After an hour of general relaxation, Nate decided to get to work cleaning up inside the tree. His body felt fresh, but he was an absolute mess. With some effort, he managed to remove his shirt. Another shirt ruined. He only had one left, but he felt thankful that he had managed to get the ruined shirt on to stop the bleeding.

The crust of dried blood and dirt was actually on the outside of the shirt. So when he finally managed to work the shirt free, he was left with a fairly clean wound. With some searching, he found the tube of healing ointment and slathered the gash in his back with a considerable amount.

“Hopefully, I stop getting hurt as much,” Nate thought, “There is barely any of the healing ointment left.”

After getting himself squared away, Nate spent some time gathering his belongings scattered around the inside of the tree. The effort wasn’t completely wasted as an alert sounded in Nate’s head.

[‘Dark Vision’ has increased to Level 5]

His good feeling over the skill level increase didn’t last long as he realized it was now time for the harder tasks. The first two difficult items went quite well. The blade was easily removed from the snake’s body after a few tugs. Getting the bag out of the snake’s mouth took a bit more effort but a few chops of the knife broke off the teeth that held the bag in place.

With the teeth-riddled bag set off to the side and his knife in hand, Nate was only left with a beast’s corpse to deal with. Because of the limited light and Nate’s lack of knowledge, he decided that he needed to take the beast’s corpse out of the tree.

Nate spent the next couple of hours occupied by moving the beast’s body out from the inside of the tree. Although the snake was large, its length had provided some relief to Nate has he tried to move it out. Because it was fairly long, Nate was able to move smaller portions at a time instead of picking it up all at once. Eventually, he managed to get a part of the beast’s body outside of the tree.

Then, it was just the effort of dragging it out bit by bit.

The entire operation took more time than Nate had planned. After using half of the day, Nate was left sweaty and tired while sitting next to a snake corpse just outside of the tree hollow.

[Strength Stat has increased by 1]

“At least it wasn’t a complete waste,” Nate thought as the ding of the system alert echoed in his skull. After catching his breath, Nate pulled his knife off his hip and bent down next to the beast’s corpse.

Considering the time of day, Nate didn’t have much time so got to work cutting up the beast. The only issue was that Nate didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

First, he had tried to cut open the snake near the center of its body. He had some luck initially, but he managed to cut into some organ that let out a putrid stench. The smell was so offensive that Nate almost vomited and had to resort to covering his face to be near the beast.

With the middle of the body ruined, Nate moved up toward the head. After some hesitation, Nate went to work again. This time, he had some greater success and managed to get a few large chunks of meat off the beast. Nate wasn’t entirely sure what to do but he was willing to attempt anything at this point.

At first, he had tried to take a bite of the meat raw, but the taste and toughness were not enjoyable. Thinking over everything he knew about food, he recalled a few people in Grey Sector would make a sort of porridge out of a mixture of packaged food. The porridge was made by mixing the ingredients together with water and heating the concoction over a fire. He would only need to figure out a way to make fire.

Thinking this might be a good option, Nate began to cut pieces of meat off the beast and put them aside on large green leaf he had picked up off the forest floor. Once he got a few pounds of meat on the pile, Nate picked up the bundle and moved it inside his tree hollow. As he was setting the meat inside, he caught glanced at his pile of belongings. The decorative lettering of the “Divine Light of the Singularity” book was reflecting some light coming into the entrance to the hollow.

Seeing the book had sparked a memory for Nate so he scrambled back outside to snake corpse. He recalled that the book had mentioned that anything developing to a certain level under the Singularity’s system would develop a core to store power within their bodies. For most creatures, including humans, this core was located at the base of the skull. People would hunt beasts to obtain theses “gifts” that the Singularity had left them.

Interested to find out of this beast had a core, Nate spent the next 20 minutes hacking at the snake’s head to investigate.

Sure enough, Nate found a small hard sphere at the base of the snake’s skull. Having never seen one before, he assumed that the thumbnail-sized shiny sphere was actually a beast’s core.

Thrilled over his find, Nate quickly went back into the tree hollow to re-read the book for some more information on the beast core.

After spending nearly an hour reading, Nate had a pretty good understanding of cores from the book.

Cores are basically stored energy utilized by the system inside of living things. As humans and beasts progress to a higher level, they develop internal cores that are used to store energy for processes of the system. Higher-level humans and beasts can use this energy to utilize special skills to heights that yield outrageous results. In the book, the writer had written about a person with a [Mage] class that could literally create fire at his fingertips and throw it at his enemies. The whole concept was quite exotic when Nate had first read the description.

From the book, Nate also learned that most creatures started to develop their core at around Level 10. He had a long way to go to get to Level 10, but he looked forward to developing his own core. Maybe one day, he could perform awesome skills like creating fire in his hands. Excited about the prospect of developing powerful skills, Nate became lost in his fantasy of becoming strong.

He read through the book several times to confirm his thoughts. He was having a good time daydreaming until a noise from outside the tree brought his attention back to the real world.

Nate could tell that something was moving around right outside of his tree.

With some trepidation, Nate quietly crawled near the opening and peeked out. What he saw in front of his home sent fear racing through his body.

A massive beast was currently ripping into the corpse of the snake. He tried to calm his breath in his panic, but was struggling to keep from hyperventilating. From what Nate could remember, the beast was either a lizard or a crocodile. Having no experience with either, Nate wasn’t sure what to call the creature.

Regardless, the beast was biting at the snake’s corpse that Nate had left sitting outside of his tree. The lizard was at least as long as the snake but was about ten times its size. Nate knew that if he had to confront this creature, then he would have no chance of living.

Thankfully, the beast didn’t seem to notice Nate’s presence as it ate at the snake’s dead body. All Nate could do was sit in the darkness and listen to the beast eating while he was trapped in the tree.

All Nate could do was sit down on the floor and hope that the beast moved on after eating the corpse. The mental strain of the situation was incredible. Nate continuously listened to the sounds of slurping flesh and crunching bone. The only thing that kept him from instantly losing himself to fear was the protection that the tree hollow offered against the lizard beast. Unlike the slender snake, the lizard was much too big to fit in the entrance of the tree hollow. But, the thought was of little comfort to Nate as he continued to listen to the beast feasting on the corpse a few feet away from his shelter.

[You have been affected by ‘Fear’ status]

[All stats have been reduced by half]

[‘Fear’ status has been removed]

[‘Calm Survivor’ class effects are active. All Stats are doubled. All experience earned is doubled.]

[A skill, ‘Fear Resistance’, has been created]

[‘Fear Resistance’ has increased to Level 3]

[Will Stat has increased by 2]

[The skill ‘Silent Crawl’ has evolved into the skill ‘Silent Presence’]

[‘Silent Presence’ has increased to Level 2]

[‘Dark Vision’ has increased to Level 6]

[‘Calm Survivor’ Class has increased to Level 2]

[‘Survivor’s Resistance’ has increased to Level 3]

[‘Fear Resistance’ has increased to Level 4]

The string of system alerts enough to completely drown out most of the beastly sounds coming from outside Nate’s tree hollow. With the series of alerts, Nate felt himself begin to relax almost immediately.

“My class is awesome,” Nate thought to himself as he read through all of the alerts. He had originally thought that he would see little benefit to his new class. But after thinking for a second, he realized his folly. He was by himself in the wilderness full of monstrous beasts. Every day was going to be a situation of life and death. His naivety had shown itself in the assumption that his class would be of little benefit. In his situation, he couldn’t have a better class to help him survive.

[Intelligence Stat has increased by 2]

[Wisdom Stat has increased by 2]

[Level has increased by 1]

Nate smiled as the beast continued to feast just outside of the tree. With the calm that his class brought about, Nate began to pull up his new skills to read their descriptions.

[Fear Resistance (Passive)(Level 4)(Exp. 79/400)]

[Fear Resistance is a passive skill that allows the user to mentally resist the effects of the fear status. Fear status effects are decreased]

[Silent Presence (Passive) (Level 2)(Exp. 148/200)]

[Silent Presence is a passive skill that allows the user to exist in silence. Chance of being perceived by others is decreased]

Nate was lucky his face didn’t hurt from the grin that was plastered to his face. After his class effect had kicked in, Nate’s situation was quite enjoyable due to the system alerts that continued to sound every so often. Sitting in his tree hollow, he even started to relax a bit. At one point, he even began to hope that the beast would stick around so he could continue to see improvement.

When about half an hour had elapsed, Nate finally heard the beast move away from his home. By this time, the systems alerts had slowed to a point where almost none had sounded in the last 5 minutes. Regardless, Nate was still interested to see how much he had progressed in such a short amount of time. He pulled up his system interface.

—————————————————-

Name: Nathaniel Redsun

Level: 7 (Exp. 16/700)

Health: 90/110

Energy: 1/0

Primary Class: Calm Survivor (Level 4)

Class Skills:

Survivor’s Need (Passive) (Level 1)

Survivor’s Awareness (Passive) (Level 2)

Survivor’s Resistance (Passive) (Level 4)

Secondary Class: None

Stats:

Speed: 10 Agility: 10

Stamina: 10 Strength: 14

Intelligence: 12 Perception: 10

Wisdom: 12 Will: 17

Stat Points Available: 10

General Skills:

Silent Presence (Passive) (Level 3)

Dark Vision (Passive)(Level 6)

Pain Resistance (Passive)(Level 8)

Bleeding Resistance (Passive)(Level 4)

Infection Resistance (Passive)(Level 4)

Fear Resistance (Passive)(Level 5)

————————————————-

As Nate sat on the floor of his home thinking over his experience, he realized that his main problem was that he didn’t know the basics of surviving in the wilderness. The only references he had for information on the wilds were his limited education and the religious book that had been gifted to him. From the culmination of information, Nate managed to pick up on a few ideas and concepts, but he didn’t have any specifics on how to actually improve his conditions in this dangerous place.

Because of his lack of knowledge, he had made a stupid mistake of leaving a beast’s corpse right outside his home. The error had put his life at risk, but luckily he had managed to survive this time.

As he quietly reviewed his user interface in the dark of the tree hollow, Nate could only hope that he remains alive until he had a chance to learn everything about life in the wilderness.