Dave

Fallen jungle

54th of Cycle 2, 1015

“We might have agreed to hunt this panther together, but as we are right now, it would slaughter us before we could even blink,” Jason said, “We need to do some serious training.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Well, before we even start hunting anything in this jungle, you need to level up your skills.” He said, tossing a skill stone at me. “That means you have a lot of running to do.”

After three hours of sprinting with my sneak and fleet-footed skills activated, I gripped the skill stone to check my progress.

Name: Dave

Race: Human?

Class: Scout(rare)

Class Skills: Sneak(basic) Lv4, Fleet-footed(basic) Lv5

Class Skill Slots 3

Skills: Archery(basic) Lv2, Hypnosis resistance Lv1, Survivalist(unique)

“When a skill says basic, does that mean there are higher forms of it?” I asked.

“Yeah, when you get a skill past level 10, it goes up a tier. The tiers go from basic to intermediate, then from intermediate to advanced. If you get an advanced skill to level 10, the skill upgrades into a rarer version of the skill.”

“What about unique skills?”

“Oh, right, forgot you had one of those,” Jason said as he shook his head. “Unique skills don’t level up but they're still ridiculously powerful, although in your case it doesn’t seem to do much.”

“Is there no way to find out what a skill does?”

“You have to use a greater skill stone, and those are way too expensive for me to be carrying around.”

I frowned, so there’s no way to figure out what the survivalist skill does without using an expensive stone. “Alright, I should get back to training then.”

“Wait, let’s add archery to your class skills first.” He said as he threw me his dagger, “Draw some blood.”

I complied, wondering how long ago I had accepted that pricking my finger to do an ancient elven ritual was normal. Jason walked over to me and mumbled some gibberish, then my world went black.

New class skill candidates:

Archery(basic)

Survivalist(unique)

Making a skill into a class skill will increase the rate at which it levels up, and will affect your options when you decide to evolve your class. Specific classes also have benefits they give to class skills.

The scout class doubles the efficiency of all skills related to stealth, dexterity, and perception. Current skills under this effect include: Sneak(basic) and Fleet-footed(basic).

Skills you have that could benefit from this effect are: Archery(basic).

Please note that making a skill into a class skill will return the skill to level 1.

Would you like to change a skill into a class skill?

“Yes.”

Which one?

“Archery.”

Archery(basic) will be reverted to level one, and moved into the class skill category, are you sure?

“Yes.”

Will that be all for today?

“Yes.”

Happy hunting, scout.

“That’s not ominous at all,” I said sarcastically.

My eyes snapped open and I saw Jason standing near the stream. I activated my sneak skill and crept up behind him, but he turned around and splashed some water onto my face before I got close.

“You’re a far cry from being able to sneak up on me boy,” He said with a laugh, “Did you get your class skill?”

I wiped the water off my face, “Yeah, yeah I did.”

“Alright let’s get to the real training then. The best way to level up your skills is to use them in combat,” He said, “Once I’m confident with your results, I’ll start hunting with you, and together we’ll hunt bigger prey. For now, you will hunt horned rabbits.”

Hunting is a lot easier when you know where you’re going, I thought to myself as we followed the tracks of a horned rabbit.

Jason stopped me and pointed towards a bush in the distance, “It’s all you from here on out.”

I crouched down and activated my sneak skill. I need a way to get it out of the bush, I can’t just shoot blindly into it and hope for the best. I picked up a small stone from nearby and moved in closer. When I got to a comfortable range, I threw the rock at the bush with an arch.

I drew my bow as the rock landed directly on target, rustling the leaves and causing the rabbit inside to dash out. The moment it did I loosed an arrow at it. The arrow whizzed through the air and pierced into the rabbit’s side.

I hit it!

The rabbit fell over and its beady red eyes started glowing brightly.

“Oh shit,” Said a not-so confident Jason.

The rabbit let out a screech that was so loud I thought my ears would start bleeding. Looking over at Jason I could see he was panicking as he tried to say something to me. “I can’t hear you!” I tried calling out, but I don’t think he could hear me either.

That’s when I felt the ground under my feet rumbling and I looked back towards the screeching rabbit. Behind it, there was a giant wave of dust that was approaching at an alarming rate. Looking closer I noticed that within the wave of dust were rabbits. A lot of rabbits.

Holy shit there’s a stampede of horned rabbits running at me.

Those were my last thoughts before Jason grabbed my shoulder and yelled into my ear, “Climb up a tree!”

Glancing back at the now dangerously close stampede I realized that I didn’t have much time to think, so I ran to the nearest tree and started climbing. The stampede was so close now that the tree was shaking violently like a horse trying to kick off its rider. I held onto one of the branches for dear life and looked down at the wave of bloodthirsty rabbits passing under me. Apparently, I had selected the wrong tree, because the shaking had done too much damage, and the tree was slowly tipping over.

Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

In an attempt to avoid my current fate of being torn to shreds by rabbits, I started looking around for another tree to jump to. That’s when I noticed Jason hanging from the tree next to me, waving me over. The distance between us was much longer than what I could jump, but as the tree fell over more, the distance was getting shorter.

Just as the distance got close enough for me to jump, I felt the world around me slow down. The stampede from earlier was running in slow motion, and when I jumped towards Jason’s outstretched hand, I realized that I was moving in slow motion too. When I grabbed onto his hand, time started moving at its normal pace again and he pulled me up onto the branch. The stampede had completely passed through, and the screeches were finally far enough away for me to hear my thoughts.

“Thanks, Jason, you saved my life,” I said, panting.

“No, I’m sorry I didn’t notice it sooner,” He said, and I looked at him questioningly, “That wasn’t a horned rabbit, it was a screecher. They look largely the same, but screechers have beady red eyes, and if you don’t kill them instantly you end up with something like that. The stampedes are usually a lot smaller than the one we just experienced.”

A screecher? Whoever came up with that name must’ve been really creative.

“When I jumped from that tree, it felt like everything was moving in slow motion, do you know what that was?”

“I’ve heard that people who are about to die experience things in slow motion, but it might be a new skill.” He handed me a skill stone, “It can’t hurt to check.

Name: Dave.

Race: Human?

Class: Scout(rare)

Class Skills: Sneak(basic) Lv4, Fleet-footed(basic) Lv5, Archery(basic) Lv1

Class Skill Slots 2

Skills: Hypnosis resistance Lv1, Survivalist(unique), Hyper-Accelerated vision(basic) Lv1

I noticed a new skill and said, “It’s a skill called hyper-accelerated vision.”

Jason didn’t say anything for a while, and he looked like he was deep in thought. “I’ve heard of it before, but it’s difficult to acquire, so learning it without intending to is ridiculous.”

“Maybe I’m just that good,” I said with a smug grin.

“Or maybe it’s the effect of your survivalist skill,” He said, “Now this is just a theory, but I think it helps you learn skills when your life is in danger. Think about it, you just magically learned hypnosis resistance on your first encounter with a man-eater, and now you learn another difficult skill just as you were going to be torn to shreds.”

“I guess that makes a little sense.”

“We can’t be sure of it from just that, but we have a good theory, so now all we need to do is test it,” Jason said as a sinister grin crept its way onto his face.

“How would we even test that?” I said instinctively before my eyes went wide, “Jason, come on, you’re not really going to put my life in danger on purpose just to test out your silly hypothesis, right?”

He didn’t answer, instead, he just sat there grinning at me.

Son of a bitch.