Chapter 5 (2/2)

But then he lurched to a stop, the dagger stuck fast in the skull. Freezing, Randidly waited for his impending doom. Nothing happened.

So, slightly reassured, Randidly began pressed back and forth, beginning the laborious process of grinding the dagger outside of the snake’s skull. Thankfully, everything in the area seemed quite dead.

The process took so long that at one point, Randidly had to taken several minutes as a break and allow his stamina to recover.

Eventually, with a sickening pop, the dagger came free, and Randidly admired the slightly carved blade with a wickedly sharp edge. The notification was even more interesting.

Congratulations! You have learned the active skill Equip Lvl 1.

“Equip,” Randidly said outloud, curious.

Equip: Allows you to inspect and equip weapons and armor. Skill level must be greater than or equal to weapon level to utilize the bonuses seen with equip. Utilizing a Weapon of higher level will raise skill level.

“Inspect.”

Item Quality too high to inspect.

Item Quality, huh…? Randidly had expected not being able to utilize the dagger for its benefits, which he suspected would be stat gains, but the fact that item quality blocked him from even examining it was strange. Still it still was an interesting mixture of disappointment and excitement. Disappointment because he didn’t know what it was or how it could help him, excitement because it was a rare weapon.

Although, if it suddenly revealed himself to him when was only Level 2 in Equip, that would be its own disappointment. But Randidly suspected it wouldn’t be that simple.

Pleased with his haul, Randidly gave the pointy eared fellow a once over before he spotted the satchel hanging over his shoulder. It was pressed against the ground beneath his back. Feeling slightly embarrassed to be stealing from the dead, Randidly tried to be gentle, but quickly realized that if he did, this would take forever. So he began wrestling with the dead body.

Within minutes, Randidly’s more irreverent approach had yielded the satchel, which Randidly opened to reveal a swirling darkness. Frowning, he prodded it with the dagger, which instantly vanished, sucked into it. Gasping, he grabbed after it, perhaps foolishly sticking his hand into the darkness.

But as he did so, a strange knowledge entered into his mind. Inside the bag, in a strange 1 cubic meter space, floated several items. Some dried rations, it looked like. A map. Some weird coins, a book in a language he couldn’t understand. 15 empty vials. A bedroll of some kind. Some stuff that looked like campfire tools. And the dagger.

And with but a thought, the dagger reappeared in his hand. Randidly gazed at the bag in wonder.

***

20 minutes later, Randidly left the clearing. With his newfound dagger and bag, he cleaned out everything he could find. The strange glowing red crystals in the giant tree, as well as the blue ones that studded the roots. All the nuts from the first tree. Several green, banana shaped fruits from nearby.

He even used the dagger to carve out one of the snake’s long fangs, which was as thick as Randidly’s wrist, and was just about to start on the second when a rustling from the bushes spooked him, sending him dashing back to the safe room. His little series of sprints also raised the Sprinting level to 3.

Upon arriving back at the room, the first thing Randidly did was have a fine meal of nuts and banana things. The glowing crystals he was a little wary of and decided to wait until later. Afterwards, he considered the area.

Then, using the dagger, Randidly carved out nine holes, spaced several feet apart in a line, and buried three nuts, three of the bananas, and finally one of the red crystals, one of the blue crystals, and one with both of them together, to see if he could grow a tree like the one outside.

While he was doing so, he even had the pleasing notification that his Equip skill increased to Lvl 2. Fortunately or unfortunately, it was still unable to inspect the dagger.

Satisfied, Randidly lay down for a nap, laying out his new bedroll, the lights dimming on cue, leaving the rest of it for after he had some rest.