Forever

Getting woken up to dull pain was unpleasant, although it seemed to be a new constant in his world. As his body laid motionlessly on the rock, his eyes closed before seemingly opening a second later, only to find that the rain had stopped, morning light streaming over the mountain. Groaning, Salim began twisting around, breaking the dried mud that had hardened on his body.

Shifting his body to look over at the inlet, he let out a sigh, the landslide had completely covered the accessible river, filling his only water source. Looking at the ruined pool of water, Salim let out a chuckle at his misfortune. The laugh was raspy, low, and slightly painful from not talking for the past couple of days, but he laughed mirthlessly nonetheless.

What matters is that I’m alive, and just need to find another source of water, Salim thought.

Unfortunately, asking [Wayfind] to point him in the direction was iffy. The skill was pointing further up the mountain where he assumed the rain water gathered, but didn’t think it was a good idea to try and live even further up. While trying to reason out his next plan, Salim opened up his stats to prepare himself for the inevitable hike.

Lvl. 7

Stats

Confirm

Might: 19(20)

-/+

Finesse: 10(13)

-/+

Resilience: 16(20)

-/+

Acuity: 15

-/+

Resolve: 15

-/+

Depth: 5(7)

-/+

With the soreness fading, Salim contemplated how much stronger he was. At first, he thought that the stats might be percentage based, but if so, all his stats would have been the same, and he definitely wasn’t twice as strong. The stats seemed to scale linearly, meaning the more he leveled up, the more insignificant each stat became.

But that was far in the future, almost every stat was important to him now, except maybe [Depth]. Thinking about his stats reminded him of his level-up message from the night before, having said something about a new skill.

Hurriedly pulling up the menu, Salim studied the description of the new ability.

Skills

Wayfind (Class)

Lvl. 2

Guides you to where you want to go.

Forage (Class)

Lvl. 4

Improves your ability to find useful items in the wild.

Safe Travel (Class)

Lvl. 3

Reduces your trace while you travel.

Reinforced Stamina (Class)

Lvl. 1

As long as you are invigorated, you will never be tired.

The wording didn’t describe much, but the word ‘invigorated’ clued him in enough to where he had a general idea on what to do. Getting a feeling for the skill was difficult, but [Wayfind] taught him how to hunt around for the unnatural feelings that the skill induced. Still lying on the rock, Salim eventually felt what he assumed to be the skill and pulled.

Pulling deep, Salim felt like he was being guided through his body and brought to what he could describe as his core. The skill showed him how to coax energy from it, with a process that he couldn’t make heads or tails of. Energy slowly started leaking out and flowed out, towards his limbs.

Waking from his trance with a start, Salim realized that his limbs didn’t feel like they were made out of lead, the exhaustion that had held him in its grip suddenly gone. Looking at his hands, they glowed slightly brown and confirmed his suspicions that this was somehow related to the trees. Pushing himself up, Salim marveled at his ability to move, able to jump up and down for a full minute without a hint of fatigue.

Just as Salim was about to mess around with pushups, a feeling of hollowness grew rapidly in his chest, causing him to shudder. That was the only warning he had before whatever his skill was doing cut off abruptly, causing his exhaustion to slam back, causing him to crumple back into a pathetic heap on the ground.

From his earthly position, Salim recognized that he had messed up out of excitement again, and admitted to himself that he probably should have paid more attention to what the skill was doing. On the other hand, his ego felt that it was a completely fair mistake, he had superpowers, who wouldn’t get excited about them? All these skills are straight out of fantasy novels, magical sense of location, increased perception, endless stamina, I’m like a superhero, he thought, a pained grin appearing on his face.

Salim felt for the skill again. There was a little movement, but his core felt hollow, the energy he felt before dispersed throughout his body.

Crawling over to a tree at what felt like a glacial pace, Salim struggled to stab into the roots; his arms refusing to work properly against the root's gnarled, tough bark. Eventually, he made some headway and glorious green sap spilled from the root straight into his awaiting mouth. Spitting out the dirt and bark that had also snuck by, Salim gulped, willing the green sap to flow through his body.

Flow it did, as he observed his core with interest, the green energy began to push into it, slowly at first, but eventually picking up speed. He felt alive, and activating [Reinforced Stamina] made him realize that he could influence the output of sap energy, allowing him to move with relative discomfort, but more importantly, not eating through his entire supply.

Salim tried his best to activate the skill while keeping the infusion of energy to a trickling speed, which was difficult to do since he needed to maintain a certain level of focus on it. Standing up was surprisingly challenging, as his muscles screamed in protest, he stumbled onto his feet. Ignoring their pleas, Salim checked his core to be sure it wasn’t draining too fast.

While his core couldn’t hold a ton of energy relative to how much the skill took, he could optimistically hold out for the next hour, and if he could keep drinking the sap, potentially longer.

None of that will matter if I don’t start moving, He thought as he slowly ambled away from the inlet and down the mountain with caution. If he lost his footing, he would go tumbling down the side of the mountain, hopefully crashing in a very dead pile at the bottom. Salim shuddered, imagining a scenario where his body lay broken and slowly dying in the middle of the forest.

Moving with the skill in reduced capacity was the worst feeling he had ever experienced even after dying, it felt like his muscles were given just enough strength to perform a half job in locomotion. But he didn’t complain too much, as the alternative was laying on the ground and waiting for the elements to take him. And while he thought it might get the pain and suffering over with, he didn't want to entertain those morbid thoughts, so with more grumbling he walked.

Just keep moving, pushing, burning, and everything will be alright.

Stomp, Crack, the only noises going through his head were his footsteps as he moved over branches and leaves going down a sharp decline on the mountain. Occasionally he would start feeling hollow, making him hobble over to a tree before drinking more sap to refresh himself. He couldn’t muster the willpower to care if there were any side effects from abusing the stuff, but there was a small part of his mind that watched in concern.

Night fell upon the mountainside unnoticed by Salim as he pushed [Reinforced Stamina] for a bit more juice as his mind was solely consumed with the task of maintaining his skill and hiking. Invisible to him, [Safe Travel] was acting, keeping him from making loud noises as he pushed through the oncoming terrain with impunity.

His journey wasn’t without danger, it was hard to see during the moonless night, with the glow of the trees being more distracting than helpful as he tripped over several rocks that jutted out from the ground. One particularly spiteful rock had sent him tumbling down the mountain until he fell into a bush, causing a large welt to begin forming on the shoulder that took the brunt of the fall.

One thing that dawned on him while he was ambling over a rather scalable section of rock was how his body didn’t complain about the lack of food and water. Granted, everything still hurt, but whatever the skill did to him was amazing for survivability, or it's just turning those feelings off a dark part of his mind whispered. His paranoid side also grew a bit more anxious as the skills seemed a little too good to be true, but he wouldn’t stop until he was in a relatively safe area. It just happened that he wasn’t sure what a “relatively safe area” was.

[Wayfind] was still being less than helpful, any requests for water directed him back up the mountain and nothing nearby qualified as safe. Salim wasn’t sure if it was his definition of what he considered safe that made the skill useless, but it didn’t matter when he left helpless all the same.

Even as the sun rose behind the mountain, Salim continued his march, only stopping to occasionally refill on what he had begun mentally referring to as ‘tree coffee’. His tongue had been rubbed raw by the small grains of bark in the trees, but all that mattered to him was getting away from landslides and freak thunderstorms. It was a little unfair to the mountain, but he didn’t consider its feelings important.

While the hike was long and tedious, Salim had to remind himself that it took him two days to climb up to the inlet, so the all-nighter he pulled meant he had to be arriving at the bottom fairly soon. And, like a prophecy, he arrived at ground level. It was hard to tell as the terrain didn’t even out, but was able to confirm it, as he pushed a little more energy into his limbs to climb up a tree to survey his surroundings.

You scaled down a mountain within the timespan of a day.

Major Event has been Logged.

You have gained a Level!

You have gained a Level!

Salim had a thought that maybe leveling up was a tad too easy. While climbing all the way down in a single day was impressive by normal standards, he felt like he cheated a tad with his skill. But then immediately crushed it as his body vehemently disagreed.

Maybe when I get to higher levels it’ll get harder, he mused. While this was awful, it seems broken if I’m able to run all-nighters and become some lightning flinging god.

Practically falling out of the tree, Salim wound up moving leaves and branches out of the way to find a dryish patch of ground to sleep on. Before he let go of his skill and lost the function of his body, Salim made sure to assign his stats.

Lvl. 9

Stats

Confirm

Might: 20

-/+

Finesse: 13(15)

-/+

Resilience: 20(25)

-/+

Acuity: 15

-/+

Resolve: 15

-/+

Depth: 7(10)

-/+

Salim braced himself before confirming, although it didn’t help. The pain from the ten stat points hitting at once was enough to knock his concentration from his skill like a muscle spasm, and the pain returning all at once instantly knocked him out.

Waking up was disorienting, as Salim blinked and it was suddenly noon. The mind fog slowly fading as he felt sunlight burning on his stomach, his body a patchwork of peeling skin and red splotches except for his incredibly dirty shorts.

Adjusting his face under nearby shady leaves, he attempted to stand up, only to be denied by his ruined body. Bright hot pain flashed through his mind as he bit back a scream. His body felt like it had been dumped in lava after the events at the inlet and several hour-long hikes down the mountain.

Maybe the improved stats helped him defy death, but they definitely weren't kind about keeping him alive. He was tempted to use his skill to get him moving again, but something told him that would only make things worse, while he retained the function of his limbs while they were enhanced, they apparently weren't immune to damage. That meant either the skill enhanced the abilities of his limbs or that it acted as some sort of booster for his bodies functions.

Salim once again cursed at himself for never enjoying biology in high school, as all his theories were based on sci-fi mumbo jumbo and video games. Unfortunately, he liked computers, which meant almost all his life skills were useless until he managed to somehow invent the computer.

Thoughts jumped around in his head, as he lay underneath a tree to avoid the midday sun. Salim switched tracks and thought about what he was going to do. He initially wanted to set up a house and find a way to live off the land, which seemed fine until Mother Nature came along and ruined it. That didn’t mean the idea was bad, but his newest skill had changed his perspective.

It was either magic or a superpower and no one could tell him otherwise, which meant he could possibly earn more skills to make his life even more convenient. He received [Reinforced Stamina] at level seven, so going by simple logic, he should receive another skill at fourteen or possibly seventeen.

The idea was there. He needed to level up as much as possible.