In the Shadow of Mountains - a litRPG adventure

*Shiani*

Shiani flinched in sudden pain, jerking to her feet. She fought down a scream as the raw stump of her arm pushed off the earth in the process, but there was no time for tears.

Some pulsating, writhing mass of muscle was stuck to her leg, sharp needles digging into the meat of her thigh and trying to drag her further into the river she had passed out beside. She stared dumbly in horror for a few heartbeats, trying desperately to understand what she was seeing before her training kicked back in.

Stumbling toward the river, she summoned a blade of chi and slashed straight through the appendage before falling to her knees weakly.

Adrenaline was already starting to fade, having been pumping through her body for what felt like days. The stump of her left arm ached and blood was already welling from bite marks in her thigh as she cast around for the origin of the attack.

A form, grotesque and slimy and large as an ox slipped away on the other side of the river, and she gladly watched the Unguent Toad flee. She had no energy left to fight it if it chose to stay. Her core was empty and refilling slower than ever. The environmental chi was thin in these hills to begin with, and the ongoing exertion and exhaustion only further diminished the rate at which she could draw it in.

She gathered herself for one last push, and stumbled away from the river, heading along its bank until she stumbled across a clearing to her left. A single stone slab stood, stabbed into the earth with clear intent. She collapsed against it, legs unable to support her, and simply hoped somebody would come by soon to help.

She had been so hopeful after that first day. Convinced they would catch her in the night, she’d watched the light fade and return whilst huddled in the stump of an overturned tree, contemplating her death. Seeing the sun again had allowed hope to bloom in her heart though. She’d been drastically under-levelled for her position within the Lions, but no creature in these hills should pose much danger to her, barring the great predators that loom large over every wild place.

She’d set off out of the valley in the opposite direction to the ambush where her team had been brutalised by their assailants. That was days ago, and since then it had been nothing but an unending barrage of ambushes and failures, chipping away at her optimism piece by piece.

Severely injured, alone, and with little survival training to speak of, she’d run and stumbled her way down towards the grasslands, hoping to get away from the unforgiving hills and their dreadful creatures. She looked at the signet ring on her hand, remembering her promise to her father.

‘come back a daughter I can be proud of, or don’t come back at all’

She sniffed to herself, leaning back against the stone menhir and trying to fight down the lump in her throat. A howl echoed around the valley, joined a moment later by a chorus of voices. Looked like it was going to be the latter.

As it turns out, sleep winning the war for supremacy in my mind yesterday was a good thing. Nothing came for me or my food in the night and I slept like a toddler – meaning I woke every few hours and complained bitterly about it.

The pre-dawn light filtered into my cave to illuminate my meagre belongings as I moved through some simple stretches and stances. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but some yoga in my old life and my Improvised Weapons skill did make it feel somewhat useful. While I doubted I’d be winning any contests for the world’s most convincing monk, I did feel a hair more calm and centred as I packed up and began to trudge onwards.

I breathed in the crisp mountain air and sighed to myself. I had no plan currently for dealing with the rest of the pack, but I had food enough for a few days at least, and water was plentiful up here. I could endure, and that was as far as I needed to think right now.

Perhaps it was the noticeably thinner air up here on the ridgeline, or it might be a result of spending most of the morning in a meditative state of slow movement, but I didn’t feel the need to plan. Life would throw whatever it had in store at me, and I would either endure as I had so far, or I would break.

I could hardly be blamed for lacking confidence in my decision-making at this point. I’d stumbled my way into more deadly situations than I could count, and the only thing I could reliably call a win was my current state of ‘still alive’.

Spending so much time by myself was a strange experience. I’d been alone in wilderness before for a few days at a time, even over a week for one memorable trip in my early twenties, but this was a whole new level of isolation. In some ways I was thankful for the wolves – they had at least granted me a purpose I’d began to lack over the last few days.

Before my frantic run to the ridgeline, my moods had begun to shift on a whim from moment to moment. I would wake one morning bursting with purpose, running through a hundred different options and planning out the next six days of my journey in detail. Sleep would claim me as I calculated how long it would take me to reach the trade outpost, only to wake the next day with no motivation whatsoever. I would walk where my feet carried me, enjoying whatever food left over until hunger drove me to hunt and forage again.

The landscape of my motivation rose and fell with the land I moved across, peaks of purpose leading inexorably into valleys of emptiness before I would once again climb out of the depressive state. It was at these peaks that I would run laughing through the valley trails, dodging obstacles with wild abandon and running only as a child can – with pure joy and nothing held back in reserve. I’d collapse satisfied, having purged the negative emotions from my body along with the sweat on my brow.

This morning’s gentle exercise left me feeling similarly empty as on my worst days, when I would sit for an entire morning and wait for the world to give me a reason to just do something. But unlike those days of nothingness, I didn’t feel wrung out. I felt empty, but ready to be filled back up again. There was a space in my soul, one so often stretched to capacity, that now felt empty and hungry for something.

I needed to follow Jorge’s frustratingly brief instructions and get something more out of my levels than simply another attribute to allocate. I needed to think about my skills, focus on both my past and future progress, and visualise a path that I could grow into.

Instead, I walked. I would have preferred to run, but even with my Sure-Footed and Running skills, the ridgeline was treacherous. There was no path per se, but animal tracks appeared and disappeared randomly, and when combined with the rocky spine that mounted the ridge like a dorsal fin on a shark, I could scramble my way along in the right direction.

I let the technical terrain lull me into a rhythmic sort of meditation. The world beyond my next few steps ceased to matter as I kept my head down and legs moving, letting my mind fully tackle the problem in peace, without the interruption of bodily sensation.

I thought of the journey I had been on so far; the things I had accomplished, the obstacles overcome. The change to both mind and body, and the unbelievable things that could be possible in time. How my skills – relatively down to earth though they may seem right now – could grow into incredible wonders with which I could breakthrough all of my previous limitations. Even the way I saw the world would change.

My sense of self had already begun changing with what was now possible, let alone what could be in the future. How would my worldview change then? To answer that I needed to know how I saw the world now, and that was a whole other kettle of fish.

I retreated from that line of thinking reluctantly after a few moments. Jorge hadn’t said it was a philosophical endeavour, more of a metaphysical one. Although I couldn’t be sure what his exact words were by this point and whether I was misremembering or attributing to him words that I had entirely made up myself.

Focus. ‘Representation’ and ‘visualisation’ were definitely things he’d said, along with ‘progress’ – both past and future. What tied them all together? I could trace my path from here all the way back to the mountain I’d emerged from so many days ago. Could I do the same for my growth? I visualised it in my mind, a path that wound from one place to another, littered with landmarks of the events that had granted me the experience I’d used to level.

It did nothing, so far as I could tell. I tried again, imagining a map filled with details about my progress, but that had the same issue. I tried focusing on my skills instead, and their growth. Seeds that grew into trees, spreading their branches wide and drinking in the sunlight of my soul. That sounded appropriate in my head, but nothing happened with that one either, no matter how hard I held the visualisation.

I was clearly missing something, but I was all out of ideas. Trees, mountains – things that resonated with me; it didn’t seme to matter. I couldn’t seem to hold the image in my head for long. I could picture each skill alone but drawing them all together at once was too much. And what bound them together?

I tried to think of my soul, of the well of energy that I drew from to activate my skills. When using the fire-lighter pebble, I had to force something open, to allow a trickle of something leave me and connect with the magical runed device. What was that thing?

A core. It held energy, and I could spend it on skills perhaps? I tried thinking of it like a bank. Complex modern economies with their tangled strings of debts? No luck either it seemed. The whole mental exercise collapsed in on itself again.

I was lost, and flailing by this point, letting single word-associations dictate my visualisation. Perhaps it needed to be something more significant to me personally. If I was particularly religious, could I use an existing metaphysical framework to map my path onto? Probably, but that wasn’t very helpful to me considering my lack of faith.

What did I find significant? The natural world obviously, but that hadn’t worked earlier when I tried. Maybe I was being too narrow. I needed an image that could represent every aspect of my growth, from when I arrived to when I died. So why didn’t I just visualise everything?

How many times had I stared out past the canopy and up at the stars? Twinkling patterns of light that represented entire solar systems – unmatched potential hiding behind a single dot against the darkness.

Seemed almost like a cop out, but who said I had to visualise each detail? Lights in the darkness, patterns made from both structure and movement. Their orbits could describe the arc of my life, and each skills could be its own constellation. The energy of the universe acting to light up each skill, to speed its movement and trace its patterns in vibrant coronae.

My thoughts raced as I became more excited with the visual. The image stayed firm in my mind, not static like the others but ever-moving, dimming and brightening with focus on each skill.

And all at once, something clicked into place.

Minimum requirements for class gain reached, initialising…

Begin class allocation?

I hesitated for a moment before mentally giving my assent.

Class allocation beginning….

As soon as the words entered my mind, I lost control of it entirely. Everything that was me dissipated and it was as if my brain was being given instructions by another entity. I had no control over the direction of my thoughts, and I flailed in absolute nothingness for a brief eternity. Everything snapped back into place, and I found myself, without conscious desire, considering what I truly wanted.

Why was I striving so hard to get to that outpost? I could stay here for ever if I wished. I knew I could continue to hunt for years without exhausting the quite frankly absurdly fecund valley I lived in. I could work on my skills, leverage Simple Traps into some sort of Simple Construction skill perhaps, and build myself a home worthy of any secluded enlightened monk on earth. There was no time limit, I could stay and experience the wilds like I never could before. A second chance at life, to connect with the world in a way my hippiest tendencies could hardly dream of.

It was romantic in a way, and I indulged the dream for long miles as I clambered over rocks and twisted past outcroppings of jagged stone. This valley, and those surrounding it, could truly be a home in time. A harsh life, living off the land and blurring the lines between myself and the world around me.

I smiled as the dream crystallised in my mind and I began to map out the steps I would need to take to get there – barely any if I seriously thought about it. I was already living off the land, a hermit of the valley with all the skills needed to survive here.

A faint ringing intruded on my dream, but I was too wrapped up in my own musings to do more than acknowledge it before forcing it to the back of mind.

Prerequisites met, support class available – Hillbound Hermit.

Hillbound Hermit – uncommon. You have spent your entire life in the wild, and in the wild you shall stay. The endless valley has left its mark upon you, and you shall stay to leave your marks upon it in return. Foraging, hunting, building, survival – these are the skills of a Hillbound Hermit, and they will allow you to make your home far from civilisation. The only company you require is the world around you, so become a part of it yourself.

Ultimately though, the romantic vision I was weaving was far from reality. I had nearly died more times than even I really knew, and I had spent far too much effort focused solely on killing.

I remembered the hunger robbing me of my strength some evenings as I tried to ignore the clawing feeling in my belly. I remembered scrabbling in the dirt looking frantically for the raspberry I’d dropped, knowing it was likely all I would eat that day. Even the fear for my life during a hunt gone wrong returned in surprising clarity and I relived that pain and fear for a few moments.

The ringing in my head intensified as I did so but I fled back into myself from the ugly emotions and memories linked to it.

Prerequisites met, combat class available – Wilderness Hunter.

Wilderness Hunter – uncommon. Far from civilisation, the valleys team with life. Boars rut and deer bound, and so too do the hunters lurk. You may now count yourself among their number. You have stalked prey throughout the wilds, using your body and mind to bring them low. All have their niche in this world, and you have used your advantages to level the field, casting down prey stronger and larger than yourself. Even the predators of this world acknowledge you as a peer, falling to you and hunting you in equal measure. Patience and movement, deception and savagery – these are your tools, and with them you will bring the hunt to the mightiest of prey.

Instead, I focused on the moments I cherished the most; the wind in my face, the land opening before me as I pounded down tracks and rushed through beautiful terrain. I recalled the flow state I would achieve, where time would pass in blinks and the ground beneath my feet would ebb and flow with my movements. Every muscle in my body was in alignment, my entire being condensed into a single purpose – to move. I recalled the solace I could find in the simple act of running, that first expression of humanity at its core, and I tried to hold it in my mind.

Prerequisites met, support class available – Wind Runner

Wind Runner – common. Running is core to your being, and a core skill you have raised. As the sun rushes across the sky, so too do you rush across the ground ever onwards. Spread your joy through movement and let the whole world open up before you.

The bells in my head were pounding now, refusing to be ignored. A staccato rhythm of tinkling windchimes and falling pottery swirling around and around, but no matter the size of the symphony, a discordant note would draw the ear. I felt something missing, some indefinable sense of wrongness and longing, pushing me to again ignore the overwhelming mental noise.

Why was I running though – simply for the thrill? As an expression of love and happiness and beauty? It seemed such a fitting dream for my soul and yet it was hollow, as if a landscape viewed through a glass window. A picture in a display, fenced off by a delicate rope barrier. An animal in a zoo.

A sense of distance that could never be closed, to run through nature but never to be a part of it. To express joy through every movement but never be still long enough to examine it, understand it or even truly feel it. The ringing in my head grew to a crescendo, spinning around the inside of my skull in a rapid dance of disorientating, totalising noise demanding my attention.

I pushed back, everything that was me, and everything that wasn’t, fighting against the feeling of wrongness emanating from the noise, from the text that sought to define my life and set forth my future.

It was wrong, it was incomplete.

I needed the joy to balance the pain, the exhilaration of the hunt to balance the lonely monotony of the wilderness. But I also needed the hardship. Without challenge I would fall into myself and never come out. I had seen the consequences of a lack of direction, and it was nothing but stagnation.

I was clinging to my only true goal to reach the outpost and for what? My erstwhile companions would be gone by the time I reached it, and I had known them collectively for about half a morning and exchanged fewer words with all three than I did with myself in an hour.

No, I was hanging on so desperately to that thin spectre of a goal because without it I was lost. Truly and hopelessly lost, with no purpose but survival. And I knew that instinct would not last in the face of the drudgery and pain and boredom and endlessness of life without a reason to live it.

I needed a challenge, and I needed the ability to measure up to it. And then I needed that again and again and again. The noise in my head was deafening and agonising, but it paled before the existential dread of a future filled without purpose.

I wanted highs and lows that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. I craved something new, something different and unpredictable. I needed the chaos of people. I could pass through the mountains and hills, the wilds of the world and explore every wonder it held, but I needed something to return to, someone to share my experience with, some sense of community and comradery that I would never find without my own people.

The noise abruptly stopped and I could open my eyes again, no needles of stabbing pain remaining behind them.

Prerequisites met, combat class available – Blood of the Hills

Blood of the Hills – rare. You have drunk deep of the hill’s blood, and thus have you been changed. Food, water and shelter – all have been provided by the hills, and all you have taken. The endless valley is a land of contradictions, and none embody them more so than you. You will live through highs and lows, but as the hills have withstood the elements for millennia, so too will you endure. Find succour in the depths and purpose at the peak, for your soul has been marked by their presence.

Class selected – Blood of the Hills. Reconfiguration beginning…

Abruptly my body stopped moving and my mind returned to me.

The forced introspection I had endured left me reeling, thoughts heavy and slow to coalesce. I managed to notice the lack of sunlight, and the darkness creeping up the valley-side heralding the rapid onset of night.

My hands still clenched my belongings tightly – even the dead mole that had pushed me over to level 15 still clutched protectively by my right hand. My feet must have been following their own design as I did not recognise the surroundings.

I had been trapped within my own mind for most of a day by the looks of things, and as I examined myself and the surroundings more closely, panic began to rise in my chest. I must have covered dozens of miles, and now my body refused to respond to my commands. My vision began to darken at the edges, and I had time for one last view of the world as it tilted sideways.

As my head rested on the hard ground, leaking a small trickle of blood from where it had impacted hard rock, I saw grass surrounding me, and no sign of the ridgeline in front. I had wondered without direction, following only the path beneath my feet. As the path had flowed down off the ridgeline without concern, so had I followed.

My eyes remained open, staring sightlessly forward but my vision was dark and empty. Only a single sound broke through into the silence left behind by the terrible ringing from moments before. A single howl on the wind, quickly echoed by others.

The wolves were out, and they had just found their prey.