Chương 24: The Wolf - Fever Ray (4:40)

PaperSnakes Sooo… bets on whether Z3ke is properly dead this time? I know he did his whole kayfabe thing before when he was "wandering through the Deadlands without computer access." But he's got a tech slate now. He can't use that as an excuse not to reach out to us. Did he just decide to kill off his own character? I mean, my man jumped in here screaming "RED ALERT, something's attacking me and I need advice on combat," and then just immediately peaces out and we haven't heard from him in hours.

Also, how do you think he's gonna handle combat encounters in this fic? You think he's gonna pen and paper it? It would be pretty cool if we suggest he heads out into the Deadlands and he's got a little chart with different possible encounters and he rolls for it and treats the whole thing like some big DnD campaign. StoryLeech Hmm… good question. I haven't really read other fanfics like this one. There was The Honey Jar posted on this forum a while back.

The author used a randomizer when it came time to write out stat blocks for all the enemies and then he'd post that, but most of the fic had been preplanned and he didn't treat combat like a pen and paper. I doubt Zeke will answer your question though. He'll just say "not a fanfic" and leave it at that. If I had to guess, I'd say he's gonna do it like how you suggested. He's probably sitting at his computer with a d100 table that's got a whole bunch of random encounters on it. He'll roll and that'll be that.

If we give him bad advice, like send him on an adventure without equipment or a weapon, and that proves dangerous for his character then he's gonna have to write around that. MushroomCleric Yeaa… ngl kinda disappointed in Z3ke right now. What'd he think we'd be able to do for him? He came in here asking for combat advice, but he's gotta know this forum can't really help with that.

"Ah yes, clearly the creature attacking you has a weak spot under its second rib. Strike now!" This isn't a co-op game. We're not spectating his fight. He's not livestreaming his fanfic. This is a written story, not a visual medium. We can't see anything he talks about unless he describes it in detail. All we've got is that dood screaming "help" and then dipping out. Pell freaked. Corva took it seriously. And Z3ke tried to crowdsource MMA techniques from a bunch of people who don't ever touch grass.

UnhelpfullyHelpful HAHAHAHAH. I get that you're disappointed Mushroom… but I love it. The guy panicked and popped into a forum filled with a bunch of nerds. I mean, what the hell do any of us know about CQB other than it was a Metal Gear thing? The closest I've been to a fight in the past five years was when I watched my neighbor argue with her Roomba. Look, I enjoy Street Fighter as much as the next guy, but I'm not all that good at it.

I was in Japan a couple years back and they've got those joint arcade cabinets. Two people sit across from each other and they can face off in the game. I got my ass smoked and when I leaned over to congratulate the person across from me, I found out it was a ten year old girl who should have been in school. Zeke is really screwed if he's expecting fighting tips from people like us. Also, I wrestled in high school for about two weeks until I realized how much cardio I'd have to do and then I got ringworm.

All told, it was a horrible experience and I'm for sure not the best person to help Z3ke with combat. Binary_Arcana I doubt that Zeke was actually asking for advice on combat. It's a writing move. He saw our discussion with Corva turning into a whole big thing and people would have been taking sides either for or against him, so he decided to yank us back into the plot with a forced cliffhanger.

Drop fan-favorite NPC to get attention Realize all that attention is TOO focused on the fan-favorite NPC and not on OC Introduce distraction in the form of an ambush Let the audience simmer Come back with "lol survived somehow." This is emotional puppeteering and I gotta say that I respect him a little bit more because of it. MetaMage77 What kills me is that this forum has millions of threads on a whole range of topics.

We got threads on stat scaling, optimal class progression, magical theory, meta builds, how to break the economy, how to cheese boss fights, which classes are trash, which classes are OP, and easy ways to upgrade skills. What we don't have are threads on how to throw an actual punch. Zeke is screwed because his tech slate has him signing onto this forum and not on a taekwondo message board. At least they'd be able to help him a bit with the combat.

We probably won't be able to agree on what weapon his character should be using. Also, imagine trying to explain a proper fighting stance through text.

"Bend your knees slightly." - okay…but how slightly?

"Protect your chin." - with what? My crippling anxiety and self-doubt? CrimsonProphecy88 My favorite thing is imagining the timeline. Pell: something is out there, I gotta warn everyone. Corva: we should take cover and defend each other. Wren: already pulling out his rifle like a professional. Cole: I knew I shouldn't have left The MIZ. I just want to write about history. Zeke: Hold on guys, gotta post on my forum real quick.

Guy was warned about an ambush and he decides to type up a whole post, hit submit, and then get ready to fight. Top ten worst decisions made by a protagonist. DeaderThanDead Dammit. I really wish my lunch break happened earlier. I only just got here and I could have given him the best tactical advice ever. Hit him before he hits you. Don't get surrounded. Try not to die. Screaming is sometimes a valid strategy. You know, now that I read back what I just wrote I gotta say… Zeke is so damn screwed.

This forum would lose a fistfight to a baby and we're all he's got. Null really dropped the ball promising him that we could get him out of dangerous situations. This is all your fault Null. /s NullSigil Either Zeke kills off his character because he got a bad encounter roll and he still doesn't have a class, or he'll log back into the forum with a story. There's not much we can do about it now. So, while we're waiting, we can think through all of the different things he might be fighting.

The Deadlands have some nasty predators, and maybe we can think of ways to counter them while Zeke is away. Gnolls Half-hyena creatures that move in packs and aren't all that smart. They prey on caravans and disorganized groups that meander their way through the Deadlands. If Zeke's group got attacked by these guys, the best option is ranged combat because they're human-like and strong when they get into melee. Jackal Runners Lean and hungry scavengers.

If he's facing these guys then he's gotta hope that they're half-starved when they attack. The biggest problem with them is their numbers. With Wren, Pell, and Corva there then Zeke should be able to make it through a JR ambush. Eaters I'm thinking that these are what's attacking him. Zeke could be continuing the Eater subplot from before he made it to The MIZ. He hasn't really tied it off and I'm sure he's gonna bring them back into the story again.

An ambush from them could be a way for him to keep talking about the Eaters. The issue here is that his expedition only has a few people and we know from the train that a concentrated attack is incredibly dangerous. Bone Crows The least likely of the four options. They're also gonna be the weakest challenge for a group that has a bunch of security. Just one adventurer is enough to take out a family of these things. AnywayHeresWonderwall You're missing Sand Howlers.

Small deadly packs that move fast and are one of the more dangerous predators out in the Deadlands. If Zeke's group stopped for lunch, like he said they did, Sand Howlers might have decided they were easy prey and ambushed them. InnerMarrow The only problem with that is that Sand Howlers are like the graboids from Tremors. They hunt through vibration and you're not gonna know you're under attack until they're popping up out of the ground. Zeke wouldn't have had time to message the forum and ask for help.

It would have just been a quick ambush. PaperSnakes It could be that he got attacked by people. The Deadlands is home to a ton of bandit clans that stalk the trade routes. Null warned him about the Black Teeth and the Shard Choir, but there's a bunch more bandits and scavengers than just those. Zeke said that Pell came back with a warning, but he didn't tell us what kind of warning it was. What if Pell saw a scouting party or something? It could even be a party from those raiders that he killed on the train.

StoryLeech Meh… we'll find out whenever Zeke decided to log back in. And then we badger him about cliffhangers.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Just read a bunch of your posts and… sorry about that. Kinda panicked. I'd like to say it won't happen again but, it probably will. Also, Corva can suck a dick. I take back every nice thing that I said about him in my previous posts. Hell, I take back all the nice things that I thought about the man when I met him. He's a grade-A asshole. The entire expedition is filled with assholes. They're all assholes and I hope they all burn in asshole hell.

We're stopped for the night and Corva is cooking dinner and everyone is acting like they aren't all complete dicks. I'm sitting here typing all this up with hands that won't stop shaking. I promise that you'll all get a rundown of everything that happened. But while I'm typing it up, can you all explain why everyone had a collective freakout when I mentioned traveling with Corva. (Who, I'd like to reiterate, is an asshole.) I read everything that you guys posted from the last time I was on here, and half of you were creaming your pants about him. If he's a major NPC from the games then cool. Great. Whatever. But it would be helpful to know why he is the way he is before he decides to shove me into another "life lesson." StoryLeech Z3ke. Bro. Amigo. Bromigo. You don't get to just stroll in here after dropping a cliffhanger and then going missing for a couple hours and hit us with a " What's Corva's deal?" You owe us an explanation.

You screamed red alert and then just ghosted us. We all thought you decided to kill off your character or you were doing your dramatic disappearance thing again. But it shouldn't have been the second thing because Null got you to buy a tech slate so you could keep in contact with the forum and give us updates. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. So tell us what happened, and then we give you info on Corva. PaperSnakes ^Story. What'd you fight? How'd you survive?

Why did it take you so long to get back in touch with the forum? And why are you now just vibing next to a campfire? Answer those questions and THEN we can give you some lore. UnhelpfullyHelpful At least respect the serial nature of the format to not vanish mid-scream man. Z3ke (Original Poster) Yea yea… you all think I dropped a "cliffhanger" and then went offline. In my defense, I wasn't trying to torment all of you. Binary is wrong when he claims I was doing all that to drive engagement or whatever.

The truth is that I panicked. Pell came running back to the group and he whispered something to Corva about us walking into an ambush. While Wren and Pell are pretty good security, and Corva seems to know what he's doing, my only experience with fighting was killing those two guys on the train. And I didn't think that whatever was coming to attack us would sit around and wait for me to run at them with a knife. So I decided to reach out to the only people who might be able to help me. You guys.

I guess I just wanted someone to give me some kind of advice on what to do. I know, I know. It's not the greatest idea I've ever had. I mean, you all rightfully wondered what you were supposed to do. But I was nervous as hell and trying to figure out anything that might be helpful at that moment. It's kinda like… you know how if you use a calculator enough you almost forget how to do math? If you've got a tool on hand and you rely on it for everything, you kinda forget how to operate without that tool.

That's what happened to me. Now, I'm writing out everything that happened in the fight. Give me like, ten minutes to finish typing it all up and you'll get the entire story. But while I'm writing, can someone please explain to me who Corva is? How important is he? Who is he? Should I be wary of him? I'm especially interested in that last question because earlier today I thought the guy was pretty awesome but now I'm thinking the dude is just an asshole.

StoryLeech Since you said that you're typing up your adventure, I'll give some info about Corva. Just make sure that you hold up your end of the bargain. Corva is known as the recurring NPC in the Fracture-verse. The devs never officially confirmed anything regarding who he is and what he does or why he always shows up in strange places. He's kinda like the Cid of the Fracture-verse. If you've played any of the Final Fantasy games then you should know all about Cid. He shows up in almost every game in the series.

It's never the same Cid, but it's a character with his name and a lot of similar attributes. He's smart. Most of the time he's mechanically inclined. He'll be a pilot or engineer or a mechanic. Sometimes he's an NPC who you see around town. Sometimes he's a party member. I think in one of the games he's actually a villain that you fight. Now, imagine a Cid character who is covered in a batter duster, a wide-brimmed hat, has a voice like gravel, and a genre-savvy intuition and you get Corva.

He's shown up in every Fracture-verse game except for Shards. But… it's always a different Cid. He shows up with a different face and a different age and a different voice, but he's always unmistakably Corva. In one game he's a cryptic mentor figure. In another he's a rugged outlaw. In another he's a guide-for-hire. In another he's a drunk who is doing his damndest to not get involved in the story but he gets dragged into it anyway. All different characters. All the same Corva.

He's a fan favorite in the Fracture-verse community and one of the most recognizable NPCs in the games. And he's dead. That is why everyone was freaking out when you casually dropped him into your story. Corva died back during Syndicate's Wake. Like… he canonically died. He was killed by this massive beast during a siege event in the game and the whole community has basically all agreed that there was no way he could survive that fight.

When no Corva character showed up in Shards - the game that came out after Syndicate's - we all pretty much agreed that we'd seen the last of Corva. I'm not gonna delve much into the whole Fracture-verse timeline because that's a whole thing all by itself, but a majority of the fandom agrees that Corva is dead and he's not gonna reappear. It's actually a tradition for fanfics that take place after Syndicate' don't have Corva in them.

So the fact that you came out and said "yo, just met this dood named Corva," that's a big deal for your fic. It poses all sorts of questions and has us wondering. If Corva is in your fanfic, you're gonna need to answer a shit ton of questions. Questions like: You got isekai'd into the world, but when did you drop in? Your fic has to be set before Shards because Corva is dead by that point. You described Corva but didn't talk at all about his missing eye which narrows down which Corva you spoke with.

But it does bring up the question of "have we met the Corva traveling with you?" Is this fic set in an alternate timeline? Or are you just using the name Corva since he's a popular NPC and, as Binary suggested, you're trying to drive engagement. Is this your attempt at bringing the Synthesis Theory into your fic? Basically, we're all trying to figure out the exact window of history that you're hanging out in.

That would be something that's helpful for you too because, if you landed in the Fracture-verse before a defining event, you could change things for the better or steal some story-driven loot and get yourself a boat load of money. TL; DR - people are focused on this because Corva is the NPC in the Fracture-verse. And if he's walking around alive, talking, and traveling with you, then we're gonna need to get into the timeline of the games and figure out when exactly you got isekai'd into the setting.

Z3ke (Original Poster) Okay. That was interesting and we can get into it more later on, but sadly it's not what I need at the moment. As payment for you telling me that, I just finished typing out the whole story of what happened to me. So we'd just finished our lunch and were back to marching through the Deadlands. It was a miserable stretch of gray-brown earth, made even worse because Cole entered "college lecturer" mode and regaled us with "interesting tidbits" that he'd learned about the Deadlands.

Wren was at the rear of our little group and Pell was off doing his scouting routine. About an hour into our hike, Pell came sprinting back towards us. Dust kicked up behind him and his eyes were all wide. He headed straight to Corva and said something in a fast, hushed tone. It was way too quiet for me to hear, but whatever he told Corva caused his entire demeanor to shift. It's not like he panicked or anything. It was more that he became more focused.

Almost like a machine clicking into gear or a switch had flipped and sent him into combat mode. Corva turned to the rest of us and, calm as can be, ordered us to "double back to that outcropping we passed earlier. Now." No one asked any questions or hesitated. We didn't even look at Cole who, might I remind everyone, was supposed to be in charge of this expedition. We all just turned around and double timed it.

I had no idea what was happening or what got Corva so spooked, but I sure as hell wasn't gonna be the only idiot standing around doing nothing. I followed along, quick as can be. We got back to a rocky outcropping that we'd passed about ten minutes ago. It was basically a big horseshoe-shaped wall of stone. As soon as we got there Corva started ordering people into position. Pell scaled a ledge overlooking the approach to the outcropping.

Wren was ordered to crouch down low off to the right, and Cole tucked himself behind a pair of boulders nearby. I was placed in the non-threatening middle-ish zone. It kinda felt like T-ball where the coach puts the worst player out in right field so he can't mess up too bad and tank the rest of the team. Yea… I was the kid who couldn't field the ball but the coach had to use them. Corva just tucked me away out of sight. With that done, everyone started prepping for a fight. Wren unstrapped his rifle from his back.

The thing was absolutely massive. Have you all seen The Last of the Mohicans? It's got the greatest last twenty minutes in cinema history where Daniel Day Lewis is hunting down Wes Studi and the rest of his cohorts. It's one of those rare movies that are sooo much better than the book. In the books, Daniel Day Lewis' character is named something ridiculous like Natty Bumppo or something like that.

His defining characteristic is that he's got this gigantic ass rifle that lets him snipe people from thousands of yards away in an era when most muskets were accurate up to only around four feet away. When Wren pulled out his rifle, I was instantly reminded of Last of the Mohicans. The gun looked like someone had fused a rifle, a quarter staff, and a siege weapon together. It had a thin body, a huge barrel, and a butt stock that had been whittled down to make it look more like a staff.

I saw Pell pull out an aged revolver and a machete. Corva had a hand-axe and a long dagger. Hell, even Cole started prepping for combat. I had the feeling that he was more of a bookish type who would be as afraid of fighting as me, but nope. The guy dug through his satchel and pulled out these tiny slips of paper that were covered in symbols and he placed them all around the place. They caught the wind and fluttered in the breeze, looking like mystical little post-its. Me?

I didn't want to be left out so I also started "prepping" but I didn't really get that far. All I had was my dull knife that I'd miraculously been able to kill two raiders with. That was it. No pistol or axe or massive rifle that could probably shoot down a tank. Just a knife that I'd forgotten to get sharpened back at The MIZ. That's when I remembered the most important piece of gear that I owned: the tech slate.

I pulled it out of my dimensional storage space and typed out my panicked forum post that you all were so angry at. Yea, I know, I get the criticism. In hindsight, there was absolutely nothing that you all could have done to magically turn me into someone useful in a fight. But when someone says that you're about to get attacked and everyone around you starts pulling out all sorts of weapons, panic begins to set in. Corva must have noticed me freaking out because he walked over to check in.

When he asked if I had a weapon and I held up my dull knife as an answer, he frowned and said "that won't do." He handed me his hand-axe and switched to a longer blade that he kept stashed in his coat. I held the axe in one hand and my knife in the other and tried to copy the stance he'd had earlier. I don't know how long we waited for the attack. It felt like hours. My heart thudded in my ears and the quiet of it all made everything feel so stretched out.

Everybody had settled into a tense silence, waiting for whatever was coming at us to get in range. Pell climbed higher into the rock formation to keep watch. Cole was seated cross-legged with his hands resting in his lap. There were three slips of paper there that were identical to the ones he'd placed earlier. He whispered something under his breath that sounded kinda like a prayer. Wren was laying flat on a boulder, his rifle balanced on it and ready as he stared down the sights.

Watching them all made something tight settle in my chest. None of the four looked uncertain or nervous. Each was calm. And it was a practiced calm, as if this situation wasn't completely unusual. It made me wonder what I'd gotten myself into. All of them were treating an attack by unknown creatures as something that was normal. Standing there with a borrowed axe in one hand and a dull knife in the other, with fear creeping up my spine and a cold sweat breaking out over my body, I didn't feel normal at all.

I didn't feel calm. I didn't feel ready for whatever happened. Instead, I kept asking myself how the hell am I supposed to survive in a world that is filled with so much danger that these four people have grown so inured to it? Pell's signal broke the quiet. He let out a sharp whistle that rose in pitch. Corva hissed out a low growl of "left side." Everyone turned towards the open stretch of land to the left.

I tried following their gaze but all I could see from where I stood was a shimmer of heat rising up from the sun-baked ground. Then I spotted movement. Low shapes. Fast and unsteady. Creatures prowled towards us with weird, uneven gaits. Their limbs were long and jointed in a way that made every step look slightly unstable, but they covered ground quickly. I read through earlier posts here where you were all wondering what creatures our expedition might face in the Deadlands.

Someone mentioned "jackal runners" and I'm pretty sure these were them. They were half-starved and gaunt to the point that their ribs pushed hard against their skin. Their hides were gray and stretched tight, and their muzzles were too long for their faces. Their lips cracked and peeled back to show jagged teeth. But it was their eyes that was the most terrifying thing about them. They were milky white and when they looked at you it was easy to feel the hunger behind them.

At least ten of the creatures were attacking. They fanned out as they approached the outcropping, heads jerking about in unnatural movements as they sniffed at the air. I froze where I stood. My thoughts scattered for a half second and all I could hear was the sound of my own panicked breathing. One of the Jackal Runners spotted Pell sitting up at the top of the rocks. Its entire body tightened and it let out a loud shriek. The sound cut through the air and forced my muscles to tense up involuntarily.

Corva grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me behind cover right as Wren fired. The shot was deafening and it knocked the lead jackal off its feet in a spray of dust and blood. The sound was the starting gun and shortly afterwards, chaos erupted. The rest of the pack surged ahead, their weird gait turning into a full blown sprint towards us. Cole slapped both his hands to a paper slip and shouted a word.

The slip flared in a flash of pale blue fire and the ground in front of Cole erupted in a curtain of shimmering threads. Two of the jackals hit it at a dead sprint. Their bodies stopped midair. Once they hit the shimmering threads, they'd lost all momentum. While they were caught and held tight, they still thrashed and snapped away, trying to latch onto anything that got too near. The other jackals didn't slow down though. They vaulted off the trapped jackals, using them as springboards to launch themselves at us.

Corva shoved me sideways and Pell fired his revolver. A shot rang out and I saw one of the jackals stagger to the ground. Another shot from Wren tore through the second creature, turning it into a mangled mess. The air around us was filled with dust and blood and the sharp smell of cordite mixed with something sour and biological. Dirt kicked up everywhere and cut my sight. Something yelped. Something hissed. One of the jackals sailed high enough through the air to clear Cole's trap and he leapt towards me.

I raised the hand axe up and just sort of flailed around with it. Blind luck allowed me to catch the creature in the shoulder. The impact knocked it off balance and carried it sideways as it slid across the dirt, claws tearing furrows as it scrabbled my way. The rest of the group joined in the melee fighting. Pell dropped down and landed with a roll, bringing his machete up in a swing that cut down a jackal.

Cole was still using his slips of paper to try to corral the jackals into a trap so that the rest of the group could fight them. Wren fired one last shot before shifting to using his rifle as a staff, knocking a few of the jackals aside. I didn't have the time to take in what all was happening around me. The jackal I'd hit earlier crouched low and stared at me. It growled. I took a step back and it took a step forward. I raised my knife and it bared its teeth. No one could spend the effort to help me.

Corva was fighting two of the jackals at once. Wren had moved to cover the right flank. Pell was reloading his ancient revolver. I knew that the jackal in front of me was mine to deal with. I'd have to buy myself time for the rest of them to kill off the other jackals and then come and pull my ass out of the fire. My hands tightened around the hand axe and knife. I tried remembering anything from that single disastrous hour I'd spent practicing with a sword back at The MIZ. Nothing useful surfaced in my thoughts.

The jackal lunged and I tried dodging to the left but I wasn't fast enough. Its claws scraped across my chest and knocked me sideways into the rocks. The axe fell from my hand but my knife stayed with me. The only reason I still had a weapon was because I'd been gripping my knife so hard that it hurt. The jackal scrambled over the rocks towards me. I could feel its breath wash over me, hot and humid and reeking of rotted meat.

I tried stabbing at it with my knife but only managed to nick it and draw a small bit of blood. The jackal shrieked in my face and I kicked out at it, nailing it in the ribs and sending it stumbling back enough away so that I could reach out for the hand axe. I barely got the axe up before the jackal was on me again. I swung with everything that I had, aiming for the head, not because I'm smart and was thinking that it was a possible weak point. No.

I aimed there because that was where the teeth were and I didn't want them anywhere close to me. The axe struck bone and the jackal let out a yelp. It stumbled back and looked dazed as it started whining in pain. Something about the creature standing there, wobbling around and whimpering, made me hold back. Maybe the fight was finished. It could just limp off into the Deadlands and I could get back to the expedition and everything would be all good.

A second later it seemed to shake itself out of its torpor and glanced my way again. Its lips peeled back and it bared its fangs and it charged and I swung again. It fell to the ground, still trying to bite at me with its blackened and jagged teeth. Something in me realized that this creature wasn't going to just stop. It had attacked us with its pack. It wanted to kill us. Eat us. Leave our bones out to bleach in the Deadland sun.

I thought of all the shit that I'd had to take ever since getting dropped into this world, all the dangerous situations that I'd stumbled into, all the assholes that I'd come across who wanted to treat me like prey. I let out a roar and mounted the creature and started jabbing at it with my knife, slamming the blade into the chest of the beast until my arms were covered with blood and I was finally sure that the thing was dead. My hands shook. My stomach roiled.

I wanted to puke up everything that I'd had for lunch. Everything about me felt both electrified and numb. Gradually, sound returned around me and I remembered that I was in the middle of a fight and the rest of the expedition team might need my help. When I managed to rise up off the jackal and turn around to see what I could do, I found the others just standing there… watching me. The fight with the jackals had ended while I'd been struggling with the last creature.

Six bodies lay scattered around the rocking outcropping, bleeding out. In the distance I could see the rest of the jackals loping off, realizing that they'd bit off more than they could chew. I glanced up at Corva and the rest of them and instantly realized what had just happened. They'd left me. They'd just stood by and watched as I fought with that jackal. They'd chosen not to intervene.

They knew that I didn't have a class and didn't know what to do with a weapon and that I could have easily been killed, but they'd left me to fend for myself. They watched. I could have been bit. I could have been torn to shreds, and they'd just sat back and done nothing. My anger started boiling over as Corva walked over to me and held out a hand. I wanted to slap it aside. I wanted to scream at him and rail against his decision to leave me there to die.

My chest was still burning from where the jackal had struck with its claws, but the anger was stronger than the pain. I felt it rising fast and sharp and unsteady.

"You did well," he said simply.

"Messy, but well."

"You royal fucking asshole," I screamed at him. My voice came out rougher and more shaky than I wanted.

"What the hell. None of you helped. You would have let me die." Corva didn't flinch. He just tilted his head and looked at me with a confused glance.

"If I stepped in, you wouldn't have learned anything." That made me want to scream out even more at him, to shout that I was done with this damn expedition and they could find another pack mule. But before I could say anything else, a small notification blinked at the edge of my vision. Simple Melee Weapons: Rank 1 You've learned basic, unrefined attacks with melee tools like batons, knives, and improvised weapons. Corva saw the look on my face and nodded, almost as if that proved his point.

I just huffed and tossed his hand axe down at his feet.