Chapter 9 - Jason

Name: Jason Foreti

Level 1

Class: None

An entire world away from where Trey was now, Jason stood up. Little did either of them know, but their lives would be intertwined soon enough.

“You have acquired the Tracking skill. Congratulations. For inquiries, be sure to pull up your status page for more information.” The mechanical voice stated.

Jason smiled in satisfaction. Concentrating on this new skill he determined that dexterity, endurance and intelligence all played parts in it. This world was kind of cool.

Although he had yet to find other people. He assumed there were more, as he had seen manmade marking posts with unfamiliar markings etched into the wood at an old, abandoned barn in the woods. He had also discovered the remnants of a rotting carriage that had broken down a very long time ago some miles back.

His old life was rather boring, he had worked as a manager at a local restaurant and hit a glass ceiling. Not that anything was wrong with the job, he just had ambition and drive that his senior colleagues wouldn’t recognize for whatever reason. And after he had figured out the system interface here, he had grown quite excited about the prospect of being away from home.

Jason had medium-length blond hair and could trace his ancestry back to the vikings in Europe. Though his family had moved to Texas when he was young and was an American man through and through, he still had some distant relatives who lived back in Norway.

Unfortunately his family hadn’t been close to him, and he had relied on the support of his close friends while growing up. One in particular, until that friend eventually moved away for college. Now at the age of 27, Jason was in his prime. He was physically fit and stood at 6’2. Up until five days ago he had been frustrated with his life’s progression, and after waking up in a new world... he was optimistic about changing his fates.

Picking up his large rock - the first “blunt weapon” he had acquired and used two days prior in order to unexpectedly gain the skill “blunt weapons,” he came out of his crouching pose to peer over the bushes that the tracks had led through. He had been tracking a deer, or what he thought to be a deer based on the fresh prints in the dirt, for the past couple of hours. He didn’t really understand why he had just now gained the tracking skill though, as he had been doing it for some time. It confused him, but he shrugged and kept on going - crouching back down and creeping forward to follow the animal as best he could.

He was fairly hungry. He was also naked and had shown up with no clothes, so he hoped to find a sharper rock with which to skin the suspected deer in order to make a loincloth or some variation of one for himself. His mind began to wander about whether or not he’d even be capable of making primitive clothes when he caught the creature...

But then, through the thickets, he finally spotted it.

The deer was exceedingly pretty, large with white spots running along its back, and looked rather calm as it chewed on some shrubbery. It was a doe, and it stood in a small clearing while munching on the shrubbery. Jason felt a twinge of guilt - but did not hesitate - as he picked up his large rock and threw it as hard as he could at the deer’s head.

The rock hit the deer alongside the back of its skull and stumbled to the ground with a pitiful cry. As it staggered trying to get up, Jason sprinted towards the poor animal with regret evident in his features. Picking the rock back up before closing with the deer, he slammed the rock one more time as hard as he could into the face of the beast. Immediately the creature crumpled to the ground, blood spilling out of its eye where the rock had made contact. Moments passed, and a few strikes later the deer was dead.

“You have gained XP,” stated the mechanical voice.

Jason stood with a look of shame and pity over the corpse before a great rumble came from within his stomach. He continued to stare down at the soon-to-be meal before briskly turning and walking into the forest in order to try and find a sharp rock to skin his kill. He had seen a river not long ago and decided that was probably the place to find such an item.

It took him nearly an hour to find that river, but pushing through the underbrush he finally saw the crystal clear waters calmly flowing along. Jason panted as he came to a stop underneath the trees of the river bank and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Looking to his top left he saw his stamina slowly start climbing back up. It was currently at 7/100.

“You have gained 1 point of endurance,” the mechanical voice echoed from within him.

He sank to the ground and leaned back against a nearby tree, watching the current of running water flow smoothly by. The trees about him shimmered in the sunlight and a breeze played in the branches - causing the leaves to shuffle about while making a soothing rustling noise. Birds flew overhead, chirping amongst the dense green foliage, and he appreciated the way it all made him feel at peace.

After relaxing for a couple of minutes he stood up, pulled out his status screen hologram and examined it. Looking at his current skills, he saw that sneak was governed by dexterity and blunt weapons by strength. Tracking also had a dexterity modifier, just as sneak did, so whenever he leveled up he would likely be putting his stat points all into dexterity. At least for now. He figured sneak would probably be the most used skill as he hunted wild animals with his rock, and until he found other people he didn’t know how hard it would be to find food. He focused on the tracking skill in his status page, which gave him a brief explanation:

“Tracking is a skill that allows the user to become more aware of the signs of passage.”

He then made his way over to the water and waded in, still breathing hard, but surely recovering from the run at a steady pace. He made a mental note to himself about how he gained an independent point of endurance just by running. There must be other ways to gain stat and skill points that he wasn’t aware of, but he assumed leveling up his overall player level would also influence the amount of points he earned.

He shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the thoughts from his mind, felt the current caress his body and he looked down along the riverbed. It was serene, and even though part of him felt a little bit shocked to be here, he was nevertheless calm despite being absolutely lost.

“AHA!” exclaimed Jason, as he plunged his right arm into the shallow water with a splash. He swiftly lifted it back up to reveal a long slender rock with a sharp edge. Triumphantly he smiled and kept looking. Within twenty minutes he had found yet another smaller rock that he thought would be suitable. Both had edges that he assumed were sharp enough to carve and skin the deer he had just killed.

But the serenity didn’t last.

A high-pitched scream sounded from behind him, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. Jason swiftly turned around, trying to locate the source - but saw nothing. The panicked scream rang out again and he thought he could hear faint sobbing as well. He didn’t know what to expect, and even felt a little scared - but he couldn’t allow himself to walk away. Not when it may lead to the answers he so desperately needed right now.

He was concerned, yet curiosity drove him to see if it was actually a person making that noise. Jason dropped both of the sharp small stones he held and picked up a larger one about the size of his fist. He waded over to the other side of the small river, definitely nervous but still wanting to investigate.

His bare feet slipped on the sharp, wet stones of the river bank, causing him to bruise across the left side of his shoulder and silently curse his poor luck at choosing to exit the river right there. It couldn’t be helped. He soon got onto dry land and crouched, attempting to sneak up and spy out what was happening. The noise grew louder as he approached, pushing his way through the foliage underneath the canopy of trees. It took him a couple of minutes as he moved through the thick forest, dead leaves crackling faintly with every other step he took. He knew that he wasn’t being very loud, but he couldn’t help sweating a little with each sound.

Then he spotted them.

[Human Dialect] “Shut up bitch, no one is going to hear you,” snarled a stockily built man with brown curly hair, as he began to mount a smaller naked woman beneath him who he had pinned to the ground. “We’re out in the middle of nowhere. Stop moving!”

The young woman was frantically struggling as tears rolled down her face. The assailant smacked the woman across the side of her head violently and stunned her with his meaty hand. As she choked on her sobs and tried to gain back control of her senses from the blow, the excited attacker began to take off his leather pants.

A bell sounded within Jason’s mind. “Your first encounter within the thirteen worlds has automatically instilled the language of ‘Human’ into your memory banks. All other languages must be learned through practice or by other means. This is a one-time message and will not be repeated.”

Jason could tell that the language the man spoke was not english, so it gave him a bit of a surprise to understand the words coming out of the man’s mouth. He still knelt behind a large bush and was peering through the foliage, completely hidden from the other two not even ten feet away.

Jason knew what was about to happen here… and although he wanted to help the victim, he was scared. Jason had always depended on his intimidating physical appearance to avoid fights in the past, but he hadn’t ever actually been in a real fight before. In fact he was somewhat of a coward. Ever the pacifist, he’d rather make peace than war and had been a rather kind soul from the moment he’d been born. Therefore he was hesitant to get up and help this woman for fear of getting hurt or even killed. No doubt this attacker wouldn’t hesitate to try and take Jason’s life if Jason decided to intervene… and all Jason had was a rock.

A fucking rock.

The man had his back turned to Jason as he successfully finished taking off his pants and forced the woman’s legs open wide to either side. The assailant was shorter than Jason with a deep brown color to his hair and beard, and he wore a leather vest. Leather trousers, a long crude dagger that Jason had particularly honed in on, and a pair of leather boots had been thrown a few feet to the side. The woman’s clothes were nowhere to be seen, but she had velvet red hair with tanned skin that gave her an exotic look. She was very petite and pretty, but a look of terror was etched across her face as she clawed back at the man’s face in desperation.

In her attempts to fight back, she drew blood with her fingernails. However, it only angered the much burlier, bigger man on top of her.

“Ahg!” screamed the attacker in anger as he hit her hard across the face once more. Blood rushed from her nose to mix with tears as she began to hyperventilate from panic. He began choking her and she gasped for breath, though a moment later the man’s back arched abruptly and to the left as he screamed in pain.

Looking down to his side with widening eyes, he saw his very own long steel dagger sticking out of his rib cage. “... Huh?”

A blonde man he did not recognize, tall and muscularly built, pulled out the dagger from his side with a quick jerk. Looking up in astonishment, met Jason’s determined glare with a panicked grunt and grimace. He failed to notice how Jason’s hand trembled though, and with blood gushing from the wound in his side the rapist’s mind went blank with shock for a brief couple seconds.

Jason stood looking down not a moment longer before going in for another strike. The dagger landed in the attacker’s neck as the brown-haired man screamed and blood shot across both Jason and the woman like a miniature fire hydrant. The man reeled and tried to scramble away from the woman, then turned frantically around trying to find something to stop the bleeding while simultaneously trying to run from Jason. Jason swiftly came up from behind, adrenaline overpowering his sense of fear now, picked the screaming man up. He wrapped both hands around the man’s torso and easily heaved him over a short ledge nearby. Unfortunately for the man Jason had thrown, and completely unintentional on Jason’s part, there was a rather large boulder directly below. The man’s head made contact with the boulder with a thud and his neck turned sharply with a loud *CRACK,* causing him to go completely and immediately limp. Jason heard the impact before he saw the end results, but after taking a quick look was rather certain the smaller man was dead.

“You have acquired the Small Blades skill. Congratulations. For inquiries, be sure to pull up your status page for more information. You have increased your sneak skill to level 2. You have gained XP,” The mechanical voice stated.

It was the first time Jason had ever killed another person. His heart was pounding inside his chest. He was hyperventilating from the emotional trauma. His body shook and he didn’t know what to do, so he stood there looking down at the limp body of the villain for a good minute. A pool of blood had begun to collect at the bottom of the boulder as blood ran from the torso and neck wounds of the corpse.

A cloud swept over the sun and the land became a shade darker. A couple of coughs from behind woke Jason back to his senses. He turned to see the young woman holding her throat. She was sitting up, had tears in her eyes, and tried to wipe them away timidly as she eyed Jason from two meters away.

“... Are you… ok?” asked Jason hesitantly in english, tossing the dagger gently towards her. His stomach was becoming upset, and he felt a little nausea coming on as he thought about what he'd just done.

He'd killed someone. He'd ACTUALLY killed someone.

The woman said nothing, looking for a few seconds at the dagger before glancing back up at Jason. She looked confused, but pushed herself to her knees while keeping her eyes on him. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights, as if she were getting ready to run - but she then looked back down at the dagger and picked it up to stand and shakily face the man.

Thinking for a moment, Jason tried again with a soft soothing note to his voice: [Human Dialect] “Are you ok?”

The woman squinted, quickly shook her head no and began again to sob uncontrollably. The emotional turmoil inside her was evident, boiling to the surface in waves, and she just couldn’t hold herself together. She dropped the dagger, held herself, and loudly cried.

His own nerves began to calm as he watched the smaller, traumatized woman break down. Slowly, Jason stepped forward a few paces until he was next to her. He carefully pulled her into a soft hug and stood there. Just… stood there, embracing her. The girl let him do so, putting her head against his chest, shaking uncontrollably as her sobs became even stronger over time.

***

Hours later the sun was beginning to set and beautiful orange-red hues stood out against the clouds. Jason huffed, putting the dead man’s clothes on with a little bit more effort than he’d have liked. The vest was stained in blood but he had been able to wash most of it out in the river nearby. The boots and trousers were a little small on him, which were the ones that really gave him trouble when putting them on, but he thought the vest fit nicely enough. His stomach growled loudly and he frowned as he heard a quiet chuckle from behind.

“Hungry are we?” asked the redheaded Elise as she pulled on her own clothes not far away. She had been taking a bath in the river while on a hunting trip and had left her clothes on the shore just before being attacked and running into the forest. She picked up her bow and arrows as well, then jogged over to help Jason with his rather primitive excuse for a belt.

Jason looked down as she tied the knots. Her face was bruised from the violent blows she’d received, but otherwise she was unharmed. She had very nice symmetrical features and as she looked back up to him he blushed while being caught staring - and he nodded in thanks. “Yup. Definitely need to go get that deer I told you about before some other wild animal gets to it. It’s been hours now.”

Elise forced a smile, trying to conceal the tormented memories and emotions that lingered from the affair just earlier that day. She sniffled once and nodded. “I’m glad you got one because I haven’t had much luck today with catching anything.”

"Who said I was sharing?" Jason smirked teasingly.

The attempt at lightening the mood didn't work very well. Her voice was still downcast, and she was still dealing with the recent psychological trauma. It had taken a good three hours for Elise to calm down and Jason had sat there with her the entire time. They had made brief introductions and Elise had only mildly cheered up since the unfortunate encounter with that other man.

Punching Jason on the arm weakly she stated: “So. Where are you from, Jason?”

“Originally Texas. But I live in Los Angeles now.” Jason snorted. “What about you short stuff?”

Elise scowled. Her features fell again as she failed to keep up the internal emotions at bay - she was still traumatized. But she quickly forced herself into a fake smile afterwards. “Short stuff? I’ll have you know I’m the second tallest of my siblings.”

"So you're a family of dwarves then?"

Elise let out an involuntary snicker and then smiled widely at him, this time genuinely. Leaning over to look at him sideways, she raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of Los Angeles before. Where’s that?”

Jason paused. He looked to the top left of his vision where his HP, MP, and SP bars were. Then he looked down to the bottom right where his status screen icon was. He looked back up to eye the girl again. “Ever heard of the United States before? America?”

The girl shook her head with a frown and her long bright red locks flowed about her.

“What about Earth?”

The girl’s eyebrow shot up. “Earth?” She repeated and put her hands on her hips. “You’re not talking about the Earth attribute right? I think I’ve heard that name before. Can’t say I know where it is though.”

Jason didn’t know what she meant by ‘Attribute,’ but had figured this would probably happen given his situation. He was surprisingly accepting of the almost unbelievable scenario. But then again, he hadn’t been too surprised after reading the pop-up message describing this ‘death game.’ What did he have to lose? He could feel the dirt beneath his feet, taste the saliva in his mouth, smell the forest about him… It was all great and if anything he felt more alive now than ever. He inhaled deeply, and then loudly let it out.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jason said, winking at Elise. “I’ll tell you about it another time.”

She shrugged, resuming the downcast mood she'd had earlier. “I’m hungry, let's leave this place. Since you have nowhere to go, I’ll show you back to my home.”

“Sounds superb.” replied Jason graciously, counting his lucky stars he didn’t have to ask.

And just like that the two set off, wading through the shallow river to the other side. Over the course of their conversations Elise found out a lot about the newcomer. He was a strange one and the talks kept her mind off of recent events as much as humanly possible. Though Elise was still struggling with what had just happened, she was truly thankful for Jason’s superb timing and appearance. She didn’t know why he’d done it. She just hoped that, given time, she’d be able to repay him for what he’d done for her.

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Name: Jason Foreti

HP 100/100

MP 100/100

SP 110/110

DP 1/1

Race: Human

Guild: None

Class: None

Level 1

Status Alerts:

Remaining Skill Points: 0 Remaining Stat Points: 0 Current Permanence cycle: ON Current Bound Point: Mehre Forest Runestone

*The rest of Jason's status page is in the spoiler*

Stat Amplifications:

0 Strength

0 Vitality

1 Endurance

0 Dexterity

0 Speed

0 Intelligence

0 Wisdom

0 Faith

0 Luck

0 Willpower

Magics

None

Miracles

None

Physical Combat

Blunt Weapons - Level 1

Small Blades - Level 1

Miscellaneous

Sneak - Level 2

Tracking - Level 1

Traits:

Earthborn - You are earthborn and experience ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’ permanence cycles. You also gain a 20% increase to any type of XP acquired when compared to your fellow NPCs, and your mana regeneration rate is increased by 30%.

Languages Learned - Human

Physical Attributes:

None

Magical Attributes:

None

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