Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

while on his recent quest, his thoughts on what were the best investments had changed. He put four points into perception and one into strength. Satisfied with what he saw, he finalized the changes and reviewed his stats.

Gus Vannett

Level 3

Agility: 8/?

Constitution: 7/?

Charisma: 8/?

Strength: 8/?

Perception: 14/?

Intelligence: 11/?

Luck: 7 (6+1)/?

HP: 120

MP: 120

Stamina: 120

“Nick, can you remove those question marks by my stats? Unless I do something that explains why they’re there, they’re kind of annoying me.”

“Done.”

“Now that my perception is boosted, how do I get things that I need to light up in my display? I would like food sources and crafting ingredients to be highlighted. Do I need a quest for those to activate, or just focus my brain?”

“Just intention is needed. After you contact the item in question, it will cease to be highlighted, however.”

“What if it’s something like berries, will the others stop being highlighted as soon as I pick one?”

“No, only items you touch will be affected. Unharvested resources will be highlighted until you gather them. Leveling in certain skills will make certain items easier to recognize and you will gain more insight on their varied properties.”

“Ok, I’m feeling the need to explore a bit more. Maybe I’ll find what’s so special about this island that warrants protection with a death shield.

Prepping for his trek, he grabbed a few coconuts and husked them. He bored a hole with Razorback in three of the coconuts. He would fill these with water from the stream and use some foam putty to seal them into makeshift canteens.

He gathered his coco-canteens and threw in the coconuts he had already opened for food. Next, he wound up some unbraided strips, and tucked them into the split coconuts, to cradle the eggs. He tucked the remaining cooked eggs into the hollows of the coconuts on top of his ties and to finish, his foam sleeping mat went over these and kept them from rattling around.

Everything sorted, he set forth. He looked at his watch and it was just a little after noon. He planned on travelling until 5:30 PM, then heading back to make it to the shelter by nightfall. Looking upward to gauge where the sun was in the sky, he saw an occasional shimmer from the bio-stasis field, far overhead. A question popped into his mind as he began walking to the stream; from there he would work farther inland.

“Nick, how big is the bio-stasis field around the island?”

“I have been going over the logs and attempted to extrapolate what some of the findings may mean in terms of its size. Based on how long it took you to float through the field indicates that it is over a mile wide. It is unique, because anyone attempting to traverse it from the outside would be killed. Their brain and all electrical signals to their body would cease. The field also has EMP properties, so vehicles would stop functioning as they entered the field as well. No one would be able to penetrate the field and resuscitate themselves on the other side. In addition to this, there is a resonance field that will interact with any organism with evolved Nth. You were extremely lucky that your passive Wreck-less skill did not hit level two during the time you traversed the field.”

“What would’ve happened?”

“The Nth would have begun to resonate in unison, and the closer one reaches towards the inner edge of the field, the energy increases exponentially. Are you familiar with the term lingchi or ‘death by a thousand cuts?’ The super would be shredded from the inside out in all tissues with Nth integration.”

“Something seems off. What are the odds of all those things happening so I could make it to the island?”

“By chance alone, they are infinitesimal. This whole situation seems like it is being guided, somehow. I see no other rational explanation based on the probabilities. I cannot see any other combination of events that would allow someone to reach this island unscathed. This leads to two other conclusions. The field has been raised from the inside, presumably by someone who is still here. The second is that some form of technology is maintaining this field, and it has been using immense amounts of power to maintain a field this size for such a substantial amount of time.”

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all…”

“What this means to you is that if you wish to leave, you will have to turn this field off—which would require interacting with complex machinery to which we may not have access. The other is that we have no information on the temperament of any other sentients on the island.”

Gus stumbled a bit at the news, quickly catching himself. What good would it do to have powers and no one knew about them? That wouldn’t do. He had to find a way off the island, somehow. He liked his alone time, but something this good couldn’t be tucked away. A smile crept onto his face as he imagined the look on his father’s and brother’s faces when he met them again, this time with fully decked out powers. His imagination went wild envisioning all different types of abilities, and how they would dazzle his family and friends.

Chapter Ten

Re: Your Brains

Day 2 4:17 PM

12:20:35 remaining

As he progressed inland, Gus began to wonder just how large the island was. He quickly filled his coco-canteens at the river and followed it upstream so he would have an easy guide to get back to his camp.

His progress was steady until his higher perception alerted him that the usual sounds of animals and birds had ceased. He stopped his motion as well, to see if he could hear some predator or indication why things had settled, memories of the nighttime death-screech making his heart beat faster.

There was a slight rustle in the foliage thirty feet off to his right. Gus crouched and slid the backpack off his back and retrieved Razorback. The rustle came again, a little closer. Gus strained