2. The Clearing

Years of training and conditioning kicked in and Mark started to critically asses his current situation. For the moment he didn't know anything about the local environment, rules, laws and the culture of local civilizations. He knew that they were advanced enough to build houses and that they learned domesticating animals. The first problem of meeting new civilizations was the language barrier and the problems of miscommunication. Following that logic, the first thing he had to do was to find out what the local language was and possibly try to learn it, find out what they used as currency and understand the laws of this place. Then he could care about other things such as what exactly is this place, where is it and a method to quickly make money around here.

He was clothed in what looked like a costume from a movie set about medieval kingdoms. Loose, woolen shirt with a leather strap at the neck, a pair of plain brown slacks made out of some kind of rough hide and a pair of boots made of leather without any padding, the only thing that kept his feet from tearing were bits of material bound around them, that were nowhere near the normal socks he was used to. Be that as it may, the only thing he lacked now was some kind of weapon to protect himself from the unknown dangers all around him. Walking over to the only wardrobe in the room, he opened it and looked at what was hidden inside.

From the clothing he wore and the architecture around him he assumed that the level of civilization advancement in this world, or at least in the region he was located in was based somewhere in the Middle Ages, so he was hoping to at least find a knife or something like that. Bingo. When he opened the wardrobe, he saw a leather belt made of the same leather as his boots, with a simple somewhat worn-out albeit surprisingly well cared for knife, taking under consideration the state of disrepair of the house around him was in, with a tattered, patched over scabbard lying next to it. There was also a satchel with loops to strap it on the belt. On a shelf below laid a simple recurve bow with a loosened string and a quiver with fifteen arrows inside. Besides that, there was also a big waterskin. With that he was almost set.

He looked inside of the satchel and there found a couple dozen of small and thin coins made out of copper with one side of it showing a stern face of an unknown woman, while the other side had the image of a five-pointed star. It wasn't a farfetched assumption to assume this was a form of local currency, and going further that line of thought, the higher denomination coins would probably be silver and gold. The only question now was how much was a copper coin worth here. It all depended on the worth of labor, and exactly how much was an average worker making around here, and what he was ready to spend the money on. If he knew that, he would have a rough estimate on the coins' worth.

Stopping his pondering he reached out to pick all this stuff up when he noticed something weird. There, on his left wrist was a small list written in red ink. Until now the unusually long sleeve of his shirt covered it so he was unable to see it, but as he was bending over to gather the things in the wardrobe it moved up, revealing the text that was as if embedded into his skin. He leaned in to take a closer look at it and read what was written there.

Name: Mark

Class: None

Level: 1

Experience: 9/10

MP: 6/6

SP: 6/6

Strength: 3

Agility: 4

Constitution: 2

Intelligence: 3

Right beneath the first table there was another one, this one, was slightly different.

Skills:

Precise Shot:

Slight correction to the flight of a fired arrow.

LVL 1 EXP 9/10

Novice Bow Mastery:

Novice handling of weapon: Bow

LVL 2 EXP 2/20

Novice Dagger Mastery:

Novice handling of weapon: Dagger

LVL 1 EXP 9/10

What was strange was that he was absolutely certain there is no way for all of that to fit on his wrist, but when he was reading, the letters somehow seemed to enlarge and the list rolled down when he read further and further in the text. From the clues and what little he knew about games it seemed to be some kind of a status. He was curious if it reflected the true condition of his body? How it fared compared to the native inhabitants of the land he was in? And these skills. What were they?

Do they help at using given weapons and at aiming or are they just a reflection of what the user is capable of? The first ability seemed to be pretty mystical in that, if it worked the way he understood it, then it shouldn't be possible, also what exactly does the experience here represent. Does he get it by killing things and repeating some actions endlessly, like in games? And what happens if he levels up? Does he gain more knowledge about the thing he leveled or does it only reflect that he became more proficient in the skill, and does he gain strength and power by killing things, if so, this world could be incomparably more brutal and dangerous than the one he was from, not that it made a difference for him specifically.

There were just so many questions that he was incapable of answering in his head at the moment. Deciding that useless overthinking and mulling it over wouldn't help him in any way in the short term, he went on and picked all the things out of the wardrobe. Looking at the slightly elongated left sleeve of his shirt he somehow had a hunch that he is not supposed to show the stats tables to anyone else.

Not bothering with anything anymore he took the blanket off his bed and went out through the only door in this room. Behind them was an even smaller room, with the floor being simply made of packed dirt. There was a fireplace in the middle of the room with a cooking stand above it. At the room's corner there was a small sack that, after checking, turned out to contain a couple of potatoes, for at most two more meals, and some carrots. There was nothing more in there. After making sure he didn't miss anything else he left through the only other doors besides the one he just used.

This time he was finally out of the small house, that he assumed belonged to him. Looking around he found it was standing on a small clearing in the middle of a forest, with nothing but trees around with a small gap between them hiding a small path. There in the pen just next to his house stood the three strange animals, looking like a cross between a cow and an alpaca. Not knowing what to do next he sat down and started thinking while looking at the nearby Alpacows. First, he needed to decide if he is going to stay here or go out in an attempt to find a city, town or even a village or something. It would be wise to stay here for some time to adapt to the rhythm of life here, maybe hunt some wild animals and scout around for any signs of larger human habitation nearby.

'That's decided then, I will stay here and find out exactly how this system thing works, find a way to level up, and also slightly train this body. It seems so much weaker than what I am used to. But first I need to find a source of water, as there is no well or stream on the clearing, and the animals have fresh water in their pen. That means it must be relatively close, and as the water must be gathered regularly, the small path leading off the clearing would be the first bet.'

With this in mind he decided that he can first check the small path leading away from the clearing.

He didn't feel this right after waking up with his head still foggy, but after moving for some time he definitely felt an issue with his body, it felt uncomfortable. It wasn't only weaker but didn't seem to work the way he expected it to. It was slightly shorter than his original body and was much slimmer, and even though it was fit, it was still far from his standard. It was weaker, slower, and didn't exactly react as fast as he was used to.

He couldn't really do anything with it now, he would have to slowly get used to this body, and slowly regain his coordination. Carefully he went along the path looking around cautiously in search of any possible threats. After walking for about ten minutes, he found himself at a crossroads. There was a path leading left and right, and along them there was a stream flowing. Finally with the water problem out of his mind he slightly relaxed his mind. He walked over to the stream and looked around to see if there were any animals nearby, what he was most wary of were the predators, as he wasn't certain how lethal were this worlds' animals. He was afraid that if he lost his vigilance some five meters high wolf is going to swallow him. In the end, humans' greatest fear is of the unknown.

But after a couple minutes he found that besides some traces of small animals there were none that looked threatening, and to his joy most of them looked like the traces of animals that he knew, squirrels, raccoons, some beavers and a couple hoof prints that didn't look like anything he knew from his world. He took the waterskin and submerged it in the water. After filling it he took the river water in his hands and drank a couple of mouthfuls, marveling at the fresh taste. He splashed his face and, got up to leave. Now with the water source problem out of his head he decided that it was time to do something about food and then he could get to training to regain his prior fitness.

He already had a couple most optimal training regimes for getting his body into a proper shape. But even as he was thinking about different sets of exercises, that didn't mean he was neglecting his safety. While he was thinking he was also constantly on the lookout to avoid being ambushed. He knew that if he was suddenly ambushed, his recurve bow would be useless, that is why he was constantly holding his hand at the hilt of the dagger at his hip. And as always his cautiousness paid off as he noticed a little almost unnoticeable presence closing in on him to the left from behind. The moment he discovered it, he slowly as to not attract attention to his movements, checked if there are any other hidden presences, and found two more on his right. One was couple of meters ahead of him and one was in the same distance behind him as the one on left. With that he knew that he was surrounded.

Knowing that, he tensed his muscles and mind in preparation for the incoming fight. He had no doubts that he would need to fight, if it were just some harmless animals, they wouldn't try to hide their presence and wouldn't have surrounded him. It would be a hard fight. No matter who his opponents were, there were three of them and he was alone, but that wasn't the worst, he was in fights with many more enemies at once than this. The problem was that he wasn't yet able to completely control his body.

Finally, the one at his right back lunged toward him.