Chapter 3 — The Way Ahead

Edwin woke up surprised, parched, and starving. Surprised because it was apparently sunset already? No wait. That was birdsong.

Despite Edwin’s growing awareness of a twig digging into the space between his shoulder blades, he didn’t get up immediately. Instead, he called up his status. While it didn’t show numbers, he

Edwin

Very Young

Human?

None

None

Athletics

Basic Mana Sense

Breathing

Flexibility

Sleeping

Status

Visualization

Walking

CharLimitCanttalkmuchNocluewhathappenedDidmybesttohelpyouli

Daredevil

Explorer

Linguist

Lumberjack

Path Less Traveled

Realm Traveler

Way of the Empty Hand

World Traveler

He vaguely wondered how he was supposed to level up his status. Just summoning and dismissing it stopped leveling it relatively quickly, though he half-remembered it leveling yesterday before he fell asleep. Was that his effort to not see the notifications? It had only half worked and he needed to fight himself to not check them, even hanging perilously above certain death, but it was better than them hijacking his visual processes and attention every time. He casually tried to ‘turn off notifications’, but while he supposed there was no way to tell if it worked, it didn’t feel like it had latched onto anything. Maybe he needed a higher level in his Status skill? How could he manage that? Could he edit his status?

Hmmm…

About 10 minutes later, he had managed to ‘hide’ his Skills, Paths, and Attributes, whatever they were. That left him with four categories, at least three of which were inaccurate.

Without information about how to get a class- was it level based? He didn’t seem to have an overall level, just for his skills- that was probably accurate, but he was absolutely human. It didn’t accept his insistence that he was just a ‘human,’ but after another couple minutes of wrangling, which felt almost like haggling, he had gotten it to display ‘Extraplanar Human’ as his race, and his age now actually showed 22. He got the vague sense of a clock clicking as he studied it, but he couldn’t get any concrete measurement of how long he had been on Joriah.

Fixing his name, by contrast, was as simple as enunciating the thought that,

Satisfied enough with the inaccuracies being fixed and the increased levels for the time being, he finally decided to do something about the stick digging into his back. It

His muscles straining- he certainly hadn’t been this active since before he went to college- Edwin lifted himself off the ground, first onto his hands and knees, then crouching, before finally standing up fully, stretching as he did so to help try and relieve some

While he no longer had to navigate a perilously thin slice of land, dodging the occasional tree, even being on relatively flat ground still wasn’t easy. The Sleeping skill apparently either was too low a level or just didn’t help with how bruised and scraped up he was, though he did feel a lot better and nicely rested, especially considering his sleeping conditions. Dragging himself towards the river, he was rewarded after just a few short minutes when he arrived at the top of the waterfall. Tons of water rushed by every moment, swept off the mountainside and into clouds of white which swiftly fell from sight. Falling in that river would mean he’d be very quickly either becoming the greatest swimmer of all time or finding out if he had developed general immunity to falling from the sky. Either way, he wasn’t about to risk it. Unfortunately, the side of the river he found himself on had no bank, the river curving slightly and carving a steep bank into the rock, putting Edwin a couple feet above the rushing waters, and there was no

Naturally, the other side, being on the inside of the curve and thus mostly shielded from the torrent of water eternally rushing by, had a nice bank and perfect access to the water.

There weren’t any trees around, and beyond the fact there wasn’t even the slightest chance he felt like trying to make that 20-foot jump from one side to the other, the slick stone- well, aside from that one patch right there with a bush in it that- no, stay focused Edwin- the

-and even if there were, he didn’t have any way to let him build a bridge or pole or anything useful out of them.

It was maddening, being so close to the water yet so far away.

Edwin poked at the ivy covering some of the nearby trees and ground leading up to the rock (it didn’t look like poison ivy, not that really meant all that much when pretty much everything looked slightly different), and found that while it detached from the tree trunk it was on surprisingly easily, it didn’t break or come down from the canopy with any force he could apply, even when he put his full weight on it.

Nope, still not trying it.

His luck seemed to not be uniformly terrible, though, and he was able to find

Thirst satisfied for the time being, Edwin allowed himself to relax with a sigh as he looked at the two notifications that blinked at him while he was drinking.

Interesting. Were those related? It brought up interesting questions about what it took to unlock a skill- was it connected to Paths somehow? None of the other Paths had unlocked a skill alongside them, but these two seemed pretty clearly connected.

“Further testing required.” He promised himself, “Further…” standing up was a struggle still, but far more manageable now that he was hydrated, “Testing… Required. Oh right, skills. Accept.”

“So! Food and shelter, then I’m all set,” Edwin broke himself out of his thoughts with a clap of his hands and a definite target to work towards. The river served as a useful landmark, one that he would absolutely need as he explored. And what better place to start his exploration than the cliff edge? There was bound to be a

“Whoa,” Edwin’s comment may have been drowned out by the roar of the absolutely

Trees stretched out for miles, blanketing the mountainside as the slope descended thousands of feet before leveling into a sprawling carpet of trees of all kinds. He strained his eyes to look as far as he could-

– and while he could see the endless expanse eventually came to an end, it was difficult to tell what lay beyond. That was only further complicated by the glittering variety of foliage he could see from here. As it turned out, the tops of the leaves weren’t black, but whatever structure made up the leaves made them ever so slightly reflective, and scattered throughout the mostly-green sea were patches where the trees were slightly blue, or red, or multicolored in a way that reminded Edwin of bubbles. Was there thin-film interference present on the

Very useful. He had to wonder at what point whatever bonus his levels presumably gave him would become apparent. None of his leveling had given him any obvious advancement, with the exception of his Status, which made it seem like it would take possibly dozens to hundreds of levels for any kind of tangible boost from his skills.

Anyway, he was still

Determination or not, though, it was still incredibly painful,

This was probably a good rate? He was absolutely pushing himself, and if fiction had taught him anything, that most likely meant this would be a fast improvement speed. He still wished it were faster, though.

Hungry or not, it was much easier walking next to the river than wandering through the woods. At least now he could get water whenever he wanted. His exploration bore fruit (heh) less than a mile upstream as the river split slightly, the offshoot forming a slow-running pool. Next to the pool, there was an almost picture-perfect wild grove, lush green grass surrounding a handful of what looked to be fruit-bearing trees, and framed in by a massive boulder covered in black, stringy moss. Back on Earth, this would have been the target of countless photographers. The beauty of the place only made Edwin more suspicious. What kind of fruit grove in a fantasy world wouldn’t be tended to by a dryad or something? Looking at the fruits, which bore a resemblance to a pear with the skin of a cherry, he was paradoxically relieved to see a few of them bore signs of being pecked on by birds. Wait, how could he see that so well at this distance?

Ah, that was how. Did his skills really provide that much of a benefit already? He’d need to reevaluate how much his skills were actually helping, if their effects were that subtle. Still, animal damage made it seem less likely that there was some supernatural force tending to the tree, though why the lower-hanging ones hadn’t been eaten by animals escaped him. Nonetheless, he approached it with caution, “Hello?” he asked the clearing, “Is it alright if I take some fruit? I haven’t eaten in three days.” When there was no response forthcoming, he picked up a couple of rocks from the shore and carefully ventured forwards, tossing the stones at the tree in case it were a mimic or something. Nothing happened as it clattered off the trunk, nor as it struck and knocked off a leaf. As his final test, he threw one as hard as he could at one of the fruits… and promptly missed. It took him a good half-dozen stones before one finally connected, making the pear-thing explode into a shower of juice, and providing yet another bonus.

Well, that seemed to confirm his suspicion about skills being tied to actually accomplishing something. Also that he had indeed managed to hide the first level-up notification, very nice. Still needed further testing, though. No need to fall into the Black Swan Fallacy, or whatever that was called. Not sure why he had gotten Throwing Weapons, though. Was it like Athletics? Was there no Climbing skill, or Rock Throwing skill? Was there an even more generic Ranged Weapons skill, and why hadn’t he gotten that one?

“Further testing required.” It was practically a mantra at this point, and he couldn’t

His first fruit was gone in seconds. As was the second and third. By the time he got to his fourth, he was beginning to slow down. He wondered how nutritious these fruits were, or if they were just tasty. Probably provided lots of fiber, and a frown crossed his face as he hoped the biochemistry of the fruit was close enough to what he was used to for his metabolism to work with it. It tasted slightly tangy- was it citric? He might need a better source of protein, but this should work for now. He paused as three notifications appeared- the first was an offered skill, which he quickly accepted.

There were some interesting things to take note of with this revelation. For one, apparently musing about chirality and vitamins was ‘demonstrating highly advanced knowledge,’ which implied unfortunate things about the technology of the world. Not that he really

Five cherry-pears (Perrys? Chears?) later, he was finally feeling full. It might not be sustainable in the long term, depending on what exactly Nutrition and Survival did and how strong they were, but it would keep him alive for the time being. Food and water now taken care of; Edwin’s next goal was to find some kind of shelter. Ideally it would be a cave, though he might be able to make some form of lean-to if he found a downed tree and enough thick branches to form a structure.

As he left the grove, he began to climb the boulder, finding much to his surprise that the black moss was just patches amongst a similar moss, only stone-grey and completely covering the rock. It was so thick, in fact, that he couldn’t even

Perfect.

Oh cool, just what he needed. Did it work on plants? He focused on trying to examine the moss, flexing the same mental ‘muscle’ he used to call up his Status.