My first try at litrpg, please be kind :)

In case you didn't catch the synopsis: the system in this story will take a while to appear properly given the nature of the world-building, and it will be a slow burn, but rest assured there will be stats.

1 | An Unexpected Visitor

Eli is cracking open the shell of a rare egg when something brushes across the front door that has nothing to do with the wind. He eyes the wooden slab he fashioned years ago now—the hinges remain intact, and the bolt isn’t moving. No sound can be heard on the boards or stone steps below.

If these were days of the past, he would think it an animal crawling across the steps. Now, whatever it is, it’ll need to be handled shortly.

Carefully, he sets his burning pan on the stones about the hearth, far enough from the fire where it won’t burn the single rather large egg he managed to find in the branches of the nearest tree. The dammed thing nearly took his eye out with a sharp branch, he won’t be ruining his prize. Standing just before the door, head cocked, he listens. His hearing isn’t what it once was, not between the decades and the one time a blade cleaved apart the left side of his skull. His ear isn’t terribly pretty, and he’s never quite heard out of it the same since, but it’s far from useless.

An often-boarded-up window sits alongside the door, but he doesn’t wish to open it. Something likely wishes to make breakfast out of him.

Grumbling and tugging on his beard, Eli climbs the set of stone stairs along the back wall and pushes up the dusty trap door into the set of little-used rooms above him. He found this abandoned place long ago and managed to make it his home. What it used to be, he isn’t quite certain. An ancient monastery, perhaps, carved into the side of this mountain. Certainly, it was a little community of sorts, for there is enough room between this little stone place he has chosen to occupy and the others clustered around it for at least a few dozen people.

It was covered in dust and clinging to the occasional bone by the time he found it.

Perhaps, it was abandoned even before the world fell.

The floor of the next room up is sturdy enough, so he creeps across it to the window overlooking his front porch. Few things are tall enough to reach this level, though he’s seen a few in his time.

Such large things don’t tend to cling to the airy topside of an abandoned mountain temple.

Pushing aside an old vine long since dead but still hanging over the open window, he glances out and down as quietly and still as he can manage.

Nothing.

He squints. It’s early morning, but mountaintops are the first places to see the sun. Long, blue-lonely shadows stretch fingers across the occasional cobblestones and packed earth of the courtyard. An ancient fountain sits in the center. It fills with rainwater when the sky decides to open up, crispy leaves the rest of the time. There is a well for such things near the ring of the other structures of crumbling stone. Plenty of places to hide in them for whatever Eli heard scuffling around his front steps.

“Hfm,” he grunts, leaning a bit farther out, but still finding this place as abandoned as ever. Perhaps it was a small animal of no threat—nothing is quite describable in that way any longer, but he supposes there are exceptions to any rule. Whatever it is, it seems to have passed on.

Though it isn’t much use, he breathes deep as he once used to and calls to the Order, hoping for the magic it should provide. It responds not, as it hasn’t for years, and he claps once, as he did when he was a child and was first learning to harness it.

Suffer, human blood, drown, drown, drown—

Wrinkling his nose, Eli glares into the distance and pushes aside the growl of a voice in the back of his mind, like an old man on the brink of death, as Eli’s years are dragging him toward. It has been as such for over a decade now, and he is both accustomed to it and filled with desperate frustration whenever the power which once welcomed him not only rejects him but seems to no longer exist in the slightest.

Considering, he rolls back his sleeve and presses his fingers to the center of his right palm. There is a dot there, a little blue thing that came when the Order cracked and has not left since. It came with the drawing of blood and has remained. What it means, he suspects has something to do with the change in magic but has never determined how. No one else he has met appears to know.

Sometimes, he wonders if it is part of the lost Order and will answer his call. But now, as ever before, there is no such luck. It glows the faintest shimmer at his pressure but otherwise responds not.

“Useless thing,” he mumbles, whether to himself or the Order, he knows not.

Another sound, a thump this time.

It came from somewhere around the side of this structure. There isn’t much to see over there, just quite an impressive drop to the next shelf of rock the mountain offers. There is no back door to this place save one, most of it built directly into the wall of stone. But there are tunnels to the other structures Eli discovered early on. Patting his belt for the knife that no longer rests there, he maneuvers back down the trapdoor, shutting and latching it firmly. There isn’t much in the way of weapons here, not when the forest below the top of this bare spot takes great pains to rot and attack anything it believes harmful. His frying pan and the metal rod he uses to stoke the fire have worked just fine. His old sword is still stashed beneath the floorboards—he managed to drag it up here without being attacked—but he is loath to use it. The world is much more hostile than when he came here. The forest may rage at its use.

He eyes the sickle he uses for reaping but is concerned to dull it in a fight. The fire poke will be easier, depending on the intruder.

His front window is open.

Did I leave it unlatched? Of course, I didn’t.

Grasping the fire poker—even if the other end is nearly too hot for comfort—he puts his boot to the chest under the window and shoves it aside with a grunt.

A boy gasps and bolts back to the door in a scramble of limbs. Eli blinks, having little time to be properly startled. Nearly amused, he watches the kid yank at the lock on the front door, drag it open, and throw himself back outside.

In the ensuing quiet, Eli chuckles once, then considers he should not find this amusing. A moment later, he realizes the danger, sighs, and stalks after the kid. How did a child even make his way out here? He didn’t get much of a chance to look at him, but he couldn’t have been older than a teen. With how small he was, Eli would bet him younger.

“Where’d ya go, kid?” he asks, stepping onto the front steps now the only threat appears to be a skinny adolescent.

There’s a scramble around the side of the house. Eli sighs. “I’m not going to chase you, and I’m not going to hurt you. Come back around.”

Silence. 

A rustle of leaves is heard across the courtyard, but it is only the slight breeze which tends to climb these peaks. Still, he wonders if something else indeed stalks him in the early morning. If a child managed to make his way up here, he may have attracted monsters.

“Child, come back here, now!” Eli hollers at a level he can’t remember when he last used. “I have food. Unless you want to be food for anything out here!”

For a moment, he considers the best option to chase the damn kid down without hurting either of them, but then a set of footsteps makes itself known. Two eyes peek around the corner of the house. Eli stares at them. When was the last time I spoke to anyone? When he took his harvest down to the nearest settlement. Nearly a year ago now, and he didn’t interact much. Seeing another person throws him off-kilter.

He doesn’t much remember how to speak to people.

“What are you doing, boy?”

The kid blinks, casts a glance into the center of the monastery, and steps out from around the side of the house. Eli feels his expression twist. It’s been entirely too many years since he’s seen his son’s face, but here it is staring at him, with the gray eyes, nearly-dark skin, and narrow face, and the same way of gazing at him as if he can pin him down with sight alone.

Without meaning to, he mumbles, “Abner?”