“Son of a bitch! You raggedy buck-toothed, oversized hamster fuck!” I bellowed at the monster before me. It was like a bear-sized prairie dog, with incisors the size of picture frames. The gods damned thing must have stood at least 5 or 6 feet tall when walking on all fours and I still couldn’t shoot it. I’d fired all ten shots at the thing while it was no more than 25 yards away from me and I failed to do more than graze it. As I reloaded my magazine, I inspected the beast to see if I’d done any damage at all.
Fuck, I thought, I did two damage?? I slammed my magazine back into the gun and pulled the slide back to chamber a bullet. I held the gun up in front of me, both arms outstretched. I took a deep breath and squeezed the trigger.
WAHOOO!
I flinched at the loud, high-pitched noise and my shot flew wide. The goddamned thing had been doing that to me for the entire fight. Every time I went to shoot at it, it screeched that stupid ass prairie dog yell at me.
Warning: You have been inflicted with Annoyed. -1 Wisdom.
I growled and shot again, this time I actually landed a clean shot to the Tyrant’s shoulder. I watched its health tick down by 20 points and nearly did a full-on Tiger Woods fist pump. Except, before I could even consider such stupidity, I got a sinking feeling that grew from the pit of my stomach. I looked at the Tyrant and realized that I would need to land 8 more shots to put it down…and from the look of him, he wasn’t keen to let me do that. He stood up on his hind legs, more than doubling his height and let out a “yip” so loud it made my ears bleed.
Wincing in pain, I grabbed the side of my head with one hand while blind firing four shots at the Tyrant. I screamed as I fired, but as far as I could tell, no sound came out. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard the gun shots either. I felt the percussion of them in my chest but there was no telltale bang-bang accompanying the blasts.
I opened my eyes and saw that two of my shots had landed cleanly. The Tyrant was down to 118 hp while my own hp was 100 of 150. The beast let out one of those Wahoo shouts again, but this time, I remained unfazed.
Notice: You have resisted Annoyed.
I wouldn’t be so fucking sure about that, I thought. I guess the debuff can’t take effect if I can’t actually hear the Yip. That’s going to make things a little easier.
No sooner had the thought occurred to me than the Tyrant let out another series of yips and wahoos. I felt the ground tremble beneath me and an entire swarm of regular sized prairie dogs emerged from their underground colony, eyes trained on me.
You’ve got to be kidding me. I inspected several of the newcomers and they all seemed to have the same stats. “Vicious prairie dog, level 1, 10 hp.”
So, they were mercifully low level, but the problem was that there had to be at least 50 of them. They attacked all at once, swarming around me. I watched in horror as my hp began to tick downward 1 point at a time as the little shits bit at my feet and calves.
I screamed and instinctively kicked at them. Five prairie dogs went flying, and I kicked again with the opposite leg. Another four flew through the air. A flurry of kill notifications flew by the bottom of my field of view, but I ignored it and kept kicking and stomping until I’d killed the entire swarm. Just as I stamped the last prairie dog into the ground, breaking its back, I was struck by the weight of a small vehicle and found myself in much the same position as the rodents I’d kicked.
The Tyrant had used Tackle on me, and I flew 10 yards through the air before bouncing off the rocky ground and rolling to a stop. I groaned and pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. Luckily, I had managed to maintain my grip on my pistol, and I fired the rest of the magazine into the Tyrant as it charged at me. Even as bad a shot as I was, it was difficult to miss at this range.
It didn’t slow the Tyrant down, however. It rammed its head into the side of me, sending me tumbling and rolling for another 20 yards or so. When I finally stopped, the Tyrant stood over me, pinning me to the ground with its front paws.
This is it, I thought. I’m going to die again, permanently this time. Killed by a giant fucking rodent. Why are none of my deaths ever dignified?
The Tyrant opened its mouth and brought its head down, clearly meaning to decapitate me with its orange-hued incisors. A notification flashed by the bottom of my sight again, and again I paid it no mind…but then, just as the Tyrant’s teeth were about to clamp down on me, its foot slipped off my shoulder and I quickly jerked sideways, as if by instinct. His bite went wide and he ended up with a mouthful of dirt and rocks.
This time I didn’t hesitate. I pulled out the Blade of Seredh and sank it deep into the Tyrant’s throat. Blood sprayed down like a fountain upon me, covering my entire upper torso. I yanked the blade free and stabbed again. And again. I kept stabbing and bellowing at the beast until it finally went limp and slumped down on top of me.
I received a kill notification. I was too busy struggling to breathe to be able to read it. I swiped it away and tried to push my way out from under the Tyrant’s corpse. The thing must have weighed a literal ton. I couldn’t budge it an inch no matter how I pushed. I laid there for a few seconds, fully aware that if some other monster came along, I was completely and utterly fucked. There’d be no way for me to defend myself, and even if there were, I wouldn’t hear the thing coming anyway. It’d be on me before I even knew it was there. I needed to do something, and quick.
With no other real choices, I pulled up my menu and scrolled through the kill notifications. Apparently, each of the normal prairie dogs that I killed gave me 1 XP. I tried not to think about the smaller, minion prairie dogs too much. They were so stinking cute that killing them honestly had me on the verge of tears. If the little bastards weren’t trying to bite my feet off, I might have actually shed a few. I swiped away all of the kill notifications until I got to the Burrow Tyrant.
The 100 XP from killing Tyrant and his minions was enough to increase my level from 1 to 2, which came with a point added to Strength and a point to Moxie, plus two free points. I immediately allocated both free points to Strength and closed my menu screen. I gave the Tyrant a shove again, and this time I felt it move. With renewed hope, I pushed at the body with my hands and pulled my legs out from under it at the same time. Completely drained, I laid next to the animal and tried to catch my breath.
Good god, I thought, I really need to work on my cardio. I looked at the Tyrant and quickly amended that to “cardio AND gun skills.” If I had that much trouble shooting a behemoth who barely even moved or dodged, I was in for a world of hurt against a smaller or more mobile enemy. But that’s a future-me problem. Right now, I had something more pressing to attend to: gathering that sweet, sweet loot. The Burrow Tyrant’s tooltip had a “Loot” button now, and I couldn’t wait any longer to see what it dropped for me. I greedily clicked on the button and awaited my prize.
Wait, that’s it? I pulled up my inventory, and sure enough – the only things that had been added were the body parts of a dead rodent. I’d gone through all that getting bitten, getting clawed, getting run over by the Mack truck equivalent of the woodland creatures and all I got out of it was some teeth, fur, and 500 pounds of rodent meat? I seriously hoped the rewards scaled up from here, because this was some actual bullshit. I stood up slowly, dusting myself off and glanced back at the Tyrant.
“Jesus, fuck!” I screamed in disgust as I fell backwards onto my butt, scrambling away from the thing. The carcass was toothless, completely skinned, with large chunks of muscle tissue missing. Its organs lay exposed, gagging me with their stench. I got up to my feet and jogged away from the thing as quickly as I was able, in my condition. I needed to get back to my safe zone in The Plains of Eidolon, so I could relax and heal properly.
After what was probably around half an hour of hiking, I finally made it to the edge of my property and collapsed into a heap. A system notification popped up as soon as I hit the ground.
I grumbled and mentally flipped the bird at The System. Everybody’s a critic. The part that really ticked me off though is that it wasn’t wrong. I did suck. I decided then and there to start a training regimen to level up my shooting and fighting skills, as well as learning to use my abilities. Tomorrow. I’d definitely start that tomorrow. For now, I was starving and exhausted. And deaf.
I looked toward the center of my safezone and decided I should move a little further inward. Just as I was about to push myself up, however, a figure appeared in the distance. It was human-shaped, looking to be an average-sized male. I knew immediately that it wasn’t The System and it definitely wasn’t Seredh. The thing kind of spooked me a little bit, honestly. I figured there was no time like the present to get started using my abilities, so I tried to trigger Threat Assessment on the figure, but just as I did he just…faded away. Almost like a column of smoke blown away and dispersed by a spring breeze. It was at that moment that I knew for sure: I would not be sleeping under the stars, tonight. I pulled my tent from my inventory, set up camp, and clambered inside. After eating a few bites of the rations from my starter pack, I put the rest away and lay down on the bare ground inside my tent. Before long, I drifted off to sleep – broken and blood soaked and more than a little freaked out. The training would definitely wait until morning.