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Tutorial Rewrite 134
🕑 Added 2023-05-26 11:17:08 +0000 UTC<The Day of Grand Conference
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…
…
…Hm? Where… where am I?...
I pry open my crusty eyes. Oh, hey, it’s the crib! That makes sense. Yup. Total sense. Ah, my body feels a bit weird… As I move to a sitting position, a little prick of pain rings out from my left shoulder. Hm? What’s this…?
I blink at the thick cactus needle shoved deep inside my shoulder. Huh. That’s kind of weird. I can’t remember wrestling a cactus…
Pulling out the needle, I toss it to the side. Still, that’s pretty weird. Normally if you step on a cactus, you’d get more needles than just one. Odd. It’s almost like someone purposefully stabbed that in there, but I can’t imagine who’d do that, so… Yeah. Must’ve been the wind or something.
With the needle removed, I sit up fully. The first thing that alerts me to the fact that things are not as they maybe should be is the frankly unholy amount of gore littering the room. Most of it is concentrated in a huge pile in the middle of the room, but a fair bit has splattered the walls, and the roof, and pretty much any place where a bit of blood and organ mush might be able to get in. It is, frankly speaking, enough gore for at least three full humans.
And surrounding this pile, like the candles around some unholy ritual, are what appears to be five empty bottles of vodka.
…I feel like there’s a story to be read here. Unfortunately, I am currently illiterate.
Standing up, I walk over to the pile. It’s very fresh, without a single sign of being spoiled. What exactly could have made this much raw meat and organs? Did some animal die here? No, the intestines are too small. In that case, gobli—
My heart rears in my chest and I start digging through the pile like a madman.
Simel? Simel?! Oh, God, please, don’t tell me I—
There's a tiny movement in the edge of my vision and my head flashes to face it. On the other side of the room, as far away as physically possible, I see clearly as Simel squeezes himself closer to the wall. He’s covered in blood. Huh. Now that I look at myself, I’m also covered in blood, a lot of it dried, so clearly from before my current dig. I look back up at Simel. He draws back in animalistic terror. Hm.
Returning my gaze to the pile of organs, I allow myself to notice a little detail. You know, these intestines are quite similar to the ones I have in my stomach. Same shape and everything. And if I take a bite…
—Yup, that’s my own spleen.
Okay, so, to summarise what may have happened here… I was probably still pretty drunk when I came back from the conference. In my non-sane state, I decided that the best way to spend my night was to train my evisceration resistance. Right. Okay, yeah. That feels like something my drunk self could have done. Still, that doesn’t explain the cactus barb in my shoulder, nor why Simel is also covered in blood. Hmmm…
Well, we’re both alive and okay, so it doesn’t matter what happened.
Sitting down, I try to make sense of what the best future course of action is. I can’t exactly keep this pile of rotting organs. Eating it would be fine, but I don’t think that that’s something Simel would like to see. In that case, putting it into my inventory…
As I furrow my brow in thought, I suddenly notice the sound of gentle footsteps moving over the soggy floor with quiet squelches. I look up at Simel. He jerks back in fear, but after a second or two of trembling, he’s able to pull himself together, taking long, deep breaths. His whole body shivering, he steps closer to me. Our eyes meet. He slowly points a trembling finger towards the door.
“Do you need to—?” He doesn’t nod or shake his head, but I can pretty much understand what he means. “Yeah, okay, let me just put on some sort of shoes…” I’m just about to reach into my inventory when I notice a large patch of skin in the pile of gore. The cogs of creativity slowly start moving in my head once again. If I took… and then… Could I?...
Creativity turns to inspiration. I grab the patch of skin and start cutting it into shapes using my sharp nails, pulling on all my technological this-is-how-shoes-look knowledge to cut out soles and insoles and everything else. I fasten the soles and the leather and everything else by using some of the snapped-off teeth and claws in the pile. Then, as a final touch, I thread the inside of the human leather boot with my own large intestine, giving it insulation and softness.
It’s crude. It’s novice. It’s probably a little disturbing. But it is the first proper piece of clothing I’ve had on in almost a full year.
I pull on the pair of boots. They aren’t the same length and they feel grossly squishy, but by God is it a pair of boots. Instead of a pro gamer, should I have become a cobbler?...
Oh, mother, father… Your son has finally found his calling in life.
I turn to Simel. “I’m ready,” I say with all the pride of a real American cowboy. “Let’s go.”
It surprises me slightly to see his facial expression not having changed a twitch from when he first stepped up to me. Is this a good or a bad thing? No idea. Doesn’t matter.
Since time is of the essence in moments like these, I head for the door, glancing back periodically to make sure Simel is still following along. For some reason, there’s a really haunted look in his eyes that wasn’t there just before I left. Keeping an eye over my shoulder, I push open the door and jump out. My thigh-high human leather boots are working great. I’ll need to look into how to tan leather properly though, since this is really just fresh skin. Maybe Simel knows more about that stuff?
I turn to look at Simel. He’s also standing outside the crib, in the ankle-high soot, but he isn’t moving. He’s rooted in place. I tilt my head at him. “What’s up?”
Keeping his eyes glued to mine, he slowly reaches up and touches a hand to the crest on his chest. I look down at the crest. It’s kind of hard to discern because of all the RED on it, but it seems to be a picture of a city on fire with the flames forming a phoenix. I look back at him. “Yup, pretty cool crest.”
His left eye twitches. He touches his hand to his crest again.
I nod. “Yeah. Maybe not my personal style—I personally prefer dragons—but I respect it. Phoenixes are cool. Can’t say I’d wanna be one, or have it represent my country, but I can see the appeal.”
Not swayed, he pokes his crest again. I furrow my brows. How do I politely tell him that I’m not psychic? And, furthermore, that if I did have powers, I would probably avoid invading his privacy using them?
But apparently, he can read the confusion on me, because he suddenly points out towards the horizon and the gently rising sun. Then, he pokes his crest again before pointing at himself, me, and then the horizon again.
I blink at him, slowly. Wait a second…
Me. Him. Go to place. Go to… crest. Crest—army. We go to army. Army encampment.
“You… want to go back to the camp? Where I…—where we met?”
He nods at me.
Maybe I’m more psychically gifted than I thought? Still… “Are you sure? It’s not exactly… There’s not much left, you know. I checked for food, and most of it was spoiled or eaten by animals, so I don’t think…”
He shakes his head firmly. His eyes, although as dark with fear as before, shine with determination. He means business. I gulp and look away. “Well, uh, okay, but… Don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay?” Not that he’ll say anything, but what matters is that the message got across. Turning away from him, I close my eyes, stick my nose in the air and take a deep breath. Soot. Soot. Soot. And, a fair bit away… Leather. Cloth. Wood. Dried skin and exposed bone. Moisture. I open my eyes again and point towards the encampment, which just so happens in the opposite direction Simel pointed in. “Over there,” I say. “That’s where it is.”
He doesn’t turn his eyes away from me. It’s like he expects me to teleport closer when he looks away. I meet his gaze and he flinches. I pull my lips tight. “So, uh…” I scratch my neck. “How do you want us to do this? If you want, I could carry you there, just like last time, but…”
Not waiting for me to finish my sentence, he starts walking in the direction I pointed, trudging through the soot with big, heavy steps.
“—That works,” I mumble after him.
Normally, getting to the encampment would only take around ten minutes of running. But, like this, it took over half an hour to get there. By the end of it, Simel was dragging his feet and panting, but whenever I tried to help him he’d slap my hand away as though it was poisonous. Still, we were able to get there in one piece, and by that time, my boots were starting to crack a little. At some point, I think a tooth went through my sole and into my foot, but I didn’t want to bother Simel so I kept it to myself.
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<07:03:10
Day 366>
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