I woke up with a headache and a face ache, and a little blood running down my face. I went over to the river, splashed water on my face, and cleaned off the dirt. Then I went back to my fire and sat on a rock close by and waited for my face to clear up. About five minutes later, I was up and moving again, and the headache wasn't trying to keep me from seeing.

I noticed that in the top right of my vision, where the green bar sometimes showed up, is a blue dot in an empty bar. Along with the green bar showing just a sliver missing.

I guessed that blue was for mana, and I emptied it out in one go. Falling over and blacking were related to mana overuse. The health damage was from too much mana drain or from landing on my head.

The spell that Sam gave me took 50 mana to use, and I only had 40. This meant that I would always go into the negatives unless I got my mana pool higher, which brought me back to needing to level and understand this world better than I was right now.

One odd thing that I'd noticed about all of this world was that I was taking it, for the most part, in stride. I doubted that many people would happily go along with being thrust into another world and or into the middle of nowhere with absolutely nothing. Well, nothing of the modern world, not even a folding knife.

Once I got my head screwed on straight again, I grabbed my stone spear, water, and empty backpack and started down to the bottom of the falls. I'd some exploring that I needed to do to see what all was around, and I'd about 5 hours of light. So, I should be able to do about 3 hours in a half-circle and see what all I could find. I knew that up would be very much a challenge close to the falls, but further out, I might find something that would let me up.

I walked back the way I'd come just two days ago. I was on the lookout for a way up and still a little on edge about the wild dogs. I knew there was no way in this section of the river to cross, but I wasn't sure if the dogs would go down the river and then try to come back up this way.

Hearing the dogs close by made me extra careful to check for ways across the river. What I liked was that in this area, the river was both deep and swift. There were large rocks that I could climb but required hands to move up to, and no way to make it all the way across.

It was about thirty minutes from home when I saw a passable assent on my side of the river. It looked like I could pick my way up and out of the steep valley. The assent kept angled downstream, which was why I missed it when I first came this way. The path looked like it would be without climbing as I saw animal tracks.

My tracking skill kicked in, and I felt that the tracks I was looking at belonged to a two-foot-tall hairy goat-type creature. It was an odd feeling to know that geson are one-horned long-haired mountain goats with sharp canine teeth and like to hunt small rodents.

As I started to track the geson, I saw that it moved up the main game trail. I was on the path for a good thirty minutes, slowly going up while still heading downstream. I wasn't genuinely tracking at this point since I was just scouting the area. I should've been tracking as I'd have realized that I was now where there was more than one set of tracks and that they were new.

However, I learned about the tracks the hard way. That being that, I took a horn to the right leg. The surprise attack dropped me to the ground, which was why the next one missed me. Me dropping to the ground also seemed to have caused the geson that gored me to fall.

I seemed to have trapped its horn inside my leg, which was both a good thing and an excruciating one. I was down and so dropped my spear since I was too close to use it anyway. Then I swung my left hand over my body and hit the goat on the head with a hammer fist which was both painful and ineffective. My hand bounced off the goat's head as it struggled to get up. Its head turned sideways because of how I landed, and so as it pulled, it yanked more flesh out of me.

I was in a bad place with bad things happening to me, and I needed somehow to keep from bleeding out from a goat horn. So I stood up as soon as the geson pulled its head back. It looked confused, so perhaps the hammer fist rattled it a bit.

It was then that I saw the second one running at me. As I was trying to figure out how to get out of the way, it ran the first one through from the side.

The first one being down was good, but the one that made the kill got all shimmery silver and backed up looking at me. My heart sank, this guy just leveled up from the kill, and now it was looking at me. I would be its next one. A quick check of my health confirmed that I was at 50% with a bleed icon as well. My leg had a hole from a two-inch horn, and now I'd this other one.

As the second geson charged me with its stubby legs, I dove and rolled to my spear. I came up and around with the spear held, ready to see the tiny aggressive hunter coming back around to finish me off. This time I got my spear tip dropped fast enough for it to scrape off the side of the geson's head and spear the back right leg. As the thing was only about two feet tall, that strike pinned it to the ground. I picked up a loose rock nearby and smashed its head in. I then fell to the ground and wrapped my hands around the hole in my leg.

END OF COMBAT

You have survived to the end of combat with several foe able to cause you harm

4 damage taken bleeding!

The bleed icon slowly blinked out of my vision, and my health bar stopped going down at about halfway. I looked down at the wound, and while I knew it should be deep and bad, it looked like a shallow gouge and not an impaling wound.

I looked around my surroundings, and my skills which had helped me in the past, kicked in again as my breathing slowed down. I saw a plant that I felt should help keep infection away and speed up healing. I knew that I needed to chew it and pack it into the wound. I also saw another plant with large leaves that would be good to put on top of the paste of the other one, and it would keep things from getting in.

As I was chewing the plant, I started to ask myself if any of this was smart. I was trusting in a skill called either survivalist or herbalism. Neither sounded to me much like medic or doctor. However, with some of the odd things I’d seen, they might work to save me. Once I got the paste into my leg and the other leaf over the paste, my red bar started to go up. It wasn’t fast, but it was a little.

As I sat there thinking about how dumb I’d been knowing that I was on the same trail as a hunter, I wasn’t paying attention. I got the feeling from my skills again that I needed to get up and move before something else came around looking for food because of all the blood. I had planned on making a scouting trip but today turned into a fight and a hunt. So I grabbed up my kills and dropped them both in my pack. It was odd they were heavy but small little guys.

Leaning on my spear, I hobbled my way back to my campsite. When I got to the cliff, I soon saw the problems of getting up that I would have. My leg was hating me, but I still needed to go up. I could either go up and then come back down with my vines and pull the pack up or just take it up the first time. Either way, I just knew that I would have problems getting up and that my wound wasn’t going to be happy with me.

It ended up being painful and bloody to get back up to my landing. Even with the ladder, I still ended up reopening the hole in my leg, but it wasn’t too bad. When I got to the top, I could press it back down and stop it again, but my health bar stopped going up. I looked like I was almost full but not quite there.

After taking a few minutes to recover and drink water, I let my skills start up, which led me to butcher the small game. As I was working on it, my mind wandered back to why the second one attacked the first. It made no sense to me until my skill brought me the memory of me being told that they always fight when they see each other. They are very territorial, and the males will attack each other over attacking other threats. If the small guys weren’t so mean, I’d think they were cute, but that cuteness went out the door at the first charge.

This world was out to kill me; I was sure of it. Snakes in my bed, dogs chasing me, and now little goats with dog-like teeth ambushing me because I was too close to them. At least the squirrels with the horns didn’t fancy a run at me. I wasn’t sure what else was out there, but I knew that I needed to do a better job at paying attention while moving around.

If I were in a straight-up fight, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt, but I let myself get ambushed. That was something that I needed to change. I’d to make myself more aware of what was going on around me so that I’d be ready. With everything I’d been through, I needed to make sure that my home ledge was both secure and that I had a second way out. That second way out right now is looking like a pretty steep climb right up the cliff face, but if I could plan it out, then it might not be too bad.

By the time I was done with my kills, the sun was going down. I’d buried the parts that I could not use because I lacked the other things I needed. I’d stretched out and scrapped the hides and was smoking the meat. It was a long day and one that, while I got injured the day ended up being productive. I ended up with about thirty pounds of meat between the two gesons.

I climbed into bed as the sun was going down. That was something that I was getting used to. I wasn’t staying up late reading or playing a game. Once that sun was down, that was it, no more light and so no more activities.

By your actions today

You have increased your level in

Staff (level 5)

Herbalism (level 1)

New knowledge has been granted to you!

Fitness Training (level 5)

Tumbling (level 3)

Nice two more skills from earth that I brought over with me. I guessed the falls and rolling got me tumbling, and the stretching and other calisthenics got me the fitness training. I took a look at the new skills.

Fitness training, Skill Grouping non-combative:

Fitness training is the skill of working your body in ways to make it grow stronger. This skill as it levels will reduce stamina use for all physical activities and stacks with other stamina reducing skills. For these benefits this skill must be practiced at least every three days for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Tumbling Skill, Grouping non-combative:

Tumbling is the skill of jumping at the ground without getting hurt. As it levels it lets you fall without as much damage, lets you cover ground in a roll and even dive into rolls while picking up objects. As it levels other ground movement opens up. This skill is a required skill for other skills and has sub skills.

That night I dreamed…