Before heading to the creek to grab smooth river stones and refill his water trough Blake had some preparations to make. First was upgrading his spear. While he could not make sharpened stone at the moment the ‘blunt’ stone blade on his knife was still better than any of his wooden tools and he wanted that on his spear.

  Making a stone spear was the exact same as making a stone knife. Blake created a stone blade by smashing two rocks together then glued the blade onto a piece of wood for a handle. The only difference was that the handle was one of the longer sticks that had been one of his old spears.

  Blake was surprised by how much of an upgrade he got to his spear skills from his Talent after making the spear. It was clearly considered a big step up. He had gotten a skill dump following the knife’s creation but it was the first of its kind so he had nothing to compare it to. For all he knew at the time that could have been the bare minimum amount of knowledge required for a knife.

  Now he knew better. After making a single dull stone spear his skill had almost doubled. It was enough of an improvement that Blake decided to take the time to make some variations. This included things like different spear lengths and differently shaped spearheads. Many were not practical but they provided him with an expanded skillset.

  Just like he had done when discovering how he could make a shiv a spear and vice versa, he made a knife that he conceptualized as a spear for his Talent. By the time he was done experimenting with spear variations, he had more than 15 of them.

  He made one more of the standard spears after finishing them all so that it could get the maximum reinforcement possible from his Talent. It was still a small effect but it was becoming noticeable. If Blake had to put a number to it he would say there was a 2 to 3 percent increase in effectiveness. This meant it cut better, was more stable, and kept an edge better. Anything that could be considered key to the spears’ quality was marginally improved. He couldn’t wait until everything he made was immediately twice as good.

  With all the spear skill gains, Blake had to take the time to train. Having such large improvements so fast made integrating all the potential take a while. He had to meditate and separate out each bit of knowledge before applying it which grew exponentially harder the less of his instinctive skill he consciously understood.

  After four days of crafting and training, Blake had to finally admit something to himself. While there were benefits to all his training over the last few days that wasn’t why he was doing it. He was avoiding going to the creek. ‘Training’ was just a good excuse. During evening meditation he set himself to leave first thing in the morning.

  First thing the next morning Blake stood up and… changed his mind. The morning was for exercise after all. Everything else could come after. After exercising he had to spend some time on the obstacle course. It wouldn’t do to have trouble balancing because he had neglected his parkour skills. Just like that, he came up with excuse after excuse until the sun had set.

  Blake wanted to smack himself. He had sworn the night before that he would go to the creek today yet had then spent the entire day doing everything he could to not head to the creek. He swore again to himself that he would head out the next day but again when the time came he found something else to do.

  Like this many days passed. Blake had already been struggling with tracking time and being in a haze of procrastination only made things worse. He wasn’t knocked out of his cycle of self-recrimination until another rabbicorn assaulted his base. He was awake during this attack but unlike the previous time he had been awake during a rabbicorn attack, he did not freeze. Well, he didn’t freeze for long.

  Stone spear in hand he moved toward the rabbicorn before it had a chance to impale itself. Blake did not get a chance to reach it before it had moved past the first layer of spikes. That was a first. The previous two rabbicorns had impaled themselves immediately. Still, when it reached the trench it hopped in only to be impaled by one of the spikes at the bottom.

  The rabbicorn died soon after its impalement. With a practiced motion, Blake stabbed his spear downwards impaling the rabbicorns head directly. Using the spear he levered the monster off the spike and brought it over toward his makeshift table. It was a flat boulder that he had moved closer to his fire and spent time cleaning off. He had set logs around the table as seats. He didn’t have any reason to have more than one seat but it felt wrong for there not to be seats surrounding it.

  After setting the rabbicorn down Blake did not set to skinning it like he would normally. This time he grabbed his water trough and moved to leave the glade. A combination of his studies before entering the spirit realm and his experience so far told Blake that monsters took time to respawn and for a short while, there would be nothing to fear.

  Each region had a preset set of monsters that were spawned within it. Over time it would replenish them to that level but would never surpass it. Nothing stopped monsters from wandering outside their home region but that didn’t cause more monsters to spawn. Of course, it did have to be taken into account that any monster leaving their home region was liable to get killed by higher region monsters which were typically stronger and more aggressive.

  A region could vary widely in size, shape, and energy density. Based on the small amount of travel Blake had done he suspected the region he was in was many miles big but couldn’t be certain. Regions varied in their energy density and it was supposed to be clear when crossing regions but he wasn’t confident that he would have detected it when he moved between regions so he might have traveled across many on his first day in the spirit realm.

  If he did not that meant that he had miles of space where it seemed only one rabbicorn spawned in. Since it had just died he had a short while before another rabbicorn spawned. If he moved fast enough to get water and river stones there would be no danger.

  That time limit was enough of a kick in the pants to get Blake moving. Despite his fear, he only hesitated at the edge of his glade for a moment before setting off at a sprint. Since his last journey, Blake’s body had surpassed normal human limits. On top of that he had trained to use his body so there was no stumbling, falling, or having to slow down to keep his balance.

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  Blake sped through the forest with his water trough under one arm and a spear in his other hand. He had run out of water days ago putting a halt to his herbalism experiments so filling the log he had turned into a water container backup was just as much of a priority as getting river stones.

  Without water, he could make no more glue and without glue, he couldn’t attach the stone tool heads to handles. He also wanted to try and make clothes using the glue but would need to find a more flexible glue formula for it to work. Right now his glue was quite stiff which was great for tools, weapons, and most other things but sometimes flexibility was useful. Like with clothes.

  Blake could imagine it now. A bunch of leaves and grass glued together into a shirt and some sort of pants. Maybe a skirt. It wasn’t very manly but would be easier to make and anything was better than the nothing he had for the past… he wasn’t actually sure how long. Had he been here for a month? Two months?

  These idle thoughts distracted Blake long enough to reach the creek. Once there he quickly dropped the trough into the water and went in search of smooth stones he could use as hammers for making stone tools. It was surprisingly difficult to find any that were of an appropriate size. Most of the stones Blake found were either much too large or small enough to almost be called sand.

  He did succeed after a short while, however. Dumping his small collections of river stones into the now filled trough he set back for his glade. His heart was beating heavier by the minute as he kept waiting for something to go wrong. It was becoming more and more difficult to hear his surroundings as blood pumped in his ears and his vision narrowed.

  Despite his constant expectation of disaster, Blake made it back to the glade safe and sound. He slumped to the ground, heart still racing. While a rather short trip Blake felt exhausted. He took a sip of the water he had collected before deciding to take a nap.

  Overall his need for sleep had reduced since arriving in the spirit realm but it was nowhere near eliminated. Unlike back on Earth sleep did nothing for his body. Just like with food and water, his body did not require sleep to function. He still needed to sleep though.

  His mind was the weak point in this equation. There was no chemical reason his mind needed sleep but there was a level of mental strain that only sleep could help with. Blake had heard that some people, especially at higher tiers, could meditate in the place of sleep but that just sounded like sleeping while sitting to him. The whole thing with meditation was focused so as to clear the mind. After a certain point that was sleep.

  Blake dozed off and didn’t wake until the sun had almost set. When he had made it back from the creek the sun had just reached its zenith so he had slept away half the day. He felt much better so it was worth it but he couldn’t help but lament how long he had been out.

  The plan had been to cook the rabbicorn upon his return but Blake wasn’t sure if it would still be good after being left in the sun all day. He decided to cook it anyway. His Talent would tell him after he finished cooking whether it was safe. He was craving food so if at all possible he wanted to eat.

  He wasn’t hungry per se, a barely edible combination of plants had covered his needs for muscle growth, but he wanted to taste something, anything. Blake took a moment to try and use one of the river stones he had just collected to sharpen his knife. With a proper knife, he would be able to do much better with his skinning job.

  While he saw a bit of improvement to the edge of the knife it would take a long time, time he did not have if he wanted to cook the rabbicorn before it was completely rancid. The stone knife was still more than sufficient to drastically improve his skinning job. The fur wasn’t in the best state but unlike all his previous attempts Blake thought it could still be used.

  He might not need to make a grass skirt if he had fur. Looking at the fur Blake sighed. That wouldn’t work, at least not with the rabbicorn fur. The monsters were only one to two feet tall and did not have enough fur for proper clothing. Maybe if he had a sewing kit he could combine furs together to make something suitable but as it was a speedo was the best he could do with the fur that remained undamaged.

  Blake decided that he would at least try and make something with it if only for practice. He enjoyed crafting but had grown tired of the same two types of crafts he was doing day in and day out. He was either making a salve or a pointy object. There was little variation beyond his new expansion into stone tools.

  Meat extracted Blake got to work cooking his meal. This time, to further his cooking skills, he varied the thickness of each slice he cooked to test out what was best. With a knife, no matter how dull, he was able to get more exacting shapes rather than the jumbled mess he got when pulling the meat apart with his fingers.

  Food complete, Blake analyzed the information his Talent gave him. While not as bad as his first meal, the food had begun to go bad. If he ate it there was a decent chance he would get food poisoning.

  The cooked meat didn’t smell bad to him, the opposite in fact. That made it difficult to throw away without even trying it. Blake glanced over the wooden container holding his anti-poison goop. He needed to test it out at some point, right?

  The memory of his last bout with food poisoning was clear in his mind as he took a bite of the food. He only planned to take a nibble but the next thing he knew it was all gone. That couldn’t be good.

  Worried that he had made a horrible mistake Blake went to sleep after burning the remaining guts of the rabbicorn. He wondered if there was something he could use those for.

  Blake woke in the middle of the night, stomach rumbling. Oh no. One of the benefits of being in the spirit realm was that there was no need for toilets. If it was edible the body could perfectly absorb it without loss.

  On one dark night, Blake learned that was not the case when it came to food poisoning. He didn’t even get the chance to take the anti-poison goop before his bowels decided to empty themselves. For once, Blake was glad he had no clothes to wear. He doubted he would have had time to take anything off.

  He would need a new bed. He was lucky that his beds were small trenches as he could just bury the evidence of his misery come morning but in the middle of the night, he had no time to appreciate such things.

  He didn’t have much in him so Blake had a chance to consume some of the goop soon enough. After a few minutes, he started to feel better and was about to lay down before remembering he did not want to use his bed. Light was beginning to crest the horizon so he decided that he was up for the day.

  Turning towards the pile of dirt that he had made from the various pits and trenches he had dug Blake began to fill in his old bed. As he was working he felt a warmth begin to suffuse his body focused around his intestines. Having become very familiar with the sensation Blake couldn’t help but grow.

  The spirit realm was enhancing his body after his fight with food poisoning. Blake had become addicted to the feeling of growth and knew that, despite what most would consider common sense, he was going to poison himself again. Intentionally.

  Who knows, maybe with time he would become immune to rotten food and would be free to store rabbicorn meat for weeks at a time before consuming it.

  Blake sighed again. This was gonna suck.

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