“You hear about the massacre in Talbridge?” A gruff voice sounded.

 

“This is another one of your jokes, Kel’tok?” A similarly deep growl returned as the two men worked to fasten a winged beast to their cart. 

 

“No. It’s serious. King’s archmage went crazy. Killed three nobles and dozens more men. Brought down half the castle before they could stop him.” The wyvern snapped against Kel’tok’s hand as he wrapped a harness around its maw. “Now they’re saying he was Soulbound, that he killed the nobles just to get stronger.”

 

“Hmm…” The other orc shook his head. “No king would keep a Soulbound wizard. If he really did, he got what was coming to him.”

 

Peter was distracted from his earwigging by the exaggerated waving of his portly, half-orc boss, waddling over to him like a displeased penguin.

 

“Hey, human! You sign those papers yet?”

 

Peter’s ears strained to hear him over the roars of the nearby wyvern, struggling against its restraints and threatening to pinball its cart across a mile of terrain. 

 

You gave me the assignment less than a minute ago, of course I haven’t. The two orcs worked to get the winged beast under control as Peter took a long, deep breath. 

 

“Well? Going to answer? Or going to be ignoring me again?”

 

“Doing it now.” He pulled up his system, swiping across to find the outbound contract for his delivery and signing with a push of his mind. His fingers twitched uncomfortably as he flicked away the system. 

 

Peter’s boss, Teflon, took a long draw on a wooden pipe, breathing purple smoke. He coughed a little, then spoke, his voice withered. “Alright, you get to Craggor’s Hill before sundown if you wanna keep your job.” He narrowed his eyes at Peter, which was a difficult distinction because he was always squinting. “Sick of you being late. Sick of your packages going missing.”

 

It wasn’t like Peter could do much to help either of those things. Even if I wasn’t the weakest in the whole damn company, I can’t afford a horse to pull my cart. 

 

Tutting, but ignoring the comment otherwise, Peter walked over to the small wooden vehicle, removing it from the support of the railing and grabbing a handle on either side. His back flared with a familiar ache as soon as he did so, fingers numb, and he struggled to get the cart properly situated.

 

As if to add insult rather than help, a half-orc child of about half his stature walked over to him and with a single hand lifted up the cart, spotting him long enough that he could properly position himself and take its weight.

 

The boy smiled at him before turning to leave, and he grunted a ‘thank you’ from beneath the cart’s weight.

 

He considered just leaving once he’d hauled the loaded cart a few feet, but dithered in the doorway. It doesn’t hurt to ask… 

 

“What’s wrong with you, human? Your legs stop working already?” 

 

“Can I get an advance?” He asked quickly, not wanting to drag out the whole process if he could help it. “Just fifty gold, it’d really help right now.”

 

Teflon was an ugly, gnarled, mean-spirited thing, grey like stone with a voice like gravel. Rarely did he smile. But now? The tectonic plates of his countenance shifted, and the old half-orc’s face split in laughter. “A what?” He wheezed, face beginning to saturate. “What you think this is, land of free money? Yeah, I give you an advance so you can go miss another delivery. You’re lucky I don’t give your job to my son already.”

 

“...right. Forget I said anything.”

 

I really shouldn’t have said anything. His son was eight, and the sad truth was, he’d probably be better at making these deliveries on time. 

 

Orcs developed fast, and with a single feat of strength, Teflon’s son had just made Peter look like an infant.

 

Meanwhile, Peter didn’t develop at all.

 

He left to a chorus of laughter, out into the main street of Bellstrow, dragging the heavy cart along behind him as the morning sun emerged from a drifting cloud to blind him in its radiance.

 

Peter braced against the bumps and crags in the road as they shot pins through his legs with each jutting impact of the cart. He checked his system as he walked, checked his funds. His ailments were flaring up again…

 

He stopped by the apothecary, all the while staring at the money in his account. 

 

[One Gold, Five Silver, Two Coppers.]

 

The gold was this week’s rent, or at least half of it. The silver was just enough to buy another elixir for his aching body. 

 

Peter groaned as he set the cart down, walked towards the apothecary door, hesitated, and walked straight past it towards a food cart. The growl of his stomach was too loud to ignore.

 

He bought a container of mutton and rice, some bread, a pint of milk, a few oranges and two skins, one filled with wine, the other with ale. 

 

He brought up his system to complete the transaction, and with a swipe, four silver and two coppers were gone. 

 

The alcohol had been the most expensive, but the meat was hardly cheap either. 

 

He peeled and ate an orange there and then, hoping it’d stave off his hunger, but it only made his belly rumble more. He didn’t have time to eat it, he needed to get back on the road.

 

Once he’d gotten moving again, he really wished he’d simply not eaten anything. His stomach seemed angry at him for having been teased.

 

With repetitive, grinding lurches, Peter moved the cart out of Bellstrow and into the countryside, greeted by rolling hills, cloudy skies, and angry, carnivorous trees.

 

He stuck to the main road. The woods either side were a dangerous place for the low levels, and the trees weren’t the worst of it.

 

Peter didn’t mind the journey to the west too much, as the forest didn’t encroach as heavily on the dirt path, and the path to Caltrox was well-travelled enough that the most he was likely to deal with were odd looks from the 99% of travellers that had pack animals, but the journey to Craggor’s Hill was a much more trying one.

 

He’d refuse jobs here altogether if he didn’t have good reasons to go, besides his boss’s insistence. 

 

Today was a strange day, though. Not the aches and numbness shooting through Peter’s body, those were familiar. 

 

The incessant flashing from his system when he walked was normal too.

 

[You are due for advancement in your athletics skill. Would you like to advance now?]

 

Just for the fuck of it, Peter decided to select [yes].

 

[Error!]

 

[You cannot advance a skill beyond level 5 without affixing a class. Please affix a class to continue.]

 

Same shit as always…

 

Peter didn’t even bother looking at the class screen. It’d be empty as always. Instead, he scrolled past his list of skills, all of them between levels 1 and 5, and scrolled all the way up to his main status screen.

 

[Name: Peter Donnovan.]

 

[Level: 5. CAPPED]

 

[Class: None.]

 

[Continuous Passive, Stunted Growth: Your body is incapable of processing mental or physical increases beyond its natural limit. Please choose a class to progress further.]

 

[Continuous Passive, Fast Learner: As an outworlder, your gifted trait bonus allows you to progress in skills 40% faster than the average human, and defines your limits beyond the usual reach and bounds of your species.]

 

[Continuous Passive, Hard Cap: You will not progress beyond level 5.]

 

Peter grit his teeth as he trudged on. He hated reading the last one so much. It was the last because it was latest to show up, only appearing once he’d actually reached level 5, which was also around the time that his physical symptoms had begun to show up.

 

That had been almost two years ago, and only a few weeks after he’d arrived. His fast track to becoming a hero, a legendary outworlder who fought to right the cosmic scales and banish the forces of darkness? That wasn’t him.

 

No. I’ve been relegated to donkey duty.

 

The worst part was that he didn’t even know why. What had made him so incompatible with the system that this had to happen? That he had to become sick? It wasn’t what he’d been promised when he’d been convinced to come here, it wasn’t the noble purpose he was told he’d be revived for. He was a joke. A laughing stock. A slow, meandering delivery driver in a world where everyone constantly passed him by. 

 

Where eight year olds passed him by. 

 

He tried to put it all out of his mind. A metronomic beep from the system reminded him to upgrade his [athletics] as all the while he scanned his surroundings. There were men on horses off in the distance, and further into the forest, he could hear strange, terrible shrieking sounds that intrigued him more than they did scare him.

 

From the edge of the forest, he noticed a black cat staring at him in the distance, eyes green and shiny. Strange. Did housecats usually end up this far out? It watched him, licking its paw.

 

The worst part was that the cat would probably be more adept at dealing with whatever was doing the screeching than he would. He tried to put it out of his mind and focus on the road ahead. 

 

Before he could turn away, however, he noticed something shifting in the shadows behind the cat.

 

Something dark. Something scary. 

 

Peter couldn’t ignore it. For how easily he noticed it, however, the cat seemed oblivious, still staring at him as he moved his cart to a halt and pulled his arms out from the handles. He couldn’t entirely make out the creature behind the cat, but it looked more than foreboding enough that he didn’t wanna fuck with it, which was an honest description of almost everything Peter saw.

 

Because almost everything was a higher level than he was.

 

Still, he couldn’t just let the cat be eaten… could he?

 

“Here, kitty kitty…” Peter stepped away from the cart and towards the edge of the forest, inching to the edge of the clearing as quietly and calmly as he could; muscles screaming from the exertion of pulling, he struggled to remain still as he pursed his lips and tried to make that one sound cats sometimes respond to.

 

Either he was doing it wrong, or this cat thought his sound was bullshit, because it simply stared at him and tilted its head to the side. The creature behind it stalked closer, finally coming into view enough that Peter could count its many, many legs…

 

What was he meant to do? Go into the evil, man-eating forest to save one dumb cat that had managed to wander its way in there? Was he really going to risk his own life to run in and try to save it?

 

He heard a hiss from the creature, and it broke his indecision for him. Before he could register his own body’s movements, he was running towards the stupid little ball of fur…

 

The cat jolted back as he finally reached it, evading his grasp. Peter swore and reached out to grab the tricky thing, but abruptly felt a flash of fresh pain.

 

Something had left a serrated slash down the side of his left arm. He whipped around to see the thing that had cut him, and immediately wished he hadn’t done so.

 

The creature to the left of him was the meanest, ugliest spider that Peter had ever seen in his life, and it wasn’t even close. Behind its many, many sets of teeth wriggled a bulbous purple tongue that pendulously dangled forth, looking sharp enough to tear flesh from bone. Peter screamed, reaching for his belt despite the protest of his clumsy hands, pulling a knife and stabbing the horrible fucking thing without a second thought, embedding the knife directly into one of its many eyes.

 

That only seemed to piss it off.

 

In fact, from how it was sliding, the dagger seemed to be melting in the face of the spider, and before long it would’ve dropped off entirely. 

 

That might’ve been the most horrific reaction to being stabbed Peter had ever seen. The spider almost seemed to be absorbing the knife.

 

Through all of this, the cat somehow hadn’t bolted. Peter had zero clue what was wrong with it, but thankfully at least this time when he reached to grab it by the scruff, it didn’t jump back or try to stop him.

 

Instead, the heavy cat hung limply as Peter sprinted straight back out of the forest, eyes fixated on the clearing and his cart as his muscles burned and tore under the intensity of his flight, his fear. 

 

“Oh god, oh fuck!” He ran like the devil himself was on his heels. With absolutely zero interest in what laid in wait behind him, he sprinted past the clearing and back out onto the path, placing the cat down on the ground as gently as he could and unceremoniously collapsing by the side of his cart the moment he’d let it go, his legs having given out.

 

He knew he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything to save himself if the spider followed him out and decided it wanted its revenge, but as he turned and looked back in from where he’d came, he saw that the same creature had a tree branch wrapped around its body.

 

It was struggling hard, clawing at the branch, but it was ultimately being dragged away.

 

That might’ve been the most horrific fifteen seconds of his life.

 

“Fuck…” Peter panted and shook as he watched the spider’s unwilling departure, increasingly aware that just a few more seconds in that forest could’ve spelt death for him. He turned towards the cat, snarling. “You’re a fucking idiot. You could’ve gotten us both killed!”

 

The cat looked at him and licked its paw. It looked at him as if to say ‘hey, I didn’t ask you to come in there. That was on you’. 

 

Or maybe he was just imagining that it was trying to say anything. Its eyes were fairly emotive, not to mention that they were extremely piercing, glowing even brighter up close. 

 

“...whatever. Suppose you didn’t know what you were getting me into. Doubt you wanted to be spider food either.”

 

As if the word was a trigger, Peter felt his stomach rumble. He’d been meaning to travel to his destination first, make sure he got there early to be safe, but after this exertion adding to his already extensive list of pains, he needed a break.

 

“You want something to eat?” Peter pulled and lurched himself to his feet. He was pretty used to having to pick himself up from the floor, so he ignored the pain better than most might. He hobbled over to the back of the cart, still lightly panting, then grabbed the box of meat and rice. He ripped the mutton in half. “It’s not tuna, sure, but it’s something. Interested?”

 

The cat hopped up onto the cart, sniffing at the meat in his hands. For a moment, Peter thought it might turn its nose up at the offering.

 

Then, it leaned forwards and started to nibble on the slab of meat, eating it out of his hand. 

 

Peter snickered at the display before setting the food down, watching the cat chow down as he himself ate his fill, though he got full faster than he expected. He didn’t have much of an appetite after what he’d just been through, it turned out.

 

The cat made quick work of the mutton, to the point that Peter even ended up giving it the remainder of his meat. Not the most frugal use of two silver, but at least the thing was cute.

 

The cat wasn’t just black, he noticed. It had a bit of indigo in its fur, or perhaps blue—it was hard to tell in the limited light between the overhanging trees. The colours of the cat seemed to shimmer and shift, and using [Identify] did nothing to tell Peter more. As far as the system was concerned, that was a domestic housecat.

 

Then again, as far as the system was concerned, Peter was a [Fast Learner].

 

As time ticked on, Peter felt he’d hung around long enough. He felt calm, almost eerily so after his encounter. He’d always imagined that if he’d strayed into the forest for even a moment it’d be the end of him, but he’d gone in and survived it! He wasn’t deluded, of course, a few more seconds or a few more paces would’ve very likely been the end of him, but still, he’d managed to brave his way inside, and that in itself felt like no small feat.

 

He used that confidence in place of any real energy to fuel his body as he started pulling the cart once more, having acquired a new passenger. 

 

Maybe I can find someone to take it when we get to Craggor’s Hill. Hopefully it doesn’t make a habit of wandering off this far.

 

Peter was busy pondering how the cat had even gotten there in the first place when he realised that up ahead there were multiple men, all of them on horseback.

 

It took him some time to realise the men in the distance were stationary. That was strange. He activated his level 5 [Identify] skill, and as soon as he did, he began to see more details about the horsemen filter into his mind. Nothing too specific, but enough that he was able to recognise two things.

 

One, they were armed.

 

Two, they were all decidedly much stronger than him.

 

Neither of these things alone were a shock, but the fact that they were all just sitting there on the side of the road, out in the middle of nowhere was weird. They weren’t camping or resting or anything like that, they were in wait.

 

Can’t wait for this to be what I think it is. Peter groaned aloud to himself. He’d been in this job long enough that he knew how to identify robbers, but with what he’d just been through, he couldn’t find the energy to do more than bemoan his luck.

 

I really don’t need this today… Company policy was to hand over whatever was asked for in the event of a robbery, but most couriers in the company chose to defend their goods anyways, or simply looked imposing enough that robbers didn’t bother in the first place. Peter had the highest rate of failed deliveries in the company, and it wasn’t even close.

 

He glanced away to the forest, a brief thought of somehow running, of trying to preserve his paycheck, wondering if on the off-chance there might be anywhere convenient he could slip away to in the inert trees surrounding, but he knew that was a terrible idea. He’d have a better chance trying to take on all three of these guys than going back there of his own free will. 

 

Peter managed a smile. His life was too absurd not to laugh at a little. 

 

“Your money or your life,” came the well-rehersed signature line of the middle horse rider, a man with a tied and knotted beard and short hair, brandishing a scimitar as he approached.

 

“My money,” Peter replied without missing a beat. 

 

Robber peered down at him as if he was crazy, and the gruffness of his voice vanished like it’d been part of a stage routine. “That’s it? Not gonna freak out or anything?”

 

“Why?” Peter shrugged. “Does something different happen if I say no?”

 

The highwayman just stared at him, mouth hovering open. “Uhh… I guess not?”

 

Peter nodded at him. “Exactly. There’s a crate in the back full of silver candlesticks, and another with plates and cutlery. Fasten them properly, or they’ll get scratched up.”

 

The bandit dismounted his horse and looked at him like he was a complete weirdo. Maybe he was. The other two followed suit, one a huge bearish man to the degree it was surprising his horse could carry him.

 

“I’m not gonna cut you in for acting helpful, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

 

“I didn’t think so. I just want this done and over with.” His back ached. His calves felt sore.

 

“Alright… Maybe you should go train up and be a hero of something, if you’re this cool under pressure.”

 

“I’m not. I’d be shaking if I hadn’t been through this so many times.”

 

“Yeah, whatever.” He turned and motioned to the other two. “You heard him, go get the shit.”

 

Peter leaned back on the side of the cart as the two other bandits began taking crates off of his cart and affixing them to a small carriage that sat at the back of one of the horses. The crates were too heavy for Peter to realistically carry, but the bandits managed it easily enough. The leader stood and pulled out a cigarette, before extending the leaf-wrapped package to Peter.

 

He thought about it for a moment, but refused. 

 

“It’s nothing personal, y’know,” leader said as he lit and inhaled deeply. Leader flicked ash and gave him a grim smile. “Suppose you get paid whether this shit gets delivered or not, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Peter lied. He started peeling another orange, realising his hands had begun to shake a little. 

 

“Listen, we’ll be out of your hair in a minute. Just try to relax.”

 

“I’m fine.” He didn’t feel scared. His fingers felt numb. Black cat mewled from the back of the cart as the two men continued to remove crates. Peter was surprised that it hadn’t run off in the commotion. This cat seemed to have pretty terrible self-preservation instincts.

 

He really wanted them to hurry up and go.

 

Before long, all of the crates appeared to be loaded, and the big, bearish looking bandit emerged from the back of the cart with a small package wrapped in paper. “You still hungry, boss?”

 

Peter put the orange down, feeling his trembles abate. He stared at the package bear man was holding. Are they?..

 

“Nah, I’m fine. You take it.”

 

“He’s got some booze in here, too!” Came a high-pitched, foreign voice from the back. “Hey, howcome you ain’t tell us you had booze!”

 

“That’s mine,” Peter said, his voice somewhat hollow. He felt his fists clenching. “That’s all I’ve got…”

 

“It’s what?” Bear man asked, advancing on him all of a sudden, and leader made no attempt to stop him. He squared up to Peter, closing the distance in three quick strides. 

 

He was at least a foot taller than him, and could likely snap Peter like a twig.

 

Peter didn’t care anymore.

 

Peter’s stance shifted. He squared his shoulders, straightened his posture. His body didn’t ache, or if it did, he didn’t notice. He didn’t look to the leader for an olive branch, he didn’t look to the forest for escape. He couldn’t even explain what had sparked it in him, but right now, his eyes could only find those of the goliath towering over him, his food in hand, lording over him like he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

“That’s my fucking booze,” Peter repeated, his voice like steel. He pointed a finger to him, jabbed it into his chest. “You already took my cargo, put my drink back...”