Universe's End

Creeping through the underbrush, Rory held his breath, keeping as quiet as possible.

Just a little further.

Although his target was only twenty feet away, he wanted to maximize his chances.

Almost… there!

Stopping, he took a single slow breath as he watched his prey. It hopped about, thumping the ground rapidly with six heavy kicks before again hopping around. If you hadn’t known better, you’d think it was seizing up, a mindless display.

But Rory did know better, as he’d seen the display several times over the last two days.

It was a mating call.

The damn monster rabbits bred like, well, rabbits. In the two days -three if he counted today- that he’d been exploring the forest jungle beyond his immediate campsite, he quickly found prey aplenty once he crossed what felt like an invisible threshold that the monsters seemed to avoid.

If I had to guess, I’d bet it’s some boundary zone where my ‘settlement’ ends and the proper wilds begin.

It was a surprisingly large boundary, at least a quarter of a mile in radius, where the monsters seemed unable to cross unless specifically lured closer.

Such as by a monster beacon.

Which reminds me.

A miniature interface appeared, a simple timer counting down.

Twenty-seven hours and forty-eight minutes.

Rory dismissed it mentally, turning his attention back to his hunt. It had taken six days to prepare all his equipment. Then he’d spent three days, today included, simply foraging through the wilds, looking for any potential rabbits to hunt. When they weren’t invading his camp as a mobilized force of death, they were relatively unthreatening, in groups of no more than four or five at a time. Well, there had been one exception, a den that was roughly two miles out from his camp, dozens of the damn things coming and going. He’d observed it for nearly two hours the day prior before slinking away; there was just no way he wanted to poke that hornet nest.

Which had brought him to today. With only a little over a day left and the knowledge that the countdown timer wasn’t precise when the wave would begin, he could only afford a few more hunts.

Disappointing but inevitable.

His ascension progress had crept up to fifty percent, which, while it sounded impressive, really wasn’t when you considered that he’d slain at least three or four dozen rabbits over three days.

I don’t think the energy gained is some simple linear equation or set amount. Rory had realized after the first dozen he’d killed that the progress made was not matching up with prior progress.

But then, I also capped my ascension progress before, so perhaps the energy fluctuates based on variables.

It was all a fun way to say that the system wasn’t doing him any favors by showing his XP number on successful kills.

Bah. Stupid system and its disdain for easy-to-understand numericals.

Dismissing the thought, Rory counted down from five, letting the breaths come and go with practiced ease before, at last, he released the held tension in his shoulder as the arrow whizzed through the air, slamming through the monster rabbit’s skull before it even knew it was already dead.

Bingo.

Releasing the tension that had been building, the mental sort, not the physical variety, he once more admired the bow he held as the analysis interface popped up.

Antler Horn Bow

Grade: Poor

A bow crafted from the Antlers of a slightly magical creature. While it has lost most of the magical potency contained during life, it has gained a focus-boosting potency. Akashic Record: Boosted Focus.

Still calling me out on my crafting skills, or lack thereof. Rory mused as he considered the description for the umpteenth time. Having no frame of reference to compare against, Rory found the bow a beauty to use, able to perform shots that shouldn’t have been possible by a novice such as himself. Of course, the bow being easy to use was a specific bonus of the bow, the magical residue left within the antlers leaving some special effect, the ‘Akashic Record’ as it seemed to be called. At first, he’d thought he’d accidentally enchanted the bow, but he dismissed the thought. First of all, knowing how the system had based so much of itself on video game logic, if it was actually an enchanted weapon, he had a feeling it would directly mention that it was enchanted.

So, what is an Akashic Record?

Perhaps some form of natural enchantment? With only himself in the vicinity for hundreds of miles at the minimum, it wasn’t as if he could consult an expert.

Not like there are any experts.

He’d even considered sending a message to Aelia, who’d gone radio silent since he’d last seen her, but he thought better of it. First, the World Spirit probably didn’t want to be constantly bothered, and second, it wasn’t as if the World Spirit knew everything. It had been an excellent source of relevant instinctual knowledge. Still, he very much doubted Akashic Records were within the realms of instinctual knowledge for a World Spirit.

So, with no leads, he’d given up on discovering the why and why-nots of the bow and instead opted to take it out for practical experience.

That had been three days prior. He’d quickly grown to appreciate the weapon, even if every analysis was a constant reminder that the system deemed his weapon crafting skills Poor.

Aside from the bow, the rest of his new gear was in much the same camp but of a more mundane nature. He’d made a new bat.

Obsidian Shard Macahuitl

Grade: Poor

A simple blunt force weapon enhanced through the addition of wickedly sharp shards of obsidian and a top sharpened into a simple stake.

He still had his combat knife from before, but his analysis of the small weapon proved bland.

Obsidian Shard Knife

Grade: Poor

A painfully sharp but equally brittle knife crafted mainly from a singular obsidian shard.

He’d managed to make a shield, though he left it back at camp as it was annoying to try to creep through the woods with it quietly.

Hide and Wood Shield

Grade: Poor

A simple shield composed of sheets of wood pasted and woven together before being plastered within thin sheets of low-level monster hides.

And at last, he’d even managed to make something that sort of resembled a cuirass that he now wore, but the system had made its assessment of his singular piece of armor abundantly clear.

Hide cuirass

Grade: Exceptionally Poor

More patchwork than proper armor provides only the barest of protections from glancing scratches.

“Thanks again, system.” Rory sighed. While the system was rather rude about his creations, he couldn’t deny it wasn’t right. Every time he returned to camp, he was forced to restitch the cuirass into a singular cohesive piece, the damned thing falling apart on its own more often than not.

I guess that’s the difference between my actual skill at making stuff and my skill when I’m boosted by System stuff.

The only reason that some of the things he’d made before obtaining Maker’s Arsenal weren’t rated as Exceptionally Poor was that the items in question were so simple it would have to be an act of purposeful sabotage to lower their grade from Poor to Exceptionally Poor.

Well, there's no point in mulling over stuff that I can’t change or that doesn’t matter. Plus, I don’t have much time left.

Satisfied with his kill, he quickly retrieved the arrow, stashing it within his makeshift quiver. Rory hadn’t even bothered to analyze the quiver; he could guess what the system would say about his work there. Standing over the dead monster, he briefly considered whether to bring the beast back with him, but chances were he would shortly have more monster corpses than he had any idea of what to do with.

Something about this feels wrong. Rory thought to himself as he left the carcass behind. It felt wasteful, but even back on Earth, rabbits weren’t exactly struggling to repopulate. Still feeling the tug in his gut, he pulled his interface timer back up, an often repeated habit of the last few days.

May as well get back.

----------------------------

Rory paced around camp, rubbing at his arms as a cold breeze swept through.

No, it’s definitely not my imagination. It’s starting to get colder.

He’d been hoping that winters weren’t a thing, but the slight chill he’d been feeling in the early mornings was beginning to sweep through the bright hours of the day, signs of a season slowly creeping closer.

Winter.

He had no way of knowing if he was technically in a summer or fall season, but if it behaved anything like on Earth, the main issue was that things would get more challenging as the cold crept in.

Are any of the others already dealing with their own winters?

He brushed the thought aside, a wandering thought irrelevant for the near future. Instead, he drew his interface up.

Still some time.

He was growing restless. Waiting had never been his favorite thing to do, and Rory could vividly remember the feeling of butterflies fluttering in his stomach hours before a big race back in his younger years.

I just want to get it over with.

Thought sparking inspiration, he looked up, speaking to the empty air.

“Hey, System, can I start the wave now?”

In response, a single notification appeared containing a small text box.

Rush Start Wave: Y/N

“Looks like I can.” Rory tapped the no button for now, intending to start it within the next few minutes anyway. There was no reason not to start it, but now that he could rush it, he wanted to do one final check.

“Bows and Arrows: Check.” Rory patted the bow and quiver strapped to his back.

“Melee weapons?” A tap of his side confirmed his bat and knife were secured in their rather shoddy sheathes at his hip. “Check.”

Jogging over to his walls, he scrambled up a makeshift ladder and leaned against it. The wall wasn’t wide enough for him to stand and fire from there, but he’d found that he could still fire from atop the ladders as long as he didn’t have to attempt any acrobatics. Glancing over the walls, he took stock of the ditch dug around the walls with sharpened stakes stabbed into the bottom. He hadn’t had time to do much more than ‘baby’s-first-stake-trap,’ but it was better than nothing.

“Walls: Check.”

A glance toward the feet of the ladder showed his shield resting against the wall.

“And shield: Check.”

That was everything he’d managed to ready and everything his current preparation and resources would allow.

I guess there’s nothing more to go over.

“System, begin wave,” Rory said with an air of authority, puffing his chest up.

Here we go.

Still standing at the top of the ladder, he unslung his bow, knocking an arrow.

Breath.

As much as the prospect of being overrun by monster rabbits that wanted to tear his throat out was a bit frightening, especially if more jackalopes appeared, there was a thrum of excitement in the pit of his stomach.

Here we go.

It was several minutes before he saw the first few appear. Doing a quick headcount, Rory couldn’t stop himself from sucking in a sudden breath.

Fifteen on the first stage?

It was… A lot, but not so many that he didn’t think he couldn’t withstand it.

Drawing his bow up, he focused in on the nearest of the rabbits as they closed in, not yet rushing at their full speed but still approaching at a brisk enough pace.

And… Showtime!

Letting the arrow loose, Rory didn’t bother to watch its path, instead already knocking another arrow.

If I can drop at least four before reaching here,

Had it not been for the Akashic Record, Rory was under no illusion that he would have been capable of hitting moving targets with only a few days of practice, but thankfully, he was in a world where he had the strange not-enchantment to aid him. With four arrows, four corpses landed amongst the copse of trees surrounding his immediate campground.

Alright, gear shift time.

Jumping from the top of the ladder, he hit the ground with a heavy thud, ignoring the impact rolling through him as he dropped his bow next to the ladder. Instead, he picked up his shield and pulled free his bat. Dashing away from the ladder, he shot toward the gap in his walls where the monster rabbits were nearing.

Twirling his bat once, the first lunging monster rabbit reached him. While he hadn’t invested much in his strength attribute, he hadn’t ignored it entirely. Back on Earth, it wasn’t as if he was a pro athlete or even a semi-pro, but he’d always considered himself near the upper echelons of what an average human could do, given he had never stopped running or training since his younger years. At his peak, he had clocked himself running a sprint at around seventeen or eighteen miles per hour. It was, while respectable, not even close to scratching the world record holders.

But that was also before he’d received a roughly thirty percent increase in his baseline strength. He still wasn’t a record-breaking human, but the strength and speed he had now, he was more than sure, would have been enough to put him at the level of a pro athlete.

This was a nice way of saying that as the rabbits lunged forward, they were met with the thunderous crack of his bat shattering their skulls, strong and fast enough that he could better keep pace with the savage little brutes.

A blur of blood, fur, and bone shards showered the air as Rory began slamming shield and bat around in a flurry of violence. In the first few seconds, the remaining eleven were reduced to a further seven before they too were dropped to three, then one, before, with a quick stomp, he shattered the spine of final caerbannog.

Panting, a rush of exhilaration filled Rory as a smile ripped across his face.

“Hah! Now that’s what we’re talking about.”

It was like a runner's high but cranked up to an eleven.

A battle high?

Still smiling wickedly, he caught his breath as much as he could, dropping his shield back next to the ladder pressed against his wall, sheathing the bat before clambering back up with his bow.

Don’t fix what ain’t broken.

If the pattern from the prior waves held, then the next stage of the wave would be appearing aunty-

Ahh, yep, there they are.

Fifteen had increased to eighteen of the little terrors thumping forward.

Surer of himself now, Rory began raining down death upon the small monsters, arrows slamming through the thin necks and skulls of the monster rabbits. Whereas before, he’d only managed to drop four of the fifteen before they reached his walls, he managed a full six before he dropped down, once more picking up shield and bat as he prepared to engage.

Again!

Again, he met the monsters in a flurry of death. Whereas in the first stage, he’d managed to kill every single one without so much as a scratch, the slightly higher count meant that once or twice, he barely missed a killing blow as they leaped about like frenzied fur bullets. Turning his body to the side in time, the slicing strikes of their vicious little talons instead turned into nothing more than blunt strikes to the stomach, painful but nothing he couldn’t take now that his durability had also been increased a smidge.

Much like the first wave, aside from the two tackles he took to the gut, Rory managed to quickly and efficiently put the swarming monsters down with brutal efficacy.

Increased sta- attributes and knowledge of how they operate go a long way, eh?

Growing more and more confident, again Rory rushed to his ladder, waiting a few minutes before the next stage appeared.

Oh... that's a bit odd.

He’d been expecting twenty-one rabbits, but a full twenty-five had appeared, breaking the prior pattern.

Only a little uneasy, Rory did his best not to let it get to him as he began to draw and release his bow with even greater swiftness, his fingers feeling supernaturally comfortable around the bow.

With so many rabbits rushing forward, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, he managed to kill nine of the damned things before they were too close, and he was forced once more into the thick of things.

This time, his walls showed their worth even more. With limited space between his walls, the rabbits could not drive forward with the full force of their numbers. It was only a minor boon, but in a battle to the death, any small degree of boon was worth its weight in gold.

Does gold exist anymore?

Dismissing the thought instantly, Rory started his messy business of crushing killer rodents with his shield and bat. Wading through the melee, Rory swung with violent abandon, but in his battle frenzy, he was a split second slow to notice one of the rabbits lunging from an awkward angle. Realizing what was about to happen but too slow to move in time, Rory could only brace himself as the rabbit cracked into the forearm of his bat-wielding arm. Stronger and more durable than an ordinary human, physics still had the final say in his body. The impact of the monster rabbit striking his arm was like a bowling ball launched into his arm. A bolt of pain exploded from his arm as the bat flew from his hand.

Shit.

Gritting his teeth and adrenaline pumping, he slammed the offending rabbit away with his shield as he snatched his knife from his belt, flipping the blade so he held it in a reverse grip as he swung the blade through the skull of one of the dwindling few monsters.

Yep. Fuck. That feels like a sprain.

Even pre-collapse, a human could ignore rather offensive amounts of pain and injury with enough adrenaline pumping through their system, something the current Rory could attest to as he mentally compartmentalized the pain of his sprained arm and forced it to the back of his mind.

Not now.

Favoring his left arm, the last few rabbits took longer to kill as he was forced to be more defensive, using his shield to slam the rabbits to the ground before either slamming the heel of his foot down on their neck and shattering their spinal cord, or otherwise simple driving his knife through their eye sockets.

Fiend of Rabbits everywhere, that’s me. With a sudden surge of grim humor, Rory chuckled before he frowned a moment later. Yeah, that’s definitely the pain talking.

Wasting an entire two minutes on the final rabbit of the stage, Rory dropped to his ass, sucking down lungful after lungful of blessedly cool air.

“Damn suicidal fuckers. Swear you’d think they were lemmings.” Rory grimaced as he poked at his bad arm.

Yep, that’s sprained.

It wasn’t broken; he could tell that much, at least, given that he could still move his arm to some degree without wanting to rip his entire arm off. Still, to call it unpleasant was putting it mildly.

Unpleasant is one thing; dead is another.

Repeating the mantra in his mind, he slowly staggered to his feet. Perhaps it was a trait of strength or durability or even both, but he found it easier to catch his breath.

Small victories. Take the small victories.

Grabbing his bow as he neared the wall, he slowly climbed up, stopping only once to let out a hiss of discomfort between clenched teeth.

Unpleasant is one thing; dead is another.

Reaching the top of his ladder, he drew an arrow slowly so as not to aggravate the injury further.

A consequence of not having any flexibility or cognition investment, I suppose.

With just a bit more of either attribute, Rory could have reacted in a way that didn’t leave his arm busted.

Folly of hindsight, I suppose. He’d invested half of his attribute density into growth, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that he would struggle without the immediate increase in his attributes.

If the numbers continue to increase like this…. No, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

It was a worrying thought. Twenty-five had become a hassle even before he’d busted his arm, but what if it became thirty-five? Forty?

I said I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

Easing his breathing, Rory anxiously awaited the next rush of fluffy demons.

Except they never came. Instead of dozens of vicious, bloodthirsty rabbits, two single rabbits slowly hopped out from the undergrowth.

Fuck.

And they both had a set of impressive antlers.