3 First Monster

Jun called up the word 'Character' in his mind, and a white box popped in his thoughts. Oddly enough, his thoughts seemed exponentially more concrete than before, as if his thoughts and internal mental space was a tangible three-dimensional space--like a loading screen or menu in a game--rather than the usual mess of abstract thinking. It displayed the following:

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Name: Jonathan (Jun Kim)

Class: None

Level: 1

Race: Human

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Strength (STR): 4

Dexterity (DEX): 8

Constitution (CON): 4

Intelligence (INT): 4

Wisdom (WIS): 8

Charisma (CHA): 10

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Reading through the character sheet, he noticed that his health was displayed with a small red bar and lacked any numerical indicators. Rolling his eyes at the extreme uselessness of this System--his interaction with Aura left him with absolutely no expectations--, he exited the mental space and continued walking through the forest, surveying his surroundings carefully. His lack of outdoors experience--although he had a good amount of schooling and Global Geographic about geography, ecosystems and wildlife, it was useless when it came to actual survival situations--made all the rich flora around him look the same. He could do very little to identify or even differentiate between the vast amounts of plants that surrounded him, and the best way he could describe all of the plants was that they were green.

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As he tried to access more information about the specifics of each plant, he felt a huge mental block. He had a vague inkling of what it could possibly be, but each time he tried to remember, the details would vanish and all he could manage concluding was that the plant was a plant. Perhaps the System had specific memory or information restrictions in place that corresponded to his levels or some unknown skill, knowledge or lore that he needed to level up or unlock before accessing. Either way, he gave up on trying to discover more and continued on his trek.

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He soon reached a small creek and he immediately circled around it, peering into the water to see whether it was drinkable or not. Jun remembered a comedy parody of a survival show which showed a desperately thirsty man drinking water from a similar creek without looking. To everyone's surprise and laughter, the camera proceeded to pan to a dead deer carcass a few inches away from the man's face. It was hilarious at the time, but that was when he had plumbing and a near endless amount of clean water. At the moment, Jun preferred to not end up as a comedic moment in this world's history due to inattention and ignorance. As he saw that the water did not have any visible indicators of being poisoned or tainted otherwise, he dipped his finger into the water and poured a drop onto his tongue. Jun vaguely remembered a series of tests to determine whether or not something in the wild was edible: first expose a small amount to the skin, then to the tongue, then consume a small amount, and finally, just eat it and hope for the best.

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As he waited to see if there were any negative effects, he could hear a few leaves being rustled. Immediately becoming alert, Jun readied his hand axe as best as he could and waited next to the water silently.

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Moments passed before a small hedgehog inched toward the pond. It's brown and shiny coat layered over its large rolls of fat, and its eyes were squished by its large cheeks; by all standards, it would be considered cute but Jun face-palmed when it saw the hedgehog flexing its front legs and shoulders as if it was the strongest creature in the forest.

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Seeing Jun's mocking gaze, the hedgehog became hostile and lunged forward, well, it looked more like a squishy furry ball of fat weakly bounced once toward him. As soon as the hedgehog was within reach, Jun swung the hand axe down and smashed its skull. Blood splattered all over Jun and on the ground, while the hedgehog immediately was knocked to the ground. It lay there still as Jun approached and mercilessly swung down again, leaving a gaping slice on the back of its neck and another squirt of blood to add to the messiness.

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Somehow, he was completely unaffected by the violence and gore. When Jun tried to understand what he was feeling, his entire mental space seemed to be completely blank with exception to the deepest corners of his mind spurring Jun to commit more violence. Perhaps this was the infamous gamer mind, which allowed him to remove responsibility and morality by pinning his actions on a character he merely controlled and any affected persons or things were not real. Perhaps it was just who Jun really was, a sociopath among the normal people of society who never felt anything in the first place and thus, led to his self-destructive life and behavior.

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Shuddering and casting these thoughts away as they were unproductive to his current survival, Jun quickly composed himself and approached the hedgehog. Just before he could investigate further, it dissolved into small dim lights and revealed a few coins. A voice suddenly sounded once again, being completely mechanical and toneless.

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"Congratulations for killing your first monster. Monsters will always drop a random amount of currency according to its level, always give a certain amount of experience points, and also periodically drop random items depending on a few factors. The System will now unlock the Skills Menu."

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A panel with two skills displayed itself:

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Skill Menu

Survival: Beginner

Axe Mastery: Beginner

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"Skills are one of the most important aspects of the system. Please keep this in mind."

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Picking up the coins, Jun almost started to cry as he realized that he had no way of storing or holding them. He remembered randomly that prison inmates would keister contraband, which meant storing items in his butt. This additional thought drove Jun into a further depression and he desperately looked around for something to use as a bag. He found a few tall grasses and attempted to make a small satchel or sorts, but miserably failed. In the end, he just held them in his hand as he scooped some water to drink. He realized that all the blood and gore from the hedgehog was gone from his body. Although his mind spun various theories about the powers at hand, Jun suppressed them as he got up and continued his trek.

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It took Jun an hour of walking for him to see his first sign of civilization: a long dirt road that bisected the forest and was the width of about four or five persons. He felt a wave of relief that he was not in a completely feral or stone age world, because Jun might have been driven insane. Pairs of long and narrow wheel marks, as well as numerous foot prints overlapping one another, indicated to Jun that carriages, carts, and persons traveled these roads, most likely merchant groups or caravans. This led to him to believe that he was stuck in a period of time with medieval or feudal age technology, or even up to late 18th-century technology with the transition to gunpowder weapons. Either way, modern technology certainly did not exist, and if it did, no where close to his location. The lack of modern conveniences in medicine, transportation, protection, and governance no longer existed, and at every step, power was needed to prevent Jun from being killed randomly. The roads and lands, outside of major cities or even just the capital, were most likely completely chaotic, meaning that Jun could be enslaved, killed, or even worse due to the most trivial reasons, and thus, garnered additional caution.

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As Jun cautiously walked down the road, he heard a low rumble followed by indistinct chatter and clack. Immediately choosing to hide in the forest next to the road, he observed two wagons being escorted by six riders. The outfit was plain, and the riders only wore a brown leather cloak and spears. The driver of the first wagon had a sword clipped to his belt, and Jun felt as if he was the leader of the guards due to his unique weapon and the fact that swords were, if following historical precedence on Earth, much more expensive and rarer due to their high metal requirements.

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Jun left his hand axe and his coins on the ground gently and approached the wagon with his hands up. He spoke with a slight amount of fear and anxiety in his voice:

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"Hello, a few bandits down the road robbed me of all my belongings and left me stranded on this road. Could I please just get a ride to the next town over?"

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The riders immediately circled around Jun with spears aimed toward his jugular, leaving him shivering unconsciously before looking at the driver with a sword. The man replied back.

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"Sorry kid, we got urgent orders and we can't be compromised by picking up a stranger."

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Throwing his cloak at Jun, the man ushered the horses forward, and the wagons resumed their pace forward. The riders backed off and returned to their original formation next to the wagons. Jun hurriedly interrupted:

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"Wait, at least tell me where the nearest town is!"

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Without stopping, the man simply replied:

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"Just follow the road the opposite way and you will reach a small village in a few hours."

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Jun walked back to his original place to pick up his hand axe and his coins, but as the last wagon passed, he coincidentally turned back to see through a cracked window an ornately dressed young lady, dressed in a frilly white dress adorned with various jewelry. They made eye contact for a split second before the wagon continued on. The blood drained from Jun's face, which maybe surprising as most normal persons would blush at the sight of a beautiful member of the opposite sex. For Jun, however, his vast experience with fiction gave him the intuition that it was either a fleeing noble or royal princess and that sticking around would probably cost him his life, and at best, leave him in a political plot that would kill him at some point in the future. Shaking his head of the split second image he remembered of her clear and beautiful eyes and her gorgeous figure, Jun quickly began running the opposite way of the wagons.