Forever

The forest had gone completely silent.

Salim looked around, eyeing the trees at the edge of the clearing with worry. The orange glow filtered through spiny leaves left patterns like diamonds covering the ground, scales of an invisible beast waiting to pounce.

While Salim wasn’t sure what type of creatures lived in the giant trees besides maybe birds and squirrels, but he was familiar with how forests operated. Gone was the squawking, buzzing, humming, even the rustling of the trees seemed quieter somehow. It was replaced with the weight of silence, pressing against his nerves.

Slowly shifting his way to the base of a tree, wrapping his back to the redwood attempting to be as flush as possible, ignoring the feeling of bark stabbing into his back. Searching with his eyes and attempting to calm his breath, Salim stayed as still as possible. Something was there, a predator that brought a chilling silence to the lively forest.

He saw it. Along the floor of the forest, he saw it, writhing and wriggling, with grotesque movements it crept along across roots and rocks. It looked like a gigantic centipede, about as long as he was tall, with sharp mandibles that could tear him limb from limb sitting right below its antenna. Unwillingly watching with bated breath, he couldn't move a muscle as it began to stalk through the clearing, hunting for prey Salim prayed wasn't him. While he never had a fear of bugs, this was horrifying, watching its hundred legs scurry across the ground, light shining off its dull red carapace.

Agonizingly slow, the gigantic centipede approached him, not directly towards but getting uncomfortably close to the tree he was up against. Seven, five, two, it slowly moved closer. The monster was so close that he could hear the skittering of its legs across the ground, clicking like hundreds of grandfather clocks. He could only hold his breath for so long, Salim felt himself turning purple as his lungs screamed for air, his heart beating a million times faster than normal.

Ghuuuh, a gasp of air. Both froze in the sunlit clearing.

The centipede turned and charged at him in a fraction of a second, its body skittering faster than Salim thought possible. Flinging himself to the left, it smashed into the tree, bark and splinters raining down onto his back. Hitting the ground, Salim shielded his face from the chunks and half crawled, half dragged himself away from the clearing and further into the forest.

Managing to scramble to his feet and looking around for anything to defend himself, he kept running further and further away from imminent death. He could hear the centipede following him, loudly skittering, having given up appearances of stalking its prey.

Knowing that he couldn’t possibly outrun the beast, Salim grabbed a rather long and sturdy stick from all the folliage scattered across the forest floor. While the clearing was free of decaying wood and mossy stones, the same could not be said for the rest of the forest. Adrenaline pumping through his veins, stick in hand, Salim watched the centipede raced towards him, all the while bracing the staff against the solid surface of a nearby tree.

Holding the stick like a spear, Salim thrust it into the bug and buckled as it slammed into the wood, but holding due to bracing with the tree. A loud crunch and squenching noise echoed across the forest as the head caved in, along with the stick giving in with a loud crack as it splintered and broke. The makeshift blunt spear had slipped under its armored scales and punctured its exoskeleton under the force of its charge.

Standing above the dead centipede, Salim froze again in shock, the pain in his shoulder and back slowly coming back as the adrenaline faded. He couldn't explain what he was feeling, he never thought he would be fighting a giant centipede half naked in a forest, but here he was. It was terrifying, but at the same time exhilarating, although that might have been his adrenaline high.

Suddenly, two boxes appeared in front of his face, causing him to do a small jump in surprise.

You successfully defeated a 'Centipede'

Event has been Logged.

You have gained a Level!

You have gained your first Level.

Select Class in Menu.

Blankly staring at the boxes, Salim slowly read them with alarm bells going off in his head. There was no prefix attached to it saying (giant) or anything to point at its size being abnormal. He wasn't going to think about it. Either way he had killed it with only a few bruises, so maybe his situation wasn't as dire as it looked? Who am I kidding, I'm going to die out here.

Not wanting dwell any longer about how screwed up his situation was, he opened the Menu and noted how Class, which had previously been unavailable, was now possible to be selected.

Classes Available

Wanderer

Alone by trade, the Wanderer travels from place to place, never staying put and always searching for new experiences.

Hunter

Hunting is a necessary action for survival, the Hunter sets traps for their prey and stalks the ones who get away.

Gatherer

Edible berries, balms, and incense are all useful with the right knowledge, poisons more so.

Reading over the options, Salim realized, with all the strangeness and horror of the past couple of minutes, that he did need to eat. He wasn't hungry at the moment, but it was only a matter of time before he needed to eat something. He glanced at the caved in skull that was slowly starting to smell but decided he wasn’t that hungry. Yet.

The class options made him think, [Wanderer] might help him figure out where he was, considering it had a line about 'searching for new experiences.' He only paused for a few seconds on [Hunter], while hunting would be a good way to feed himself, he didn’t fancy eating bugs for the rest of his life, and he seriously doubted a wolf could outcompete a 5-foot centipede.

[Gatherer] also stood out to him since knowing what to eat was incredibly valuable to him, all he could think about were stories of people dying due to misidentifying a mushroom. So he decided, those were his two choices, [Wanderer] or [Gatherer]. Thinking for a moment, he made his choice.

You have chosen the Wanderer Class.

The whims of your will guide you

You have gained 3 new Skills.

‘Wayfind’

‘Forage’

‘Safe Travel’

You have gained 5 stat points.

Opening up his skills page, his eyes skimmed across the pannel, looking at the scant information he was given on the [Skills].

Skills

Wayfind (Class)

Lvl. 1

Guides you to where you want to go.

Forage (Class)

Lvl. 1

Improves your ability to find useful items in the wild.

Safe Travel (Class)

Lvl. 1

Reduces your trace while you travel.

It seemed like a mixed bag of skills to him. [Forage] was the obvious winner in terms of usefulness, and would probably keep him alive long enough to figure out where he was. The other two skills had glaring weaknesses, but they were both seemingly contingent on him traveling. [Wayfind] needed a direction for it to work based on its description and in his current state, he doubted 'home' would do anything. [Safe Travels] on the other hand needed him to be activly traveling, which he wasn't sure how to quantify.

None of his abilities called for magic words, mysterious motions, or anything of the sort, so maybe there was a silver lining, as grim as the situation felt. Moving onto his other notification, Salim pulled up his status page to begin messing with another system he didn’t understand.

Ultimately he decided to go with the safe option, upgrading [Might], [Finesse], and [Resilience] would be the best choices until he figured out what the other stats did. Feeling the aching bruises on his back, Salim decided to put three of the points into resilience and two into might, so that he could fight back a little more next time a killer bug comes at him.

Confirming the options and glancing at his surroundings, Salim turned back to the menu before confirming the stat spread with a shaking hand.

Lvl. 1

Stats

Confirm

Might: 8 (10)

-/+

Finesse: 9

-/+

Resilience: 7 (10)

-/+

Acuity: 12

-/+

Resolve: 14

-/+

Depth:0

N/A

Looking down at the menu, Salim began to feel a familiar burn growing throughout his body. It wasn’t debilitating but it did hurt, feeling like the acid in his muscles was catching back up at the end of a workout. The burn was comforting in a way, it was something he had felt before.

Dismissing the window with a swipe of his hand and looking down at his body, Salim watched as it shifted, flesh warping ever so slightly until some of the stomach fat he had was gone. He wasn’t obese, but a bit of his office weight had been vanished in a matter of seconds.

However, if this was some sort of virtual reality, why go through the graphic process of his body shifting? Why not change his body instantly if he was just interacting with the world through an avatar? Trying to avoid another panic attack, he focused his thoughts elsewhere and wasn't going to think too hard about it. Shoving it to the back of his mind with a shake of the head, he moved on.

Bringing his train of thought around he realized that finding water was his top priority. Glancing at his surroundings, he picked what he assumed to be east because of the setting sun behind him and began to trudge through the woods. Along the way, he picked up another stick, just in case.

For now, the forest was alive again, humming and chirping as he walked beneath megalithic trees. In a normal situation, Salim would have been looking around in awe, the sight being completely new to him. But the threat of predators loomed over his shoulder, making him cautiously scan the environment, the beauty of nature skewing before his eyes.

His eyes darted as he moved from trunk to thick trunk, circling the gigantic redwoods and moving on to the next. It was a slow process, and before he knew it, the sun behind him was hidden from view while the ground was bathed in disordered patches of orange light.

Water had escaped him for the day, and he felt hunger setting in, not enough to miss the centipede he left behind but enough to make him think about it. Eventually, he began looking for a bush or knoll to hide before night came. Looking around, he couldn’t see a reasonable place to rest, any foliage on the ground was too sparse or small to hide his bulky body.

Then he felt a pull, a dull tugging sensation in the back of his mind willing him towards his left side. Following the feeling, Salim was led to a dying tree with a sizable hollow den at its trunk which looked like an abandoned nest.

Pushing himself into the hollow, it was big enough for him to move around on his hands and knees. Shifting his weight until he was comfortable enough to rest in the dirt, Salim peered out at the surrounding forest through a small hole in the tree.

It made him feel small, not in a bad way, but just enough for it to be poignant about his place in nature. He was in the most figurative sense screwed, not being big enough to be considered a threat by the predators meant that he would have to watch his back. Thinking that he would probably have to face off with other bugs or worse, Salim took the stick he had grabbed and snapped it jaggedly in half, using his foot as a fulcrum.

Taking the biggest rock he could find, Salim attempted to sharpen the jagged point he already had using the flattest edge of the stone. After a couple of minutes without making much progress, and giving himself numerous splinters, he managed to make the tip a tad sharper before night finally swept across the forest. Through the darkness, he could make out a few trees illuminated by what he assumed was moonlight. Peering out of the hollow, Salim looked up staring at the sky above, a black canvas, with only stars littering the night sky peeking through leaves.

The ground outside wasn’t being lit by starlight, the trees themselves were glowing softly with faint light coming from leaves and bark. Watching the glowing trees until exhaustion snuck up on him, Salim found himself oddly at peace as he drifted to sleep in the dirt.