I was ready to start my new life. I was here, this was real. I accepted my lot. My new life would start when I started my journey to the city Arigulius mentioned.

  I stepped out of the cave and looked toward the rising sun. Miles and miles of forest with nary a break. I will admit, it appeared to be a daunting task making my way through the forest to a town/city I couldn’t see and didn’t know how far away it was. Still 6 weeks by myself was way more than enough for me to go a little stir crazy. With that depressing thought, I took my first step on my journey and new life, heading into the forest.

  For the first hour I had no problem walking through the forest. The underbrush wasn’t too bad, and the trees weren’t so dense that I couldn’t see the sun overhead, so moving in the right direction was easy. However, the deeper I moved into the forest, the denser the underbrush became and the trees foliage began to block out the sun at times. I continued walking through the brush and forest for hours. Finally, I ran across a path that appeared to be a narrow trail that tended to lead in the right direction, so I started following it. The trail meandered to the left and right, but overall, it led in the correct direction and it was a hell of a lot easier to walk than the underbrush. As I turned a corner, I came face to face with what looked like a wild boar. I was caught by surprise. Since I couldn’t recognize a game trail, coming across a wild boar surprised the crap out of me. I thought it was a boar, I mean, it had tusks. It looked vaguely like a boar. At least those I saw on the Animal Channel, but its eyes were literally glowing and it looked to be missing its skin. I could see its muscle and the veins running across its body. I was both revolted and fascinated by the thing. The whole thing was covered by a transparent mucus, therefore I named it ‘slime boar’. I had a primeval reaction deep down. I knew I had to kill it. As it looked at me, I knew it felt the same.

  I used Identification on it.

  Monster – Mucus Boar

  Level 5

  HP 25

  Description: Boar covered in slime. If slime gets on skin, it causes extreme numbness to contacted area.

  Now, I would like to tell you it was an epic battle, where the tricky slime boar would come at me with it tusks, feint and then slash, retreat, then try to run me over, and I would expertly block its slash and counterattack, until finally, I heroically killed it. But the truth quite different. The slime boar simply put its head down and charged, churning up dirt clods. Weirdly, the charge seemed to be moving in slow motion. As it got close, I was able to easily moved out of the way. The boar continued its charge unchangingly straight. Right into a tree. The tree shuddered from the impact, which surprised me because, again, the slime boar appeared to have been moving very slow. Apparently, the slime boar hit the tree hard enough to give itself a concussion. Again, weird and almost unbelievable, but I was right there and saw it happen. I couldn’t afford to not take this seriously. So, while it was dazed, I thrust my spear deep into its chest. It squealed and slowly thrashed about, but I kept it pinned down using my spear. I kept pushing my spear deeper into it until the slime boar stopped moving. Then I felt something move into my body. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, but it was definitely something I never experienced before. I instinctively knew it was the slime boar’s essence. The slime boar was dead. Then I received a system notification:

  You have slayed a Slime Boar. You have received 0 experience points. Since this is you first monster kill, you have received an extra 0 experience points.

  Do you wish to loot?

  Arigulius said I would not receive any experience until my soul recovered, and damn he was right. It was going to be a long 5 years, I thought to myself.

  I answered yes to the loot question.

  Two tusks appeared at my feet. I picked them up and used Identification on them.

  Tusk – Mucus Boar. Can be used to make weapons and in alchemy recipes.

  They seemed to be worth keeping, so I tossed them into my storage ring. I took another look at the slime boar aka Mucus Boar, and it started turning into smoke. Faster and faster, until I had to move away because I didn’t want to breath the smoke in. Finally, the slime boar was gone and the smoke drifted away. As I watched the last of the smoke dissipate, I considered that I got really lucky because my first monster encounter was so easy. I was a level 1 and took out a level 5 easily, which in every RPG I ever played was almost impossible. I put it down to the slime boar being stupid and knocking itself out.

  I pushed the notification away, and it was immediately replaced two more.

  Your spear skill has increased to 4.

  You have learned the skill Slow Time, level 1.

  I had no idea what Slow Time was. So, I brought up my skill status and expanded Slow Time.

  Slow Time – In times of stress, this skill speeds up your perception of time, making everything else appear to move slowly. Time differential varies depending on skill level. This skill is both passive and active. 0

  Wow, so that’s why that slime boar appeared to be moving so slow. But still not a good reason for the slime boar to have knocked itself out. Still, Slow Time is a good skill to have, if it works for every battle.

  I continued walking along the trail for a few hours, until it reached a small stream. It was around mid-day according to the sun, and I decided to take a break for lunch. I retrieved the unending food bowl from my storage ring and began to eat. The food tasted better in the fresh air outside of the cave with the sun shining high in the sky, but not by much. The trees provided plenty of shade and I sat down and leaned against one. I listened to the sound of birds singing. It seemed a very peaceful spot near the stream. I decided to let my food settle before moving on. I listened to the birds and enjoyed the tranquility of the place for another 15 minutes. This may be a nice world after all.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Now, I had to make a choice. Do I continue on through the forest in the direction I think I need to go, or do I follow the stream, which was moving in a south easterly direction (assuming the sun rose in the east and set in the west). The stream seemed to be easier to travel and would hopefully merge into a river, then I could follow the river. However, Arigulius did not mention a river in his letter. After considering both options, I settled on continuing on into the forest.

  Once again, I moved through the forest. This time without a trail to follow. Travelling was not too difficult, even though it was slower than the trail. I was quite satisfied with my pace. After a few hours, I heard a noise that sounded like an animal roar. From my avid TV watching days, I would say it sounded more cat like than bear like, but couldn’t swear on it and didn’t like it either way. I stood unmoving, hoping to hear the roar. A minute or two later, I hear it again. It seemed to be coming from my left, so I decided to walk away from it slowly. I was sure I was making all sorts of a racket because being stealthy in the woods is not my forte. I continued to walk away from the roar for about 15 minutes before I was confident that I was far enough to start moving east again.

  As time went by, I became more and more attuned to the forest. I began to notice the difference in the trees, the bushes, and even the bird songs. Walking became more and more comfortable and then I received a System notification.

  You have learned the skill Explorer, level 1.

  Explorer allow you to move easier through rough terrain, provides an innate sense of direction and a mini-map for your System User Interface.

  System UI. What was that? Arigulius never mentioned that. Would that be like a heads up display similar to the RPGs. I stopped and started to think of commands that might bring up the System UI. System UI, User Interface, Heads Up Display. None of them worked. I reread the message and then thought System User Interface. Nothing. The I tried ‘System User Interface on’. Boom, the SUI (as I refer to it) blossomed into view. It showed a lot of information, including a small circular map in the upper right hand of the view. There were three bars of different colors running along the bottom. Green, Blue, and Yellow. There was also a compass heading along the top. Finally, there was an outline of a body on the left. When I concentrated on it, it turned into a screen showing everything I had equipped. I dismissed the screen and returned to the SUI. The center was clear and I could see through it. Nothing really blocked my view, but it did take a few minutes to get used to it being there. I started walking again and used the compass to ensure I was headed east, because it turned out that the sun did rise in the east. Seemed a little coincidental.

  While I walked, I paid attention to the map and tried to determine the distance it covered. It seemed to cover about 100 feet from the center. It did not show a lot of detail, because there was nothing but trees for the moment. Every now and then a white dot would show up on the map from one direction or another and then move off outside the map’s perimeter. I assumed this would be larger animals that were neither friendly nor enemies. Dangerous, probably, but not actively looking to hurt me.

  One time during the day’s walk, a red dot appeared on the northern most part of the map. I immediately froze. The red dot moved very slowly for a few seconds, then stopped. Is it tracking me, I wondered. Then after another minute or so, it moved back north and off the map. I took a quiet breath to relax and started moving slowly until I was a good 500 feet further along.

  My motto is that ‘I don’t seek violence, but I don’t run from it either’. This means that I was not looking to get into a fight with monsters or wild animals, but would defend myself without hesitation. It is something from my Marine days.

  The sun was lower in the western sky and I started to think about where I would be spending the night. I started to look around for a place I could sleep, but I couldn’t find anything. So, I decided to sleep in a tree. I would find a big wide tree with solid branches and use it for my night time camp. However, before that I decided to eat. I was very hungry after walking all day. I ate from the unending bowl of tasteless food, drank from my canteen and went in search of the perfect tree. Fifteen minutes and nothing. I started to get worried about finding a tree. Perfection be damned, now I just want something I wouldn’t break. Ten minutes more and I found a tree whose branches would support me and yet were high enough off the ground that I thought it would be hard for any animal to easily reach me. I had noticed that there was rope in my Storage ring and used it to secure my body against the trunk to prevent me from falling while sleeping. It was uncomfortable as hell, but better than sleeping on the ground. As night set in, the birds stopped singing, and the forest became very, very dark. The silence was all around and was quite eerie.

  Then the night time noises began. Creaks and groans from the trees as they swayed in the slight wind. Rushing noises from animal out and about, and the occasional noise of something crashing into the bushes. Insect chirps and buzzing of their wings. Needless to say, it took a long time for me to finally get to sleep. Restful it wasn’t.

  I awoke with the predawn lightening of the sky. I was ready to dismount from my tree after a restless night. After I dismounted, I stretched for a few minutes. Young body or not, sleeping in a tree overnight requires working out the kinks in the morning. I ate from the unending tasteless food bowl. I patted the tree and said thanks, before I moved off to the east. I walked until it was time to eat. Stopping only if a red dot appeared on my minimap. Around lunchtime, I rested for about a half hour while eating, then started walking again. I walked until the light began to fade, then found a tree to rest in for the night.