Chương 12: Survival of the Fittest (Andy Is the Fittest)

The days after the fisherman encounter were rather stressful. He started out avoiding one very very dedicated and determined fisherman. By the end of the week he was dodging three different searching humans. Luckily for him this got him a lot of survival and hiding bonus XP. And this was how Andy kicked off his training montage. Every movie in Andy's memory about a person getting stronger had a training montage. The Rocky sequence, Kung-Fu Panda, and The Matrix all good examples.

The 30-second compilation of push-ups and running, and eating healthy set to music. Andy did not have a soundtrack. What he did have was XP, a fish and bug killing horn, and a diet on par with some proprietary lion, meerkat and warthog. He hunted and ate, a repeatable daily quest that he'd refined into an art. In the dawn he found slow, cold-blooded arthropods that hadn't yet warmed up, moving through the foliage with a sluggish cadence of a morning commuter who hadn't yet had coffee.

Easy kills, a great way to start his morning. Thonk thonk crunch slurp. He cleared them meticulously. Midday brought dodging humans and covering his trail. In between that he hunted fast insects, warmed by the sun, clicking across the rocks with speed that he found genuinely challenging. He developed new tactics to ambush these insects. Patience and stealth were imperative. Fast insects definitely yielded better XP and catching them was also honing his reflexes.

[NEW ABILITY: CAMOUFLAGE (BASIC)] [YOUR SKIN PIGMENTATION CAN NOW ADJUST TO APPROXIMATE SURROUNDING SURFACE COLORS. EFFECTIVENESS: MODERATE. DOES NOT AFFECT HORN LUMINESCENCE.] Camouflage arrived once he'd gotten into the groove of his new grinding routine. His skin could now shift pigmentation to match surfaces. It wasn't perfect but was very similar to the way a chameleon worked back on Earth. It definitely improved his hunting capabilities and also his avoiding human artistry.

His luring fish by using his delectable frog body as bait won him another skill. [NEW ABILITY: TOXIC SKIN] [PREDATOR WEAKENED. NO SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE TO YOU.] He accidentally tested it when in the middle of luring in a large fish an aerial predator swooped down and grabbed Andy before the fish could. He struggled in the grasp of the bird's talons. [ORGANISM DETECTED: FALCON]"Organism detected. You think!?"

The bird landed on a branch a distance that was not very far for the bird, but quite a long distance away for a mouse sized frog. The bird's talon(and thus Andy) came up to meet its razor sharp beak. It opened its mouth and the small black and pink tongue shot out to begin maneuvering Andy into optimal consumption position. The effects were almost immediate. The falcon swayed on its branch. It began spasming the talon loosening and tightening as it tried to maintain both consciousness and its lunch.

Consciousness won out and Andy began to fall through the branches. Thunk. Ooof. Thunk. Thud. Thud thud. Crunch. When he finally hit the ground with a relatively hard final thud. [MAJOR INJURY: BRUISED RIBS. ABRAISIONS. CONCUSSION. REGENERATION ACTIVE. ESTIMATED RECOVERY: 9 HOURS.] Andy lay there watching the world swim in and out of focus. He fought against the black swimming at the edges of his vision. When he heard the crushing of branches steadily getting closer to him. Andy struggled to focus. The falcon.

The falcon was going to crush him. He tried to get to his feet, but everything ached. The world swam, and he was very nauseated. Could frogs throw up? He wondered, vaguely aware that this was not the time or place for such thoughts. He realized he wouldn't make it in time and reverted back to being a single-celled organism burying itself in the sediment horn sticking up for protection. The falcon hit. The world went black. When Andy came to everything was dark and sticky.

It took several moments for him to remember where he was and how he got there. Why couldn't he sit up. Quite a few notifications waited at the edges of his consciousness. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. [CRITICAL HIT!] [HORNY STRIKE: DAMAGE BONUS +25%] [FALCON: DEFEATED] [+123 XP NEW SPECIES BONUS +10] [SURVIVAL BONUS +5 XP] [XP: 1582/1600] [REGENERATION: 67%… 78%] Andy realized in that moment that he was not only underneath the falcon but that he was actually lodged in the falcon horn first. He struggled and pulled and wiggled with absolutely no luck. Andy groaned. Everything hurt, and he was going to die of starvation being trapped under a large bird. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander. [REGENERATION: 85%] Something shifted on top of Andy. He grew incredibly still and activated his camouflage. Maybe if he were still enough they would eat the bird and leave him.

He held his breath as the tugging and pulling continued. He felt himself slowly become uncovered when finally with one last tug the bird was pulled off of Andy. He lay very very still cursing his horn which was now glowing a ghastly red tinged glow through the viscera on his horn. He peeked one eye open and a shadow moved across him. He slammed his eyelid closed again. A cold and wet nose nudged him. He stiffened. His breath burned in his lungs. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die.

The shadow retreated and when Andy was absolutely sure they were gone he sat up and gasped for air. Pity. Disappointment. A strong feeling came from the direction of the moving grasses where the large predator had disappeared. Andy, unused to his own [THOUGHT PROJECTION.] had almost forgotten about it completely. Wait. Andy sent, back into the grass. But the creature either didn't hear him, or didn't care to return.

Andy was very far from the territory he was used to, and did not recognize how he could get back to where he was. Had the falcon crossed the lake? His head hurt, and he couldn't remember. He limped over to the lake and washed the remaining Falcon from his horn and body. Dark began to fall and along with larger insects who were very attracted to his horn (Who wouldn't be?) larger predators were looming as well.

He moved further and further from the lake inland hoping to find someplace he could tuck away for the evening to get some rest. And then he found the grove. It was inland, very inland. The vegetation here smelled thicker. Less like muck and water and more like chlorophyll, and the sweet decay of organics returning to the ground. Insects were plentiful, and the trees all appeared to be standard. What wasn't standard and made Andy stop dead was the glow.

This wasn't his glow, this was a warm golden green that seemed to emanate from the trees themselves. They pulsed in a rhythm that his body responded to on a level deeper than he could articulate or even understand. He felt pulled towards them. Andy walked slowly toward the trees, carefully, afterall glowing things were usually either very good, or very bad. And in Andy's experience the difference usually depended on whose side you were on. His horn began to glow in tandem with the trees.

The blue white shifting toward the golden green until it matched the trees color and cadence. His horn was definitely attracted to this forest whatever it was. His horn was aroused by some tall wood. He was not going to make the joke, afterall, it was obvious the System was going to do it for him. [AMBIENT ENERGY DETECTED: LIFE MAGIC (NATURAL)] [YOUR HORN IS RESONATING WITH AMBIENT LIFE MAGIC.] [ABSORPTION POSSIBLE. ABSORB? Y/N] Life magic. He had a name for it. His horn was tuned into it, hummed with it.

In fact, the humming had started right before he'd been freed from the falcon. He'd been unsure at the time but now the hum grew louder and was no longer mistakable for tinnitus. [NEW ABILITY: HORN SONG] [YOU'RE NOT ALONE ANYMORE.]"Come on System, really?" [YOU CREATED THIS ABILITY.] Andy went back to the matter at hand, the notification hovering in front of him. Yes, yes of course he would absorb the life magic.

"I've committed to this horn bit, I should probably follow through with it. The Horn is my ride or die. Let's go." [ABSORBING…] Golden green energy flowed into his horn the way water is absorbed into a sponge. The warmth radiated from the tip of his horn down into the rest of his body. It felt refreshing. Something more than physical. It was an entire experience. Vitality. Concentrated vitality. The building blocks of whatever made living things live, rather than just existing.

It felt incredible and he lay on his back in the grove taking it in. The whole experience, he would later reflect, was weirdly intimate for something happening between a frog and some trees. [LIFE MAGIC AFFINITY: BASIC - ACQUIRED] [YOUR HORN CAN NOW STORE AND CHANNEL SMALL AMOUNTS OF LIFE MAGIC. CURRENT CAPACITY: MINIMAL.] [LIFE MAGIC APPLICATIONS: HEALING (SELF), PURIFICATION (MINOR), GROWTH ENHANCEMENT (MINOR).] [NOTE: LIFE MAGIC AFFINITY IS A PREREQUISITE FOR CERTAIN ADVANCED EVOLUTIONARY PATHS.] A prerequisite. Life magic was a key to a door he didn't know he needed. The System didn't tell him about this quest objective, and if he hadn't been almost eaten he certainly would never have found this. Life magic and a horn, he thought. Basking in a glow that was not solely his own. His horn felt warm and full. Now I just need to be a horse, right? That covers all of the bases. Horn plus magic equals unicorn. I'm going to keep saying it until it happens.

If I can make myself keep a horn I wasn't supposed to and cause that same horn to glow and sing, I can certainly will myself into being a horse. Life magic continued to seep into the rest of him. [REGENERATION: 100%] [XP: 1582/1600] He was no longer bruised and broken. Eighteen more XP and he would become tier five. He could finally become a mammal and once he was a mammal it was a jump skip and a hop to becoming a horse. Closer. Ever closer.

The horn glowed a golden green in the magical grove and Andy fell peacefully asleep dead center in the middle. His body was full of poison, his horn was full of magic. This is the weirdest dating profile in any world.