Light pierced paper thin eyelids. As his mind awoke from slumber, the smell of rotting waste slammed into him, worming its way into his mouth and nose, clogging his pores with it’s vile, oily, taint. Nails slowly drove their way into the front of his brain, a pounding headache proclaiming its existence to the man. Daniel groaned, and then immediately wished he hadn’t. The rush of air clawed its way out of his throat, like sandpaper up his gullet. The warm air passed over his cracked lips, providing very little relief to the fiery chasms between the hard plates. Dark blood welled up, beading then spilling onto his tongue. Daniel tasted shit and iron.

The assault sprung his battered body into action, and he scrabbled and slipped across the slimy floor, sleep dulled eyes searching desperately for the exit. His ears guided him to the sound of roaring water, and the man collapsed under the cooling weight, the liquid a balm to his face and throat. Once he had drunk his fill under the liquid curtain, the man stumbled outside.

The pile of rotting flesh was the first thing to greet him. The corpses had begun to bloat, shifting the precarious pile. As Daniel took in his bearings, a headless Lesser Ratman slipped and slid down the slope of the pile rolling to a stop at his feet. Disturbed maggots wriggled through the ribbons of flesh encasing the paper white spinal cord.

Shuddering, Daniel toed the carcass aside with a disintegrating sneaker. The light of day showed the man how little work he had done the day before. Stray sticks and waste littered the ground, and numerous bodies had rolled off the pile during the night. The bodies had to be the first thing to go. He was lucky that no scavengers had paid the pile a visit in the night. They would need to be moved away from the water, preferably out of the small forest altogether.

Before tackling the monumental task, Daniel checked his notifications. A glance revealed two levels in cleaning gained, as well as a point each in strength, endurance, and willpower, the attribute gains he had earned the day before finally setting in.

Dismissing the blue panel, the man scanned the forest edge, searching for obviously edible fruit or berry. Mushrooms were way too dangerous to attempt to consume, even though they were incredibly abundant. Some tall red speckled bushes spilled into the clearing, along with a thorny plant, it’s stems laden with dark shapes.

Rushing over, an excited Daniel knelt down to confirm his suspicions. The berries were ovoidal, and were made up of many small blackish-purple spherical blobs. Activating an ability, his suspicions were confirmed. They were blackberries. Plucking all of the ripe berries from the bush, the man popped them into his mouth one by one, the tangy sweetness slightly easing the cramping in his belly.

After his meal, the man licked his purple stained fingers, unwilling to let any of the food go to waste. Scrubbing his face and hands once more in the waterfall, Daniel set about solving the problem of how exactly to move the dead bodies. Eventually he decided the best way would be to create a hammock out of the pelt of one of the Hulkers. Sighing he got to work, tying the remains of his hoodie over his nose and mouth to lessen the awful stench. After a very messy failure, in which he almost regurgitated his precious blackberries, Daniel succeeded in rescuing a mostly intact pelt, large enough to load a decent number of the Lesser Ratemen into, and drag them to the edge of the woods. He quickly got into a rhythm, as the disgusting work no longer bothered him, and he figured out the optimum way to ferry the corpses away from his new home. By wrapping the corpses horizontally, as if in a burrito, and then dragging it sideways through the use of a looped rope, made of incredibly sturdy vine, Daniel was able to quickly move the corpses, whilst also minimizing contact with the decaying flesh.

By the time the sun began to set again, all but the hulkers had been moved away from the site. Not trusting luck a second time, Daniel made a small fire using the lining of various nests, sitting watch over the camp and flames all night, contemplating his future plans.

As dawn broke, Daniel hauled himself, bleary-eyed, off his feet, and splashed himself with some cold water from his waterfall. Awake as he could get, he staggered over to the hulks, and implemented the strategy he had come up with the night before. Tying the vine under the armpits of one of the creatures, he painstakingly dragged in across the bumpy dirt, to the edge of the forest, where he created a new pile some ways away from his old one, which was now swarmed by ravens, pecking at the bloated flesh mound.

Midday came, and he once more visited the blackberry patch, scarfing the precious food source down before returning to his cave in order to create a proper bedroom, and a bonfire. By the evening of the next day, he had a medium sized fire burning bright and merrily just next to the waterfall, and had cleaned out the Alpha’s old quarters, creating a mattress of bark and leaves for him to sleep on during the night.

Most of the next day was spent creating weapons as he did not trust the current Rat-made supply. He made both a replacement spear and a backup spear, as being weaponless was unpleasant to say the least. This finally unlocked him a crafting skill, for improvised and primitive weaponry, which he was briefly excited about, until he realised that his creations were both being insulted, and that the extraordinarily low skill level meant that none of the effects were really noticeable.

This anger was directed mainly towards Tau, the only “face” Daniel could prescribe to his alien handlers. Remembering his conversation with the alien, and how he was little more than a lab rat in a cage, worsened his mood.

The anger distracted him whilst he attempted to catch dinner by spear fishing in the pond. His reaction speed was dulled, and instead of effortlessly piercing the body of the fish like he’d envisioned, his spears would just slip past a silvery body, before glancing off the rocky bottom, and bobbinh back to the surface a good distance away from the shore. Due to his short supply, he frequently had to wade into the pond to fetch his thrown spears. Then, cold and uncomfortable as the cloth hung against him, he would wait for the fish and water to calm and clear again, before repeating the whole process.

When the sun began to set, and the cold became more of a threat, Daniel gave up on his efforts, and instead spent his time eating berries and fantasising about beating Tau and the rest of his race into a pulp for putting him in his current situation. As he slipped off to sleep, knife cradled in hand like some twisted serial killer’s teddy bear, he decided it was time to fully explore his little forest, and maybe even start to gain some more levels. The warmth of the fire kissed his face, and Daniel let go of his thoughts and worries, content to dream even more fantasies of violent retribution.