Trees as far as the eye can see. Enormous trees, almost five-hundred feet tall. Trees with needles the size of daggers and others with leaves the size of serving trays. From the left to the right and all the way to the horizon all he could see were trees. The mountain that the dungeon was attached to, on the other hand, seemed to be completely devoid of vegetation.

The view momentarily stunned Jack before he remembered why he was in such a hurry.

As quick as he could without risking a fall Jack hiked down from the mountain towards the edge of the forest.

Walking into the forest was a humbling experience. Everything was huge, the trees, the plants, the animals. The first creature he saw was a twelve-foot doe. Initially, he mistook it for a moose.

The world looked like someone had zoomed in. He was already used to the giant bugs from the cave. Luckily, these didn’t seem automatically hostile.

There were foot-long caterpillars, birds the size of his chest, and he was pretty sure he saw a chipmunk the size of a pomeranian run up a tree.

In the distance, Jack could hear flowing water, and while he was no survival expert, he knew rivers generally would lead to some sort of civilization.

While he walked, Lucy was giving off massive amounts of excitement. Which he could understand as literally everything was new to her. He wasn’t sure what her intelligence was but Identify said it was her highest attribute, so that means it was at least three. He was going to guess she’s about as smart as a kitten or a puppy right now.

Once he had put some distance between them and the dungeon, he felt himself relax. The angry manaweaver shouldn’t have a reason to chase them this far. Feeling safe from that threat, he made a mental checklist of what he needs to do now.

Find civilization. Find a water source. Find/Hunt food. Get stronger for protection Help Lucy get stronger

“Ok Lucy, we have a loose plan. One and two as of right now are the same thing. On a similar note, three, four, and five can be accomplished the same way. None of the animals I’ve seen so far have been higher than level six, so we should be able to grind up to at least level ten.”

Lucy stared blankly back. He felt confusion radiating off of her, but she seemed to enjoy being acknowledged and talked to. “Don’t worry, I will take care of things, you just have fun looking at the new things.”

Eventually, Jack found the river he was looking for. It was about a football field across, and according to his compass, it was flowing south-east. Since the dungeon was north of him he decided to follow it downstream for now and hopefully find people.

Jack sat next to the river eating one of his food calorie bars. He estimated that with the ten remaining bars, he had enough food for a comfortable two to three days. Lucy was enjoying a sizeable chunk of the centipede meat. He had no idea how much she was going to eat. Normal spiders can go a long time without food and her race says she can survive off of mana only provided mana is dense enough. But contrary to those facts, she ate a chunk of centipede that was almost half the size of her body and looked at him for more.

“Ok, ok, you can have a little more but don’t be a glutton.” He cut a smaller piece of centipede and threw it out to her. It lands a fair bit away from her and instead of running up and eating it like he thought she would. She instead began to slowly circle around it. Kind of like she was stalking it. Once she ‘found’ its blind spot she pounced and started tearing into it.

Jack couldn’t help but let out a few chuckles that immediately drew her attention. “Good job, Lucy BRAVO!” He clapped at the last part to encourage her. Happy with his praise, she went back to her meal.

**Skill Up** Hair manipulation Level 3

Jack had figured out that instead of looking at his hair and watching it move, if he just tried to move it by ‘feel’ then he could actually manipulate it better. For now, he had let his hair down and was slowly trying to braid it using only his skill. The task was proving to be exceptionally difficult.

“Ok Lucy, do we start looking for shelter, or do we keep going?” Lucy continued eating without a response “you’re right, we haven’t seen any sign of civilization yet so following the river another hour or so probably won’t produce anything new. Good talk.”

Jack wished he watched more survival shows because he had no idea what made a good temporary shelter. A cave would be nice, but besides the dungeon, he hasn’t seen any large hills or mountains. His best bet would probably be setting up his tent near the river, then keep a fire going all night.

Interrupting his planning was a rustle from a nearby brush.

Forest Constrictor Level: 6 Current mood: Hungry.

One of the most common types of snakes the forest constrictor targets weak-looking prey then strikes quickly wrapping around it.

Contrary to intuition a constrictor does not crush its prey most commonly it cuts off blood flow or asphyxiates.

Usually nocturnal, a forest constrictor will hunt during the day when it is starving or its environment is majorly disturbed.

Age: 7 years.

Highest attribute: Strength

Highest skill: Grapple.

Quickly, Jack picked up his pole, which he currently had extended to six feet. “Lucy, come!” Lucy, having almost finished her meal, looked up. Seeing the snake, she let out a hiss and turned to run back to Jack.

The snake waited until Lucy’s back was turned before it lunged at her. Jack was prepared for exactly that. He missed its head but was still able to slam it into the ground, stopping its attack. Jack didn’t give the snake any time to recover by repeatedly lifting and slamming down this pole until he received the notification that it was dead.

You have slain a Forest Snake Level: 6

Your contribution 75%

You are awarded 13 Experience **Skill Unlocked ** Staff Mastery Would you like to learn this skill Yes No

Jack collapsed to his knees. He didn’t know when he would get used to killing things, but he knew he had to soon if he was going to survive. When he fully sat down Lucy walked up to his hand and placed one leg on it. She then started to stroke the back of his hand softly while looking up at him, sending some complex feelings. Jack barked out a laugh. She was trying to comfort him, like he would do for her, by petting him.

“Thank you.” He reciprocated a small pet then got back to his feet, grabbing the body of the snake.

**Skill Acquired** Staff Mastery Level: 1 Mastery in the use of a staff.

“Oh, a very helpful description. Come on Lucy, let's find someplace to sleep for the night.”

It was getting dark as Jack inspected his camp. Calling it a camp may be a bit of an overstatement, it was mostly just the emergency tube tent from Jay’s bag hanging off a small rope that was attached to two trees. The bright orange tent wasn’t very big, but it should keep out the elements. As an additional border to his ‘camp’ was his hundred-foot climbing rope held about six inches off the ground by eight pitons. He hoped that if a creature made its way into his camp, it might trip or get tangled in the rope.

Stacked neatly next to his tent were about a dozen branches to keep a fire going for a while. He hoped they would last all night, but there were surprisingly few downed branches in this forest and he didn’t want to chop some off a tree because the noise might attract something.

Lucy was having fun running back and forth inside the tent. It was made of a foil-like material, so when Lucy would run across it, it would make a crinkling sound that she seemed to enjoy.

Jack pulled out the firestarter and immediately realized he didn’t know how to use one. It was a metal stick with a stone block on one side. He thought it might have something to do with striking the block with a knife to make sparks. He checked and was correct you could make sparks but beyond that; he didn’t know what else it did.

After an hour of trying to spark some leaves and pine needles and set a fire, he gave up. He crawled into his tent laying on his back. Not realizing how tired he actually was, he fell right to sleep.

Jack woke up feeling horribly groggy. Lucy had curled up on his chest and looked to be sleeping. It was hard to tell since she didn’t have eyelids. He scooped her up and laid her to the side, getting out of the tent.

He went a couple of trees away to pee. While doing so he looked down at his tattered jeans and shirt. Mid-thigh down his jeans were just strips barely holding together. His shirt had several holes and bloodstains. Just as he was making plans to cut the jeans into shorts, he noticed something that made his blood run cold.

A massive print in the soil of what looked like a talon. The talon was four feet long; he had no idea how big that would make the monster attached to it, and he would not stick around and find out. He quickly woke Lucy and broke down his tent and rope border.

Around midday Jack had just gotten done eating lunch and trimming the scraps off his new ‘shorts.’ During his walking, he thought more about the system. If it assigned everything a level, does that mean he could just grind levels by killing fish? What’s the limit? He knew that there were giant centipedes with levels. What about the normal ones? Do they give experience? To test this, he found a large rock and flipped it over. Underneath the rock he saw worms and other bugs crawling around, focusing on one of the worms, he tried to Identify it.

Earthworm Level: 0 An earthworm is a terrestrial invertebrate. They exhibit a tube-within-a-tube body plan, are externally segmented with corresponding internal segmentation, and usually have setae on all segments. They occur worldwide where soil, water, and temperature allow. Earthworms are commonly found in soil, eating a wide variety of organic matter.

“Sorry little guy, but I have to know.” He moved the worm to a rock and smashed it with another rock.

You have slain an Earthworm Level: 0

Your contribution 100%

You are awarded 1 Experience

“No fucking way.”

Fifty-four level zero bugs later.

**Level Up** You are awarded 5 attribute points Name Jackson Calder Race Human Class Adaptable Dungeoneer Age 5000 Level 4 Health 30/30 Stamina 13/17.5 Experience 0/400 Strength 6 Dexterity 7 Endurance 7 Vitality 12 Perception 8 Intelligence 21 Available Attribute Points 5

The entire time he was smashing bugs, he had thought about what he was going to invest his points in. Two points to strength and three for endurance.

Stamina 21/25 Strength 8 Endurance 10

His whole body felt like he had worked out to exhaustion, then slept, only to do it again all in the span of thirty seconds. “Well that was unpleasant, note to self; wait until I am in a safe location to increase attributes.”

Happy with collecting and smashing bugs, Jack didn’t notice the creature walking along the other side of the shore, attracted by the sounds of smashing rocks.