The beast didn’t seem to notice him yet but that didn’t stop Nate’s heart from almost beating out of his chest. To his relief, the gigantic creature was actually moving further away to look at another piece of debris.

Seeing his chance, Nate stood up and started running into the forest. His body hurt horribly as he moved but he pushed through the pain. Nate ran with an abandon driven by fear. A system alert brought Nate’s awareness back to the situation as he stumbled and fell on the ground.

[You have been affected by ‘Bleeding’ status]

[Your health will decline at a rate of 1 per minute until ‘Bleeding’ status removed]

[Health: 12/100]

As he sat on the ground, Nate followed the burning sensation in his leg to see the wound through his ripped pants. The gash in his right leg had started bleeding again. To stop the bleeding, Nate quickly ripped a piece of cloth from his shirt sleeve and tied it tightly around the wound.

[‘Bleeding’ status has been removed]

[Health: 11/100]

Regardless of his intense effort at running away, he hadn’t made it far into the woods. Nate knew that he couldn’t keep on moving like this for much longer. At that moment, he heard the noise of the beast ripping into metal again. This time it was much closer than before. The beast must have found Kevin’s dead body still strapped to the debris that Nate had been attached to a few minutes ago. Nate continued to move into the woods by following the easiest path available.

After moving for some time, he realized that he could no longer hear the beast at the crash site. Nate felt that he needed a place to hide right away. Looking around the cluttered forest floor, Nate could see what appeared to be a knotty hole in one of the extremely large trees. The hole would be barely big enough for Nate to climb in but it should work as a good hiding spot to keep the beast from finding him. Limping and crawling his way over to the very large tree, Nate could feel the pain starting to dull down and he felt extremely tired. As he reached the tree hollow, he tossed his bag through the hole then climbed inside himself.

Unexpectedly, Nate fell into nothingness as he began to climb inside of the tree. With a thud, he hit the earthen bottom of the tree hollow. Pain coursed through his body at the impact, but the thought of security made Nate feel better. As he lay on the soft floor inside the hollow, Nate finally felt a moment of safety. His body hurt badly, but he felt safe. A moment of relaxation rippled through his body as he realized that he was away from the threat. Then, he immediately passed out as the ‘ding’ of a series of system notifications rang in his head.

************************

An unknown amount of time later, Nate awoke to the earthen smell of damp dirt in his face. Pain was also vibrating throughout his body. Every beat of his heart caused a burst of throbbing pain in his right leg. Nate rolled over to his back and looked up to see a few rays of sunlight coming through the opening in the tree.

“I must have fallen over 6 feet when I climbed into the hole in the tree. I didn’t know that the bottom would be so deep,” Nate thought to himself as he tried to look around in the dim light.

With a faint recollection that he had received alerts before passing out, Nate decided to first check on his status before trying to get a better understanding of his surroundings.

—————————————————-

Name: Nathaniel Redsun

Level: 0 (Exp. 34/50)

Health: 27/100

Energy: 1/0

Primary Class: None

Secondary Class: None

Stats:

Speed: 1 Agility: 1

Stamina: 2 Strength: 1

Intelligence: 5 Perception: 2

Wisdom: 3 Will: 5

Stat Points Available: 0

General Skills:

Mental Calm (Passive)(Level 7)

Silent Crawl (Passive) (Level 2)

Pain Resistance (Passive)(Level 1)

————————————————-

“Cool,” Nate said out loud to himself while looking around in the darkness of the tree hollow. He could barely see but the display of his user interface was clearly visible.

Then, a growl echoed in the tree hollow.

After a brief second of fear, Nate chuckled to himself. His stomach continued to rumble angrily.

“I am really hungry and thirsty. How long was I passed out for?” Nate thought as he tried to feel around the tree hollow to find his bag. After a few minutes and a bit of pain, Nate managed to find his bag. Pulling the bag along with him, Nate found a comfortable spot to sit against the wall of the tree hollow. After a few seconds of rummaging through his backpack, Nate found the stash of nutrition bars he had tucked in the bag back in the city.

He sat on the soft soil inside the tree and inhaled two of the nutrition bars in a matter of seconds. His appetite and thirst were quickly settled, but he really wished he had some more water to wash it all down with. Nate didn’t know how but the small nutrition bars were enough to keep hunger and thirst satiated for half of a twelve-hour workday. The city didn’t want people stopping work once the factory was operational so these were kept in ready supply for workers.

After downing the two bars, Nate tried to stand up to see if he could look out of the entrance to the hollow, but his body didn’t quite cooperate. Although he wasn’t weak, he was still in a good deal of pain. He put his curiosity on hold and decided just to sit down to review the information related to his new skills.

Pulling up the skills on the user interface, a description of his two new skills appeared in his view.

[Silent Crawl (Passive) (Level 2)(Exp. 12/200)]

[Silent Crawl is a passive skill that allows the user to move on all fours in silence.]

[Pain Resistance (Passive)(Level 1)(Exp. 45/100)]

[Pain Resistance is a passive skill that allows the user to endure pain from injuries.]

Nate leaned back against the insides of the tree while thinking over his new skills.

“Why are all my skills passive?” Nate wondered to himself.

Passive skills weren’t rare, but Nate was certainly gaining them easily. He had figured that a skill like [Silent Crawl] would be an active skill that had to be initiated. He didn’t know what the difference was that caused his skill to be passive, but he wasn’t going to complain about getting something new.

Putting aside his thoughts on the skill issue, Nate began to look around the tree hollow. By his best assumption, it must be late in the day. Looking at the dimming light, he wouldn’t have much time before the light that stopped shining through the hole in the tree. Since his eyes had a few minutes to adjust to the darkness, he could make out the insides of the tree slightly. The tree cavity was practically barren of anything but mulchy dirt and a few protruding parts of the tree.

Thinking about the tree cavity, Nate slightly moved his body so that he could directly see the opening. While this had the practical purpose of watching for possible intruders, Nate was really just trying to keep his mind occupied. Living in a small space in the city, Nate had grown accustomed to doing odd tasks to pass the time when bored. However, in this instance, he wasn’t bored. He was hurt and scared. He needed to do something to occupy his mind since his body could barely move.

Nate spent the rest of the day resting his body. He would frequently lose track of time when he slept, but the rest was wonderful.

In the steadily dimming light, Nate tried his best to look around the tree hollow. From what he could see, the space inside the large tree was actually a tad larger than his boarding room back in Newcomb City. The trees of Soaring Woods were really large. Nate tried his best to make out the details of his resting place. The light continued to dim, but Nate continued to take in as much of the surroundings as possible. He wanted to make sure this place was empty of potential dangers.

[A skill, ‘Dark Vision’, has been created]

[‘Dark Vision’ has increased to Level 1]

“Damn, this has to be some sort of record,” Nate said to himself upon realizing that he had gained yet another passive skill. He immediately pulled up the skill’s description to see what it was all about.

[Dark Vision (Passive)(Level 1)(Exp. 11/100)]

[‘Dark Vision’ is a passive skill that allows the user to see more clearly in the lack of light.]

Reading the skill description, Nate felt shocked by his continual grasp of new skills. After a few minutes of thought, he began to consider if he had gained some ridiculous power of creating passive skills. With this crazy idea in mind, Nate decided to try his luck with creating another skill. He desperately needed to get back into good health if he was going to be able to crawl out of this tree. What he really needed was a skill that helped him heal. With that thought in mind, he continued to lay down and tried to focus on healing his body to create a healing skill.

Since he didn’t really have anything else he could do while laying in the dark, Nate spent hours of time trying to somehow make another skill appear. But, nothing happened.

Disgruntled that he had wasted so much time on a whim, Nate noticed that the sun was already set. The change was quite obvious because the light coming in the tree hole was none existent. Laying on the damp ground, Nate rested in complete darkness. Soon he drifted off to sleep.

************************

Nate woke again, but his sense of time had become disoriented. With his frequent bouts of sleep, Nate had no certainty in the amount of time that had passed since he fell in the tree. This fact made Nate both excited and worried. By the best he could tell, he had been out for at least two days.

As the light from the hole increased, so did Nate’s visibility.

“At least this time, I can actually truly see what is inside this tree,” Nate thought as he managed to pull himself into a seated position. He was beginning to feel slightly better physically.

Realizing that his stomach was growling, Nate decided to sort through his backpack while he dug around for another nutrition bar. As he was digging through the bag, he felt a slight sting on his finger. Slowing down his motions, he gently grabbed a hold of something and pulled it out of the bag.

“This must have been what broke to keep me from getting crushed alive,” Nate thought as he slowly pulled out two pieces of his knife.

“I wish the knife wouldn’t have broken,” Nate thought to himself, “But I guess that is better than getting crushed alive.”

Nate was very disappointed that his prized possession was broken, but he still continued going through the bag. All he needed was a sliver of metal to pin the knife back together and it would be fixed. After setting the pieces of the knife aside, Nate did a quick inventory. He had 8 nutrition bars, 2 changes of clothes, a blanket, some of his personal care items and a book. Not much in terms of supplies, but at least he knew that he would be able to survive a few days without starving to death.

Nate opened up his personal care bag and pulled out a large tube of healing ointment. The ointment wasn’t anything special, but it was something that most factory workers in the Grey Sector kept with them. The healing ointment would keep his scratches and wounds from getting infected and would help them heal quicker. Nate used the stuff all the time in the factory to treat small cuts on his hands. Right now, he was just thankful that he had almost a full tube. In the growing light of the morning, Nate squeezed a bit of healing ointment out on his hand and began rubbing some on his wounds.

“Maybe I should try to go get some stuff from the transport wreckage,” Nate thought as he applied the ointment to the large gash on his leg, “I could probably find a few things to help me repair my knife.”

After applying the ointment, Nate lay down on the earthen floor and relaxed. Having his wounds slightly soothed, Nate dozed off to sleep.