2025-12-22 01:55:41Then the breeze picked up and changed direction, blowing the air around him towards the wolf.
It sniffed once before snapping its head in his direction, red glowing eyes locking onto his. The creature let out a strangled howl that shook the leaves and made his blood run cold. An instant later, it lunged. Rob moved by primal instinct. He swerved around a tree, barely avoiding the blender of fangs and claws that sailed past him, hands fumbling for the hilt of his sword. Once, twice, then three times it took before his trembling fingers managed to grasp the blade and pull it free, and even then he almost dropped it when the beast let out another horrifying wail of pain and yearning. Can't go back into the woods, he thought, mind racing a mile a minute. Wolf is there. Terrain too uneven. Disadvantage. Best bet is base camp. Will never outrun it. Have to figh— The creature bounded around the tree in huge leaps, its warped bones creaking audibly. It stared him down, creeping forward for only a moment before jumping at him, slobbering jaws opened wide and hungry. Rob didn't think. He didn't even aim. His body moved the sword, and it went where it went. The sword carved through the wolf's midsection with barely a hint of resistance. Skin, flesh, and even bone parted casually in the face of the weapon which was now Rob's second-best friend. It damn near bisected the beast. None of this did anything to halt the wolf's forward momentum or prevent it from clamping down its jaws on Rob's arm and tearing out a massive chunk of flesh before collapsing to the ground. Rob's screeches of pain drowned out the wolf's piteous whimpers. He stared in abject shock at his arm, which was now much less of an arm—missing flesh, muscle exposed, and bone visible. Blood was pouring out like a faucet. He grasped it with his other hand and put pressure on the wound, manic laughter spilling out of his mouth, but his efforts were as effective as if he'd tried to plug up that very same faucet with a thimble. Blood ran free, because his whole hand could only cover half the wound, because most of his forearm was fucking gone and— An instinct poked at his brain. He was barely able to comprehend it considering what had just happened, but enough of his mind remained cognizant enough to follow its advice and open up his Character Sheet. HP: 65 / 110 Stamina: 68 / 90 MP: 50 / 50 Status Effects: Bleeding (Severe) He didn't have time to be exasperated at the Status Effect telling him what he already knew. With every half-second that passed, his HP ticked down a little bit more, creeping closer and closer towards 0. Tick. Minus 1 HP. Tick. Minus 2 HP. I'm bleeding out. That simple statement of fact snapped him out of his shock. Rob pulled his tunic off as quickly as he could and wrapped it around the gouge in his arm, ignoring the ludicrous amount of pain he was feeling as he pressed down hard and kept it there despite the burning agony it caused. He chanced a peek at his HP with the same morbid fascination of someone eyeballing a crashed car on the side of the road. The rate at which it was ticking down had slowed, but by an amount that was barely noticeable. 40 HP. Tick. 39 HP. Tick. Rob laid down on the ground and put his arm on his stomach to keep it elevated. Blood continued to flow out of the wound and onto his chest, having already soaked his tunic from top to bottom. He belatedly realized that the wolf was next to him on the ground, twitching and moaning, but if it had enough energy and spite to take a snap at him after nearly being cut in half then it fucking deserved the kill. 20 HP. Tick. "Fuck this," Rob spat through grit teeth. "I'm not dying here. You think you can just send me here and literally throw me to the wolves, whoever you are, you piece of shit? Think I'm gonna take it laying down? No. Not in a million years. I'll walk this off in no time, and I'll find you, and I'll kick your ass. You hear me? I'm not dying here." 6 HP. Tick. "YOU HEAR ME? I'M NOT DYING HERE!" The wolf let out one final, piteous whimper, and stopped twitching. Enemy Defeated: Frenzied Wolf Reached Level 2! 5 Stat Points Gained! First-Time Level Bonus: 5 Additional Stat Points Gained! RARE Active Skill Gained! Name: Do Not Go Gently (RARE) Prerequisites: Vitality 10, go through a near-death experience, and exhibit the unyielding will to survive. Description: When HP falls below 25%, double Vitality and the effectiveness of all defense and Vitality-based skills. Duration: 1 Minute Cooldown: 15 Minutes A sudden rush of euphoria surged through his veins. Rob gaped at the litany of messages, wasting a precious moment where another tick transpired, before his mind went into overdrive. He embraced the instinct in the back of his head—the instinct which had gone from poking him to shaking him by the throat—and did what he needed to do. Do Not Go Gently activated. Put 10 stat points into Vitality. Passive Skill Gained! Name: Tough Skin Prerequisite: Vitality 20, take grievous physical damage at least once. Description: Reduces physical damage incurred by 10%. Passive Skill Gained! Name: Regeneration Prerequisite: Vitality 20 Description: Heals 10% of Max HP every hour. Cool. Rob looked at his Character Sheet. HP: 104 / 210 (Temp HP: 208 / 420) Status Effects: Bleeding (High), Do Not Go Gently (Time Remaining: 58 Seconds) 1 Vitality equaled 10 HP. 10 Vitality meant 100 additional current and max health. HP was still going down. But there was a lot more of it now. And every now and then, it ticked back up. Yeah. That would have to do. Really tired. Everything fading. Darkness encroaching… no, not darkness. Sleep. Guess I'll see if it worked by waking up again.
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survival #2
On the third day, he almost died. It wasn't even his fault this time.Rob woke up from his nightmares to find that his HP and Stamina were falling fast. The culprit was no mystery; he was coughing up a lung and shivering like a babe in winter. He drank water and ate berries – the non-poisonous ones – to keep his strength up, but nothing helped.Passive Skill Gained!Name: Disease ResistancePrerequisite: Come down with a potentially life-threatening disease.Description: Helps you fight off nasty microorganisms. Sadly, you won't get EXP from them.Fuck, what do I have? Dysentery? Malaria? I mean...I keep getting bit by animals with the 'Infected' status but...shit.Rob made sure he Breathed Deep, and often, his new Passive skill barely keeping his Stamina above water. He wasn't sure how the relationship between HP and Stamina worked, but he had to believe that keeping his Stamina high would help his body fight off the infection. Every little bit helped. Especially when the nearest hos
air is life
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
nine more feet to go
He sat down, mind poring over every bit of poison trivia his late-night Wikipedia binges had turned up. The knowledge was there, but accessing it in his current mental state was like trying to find a library book in an earthquake. Not that it mattered either way; he didn't have access to any kind of antidote, or medical supplies, or a doctor, so his only real option was to sit down and keep his nerves in check.I'll be okay. It was just one berry, and I only got Poison Resistance Level 1. It...probably would have already gone up to Level 2 if the damage was that going to be life-threatening. This can't possibly be worse than taco night.It was worse than taco night.Five minutes of worsening stomach pains and slowly – but consistently – falling HP, Rob panic-shoved his 5 unspent Stat Points into Vitality in the hopes of getting an upgrade to Regeneration. The skill stayed at Level 1, and he panicked further. His stomach bubbled and broiled with nausea to the point where he felt like v
oh fuck
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
struggle for survival
HP: 99 / 210Stamina: 35 / 90—HP: 100 / 210Stamina: 37 / 90Rob shut his metaphysical eyes and closed the Character Sheet as an unbidden sigh of relief hissed through clenched teeth.Despite everything that had happened, seeing his HP finally tick back up to the triple digits after hours of waiting for another rabid wolf to chance upon him and finish the job was almost, almost enough to make him feel better.At present, the comfort it afforded did little more than make a dent in the iron wall of rage solidifying inside him.Because someone was fucking with him.It was something he'd strongly suspected considering the portal's parting words of "You'll Do", but having it outright confirmed via a belated post-it-note was such a slap in the face that he tore the message to shreds the second he'd finished processing it.Good luck? he thought, for the hundredth time.Some jackass put me here on purpose, and all they have to say to me is Good Luck?!He thought, for the hundredth-and-first
## the beginning 4
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
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