Chương 6: Progress (Probably)

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── Current XP: 26. 376 / 100 Fenwick had stopped counting the bugs. He had kept count for the first week. It had seemed important, a record of progress, something to report back to Nibbles in the evenings when they returned to the Aphid Barn. By the end of the second week, the number had become large enough to be demoralizing rather than encouraging, and he had stopped. The bugs continued regardless of whether anyone was counting them. Beetles, mostly.

Flies when the hero could catch them, which was more often than it should have been, given his AGI of 1, though Fenwick had developed a theory that the flies did not register the hero as a threat and therefore did not flee—several moths. An incident with a wasp nest that Fenwick did not like to think about, but which had generated a surprising amount of XP in a short period, along with several stings that the hero had not noticed and Fenwick very much had. The frogs had been more significant, XP-wise.

The lizards, more so. There had been two oversized beetles the size of his fist, a twig blight that had emerged from a bramble at an unfortunate moment, and something Fenwick could not identify that had apparently wandered in from deeper in the Thornwood and would not be wandering back out. The toadstool people were down to four. Fenwick had developed a system of acorn throws timed to the hero's engagement window. It worked approximately half the time. The other half of the time, the hero ate bugs.

Today had started like most days. The dawn light came through the unshuttered north windows in thin bars, crossing the fresh-laid floor and reaching the far wall. The hero stood exactly where Fenwick had left him the night before. He stood there every morning. The screen above his head was dim, its single small image quiet in the early light, the strange script Sindy ran through the nights already fading as the day started.

Fenwick's desk in the stable hand's quarters held last night's notes, two unused acorns, and a letter to his mother he had started four days ago and not finished. He renewed Flower Scent at dawn, feeling the familiar small resentment of a spell slot spent on personal survival rather than anything useful. He climbed into the harness with the practiced efficiency of someone who had made peace with a situation without actually accepting it. The trek to the hunting grounds was mostly uneventful.

There was a moment when a bird flew past them, and the hero tried to climb a tree. A few slips and a lot of yelling on Fenwick's part, and they were back on track. They reached the Shadefall Training Grounds by mid-morning. The remaining four toadstool people were in their usual positions, having apparently spent the night being furious about the continuing existence of the log they were hiding behind. Fenwick readied an acorn. The hero walked entirely past the clearing.

Fenwick turned to watch the toadstool people recede behind them. The toadstool people watched the hero walk past them. Everyone was briefly confused. The hero stopped at the base of a large oak tree. He stood there for a moment. Then he reached down and picked up something from among the roots. A beetle. Large, black, slow-moving. He ate it without ceremony. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0. 0005 XP Fenwick watched this.

"The mushroom people," he said, with the exasperated flatness of someone who had said a thing many times.

"Are behind us." The hero found another beetle. Above his head, the screen cycled through its sequence. The dancing figures pointed back the way they had come. The toadstool shapes blinked with encouraging gold light. The hero ate the second beetle. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0. 0005 XP One of the toadstool people had broken from the log.

Fenwick noticed it first — a small furious red shape moving through the undergrowth with the focused intensity of a creature executing a plan it was very proud of. It reached the hero's boot. It bit the boot. It bit it again. It planted both small feet and pulled, which accomplished nothing, and then resumed biting with the commitment of something that had decided this was its life's work now. The hero found a third beetle. The toadstool person bit the boot eleven more times. Fenwick counted.

On the twelfth bite, it paused, reassessed, and bit the boot again. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0. 0005 XP Fenwick reached for an acorn. Then he stopped. He put the acorn back. He watched the hero work methodically along the base of the oak, finding beetles with the focused attention he rarely applied to anything. The toadstool person continued its assault on the boot below. The screen continued its routine above, largely ignored. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road.

Report any occurrences.

"All right," said Fenwick.

"All right." He would wait. The toadstool person did not give up. It tried the lace first, found the loose end, and pulled with its full weight, which was not much. It tried the seam along the toe, running its small, furious teeth along the stitching with the focus of a creature that had identified a structural weakness and intended to exploit it. It stood back at the fourteen-minute mark and assessed the boot, its head tilted, its small, furious face arranged into something that was almost thoughtful.

Then it bit the heel seventeen times in rapid succession. Fenwick had spent three weeks trying to direct, encourage, lure, and occasionally beg the hero toward anything resembling a combat engagement. The toadstool person had been at it for going on fifteen minutes without once considering stopping. He watched it try the lace again. The hero found another beetle. The lizard appeared twenty minutes later from the northern treeline, darting across the clearing in a sudden burst directly past the hero's feet.

The hero stumbled back a step. Fenwick grabbed both straps. The hero made a sound. Low, directionless, the first sound he had produced that was not the ambient noise of existing. He turned to follow the lizard, one heavy step sideways, boot coming down directly on the toadstool person mid-bite. There was a small sound. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +1. 0 XP"—Oh no—" said Fenwick. The boot lost traction.

The hero went down hard, no attempt at recovery, straight into the grass and whatever the toadstool person had left behind. Fenwick went with him, still attached, still holding both straps. By some miracle, maybe prophecy, the hero's hand landed on the lizard. The lizard squirmed. It twisted. It made a determined effort to be somewhere else. The hero bit down on its head. Crunch. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0. 5 XP The lizard stopped moving. The hero looked at it.

An ant crossed the grass six inches to the left. The hero got onto his hands and knees and followed the ant with focused attention. Then another ant. Then a third. He moved slowly through the grass after them, unhurried, already entirely done with lizards. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0. 0005 XP ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0. 0005 XP Thirty seconds later, the lizard stood back up. It made it to one leg. Then two. Then four.

It stood in the grass with glazed eyes and a head bent at an angle no living creature carried, the wobbling determination of something that had not fully processed what had just happened to it. Fenwick, still on the ground, pine needles and dead leaves clinging to his fur, watched it take one slow step. The white paw came up. ⟨ [Spell Cast] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── GRAYSON'S SPARKLY HANDS A puff of pink smoke. Then glitter, cascading outward in a cheerful arc.

Then the glitter became tiny crackling bolts of electricity, snapping and fizzing through the air with a sound like a very small thunderstorm. 1d4 damage. The lizard did not take a second step. Fenwick lay in the grass for a moment, pine needles in his fur, staring up through the canopy. The harness sat crooked. Something in the grass near his ear was investigating him with a level of interest he chose not to examine. He had not planned any of today. The acorn had gone back in the bag.

The toadstool person had put in more work on that boot than three weeks of acorn throws had accomplished, and it had ended under a heel by accident. The lizard had been caught by falling on it. None of it had been the plan. He sat up. Another lizard. Smaller than the first, at the treeline, frozen at the sight of a predator. The hero lunged. The lizard tried to move, but was caught. The hero brought it to his mouth and bit down.

The lizard made one last desperate jump — he got a toe — and was gone, scrambling into the undergrowth. Fenwick lay there stunned. Then he realized what had just happened. A creature bitten by a zombie, from a world where zombie-ism was contagious, had just gotten away. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0 XP He sat up fast. He caught sight of the lizard at the tree line — still running, heading toward the buildings at the edge of town.

"Crap. Crap." This was not good. The hero had found another beetle. ⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── +0. 0005 XP It was, by any measurable standard, the hero's best day. Fenwick hoped it wasn't the Order's last. ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── [System Private Log — Entry 23] Day 23 in the fantasy realm. Outbreak containment actions: 48. Secondary infections prevented: 48. One was missed. This isn't good. The record will reflect this. He made a sound today. Not a groan.

Not ambient noise. Something with direction behind it. He also killed a toadstool person by stepping on it, caught a lizard by falling on it, and spent twenty minutes following ants. None of this was planned. All of it counts.