I quickly backed out of the water, trying not to panic, yet failing miserably. Why didn’t I notice earlier?! And why didn’t Mark warn me?! Did he not notice either??

  I made even more distance between me and the river, which earned me a look from Mark. "What is it? I thought you liked water, Shrimpie."

  "I do! But not when there are, like, twenty red dots around me!"

  Mark’s eyes widened, and then he finally started looking around, trying to match the map to what he was seeing. Finally, he decided to stop trying to find them from above the water, and he actually dived in. Okay, saying that he dived in might be a bit of a stretch.

  He fell through the ground as he walked to the water, and I could see him getting lower and lower, until even the top of his head sank under the water. A tense few minutes passed, in which I started to wonder whether my guide could actually die to something as well. What if there was some way to kill them? I knew that he would die if I did, but did the same rules apply the other way around?

  I started pacing and was just about to dive after Mark when suddenly, his head started emerging, soon followed by his whole body, levitating.

  "Gods, you scared me. I thought you died!"

  Mark looked at me funny, but then waved my protest away. "I can’t die, Shrimpie. Only if you do. Anyway, I-"

  "Then what took you so long?!" Did this guy not understand the stakes? I didn’t know the rules, god damn it. If he died somehow, I’d be toast. I had no clue about how to proceed in games like this, and it was just the first one! Sure, he said he couldn’t die, but he seemed as effy about the rules as I was sometimes.

  "Sorry. I should have contacted you from under the water. Yes, I can do so, forgot to explain that part too. But that comes later. First off, the creatures under the water are enemies, hence the red dots, but they aren’t really dangerous. So no, they don’t count toward our little competition. You should kill them for some XP."

  Calming a bit, I listened in with full attention. Some enemies sounded lovely. "They don’t count? What are they?"

  "Some weird crabs with rocks on their backs. Or something like that. They were hidden under their rocks, so I couldn’t find them for a while."

  I nodded and stepped toward the river again. Though I could definitely feel myself tense up, I felt very excited, too. Killing these things would bring me more XP, and getting levels, was in Mark’s words, the key to survival.

  I finally entered the center of the stream, watching the movements of the red dots closely, but they were not moving at all. The cool water bit into my legs, wetting my pants, and though it was not as pleasant as I expected, I still felt right at home.

  Taking a deep breath, I bent my knees and fully submerged myself, opening my eyes. The familiar blue met me, though different than I remembered. A lot more light, the fact that the water was moving, and other aspects made it a different experience than the one I was used to. Nevertheless, I started looking for the crabs that Mark mentioned.

  It took me just a moment to find one. The little things were moving so slowly that I had some trouble spotting them, but I could see the heat coming off of their bodies when I really focused. I used [Analyze] when I came near one of them, and was rewarded by a wall of text.

  THE ROCK CRAB

  Creature

  Level : 1

  Tiny creatures that live on the bottom of moving bodies of water. They are fairly harmless, just like a certain kind of shrimp that we sometimes watch in our tournament.

  ….

  OH, did you think we were talking about you? Nooo, don’t worry. We’re sure that you will do great! We were talking about those other shrimp!

  Anyway, these rock crabs are seriously just dumb, slow, and a nuisance. Their shell is a bit hard to crack - good luck with that.

  What the hell was that? What did I do to make the text-thingy so sarcastic? Whatever, I’d rather focus on killing these little guys.

  Bullet strike was still down, but surely I didn’t need that to kill these little creatures… Without further ado, I grabbed the closest one and smashed him on the riverbed with as much force as I could muster. He squirmed in my hands, and I could see his claws trying to clench onto my skin, but it simply wasn’t fast enough. Another smash killed it, and I was rewarded with a +XP notification.

  How lovely. Would these creatures really allow me to level up? I looked at the XP meter in my Stat View, and I could see that the meter moved, but just a little bit; not enough to really push me over to the next level. It didn’t matter, though; killing these was easy compared to the wolf. I emerged from the water for a little bit, looking for Mark.

  “If I kill 20 of them in 20 minutes, does that count?”

  “You know what? Sure.” Mark nodded. He seemed to be mighty confident for some reason. But that was good enough for motivation.

  I cracked my shoulder and went crab hunting.

  —

  It took me almost an hour to kill all the crabs in my proximity, but it was as easy as walking. Honestly, it felt like cheating that these things gave me any experience points at all. Sure, the reward was small, but I lost no HP, they gave experience, and I ended up with their bodies, too! Hopefully, they would taste good.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Deciding that my hunting was over, I quickly glanced at my experience. Killing several dozen of the crabs pushed me all the way to level 7, which was pretty good, all things considered. I grabbed a few rocks along the way too, and it would hopefully be enough to satisfy my guide and his plans.

  Emerging from the river, I paced to where my guide was and looked at the sun. Sure enough, it was already lower than when I went into the water, but I still had some time. Building a base was out of the question, but I did want to eat the crabs, and I knew now that cooking them would be a necessity.

  "Finally. What took you so long, Sh… Oh, level 7? Impressive. I see that most of the crabs gave little experience, though. Probably better spend our time hunting something bigger next time." He smiled, a cocky expression that made me instantly want to punch his face in. “It took you 25 minutes to kill twenty of them. Guess I won the bet, huh?”

  "You didn’t mention that their shell would be so hard to crack!”

  “The system did.”

  “Doesn’t count!”

  “Sheesh, what a sore loser. Okay, you know what? I’ll count it on the next one. This time you get a freebie.”

  That was… as good as it would get, I guessed. “Can I eat them?”

  "Check if they aren’t poisonous, first. But yeah, good job. We can more or less call it a day now. Let’s get to crafting and set you up. We want as much wood as we can get, and build that safehouse. Won’t do much, but if we get the necessities down, I’ll be able to tell you what to craft next."

  "Can’t we just return to the small hut we were at before?"

  His head swayed, and he solemnly looked to the ground. "Afraid not. Would be a lot easier, right? Sadly, we can’t stay there for more than an hour per week. At least for this floor, where we can build stuff."

  "Changes on other floors?"

  "Yeah, but I can’t tell you more than that until we get there, sadly."

  Nodding, I left the matter be, and looked over my inventory. Sure enough, there were about twenty sticks with the craftable tag, and the same number of rocks. I somehow even managed to grab a nugget of gold there, too, and it showed me that it was more valuable than anything else I owned.

  "So, how do I craft?"

  Mark took a deep breath, and got closer, close enough so most of my vision was filled by him.

  "Okay, you want to open up a menu for that. It’s not on your menus yet because I didn’t want to overwhelm you with so many at once, but here, give me a second."

  Oh, that was actually really thoughtful of him. He didn’t seem to care that opening up my Stat View for the first time mid-fight was really dangerous, but he did seem to learn from his mistakes, which was definitely nice. Just a moment later, the new menu opened, and while it looked a bit like the inventory menu, it seemed way more complex.

  "Okay, that’s a lot of things."

  "Yeah, it needs getting used to. The gods definitely didn’t take simplicity and good game design into consideration, and instead focused on pure spectator value. Can you imagine an animal trying to navigate these menus without a guide?"

  I couldn’t. God, I didn’t know half of these existed, and I had no clue how the tournament worked for the most part. “Not really. This all seems really tough. My brain keeps hurting.

  He became ego incarnate at that. "Glad you seem to appreciate my greatness, then."

  Hey, that was my line!

  "Anyway, let me take you through it." And with those words, the hell started. He tried to explain what tools we’d need, how to craft them, how to check and uncheck every part in the crafting menu. I did try to pay attention at first, but he just kept going on and on. Once he got to explaining potion herbs, I just completely zoned out.

  Fifteen minutes in, Mark FINALLY realized that I got literally nothing out of the lecture, proceeded to shout at me for being an idiot, and then, after a great deal of whining, told me to at least craft an axe by searching it in the crafting recipes.

  Mentally commanding my menu to move, which was getting easier by the minute, I found it almost instantly, and selected the stone axe from among the dozens of axe types that showed up, but I couldn’t craft. The menu moved in front of my vision, and I could see the CRAFT option right underneath the likeness of the item. Without further questions, I selected it, and was rewarded with a ten-second timer.

  I watched it go down, slowly trickling away second by second, and then PHOOSH. It appeared in the air, right in front of me! Gods, that scared me! It continued hovering there instead of falling to the ground though, which was definitely helpful. What if the item I crafted was smaller, and I wouldn’t be able to find it?

  "Do all of these items appear in thin air?"

  "No, just the ones that you can carry. I’ll set it in your personal settings so they don’t do that anymore. Anyway, let’s get to cutting down some trees! The sun will come down in just something above two hours, so you better be fast."

  Gods, he never let down, it seemed. I was already beginning to feel tired from constantly thinking and walking today, but he seemed to treat me with no consideration for that. Would he command my dead body if I died?

  Too tired to argue, I went to the nearest tree that I could see the top of, and started smashing the axe into the trunk. While there was nothing like that when the giant wolf damaged the trees in our fight, I could see a health bar appear after my axe connected for the first time. Really helpful, even if it was a bit demotivating to see how slowly it moved.

  "This is going to take forever, Mark."

  Mark looked at the tree as well, and tried to put a hand on my shoulder, just for it to go through it completely. "It’s going pretty fast, actually. Human lumberjacks would take longer with better equipment than a stone axe. That strength stat of yours must be helping you."

  Sighing, I kept at it. Two minutes later, the tree finally fell onto the ground, and I felt more accomplished than when I’d slain that wolf. God, did humans do things like this for a living? It was so boring!

  The tree fell to the ground completely and stopped moving, and then it dissolved into motes of light. What? Did I do it for nothing? I quickly opened my inventory tab, and thankfully, I could see the reward of my work. Ten chunks of wood, whatever that meant.

  Apparently, one tree didn’t give us enough wood, or at least according to Mark, so I had to keep at it. Cut a tree down, wait for it to appear in my inventory, and repeat. By the time I got to my fourth tree, I could feel my hands getting tired, though I didn’t complain. Yes, it was boring work, but working toward something greater felt exhilarating, and I wanted to progress as much as I could. I wanted to reap as many rewards as possible, and if this got me a new skill, then it was well worth it.

  Cutting down my fourth tree, I turned toward Mark and was just about to ask if that would be enough yet again. But I stopped before the words left my mouth. I didn’t even notice it before, but now I could see a change in my map. The sun was almost completely down now, and the evening dim was beginning to color the landscape, but that wasn’t what stopped me.

  No, what stopped me was the change on my map. There was a blue dot, and two red ones, quickly approaching my location.

  "Hey, the green dot is me, and red dots are the enemies. What is blue, though?"

  Mark straightened from where he stood and looked straight at me. "Shit. Shrimpie, prepare for combat. We have another player approaching."