2 Chapter 2 - The Honor System
'System?' Alex wondered.
As if responding on cue, an additional screen popped up startling him.
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 0]
[Mana: 3/3]
[Soul Force: 87]
[Strength: 0]
[Endurance: 0]
[Dexterity: 0]
[Vitality: 0]
[Resilience: 0]
[Cognition: 0]
[Perception: 0]
[Available stat points: 5]
Alex willed the interface to close, and it responded in turn. He continued standing, and glanced at the creature lying before him, it had finally stopped seizing, and its head was caved in, creating a mess. The adrenaline was fading from his body, leaving only the lingering sensation of terror.
'I almost got ripped apart by something in the weight class of a small dog.'
'Why was it so strong? It was super aggressive too.'
Face darkening, another thought crossed his mind - there could easily be more of these things. The terror shot up, before fading into numbness, his mind felt numb, like he couldn't string a coherent set of thoughts together, again he found himself start to hyperventilate.
'I think I'm going into shock.'
He sat down, doing his best to clear his head. After 15 minutes, he felt color return to his world, along with a few sensations, he was both hungry and thirsty.
'I guess I've accepted that this is all real. I'm not clever enough to imagine that dinosaur thing, and that pain was vivid and sharp.'
'If this thing is real, then did the system bring me here?'
'Does that mean it can take me back?'
A flicker of hope, Alex popped the question.
'System, take me back.'
No response, as always.
'Well fuck you too.'
He opened his system interface again, and began noting several details he hadn't noticed earlier. Most importantly, it was basically a character stat screen, and he assumed he could invest his points into various stats, presumably to strengthen himself.
'Wonder what the different stat points do? Strength should be pretty straightforward, but resilience is a little vague.'
Again, just as Alex issued the thought, the screen changed.
—-
Resilience: Increases the users bone density, mechanical strength, skin thickness/strength, tendon strength, general resistance of body to damage, etc.
—-
Next, he went through the other stats
—
Strength: Increases peak contractile strength of muscle fibers.
Endurance: Improves ability of circulatory system to carry oxygen, metabolic speed, anaerobic capacity, glycogen storage, etc.
Dexterity: Improves peak muscle contraction speed, elasticity, flexibility, mind-body connection/coordination.
Vitality: Improves digestion speed, increased resistance to disease, poison, improved cell division speed, wound recovery, stem cell enhancements, improved growth speed, etc.
Cognition: Improves cognition speed, reflexes, memory recall, pattern recognition.
Perception: Improves the interface between the mind and the universe, improving all senses.
—
Returning to the main interface, Alex glanced at the portion of the screen that mentioned his 5 available stat points. Only thinking for a moment, Alex willed the system to invest 2 points into vitality and 3 points into perception. He wanted to know when trouble was coming, and vitality would help him recover from injuries.
He felt an energetic warmth spread out from an area beneath his sternum before radiating outwards all the way to his fingertips, and his toes. It also slowly made its way to his head where he felt his eyes glaze over for a second, obscuring his vision, as well as his other senses. This lasted about 2 minutes, after which he opened his eyes, and observed the world in new clarity.
It was like turning the resolution up, details he could previously barely make out across the river became evident, he could see the veins on tree leaves 4-5 meters away. The smell of his own blood filled his nostrils, assaulting him with the smell of copper.
'Going to take some getting used to.'
All the extra stimulus made him rather dizzy, and he had to fight down growing nausea - not that he had anything in his stomach at this point.
'Good thing I was sitting down.'
The sensation quickly settled, and Alex was finally ready to move - he'd investigate the rest of the system interface later.
Glancing down at the dead creature, Alex picked it up by its tail. Studying it, he could only think up a few options to explain its existence,
'There are two good options I can think of, one I'm no longer on Earth, and two I've returned to some weird period of time.'
'Everything is on the table.'
'I guess this could also be some weird experiment coming from a lab.'
Reminded of his hunger, he threw the dinosaur creature over his shoulder.
"I guess you're dinner now, mister dinosaur."
Grabbing the hatchet off the ground, he started to make his way back to camp, taking care to stay near the edge of the water. He couldn't afford to get lost at night in purgatory after all.
The walk back to the village took him about 10 minutes. Stopping just outside the edge of the clearing, he tossed the creature on the ground, before walking towards one of the houses, returning with a dagger he'd seen in his early stakeout.
'I'm supposed to bleed out my kills right?'
'Or does it not matter if I'm about to eat it?'
'Shouldn't make things worse.'
He took his dagger and awkwardly sawed off the creature's head, before tying it upside down from a tree branch with some vines, letting the blood run out onto the ground, creating a small pool. Butchering an animal was a messy business, and Alex didn't want to attract any predators, so he'd butchered it about as far away as he could manage at the moment.
Taking the creature down, he began by carefully cutting open its chest cavity, fortunately this dagger was quite sharp. He did his best to keep the cut shallow, as he didn't want to puncture any organs by accident and ruin the meat.
Next he grabbed either side of the cut, ripping the chest cavity open, and revealing its organs.
'I can't do this. There's no way I'm grabbing intestines with my bare hands.'
The sense of revulsion was aggressive, as he'd never butchered anything before, and it was not a business for the delicate of heart. Alex found himself pacing around the clearing, trying to figure out what he'd do about the apparent dilemma, but unfortunately for him, he came up blank. As much as he didn't want to do it, his hunger strongly disagreed.
Returning to the corpse, he tentatively used his dagger to poke the innards around.
'Stop being a loser, this happens with all food.'
Gritting his teeth, he put down his dagger, reached into the chicken, feeling the wet slimy innards with his fingers. He started by removing the intestines and stomach, as they'd be the prime culprits for ruining the meat, carefully extracting them, before depositing them on the forest floor beside him.
'Some for the homies.'
Next he examined the other organs, looking for anything seriously off color, or any signs of infection. Most of the organs looked strangely familiar, and he felt he had a decent sense of what color things were supposed to be. He then began removing things from the creature's chest cavity, when he noted what looked like a gizzard. He'd seen them in supermarkets before, and seemed to remember they were a bird thing.
"You sure you're a dinosaur and not just a scary chicken?"
Alex stared at the creature, waiting for a response.
"We'll see how you taste."
At this point, Alex hoped it tasted good, as he didn't have much of an appetite. Alex continued gutting the creature and adding anything he was too scared to eat to the pile on the forest floor.
'This is a complete mess.'
'Not really sure what I'm going to do with these remains. Maybe the forest takes offerings.'
'More for the homies.'
Leaving the pile of organs, he grabbed the carcass and walked back towards his makeshift fire pit, placing two logs he'd found on either side of the fire, and lying the carcass across a piece of wood over the fire pit. Alex then retrieved the flint he'd found in one of the houses, and used it to start the fire.
It took a few tries, and he ended up using the back of his dagger, as he was nervous about dulling his only blade - not like he knew how to sharpen it. Fortunately the firewood he had was quite dry - Alex guessed it hadn't rained in several days. Watching the growing flames, he enjoyed the smell of burning campfire, it was a comforting nostalgic smell.
Glancing at the carcass sitting over the fire, Alex made a quick prayer to the forest.
'Hopefully cooking mister dinosaur over here doesn't attract anything more dangerous.'
Alex paused.
'System, if you can hear me, that was not a provocation, I promise.'
Alex let out a sigh, and walked back to one of the nearby houses, retrieving one of the spears he'd seen.
'Can't afford to be careless.'
He then hung the carcass of the creature over the fire, where he started to roast it.
'Hope the feathers don't burn.'
While he was waiting, he opened his system interface again. It was time to investigate all this other stuff he didn't recognize.
Alex returned to the main system interface, looking at the final items he'd not investigated.
—
Water control: Provides control of water, in all forms.
—
Mana: The source of power for existence, the medium used by the soul to manipulate reality.
—
Soul force: The capacity of the soul to exert its will on the universe.
—
Existence Tier: Insufficient permissions.
—
Alex pondered.
'So if this system description is accurate, and I'm not just high out of my mind, then I should be able to control water, somehow.'
'What are permissions?'
'Why is it called the honor system?'
Again, insufficient permissions.
Like an impatient child Alex folded his arms.
'You never tell me anything useful.'
Just then, the smell of burning filled his nose, pulling him out of his stupor. The feathers of the chicken had caught fire, and the smell was truly awful.
'I guess this is what I get for being lazy.'
'I'm not exactly sure what to do here.'
Fortunately, the fire didn't last long, leaving a charred blackened skin dotted with feathery nubs. Alex decided to circle the clearing on the lookout for predators - it would be a while before the chicken was finished cooking.
After finishing his circuit, he returned to the river to wash his hands. While he waited for the creature to roast, Alex walked towards the river. The section of the river that the village was by widened significantly, and the areas near the sides of the river were relatively shallow and very slow moving. Alex leaned down to begin rinsing off his hands.
'I guess soap is a little too much to ask for huh?'
'Never learned how to make soap, I guess I'll be relying on my vitality stat.'
'Lets try to figure out how this ability works.'
Walking over to the river, he stuck his hand in the water, deciding to focus on the sensation. Feeling the water rush past his hand, he paused for a second, trying to note if there was anything special or abnormal. Next he noted that he could feel the water slipping past his hand with a level of detail he'd never noticed before.
Here he felt like he could feel the thickness of the water, tell the direction it was going, and feel the small disturbances in the water.
'I guess that perception increase really did something.'
Focusing harder, he tried to find if there was anything else. Nothing.
'How does this ability work?'
Alex remained rather skeptical of the claims of the system, exerting your will on the universe? Ridiculous. However, it had somehow improved his vision through the perception stat, and teleported him to who knows where, so perhaps things were up for a big change.
Trying to keep things simple Alex cupped some water in his hands.
'You going to listen to me and prove me wrong?'
Alex then willed the water to lift up out of his hands. Nothing happened.
'So am I just not willing hard enough? Do I need some flow like water hand movements or something?'
Alex closed his eyes, doing his best to recreate the image he had of the water in his hands. Next he focused hard, visualizing a ball of water rising from the surface. Concentrating hard, he focused, and tried to imagine the sensations of the water, thinking about how the force would be spread across the bottom of the little ball.
Opening his eyes, he was greeted with a small raindrop of water having separated from that cupped in his hands, floating before him.
'Well shit.'
Thinking for another second, Alex then narrowed his eyes.
'How is this helpful? Am I going to spit on some of these creatures?'
Sighing in defeat, Alex dropped the water and his concentration. Next he opened his system interface.
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 0]
[Mana: 2/3]
[Soul Force: 87 -> 88]
[Strength: 0]
[Endurance: 0]
[Dexterity: 0]
[Vitality: 2]
[Resilience: 0]
[Cognition: 0]
[Perception: 3]
[Available stat points: 0]
'So moving that pebble of water cost me a full mana point, good to know.'
'Seems my soul force went up, whatever that means. I assume more is better, but who knows.'
Giving up on his water control, he grabbed his spear and returned to the fire. Alex continued letting the creature roast for another hour or so, until it started giving off a lovely roasted smell - better to be on the safe side.
Once it was done, he moved the roast off of the fire, where he grabbed the creature and began cutting off its legs with his dagger. Alex started cutting off the blackened skin, and slicing the meat underneath into strips. After processing most of the meat on the leg, he started eating, fortunately for him, his hunger had returned after the hour it spent cooking.
"Ha! You do taste like chicken. I'm demoting you from dinosaur to murder chicken."
The charred body of the creature didn't respond.
Alex then proceeded to devour three quarters of the remains, until he couldn't eat anymore. At this point it was quite dark, and the majority of the light was coming from the fire. Fortunately for Alex, his increased perception meant he could still get by in the dark relatively well.
Alex stood up and stared at the remains of the food on the carcass.
'I don't really have any way to store this meat, I can maybe smoke it and eat it tomorrow. The things I'd do for some salt.'
Alex then cut the remains of the murder chicken into small thing strips, and created a pseudo grill out of thin sticks. Placing his grill high above the fire he laid out the strips of the creature on the grill to dehydrate.
Next he started to roast the remaining organs he had plans for. He'd only kept the liver, heart and gizzard as he was quite certain these should all be very edible.
'Need the organ meat to keep my nutritional bases covered, I have no idea what of the surrounding foliage is edible.'
Finally, after having finished grilling the organs Alex summoned his willpower and prepared to eat them.
'Should have eaten these first while I was still hungry.'
…
'Mistakes were made.'
Alex slowly sliced up the heart, as this was the easiest to start with. Grimacing, he started chewing, 'frankly, the texture is the worst part, otherwise it tastes like everything else'.
Next he started on the liver and gizzard. While far more tame in flavour than something like cow's liver, they were still pretty pungent, eating them raw and without seasoning caused him to gag.
After forcing himself to finish the food, Alex sat down and stared at the sky, hoping to recognize something. Alex noted that the moon seemed rather large, though it was a bit hard to tell, seeing as it was a waning crescent.
He hugged his legs close and continued staring at the sky.
'These people aren't coming back.'
'Even if they do, I highly doubt this is Earth, meaning they won't speak English.'
'How do I get home?'
'A problem for tomorrow's Alex.'
It was long since dark, and the meat had been smoking for a solid 2 hours. Alex checked it and made sure that it was reasonably dry.
'This should keep for a couple days'.
Alex then took his grill covered in smoked meat and brought it to one of the nearby houses.
'If I'm going to get a visitor at night, I'd much rather they don't visit me.'
Visions of the murder chickens finding him at night flashed before his eyes and he shivered.
'No thank you.'
He set aside a few of the buckets of water that he'd boiled over the course of the night, and used one of his dirty buckets to put out the fire.
Alex then picked a house and entered, closing the door. The temperature was actually relatively comfortable at night, so he left the windows closed. Utterly paranoid, he placed his spear on the side of the bed, and the dagger beneath his pillow, before collapsing on the bed and crawling beneath the animal furs.
Now that he didn't have things to do, he kept seeing visions of the murder chicken when he closed his eyes. Its gaze contained nothing but violence and rage, sending shivers down his spine.
'What if there are more of them?'
He continued lying in bed, thoughts racing, staring at the ceiling. This continued for another hour before his terror was overpowered by his exhaustion, and he fell asleep.
---Author's note---
Another long chapter, as I just finished re-writing it.
