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CH 5: Status Screen
🕑 Added 2024-11-21 17:33:26 +0000 UTCReid sat on a dry patch of dirt with elbows on his knees. Broken bodies lay all around him, blood soaking into the soil.
He could clearly remember the first few kills, right up until he ripped one's jaw off. Everything after that felt like a blur of impressions, just a sense of rage, the feeling of bones snapping under his blows, and... so much blood. He wiped another bead of sweat off his forehead and let out a sigh.
He should be finding a water source to wash off in. Or trying to find his knife amid the carnage around him. He'd dropped it early on after his skill restriction release. Even if he didn't need it anymore to kill the beasts in the area, it was a gift from Sara.
Every year since she was 13, he and Susan had given her gift allowances. She'd originally asked them for a chore allowance, so she could 'really buy Christmas presents'. When they'd shot that idea down, she'd told them flatly that she would be babysitting for the neighbors and earning her own money. Reid smiled at the memory. They'd eventually compromised in giving her an 'allowance' each year that she could use to buy gifts for relatives and friends.
It was a good compromise. Neither Reid nor Susan wanted Sara to have to work, or grow up at all before she needed to. Sure, money was tight when they started, but they made it work, and Sara took it as a personal negotiation victory and spent days humming as she looked through every store catalogue that showed up in the mail. When she was 16, she started giving out more expensive gifts. That was when they'd learned that Sara was running her own videogame server and bringing in almost $200 a month - then turning around and spending almost all of that money on others. What little she bought for herself was mainly in board games and cards. More recently, there was also hiking gear.
And she'd used a good chunk of that money to buy Reid the knife sitting somewhere in the dirt. Reid groaned as he stood, muscles complaining from overuse.
The side effect to his new fighting prowess was a deep exhaustion. He didn't want to stand, much less move, and even his eyes felt strained. He'd happily pay this price again to fight off a pack of beasts, but Reid damn well wanted to just take a nap on the forest floor.
It took almost five minutes of searching to find the knife, half buried under one of the bodies. Dried blood had cemented dirt to the blade. Reid scraped it across his boot a few times to get most of the gunk off, but it was still dirty when he slipped it into the pouch on his belt. With the knife found, he could start making progress towards the beacon. And, hopefully, he could find a river or stream to wash himself off on the way.
"Hey, shackle. Is there any water near here?"
Reid let the words hang in the air for a few seconds.
"Helllooo? Can you hear me?"
A gust of wind whistled through the trees. The ground crunched as Reid shifted back and forth on his feet. Half a minute passed with no response.
A deep sense of unease spread through Reid. He was alone in the woods, he knew, but there was a difference between being by himself and being truly alone. He hadn't realized how much having someone to talk to was keeping him grounded until it was gone. But that wasn't productive thinking. Reid let out a sigh, and pushed the worry down. This wasn't the time to feel sorry, or worried. He was still in the coyote's domain, and more of them could show up and surprise him if he wasn't careful.
He needed to move. Reid turned to the inverted triangle that represented the Sanctuary Beacon, and started walking.
#
It was an hour after that he'd heard the sound of running water. It was cool, refreshing, and after a bit of hesitation, Reid had stripped himself down and washed off the mess of his fight. His pants, and what was left of his shirt were drying on low branches while Reid leaned against a tree in his boots and underwear, turning the knife in his hands.
#
Night fell on the forest. Reid couldn't see in the dark, but stubbornly walked into a half dozen roots and branches before he decided to stop for the night. He'd climbed partway up a tree to a particularly sturdy looking branch, then tied himself to it with his shirt. He fell asleep in a sitting position, bark pressed into his back.
Later, he woke groggily to howls carried through the forest, followed by the yips of a chase. There were more coyotes, and they were hunting. Reid's knife was already in his hand before he realized it. He admonished himself a bit. They couldn't reach him here, twelve feet up in the tree. It still took a bit of self control to put the knife away and allow himself to fall back asleep.
#
Wake up.
Beams of light were filtering through the canopy, sending morning dew into a beautiful mist that danced through the trees. A bird was calling loudly close by, and something else scampered through leaves behind Reid's tree.
GET UP, REID. We don't have all day.
Reid's back peeled off the bark, and he fumbled with his shirt trying to get it untied. Once his legs were free, he slowly, groggily swiveled so both were hanging off one side of the branch. There were a few disturbed leaves below him, but no imminent danger seemed to be waiting for him. He put an arm through the single remaining sleeve of his shirt, and let it rest unbuttoned on his torso. Then, he realized what he'd just heard.
"Shackle! You're back! What happened?"
YOU happened. Unlocking a percentage of your skill ended up taking a lot more energy than calculated. More than a single shackle should normally do at once, which was both bad for your future protection, and bad for us. In terms you'd understand... it was pushing too much electricity through an old wire, and the wire overheated and got a bit melty, and now it might be harder to do it again. And the battery connected to the wire has less charge. We had to take a forced rest to recover. From helping you. You can thank us now.
"Thank you." The words came almost automatically as Reid considered the new information. If system protection was a finite resource with a certain number of charges, he needed to be more careful about getting hurt. And, if the Shackle needed to take a nap every time it helped him, the protection, or any healing, had a built-in cooldown period.
He balled his hand into a fist and released it. His arms were still a bit sore, but the full-body fatigue he'd had yesterday was mostly gone. He'd hardly suffered more than a few scrapes in the fight. All in all, his condition today was better than expected. If he could manage to keep going like this, not taking too much damage, he might not even need to use more of the system protection juice at all.
"Hey," Reid started, "How bad was healing me for you? Like, I know you said it wasn't good, and the wire analogy sounds bad, but are you hurt, or anything? Or, can you hurt?"
There was a pause.
The collective is healthy. We can reunite once the purpose is fulfilled. Anything else is insignificant.
"Is this another one of those, 'too complicated' things? Because that doesn't make sense."
A rumble escaped Reid's stomach, and he instinctually put a hand over it. Hunger was going to be a problem if he wouldn't be getting to the beacon soon. He'd gotten water the day before, but without anything to carry it, he'd also have to find fresh sources frequently if things were going to be slow. The Shackle was being evasive, but it probably had plenty of things it wasn't telling Reid. One of those things might also be how to find water. Or food. Absentmindedly rubbing his abdomen, Reid suddenly realized he was touching something hard.
He looked down and frowned. Reid's dad bod was ruined.
He had abs.
#
Half a day passed, with Reid trudging through the woods while the Shackle continued to play verbal dodgeball.
"But what is actually going to happen to you when I get to the beacon? Like, how do you get back to the collective?"
That is knowledge you cannot understand.
"Look. I've been walking for hours, you won't tell me how close to the beacon I am, you won't tell me where I can find something edible, AND you won't tell me if Susan and Sara are okay. So if you can't tell me any of that, why not pass the time by explaining the knowledge? If you're right, and I don't understand it, I'll even let you gloat about it."
We do not gloat, Reid.
The wind sound that Reid had determined was the Shackle's version of a sigh echoed in his mind.
While we do not have information on your family, we can share something else you might value. If you cease the rest of your questioning.
"What happened to being here to serve me? Shouldn't you just tell me things I want to know?"
Leaves and branches crunched under Reid's footfalls as the conversation's pause stretched out past three minutes.
"FINE. Tell me the thing."
Good. Now, I'll help you understand how to access your status screen. Normally, you would need to reach a beacon to do this. Or, one could discover this on their own. You wouldn't, but it is possible for those with talent.
"Are you ki-"
Now, in a minute, you should start feeling a connecting thread between your Occipital and Temporal Lobes. Pull up on that thread once you can feel all the way to each end, and you'll be able to read your status screen. Just sit down on the tree over there before we start.
As Reid made his way to the tree, he imagined what the feeling would be like - to have connections running throughout his brain like an old switchboard, waiting to make some new function known. He pictured hundreds tangled and messy in his mind, then imagined himself searching for the one connection that would give him what he wanted. A mote of light danced around one of the connections, and Reid focused in on it. He spread himself from one end to the other, following twists and loops like a rollercoaster, back and forth. With a sudden snap, Reid could feel the entire length of the connection, from end to end. The twists and tangles had meaning lurking just beyond his comprehension, taunting him like water to a man dying of thirst.
After a bit of longing, he instead focused on lifting the connection, in its entirety. It wasn't physically moved, but instead felt like a forgotten memory being brought to the front of his mind. A wall of shapes and text flashed in front of Reid. He startled, tripped, and slammed face-first into the dirt. Head swimming, Reid closed his eyes, then opened them, only to find the new screen of information stayed with him whether he had his eyes open or closed. Keeping his eyes open had started giving Reid a headache, so he decided to shut them for now.
Interesting.
Reid ignored the Shackle and took in the information in front of him. There were a ton of numbers, categories, and bits of text.
-
STATUS
Name: Reid Oliver Calderwall
Affiliation: "Earth"
Race: Human
Grade: G
Level: 3
Health: 19/20
Experience: 133/200
STATS:
Constitution: 2
Dexterity: 2
Intelligence: 1
Perception: 1
Power: 7
Control: 3
Stat Upgrade Points: 15
SKILLS:
Strengthening [Basic]
Hardening [Common]
Calcification [Uncommon]
Petrification [Rare]
Skill Upgrade Points: 1
RESTRICTED:
???: UNAVAILABLE
???: UNAVAILABLE
???: UNAVAILABLE
???: UNAVAILABLE
-
Reid read through everything twice, pausing on each stat and skill, feeling there was more to understand if he focused in a bit harder. The restricted items, no matter what he did, felt like a truth at the bottom of the ocean, too far and out of reach for him to possibly get at it. But he could get to those things in time, or Shackle might tell him what they would be. All of that could wait, because Reid had started to get an understanding of how he could manipulate the screen to get into the upgrade menus.
It was time to spend some points.
