Chapter 6

  Wes had made good progress for the first ten minutes while he could still make out the outline of the mountain behind him through the canopy. As he got deeper into the forest of trees his next hurdle came. He needed to find a solid way to navigate in one direction. He had just come from backtracking until he was able to spot the small mountain once again. Navigating around the trees had been a real challenge while the mountain was in view. With it now being out of view he decided that his best course of action was to head toward a side. Either the waterside or the gorge side would offer a clear distinct direction of travel.

  It seemed with every new choice Wes found himself with more and more crippling indecision. Every choice he would make from here on out would place more of the onus on him, living or dying only a decision away. He thought to himself, Going to the gorge side would be ideal because if I head to the water side I am more likely to find life. Water brings life from what I remember from my studies. But if I go gorgeside I could find myself at a loss if there is life there. I will need water too at some point. If this trek ends up taking the full time I will be dehydrated long before I get there. If only they were closer together I would just zig zag back and forth but it seems to be over 10 Kilo-ewwww. “Okay, I'm sorry, over 6 miles apart.”

  Okay, I can’t even think about Kilo, I mean the old way. Yup to great of a distance to navigate across consistently. In the middle, I could just end up walking in circles anyway. Marny always wanted me to work on my weaknesses. So left it is.

  Wes backtracked once more to the clearing before the mountain and walked to the side with the water. He moved slowly and cautiously through the better part of an hour. When the second hour ticked by he found that he was moving too slow.

  268:35:04

  “Nope got to speed it up.” He whispered to himself.

  Wes picked up his pace and could smell the water before he got any view of it. He had never been around such a large body of water. He didn’t know at first that what he was smelling was water. As the scent in the air got more saturated and he found the air chilling more and more as he walked toward it he put the two and two together. When the sound of it rushing through hit his ears he quickened his pace one more. He was excited to take in that huge amount of water for the first time.

  When he first caught sight of the water lapping up the side from time to time as it rushed off to his right toward the sea he had seen earlier. He could not help but feel grateful for being able to see this. He thought he would spend his whole life on that planet. Or a system or two higher at the very least.

  When he got within a hundred feet of it the trees broke like they did near the mountain. Not a tree in sight for a hundred feet. The line ended up being perfect all the way down. He was too close to the ground to see the sea off in the distance but he knew it was there. The curious thing about the gap from the water to the trees is that the ground was all black dirt. No grass or trees, he could not tell if there were any animals in the area either. The black land made it difficult under the constant cloudy conditions.

  Wes considered his options. He really did not need to go up to the water's edge for a while. He was not thirsty yet. He would eventually have to make the choice but something in him told him not to make the journey if he didn’t need to. He settled on only adventuring toward the water if he needed to.

  With his mind made up and his direction decided he finally set out on reaching the Black Sea.

  267:28:14

  Wes had decided to move into the trees and obscure himself from anything that might view him from the black ground or the waters edge. He of course had no idea if this land had any predators but it couldn’t hurt. Especially since those loud noises he heard from the other side of the mountain could be heard over on this side. He had grown tired after not sleeping for however long he had been up. When Argyros had healed him through that week of torture he never grew tired. And with Argyros not there to heal him he found it increasingly difficult to fight off the call of sleep.

  254:12:57

  He carried on for a little while longer until he saw that he was no longer able to pay attention to his surroundings and walk at the same time. He found a group of trees that were close enough together that if there were anything else in these woods they would avoid them and move around them. His reasoning was that they would look to save energy too. Moving around these trees over and over would grow tiresome to them as well. The roots of all five trees met near the middle, but they did not provide a comfortable bed for him to lie on. Found the flattest part of the ground and nestled up to one of the trees where his back could rest up a root coming off it. Just the comfort of his back not being exposed let his mind relax enough that when he closed his eyes he fell asleep.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Wes woke up in a panic. He scanned the world around him. Nothing immediately stood out to him so he looked internally. He pulled up his timer and found he had slept a long long time.

  232:16:22

  This would be a serious problem going forward. He decided not to think about it for long and decided to continued on. He could not reasonably estimate how far he had gone without leaving the comfort of the trees and heading over to the water to peek back at the mountain. That was still out of the question for his psyche so he continued on. From the time he arrived wherever he was, he could not tell if the light pushing through the clouds had gone down at all. None of the stars' rays of light peeked through the clouds. They instead made the clouds glow as one uniform blanket of light.

  Through most of the day, he walked at a walking pace. He would stop every now and then when he thought he heard something but over the last 10 hours, he felt he could make it through. At this pace, he would be there with a bunch of time to spare.

  221:54:26

  After only a few more hours Wes started hearing splashing and a hit of something hard every now and then. He decided to stay in the trees, choosing to try and pass whatever it was through the relative safety of being hidden. He crept quietly for a time. But found that the sound only grew louder as he pushed forward. He decided to change course and head toward the clearing before the water off to his left. As he reached the edge of the trees he saw it. The utter blackness off to his right was a real sight to behold. He shot out of the trees to take in his first real view of the Sea. The blue water of the large river was engulfed by the black Sea or Lake. Its deep blue water vanished into the inky black. He didn't care anymore about being in the clearing. He had not seen a thing for close to 50 hours. He ran the rest of the way, as he got closer he saw that the ground around the black sea was black as well. As he got close to the unfathomable quantity of water the ground started to engulf his foot with every step. The sensation of running in this black dirt was exhilarating. His heart began to pound. The clearing along the water met the clearing around the black sea. The trees of the forest were perfectly manicured into a right angle. When he got halfway to the black sea from the last of the trees his status screen popped up into his vision.

  —218:34:18—

  You have cleared your first quest in a serviceable amount of time. You have chosen the safe route and chose to walk through the uninhabited forest. Do you wish to claim your rewards?

  Yes/No

  Alternate quest: Delay rewards and venture back across the uninhabited forest. Choose to meet the inhabitants, test yourself, and receive a reward commensurate with your bravery.

  Wes looked at his status screen and said, “Fuck you, I am taking the easy route. Give me my bounty and get me the hell out of here.”

  Wes went and selected Yes, but found that nothing happened. He hit Yes three more times before his status changed.

  Due to your sponsor wagering ### Levels you must choose first to forgo his offering.

  Warning - By choosing Yes now your sponsor will lose ### Levels that were wagered on you. Are you sure you wish to continue?

  Yes/No

  Wes lost it. “Who the hell is my sponsor? Is it Marny? Argyros? Somebody else I don’t know.” Like what the fuck?

  Wes let his legs give way from under him and he fell back into the soft dirt. It absorbed the impact nicely but he could not find the comfort in it while this decision hung over his head.

  Wes sat back and let his mind go wild.

  Who the heck would risk levels on me? I know from my school that when someone awakens from a well-off world that their family may offer to increase their starting abilities by offering up some of their own levels as collateral. But all levels are not equal. It seems that someone offered triple-digit levels to increase my reward. If it was sister then wouldn’t that mean she is still alive somehow? If it is Argyros then why? Do I have a rich uncle somewhere that I don’t know about?

  The other thing is that the person who offered these levels had to be over level a hundred or there wouldn’t be three placeholders. It would be insane for someone in their second hundred to offer me this chance. But the only one that I know for sure that was above Level 100 is Argyros and I just met that old crazy bastard. Ugh fuck!

  If I turn down this and whoever these levels belong to then they will surely kill me. I mean I would kill someone easily if they lost me a hundred levels. And from what I know it takes from your last hundred levels. So the higher the level they are, the harder it is for them to earn. It would be crazy to lose years, decades, or millennia of work for this.

  Wes let his mind spiral as he mulled all his two options. He could choose to take the easy road and feel the benefits of awakening his status for whatever amount of time until he was killed by whoever his sponsor was or he could go to the other side of the mountain and die. Either way, he felt like he was dying but for sure once whoever these levels belonged to found out that they weren’t getting the levels back. They would probably come to kill him immediately. He looked at his timer.

  218:21:22

  At least this way if I play my cards right I won’t die two seconds after choosing.

  Wes turned around and headed off toward the mountain. Frustrated with the circumstances but happy with what he had gotten the chance to see so far.