Mike adjusted his body position, shifting his weight slightly to his right leg. The sun now beat sideways on the carbon fiber barrel, revealing the hexagonal texture beneath the handguard like the technological skin of something living. Beautiful. Lethal. Familiar. A rare thing in a world that had taken everything from him in seconds.
"How much ammunition can I get for a crystal?"
"One hundred shots. Or a thousand if it's better quality crystal and the batch allows it. But remember: this is a system purchase. In the city, with a merchant or at a gas station, the price changes. It can get worse. It can get better. It can come in an old box, it can come in a batch of another caliber with an idiot swearing it can be adapted. Don't trust every seller just because they smiled toothlessly."
Mike did a quick calculation that he didn't like. Even with the discount, ammunition was still something to use carefully. The rifle was an advantage. An expensive advantage.
"You're going to need to think about your weapon in layers," the voice said, as if reading the bill. "Long range with the M2010. Medium range with something you'll still have to get. Short range with a knife, improvisation, a buttstock, and good homicidal training. It doesn't marry with a single tooth in a world that lives trying to break teeth."
Mike zoomed in again on the bright red dot.
At first, he saw nothing but stone, shadow, and dry shrub. Then the shadow moved. Not all at once. In parts. As if several segments had decided to exist in the wrong order. A thin leg appeared, then another, then the brief gleam of multiple eyes reflecting dead light under the stone protrusion. A spider. And it wasn't small. A body the size of a medium barrel, long, black legs, hairy in patches, with joints too thick for something that should live on a bathroom wall. It remained half-hidden, half-not, as if it knew very well that its very shape was enough to dominate the space. And yet, on the map, it remained a threat, a redder than a wolf, a boar, and a rat.
"I hate being right," the voice said. "Spider. And I just warned you."
Mike studied the creature in silence. Level one, according to the logic of that enclosure. If that was level one, then the rest of the planet must have been designed by someone very sick.
Is she alone?
"Maybe. Maybe not. A spider that size is sometimes a solitary hunter. Sometimes it's a larger web-slinger. Sometimes it's just there because the program wants you to feel your heart rate change. In any case, I don't advise shooting now. Not at that distance, not without knowing its behavior. And before you think about going around out of curiosity, let me remind you that you've barely arrived and you're already eating tutorials for afternoon tea."
Mike lowered his scope slightly, but continued to see the creature through the edge of his optical vision. The spider wasn't moving much. Just enough to remind him that it existed.
"Do cities have maps?" he asked.
The voice seemed to approve of the change of direction. "Yes and no. You can get coordinates, routes, rumors, guide services, purchased maps, temporary event markers, visible pillars, road signs, traveler directions, or even system updates if you meet a condition. Don't expect a giant arrow saying 'safe city 14 kilometers' in the tutorial. Sometimes the program likes to make humans walk until they reinvent civilization."
Mike noticed a yellow movement in the corner of the reading nook. Nina had stopped. Her point was no longer moving away. It was fixed near a low rock formation about one hundred and fifty meters away. This could mean cover. A worsening injury. Or trouble.
"Your yellow light is stuck," the voice said. "Want to go check it out?"
Mike remained silent for two seconds. Two full seconds, which to him were worth a meeting.
"Not yet."
"Good. The world becomes more dangerous when you adopt a stranger on reflex."
Soon after, as if the planet wanted to punish his prudence with too much information, a human voice arrived, carried by the wind. Male. Shouting in something Mike didn't recognize, perhaps Mandarin, perhaps some other Asian language. To his ears, however, the sound came through clearly, in smooth, automatic English, almost too clean.
"There's something in the stone! Don't look into its eyes!"
The man appeared running in the southwest sector, his dark t-shirt torn, a metal bar in his hand, his face covered in dust and someone else's blood. Behind him came two small, very fast things, resembling monkeys if monkeys had been crossed with bats and hatred. They jumped from stone to stone using their hands and feet alike, squealing softly.
"Small beasts," the voice said. "There's a category that loves to pretend to be an detail."
The man saw Mike on the rise and pointed in the direction of the spider, unaware that Mike had already seen it.
"Big spider! There are more!"
The automatic translation delivered everything with the same raw urgency. The man must have still been yelling in his own language, but Mike listened as if he were from the same neighborhood. There was no awkwardness. Only usefulness.
One of the small creatures caught up with the man and leaped onto his shoulder, sinking its claws and teeth in simultaneously. Mike didn't shoot. The distance was too bad and the movements too fast. Instead, he saw the man slam his back against a rock, crushing the creature with a wet thud. The second creature changed direction and disappeared into the low bushes.
"Interesting," the voice murmured. "Not everyone here is completely useless."
The man kept running without heading straight for Mike, which was already worth some points. He cut through the lower valley, trying to gain ground on clean rock and a line of sight. He had survived long enough to learn something. Good.
Nina, the still yellow dot, moved again. In the opposite direction from the man. Perhaps he had heard the spider's cries. Perhaps he simply had better instincts than average.
"See how useful the translator is?" the voice said. "Without it, that warning would have come in Mandarin, you'd just pretend not to notice, and maybe you'd have discovered 'don't look into their eyes' the old-fashioned way."
Mike didn't say anything. But he took note. Spider. Eyes. Some strange property. Hypnosis? Debuff? Poison reflex? It didn't matter yet. Just enough not to mess around.
The map flashed again.
New alert. A bright red dot has appeared less than a hundred meters away, coming from a line of broken rocks on the left flank. More mobile. More aggressive than the spider. And advancing.
"Quick contact," said Mike.
"I see," the voice replied immediately. "It could be a large insect. A beetle, perhaps. Or one of those damned wasps that this show loves because they make a noise like a broken engine and cause childhood panic at the same time."
The sound came a second later.
Bzzzzzzzz.
Deep. Heavy. Too much of an insect for the size of the sound.
Mike turned his sights and found the thing emerging from above a rock like a yellow and black nightmare. Wasp. The size of a small dog. Segmented body glistening in the light, transparent wings vibrating too fast, stinger too long, legs too thin, everything about it screaming that evolution had been beaten to a pulp to produce this. Behind it came a second.
"See?" the voice said, sourly. "I told you that a big insect wasn't a metaphor."
The wasps had not yet decided on their final target. They hovered around irritably, sniffing for movement, heat, vibration.
Mike had already reloaded. He already had line. He had already learned the cost of shooting. Still, sometimes paying is cheaper than being stung by a stinger the size of a short knife.
The first shot ripped off a wing and half the thorax of the wasp further ahead. The creature plummeted, hitting the rock and writhing in a noise that sounded like electric rage. The second one dodged at the last minute, a sharp turn, irritating speed, coming from lower down.
"Don't lose sight of her," the voice growled. "Small flying creatures love to turn into surprises on the side of your face."
Mike released the zoom, pulled the rifle back for a shorter read, and tracked the wasp by sound and the glint of its wings. The creature tried to gain altitude to dive. Too late. The second shot hit the center of its body and caused it to explode in a shower of chitin and yellowish liquid that splattered onto the rock below.
Confirmed Kills x2.
LOOT:
CORE x2
VESPA VENOM x10
TRANSLUCENT WINGS x10
SOUR MEL x5
.300 WIN MAG Ammunition x10
The voice made a satisfied sound. "Sour honey. That's something I was hoping you'd find later. It's good for a lot of fun and horrible things."
Mike collected everything in his inventory without shifting his stance. Now his ammunition supply was better. The world kept trying to collect it, but it also gave back a little when the knife and the sight worked together.
"Are you going to stockpile or are you going to start shooting at everything that flies?" the voice asked.
"It depends on what comes next."
"Good. A response from a man without illusions."
In the distance, the spider was still where it was. Quiet. Watching. The man who had warned about the eyes was now disappearing behind a cluster of rocks. Nina remained yellow on the right edge. The kobolds continued to form a small cluster of activity in the valley. The entire planet seemed like a huge game table where each piece hid teeth beneath the wood.
Mike lightly ran his thumb across the floating screen and opened the dial-up settings again. Blue, yellow, black. Name required. The system was right. Name was power. Name was focus. Name was target.
In the lower corner of the interface, new information appeared, as if the system had decided to reward his attention with a tool.
AVAILABLE OPTION:
RECORD OF NAMES HEARD
FUNCTION:
FUTURE MARKING
Partial Hostility Update
"Now you're starting to get into the right game," the voice commented. "Listen to names, remember names, use names. People without names are just a vague risk. People with names can become a black dot."
Mike closed the tab and looked at the world again. Much bigger than Earth. Neutral cities. Semi-neutral cities. Gas stations selling everything for mana stones. Highways crossing monstrous continents. Level one barrel spiders. Wasps the size of dogs. Kobolds building dens. Goblins with stones. Boars turning into meat and fat. And somewhere above it all, an impossible audience watching it all like someone channel surfing.