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CH 8: Meat
🕑 Added 2024-11-21 17:34:34 +0000 UTCReid groaned, fatigued and bleeding on his cushy bed of moss. Part of him - a large part - just wanted to sleep, and worry about all his problems later. He felt like his entire existence was fighting and traveling. He had no idea where the next threat would come from, and the enemies he was facing were getting more difficult to take down.
He looked again at the notification.
Coyote lvl 5 defeated. Bonus exp awarded.
Almost every coyote he'd fought so far were level ones - in the first pack, and the second, smaller one. But the small pack's leader, their fighter, was a monster by comparison.
Reid had, even in his brief time with the power, gotten used to fully obliterating his foes. When he'd stabbed at the final beast, every part of him KNEW it was a killing blow. Knew that it would devastate the creature as he buried his arm up to the elbow. But the coyote had been made of sturdier stuff than its brethren.
It... made sense. Reid had only been level 3 when he started tearing the coyotes apart - in a very literal way. And that was with only seven points in power. If he'd been able to put points into strength, he could have broken it with a single blow like the rest. Or - his mind went through every path closed to him by the loss of his points. That brought on another realization.
He needed to check it again.
He had been ready to level up before this fight, which meant gaining more free points to spend. Or not. It was the only way to know more about what had happened to him. He focused, a bit reluctantly, on the status screen thread in his mind. Reid startled at how easily it came to him. He'd barely begun to try and focus in, but the status screen was already sitting in his vision.
-
STATUS
Name: Reid Oliver Calderwall
Affiliation: "Earth"
Race: Human
Grade: G
Level: 4
Health: 11/20
Experience: 270/400
STATS:
Constitution: 2
Dexterity: 2
Intelligence: 1
Perception: 1
Power: 7
Control: 23
Stat Upgrade Points: ERROR
SKILLS:
Strengthening [Basic]
Hardening [Common]
Calcification [Uncommon]
Petrification [Rare]
Skill Upgrade Points: ERROR
RESTRICTED:
???: UNAVAILABLE
???: UNAVAILABLE
???: UNAVAILABLE
???: UNAVAILABLE
-
He sighed. The errors were still there, and the five points he'd earned from gaining a level had already gone straight into control. That meant whatever the shackle had done to him was going to keep stealing away his points and shunting them into the single stat. He also had no idea where his skill upgrade points were going. Based on how easy it was to gain ranks, Reid guessed that he would soon be falling behind the average person in ability. If he couldn't get this fixed, he would be completely useless in a fight against anything stronger than the coyote leader.
He quieted his worry and dismissed the status screen, then pushed his senses into himself again, towards the stat tree from before. Pain blossomed in his head as he neared it, like the mental equivalent of stepping on a Lego. He recoiled instinctually for a moment. The pain didn't subside, and Reid pushed himself through it to get to the area where his points had once resided. What had been a tree with limbs he could reach now felt like a telephone pole. There was only a straight, unnatural path from the free points area to control. Each other stat was visible, but completely separated from the structure, like all the limbs had been clipped away.
He searched for a few moments, and found what he was looking for. The skills were still there, almost entirely obscured by a thick fog. They, too, looked like clipped limbs of a tree as they floated by themselves outside the central spine. He tried reaching out to them, through the fog. It made his head pain spike to a new level, and Reid retreated entirely from the stats and skills tree. Cradling his head, he rocked back and forth in the moss.
Now, everything hurt. His stomach rumbled, and his arm was still bleeding. He couldn't touch his own stats or skills without a massive burst of pain, and had no idea of how to fix the damage the shackle had done to him.
But, at least he could fix his headache. Reid focused in on the pain, and found himself pushing it down and soothing it a bit more quickly than before.
On a hunch, he pushed his focus down into himself again. This time, though, he focused on his left arm, starting at the bicep. It was a structure damaged, with a series of wounds made by the teeth of the coyote. Tiny mechanisms were pushing blood there, clotting the wound and sending more cells to regrow flesh and skin. Reid pushed further, feeling like a 'zoom and enhance' sequence was taking place inside his body. He could see his blood vessels, running through... bits of information came back to him, flashcards and textbooks he'd helped Susan study. Dermis. That skin was the dermis. Below that, was... hypodermis? Subcutaneous something? He couldn't quite place the name, but he kept pushing deeper down until he reached the muscle.
He felt out through his muscles, torn strands yearning to connect, and imagined and willed them to grow back together. Minutes passed, but he refused to break his concentration. Eventually, he felt two centers of… something empower the muscle fibers and give them more structure. Slowly, strands of muscle reached out and connected to each other before anchoring themselves back to bone. His arm felt like it was on fire and his headache was slowly returning, but Reid pressed on anyway. He moved up, mentally sewing flayed skin back together. He lost focus for a moment as pain and heat overwhelmed him, but progressed stich by stich as the skin on his arm slowly healed. He pushed, up and down his left arm, puncture by puncture. He repaired the damage, endured the growing feeling of heat, and the growing headache plaguing him.
He panted, pulling his focus out of his arm and taking in his surroundings again. The clearing was still just him and the beast corpses. His head pounded, making it hard to focus. Reid took a few minutes to steady it and push back the pain. Opening his eyes again, he looked down at his left arm. The sleeve of his shirt was in tatters, and he ripped it away before using what was left of the thing to wipe blood off of himself. Underneath the blood, though-
Reid marveled at it. Pink, fresh skin dotted him where the coyote had punctured his flesh. His hand to his shoulder was entirely, completely whole. It burned, deep into the skin and down into his muscle, but his arm was healthy. He flexed it, and felt a few uncomfortable pulls of freshly healed muscle. So, it wasn't perfect. Not quite as 'magical' as the healing shackle had done for him, but he had healed a bit of himself.
This was good. He'd been looking for a way to manage injuries with the shackle asleep, and he felt he was on the right track. It wasn't anywhere near instantaneous, but as long as he won his fights and had time, he could work on himself. It came with consequences - his arm was in a massive amount of pain, and his headache still pulsed dully with every heartbeat, but that felt like a damn good tradeoff for not bleeding to death.
Speaking of - Reid looked at his right arm. It was still an absolute mess. His leg still had some wet blood. And there were scrapes all over him that - if he was being honest - he was worried would get infected from the forest or from whatever was in coyote saliva. He took a few large breaths through his nose, and plunged into the work.
#
As dawn broke over the forest, a man convulsed violently with his eyes clenched shut, so hot to the touch that the moss under him had begun to wilt. He wore a grim determination on his face, as bits of parted skin slowly grew back together in real time.
#
When Reid opened his eyes again, the forest was lit in daylight. His head still ached, but the work he'd done to dull the pain before he passed out was effective enough that he could see and think clearly. His body ached in multiple places, but the most prominent one right now was his stomach. Groaning, he flopped over on his side, then his hands and knees as he slowly brought himself upright.
Around him lay the night's gruesome aftermath. Half the clearing was strewn with body parts and blood, with some resting on low tree branches, like sausages in a butcher shop. Reid's stomach grumbled again. He realized, with a bit of concern, that he was so hungry, he was subliminally thinking about eating the gore up in the trees. He turned, and inspected the deer.
Its antlers were as vicious up close as they'd seemed from afar, and Reid drew a pinprick of blood testing the ends with a finger. He sucked on it as he crouched down. At least some of the corpse was unspoiled, and looked like it would be safe enough to eat. Now, he just needed fire.
#
Reid swore as wind once again prevented his attempt. He'd used his knife, and a bit of early childhood memories with dear old dad to put together everything he needed to start a fire. He longingly thought once again about different his trek would've been if he had his pack. There was a little tool in there he could've scraped against his knife to make sparks, instead of doing things the hard way. He set back to work again, shielding the bits of wood with his body.
#
The sun was high overhead as Reid turned his skewers over the fire. It had taken much longer than he hoped, but Reid had successfully started the thing, grown it to something respectable, and cut what seemed to be good pieces of meat out of the deer. Now, he had different sized bits turning on shaved down branches braced against rocks to keep them from falling into the flames.
It was a bit of survival ingenuity, he told himself as he salivated. With the smaller pieces, they'd cook quicker, and let him ingest something as soon as possible. Then, the larger pieces would be finished later on. And the moment of truth was almost at hand. Without a thermometer, Reid had decided the safest way to do this was letting the outside layer brown, and the smallest piece was finally there.
With growing anticipation, he pulled the skewer out, and put the meat onto a flat-ish, clean-ish rock before slicing it in half with his knife. He beamed. The inside was cooked through, and Reid wasted no time popping it into his mouth.
It burned his mouth a bit, but he chewed into it anyway, savoring even the gamey, slightly greasy piece of meat. It was good...ish. All too quickly, it was gone, and he turned his attention back to the second smallest chunk, still cooking over the fire.
Soon, he thought.
#
It was another five agonizingly long hours before Reid had 'finished' eating his fill and cooking the rest. He'd overcooked the larger pieces, and they were entirely dry. But Reid was happy, even for that. It had reminded him of something that would help him immensely - jerky. It had only taken the first hour to finish cooking the regular meat. The last four were spent tending to the thin strips he'd let the fire and smoke dry out. He'd architected a crude set of hangers for the meat, hoped he'd gotten the temperature right, and spaced the strips out to try and keep the airflow good.
Now, he smiled as he pulled a piece apart. It was stiff in his hands, and he could see the little white fibers - feathering, he remembered - that meant it was done.
He'd looked around for a bit after that, lost on what to do next, until he finally caved and went with his first idea on how to store and transport his new rations. He gave one look back at the clearing as he crested the small hill and continued towards his waypoint, grateful for the deer, and to the coyotes for giving him room to better understand his capabilities. Both his shirt sleeves were gone entirely, and his shirt hung open completely now, like a vest on some low-budget 80's action hero. The idea of having abs was still new and - admittedly - a bit exciting to Reid, so who would really judge him for showing them off? He was still a bit hungry, even after his earlier deer feast. But if being able to heal himself was just a matter of pain and proper portions, he could deal with that.
A ways into his walk, Reid reached down and pulled out a strip of meat. He blew on it a bit to get some junk off, then bit into the tough snack.
After all, who didn't like pocket jerky?
