CWD: GA ~ Four

Nacho found the cave on the north side of the mound of rocks. Inside waited a trio of Rat Nasties, a rodent monster similar to the Claw Squirrels, but with exponentially less cuteness to them. The rats had filthy fur, diseased pink tails, and both their arms and legs were visibly muscled.

He reflected on the fact that he was doing so much better than his first go-through. Last time, he’d spent way too much time filling his non-existent underwear and running from monsters. Killing things in a video game was so much easier than killing things in real life.

The fact that the club had been a terrible weapon also crossed his mind. When he had first found them, he’d only had the sword and daggers for about twenty minutes before the wandering reptile-bear-thing had pulled him into the black water and ripped him to shreds. Hence, a healthy respect for amphibious creatures had been born.

Nacho lured the Rat Nasties out of the cave, then flung knives at them. He killed two before he had to pull his sword to kill the third, which was almost on him by then. Having made short work of the pathetically weak creatures, he collected his knives and kicked their bodies into the tangle of bushes. He was up to a hundred and eleven Evaluation Points and now had a well-protected base for his future operations. Carefully placing his jars in the back of the cave, he gathered dry wood and made a tiny fire on the flat hunk of rock of his cave patio. The roasted peanuts were so much better than the raw ones that he just kept going, probably using too many. “I earned this. I need a treat after a day like today.”

Whatever the glowing thing in the sky was, it was setting by the time he added a few more roasted peanuts to his stores. He piled wood in front of the shallow cave, knowing that it wouldn’t keep anything from coming for him, but the noise of the clattering sticks would wake him up. He sneaked a peek at the night sky. There weren't any stars, just a fake-looking crescent moon that glowed like a papier-mâché sickle in the utterly black dome above. It was unnerving, like poorly-done CGI. Filling the last crack, he spent the rest of the night in total darkness, worrying about his friends and their own Evaluation abyss—but he did sleep pretty well for laying on a bare stone floor.

In the morning, he drank deeply from his water supply, then re-filled it from the clear pond. Most people wouldn’t have noticed that the water level was down a quarter of an inch, but Nacho did. He knew from horror stories of people that had done well in the Evaluation that in the end, that pool would dry up.

“Two days and two hundred EP is my record. I gotta at least double that, if not triple it.” After tidying up his cave, he took the north path in the hopes of topping off his clay jar with peanuts. The northern forests were full of the yips and yowls of monstrous wolves, probably level three at least. He’d eventually go hunting there, though he had to be careful. High-level Tier zero monsters were hard, but a Tier one monster would be impossible to even damage without skills or weapon masteries.

He remembered the wolves from before. They were smaller than the average timber wolf, completely hairless, and bright pink. Their eyes were dull black dots in their skulls, but frankly, their teeth were the largest part of them: big, spitty, and yellow.

Nacho had a plan to deal with them, but he wanted to make sure his stores were good enough for him to hole up if he got too injured to continue. To that end, a fence for his cave entrance would be a great idea. He didn’t have the ability to make a door, but he had enough access to the materials around him, so he decided that he could create a screen of sticks.

After looking up, then down and to the left for the third time, he grunted in annoyance. There was no way to see his Satiation values here—how hungry and thirsty he actually was, not just how he felt at the time. In the Juxtaposition, Hunger and Thirst Points were tracked just like Health Points and Mana. “I can’t… man, it’s gonna be wild returning to that madness.”

Part of him was excited to beat whatever twisted game the Patrons were playing. Another part of him didn’t want to be thrust back into that chaos. Frankly, the ‘nice’ people from Earth didn’t last. While he would do what he could to change that, the fact was that the vast majority of people that did survive too often turned out to be bloodthirsty and paranoid. Not always—Nacho had met a select few kind people, and there were natural leaders who knew that humans did better when they worked together than they did by going it alone.

“How about I watch the grass so I don’t get eaten, instead of reminiscing?” he chastised himself. To the west of his cave home, he found tough grasses. He pulled a bundle out of the ground, filling one of the cloth sacks before returning. In about an hour, he had woven the grasses through his sticks and made a crude fence for his cave entrance. He looked over it with a critical eye, sighing at the wilting mess that he had put together. “Enough of this. Time to go wolf hunting.”

The sky’s glowing orb—as he couldn’t really call it a sun, the world being flat and all—hung overhead as Nacho jogged up the northern trail without even breathing hard. That was a great sign, encouraging him that he was in very good shape. When he was a kid, he’d thought that being in shape meant being muscular and cut, but now he couldn’t care less how he looked. This was about his survival, and being lean with high endurance was the key to staying ahead of the curve.

*Yip!*

The cries of the naked pink wolves grew louder, all the way until a wolf came running from the undergrowth—easy to spot, given the fact that it was practically fluorescent. Nacho chose a tree with plenty of branches as his escape route. He waved his hands and called almost softly, “Hey, pinkie, wanna chew on some grade-A Evaluation butt?”

The wolf seemed to like the idea. Unfortunately, it didn’t want to play along with his one-on-one plan. It lifted its head and gave out a howl, a signal for its buddies that it had found lunch.

“You filthy cheater!” Nacho hissed as he turned and sped to the tree, climbing up a few branches. He hung his helmet on a branch so that it wouldn’t impact his aim, then whipped out a knife and sent it end-over-end into the throat of the naked wolf.

It was a perfect shot. The wolf choked and scratched at itself, but it eventually died choking on its own juices.

Congratulations! You have killed a Naked Wolf!

Level 02 Standard Monster = 20 Evaluation Points

Good job; those nudists have it coming!

The party was only just starting. Six other naked wolves came tumbling down the trail, drooling at the idea of prey and fully ignoring their fallen companion. Lathered into a frenzy, the naked wolves tried to scurry up the thick tree trunk, but all they tasted was his blade. Nacho slammed his short sword into an eye, an instant kill. One fifty-one EP. Another, he had to slash twice. One seventy-one EP.

Seemingly unconcerned about the prey in the tree, one of the wolves turned and started eating an easier meal. The others had yet to give up, one of the final two leaping up and managing to get its paws over a lower branch.

The human was forced to switch to his long knife in the close quarters, hacking his blade into the monster’s skull. At this point, normal canines might’ve run from the massacre, but these were monsters. Their job was to kill or be killed, and when they faced someone like him, he could prove empirically that it wasn’t a good evolutionary route to success.

Nacho was soon out of knives, but the wolves didn’t relent. Instead, even more started trickling out of the woods and joining in on the hunt. By the time the final furless lupine lay bleeding out on the ground, he was sitting at two hundred and fifty one Evaluation Points. He’d gotten thirsty, but he knew that he had plenty of food and water back at the cave, so he pushed on, continuing down the north trail.

This was new territory for him, and all he had to go on was second-hand accounts from people that were clearly exaggerating their time in this place. The last time he’d been in the Evaluation, he’d been forced to go running from the wolves. Yet he still remembered the squawks of monsters farther into the forest. So far, he’d killed monstrous squirrels, snakes, and wolves. “Might as well take on some kind of bird. Task list is growin’. I need boots and leggings, and I wouldn’t mind a projectile weapon. These throwing knives aren’t ideal beyond like… ten feet.”

He followed the path through the thick forest until he came to a river, which was a neat trick on a flat world. “Who needs physics anyway? See, this right here is why I skipped out on physics. Not because the world was ending. Totally not.”

A half-destroyed stone bridge arched over the frothing water below. Farther north, the ramparts of a castle tower rose above the rainforest trees. Nacho checked the skies one last time, then started across the bridge. He was jumping from the cracked stones on one side to get to the crumbling bricks on the other side when the shriek of a furious monster split the air on his left.

Immediately following the first sound of alarm, the roar of a bear rose to the right. To be fair to his past self, it was actually a bear crossed with a lizard. That monster among beasts had killed him before, but that wasn’t going to happen this time.

Nacho backed up onto the bridge, took three big steps, and jumped to the other side. Behind him flashed the black feathers and wicked yellow talons of the bird creature. Nacho landed safely, then whirled, short sword and dagger ready. The bird was already flapping away in the distance. He got a good look at it: a misshapen crow, like a raven if it had been dipped in candle wax and then left out in the sun. “Tha~a~at’s upsetting. Ambush predator dropping from above? So unfair.”

The lizard-bear roared again. It was close, and getting closer. Nacho was at two hundred and fifty-one points. He’d broken his previous record, and as long as he was careful, he might hit his lower goal of five hundred. At that point, he wouldn’t need to be an assassin; he’d have the points for a Paladin class, if he wanted to learn a whole new way of doing things. That wasn’t the route he’d take, though; he’d stick with being an assassin. It just matched his personality too well. With this windfall, he’d buy any number of skills and weapons from the Evaluation Mall and hit the game already overpowered, ready to kill anything and anyone who threatened him and his friends.

Satisfied, Nacho continued down the path. That bird thing was at least level five, as was the lizard-bear. If he killed both? He’d end the day at well over three, if not four hundred points. Blinking the sweat out of his eyes, he focused on his current survival. If he got taken down by some minor creature, his trip to the Evaluation Mall wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. He wanted to go shopping while flush with EP.

Managing to reach the castle without further incident put him on high alert. It wasn’t a huge keep; more like a stone outpost than anything grand. Near the back of the castle, the pine trees were gray, and he could see the trees near the front already losing needles. It would be happening across the world: the plants dying, the land turning to dust.

Peering around carefully as he passed through the half-destroyed gate and into the courtyard, he took in all the details of the area and plotted his escape route right away. Above him hung a loft area, as wrecked as the swamp shack. Half the floor was gone, and the wooden roof was open, granting him vision of the melted crow that went soaring over him. The bird creature wheeled around with a distant caw, clearly waiting for him to come back into the open.

The first thing Nacho spotted was the boots, but after racing over to them and trying them on, he found that they were way too big, as were a pair of leather pants with rings on the side. The only things he found that he could use were a bow and a quiver hanging from a hook, along with a long halberd which gleamed silver. It was truly a mighty polearm, but way too heavy for the current him to use properly. Fortunately, there were also some leather satchels, all far better than his current homemade cloth bag.

The devil crow finally came swooping down, landing on the front battlements across from the loft. It was a massive, ugly thing that eyed him with evil, beady eyes. It shook itself, and feathers a yard long fell to the courtyard floor as black fluid spattered the walls.

Cawing hoarsely, it launched itself off the wall and came crashing into the open-topped building. Nacho was quick enough to grab the bow and quiver of arrows, scurrying up a ladder into the upper level as the crow smashed up the wall with its long black beak. Its talons shredded the floor, and the halberd went clattering to the cobblestones below.

Nacho was thrown against the wall as the crow bashed through the remnants of the roof, sending splinters flying through the air. The thing was big, clearly higher than level five. He could only hope that it was geared toward speed and ambush while perhaps having a glass jaw that he could shatter with standard weapons.

He nocked an arrow and let it fly, the too-high draw causing the string to slap back against his wrist and fingers. “Ouch! Stupid bird! Stupid bow!”

His practice paid off, even if it had cost him a bit of pain. The feathered shaft tore through the neck of the beast… and bounced.

“Uh oh.” The strike was enough to drive the crow back and perhaps hurt it, but it flapped its massive wings and blew an awful stink into Nacho’s nose, then went soaring away. He wasn’t worried about it leaving. It would be back. That was the concerning part.

Nacho glanced down the back castle wall, finding that yes, this was the northern edge of the world. Below waited nothing but swirling mist. He wondered if he could walk on those clouds, maybe find a secret room, like in a video game? Would he find an easter egg from the Patrons themselves? It was an interesting idea, but he wasn’t going to risk it. He could imagine himself smashing to pieces on rocks below the mist, or worse yet, falling forever and dying of thirst with the wind whistling in his ears.

It was rather unnerving to see the world end in nothing, bordered by a line of dead trees, dried roots, and dirt turning to ash as it dripped away into nothing.

The devil crow shrieked a challenge to him, declaring that it was coming back to dine on his very Nacho-y flesh. He remembered what he’d told Reuben and Brie—to take chances. This wasn’t real. This was an Evaluation, and death would only send him to the Evaluation Mall. So… he decided to take a chance. He stood tall and waited for the devil crow to fly toward him, dripping goo and losing feathers.

He didn’t take the shot right away. He waited, waited… waited. Part of him wanted to shoot just to let go of the slightly shaking string. Another part, the war-weary part, told him to endure—that he would know when it was time to release the arrow.

Those claws reached for him. They were within ten feet, and that was when he let the shaft fly with a grunt of relief. It sank into the chest of the devil bird just as one of the iron-hard feathers fell away, sending it tumbling over him and into the wall to break through the stone and land on the other side.

Nacho spun, fingers stinging. That was nothing compared to the burn on his arm.

Congratulations! You have killed a Melting Crow!

Level 05 Standard Monster = 50 Evaluation Points

Nice work! Try a bite; it’s practically ice cream!

“You’re disgusting,” Nacho called up at the system. He didn’t need to check the meat; there was no way it didn’t have Putrid Mana. Getting off the castle wall was a little tricky, but he managed to find handholds and footholds in the stone. As he was still wearing the kilt, it wasn’t a good look. “So glad I’m here alone right now.”

Sitting in the ruins, he pulled on the pants. They were big, but the minute he used the wooden button to close the fly, they shrank to fit him, as did the thick leather boots once he stuffed his feet in.

He checked his gear:

Evaluation Armor Detected

Head: 10

Body: 10

Legs: 15

Feet: 10

Note: Your new pants and boots are disco-leather-luscious. However, evaluation items are not transferable to the Starter World. Enjoy them while you can!

“Dang, it really was only level five.” While he had been hoping for a better payday, he was still pretty happy about the gear he had found. He hadn’t been expecting leather to be as protective as the metal of his cuirass, but apparently, game logic was in charge once more. Nacho had been living a regular life for the last half-year, and he had gotten rusty. The fact of the matter was, reality had been reprogrammed to do whatever the Patrons demanded.

Fully armored up, he shouldered on the leather satchels, the bow, and quiver. He didn’t have any extra-dimensional Storage Slots yet, so carting around all the gear was cumbersome. He thought about leaving the halberd behind, but a devious idea of how to use it popped into his mind, so he lugged it along as well as he could.

Rapidly drying pine needles littered the ground as more trees died around him, some even falling as he passed by. He stopped and threw some pinecones, half-opened and dry, into the satchel, getting sticky sap on his hands. All he wanted to do was go take a nap, but that was the gamer college student in him, not the trained assassin. He had to get back to his camp, eat and drink, and then he could explore some more.

But first, he had a bear to kill, and revenge to take. He was at three hundred and one Evaluation Points, but he wanted to end the day killing the monster that had killed him. Fortunately—or unfortunately—the lizard-bear blocked his path on the other side of the bridge.

“Might as well get this over with.” Nacho rolled his head around and dropped his gear, grabbing the bow and arrow from the pile. The beast stood on its rear reptilian legs, brandishing the massive claws adorning its paws. Fur mixed with scales; half the bear's face was mammalian and familiar, the other half lizard ugly and scaly, with bulging eyes rotating in their sockets. Nacho was pretty sure the lizard-bear hatched eggs, if it procreated at all—not that it needed to. “Thanks, magic, for a treat like this thing.”

Nacho retreated back down the path, then jammed the butt of the halberd into the dirt that was already turning to dust as all moisture within it vanished at an unnatural rate. He lodged the spear tip against the lower limb of a dead tree, covering it with dead branches.

When he returned, the bear was pacing back and forth, roaring and huffing on the other side. The river was too fast and full of frothing water to easily cross, and the creature was too smart to put itself in a disadvantaged position. It clearly wasn’t sure about making the jump across, a perfect scenario for Nacho. It was like finding a glitch in a video game where the bad guys couldn’t touch him.

He fired arrow after arrow into the bear, until the thing was so blinded by rage that it launched itself across the gap in the bridge. Bleeding and frothing at the mouth, it landed only ten feet from the human and didn’t pause. It sped forward, chasing after Nacho—who had started sprinting down the path.

Nacho dodged to the left just as the creature caught up, leading it straight into the halberd that was hidden by the dead tree limb. The bear rammed a shoulder into the spear point, driving it in deep, which served to anchor the creature to that position.

Seizing the moment of pained surprise, the human danced forward and drove his short sword into the monster’s side, bypassing its ribs and puncturing both the heart and lungs. Then he ducked and swirled away to let the creature finish dying on its own.

Congratulations! You have killed a Gecko Bear!

Level 07 Standard Monster = 70 Evaluation Points

You did well!

Note: +5 Evaluation Points for killing it on your second day! Bam! You go, boy.

Nacho let out a sigh of relief, then returned to the bridge to gather everything he’d dropped. He couldn’t keep a wide smile from spreading across his face: he was ending the day at three hundred and seventy-six Evaluation Points. That was almost twice as many as he’d had when he’d died the first time, to the creature he’d just finished off.

Jumping over the bridge, he hurried back to his cave home… and that was when he heard voices calling out in the distance. They sounded human, if a little high and throaty. “This is new… are there people here?”

Everything he experienced from here on out would be new, but… he had never once heard about other people being found in the Evaluation, and some people had managed to survive for four days. He inched closer, but even up close, he couldn’t understand their words.

Someone was talking. Nacho was sure of it: he wasn’t alone.