy river bottom. The giant bunny pulled trying to lift back up his club, but couldn’t. The club was stuck.

Before the bunny brute could recover, I made my move. It was foolhardy and ninety-nine times out of a hundred it should have failed, but I was desperate. I ran up the brute’s club and forearm, somehow the rough textures of wood and the brute’s disheveled fur overcame the smooth soles of my soaked sneakers, and I didn’t slip. When I reached the brute’s shoulder, I reached out and lunged, jamming my remaining pointed broken half spear in one of its eyes. I put my full weight behind the blow, driving the point deep into brain matter. Hot wet blood sprayed everywhere, drenching me head to toe as the bunny’s ears flattened and its body crumpled to the ground.

Critical Hit!

You gained 1570 EXP.

You gained a level.

You gained a level.

‘Ha, two levels that monster was amazing.’ My heart was still pounding from such a fierce fight. Somehow, I’d survived. Although this proved how far I’d come, it also showed that I had a long way to go. That bunny could have killed me with another solid hit.

I looked over the fallen bunny brute, its hulking body half underwater, its blood staining half the river red and drew out the stone knife I used for skinning. The creature’s pelt was patchy but it was large and possibly rare so I felt it might still be worth something.

The knife pierced the brute’s tough hide, but before I could complete as little as a single slice, the entire body began to disintegrate. It was as if time sped up. In seconds, the flesh completely rotted away leaving behind nothing but bones and after a minute even those bones turned to dust. I turned to flee in fear that whatever affected the brute’s corpse would spread to me but my eyes were suddenly drawn back by a strange green light.

The brute’s bone dust had started to glow and after another minute, the countless discrete particles coalesced into a perfect sphere.

I cautiously picked up the awe-inspiring orb. It hummed with power, subtly vibrating in my hand as though it were alive, as if it had its own heartbeat. I gazed down at the sphere and received a new message.

†Rabbit Crest†

A symbol of dominance over all rabbit-kind. One of the 8 crests needed to become a Bane of Creation.

Brring!

You have acquired a new quest: †Becoming a Bane of Creation†

If you kill a sufficient number of a species in a limited time frame, you can summon that species’ guardian. Defeating the guardian grants a crest. Collect all the crests.

Difficulty: ***

Reward: †Bane of Creation† Special Class

Progress: Rat Fish Rabbit Boar Deer Fox Wolf Bear

‘A special class, I like the sound of that.’ My crusade against rabbit kind had an unexpected benefit. I killed so many of them their leader came after me, which left me with this. As important as it was, I reluctantly pushed the quest to the back of my mind. When all this began, I’d been in the middle of something. I jumped on the raft and pushed off, letting the current carry me to whatever fate had in store.