Timothy’s PoV:

Over the last half dozen or so hours Timothy had noticed several further odd data points that confirmed some of the things they were suspecting. Not like that actually changed their situation.

The least impactful discovery had been that his phone didn’t have reception. Anywhere. His Radio neither. To conserve energy for when he might have a need for them, he had switched them off, having arranged with the currently sleeping Vera to switch their radios back on should they get separated.

His solar-powered watch had stayed on though. Allowing him to frequently check the time. They had been stranded for over eight hours already, which by itself wasn’t that odd. What could definitely be classified as odd was the time it took for the sun to pass above the horizon.

This alone wouldn’t have been indication enough to determine the full time a day took, but in conjunction with at some point literally lacking a shadow larger than his shoulders, he determined that it was right around summer the closest thing this planet had to a summer.

Only being able to make assumptions as of yet and having never picked up his father's astronomy hobby he struggled to make a better guess. But a day here seemed to be at least six, maybe eight hours longer.

That’s gonna be tough getting used to, he thought and sighed. With crossed arms, he looked around again. Max had fallen asleep again on Timothy’s own repeated insistence. He didn’t want to wake up Vera just yet and Max had seemed sufficiently tired, so having them both asleep seemed like the best idea. He could get by without for a couple of days.

He would have gone around and gathered materials to build a shelter for the night. It would be the prudent option. Especially if the cloudage would stay this low it would get really cold in the night. Without shelter and bedding, it would get tough. A fire should help, and they would probably be all awake at night, keeping them warm.

The only issue he had, was that he lacked any sort of tools to build anything noteworthy. While not necessarily in accordance with regulations he carried a knife, but that was not enough to fell the trees in the area. Due to some unexplainable reasons, there was almost no shrubbery, no small trees, just trees that had a diameter of at least half his forearm’s length.

Max hadn't alleviated his worries about monsters instead stoking them. Tim might have been inclined to leave the two sleeping beauties behind, while he went to check out the surroundings a bit more. That wasn’t an option now, with the fictional stories Max had told – though there was no evidence to them – he was already worried. The status made him feel odd about it.

Another issue was that there was no good place anywhere within eyesight that could serve as an overlook. The trees, while tall and evidently climbable for the most part, had dense tops that would often only allow for sparse visibility. He had tried.

The clearing they were in was a bit elevated towards the middle with a somewhat largeish hole though that didn’t help either.

So, he had decided to give both about four hours until he would wake them, which should be later afternoon if his observations were correct. Possibly earlier if he got any good ideas.

Without anything else to do, he just walked another round around the hill, keeping an eye out for anything that could become a potential issue.

At some point, he had even lost count of the laps he had made around the hill. It didn’t happen through inattentiveness but through a distraction. One of his “pools” as Max called health, stamina, and mana had reduced. Going from 100 to 99.

Initially, he had ignored the talk of stats he had with Max, having seen no evidence of them having an impact. Max had spent his stat points and had reported no effect. Now with a visual representation of something, he wasn’t so sure anymore.

This had been what led his thoughts to spiral.

The young man had introduced him to two of the most common playstyles in video games. The first and apparently very popular path of what people did to become strong was invest heavily in one stat - the so-called min-max approach. Timothy didn’t like that one bit.

In his former job, he had been required to be flexible. Some jobs required finesse and brains, others brawn. Sure enough, you could exceed in one of those, but in an unknown setting neglecting the others was careless.

The other more balanced approach was shoring up weaknesses and working on strengths. It still had some of the weaknesses that came from the min-maxing approach but was far more flexible, but also weaker than any other particular focused class. He could go even further and invest his free stats into all six stats equally – an approach he favored currently – which might reduce his absolute power but he didn’t need power he had a gun if it came down to it.

He glanced at it.

U̷̮͝n̷̢̻̻͇͆͝k̷̫̿n̴̬͖̱̆̄ö̵̥͑̾͑w̷͖̼͚͌̓͆̑n̶͓͌ ̸͔͇̾̿̕D̶̩̤͍͊i̶͕͚̒̋̓r̷̙̩̄͑̄̚e̸̪̾̾̓͗c̵̣̦̘͈̉̂t̵̛͙̳́ĕ̶̢̛̫̩d̵̢̢̤̅́ ̸̛̭Ē̴̗̯͈̟̐̂̈x̶̢͚̼̿̆p̷̳̭̖͈̎̒l̶̡̝͇̔̑̚͠ŏ̶͖s̶̛͓̉̐í̶̭̖̫͜v̴̛̬̓̎ê̷̢̊

Unknown, Darkmoon Industries – Unknown, unaspected, composite

Charges: 43

Curiously enough, whatever magic was associated with this so-called system returned a count of all his bullets, not just the currently loaded ones. The initial identify on the gun was done on the recommendation of Max.

He harumphed, more bullets would be good out here, then ignored it again.

It took a bit of contrived thinking to open his status. Staring at the large slightly see-through panel he was confronted with decisions on how to spend his stats. Options were plenty but just… There was no clear way. He would have preferred that.

Status: Timothy Evans

Race: Frontier Human [Lvl. 4]

Class: Ranged Fighter [Lvl. 0]

Independent Skills: Evolutions [0]

Class: Ranged Fighter [Lvl. 0]: 0 free skill slots

[Identify]

[General Ranged Weapon Proficiency]

Stats: 28 Stat points available

Vitality

100 Health

10

Strength

1 Strength

10

10 Hp/hour

Race: Frontier Human [Lvl. 4]: 2 free Skill slots

Physique

100 Stamina

10

Endurance

10 SP/hour

10

[Empty]

[Empty]

Concentration

100 Focus

10

Clarity

10 Focus/hour

10

Frontier Human: 0/8 Class Lvl.

Ranged Fighter: 0/100 Exp

He would have to decide eventually on how to distribute his stat points. Sadly, his page didn’t show Willpower and Wisdom as Max’s did. Magic would have been fun. Flying on a cloud and just wishing stuff to change had to be good. But for some reason, his available stats deviated from Max’s.

His musings were interrupted when he heard the grass scuttling from an unexpected direction. At first, he blamed it on the wind, but it was steady and there was no real wind to note off.

Fairly soon he realized the nonexistence of the very same and glanced about. Maybe fifteen meters away was a slightly oversized rat dashing at him.

Socle [Lvl. 2] - uniform specimen

A previously nonexistent instinct made him use his skill on it. Maybe it was just staring at the sheet for a good while, or walking around the clearing and identifying everything in sight, maybe something else.

The creature, that shared most characteristics with a rat diverged in one important factor. The snout lacked the pink cute nose with a few hairs and instead had a small elephant trunk with a single fang lodged on the trunk's lip.

Vampire Rats, was his only thought as he pulled out his gun, unlashed the safety, and fired within two heartbeats.

—

Nik’s PoV:

After breakfast and stretches were done Nik had to make a subjectively difficult decision. Gathering mineral-rich rocks had become more and more difficult as he had collected most of the low-hanging fruit - well, mineral-rich stones - in the vicinity already.

He would have to move further away from where he felt comfortable. Specifically, backward in time and place. Towards where he had originally been transmigrated to. The boulder he used as a base for several days wasn’t a place, he wanted to revisit but he should on accord of finding out whether it was rich in any metals.

As much as he was not in the mood to go back to the clearing, he wanted to move up the mountain even less. The other day he had seen a mountain goat utterly demolish a teerox.

The other option was a scree field on the first mountain, he hadn’t seen any teerox there but found it prudent to stay away from there until he could determine the accuracy of that suspicion. He had never really investigated it prior, but he had high hopes that it might have a bias towards one of the materials he had a grasp on working with.

The reason why he didn’t really want to go back to the clearing was bad memories. He knew he was suppressing fear and that it would most likely not be healthy to do so in the long run, but did he really have time to confront his fears? He would have to. The cat adjacent monster he had seen around there had left. Nik was certain. There was nothing to hunt around here besides maybe the Bergams but they were terrifying in their own right.

It was the best and smartest option available to him, especially when considering his goal of acquiring some comforts of life, and potentially finding civilization. He would need a lot of metal for his plans.

He made his way slowly - just a light jog, the stamina drain completely negated by his current stamina regeneration. He would have walked but didn’t want to spend too much time dwelling on his fears. He passed through the slightly hilly region along the mountain with energy manipulation active.

The increased pain of pushing stamina out of his DERP zones was enough to keep his mind off any panic-inducing thought. If he were to guess, he had gone through around ninety-five percent of his body's surface area already but there were still two areas he was hesitant to approach to push stamina through.

Both his already bald head and crotch were worrisome. And he had decided, after noticing that he could further improve the rate of stamina throughflow in regions of skin he had worked on already with consecutive expulsions of stamina, to do several passes before focusing on potentially sterilizing himself or blowing up his head.

The process of - hopefully - gaining stamina pores would be lengthier than mana pores. The second and third iterations - he had tested them on his hands - had been drastically less painful than the first - still unpleasant though. The complete lack of blood was nice as well.

With two baskets in hand, he crossed the small stream separating the two smaller mountain ranges and began working on his neck’s stamina permeability.

He was thinking a bit too much about giant cats for his liking and hoped that pain would get his mind off things.

It was uncomfortable but it got the job done. For some reason, he preferred working on his neck over his crotch.

Parallelly, as he did most days nowadays, he tried to improve upon his existing skills. [Running] had improved through adding and combining mana with the preexisting stamina structure and was supposed to have unlocked a special upgrade. Nik believed that something akin to that would be available for most skills. Not quite sure yet how the system worked with skill advancement, and skill advancement gain, he thought it best to work on his highest skills, before they reached the cap of level thirty-three.

[Internal Energy Sight] fit the bill perfectly. As his second-highest skill, it had yet to reach the cap – unlike [Stealthy Movement] that was maxed out as of right now.

What Nik wanted was to advance the skill to also work on external sources of energy, akin to the more familiar mana sight that some stories had. Thus far he had been rather unsuccessful. The skill worked fine just a few centimeters around his skin, but any further than that it began to be hazy at a drastically increased rate. Almost like a sort of interference.

The fogginess wasn’t anything new either. When working on his pore traits every single time something similar had happened to the resources he had pushed out of his body. They got swept up by haziness and vanished, a major annoyance requiring consuming a steady supply of berries.

Nik grinned for a second. He wouldn’t be surprised if all the berries in a kilometer radius of his tree and the cave had been eaten by now.

Focusing back on the sense of muddiness outside he considered his options. [Internal Energy Manipulation] could only get him that far. [Energy Veil], even though it was able to form a sort of barrier wasn’t going to work either – as it was on the inside of his skin.

The last option was maybe the most fun. But also most strenuous, and potentially dangerous. He looked around for a second, noting that nothing seemed to be off.

Folding his hand onto each other he focused for just a moment before guiding a steady stream of mana into the small cavity that was slowly growing.

After dumping out around forty mana he slowly started feeling a pressure against his hands.

Ready to inspect what he had created he activated his [Internal Energy Sight] and opened his hands.

Condensed Mana Splinter - Purity: Poor; Stability: Poor; Mana: 3

After a quick [Identify] he went on to observe the slow but steady degradation of the splinter. At first not much seemed to happen, not even through his magical sight, but after a while, he noticed small indents building up in the crystalline structure, more and more appeared until the crystal slowly dissolved into motes of dust, which too succumbed to the corrosive effects of something.

Maybe it’s like a solution, where mana dissolves into… into what? Ambient mana?

I’m totally not procrastinating.

Not quite happy yet with his theory crafting he repeated the experiment a couple more times. Each time spending around forty mana and a good minute to create the shards.

Turns out his provisional theory had some merit to it. Whatever the ambient substance or energy was that reacted with the mana splinters seemed to eat mana.

Nik desperately wanted to try the same with stamina too but given the disastrous results, he had the last time when he tried solidifying stamina he held off – at least until he had stamina pores.

His eyes were barely doing an adequate job, of sensing what was going on specifically, but together with the superficial sense that came through his energy sight skill and maybe some passive effect of [Unobstructed Optics] he slowly but surely was able to discern the existence of the milky energy’s effect all around his body.

Only when he saw a panel of white light appear before his mind’s eye did he realize he had stopped walking a good while ago. The sun almost disappearing behind the horizon.

New Race-Skill unlocked:

[Ambient Essence Sense] – Get a vague impression of essence all around you.

It was a no-brainer. Just a second later it was followed by another.

New Race-Skill unlocked:

[Civilization Gradient] [Locked] – You can discern the general direction in which large groupings of civilization are located through the ambient essence more easily.

“Sweet,” he grinned. It might be exactly what he had been looking for, just not expected to find it as a new skill. He had the skill slots available to him, but for some reason, he couldn’t learn it.

His eyes flew over the text again.

Locked? I wonder how I unlock it. Wait. It says I unlocked it. I swear this system is such a joke.

In the end, he didn’t dwell on it for much longer but instead began testing out the new skill.

Just as he began properly understanding the workings of the skill and the new sense that came with it, he heard a dull thump, or the echo thereof, akin to what a shooting range sounded like from the distance.

Instinctively Nik ducked, and his heartbeat began racing. His hand slipped down his leg, touching his calf and his foot. He caught himself seconds later as a couple of scenes of back home, not his tree but earth, replayed through his mind. He almost bolted right there and then.

No, if that really is a gun, then that meant that there were people there. Maybe not humans, but people.

As he dashed towards where he figured the shots were coming from, he blazed all his movement skills as high as he could. He couldn’t be entirely sure how much faster he was going than he could before coming here, but he imagined it to be four times, maybe even five times boost.

His baskets for his rock gathering operation were forgotten, only his hammer and a clay amphora filled with a mix of mushed stamina and mana berries were with him now.

I hope [Stealthy Movement] can keep up with the ruckus I’m making, he thought as he wove through the trees. Smirking he sent a small prayer of thanks to whatever had made it so that there was barely any shrubbery in this part of the forest.

The next few shots he heard were all the guidance he needed to find what he was looking for. [Tracking] had finally begun picking up the slack and giving Nik a rough sense of where the shots were coming and painting a mental map of his movement related to the sound. His hearing helped too.

As he grew closer, he slowed his speed, and put a hand on his hammer’s handle, better be safe than sorry was a good motto to live by he found.

That was when he heard scuttling behind himself. He turned around to see what it was and gasped in shock. He had never seen such an ugly group of five not-rats.

Socle [Lvl. 3] – Instable Specimen