Fork This Life!

Chapter 10: Epiphany and fork party

“Beep, beep, beep…”

Dang, he won’t even get the joke, will he? Bad thing about being in another world is that I can’t use any of the jokes or references I know, because they use modern terminology. I probably can’t even use doctor, doctor jokes.

It depends how advanced they are, I suppose. I mean, when you think fantasy and magic, you think sort of medieval era, but it might not be. And doctors in the medieval era - from what I hear - weren’t very effective, to say the least.

So, back to training telepathy while he sleeps, since there’s nothing better to do…

I wonder… Can I use absorb on myself?

Wait, if I could, that would be damn OP. OP as all heck.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, ‘How does the ability to eat yourself make you OP? Are you crazy?”

I may or may not be crazy, but think back to the abilities I have.

Mana sight, absorb, telepathy, body of deadly poison… And self-repair.

That’s right, self-repair. My one and ONLY skill that consumes mana. Which heals me. And if I can use absorb on myself, and heal myself, then… my proficiency for both skills will go up, and I’ll have a use for mana! Finally.

So, let’s try this baby out! Absorb!

Metal of lvl 27 Living Fork absorbed

Durability recovered: -4.2

Skill proficiency increased: Absorb 0.01%

Titles gained: Ouroboros

Window will close in 29s

...Huh, it actually worked. I didn’t expect it to, but hey, I’ll exploit this glitch to the high heavens!

So, that title?

Ouroboros – Like the serpent of legend, you bit your own tail. Then you ate it. Weirdo.

Stat – Luck +2, Charisma +1, Wisdom -1, Wisdom +2

Hey, if eating myself makes me stronger, I’ll do it. Don’t call me weird. It’s not like I’m eating my own leg or something. I can barely tell the difference from before I took a few centimetres off my handle. And what do you mean, Wis – 1 +2? Is it insulting my intelligence? I think it’s insulting my intelligence.

Let’s just take another look at my status – Woah, not the whole thing, I really need to remember to close tabs.

Status

Name: Gerald

Race: Living Fork

Level: 27

Experience: 4308.26/5400

Gender: None

Age: 10 months (local time)

Allegiance: None

Fame: None

Strength: 5.0 (50.0)

Intelligence: 43.0

Dexterity: 5.0

Wisdom: 43.0

Charisma: 6.0

Luck: 12.1

Hardness: 24.6

Durability: 12.0/14.2

Mana: 860/860

Mana regen: 8.60/min

Psi: 430/430

Psi regen: 4.30/min

Unspent stat points: 0

Titles

Traits

Skills

Neato, that evened out my wisdom stat.

Y’know, thinking about it, I need regen more than max pool. But then again, Psi regen is INT and Mana regen is WIS, so… I’d just do the same thing as always, unless I focus on one.

And I want that telepathy. But I would really like to be able to repair myself cheaper and increase absorb proficiency. And in the end, absorb is my base, what I rely on. So I should focus on WIS next time, so that I can do the self-harm repair cycle more often. Speaking of, let’s take another look at that, since I haven’t used it in ages.

Self-repair (Basic) (Low Rare, Active) 3.33% - By expending an energy type, you can repair your own durability and recover your original form. Current energies able to be used: mana. Exchange ratio: 10 mana: 0.1 durability

So 4.2 durability is 420 mana. Hey, that’s almost half my max mana. What the heck is with all these coincidences? Well then, let’s start blazing through my mana pile, shall we?

Self-repair: gained 4.2 durability

Metal of lvl 27 Living Fork absorbed

Durability recovered: -4.2

Skill proficiency increased: Absorb 0.01%

Window will close in 29s

Self-repair: gained 4.2 durability

Aaaaand it’s gone.

Proficiency is at?

Self-repair (Basic) (Low Rare, Active) 11.73% - By expending an energy type, you can repair your own durability and recover your original form. Current energies able to be used: mana. Exchange ratio: 10 mana: 0.1 durability

Back to training telepathy for like, 20 seconds, and then like, and hour and a half wait until my mana and psi regenerate again. This new training reduces my free time by about… five seconds?

It’s great and all that I can train so quickly, but this is just ridiculous.

If it takes so much mana and psi to level these skills, I don’t want more skills that use them right now.

…But, I do really want some offensive magic.

…

Is there anything I can do to pass the time?

Hey status, you got any games installed?

Games

Minesweeper

Checkers

It took me this long to think about asking for this? A whole ten months? I am dumb.

You got minesweeper? Aw hells yeah!

Minesweeper all night!

Damn, this version has custom up to 10,000 width and height, and 40,000,000 mines max.

This solves all my problems. Hallelujah! Insanity creeps upon me no more!

This is what I spend my time on from now on. RNG don’t fail me now!

No, dammit! Two spaces, and either could be a mine, but not both! Not a single clue telling me which one it is! Screw it, guessing it!

*click*

*boom* *boom*

…

An hour later, I finish watching every single mine on that page explode. All 50 million of them. I got up to 100 mines flagged. I could have kept going elsewhere, but I would have had to go back to it eventually, so better fail sooner than later.

And start again!

*click*

*click*

*click*

Oh, he’s up. Can I minimise this window? Pause, please.

It worked? Whoever made the UI for this status system was thorough.

“Good morning. Assuming the reason you woke up wasn’t to go for a midnight piss.”

He replies blearily a moment later. “Huh? Oh, good morning. Do you really have to say something the moment I wake up?”

“Not at all!” I answer happily. “But I do anyway, because it’s either conversation with you or minesweeper, and conversation sounds much more interesting after hours of mind-numbing games.”

“Mine… Sweeper? Something to do with a maid?” He asks uncertainly.

“You don’t know about it? Huh. Just ask the status for games, and click the minesweeper one. It has nothing to do with a maid.” I explain.

“Oh, okay… What in the world do you do with all these blue squares?”

I explain the rules. A moment later, he tells me he’s died already. Not cut out for this sort of thing, eh? Strange, I thought minesweeper is fairly easy…

Well, on with the day! I do wonder if there’s anything I can do to help Ferdinand get a bit stronger? The stronger he is, the stronger things he can kill, the stronger things I can eat, the stronger skills I get! On average that is. I don’t doubt that strong people also have trashy skills.

What is there…

…

…

…Does a party system exist?

Create a party?

Yes

No

Sure.

Would you like to name your party?

Yes

No

Sure.

What name would you like?

Uhhhh… heckin dope masters? No, that’s stupid. Le societe de dank meme? Let’s just forget that was something I came up with…

The fork is mightier than the sword. Not bad. Yeah, I’ll go with that.

Would you like to invite anyone to your party, ‘The fork is mightier than the sword’?

One mo, status.

“Hey Ferdinand, you know about the party system, right?” I ask him.

“Of course.” He replies. “Why?”

“Can you be in multiple?” I ask.

“Sure, but your exp gain will get split so many ways it’s not worth it.”

Invite that dude right there to the party.

“… I’m not sure what to say to this…”

“Yes?” I prompt.

“Fine…” He replies.

Ferdinand, lvl 18 has joined the party, ‘The fork is mightier than the sword’.

“So what’s this about?” He asks.

“One moment…” I say.

Are party options a thing? They are indeed.

Party options

Experience sharing options

Gerald (Party leader): 75%

Ferdinand (Party member): 25%

Titles gained (Excluding racial and unique titles) shared: Yes

Promote member to party leader (You will lose party leader status)

Ferdinand (Party member)

First of all, can I glitch this? Change his exp gain to 100%... Mine went down to 0. 1000%? Down to 100%. Well, set mine to 5% and his to 95%.

“Okay, you probably got a notification or something, but I set the experience sharing to be ninety-five percent to you and five to me.” I explain.

“But why?” He asks.

“Because right now, I don’t need experience. More stat points don’t make me much stronger at all. I need skills, and skill proficiency. To do that, you need to be stronger, and the best way to do that is to… basically throw me at things to kill them. You get all the exp, and I get to absorb things.” I say.

“Okay, but how are we going to do that? You’re still poisonous, right? How am I going to be able to wield you safely?” A good question.

“I’ve had a few ideas about that, but I’m still not entirely sure. Simplest way is probably to wrap my handle in a bit of cloth, tie it there, then just avoid touching the business end.”

“And no poison will… seep through?” He asks hesitantly.

I double check the skill description. “Shouldn’t do. And even if it does, it won’t kill you.”

“How reassuring.” He says.

“Now let’s hurry it up, I can’t wait to get a bunch of useless skills I’ll never use or look at again, in all likelihood.”

What was happening before this conversation? Oh yeah, he was just waking up. Welp, onto adventure! In the immediate vicinity of this city, of course.

And so, here are my gains for the past few days.

Three bicorn boars, at levels 13, 15 and 16, netting me a total of 97.25 experience. No skills or traits.

One level 11 wild gazelle, 16.75 exp. Gave me an interesting, but ultimately useless skill, aptly named ‘flee’. It increases dexterity by 1.5 times over, but only when running away from something. It cancels if any offensive action is taken. Maybe one day, physical stat related skills, maybe one day…

Twelve rabid rats, all level 5 apart from one level 6 and one level 4. A pitiful 45.25 exp. What’s worse, they gave me the trait ‘Flea-bitten (Minor)’ that makes me attract fleas. I wonder what level fleas are, and if they can give me any exp?

And then a whopping twenty-three oozes, eight level 7, three level 8, four level 9, two level 10, five level 11, and one level 13. And all that still only gets me 263.5 exp. Got one trait here that is useful, ‘Physical damage reduction (minute)’, and a skill that is not so useful, ‘body of weak acid’. So now, I am not only highly poisonous, I also slowly - excruciatingly slowly – dissolve soft substances that come into contact with me.

I am the only fork in this world that has better use as a weapon then as cutlery. But then again, do I really want to be put in people’s mouths? Probably not. What’s worse, saliva and half-eaten food or blood and guts?

…I can’t even decide. Well, that’s another use of absorb, I guess, removing strange substances from my surface.

That exp gain really is abysmal though, now that I only get 5% of it. 422.75 exp all up, a mere 7.8% of the exp I need to level up. But at least I got a single useful trait…

Then there’s the experience I got from absorbing some of the flesh of the monsters. Around 90.27 exp.

And it might be a bit obvious, but that number of monsters attacking in this area would normally be absurd. Normally, they don’t have a certain fork telepathically directing them. I’m getting good at this, and with my sight now having a range of 871m – a boost of a hundred meters with that few stat points, my god – and a telepathy range of almost 350m, it wasn’t hard to draw in a few extra monsters and keep the others away while he’s occupied.

I may have gone too far, though. He took a bit of damage. Shame he doesn’t have self-repair.

Another thing of note is that my self-repair skill has skyrocketed in proficiency, and it’s now advanced. It just made it slightly more efficient, taking 8 mana instead of 10, but thanks to that I can do it once every hour twenty minutes instead of once every hour forty minutes.

And that again has increased the rate at which I gain proficiency, even if the proficiency gain per 4.2 durability repaired has reduced from 4.2% to 1.05%. Which makes it be a bit less overall, but still making good progress! I want to see what’s beyond advanced.

I could just ask Ferdinand? Come on, where’s the fun in that?

And in circumstances like these, I need some fun.

…The minesweeper is good, though.

But perhaps the best, or at least most exciting, gain was a neat little skill called ‘magic edge’.

That’s right.

MAGIC edge.

I can finally use magic! Okay, it’s very basic and still pretty much useless, but magic guys, magic!

Ferdinand used it a couple times, and when I asked about it, he taught it to me. After studying the fluctuations of his mana a bit, I managed to figure out how to move my own. Yay magic!

(POV Ferdinand)

Throw! Miss.

Pick up, throw, miss.

Pick up, thro- MISS!

Turns out, it’s much easier to hit a target with a thrown fork when your target is bigger than the city gates than it is to hit animals that are running around wildly.

Grasping the cloth-wrapped handle of the highly lethal fork, I toss it again. Hey, it hit this time!

It… is just the handle that hit it…

It glances in disdain at me for a brief moment before it resumes grazing. Why you little-!

‘Not to sound rude, but maybe you should just use your sword. It’s not like the things have to be alive for me to absorb them, after all.’ Gerald interjects.

Somewhat frustrated, I ask, ‘Then why are we doing this in the first place!?’

‘Dunno. Training?’ He replies blandly. ‘I mean, if something strong comes again, throwing me at it will have a much better chance of working than going up to it and stabbing me into it.’

‘You mean something I could be doing when I’m not in combat?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, that sounds about right.’

Grabbing him between thumb and forefinger, I flick him downwards at the ground, and draw the weapon I can properly use.

My sword.

Swinging it down at the gazelle, I catch it in the shoulder, tearing a deep gash and causing it to collapse to the ground, the injured limb uselessly twitching as it thrashes around in an attempt to become upright once more and run away.

Before, it had thought so little of me that it didn’t even run away as I hit everything in the vicinity with the fork - except for the gazelle itself - for a solid ten minutes.

Damn gazelle! I’ll show you who’s the weak one!

“Hah!”

Plunging my sword into its chest, I end its pain.

A glance and a thought dismisses the window describing my experience gain.

I wasn’t an expert swordsman by any definition, least of all the status’. I wasn’t even at the advanced level, which was a milestone for all professions and skills that meant you were no longer a novice. In other words, I’m still a novice at the sword, but I’m getting there. Perhaps eventually, I’ll get to the expert level.

But that will take a long, long time. Getting from the basic to advanced level alone for most skills takes years of practice in it. Getting to expert usually takes at least a decade of experience. At least, it did for me getting to expert in farming.

That sure was a happy day. My parents specially bought some meat from a local hunter and cooked it over low flame… The very memory of how tender and tasty that meat was would make me salivate, if it wasn’t such a bitter memory for me, now.

A tear escapes my eye -I instantly become alert at the sound of snuffling coming from nearby. Glancing left and right, it doesn’t take me long to spot a beast slowly trotting towards me. Above its large snout, a long, straight horn jutted, and above that, another.

A bicorn boar! Cursing softly under my breath, then reflexively apologising to my late mother, I hold my sword at the ready in anticipation of the imminent combat.

Bicorn boars were known rookie killers. Their sharp horns and considerable bulk make for a deadly charge, and they were surprisingly fast on their feet for a creature with so much fat lining its belly.

I had killed them before, but it had been a long time since I’d last gone solo, and I was still getting used to not having anyone laying down covering fire, magic spells or taking the brunt of the assault.

The easiest way to finish this combat would be a pre-emptive strike. Kicking off, I run at the boar, startling it. I recognise the sounds that it is currently making as warnings, and the boar glares at me as it scrapes at the dirt and lowers its meaty head. Preparation for a charge that could be very painful for me.

Tensing, I wait until the last second to leap aside. Lucky for me I have some experience against boars from the times they attacked the farm animals, and I knew they can’t turn quickly. It should just brush past – Gah!

Turns out I’ve underestimated the monster. The thing’s horns are long enough that a tilt of its head was enough to put me in the way of harm, and the tip traced a line across my upper leg.

I’ll need to treat that later, but right now, I’m killing the dang thing.

As it struggles to loop around to charge at me, my mana floods onto my sword, forming a glowing edge over the edge of my blade. I can only maintain this skill for a few seconds, so I charge and slash down at its side, leaving a brilliant afterglow behind the sword and slashing halfway through the boar’s torso.

A window comes up, confirming the boar’s death. Quickly sitting down, I take a moment to catch my breath. Because of that move on my wounded leg, it is now throbbing with pain, and I’ve lost a bit of blood. Worse, I am now completely out of mana and feeling a bit lightheaded, not a condition you want to be in under threat of roaming monsters.

Grimacing against the pain, I take off my pack and search through it. My fingers pause briefly over a bottle of red liquid before passing over and grabbing a bottle of cheap alcohol. Nasty stuff, but useful sometimes. Like now.

Pulling down my pants and gritting my teeth, I pour the booze on my open wound, washing it clean but increasing the pain tenfold, drawing a hiss of pain from me. Searching again through my pack, I pick out a clean strip of cloth and wrap it tightly around the wound. A reddish colour starts to replace the pale grey. I tie it off. Should be fine as long as I don’t put too much weight on it.

I start to reseal the alcohol, then stop and take a swig.

Bleh!

Yep, terrible. Hopefully, it will take a bit of the edge off. Any adventurer worth his salt has supplies for treating wounds, or at least someone in the party does.

Pulling up my pants again, I stand a bit unsteadily and start looking for the fork. I find it standing perfectly straight, tines down. Really? The only time I hit something right is when I wasn’t trying. Irritated, I pick it up, put it in my pack and start walking back to town.

Can’t fight like this.

But wait, it can’t stop there, that would be too easy, wouldn’t it? After the gazelle, a boar, after the boar, there are rats.

Strangely, they come one after the other instead of all at once, but that is better for me. Rats are only a pain in groups, since they are weak individually. And because they are coming at me one by one, I can focus on the single rat and swipe at it calmly.

In a very awkward underarm swing. Quite like using a broom, really. Well, not quite. The hilt of my sword isn’t that long.

By the time they are all dead, I am even more tired than before.

Scratching my head, I resume my walk towards town.

‘Hey, what’s up?’ Gerald asks.

‘What sort of question is that? The sky, of course.’ I reply in confusion.

‘Can’t see it, but that’s not what I meant. ‘What’s up’ is similar to ‘how are you’ where I’m from.’ He explains.

‘Oh. Pretty bad then. Got injured in my leg, constantly attacked by monsters in an area where monsters are rare, pretty much couldn’t get worse.’ I sigh.

Gerald doesn’t respond for a moment. ‘…I see I have much to teach you. Now you see Ferdinand, you shouldn’t have said that. You never, ever, EVER say that something couldn’t get worse. It’s a serious jinx.’

‘Jinx? What’s that?’ I ask.

‘It’s basically when you say, using definite terms like can’t or won’t, that something is or isn’t going to happen, mostly when you say something positive is going to happen or something negative isn’t. It’s serious bad luck, man, trust me.’ He says seriously. ‘Usually when someone says, ‘it can’t get any worse’, it starts to rain, monsters attack or someone dies. Or all of them happen. Usually all of them.’

Taken aback slightly, I reply, ‘Okay… My luck stat is pretty high, though, so shouldn’t we be safe?’

‘Oh, so that’s what rain looks like to me. Huh. It looks like light is falling from the sky… How beautiful.’ He says.

Eh? Holding out my arms, I don’t feel anything. There are some dark clouds but…

‘It’s not raining, is it?’ I ask.

‘My vision goes up over eight hundred meters. Give it a few seconds. Three, two, one, aaaaand impact.’

My face which is still facing the sky is moistened as drops of water fall upon it. Now I really feel miserable.

‘Well, it c–‘ I start, before Gerald interrupts me.

‘Oi! What’d you JUST learn?’

I try again. ‘At least there aren-’

Gerald interrupts me again. ‘Also bad!’

‘What CAN I say, then?’

‘Usually someone says to the person who jinxed it originally, ‘you just had to say it, didn’t you?’, and then there wouldn’t be conversation. Um, ‘I shouldn’t have said that, should I?’ works, I think.’ He says, sounding slightly unsure himself.

‘Your world was very weird.’ I say. ‘Or is it just you?’

‘Both.’ He replies.

Ha ha. Well, let’s get back to town before I get drenched… Too late. At least this rain makes it hard for monsters to smell me.

I somehow manage to get back to town without collapsing into the mud. Trudging into my room in the inn while dripping with water, I collapse into my chair.

Could I be any wetter, even if I were to take a bath? I doubt it.

The only thing I can do is change into my spare set of clothes, so that’s what I do. My bandage is sopping wet, so I change that too.

The wet, bloody bandage was useless to me. I’ll burn it when wood is flammable again.

Now that it’s just me wet and not my clothes as well, I should get some food. Limping down to the front door, I look out.

Pelting down. Just Great.

‘Shouldn’t you be grabbing an umbrella?’ Gerald asks.

‘Umbrella? What’s that?’ I ask in reply.

‘You don’t have umbrellas? How do you stay dry when it’s raining?’

I say sadly, ‘We don’t…’

And with that, I stride out into the rain to find something hot to eat.

…Maybe I shouldn’t have changed.

I didn’t believe it was possible.

But it is.

The next couple of days are even worse.

Do you know how hard it is to fight on muddy ground?

Very.

Pretty much everyone except mages rely on good footing. Without good footing, I’m not able to put as much strength into my swings as I could normally, and dodging is a far-away dream.

Running, you say? What, are you crazy as my fork?

…That sounded considerably crazy.

But you’re more likely to faceplant than to build up any speed.

What else was bad about those days?

Oozes. Oozes everywhere. EVERYWHERE.

I spot one grazing on a tree.

I roll over a rotted tree trunk, there is an ooze under it.

I think I drank part of an ooze when I stop at a stream to drink, because it tastes funny and I have stomach pains for hours afterwards.

Then there are all the oozes that are just milling about in the mud.

Normally, you just give them a few good stomps and they’ll fall apart, but with all the mud and my bad leg, that is somewhat difficult. I still manage to kill quite a few, even so.

At least the rain had stopped overnight, and the monsters seem to be just as impeded by the difficult terrain as I am.

The bicorn boars slip onto their sides when they attempt to charge me. It’s so pitiful that I start wondering whether I should kill them or not.

They are just monsters, I suppose. And easy experience is too good to give up.

Then there are the rats… Even filthier than usual. There isn’t a farmer out there who doesn’t detest rats, I think. The rotten things gnaw their way into bags of grain and produce, spilling them all over the floor and spoiling them…

I don’t hesitate to put them down.

Gerald asks me to poke him through some dead monsters. The flesh around him just… vanishes. Is there anything he can do that isn’t weird?

And as a result of all this, here I am. Having levelled up three times in as many days. Is the difference in experience gain really this high when you aren’t in a party?

To guarantee my safety, since heading out from home I always made a point to be in a party of at least four people. And… I, as an adventurer, didn’t have a specialty. I can’t block enemy attacks, I can’t attack from range, I can’t cast magic, I don’t know how to detect or set traps… Most of the time, this led to me being a glorified baggage carrier, with a very low experience share in the party.

But three levels, so fast? That’s crazy. I’m… I’m over level 20 now. I’ll get much more stats per level, and I’ll get much stronger!

Now to allocate my stats… I have 10, so I’ll put 2 in endurance to make me a bit tougher, and split the rest between dexterity and strength.

As I allocate the points, I can feel my muscles and skin growing tougher, sturdier, and faster.

My sword had never felt heavy in my hand, probably because of all the long hours spent hacking at the ground in my childhood, but now it felt light. Too light, perhaps.

Shifting my feet into a simple stance, I do a few practice swings, creating a satisfying hiss as my blade cuts through the air.

It’s louder than before I levelled up, I think. But it just doesn’t feel as… satisfying.

It almost felt like when I was a kid, swinging around a stick. It made the sound, you could hit things with it, but it never felt like a weapon.

Maybe I should focus more on dexterity until I can afford a better weapon.

Looking down at myself, dried mud is clinging to my clothes, hair, almost everywhere.

I really need to change that bandage again. It would not be pleasant if the wound were to fester.

The thing has nearly solidified into a single chunk of mud and cloth, and I have to use a knife to cut it loose. The flesh underneath thankfully had no signs of strange colours or smells, and is starting to develop a scab.

But it won’t be safe until the scab had fully formed, so I take out yet another stretch of clean cloth and tie it around. I’m nearly out, so I’ll have to buy some more soon.

Changing into my newly “washed” set of clothes that is now dry, I fall into bed.

Maybe I should just take it easy for a few days, to let those crazy monsters calm down a bit.

Gerald: status

Spoiler: Ferdinand status (As of end of chapter)