After his panic attack had subsided, Rob took stock of his situation once more. He didn't remotely know where or when he was; all he had to his name was a sword, an empty waterskin, and the clothes on his back, and civilization was nowhere in sight. On the plus side, he had 5 Magic points and 50 MP, which meant:"Fireball!" Rob stuck out his hand and pushed out the latent energy hidden within his soul. Nothing happened. The chirping of the birds was beginning to sound suspiciously like laughter."Should start smaller," he mumbled. "What's the most basic of the basic magic I can think of? How about: Orb of Light!"No dice. Neither was Move Leaf, Move Earth, or Fuck You Why Won't This Work. Eventually, Rob was forced to accept defeat, unable to stomach the mounting secondhand embarrassment he was feeling toward himself."Probably need more than 5 Magic points to actually cast a spell. And a teacher to help me do more than flail about in the dark." He involuntarily shuddered at the remin

I'll away.He was awake—but his eyelids hadn't gotten the message yet. He pushed, and pushed, until at last they creaked open.And immediately shut them again as water splashed on top of his eyeballs.Water was splashing everywhere on him, actually. He was soaked to the bone and more than a little cold."It started raining?" Rob sighed. "Is this some kind of cosmic joke?"No one answered.Rob brought up his Character Sheet, which thankfully he didn't need to have his eyes open to look at.HP: 17 / 210Stamina: 18 / 90Status Effects: Bleeding (Minor)His eyes were glued to the screen. Two simple letters and two simple numbers decided whether he would live or die.He waited, every second lasting an eternity. Panic welled up within him when his HP ticked down, but it ticked back up shortly after, and then again after he waited a few minutes.For every 1 HP lost to bleeding, he regenerated 2.Approximately.Another brain poke reminded him that Do Not Go Gently was off cooldown, and could

The pop culture reference his brain had conjured—the product of a diseased mind raised on TV commercials—forced him to remember the one part of his Character Sheet he'd been studiously ignoring.The Active Skill Do Not Go Gently, which would undoubtedly come in handy the next time a wolf decided to munch on him, was a Skill that left him feeling ill as he considered the ramifications that its name implied."Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."It was a fairly well-known poem back on Earth, and had featured prominently in several popular pieces of media.And that was the problem—unlike everything else he'd encountered before being thrown into whatever this new world was, that Skill was very specifically a reference to Earth.Something like Tough Skin was generalized, but Do Not Go Gently was a dead giveaway that the system that governed his RPG mechanics was aware of Earth, alluding to it, and potentially an accomplice to whatever force had

Stab. Climb. Stab. Climb. He fell into a rhythm while simultaneously making sure he didn't get complacent. The cliffside could loosen in the wrong way at any moment, and he needed to be prepared for when that happened. At some point he gained a point in Strength, then a point in Endurance and a few Passive Skills from reaching the Endurance 10 milestone, including the first level in Climbing and something called Deep Breathing, and while all that probably helped he just did not have the mental capacity to care.Could have been twenty minutes. Could have been twenty years. He couldn't tell the difference, but however long it took, he made it. Cresting over the top of the cliff gave him the most thrillingly relief-filled moment of his entire life. He plodded along a good bit away from the dreaded edge, the entire upper half of his body aching like it was on fire, and checked to make sure he was safe from any ambushing rodents before collapsing into a pile of limbs and sweat.For your fa

Maybe I can let him bite me and stab it while it's busy munching. Same as the first wolf. Rob mulled over the idea. I'll call that Plan B. Don't know what Plan A is yet, but it's gotta be more appealing than B.Another scratchy howl, during which Wolfie coughed up clotted blood onto the forest floor. Seriously, what are these things Infected with? Is that the messed-up fantasy world version of rabies? Its HP must be ticking down right now and it doesn't even care. The thing is dying and the Frenzied status probably means it's lost all sense of reasoning.Well, if the wolf's ailment was going to make it reckless, he would use that. Rob pointed his sword out perpendicular to the ground and planted his feet. "Your move, Wolfie."It shrieked and pounced directly at him, a blurry, furry whirlwind of claws and fangs that Rob's eye could barely keep track of. Not that he needed to. Inertia did the heavy lifting; the wolf's lunge landing it straight on Rob's sword, sharpened steel piercing ef