My name is Aaron Shepherd.
The Book said I died. The Book says I must build if I am to survive.
I'd think I'd remember dying. I can remember what felt like a few days ago. How do you remember when something happened, when you're not sure what happened between then and now? It feels like I'm missing a few days. Weird, huh?
All I know is that I've been here maybe an hour. Well, since I woke up. Wearing a cotton long-sleeved shirt, cotton pants, and some kind of leather boots.
The Book says i must build if I am to be free.
How dramatic can a book get. I'm sitting in the woods, with a book giving me instructions.
This book is just an ordinary looking book. Fancy looking, though.
Leather-bound hard cover. No writing on the front, back, or spine.
It even tells me about myself. There's nothing about having a mental breakdown, though.
That would have explained a lot.
Right here on the front page
> Aaron Shepherd <
Class 1 Builder
Age 21
H/P 75
M/P 150
Str 08
End 07
Con 06
Dex 06
Int 09
Combat rating 00%
Identify Skill 00%
Gathering Skill 00%
Page 2 has a Questfor me. Nice to have something to do
> Builder Quest Available <
> Identify Items <
> Gather Items <
> Build A Fire <
Clear An Area 1 Metre In Diameter
Gather 15 Stone
Gather 10 Dry Wood
Gather Dry Moss
Gather 1 Pyrite
How am i gonna find this stuff.
Identify? Like study it?
I walk over to a tree and pick up a stick from the ground, and I just stare at it.
I get a little white name tag pop-up, like in a VR game. Just floating in my vision.
Stick - Wet.
Well, that was easy. I drop the wet stick and start picking up other sticks.
One in ten sticks are dry. I figure it might be best to leave the wet sticks in one area to save me re-identifying ones I've done already. Wet stick? Throw it over there. Maybe they'll dry out eventually
So now I've got 10 dry sticks.
I drop them down where I plan to have the cleared area.
Stones next. At least wet or dry won't make a difference. I wander the area, picking up a few stones as I find them and dropping them next to the dry wood.
15 stones later, I start clearing an area. Not really the hardest of tasks, I just use a piece of my dry wood to sweep away leaves and tree twigs to the side till I hit dirt. I actually made a much bigger area than 1 metre. It's more like 3 metre diameter cleared space.
So now what? Dry Moss. Which is where exactly?
The North side of trees? Hell if I know. Just start looking Shepherd.
So I start looking. Turned out, I just didn't know what I was looking for.
It was EVERYWHERE! Green moss, brown moss, dry, wet.
What I thought was part of the trees bark turned out to be what I needed. Now I had plenty.
Pyrite. Fools gold. I was looking for a glittery stone.
That's the one that took all my time. I was kicking over logs, clearing brush. I looked up briefly before feeling stupid.
I searched for hours, in an ever greater circle away from my campsite. It was down by a river where I found it. Maybe it had washed there from upstream. Who knows, but I had it. It's time to get the sparks flying.
I spent a while just getting the strike angle right between the stone and Pyrite. I had to hit it with a sliding g blow to get a spark more often than not.
I laid out the stones in a circle, using all the stones I gathered for the Quest. Making a pile of Moss was easy enough. I broke up some extra dry sticks to use as kindling on top of the Moss.
Then I began lighting it. I got plenty of sparks. I had trouble getting air to it before it fizzled out, leaving a wisp of smoke and disappointment.
Must have taken 30 minutes to get thst damn fire going. I was more than a bit annoyed about having to build a fire that I really didn't need at the moment. But I got it done, a small fire that wouldn't eat up my wood stores too fast.
> Quest Complete <
+5 Health
+1 Endurance
+1 Constitution
Identify increased
Gather increased.
Now, the book said I had 8 for endurance and 7 for Constitution. And 80 for health.
All my stats looked really low, but I'm only a level 1 Builder. Or Class 1 to be more accurate.
My Identify and Gather skills were at 10% now. So what next?
Page 2 of the good Book shall provide, of course.
The former Quest had vanished. A new Quest was there now.
> Builder Quest Available <
Craft A Spear.
Gather Straight Green Stick.
Fire Harden A Point.
Hunt An Animal.
Oh, just all that. I do that all the time, back in the city.
Sighing, I banked the fire and went looking.
I found some flint first. Only because the node looked different, so I decided to identify it. Blades could be made from flint. And spearheads I've heard.
The Quest didn't ask for this, but I figured that using the identify skill as often as possible would boost it up. I wondered what the next level would be like?
I ended up climbing a tree to get to a few branches a couple of feet outside my reach. Two were just over an inch thick, and the last was about 2 inches. All were shockingly straight for natural tree branches. But I wasn't in a position to consider this world as natural yet.
After I broke them from the tree, I carried them back to my campsite.
My Gather and identify skill had gone all the way up to a whole 12%. Identify clearly only went up when used on new objects.
I gathered more wood for the fire, not wanting to constantly be going back and forth through the forest for more.
When I was happy with the pile I had, I started on the spear point by charring it in the fire, then rubbing a point onto it with a stone. If I had any skill at Flint Napping, I would have used that instead. But I didn't, so I didn't.
30 minutes later, the spear changed appearance in my hands. I became....better. not in any fantastic way. It just felt lighter and more solid. Maybe it was a bit straighter, though that was hard to tell. It wasn't a green stick anymore, my Identify now called it a Light Spear.
The Book had updated my stats as well
> Aaron Shepherd <
Class 1 Builder
Age 21
H/P 80
M/P 150
Str 08
End 08
Con 07
Dex 07
Int 09
Combat rating 00%
Identify Skill 13%
Gathering Skill 12%
Crafting Skill 05%
I'm not sure why my Dexterity went up. Maybe the tree climb for the sticks? I didn't expect to get boosts like that often, though. Diminishing Returns seemed to be the rule of the Book. Get a boost for doing something new, then probable every 2nd or 3rd time next, and so on from there.
No boost to my stats for making the spear, just to my Crafting Skill. I figured any reward would be for completing the Quest only.
I chose to put off the hunt in favour of working on what I hoped would become a stronger version of the Light Spear. So I began again the process of charring the end of the 2-inch branch. Using the same stone to grind a point on to it. This took quite a bit longer, whether it being a thick branch I don't know.
But the end result was another success. The Change to the stick happened after what felt like around the 1 hour mark. The weight thus time didn't change, but the formerly green stick was now a pointed dry wood Heavy Spear, or so much identify informed me.
I stood up and made a few practice thrusts and swings with it. It had a good weight to be used as a spear or as a staff.
And I got another 5 percent to my Crafting Skill.
Happy with the result, I banked the fire once again to keep it burning, I picked up the Light Spear and headed out to find something to kill.
I could hear plenty of birds and insect noise, just like a regular forest. Somehow, I kind of expected an ominously quiet forest, the only sound coming from rare individual animals. Like in a cartoon. Or anime.
Oh fuck me! That's what's happened! I knew all this seemed weirdly familiar! Transported to a whole new world to save a kingdom or some shit. God damn it! Or is it Gods now, who knows. I'm bound to be challenged to my limits sooner or later. Probably to save someone's life.
OK chill out Shepherd! This is good information to have figured out. And you can bet that in this world Information is Life.
So best get training in anyway you can think of. The first thing being Hunting.
That's how I ended up going my version of Stealth Mode.
I wasn't sure how much difference it made to my hunt. But I did find a pheasant. It wandered out from under some bushes, heading away from me. I paused to quietly put my Heavy Spear down, raised my Light Spear and cast it, as best as I thought I could.
I was more than a little shocked at the flat trajectory the spear travelled to the pheasant.
It struck the bird at the base of its neck, where it met its body. The bird tumbled over dead. And that was that.
I walked to the kill, wondering how long it would take to pluck a pheasant. But as I reached to pull the spear out, the bird vanished. In its place was a package loosely wrapped in paper. Picking it up and unwrapping it, I found a large bird breast of meat, boneless by the looks, and some kind of string.
Identify, oh how helpful you are, said I had a Large Pheasant Breast and Intestinal String.
I had heard of Catgut string before, but not from a bird. Of course, magically being produced fully cured and ready for use wasn't something I'd heard of either, to be honest.
I took it all of course, and continued to hunt. My Light Spear was no worse for wear, possible the point slightly dulled. A few minutes light grinding on a random stone took care of that.
My next target about 30 minutes later proved to be a rabbit. My Light Spear catching it in the side of its chest just above its front legs.
The loot from this animal made even less sense than the Catgut string from a bird. It was a large piece of rabbit meat.....and a bag. A leather satchel with a shoulder strap, to be more precise.
A closure flap had a piece of leather string to keep it closed, it was empty of course. Briefly empty, as it went over my shoulder and had my paper wrapped meat quickly put inside.
This world was soo damn weird, but it was what it was. And my continuing to hunt after my quest was likely complete had given me a reward I dearly needed. The Sun, past being overhead let me guess at the time being around early afternoon. I must have shown up in this world early morning.
I decided to see if I could find another animal before I headed back to camp. This time, I found another pheasant, after another half hour of stalking.
I'm sure any normal hunter wouldn't have the same 3 for 3 success rate. Maybe an advanced spear hunter, which I wasn't. But my spear landed true once again. Also, once again, I got meat and string from it, another 6 foot coil.
Time to head back, I think.