Chapter 37: A Bit of Fun

The Apocalypse System will kill you dead and not bat an eye. It isn’t your friend, it won’t feel your loss, and to the extent it writes anyone obituaries, they come in the form of wry little anecdotes attached to an equipment’s flavor text. For all the jokes it tells, the system created a cold, cruel world that will shred you to pieces if you take your eyes off the ball for even a second.

At the same time, you can’t ignore the fun of it all. I don’t just mean that in the sense of you have to smile and laugh at the bad jokes that the system uses in its fanciful-descriptions, though that wouldn’t hurt. And I don’t mean the sense of pride and accomplishment that you’ll get when you overcome the personal monster of the day that the system generated.

Specifically, I’m telling you that this is a harsh world, and that’s not just because of physical dangers. Humans need joy. They want friends. A life worth living is filled with little moments where they allow themselves to smile and enjoy things. Otherwise, they crack. I’ve seen people who were strong enough to take down titans fall to the malaise of it all.

Depression is a threat as real as any system-generated absurdity, and you need to be just as careful to avoid it.

The Guide, The Apocalypse System and You, page 6

—

In a video game, weapons were judged by two criteria. They had to have good stat blocks, and they had to look cool. And the looking cool could sometimes be ignored if the stat increases were good enough. The game would ignore all the physical implications of the weapon, and the user didn’t have to feel the strain of swinging them

Sean had now wielded enough weapons to know that it wasn’t entirely like that, in real life. The stats mattered, sure. But weapons were more like tools or pieces of sports equipment than he had expected. His real-life hand had to grip them, and his real-life arm had to swing them. How they fit, felt, and balanced meant a lot.

That said, the stat boost was also pretty cool. The spear granted +1 to his SAV and a whopping +2 to his MAG. The only snag was that when he held the spear in one hand and the Mystereamer in the other, Sean found that only the stat boosts from his primary hand weapon showed up. It wasn’t optimal, but was also not entirely unexpected.

The weapon was going to work out just fine, he suspected. More than just feeling right or giving him stats, the spear was something that he could switch to when the Trash Compactor was too slow and the Mystereamer didn’t give him enough attack range.

With the main objective accomplished, Sean started on his fun project, three smaller spears. He made them first and foremost because he thought they would be cool. Practicality be damned.

Spectral Darts (3x)

These may appear to be miniaturized versions of the Spectral Sticker, but this is one of those cases where appearances are deceiving. Can you stab with them? Sure. They’ll work fine for that. Will they act a lot like their big brother when they do? Yup. But using them like that would be a waste. You know that. I know that. Hell, even the darts know it, and they literally don’t have the mental capacity to think.

Deep down, these are throwers. They will fly straight, true, and generally cooperate with your stats and any relevant skills you might have to ping enemies from a distance. So hide in the shadows, my friend. Sink these fangs deep into small game. It’s what the bears would have wanted.

Unlike the spear and much like the Trash compactor, the darts didn’t come with any stat buffs. That was fine. The way Sean planned on using them, he’d almost never end up holding them for very long anyway.

Now he just needed a few mostly stationary, well-understood enemies to test them out on. Luckily, there was no shortage of Toxic Clumps to practice on, and Sean could always use more glue. But for now, it was dark enough that he felt instinctively uncomfortable. He’d get to testing in the morning.

—

“Hmm. Hmm, hmm.”

Sean woke up to the sound of Cedarhelm humming to itself, not once or twice, but almost continuously. He quickly sat up to see who or what Cedarhelm was humming to, only to find the grove was empty besides him and the dragon. As he sat up, the humming suddenly stopped.

Was he trying to wake me up? Sean thought. Is he… bored?

“Good morning, Cedarhelm.”

“Good morning, Sean Lawrence. Did you have success with your hunt?”

At this point, Sean strongly suspected that Cedarhelm had a pretty good idea of what went on outside the grove, whether it was in his line of sight or not. Given his size, Sean doubted the dragon was following him around, but the toxic plants that Cedarhelm had clued him in on hadn’t been that near the grove. Given the dragon’s high stats and Sean’s relative ignorance of, well, anything, it was at least possible.

“I did, and thank you. I only had time to kill one of the plants, but I was able to make these,” Sean said, waving the spear and darts in the air a bit. “I’m going to clearing out at least several more of the bushes. I can never have too much glue.”

“Glue?” Cedarhelm said, apparently unfamiliar with the word.

“Umm… adhesives. Sticky stuff.”

“Ah. I see,” Cedarhelm hummed a bit. “I apologize if I woke you up a bit early. I wanted to make sure I talked to you before you left. To say goodbye.”

“Goodbye? Are you leaving?” Sean thought about leaving a larger question unasked, then decided against politeness in this case. “Where would you go?”

Cedarhelm laughed.

“Not me, Sean Lawrence. You. It’s unlikely you will return here.” Cedarhelm shifted his weight a bit. “Those weapons are a bit better than you think they are. And I’ve been here a while now. Those as strong as you are now will find themselves at the edge of the forest soon, whether they like it or not.”

“Well, okay.” Sean took a deep breath. For better or worse, he had spent as much time in the forest as he had spent anywhere in this new world. Once he got over the fear that Cedarhelm would casually lean over and eat him, it had been one of the very few periods he had felt somewhat safe. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try to come back to visit. If I, you know, live long enough.”

“I hope you do live, Sean Lawrence. You have been an interesting person to meet, here at the end of your world.” Cedarhelm huffed a bit. “But you won’t be able to come back. The forest exists for a purpose, and those too strong for it can’t enter.”

Which explained, Sean supposed, why the junkyard titan hadn’t followed him in. He had wondered exactly how that worked.

“That is also why I don’t leave. As strong as you perceive me to be, there are things in the world that might hunt me. I have no wish to make them stronger.”

“Well, huh. I suppose that’s goodbye, then.” Sean sighed. “Hey, I don’t want this to be weird, but thank you. I don’t really have that many friends… lately. I’m glad to have made one.”

“A friend?” Cedarhelm’s head lifted the barest amount. “You would consider me a friend?”

“Well, sure. You’ve helped me out a lot, over the last few days. It’s appreciated.”

Cedarhelm hummed, one long continuous release of air that lasted surprisingly long. Whatever he was thinking apparently took a moment. “Very well, Sean Lawrence. I am glad to call you friend. I wish you luck in your adventure.”

Sean nodded, and turned to leave the grove for the last time.

“Sean Lawrence?”

He turned to find Cedarhelm standing, the illusion that normally disguised the reptilian shape of its head dissolved. Somehow, he wasn’t nearly as afraid of the dragon now.

“Yeah, Cedarhelm?”

“The troubles you face. Hit them hard between the eyes. If you do, I’m sure it will turn out all right.”

—

Sean managed to get seven more vials of glue before deciding to go on his way. He wasn’t sure what he’d use them for, but it looked a lot like his life would be more or less governed by the availability of adhesives moving forward, and he really couldn’t have too much.

The clumps weren’t that hard to kill anyway. Using Hard Time on them hardly made a difference that he could see, not that it was easy to see how the skill worked on a visually confusing mass of reaching tendrils.

Using Hard Time on the Spectral Darts, however, proved to be a very big difference. Between the recent growth in MAG and its small-object buff, a charge of Hard Time nearly doubled the speed of the darts. It was an expensive sort of resource use, since he only had a few charges to begin with. But since the buff lasted as nearly as long as a throw from distance he was attacking at, he could see it being an important situational tool for him in the future.

Even without a full-on throwing skill, the darts worked a little better than he had expected them too. They took a bit of getting used to, but his experience practicing with the knife helped. After a few dozen throws, he more or less had the hang of them and could consistently plant them most of the way into the Toxic Clumps’ stems. Taking a direct shot to their cores seemed to distract the plants, and it helped his hunting go a little quicker than it otherwise would have.

They also, true to the system’s description, seemed to like being thrown, as if being a throwing weapons gave them get a little bonus for that purpose. Sean couldn’t explain why he felt that way. He just chalked it up to what the guide had said about listening to the Apocalypse System.

On top of that, two more things were helping Sean’s little experiment work better. SAV made almost everything physical motion he made a little smoother and more refined, and his Shankmaster skill was probably helping out in some way too.

He might have tried a little harder to get a little more glue, but the Toxic Clumps gave out very little in the way of experience, and time was at a premium. If there was one thing he didn’t want, it was to find himself at the edge of the forest after sunset. There was a good chance he’d be running as soon as his feet hit non-forest ground, and if so, he would benefit from good light.

It turned out he didn’t need to worry. Only a half hour or so after leaving the glue-harvesting hunting grounds, the light started to change. Things were a bit brighter, and the air had started to smell less like moss and pine.

Sean knelt and shrugged off his pack, making sure everything was packed down as securely as it could be. After a lot of deliberation, he had decided only to bring out Capon’s and a few other rabbit pelts, all three of the bear-skins, the wind panther’s skin, and one large section of titan-sloth hide. Even after reducing his loot, the pack was still heavy as hell, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave more behind.

Out of all of his weapons, the Mystereamer was the hardest to pack, so he shoved it into the front of his belt. Making a mental note to get a sheath for the jagged weapon, Sean shoved his darts into his belt’s side-pouch, wedged his spear into the center of his bedroll where he could draw it quickly, and stuck the Trash Compactor to the side.

As prepared as he would be, he stepped out of the woods and into the light.