I pulled up my screen again and saw that a new tab had been added. The icon was a plate with heaping food—“Meals.”
Why hadn’t the roasted item immediately gone into that tab? Why the revelation—because I’d had to do it myself?
And then I knew why. The roasted meat over the fire had been a hint. And a way to heal if I’d taken damage there. Then the pot was here, in the next obstacle, over a fire, silently nudging me to try doing it myself. Once I accomplished that task, I got the tab and a way to store more of the meals in case I needed it during a battle.
As if on cue, a new message popped up.
First meal bonus! You’ve combined fire, food, and a vague understanding of timing. No more waiting in the basement for Mother to come home and feed you. You have officially transcended above “feral raccoon.” Now, let’s see if you can make something more than burned tapioca.
Stand still.
I shook my head and sidestepped two paces. The stone chest fell right where I’d been standing and tumbled a smidgeon toward me.
“Why do you even keep trying?” I said dryly, lifting a foot and stomping on the chest.
It snapped open and glowed. I stuck my foot in. Toes worked as well as fingers to get the chest items into the inventory, where I could read what they were.
“The Hangry Grimoire,” I read, scanning the description. It was filled with recipes and the amount of health each offered, expressed in those globs. Some went up to ten globs! Somehow, I could increase the amount of health I had in this place. Maybe just eating more?
I took out a somewhat burned apple pellet, sighed, and shoved it into my mouth. There was no point in dainty bites and savoring the flavor in this place. Eat to get it done. I swallowed it down and watched my third glob fill.
After cooking another, with no choice over how long it danced around the pot, I ate that one as well. No more globs, or even portions of globs, appeared. I couldn’t exceed the current glob number. I probably had to do challenges or sacrifices or something for more of those things.
I wondered if I could do that with the stamina, too.
Thinking about that, and how I might improve my weapons, and when I’d have time to play that damned accordion, and how much farther I had to go to get where I was going, and how I’d find Kym, I finished making enough meals to fill that section of my inventory.
They were all singular items until I accidentally combined a grasshopper with an apple. Then it became [Locust à la Orchard], listed as three globs rather than two, totaling more than the sum of its parts. Hence the book of recipes. There was also a little boot with lines under the heel next to it, probably relevant to the “hop in my step” the grasshopper was supposed to give me. It would probably help me jump higher, which was cool.
I did not love that the pellet had a little grasshopper leg sticking out.
“Ah, come on,” I groused in disgust.
Half a day later, as evening neared, the distant sound of the polka took me out of my reverie. I’d seen a couple more Mr. Bow Ties ambling around, but they didn’t have weapons. I could now take them out with quick economy.
I slowed on the trail when I saw a glimmer out of the corner of my eye. An acorn.
I already had a million, and they didn’t seem to add much to meals. I ignored it.
The sound of the music didn’t grow in volume, the origin ahead of me.
My heart leapt. That had to be another person trapped in here!
I didn’t care that they were in danger, which would mean I was running directly at that danger—I wanted to see someone else. I wanted to share information and know I wasn’t alone in this place. I wanted to know that Kym could be found if I just kept looking.
I sprinted. My purple bar bled away. I glanced at the sides to make sure nothing planned to pop out at me, but really, once sprinting, nothing could generally keep up.
The purple bar neared depletion and I slowed to a walk, allowing it to refill.
The music grew in volume. Just up ahead.
I sprinted again, following the music off the path and into a small grove of trees. There I saw the issue…and cracked a smile.
A plant monster bumped into a trunk before stopping and looking upward. Its prey sat at the top, a guy in his twenties with messy brown hair and a bored expression. A sandal adorned the foot peeking over the treetop.
What must’ve been his sword lay five feet from the tree. A knife was somewhat under the hopping monster, and the handle of a bat peeked out from the other side of the tree trunk.
“Do you…uh…” I wrestled a smile as I pulled out my least effective bat. I didn’t want to wear down the durability of a good weapon on one of these lame plant monsters. “Need some help?”
The guy started in surprise, his head snapping my way. The plant monster didn’t seem to notice me.
“Oh, hey.” The guy straightened a little, and then suddenly looked sheepish. “Yeah…ran into a little weapons issue here. I was just taking a minute to figure out my next move.”
“Was the issue opening up your inventory and just chucking everything out?” I sprinted toward the trunk and double-whacked the plant monster with my bat. It hadn’t even realized I was in the area before it was sounding its butt trumpet.
It poofed out, and I kicked the floating prize, landing it into my inventory. I wiped the screen away without reading what it was. I was sure I had a bunch of it already.
“Uh…kinda.” He grinned, looking down on me. “I—”
“Wait.” I stopped him from climbing down. “Did you check the tree for eggs?”
“Yeah. Got ’em already.”
I grunted and got out of the way.
He jumped down. Once his feet hit the ground, his knees buckled and he skidded onto his face.
“Perfect,” he grumbled, shoving up to his knees. His face was red with embarrassment. “I wondered if that would happen. That’s why I didn’t jump down earlier. I’m sick of getting chomped on or battered with something. I am definitely sick of dying.”
“Of dying?” I bent to grab his knife for him. It disappeared into my inventory. “Oops.” I brought it back out and handed it over.
“Thanks.” He took it and walked over for his sword. “Yeah. We need more health. These NPCs are way tougher than they should be for our max HP. Far as I can tell, there’s been nothing to increase it, though.”
“Okay.” I held out a finger as he went around to get his bat. “First things first. HP is…heart, then? Heart power?”
He stopped and zipped his gaze around me, noticing my pin and sandals and the sword at my back. “Hit points. Sometimes health points. It’s essentially a numerical value that represents your character’s health. Our health, I mean. In here.”
I threw up my hands, showing him a big smile. “I think I had that right when I thought of it earlier. Or yesterday. Or eight days ago. Honestly, I have no idea. The days are incredibly short here.”
He froze, his eyes slightly dazed. One corner of his mouth ticked up, as though he wasn’t quite in charge of his facial movements. He was probably reading something on his screen.
Just in case he was freezing in the face of an enemy, I glanced behind me. Nothing was there. Checking the screen, then.
“Right, yup.” He nodded and looked around the clearing.
“NPCs? I’ve heard that before.”
“Non-player character. A system-generated character, basically.”
“Right, right. I think I saw that in a movie once or twice.”
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His brown eyes flicked to me and away again. “Not a gamer, then?”
“What gave it away, my cluelessness?” I joked.
“Not too clueless.” He pointed to the pin and the sandals. “You got those things.”
“What choice did I have?” I motioned toward the path. “Should we get walking? I have no idea where we’re supposed to be going, but there aren’t many paths around. I figure we are probably meant to follow it.”
“Oh. Ah…” His face turned red again. “Yeah. Yep. Sure.”
I would’ve asked if I was cramping his style and whether all the embarrassed shuffling was because he couldn’t find a nice way to tell me to buzz off, but he’d been treed by a plant monster. He could do with my help.
“What do you mean, you’re tired of dying?” I asked as we reached the path.
“I almost gave up on the battle with the three monster NPCs. I must’ve died three times! Finally, I ran around eating apples between hits until I could deliver all my damage.”
“Wait.” I held out my hand.
He stopped walking.
“No…wait, like…hang on a minute—figure of speech.”
“Oh.” He jerked to a start, his cheeks coloring again. He was so pale, his skin showed every flush.
“We can die and come back to life in here?”
He gawked at me. “You haven’t died? Or, sorry, fainted. It’s really just a faint before you respawn. It feels like that, at any rate.”
I wiped my hand across my forehead. “I’m assuming respawn is coming back to life? No, I haven’t died. Or fainted. I’ve been walking around collecting crickets and butterflies, stalling, because I didn’t know we’d come back from the dead. How much time have I wasted? Kym is probably sitting somewhere, wondering what the hell is taking so long. Actually, she probably thinks I’m walking around in circles. That’s what she probably thinks.”
“Kym? Wait, so how did you get through the battle with the three monsters? Or did you get the sandals from a different loot drop?”
“Loot. Like treasure.” I grinned at him. “Cute. No, I got it with the three monsters.”
I described how I hid at first and then launched into the clearing with my bat blazing.
“Huh.” He chewed his lip as we walked. “I tried all that. I didn’t have the glass, though. I had to crack the eggs into my mouth. I could only manage two.”
“You need to collect twenty for the glass.”
He nodded, falling silent for a moment.
“Anyway.” I held out my hand. “Quinn.”
He shook it, barely looking at me. “Tyler.”
“Hey, Tyler.” He was a bit taller than me, lean, almost lanky, and had also chosen his sports bra for his pin placement. “So…how did you come to be stuck in a tree without any weapons?”
“Oh.” He scratched the back of his head. “I climbed the tree to look for eggs and the monster climbed out of the ground. I bent down to whack it but lost my balance and accidentally let go of my sword at the wrong moment. I grabbed the bat, but I hadn’t situated myself properly, so the bat hit the branch and I lost my grip. I couldn’t reach with the knife, so I tried throwing it at the thing to see if maybe that would work. It didn’t.”
“And you didn’t jump because you were afraid of landing on your face and getting chomped.”
“That was the first time I tried jumping down. I definitely would’ve gotten chomped. It hurts.” He rubbed his leg in remembered pain.
“You don’t have much dried blood on you, though.”
He spread his arms to look down at himself. “Once you respawn, you start fresh. I had some on my leg, but I picked it all off while sitting in the tree, anticipating my doom.”
I laughed. “Gotcha. Well, I haven’t gotten chomped, but I’ve gotten whacked. Yes, it hurts. A lot.” I turned to show him my side.
“I know,” he grumbled. “What sucks is, I figured I’d be good at all this, you know?” He gestured around us. “I thought I’d be into getting sucked up into an open-format, alternate world like this. Dream come true, right?”
I grimaced. He had odd dreams.
“The place is somewhat rudimentary, but it probably has to be, right, with so many beginners?” He gestured at me now. “Swing a weapon, experiment a bit. The system’s clearly teaching progression mechanics. Break stuff, see what drops—classic starter zone.” He hunched a bit, obviously frustrated. “I figured we could expand on skills they started us with, not start us with our own skills and only progress the weapons.”
I replayed what he’d said, trying to figure out ass from end. “Right, so progression mechanics is essentially learning the basics and building on it, right?”
He glanced at me. “Sorry, yeah. Forgot you—”
I held up a hand. “It’s fine. This is like a riddle.” I veered and grabbed a stick from the ground before shoving it into my inventory. “Weapons progression means we get better and better weapons with harder and harder obstacles?”
“Y-es,” he drew out slowly, which probably meant I was somewhat right.
Good enough. “Right. And you don’t know how to swing a bat, so you’re annoyed because that puts you at a disadvantage from Babe Ruth.”
“I know how to swing a bat. Anyone can swing a bat. But yeah, bro, those who have experience at it will naturally be better. Do you know how to properly swing a bat?” he challenged.
“Yes. I have done a lot of bat swinging. Two-handed, one-handed, while chasing someone faster than myself, while someone is rolling around on the ground trying to kick me—I have a lot of experience hitting things with bats. Not just balls, either. Fruit, rocks, the bottom of a swing, cans, my bike that someone else won’t give back, all sorts of things. My specialty is people. I am very good at hitting the sweet spot with a Wiffle Ball bat, let me tell you. Or a stick. Or a broom. Basically, if it is something I can swing at someone else, I have probably swung it. And also, been hit with it.”
His eyes were wide and his mouth a thin line. He stared at me silently for a long beat. “And that explains why you didn’t die.”
I snorted. “Maybe so.”
He took a deep breath. “I didn’t spend my days hitting people with things. I’m an only child and my friends did a lot of gaming. I can swing a bat or throw a football like a champ on a screen, but I didn’t have a lot of practice outside.”
“Gotcha. We weren’t allowed to stay in the house. We broke too much stuff. Well…my brothers did. I only broke stuff in self-defense.”
“By hitting your brothers with it?”
“You’re getting the picture. Yep. Whenever possible. I have good aim and great anticipation skills. I can tell when someone is about to lose their temper and thump me.”
A crease had worked between his brows. “That’s probably a good thing in here.”
“Yeah. And now I can also tell when a butterfly is about to randomly dart at my face. Add that one to the list.”
“O-kay,” he said warily.
I had a feeling he’d take off running when my back was turned.
“But whatever, it’s fine.” I waved his worries away. “We’ve got your brains, and my very practiced expertise at hitting moving things with blunt objects.”
He broke down laughing and ran his fingers through his hair. “True.”
We walked for a bit in silence, coming to an unspoken agreement that I would collect glittering items on my side, and he’d collect those on his. We didn’t veer far, though, sticking to the path and walking at a brisk pace. I wasn’t sure if he was in a hurry to get somewhere, but I really wanted to find Kym.
“Did you see anyone walk by your tree?” I asked.
He picked up an acorn. “Yeah. A bunch of people, actually. A lot of them just kinda peered into the grove to see what was going on. Once they figured it out, they took off.”
“No one offered to help?”
“Not one. An older woman waved with a sad smile. Clearly thought I’d bite it and she was wishing me well.”
Chuckles bubbled up. “Shut up.”
He laughed. “I mean, it’s a bushling. It’s a nothing, level-one NPC—”
“You know the name of it? How?”
He gave me a funny look. “It’s in the info tab. You select the item—loot, in this case—and it tells you the creature it came from and…” He trailed away. “I can see you don’t care.”
“No! It’s just that I hadn’t noticed it. But I don’t pay attention to a lot of the names and stuff.” I shrugged with one shoulder, relenting. “Because no, I don’t care.”
He nodded, cracking a smile. “Anyway, it’s a little absurd to get stuck in a tree because of a bushling, but I didn’t feel like being chomped.”
“How long were you sitting in that tree?”
“Not as long as it seems, I swear.” He crossed his freckled arms. “I was staging a one-man rebellion against the system.”
I laughed and brushed a strand of hair out of my face. “It’s crazy, though. Your weapons were littered all over the place. The least someone could’ve done was kill the thing real quick and then wave goodbye with a sad smile.”
“You took that thing out lickety-split.”
“Wait.” I stopped with my hand out.
He walked a few paces before realizing I’d been left behind. “We’re going to have to work on your communication over the word ‘wait.’”
I laughed and started forward again. “Did you just say lickety-split?” His cheeks infused with red, and I nodded knowingly. “You did. You just said lickety-split. My granddad said the word lickety-split.”
“You’re overusing that word. You’re going to wipe the cool off it.”
“A couple generations have already wiped the cool off it.”
“It’s vintage.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
He rolled his eyes with a goofy smile.
I thought about what he’d said as I sprinted through the trees, grabbing a couple of items before meeting him back on the path. My purple started to climb back to its zenith.
“I still can’t believe— What?” I said, catching his funny look.
“Do you just randomly sprint everywhere, or were you that desperate to get back and ask me a question?”
“Oh. I randomly sprint when I can. You know about the purple bar, I’m assuming.”
“Your stamina, yes.”
“Right, well, you have that much time to hurry things up. So, I hurry things up. Anyway, I still cannot believe people didn’t help you. That is blowing my mind.”
“A lot of them were clean. Not like you, with dried blood on your side. They probably didn’t want to get chomped, either.”
Ah. That made a lot more sense. I nodded in agreement. “That means quite a few people didn’t do so great in here, huh?”
“Seems like it.”
“They must’ve gotten through the various battles, though.”
“Or run through or around them.” He paused. “You didn’t know you could, did you?” he said in a dry voice. “You saw a monster in your way and said, ‘Whelp, nothing else for it, I guess I’d better kick some ass.’”
I held out my hands. “The first path ended at a monster. I figured I was supposed to kill the monster.”
“Never did you think to run through the camp?”
I furrowed my brow. “I did, kinda. I contemplated it for a moment. But sometimes I couldn’t run around, and I needed the weapons…” I shrugged. “This place hinted that I needed to kill the monsters, so I killed the monsters.”
“You probably loved dodgeball, didn’t you?”
“Not when I played with my brothers, I didn’t.”
Movement caught my eye, and I pointed, seeing a familiar polka-dot shirt announcing a Mr. Bow Tie.
Tyler sighed. “I’d really rather not get scratched again. I’m tired of getting hurt.”
“Good lord, Tyler, did no one ever pick on you?”
“Bullying at school wasn’t allowed.”
I gawped at him. “We went to much different schools. Right, okay. C’mon, I’ll teach you how to knock one of these out. It’s real easy once you get the hang of it.”
For me it was, yes. For him, not so much.
I had him crouch-walk closer with me, which he did perfectly, wait behind a bush, which the monster didn’t seem to notice shaking because Tyler was still crouched, and then…it all went tits up.
Tyler yelled before he launched forward, screamed when the monster turned on him, whacked when he was too far away, and froze when the monster bore down.
“Run, Tyler!”
I barreled in, zero fear now that I knew I couldn’t die. It took all the pressure out of things. Free rein for senseless violence!
“I gotcha!” I hacked at its limb and was let down when the extremity didn’t fall off. I pivoted, stepped, and tried to kick it in the face for no reason other than I’d wondered if I could.
I couldn’t.
My foot connected with its chest. My sandal flew off. One of its claws scraped my knee before its body puffed out with the usual noise of vibrating cheeks.
I regained my balance and checked out the scrape on my knee.
“Merely a flesh wound,” I said to no one in particular, unable to help the big smile. That was fun. I felt like a ninja or a gladiator.
Tyler’s face had turned a worrying shade of white, and I patted him on the shoulder. “You okay?” I asked.
He flinched. “What sort of brothers did you have?”
I’d made him nervous. What else was new?
“Big, dumb ones. I’m not kidding. They have good jobs now that they’ve calmed down and let their brains do the heavy lifting, but when we were kids, their brains were playing hide-’n’-seek and they never bothered to look.” I kicked the loot to claim it and jerked my head back to the path. “Want to do some sprint-walk-sprints? You could probably use the practice.”
Is Tyler going to be a help or a hindrance?
