Chapter 19 Through the Mud

Miggy and I crouched in the mud. It had rained heavily this past night, and trekking through the mud had been slow, soggy business. He had warned me against it, that to even enter the death zone again was, well, death. But I had to. See it with my own eyes, the destruction those metal gods had done, the lives they had extinguished in seconds.

The dead were gone, the avatars spirited away. Their bodies at least, the system quietly working in the background. What was left were small brown pouches, which I knew if I were to interact with them would carry the last loot of the avatars to whom they had belonged. Dozens upon dozens upon them. I had tried to piece together what had happened that night, and still came up short.

All I knew was that Adrian’s war band was no more. All that was left were loot pouches and a crater in the ground that looked as though a meteor had hit it.

‘Get the point?’ said Miggy. He’d been tense since we’d entered the death zone. I didn’t blame him. I nodded, and we left.

Ten days had passed since the night of Adrian’s death. Three of those days had been spent on recovering, both from the wounds I’d sustained and the effects of levelling on the body. Levelling seemed to strip my body to the bone before rebuilding it, and there were some mornings I was so stiff I could barely move.

It had been well worth it, though. Those extra stat points were not for show. I could feel it, the endurance, the strength. I was becoming more than I had ever been. Greater than I’d ever dreamed.

Miggy had given me his side of the story, and just like with how I had learned that there was a way to enhance armour to greater levels, once more I showed my ignorance. In the HUD, Miggy showed me a tab that I’d never bothered opening, which, as it turned out was the party feature. Having been a party of one, I’d basically completely ignored it.

Thankfully, and in fact, owing my life to this, Miggy had not. Despite my outright dismissal of teaming up, he had kept me in his party interface, sending me the equivalent of a friend request. I had ignored this. He had not taken this personally. So when I’d activated the primitive distress beacon, it hadn’t been a shout into the void. It had been a shout to Miggy.

Risking his own life and his own uncanny ability to predict and find the PvP-free zones, he had kept me alive whilst those…things had wiped out the war band in the time it took to heat a hot pocket.

The kid had guts and guile. I had wildly underestimated him. I still had no idea how he had managed to pull me out of that place alive, and bring me to the safety of his cave. I wasn’t about to pry, though. Wasn’t like I didn’t have secrets of my own.

There was one thing I wouldn’t let go, though.

‘So you’re telling me you don’t know what those things are?’ I said once we were safely back in his camp. He tossed me some grilled deer meat as he began to heat up the soup I’d made from my wilderness foraging. It wasn’t exactly the most exquisite thing I’d ever tasted, but for the Stone Epoch, it was like a home-cooked meal.

Miggy sighed deeply. ‘No, I don’t.’

I took a seat opposite him. I hadn’t asked him how long he had been in this cave, but I had to guess it was a decent amount of time. He had told me he’d originally arrived with Adrian’s band, and that was at least half a year ago.

‘And you’re not even a tiny bit curious why there are two war mechs flying around in the Stone Epoch blowing people up?’

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He tore into the grilled deer meat, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Listen, Reave. If I stopped to think about every little thing that didn’t quite make sense, I’m not sure I’d make it five steps in the morning.’ He wagged the grilled meat at me. ‘Why was I taken from my sister’s quinceañera and sent back to the Stone Age to fight wolves and sabretooths? Why do I suddenly have stats like it’s a video game? Why am I still constipated despite eating what is surely the literal definition of unprocessed fibre.’ He took another bite, as though to underline this point.

‘Yeah, but war mechs. With orbital lasers. Here?’

Miggy simply threw his hands up. That’s when I told him about the tutorial zone, and what Alpha had shown me in the moments before both he and the tutorial zone unceremoniously collapsed and disappeared. I could tell from his expression, this came as a genuine surprise.

‘I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to ask for a tutorial,’ he said. He sounded annoyed at himself, as he got to his feet. We’d spent a few days gathering materials and supplies. I was back at full strength bone armour, and now carried two spears and an extra bow, stowing the extra weapons in my inventory. Miggy too was a hunter, and together we had been stockpiling and crafting poultices, bandages, and arrows. It gave a small amount of experience points too, though Miggy, level four, was still some ways off level five.

‘I blame the others,’ he said, as he set about crafting an arrow. ‘They were all older. Guess I was just a kid, and didn’t know what was going on. No one thought of a tutorial. Took me months to realise this thing, wherever we were was built like a video game.’

I had realised immediately, but it felt a little conceited to point this out right now. Besides, it wasn’t like my own false assumptions and lack of knowledge hadn’t almost got me killed, with Miggy being the one to save me.