Felix spent the next hour lying in the weeds, occasionally eating yarrow and a small patch of red grass called flitweed.

 

 

Despite it's gruesome lore, flitweed tasted a bit like coriander and reminded him of his mother's cooking. More importantly, it was necessary. The Stamina regeneration it offered allowed Felix to sit up and take stock of his situation.

 

 

Felix nodded to himself. Step One was difficult, but he'd managed so far. Barely. The fact that he had two Survivor Titles meant he was entirely too weak for the creatures around here. It was like he was dropped into a high level zone at the start of a game.

 

He frowned, frustrated. He had to stop doing that. This place was clearly NOT a game, no matter what the Skills and Status screens might suggest. He had to consider this place real, because anything else would kill him.

 

First stage of Step One is to assess what I can do. Felix looked over his Status screen and considered his assets.

 

His stats were growing due to leveling up, Titles, and whatever happened during that battle. So that meant, what? He could train his stats? But why didn't his stats increase during his tiring hike through the woods earlier in the day? Felix frowned, thinking.

 

Stats aside, he had a grown number of Skills, though most were only Level 1. He only had one offensive Skill but all the rest were amounting to an impressive array of avoidance. If he were to train them up and also increase his stats through more strenuous exercise, could he survive?

 

The better question was, did he have a choice? How long could he eat flowers before something ate him?

 

 

Though he didn't know much about this place, it was doubtful he'd find any spellbooks lying around the forest. Did they use spellbooks? Scrolls? He was basically guessing at this point.

 

"Alright," Felix got to his feet and took a deep breath. "Stop stalling and get to work."

 

 

Felix took off running.

 

Not far. He was all too aware that a level 20 creature could lie in wait anywhere. So he did laps in the forested glen where he found all the yarrow, approximately a quarter mile loop. It was rocky and provided uneven footing, and Felix struggled to keep up a steady pace at all, but after twenty minutes of struggling and nearly breaking his ankle he got a notification.

 

 

"Awesome."

 

It was proof of what he was trying. Bolstered by the success, he kept running.

 

The rocks in the ground were such a hassle that he ended up hopping between them, leaping from step to step as he kept running around the glen. After another ten minutes he had to rest and eat some flitweed to recover his Stamina, but was back at it less than a minute later.

 

 

After two more rotations of this, Felix was starting to get bored. So he kept using Analyze as he ran, trying to retrieve and read the information as quickly as possible as he ran by various weeds, rocks, and trees. Ever since Analyze had hit Level 10, he found the Skill was easier to use. Smoother, somehow. He barely had to think about it before it activated. His Born Trait also helped, allowing him to memorize the info at a glance. Running as fast as he could, he kept jumping from rock to rock and kept up a steady stream of Analyze windows of anything he could see.

 

He took a break after forty minutes of this, ignoring his notifications blinking at him, and started resistance training.

 

Felix had attempted to lose weight and build muscle off and on for years, but had never been as engaged as he felt now. The stat increases and Skill Levels felt euphoric, a jolt of positive reinforcement that kept him pushing that much harder. He dropped to the ground and did as many push-ups as he could. But his 3 in Strength showed itself, as he was barely able to get through five and even that burned through nearly all of his remaining Stamina. Not even running for ten minutes used this much. Was that because he had a Skill for running? Or was the majority of his strength located in his legs, as opposed to his arms?

 

 

 

So it went. Felix took rests when his Stamina dropped below 5 and ate more yarrow when he twisted his ankle on a rock or bashed his arm against a tree. He ran as fast as he could, for as long as he could, hopping from rock to rock, moving across the uneven ground with his increasingly tattered sneakers. Sometimes he held his walking stick as he ran, out in front of him or above his head, quickly tiring out his arms and Stamina. He did push-ups until he collapsed, recovered his Stamina, then went again. On and on and on for hours.

 

Before he knew it, the area had grown too dark to see well enough. Too dangerous to run on this rocky ground, though even still Felix was tempted. In the distance, he heard the cry of something that sounded like a big cat. Fear shivered down his spine, like cold water on his heady enthusiasm. Suddenly, he felt terribly exhausted.

 

Felix toggled his notifications as he trudged back toward the last of the flitweed, beginning to munch on it mindlessly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Hell yes," Felix whispered to himself. His second rare Skill.

His eyes strayed back toward his rocky obstacle course, but another cry of that cat creature and the steadily failing light was enough to nip that thought in the bud. He would have to find shelter for his first night.

 

"Jesus Christ, what a day."

 

Felix found the tree some distance away from his rocky glen.

 

It was sturdy, thick enough that three of him couldn't encompass it's trunk with their arms outstretched. It was also tall, maybe one hundred feet to the crown and filled with dark purple leaves. The bark was white with horizontal striations in pale ochre. Analyze called it a Kingsap Tree.

 

 

"Ok, magic tree," Felix put his arms on his hips, considering the smooth bark and approximately twenty foot span before branches began to appear. "How do I climb you?"

 

It was the clear winner for safest perch in this forest. The runner up was a low dirt dugout, and that had the dual problems of being easily accessible to predators and the overpowering smell of piss. Something definitely lived in that den, and he didn't want to be there when they returned.

 

Felix set down his walking stick and wrapped his arms around the smooth bark of the Kingsap in an attempt to shimmy up the giant tree. His first few tries were, well...he hadn't climbed a tree in a decade. He ended up on his ass no less than five times, finally landing on a particularly knobby rock. Cursing and breathing through the pain, he turned away from the Kingsap. His eyes landed on a much smaller tree about a dozen feet away. It had low branches but was about fifty feet tall.

 

Struck by an idea, Felix quickly clambered up onto the branches, shimmying his weight up further and further on the tree. When he had gotten about twenty feet off the ground, he got the notification that he was hoping for:

 

 

Felix grinned.

 

Now he just had to get down.

 

Felix stopped grinning.

 

 

 

Felix limped carefully back over to the Kingsap tree, chewing on a clump of yarrow. He'd come to appreciate the herb despite its bitter flavor, and it had saved his life twice now. Also his pride, in this case.

 

 

Whatever. At least he learned a new Skill.

 

It was getting closer to full dark now, and Felix was starting to feel an edge of danger in the air. While he'd yet to feel fully comfortable in this world, he was certain that when night fell it would bring with it a whole bucket of bad. Several yowls and cries in the distance affirmed his thoughts, and he gulped audibly.

 

 

It took three tries before Felix's Free Climb Skill activated, allowing him to catch onto a ridge of bark he couldn't see in the failing light. He strained upward and reached again, sliding his free hand across the face of the Kingsap. Another handhold, just barely enough to keep going. He wrapped his legs around the trunk, giving himself that extra friction needed not to fall on his ass. Again.

 

Five grueling minutes later, Felix flopped heavily onto the wide expanse of the first split in the trunk. Wheezing, the edges of his vision dark and flashing, he just laid there for a solid twenty minutes. Stamina somewhat recovered, Felix sat up and took stock.

 

The Kingsap was big, feeling even bigger from his perch, and the area was approximately nine feet in diameter. Easily large enough for him to stretch out and sleep. It was also oddly smooth, the bark feeling almost polished and waxed. His vantage from this height was also substantial; while he couldn't see very far due to the heavy foliage and growing dark, he could see the entire glen and his rocky obstacle course.

 

 

 

Felix leaned back against one of the large boughs and took a deep, steady breath. This was a good place, and it seemed safe. He'd be fine as long as he kept his ears open and his stick....

 

"Shit."

 

He climbed down the tree.