LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 5 - New Heights
Almost any decision is better than no decision at all – unknown proverb
Weeks passed in a blur following my first successful hunt. My back was almost fully healed by this point, a couple of jagged scars present but nothing more, and the same was true of my shoulder. I sported a number of other fresh scars too, but only one injury – a clean bite through my waist, thankfully missing any major organs – required me to rest for a few days before it closed and I could continue on.
That had been a particularly scary encounter, where a small deer had surprised me with a nasty pair of fangs when I had closed in for the kill, gripping onto my side and refusing to let go even as I stabbed it through the chest with my horn. I had needed to jam my knife into its eye and physically pry its dead jaws apart to release myself from its grasp, and that had led to another emotional spiral at the brutality I was forced to endure and unleash to survive here in this new world. The pain perhaps didn’t help matters, but within only a few days, I was ready to hike again, and only a day later I had moved back to a light jog.
What I had received in abundance was experience. I’d levelled 8 more times, the rate slowing dramatically as I reached the double digits in level. Once I was dealing with creatures of a similar level, a single battle wasn’t enough to get me over the finish line, and it had been days since I had last levelled.
The miles were disappearing rapidly though, and I was only a few days out from reaching Cloven Rock by my best guess. It had teased me as I woke this morning, its dramatic rocky formation towering into the sky before me, rising prominently above the ridgeline it perched upon.
My skills had improved dramatically, and as I levelled, so too did my attributes. I had experimented slightly with the attribute allocation, and tried to see if I could get a sense for exactly what each attribute governed.
It was difficult to tell without investing a chunk at once into a single attribute to see immediate results, so I had saved the attributes from two consecutive levels to experiment with. I was again reminded how powerful a change even a single point could bring though as I had poured the bounty of my first level up since the boar into strength. I had expected to immediately feel stronger, and half expected to fill out with muscle in an instant.
I was half right, as I had felt an instant rush of power, my muscles flexing slightly, blood rushing to them and filling them with purpose but alas, no obvious physical changes abounded. I’d tried jumping and lifting a few rocks, but I couldn’t really tell much of a difference. I’d felt stronger, sure, but I had never really measured how I high I could jump or how heavy the rocks around me were before I’d allocated the point into strength for the first time.
My new strength made itself known however as soon as I’d started running. I could run fast now. Sure, a couple of kilometres an hour doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but when you experience that change instantly, shattering your previous baseline in a few strides and not slowing down? Yeah, that was a kick.
Without thinking another point was put into strength and I was off, racing down the goat-track like a bullet from a gun. I’d run faster than I ever had before and it felt like a strenuous run, not even an all-out sprint yet. With each step, my thigh muscles bunched and pushed my foot into the ground with force, rocketing me forwards, each pump of my arms feeling like it carried momentum I’d never before experienced.
Around this time was when I’d experienced the first lesson that everyone in this new world was presumably taught as a young child – don’t let your stats get out of balance. With 9 strength and only 5 agility, I was badly unbalanced. I could move with more force than I could control, and while I had always been sure-footed – and now had a skill to prove it -, I had made a mistake and the time to pay my dues had arrived. Misplacing my foot, I’d slammed to the ground and sprawled into a pile of limbs.
The problem became clear after some more testing and the next few days before I’d earned enough experience to level up again were some of the more painful ones in my recent history.
As soon as I could, I’d allocated my new stat point into agility, and again with the next point a day later after a lucky ambush on a couple of large salamander-looking creatures both at level 14. Another level a week later led to a final point into agility, before I switched back to strength for the next one, craving more of the new speed and power I could output with it.
It was then that I was faced with my next lesson; higher physical stats across the board came with problems of their own.
I could move much faster, for far longer than before, and had a much better sense for my own body. I found my balance easier, could change direction smoothly even towards the upper limits of my pace, and had excellent control and awareness of my own momentum and sense of balance. All good so far. The issue was that I was struggling to keep track of this wave of proprioceptive information constantly flowing into my mind.
My next level’s share went straight to cognition and instantly things cleared. I could finally process at the same speed my body could move at, months of reaction training condensed into a single glorious moment.
I slowly began stalking larger prey, and even risked fighting animals on a roughly equal footing. Of course, I’d made sure to have a backup plan or escape route mapped out just in case things went sideways, but the repeated levels and immediate changes produced by raising my attributes in quick succession had built a hunger within me to see what I could do. Was I truly capable of wrestling a wild animal to the ground and killing it? As it turns out, yes and no.
I still couldn’t match the raw physicality of most creatures my level, and I wasn’t sure if this was because they had no attributes and were just wild animals like from Earth, or whether they did have attributes and spread them in a more specialised manner.
It was certainly true that the fanged deer – a Vampiric-Deer as the system in my brain had dubbed it, which had given me a hell of a fright for a few days until I was certain I wouldn’t turn into a vampire myself from the bite – was much more agile than me, and the Bloodmane Hill Boar far more tough, but those specialisms came with a subsequent weakness in other areas.
So while I couldn’t wrestle a boar to the ground, I could certainly knock over and dominate a small deer. Different creatures required different approaches, and the benefit of my more rounded attributes became clear as I used my skills – Simple Traps and Improvised Weapons in particular – to great effect to overcome most challenges I faced.
Most challenges, not all, because I was still forced to flee from some especially terrifying creatures that I had no desire to test myself against just yet. When I had first arrived in this new world, my pride had skittered away on its many metaphorical legs at the first threat to my life. I had scavenged like a rat amongst the dead, stealing corpses to devour in hiding, and I had done so without shame. My continued survival, and rapid growth in both power and competence, had my pride slinking slowly back into the light, but it was still skittish enough that any sign of a large hunting cat or many-toothed lizard would send it running for the hills, and me along with it.
The attribute from my most recent level went into perception to boost my senses, and hopefully give me some advanced warning of any predator seeking to make me their prey before they struck.
Ancestry: Human (unevolved)
Level: 14
Class: None
Titles: God-Touched
Attribute allocation:
Strength: 10
Agility: 8
Endurance: 13
Perception: 10
Cognition: 9
Available stats: 0
As I set to the grisly work of butchering my most recent kill with a smile on my face, I heard a sound that made the it freeze in place. The combined hunting calls of at least a dozen overgrown wolves shattered the peace of my valley. I could see them silhouetted on the ridgeline, small shapes standing out starkly against the setting sun. They howled in a discordant harmony, over and over again, proclaiming their position as predator and all others as prey.
I stared mutely for long seconds, the partly dissected corpse in front me of entirely forgotten. My earlier ecstasy and joy dissipating as the harsh noises continued above the valley. I could probably kill one or two before they took me down, perhaps a few more if I used what little time remained before they reached me to prepare some surprises. I couldn’t take out the whole pack though, and I would be cornered quickly.
So it was either head down and hope to cross the river, or head up to Cloven Rock and hope for a wall the wolves couldn’t scale or climb around. Given that I was pretty sure wolves could swim just as well as I could, only one decision seemed sensible.
The month or so out here alone had certainly taken its toll on my sanity, but there were advantages to my fragile mental state. For one, I no longer spent much time deliberating on a decision. What was the point when I had nobody to bounce ideas off?
And so I started to run.
I tried to take this seriously, I really did. I knew that I was in danger, and any delay here could cost me literally an arm and a leg, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I was having too much fun.
I had never felt so alive, and gratitude poured from my soul that I could experience this, no matter how briefly. Sunlight beat down upon the bare skin of my back, encouraging beads of sweat to form small trickling paths down to pool on the waistband of my trousers.
My socks were tucked into my boots, which were themselves trussed up neatly with my shirt inside my cloak. I had tied the makeshift cloth satchel into a tight bundle and strapped it under my left arm with some twisted vines of ivy I had scavenged, my Simple Traps skill nudging me towards the supplest vines I could find. That had been an interesting thing to learn – I could gain innate knowledge from the skill only if I was intending to use it for its stated purpose, but the knowledge stayed with me afterwards.
While looking for a vine to use as a trip wire, I had instantly known that the thickest ivy branches would be less optimal than their smaller counterparts, due to their increased brittleness and lack of flex. This fact wasn’t wiped from my mind though, and while the knowledge wasn’t innate and intrusive – guiding my actions and decisions without conscious thought – I still had the memory and could learn from the experience as if the skill was a teacher.
I had my knife and fire-lighter tucked into my boots as well, and carried my broken horn in my left hand, with my right free to act as a counterweight to my body as I slipped past boulders and twisted with the animal trail below me.
Everything I could claim to own was strapped to my body, and I was still able to glide along mountain trails with ease. My breath was regular and steady, filling my body with energy with each inhale, and pushing myself further up the steadily climbing path with each exhale.
I was surrounded by a glorious vista, the natural world on full display, unmarred by even a hint machinery or human presence. For once I thanked the haze hanging over the memories of my previous life, not able to recall and tally up the amount of time and money I must have spent trying to get away from busy city-life and to a view like this.
The constant feeling of separation, of distance between myself and the world around me, had slid away quicky during my first few weeks in this world, and now that I fully accepted the position I found myself in, I was able to truly savour the range of experiences on offer.
A single keening cry echoed off the slope to my left and a moment later a chorus of howls took up the call. I laughed in exhilaration as the hunting call of a dozen wild creatures chased me along the trail, promising blood if they caught me.
That was the thing though, that ‘if’ was starting to get more and more tenuous as the day wore on.
Much like humans, wolves from earth were endurance hunters, running their prey down over leagues and hours. Unlike humans though, they tended to reach their limits within hours of relatively high-speed chase. They were faster than I was, undoubtedly, but I had a significant head start thanks to their hunting call. While they were certainly closing the distance between us, I wasn’t tiring as quickly as most other prey animals would.
I was a human, built to exhaust prey not over hours, but days. Even without my enhanced attributes, I could run for hours at a time when faced with the threat of death, and my new body and skills made what would have previously been a fast run into a steady jog. For every mile I travelled, the wolves closed in on me, but the distance between me and Cloven Rock was shrinking just as rapidly.
How many people back on Earth would pay to run with wolves? And here I was, feeling the cool mountain breeze chill my skin in delightful contrast to the warm sun shining brightly above as I rushed through a titanic valley with a pack of wolves following along doggedly – excuse the pun – behind me. I’d always loved the flow state I could occasionally reach while running on a trail – where time slipped away, the miles meant nothing and the running felt almost effortless – but where before that feeling was fleeting, here it was constant.
All good things must come to an end though, and the end of this exhilarating experience came swiftly in the form of a 15 meter tall cliff face, sporting a wide crack climbing diagonally from about a meter off the ground right to the very top. The goat track I had been following ended at the base of the wall, forming a shallow basin filled with the indentations from hundreds of hoof prints – likely a small mountain lake during the wetter months. This dried lakebed spanned the dozen or so meters across the ridge, before another goat track extended down the other side.
My path was clear and so I scurried to the base of the wall and after stuffing my horn into my improvised cloak-pack, I started climbing. It wasn’t until I had gotten several meters off the floor and saw the first members of the pack on my tail emerge onto the ridgeline that I realised how close I was cutting it.
I frantically searched for secure handholds, taking risks I probably shouldn’t have to pull myself up the cliff face and into the crack. I turned my body into the rock, wedging my feet and hands against opposite sides of the crack and forcing my back into the cliff face. This gave me a great view of the wolves stalking forwards towards the cliff and the remaining joy from earlier fully fell away.
There were at least 20 of the creatures, and they looked very similar to the Tarkenzi Maned-Wolf I had killed long weeks ago. Long, slender legs supported slim bodies, their large paws padding silently through the dried lakebed. Elongated snouts swayed at the end of their sinuous necks, occasionally sniffing the air and yipping to one another.
I couldn’t tell if there was very little sexual dimorphism in this species, or whether they were all just males or females, but either way; they varied little from wolf to wolf. Two stood out though, standing taller and broader than the rest. By the way they moved through the pack, lazily brushing past other members to emerge at the front in a casual display of dominance, I assumed them to be the leading pair.
The comforting coolness of the rock behind my back was all that prevented me from trying to back away further from the unnerving gazes. I started to shimmy my way up the crack, spending extra care to keep my limbs braced in opposition to one another. Small pushes from my feet to lift me up a few inches, followed by bracing my shoulders to keep my upper body in place while I moved my feet up, before repeating.
I had spent a fair amount of time rock-climbing and while this cliff face was well within my abilities even before my increased attributes were factored in, I also knew that the majority of climbers fell to their deaths on climbs that they could easily handle. A momentary loss of focus was all it would take to see my overbalance and swing out of the chute, and that would be that.
I tried to put the wolves below me out of mind and focus on the climb, but a flurry of movement drew my attention. One of the larger wolves seemed to communicate with the rest of the pack, snarling and moving its head around in lithe, swaying patterns. The pack responded by splitting, half running around the cliff face on my side of the valley and skirting the bottom of the rocky section. The other half did the same on the opposite side.
I fervently hoped they wouldn’t find a break in the jagged knife-edge ridge soon but I knew it was a longshot to hope that the ridge would stay unbroken for miles. They had already spent at least an hour on my tail at this point so I doubted they would give up soon. Perhaps I could hole up overnight at the top of the cliff or further along the ridge. It might not be comfortable, but at least I would be safe from predators.
As the gap between us widened with my continuous slow movement up the rock, the largest two wolves continued to stare at me. As I passed the 10 metre point, they both sat on their haunches, presumably to avoid tilting their heads at such an angle to keep track of me, but they still didn’t move.
It was uncanny, being watched so intently as I slowly climbed away from them. I was half-convinced they were waiting for me to reach the top before springing up themselves and showing me the futility of my escape, but that was apparently too far-fetched. As I reached the lip and pulled myself over to slump down the other side, I caught a last glance at the pair of unmoving wolves below before I disappeared from sight.
Skill gained – Scrambling. Open skill slots available, skill integrated.