The days after that were a bit of a blur. After finally healing up, I spent every waking moment busy somehow. I mapped out the island, started keeping track of the days, discovered a ton of edible wild forageables and some plants that were probably better suited to medicine or alchemy, got some practice with skills and abilities too; my discoveries were myriad.
The island was about 7km long and 1km wide at the thickest running east to west lengthwise. As far as landmarks go, it was pretty sparse, the crumbled remains of a stone bridge, a dock on the southwest portion of the island, and the chapel of course near the center; the rest were less interesting, just uniquely shaped trees and stones or somewhat recognizable heaps of rubble.
Feeling a bit cheeky, I decided to name the place Amber Island; My own little joke. I’m sure someone somewhere might have a proper name for the place, but they weren’t there at the time.
This was my island for the time being and The System agreed.
|
System Alert! Territory Claimed [Amber Island] Size: ~7km² ►Accept◄ |
"Alright, all of this is strictly true but... it looks pretty bad doesn't it? I guess I did sort of declare war on the forest."
It’d been 20 days since I first arrived and the mornings were still crisp, I could only guess the season was early spring; glad I didn’t pop up in winter or I might’ve starved.
As for food, where do I begin? The whole place was a veritable cornucopia once I started looking, it didn’t take long for me to unlock and level Foraging alongside Herbalism. With both combined I didn’t have many scares over poisoning, but from what I can tell they aren’t completely foolproof; a few of the analysis menus looked a bit like this.
| [Straw Mushroom] - 68% Certainty |
|
Rarity: Common Quality: C- Medicinal Uses: Treatment of Glandular Disorders, Anti-carcinogen, Boosting of Endurance, Bone Strengthening, Treatment and Prevention of Anemia, Prevention of Heart Disease Magical Uses: Filler product in cheaper potions for restoring stamina. Description: Straw Mushrooms are a common nutritious foraged and cultivated variety fungus, though picking them wild is best done with an expert present; more than a few amateurs have found themselves disabled or dead for consuming other species similar in appearance but vastly different in nature. Other Names Include: Gambler's Dinner, Paddy Straw Mushroom, Lucky Fool's Feast Potential Alternative: Death Cap Mushroom, a pleasantly flavored but deadly fungus loaded with deadly amatoxins, as little as half a mushroom contains enough toxin to kill an adult human. Symptoms include gastrointestinal pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, hypotension, tachycardia, hypoglycemia, jaundice, delirium, seizures, coma, hepatic encephalopathy, kidney failure, coagulopathy, intracranial pressure, intracranial bleeding, pancreatic inflammation, and cardiac arrest. Death usually occurs between six and sixteen days after consumption. |
Yeah, I didn’t fuck with anything below 90% certainty.
Even accounting for what I declared off limits, my selection was broad: There were berries, wild leeks and tubers, mushrooms, greens, wild grain of some kind, and what I think used to be a tended orchard of apple trees that were now growing wild and in full blossom; I even found a few bird’s nests with eggs the size of my head. I opted not to disturb those though, if the fish are any indication, I don’t want to tussle with whatever laid them yet.
I couldn’t be completely sure, but something was strange about the sheer variety in the bounty I’d found; The entire island was full of food. I didn’t pay it any mind at first but it was uncanny; plants that would’ve grown half a world away from one another on earth sprouted side by side here.
Shit was weird.
On the subject of weirdness, the Grand Tuna didn’t degrade in the least. I’ve been double and triple checking it every day, but the massive slab of meat is still as fresh as when I first brought it in; I have no explanation, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.
Those oddities aside, my meals were greatly enriched by the variety of ingredients and around five days in I managed to clean the cast iron cookware I’d found too. The kits from the Combat Alchemist starter pack had concentrated acetic acid and a scrub brush in them, and though it made the cast iron smell a bit funny, the fatty scrapings from the tuna were enough for a passable seasoning on both pieces of cookware.
I found myself eating very well and in great amounts, something about how my body had changed since arriving here made my appetite skyrocket; I was shocked to find I could and did often eat 5kg of food a day, sometimes more. The meals were more than just survival fare too, they were extravagant; so much so that I managed to unlock Refined Tongue. I might’ve gone a little overboard, but I don’t regret it; I do wish I had salt though.
Blackened tuna steak with sauteed wild garlic and morel mushrooms, rich fish stew with burdock root and hosta shoots. I can only hope Ikenia was enjoying this as much as I was, I sent her a plate of food as agreed every night after dinner; having to send away the serving medium every time was annoying at first, but it kept me busy.
My Whittling Skill went up from making plates and utensils every day and even upgraded into Carving when I started adding decorative flourishes; of course this necessitated making a stone axe and gathering lumber which netted me Rudimentary Stone Crafting and Woodcutting. All I can say is, ‘Thank you primitive technology youtube guy.’
Ability practice was also fruitful, I’d managed to get the hang of most of them but a few were still outside of my understanding; I couldn’t manually activate [Combat Premonition] or [Surpass Limits]. I should probably add something about the activation criteria to my notes when I figure it out.
Over those two weeks I’d fallen into a comfortable rhythm, wake up, breakfast, train in the morning, forage in the afternoon, lunch, research and note taking, dinner, check in with Ikenia, sleep; rinse and repeat.
The twenty first day was about when everything went wrong, something I’d been expecting; nothing goes that smoothly for too long with me around.
I think it was a Wednesday that things went wrong, mostly because I’ve never liked Wednesdays; a holdover from my days as a wage slave.
I was finally feeling brave enough to poke at the reward items from my second quest; the Feybound Cowl and Gloves of Compassion.
I’d been hesitant to play with them before because they made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I touched them; I only realized after using Mana based abilities that this meant they were magical somehow.
I also... just forgot about them for a while too.
I started with the Gloves of Compassion. They looked really cool, a pair of black leather gloves stitched and embroidered in silvery thread; the embroidery could’ve just been decorative flourish, but I thought it might actually be another language when I examined it closely.
“Damn these things look nice… please don't actually be cursed or something.”
I was careful slipping them on and found they fit comfortably; it was imperceptible, but I think they might’ve actually adjusted slightly in size to more easily be worn.
After that, I slipped on the Feybound Cowl, a dark green cloth hood stitched in thorn patterns that hung down over my eyes; thankfully it was made of a sheer fabric that I could see through, and again an almost perfect fit that got better a few moments after I put it on.
“Alright… so, what do these things do?”
I checked my status; everything seemed in order, but my Health, Mana, Spirit, and a few other stats were boosted.
| Status (Truncated) | |
|
[Bio] [Name] - Amber Primary Class: [Guerrilla Fighter] Lvl 16 [447/2654] Subclass 1: [None] Secondary Class: [Combat Alchemist] Lvl 12 [953/1130] Subclass 1: [Mad Bomber] Lvl 10 [129/660] Health - 498/498 +93/Day Phys Def: 42 |
[Status Effects] [Lesser Blessing of Ikenia]
Constitution: 13 Agility: 37 |
I went ahead and checked out the Equipment Menu to get the specifics and saw something that made me very happy.
| Equipment | |||
| Name | Effects | Description | |
| [Light Leather Armor] |
+15 Phys Def |
A set of light and comfortable leather armor, though it could be made more comfortable with the addition of a sports bra. | |
| [Feybound Cowl] |
Mana +50 • +3 Mag Def • Cast [Feywalk] 3/ Weekly |
A mysterious green cowl of unknown make. | |
| [Gloves of Compassion] |
Health +50 • Spirit +3 • Cast [Light Cure] 1/Daily |
A pair of gloves warm with the light of compassion. | |
“Shit yeah, they come with spells! Finally I get to play with some actual magic!”
I still didn’t have any idea how magic worked at the time, ostensibly abilities that use mana were ‘magical’ but I wasn’t sure exactly what made them different from spells.
“Looks like they’re kind of like Abilities, but different somehow… I’m not even sure how to get more, but there’s gotta be a way to learn spells.”
Light Cure seemed like a spell for restoring health, hopefully without any risk of causing cancer like the potions. I was in perfect health at the time, whatever fractures I’d had mended with substantial speed over a day and a half, so I moved on to the other spell.
Feywalk, I couldn’t guess at what it did; so I opted for a test.
“Alright, let’s do this...”
“[Feywalk]!”
Activating it, the world sort of went a bit… wobbly; a few spots seemed to bend and warp, but most notably fog drifted from a section of ground between two old oaks. Through the sheer green fabric of the hood I could see something beyond those trees that wasn’t there before; the old apple orchard which to my knowledge was just over 3km away, was now five short steps ahead of me.
“Woah…”
Curiosity got the better of me and I walked forward into the foggy portal.
There was a sensation of vertigo for a split second and then... I was there. The excitement got the better of me, and I whooped and hollered in celebration.
“Woo! I can fucking teleport!”
That was a mistake on my part.
The moment I started shouting bells and whistles went off in my head; Sense Danger, Threat Detection, Area Awareness, and Early Warning were all triggered at once.
Something was behind me.
In that dreadful moment, my blood froze cold as I glanced back to see what terror awaited me.
The beast was a sight; its shoulders stood level with my head, thick muscle ripped through it beneath its bristly rust colored hide. A boar the size of a small car turned to face me, interrupted while rooting around in the soil at the foot of one of the apple trees by my foolishly loud celebration.
A pair of beady black eyes traced from my feet before meeting my own, framed on either side by four matched sets of viciously pointed yellowed tusks. Set in the center of its forehead was a purple gemstone the size of my head.
We stood 10 meters apart from each other in a silent standoff; I didn’t dare breathe. A quick check told me Army of One was boosting me by an entire 30%.
“...”
Two things came to mind as I looked into its eyes: First, I didn’t need Wild Empathy to know this thing was sizing me up, and second… I conveniently just remembered that pigs are omnivores.
It snorted once and beat a cloven hoof against the earth, kicking up a cloud of dirt and making the ground shake.
|
System Alert! [Blink Hog] challenges [Amber 'Goddamn' Wilson] for dominion over [Amber Island]. ►Accept◄ |
While the system helpfully explained what was already painfully obvious, I just booked it up the tree into the canopy. I was carefully planning a leap to a nearby branch before the sound of exploding timber filled my ears and the world turned upside down. The big Ganon looking motherfucker had reduced the tree’s trunk to splinters and sent me careening to the ground.
I didn’t wait to see it shake itself off and instead booked it, dashing away between the trees trying to come up with a plan. I didn’t know where Feywalk would land me if I used it again, so that was out.
“Fuck!”
My mind was reeling searching for options as I desperately tried to keep ahead of the charging wall of tusks and death. Thankfully I’ve made a habit of carrying all of my equipment whenever I leave the church.
Okay, I have my entire kit on me: bolts, bombs, potions; everything. So what’s the play?
My head start wore away as the long stride of the monstrous boar made up the difference, I didn’t have long to plan.
Outpacing long distance it isn’t an option.
Try to find a tree it can’t knock down and hit it with ranged attacks?
I vaulted over an old stone wall before hearing the beast plow through it a few seconds later sending chips granite flying and pelting me in the back..
Okay, scratch that plan
The sounds of falling trees and rumbling hoofbeats filled my ears, growing closer with each second as I struggled through the underbrush in an adrenaline fueled dash. My heart was pounding, if I failed, I would die.
I don’t think anything aside from a foot of rock is going to stop this bastard; good thing I know just the spot.
My scouting of the island definitely came in handy.
If my sense of direction is correct then… YES!
I burst through the foliage into a clearing surrounded by trees and studded with a few sturdy looking boulders.
Can’t outrun it? Fight it, but on my terms.
I’m a Guerilla Fighter aren’t I?
Get ready you big meaty motherfucker, I’ve been cheesing bosses since I was 9!
I dug into my bag and pulled out a handful of smoke bombs and flashstones, tossing them behind me in a fanning arc and hoping I timed everything right. Thick choking smoke and disorienting flashes of light filled the clearing; the boar didn’t stop, but it was slowed.
I whirled around to see the thing shaking its head and trying to clear it’s lungs; the smoke bombs must’ve had some sort of irritant in them.
Perfect.
“[Detect Physical Weakness]!”
My vision lit up and I saw every single detail. That thing didn’t have many soft spots; eyes, mouth, ears, neck, tendons on its legs… and underbelly.
Every instinct was telling me to slow down, or turn and run, but I fought against the urge and instead drew my dagger.
“[Rapid Engagement]!”
I shouted out the Ability and rushed forward; not to engage however, but to rush past the boar. My timing had to be perfect if I wanted this to go well; as I rushed by in a blur I called it out.
“[Quick Stab]!”
My hand whipped out as I sped by the boar, dagger in hand; the blade struck against its hide as I passed, drawing a scarlet line down the beast’s flank and eliciting a cry of anger and pain. From there it was just a matter of diving behind one of the jutting stones and hoping it’d be dumb enough to charge the big rock to get at me.
I hunkered down waiting for the sound of impact but all that came after those hoofbeats was silence.
I peered out from behind my stone to see it gone… I didn’t even see footprints.
Shit, how does something that big just disappear… where the hell did it go?
Once again alarms blared in my head, the sound of hoofbeats approached from behind and I had a bare second to shift to the side turning what would’ve been a full on charge into a glancing blow that chopped half of my health off immediately.
That sounds clinical, the reality of it was much worse. Half of my stomach was a ragged red mess, those tusks tore through me like I was tissue paper; in any other scenario I would’ve stopped and puked, but in that second I was more angry than anything else.
Through the haze of fury, the pain didn’t bite as deeply as I’d expected, but it still took precious seconds to stop the world from spinning; by the time I could think clearly again I was already back on my feet and the fucking pig was nowhere to be seen…again.
This time I hopped up onto the stone, doing my best to move quickly while holding my insides in.
It’s possible… that I may have underestimated the pig…
Ignoring the immense drain on my mana and accompanying headache, I flipped all of my danger sensing skills to their active state; my mind was flooded with information.
My eyes and ears, and even sense of touch sharpened further and for the first time Combat Premonition activated.
It hadn’t done much while I was practicing, but now in the thick of the fight I could see the phantom shape of the hog overlaid coming from a hundred different angles, each tagged with a percentage chance attached.
Lost in the new layer of interface I noticed one of those paths was tagged with 87.6% and... it originated from behind me.
I jumped and rolled just in time as the monster flew through the air as gracelessly as a wrecking ball and slammed into the ground another 4 meters away before dashing off behind a stone and disappearing.
Motherfucker, he’s using the same tactics as me, but better!
The probability predictions of Combat Premonition all dropped back down to even odds, which frankly confused the hell out of me.
What the fuck does that even mean? How can it be even odds that it comes from any direction unless…
I really should’ve paid more attention to the first prompt I got when encountering this thing; the system called it a ‘Blink Hog’.
It’s a fucking teleporting boar!
I did my best to consider my situation; the ‘make it ram into rocks until it passes out’ option was definitely out.
Wild hogs back home had layers of fat thick enough to shrug off snake bites and I’d heard more than a few stories of them straight ignoring small arms fire. This beastie was the size of a small car and could teleport in addition to those other fun details and I was armed with a dagger, a crossbow, and a sack full of volatile magic bombs; It didn’t take long to figure out which of these would be the solution to my problems.
Still, I kept the dagger unsheathed while I reached for a clump of blasting putty and kept my eyes open for any change in the readout from Combat Premonition.
The numbers danced around a few times, raising and lowering as I picked up the sound of a few hoofbeats and a near imperceptible shift in the air that I’m pretty sure had to be teleportation.
Alright… here piggy piggy, come and get it.
The moment I had something bigger than 80% on certainty, I moved.
“[Overcharge Compound]! [Prime]!”
My mana flared through the explosive paste in my hand and I slapped it down on the ground as I sped away with a movement ability.
“[Disengage]!”
The boar charged right through the empty space I’d been occupying and right into my trap.
“[Blast Compression]! [Detonate]!”
[Critical Strike! - 2x Damage Multiplier!]
The blast was like a tiny sun, it burnt itself into my retinas and sent the pig flying; it regained its footing quickly and disappeared in a flash of purple light leaving behind a bloodstain. I had confirmation it could teleport
“YEAH, GET SOME MOTHERFUCKER!”
The plan worked, at least it seemed to; I can’t see enemy HP, but that was a crit.
I loaded both hands with alchemical explosives; Smokey be damned I was going to survive this if it meant burning this place to cinders.
The fight was, and I say this without a shred of irony epic, and not in the slang sense; I’m talking Studio Bones animated fight scene, at least a third of my strikes registered as criticals, and I found out that the multiplier goes up for consecutive critical strikes.
My adrenaline flared and all the pain just melted away, I was unstoppable.
I fell into a steady rhythm of baiting the pig out and either giving it a facefull of boom or a shank in the side; eventually as things carried on I began to mix it up and got a few good hits in with the crossbow when the beastie was retreating and once I swear I nailed it while it was airborne from a bomb blast.
“Wooo! how’s that for skeet shooting?”
Over the course of the battle several boulders were reduced to gravel and craters filled the landscape, hiding places were dwindling and I had a lot more chances for clean ranged shots on the pig.
I might’ve gotten a bit… showboaty, a nonzero amount of sick as hell flips were done to test the acrobatic abilities of my upgraded body, at one point I even dropped prone when the boar was charging and carved a slash straight down it’s gut.
I kept my eyes focused and body tensed, stretching my improved reflexes and senses to their very limits for what felt like hours but in retrospect were probably minutes.
I should have been paying more attention to my status; I went to fire off another ability and found myself unable, only a basic uncharged explosive went off.
| Status (Truncated) | |
|
[Bio] [Name] - Amber Primary Class: [Guerrilla Fighter] Lvl 16 [447/2654] Subclass 1: [None] Secondary Class: [Combat Alchemist] Lvl 12 [953/1130] Subclass 1: [Mad Bomber] Lvl 10 [129/660] Health - 50/498 +93/Day (50/360 -5/Min) Phys Def: 42 (10) |
[Status Effects] [Lesser Blessing of Ikenia]
Constitution: 13 (1) Agility: 37 (19) |
Oh shit… a whole lot of that blood is mine.
The spell of adrenaline had broken, perhaps just in time to save my life; after reading that message the pain hit all at once and I collapsed into a rough heap. The boar didn’t dash off after being hit by the explosives this time.
When the smoke cleared, the beast was marching slowly and purposefully towards me, eyes red with fury. If I’d been thinking properly, I would’ve tried Surpass Limits again as a last ditch effort, but I was too busy trying to keep my internal organs from becoming more external.
I had trouble breathing, and standing up was a chore too; I heard it’s hooves beating towards me as I clawed myself from the ground leaning against one of the few remaining boulders.
I scrabbled for the potions in my bag in desperation but stopped when I saw the beast lining up it’s charge.
Fuck it, do or die.
I had one last shot at finally putting this jumped up slab of bacon six feet under and 150 HP was going to linger about as long as a fart in a windstorm if this thing succeeded in landing a clean hit.
I dug into my bag and pulled out an entire brick of blasting putty and clenched it tightly in my fist, there was a split second and it charged.
I thought I had everything timed perfectly… I did not.
The fucker flickered out of reality after getting up to speed and reappeared barely a meter away from me before slamming me up against the stone.
The world was a symphony of agony even with my heightened pain resistance, I was skewered through with a tusk as thick as my arm. Everything began to go grey as I struggled, pinned to the stone that might be only memorial.
Everything began to melt together and the color faded from the world as I watched my HP drop rapidly down to 0.
That was it.
...
But then light filled the world and color soon followed.
|
System Alert! [Will to Live] Activated Prerequisites met for [Berserker] Class Trees ►Accept◄ |
“Fuck... you!”
I spit an insult and a mouthful of blood before following it with a string of Ability activations.
“[Overcharge Compound]!”
“[OVERCHARGE COMPOUND]!”
“[OVERCHARGE COMPOUND]!”
“[OVERCHARGE COMPOUND]!”
I slammed the glowing brick of blasting putty into the hog’s smug fucking face and spoke one I didn’t recognize.
“[POINT BLANK ANNIHILATION]!”
My entire world flooded with scorching white light and terrible sound before blissful unconsciousness took me away.
woooow berserker mad bomber combat alchemist ...
not something i want to mess with ...
that was intense
Thanks for the chapter~!
Well...this is something to come back to...
The end part felt a bit like a deus ex machina
*Shrug* She bought the perk, she gets the effect.
That came across as perhaps a bit flippant, further explanations on the system should provide a bit more context as to what happened, why its not unheard of, and why it's not necessarily super great for Amber