What was the difference between danger and opportunity? Maybe that line was divided only by the answer to one question: when you were tested, did you rise to meet the challenge?

Benate stood back away from the newly defined landmark. There was a nearby {size: small} {fragile} boulder-0 nearby, and he sat down on it to rest and think. Really, from a certain point of view, there wasn’t any difference at all between a {small} boulder and a {size:e5} material.lump.mineral, it was all just a point of view. But Benate generally trusted the wisdom of NaturalLanguageEngine. NLE was a part of system that he didn’t get to talk to very often, only ever in the rare cases she got something particularly wrong. But she was diligent and precise and quietly ever present.

He /sigh ed. He probably should have asked her out instead of AutoMod, way back when. But the incorporeal, near omnipotent knowledge entity was just so smart. It was too intimidating to talk to her. He still blushed with embarrassment at the memory of their last interaction two lifetimes ago –

NLE→FeedbackResponse→Rejection→Reasoning: Possible reason for inquiry is determined to be root word derivation. Amphibian is derived from the same root as amphibious. However the first is associated with a particular class of tetrapod vertebrate animals of the group lissamphibia.

The second refers to an organism’s ability to survive in both terrestrial and aquatic environments.

Since there are example species of lissamphibia which are terrestrial only,

And since convergent evolution often develops survival mechanisms across orders,

NLE→FeedbackResponse→Rejection→Conclusion: Recommendation to classify {amphibious}{bloodthirst}{doublestrike} beast.mammal as beast::order::amphibian is denied.

He had been so humiliated. Her words were probably burned into his mind forever. Of course, it hadn’t helped that she’d probably seen the {doublestrike} slicky-haired waddler kill him afterwards. Tier 1 beasts were scary.

The oncoming of dusk made for dark and growing shadows in the swaying grasses, both in front of him, and behind him. He looked again at the bleached, accusing beast jaw. He was too far to [Inspect] it closely, but he noticed the way the soil looked so rich around it, and wondered if it could the source which was feeding the evolution of the {razor-leaf} grass.

He hadn’t meant to come back. Sometimes, Benate just got lost. On his first visit to this place, he had found it roughly { 27.9, 70.2 } meters { north, west } of the clearing at the stream. Then, when he had wandered north-east from there, he had basically just pathed along a segmented, repeating, 60 degree intersectional disjoint of sectional 84 meter Fibonacci-8 spirals. If he would run into an obstacle, or danger, or even just found something interesting – well, it was easy enough to make slight adjustments along the way.

Benate liked how this pattern provided for a wide breadth of coverage, with allowance for fine search detail. But, according to his calculations, he should currently be located { 61.36, 220.4 } meters to the { south, east }.

“😩, 😗💨. 🤷.”

He must have just wandered a little too far from the reference point of the creek. That could happen sometimes, especially if he didn’t generate enough deltas along the way to to make an impression. When you did that, sooner or later the system led you back…

To something it wanted you to remember.

Benate peered through flickering gaps between the sharp, wind rustled grasses. Here and there, a stalk would sway into view; sprouting a ripening cluster of grains. The round green seeds were just the same shape and color of basic cereal, but it was fruiting from a t0.15 plant. That could make all the difference.

Oh yes, there were gains to be found here. The skull might be a t0.3 item all by itself, though taking it might starve the {razor-leaf} grass. The cereal would attract stronger beasts, and the 🌬Slashing damage would whittle down the unfit until they would either adapt new perks or die. A tiered landmark wasn’t a place whose rewards were valued at its measured level. It was a place that you needed to fight at that tier in order to survive. But it was also a floor from which you could only grow higher.

Benate took stock of himself. He was in much better shape than he had been at the start of the day. He held his crushing bone-0.2 in one hand, and a wicked claw-0.11 in the other. His diet was growing in richness and variety, and his belly was over half full. He gave a cursory scan of his nutrition grid, and made note of the falling food durabilities.

cereal-0.11

3.4/4

meat-0.24

7.7/9

cereal-0

4.8/6

cereal-0

0.4/6

cereal-0

0.4/6

⊜flower-0.1

5.6/6

cereal-0.08

3.4/6

cereal-0.17

3.4/6

▲meat-0.35

6.5/9

herb-0

3.5/6

meat-0

3.5/6

nectar-0

1.5/4

meat-0.18

6.9/9

cereal-0

4.8/6

cereal-0

4.8/6

legume-0.1

5.7/6

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He had mostly been focused on raw meat and grain, with its benefits to his ❤Vitality, ⚡Stamina, and 💪Physical attributes. Many wild food sources started with baseline bonuses around 2, and scaled with the item’s quality. There were also hybrid foods like legumes, which were only different that they divided their potency between multiple stats. But there were plenty of specialized foods like nectar as well.

Nectar’s raw ⚡Stamina bonus was much less valuable than ❤Vitality, but its bonus to ⏫⚡Stamina Regen was an invaluable dietary combination. By making his stamina recovery more efficient, it would reduce the draw on his vitality. And thus, by even just a little bit, making all the rest of his food last just a little longer. There were lots of things in the world which had clever little interactions like that, and Benate enjoyed learning about them.

But even though his meals were important to keep track of, the real information he needed now was how it had affected his stats. It had been a while since he’d pulled up his stats, so Benate turned inward.

Name: B398

Tier: 0

{Scrounger}

💪 Physical: 1.35 (22.8)

🧠 Mental: 1.19 (15.6)

❂ Social: 1

❤Vitality: 38.9/ 38.9

⚡ Stamina: 39.0 / 39.0 • ⏫⚡Stamina (12)

In particular, he focused on his three primary attributes. He wasn’t sure why they were called primary, most of the time he was only really using 💪Physical. So he assumed the other two would become important somehow if he ever tried to improve them. The attributes didn’t increase the same way that vitality or stamina did. They had a raw value, which started at 10, but then they had an effective value. This smaller number appeared to grow much slower than the raw one, almost like it was a direct comparison with Tier. It was all a little complicated to process, since Benate would have been much more comfortable with getting the information as float variables encoded in x64 block data.

Regardless, his growth was slow, but noticeable. After a few choice cuts of meat, he was already 35% stronger than he had been when he had come back to life. It also affected his walk and run speeds to a lesser degree, and he could range farther and faster. Plus, when he focused on his [Plan] action, he could feel the whispering opportunities of new actions he could unlock with his newfound strength. [Tool Arte: Throw] in particular was a useful ability for turning small, heavy items into weapons, and he’d relied on it in previous lives to good effect.

Mental stats were something that Benate had often overlooked in the past. He’d known it was the base attribute which unlocked upgrades to his [Inspect] action, and it had some value in surveying as well, but he’d rarely managed to invest into it without hitting roadblocks. It was chance that he’d stumbled on the {⊜nauseous-potency} flower-0.1 earlier. It had really been a nice find with its 3.59 bonus to 🧠Mental, and he wondered for the first time if this life would be the one in which he’d finally explore a build beyond stacking 💪Physical and ❤Vitality.

Unfortunately, the extra stat value of the flower had come at a cost. Its attribute was called a quirk, and it came with drawbacks to match its bonuses. He had paid a small, acceptable penalty to his vitality – and that, along with his drink of nectar, had left him in an amusingly unusual situation. His stamina had outpaced his vitality for the first time since he’d acquired his title.

Still, it was his physical aspects which he had been most comfortable with in the past. He took a moment to think about what it would mean to truly reach Tier 1. His best guess was that he could achieve a tier upgrade by improving one of his effective attributes to the next whole number value.

That was no easy feat. It meant he had to increase his raw score from a base of ten, up to a hundred. That was going to take a lot of high quality meat. If he considered a standard base rate of 2 bonus attributes per slot, with a quality multiplier of x6 at tier 1, and a total goal of 90 additional points, he would need to fill 8 slots with tier 1 quality meat. Benate slumped to the ground. He tried to imagine what it would be like to hunt not just one tier 1 beast, but four. What a terrifying goal.

And yet, it wasn’t enough either. Because he had already sworn that this was just a stepping stone on his journey beyond it, all the way to the mountain, the legendary Tier 5. So Benate simply stood up, and got back to work.