Chapter 23

A cold pale foot poked out from the green shrubbery of the jungle. Beneath lingering grains of sand and dirt, the skin had a blue lifeless hue. A type of firefly crawled on the big toe, nibbling at the deceased flesh.

Rob stood frozen still. His boots sank in the dirt.

The firefly flew up in the air, casting a light turquoise glow. Rob quickly identified it.

Rob pulled out one of his empty bamboo rods and with his quick Perception skills raised his hand and trapped the glowfly in the bamboo rod.

Rob read the message over carefully.

It looked as if once you had reached a higher threshold of Vocation, the other invitations for a Vocation of the same type were null. Again–it added to his theory that his actions were cumulatively contributing to more and more interesting Vocations.

He held up his new glowing rod and grinned. A jungle flashlight was exactly what he needed.

With the glowing rod he’d just created, he got down on his knees and investigated the body before him.

The body was of a man in his twenties with pockmarked skin and strawberry blond hair. He wore black pants and a goofy red and white striped shirt, like he worked at an old-fashioned American diner or something.

Rob cast Identify on him.

Hello Carl, Rob thought.

He couldn’t believe he had finally discovered another participant, only for them to be deceased.

He was hoping to have more of an actual dialogue in terms of exchanging information, but his corpse wasn’t without information.

Rob learned that Identify would reveal another player’s class, which was interesting.

Also, interesting to see how low a level Carl had been when he died. It made Rob think that he must be ahead of the curve being at level 11 already.

Moving the glowing rod over the course of the man’s body, Rob could see clean focused stab wounds. They looked like they had been dealt by swords, which suggested other human participants rather than monsters that had killed Carl.

Rob thought back to the day before when he had picked up the hostile presences in his Perception. He was realizing he must have been picking up on a fight between Carl and whoever had killed him.

Rob considered looting Carl Hendricks. He hesitated for a second and then he thought “loot” in his head.

A message appeared.

Rob looked over the list of items. It was interesting, the prompt was giving more of a breakdown of what was available to take; but unlike a monster, he would have to remove anything he wanted from Carl himself.

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He took a look at the man’s fingers and the silver ring. He cast Identify on it.

Rob sighed. He would leave Carl as he was.

Rob was about to get up and continue exploring the jungle, seeing if he could find the participants who had killed Carl, when he suddenly had an idea.

He had felt slightly guilty of trying to loot Carl, his next idea felt like he was pushing himself into the crazy zone.

But he had to try it.

Rob took out his finger and pressed into Carl’s wound, until his finger was coating with the dried blood of Carl Hendricks. Rob then took the finger and placed it in his mouth, taking a lick of the flaky dried blood.