Jake kept his promise of being on the lookout for the rest of the night. It turned out to only be a couple of uneventful hours until the artificial sun rose once more. Looking on as the scrambling group got up and gathered their things, he seriously doubted they had gotten any sleep at all.Their current campsite was compromised, and they had no clue if more enemies would come, so they needed to find somewhere new. Their entire initial plan of finding water and food and all the usual survival crap turned out to be a damn waste of time. While they still needed food and water, they needed levels far more, so sitting in one spot was just stupid.They got packed up, and Jake was surprised to see even Joanna up and about with a makeshift wooden leg. It was essentially just a big stick of wood bound to her thigh and what was left of her leg. It looked uncomfortable and certainly not fit for any big movements, but he saw determination and grit to keep going on her face. Jake felt respect for

How troublesome, Nicholas thought as he pursued the archer on Richard's orders.Nicholas, an archer himself, was silently running through the forest with six of his companions. Four archers and three light warriors made up the hunting party. In his opinion, it was total overkill to send seven men for a single archer from some corporate office.Seriously, what the fuck was up with that guy? Spewing off some cliché bullshit to look like a badass? He’d had to hold himself back from cringing during the entire thing, and had barely managed to not just shoot him in the back as he walked off.Sadly, Richard didn’t want to spoil the relationship with their new healer. While the guy did do some weird stuff, it was nothing to make Nicholas wary of him. It was totally unnecessary to send so many, but Richard was nothing if not thorough.Ultimately, he did, of course, understand why Richard sent people after him. Either he was a real and serious threat, or he was a lunatic, in which case he woul

As Jake was relaxing, he reflected on how weird stamina was. He was not tired per se, as he did not feel like taking a nap, and his muscles did not ache or anything like that. He had not felt even a second of exhaustion during the fight itself, and yet the second the battle was done, he’d felt drained.It was likely just mental exhaustion over physical exhaustion, now that he was thinking about it. There was no stat for that. Or does Willpower help with that? Naturally, he didn’t know, so he could only guess, but since he hadn't really felt less mentally taxed even with the stat increases, he felt like it didn’t.It did kind of make sense that it was tiring to focus on interpreting the feelings from his Sphere of Perception all the time while also being under constant pressure. At the moment, it was still active, vaguely making him aware of everything within eight meters or so, but he was not really directly using it. He couldn’t really put it into words, but he guessed one would say

ake considered taking a quick trip to clean off all the blood but decided against it. Chances were, he was going to get dirty again from all the fighting one way or another. He instead picked up his bow, which he had dropped during the fight with the horde of badgers.He started looking for more prey to hunt. While walking, he also conjured more arrows in order to fill his quiver. He had no idea what he would do if he did not have this magical quiver. He imagined having to make every single arrow manually and shivered at the thought.While walking, he got an idea that could perhaps help alleviate his issues locating prey. To find something to hunt and get a good view of his surroundings, he found the biggest tree he could. The thing easily exceeded eighty meters and towered over the nearby trees.The climb itself was surprisingly easy. The stats had made Jake’s grip strength strong enough to grab the small imperfections in the rough bark and easily climb. It took him a couple of minut

Challenge Dungeon Entered!Objective: Survive to the end of the dungeon while accomplishing all challenges presented along the way. Failure to complete challenges may result in death.Jake felt his vision shift as he blacked out for a brief moment. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself standing in a giant hall. Looking around him, he saw only shattered stones and broken pillars littering the ground, all of it the same monotone gray color. The only slightly different thing was the braziers hanging from the ceiling, emitting a faint blue light.To his horror, the braziers emitted light not through magic or fire, but by being stuffed with glowing blue mushrooms, the same kind as in the cave. It seemed like even in deadly Challenge Dungeons, one could not escape the power of fungi.He also noticed that his bow, daggers, and quiver were all mysteriously gone, and checking his satchel, so were all his potions. He really hoped the system would give those back…Shifting his attenti