As time passed, Level 4 came and went.

  !Congratulations

  You have ascended to level 4!

  You have earned one free class switch

  You have earned one free wish

  This time I wished for a metal bucket. A simple metal pale materialized out of nowhere, like the other tools had. With it, life improved. No more trekking to get water from the river. No more digging with my hands. No more carrying things one by one or with vines tied to my spear.

  In the meantime, I dug irrigation ditches with it around the camp to drain more water when it rained and even led one ditch to a shallow pool where it would collect water for a few days after a shower. I’d use that for boiling and so on.

  Near the clearing’s edge, I planted berry seeds and started a little row of bushes. They were nothing so far, but a tiny irrigation ditch led across the whole row feeding trickles of water to the buried seeds.

  “They’ll be sprouting from the ground in no time…” I thought, anyways. I didn’t know anything about planting.

  !Achievement

  Plant your first plant

  10XP

  Over time, I kept adding to my little hut until the walls made it halfway up to the roof… then all the way. There wasn’t much room inside but it was cozy and dry.

  The campfire was more elaborate too, with a spit and a couple roasting sticks for poking meats and holding them over the fire.

  !Achievement

  Camp upgraded to dwelling!

  50 XP

  And life remained simple.

  The stream trickled through my legs as I watched for fish in the shallow banks. I’d learned that standing still in the water was better than sticking to the river bank. If you stayed still long enough, the fish would swim right up to you.

  As I predicted, soon fish were swimming around my ankles without a care in the world. My eye focused one out that was sufficiently big. I raised my spear ready to strike. Just then, an enormous fish slid up from downstream, coming to rest just between my legs. It was massive.

  “This would definitely beat my previous record,” I whispered to myself, “By a lot.” My spear glimmered in the sun, rising high and ready to strike. The fish floated ethereal at my feet, glimmering scales a glorious yellow and green checkered together. It was mesmerizing.

  A part of me hesitated. The fish I’d been catching weren’t nearly as impressive. Usually, they were half the size and half as pretty, mostly the color of the riverbed. Grays and steely black.

  “I wonder what you are,” I asked the fish, unable to strike it dead. Shaking my head, I spurned my soft heart.

  “Why am I like this? Fine. Go little guy. You are too pretty to eat.” I chose another fish and struck out with deadly efficiency.

  Back at camp, I waited while the fish cooked on the fire spit.

  “I’m going exploring today. I’m going to switch to scout and go running around for a bit. If I don’t come back, come looking for me.” Spot rolled around in the dirt like a bored puppy, getting its fluffy fur all dirty.

  The fish smelled divine. I took it off the skewer and cut it to pieces with the sword. For the first time, I noticed the degrading quality of my blade. Shiny scars ran up and down the pointy end. Some of the sheen had worn off.

  “My sword’s getting dull,” I commented to Spot. The odd feeling of being somewhere I shouldn’t returned.

  The edge was still sharp. My finger tingled as I carefully ran over it.

  !Class change Hunter to Scout

  [A free class change has been used]

  The speed change was amazing. I’d never moved so fast so effortlessly. Of course, I fell a couple times, but no one was around to see it.

  My mind was running too. It wasn’t a perfect map, but a sense was awake in me that told me how far I’d gone from the camp, what direction I was headed in, and how long it would take me to traverse this terrain. It was amazing.

  In the underbrush, too, I could see tiny tracks everywhere, more than as a hunter. Hunting seemed to be about moving stealthily through the underbrush, striking from the shadows. Scouting was more about finding a trail to follow and the difference was apparent.

  “Though surely, tracking was a more important part of hunting than scouting… maybe my low level has something to do with it. More buffs the more levels I get?” I questioned aloud.

  As I thought about it, my feet took me to different places.

  A giant oak like tree with a hundred branches waited for me in the center of a ring of younger trees, all keeltowing to the great lumbering oak. I had to crane my neck to see all the way to the top. My breath stuttered at its size. It must be hundreds of years old.

  The sun carried through the leaves in stunning green beams. Golden columns fell through the breaks in the leaves, lighting the forest floor with golden light.

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  “Wow.” It was truly beautiful. “Nature is full of surprises.” I wished Spot was there to see it with me.

  I carried scouting over into my routine, visiting old and new places alike over the coming days. Every so often, I’d return with a new shrub I found to test it out on Spot.

  This particular day, I’d come back with a dark green leaf the size of my head. I pulled it out of a grass pouch I’d made for myself where I kept some other things I found. A few days ago, I’d found some kind of tree that produced acorn like nuts. There were a couple of those in there. A few shiny rocks I’d found in the stream rustled around in there, too.

  I pulled the leaf out of the pouch and placed it in front of Spot, watching the rabbit’s reaction.

  “Check that out. The plant it came from was as tall as a house. It had thin stems that swayed in the breeze. Quite interesting looking.” Spot sniffed, while I waited anxiously for a review.

  Nibble. Nibble. Spot took curious bites from the leaf before chewing on it with wild interest.

  “You like it?” I asked, smiling. I watched as Spot chewed away. “Yeah, you do.” I reached down and scratched Spot on the top of the skull, something Spot let me do these days. As a matter of fact, sometimes when I was sleeping, Spot would climb into bed with me and wake me up until I scratched that little spot.

  “One day, I’m going to get you some hay. Huh. You know what I never thought of? I wonder if you can come back with me to my world. Would you like that? Get you out of this forest?” I pet Spot’s head again.

  “I promise not to put you in a cage.”

  “You ever think about what’s out beyond this forest? Like is this it?” I asked Spot while we were laying underneath the stars.

  Spot laid belly up, feeling the warmth of the fire, a stray leg kicking up into the air as sleep came and went.

  “What’s out there, huh? Like if this forest has goblins in it, what’s the rest of the world like?” I turned over to eye Spot, wondering if the little creature was interested in the conversation. Seeing Spot asleep killed my excitement.

  “Freeloader.” I turned on my back to look up at the stars again, mind whirling with fanciful ideas. If there were goblins then what other fantasy creatures were out there? Unicorns? Pegasuses? Centaurs.

  “I don’t know why they’re all horse related.” Spot kicked awake before flipping belly side and falling back to sleep like nothing happened.

  “Elves? Dragons? That would be cool.” I gave a second thought to meeting a dragon face to face.

  “Are there any people out there? Is there anyone out there at all?” I asked aloud, almost to the stars.

  A part of me wanted to take the scout class for another spin, this time go out for a long time and find the edge of this forest. Run, jump and swim my way through the forest until the trees broke and I would find… I don’t know. Grasslands. Mountains. A town.

  “A town would be nice. I wonder what the people would be like.” A scary thought dawned on me that maybe there were no other people. That frightened me more than anything hunting me in the night. I shoved the fear deep down inside and left it alone.

  Then, I glanced over at Spot fast asleep.

  “That’s alright though. I got you buddy.”

  In the morning I dressed to go hunting. Putting on my shirt, I noticed a new hole, one of very many already breaking through. I’d ripped the legs off of my pants a long time ago, after they kept catching onto underbrush. I used the fabric for various cleaning rags.

  As I sat to lace up my shoes, I noticed the toes popping out at the ends. I wiggled em freely.

  “These have seen better days. What am I gonna do when my clothes go?”

  That day I spent the hours gathering materials for making new shoes and clothes. Most of it was from the forest floor, leaves and foliage, ivy, vines, things like that. I spent all afternoon trying to stitch everything together, hampered by my absolute lack of skills in the area. After some frustrating hours, I pulled together some simple sandals. They were tight enough to run in, maybe a little too tight, but they’d have to do.

  My toes showed through the ends of those too. I wiggled them freely.

  “Okay. Here I come,” I warned Spot, hiding in the forest with my new completely plant made outfit. Sheepishly, I walked out from behind a tree.

  I showed Spot my new outfit. It was completely made out of leaves. I’d pulled some of those giant leaves and used them to cover my torso and private areas and then covered my arms and legs with grasses and entwined leaves. There was still too much thigh and chest skin showing but there wasn’t mch I could do about it. And so many vines held it all together that they hung down from my waist like a hula skirt. All in all, I’d made a vegetation dress.

  Spot’s nose twitched as the rabbit watched from under the shield shelter. My face fell flat at Spot’s expression.

  “Don’t laugh. What do you really think?”

  Stare.

  “It’s not that bad is it?” I inspected myself. It did look a bit silly. Frustrated, I huffed. “It’s not a dress… No, it’s not… Well it’s the best I could do.”

  Nose twitch.

  “Ah, forget. I’ll just walk around naked. How about that?” I stomped off behind the tree to put my clothes back on.

  Back in my normal clothes, I worked relentlessly on the leafy fabrics to make a new design, my mood thoroughly soured.

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered to myself as I sewed by the campfire, “You ask a friend for help and they just laugh at you. What does a rabbit know? They don’t even wear clothes.”

  That night, as I laid by the campfire soaking in the warmth of its aura, smelling the smoky textures of the new fire wood I collected, I counted up the XP I’d earned that day. It wasn’t much. Maybe 50 in total.

  My XP gain had slowed considerably the past couple of weeks, since my routine became so easy to follow. The only XP I was getting was from slaying small meals for meals now.

  There were a couple instances of large XP gain in that time but it was too little too slow.

  I got 10 for creating those irrigation ditches. No farmer class or anything, not yet anyways.

  I got another 10 for building some stuff for camp and some for more exploring (traveling over a mile in one day 10XP)

  “Show me current level progress,” I said out loud.

  !Current level progress

  [260 out of 500 needed to access level 5]

  “Ugh. So slow. Now that all the new stuff is dried up…” I turned over to watch the flames lick the air, sulking. “I’ll never get out of here.” Asking for my overall XP was useless. Every new level, 6,7,8 and so on would require that much XP x100 to level up but the total numbers were all confusing once you got so high. I could do the math but why bother?

  “Combat gives me a lot of XP,” I said as the thought came to me. “Slaying that first goblin gave me fifty XP.” I mulled the memory around in my head, remembering my first day in this strange new world. That had been weeks ago now.

  “Why was that so much? Cus it was a monster? Or cus it was… more human?” The thought made me shutter. “If I cleaned out those goblins I’d make an easy one hundred and fifty. With my warrior skill, it would be easy peasy.” I thought it over again. The first time had been an accident.

  “Nah. I’m not a goblin slayer. I can barely hunt land animals without feeling bad. I’ll just have to do better at finding new things to do.” I sat up scratching my head. I really missed home suddenly.

  I looked at Spot who was dead asleep. Spot was nice but not a real human. I sighed, looking up at the stars again. They twinkled down in silence.

  “Maybe this is just a dream and I’ll wake up soon.” The thought made me feel better.