A Record of Ash & Ruin: The Grieving Lands

Book 2: Chapter 7: The Test

For the scholars of Quas, the origins of Gryphons represent a challenge to one of their oft-touted and supposedly enlightened paradigms. What made the gods, or nature itself, create a creature with the body of a lion, and the head, wings, and beak of a great eagle? The very existence of Gryphons completely overturns their theory that animals, not monsters, change across the millennia through a process called ‘Nature’s Crucible’. It is an absurd theory where they posit that it is, in fact, a creature’s environment that shapes them, changing them across the generations.

Any learned man, or heaven forbid, even a woman, would know, of course, that the Gryphon is, in fact, not an animal at all, but a monster spawned from the twisted womb of Iasis.

- Monsters of the Mortal Realms by K. D. Fidditch.

“I hope this proves entertaining,” Kidu said in his deep, heavy voice, eager for conflict.

“How about a friendly wrestling match? It would do neither of us any good if we were to injure each other here, were we to use weapons. Wrestling would be a purer test of strength,” I responded, hoping that he would agree to my suggestion.

“This is good and acceptable. Good, too, that you chose the morning. Don’t want to hear complaining that you lost because you were tired from a little walk in the forest,” he answered, a glint of savage eagerness in his eyes.

His response was filled with the fire and impetuousness of youth. I came to understand then, that for all of his martial might, the man mountain was actually still rather young. His beard, which was now gone, had given him the aura of age that he had not truly possessed when we were still out in the wilds. Now clean-shaven, I could see that no lines marred his face or creased his brow, which served to only reinforce his image of unrefined youth. He was young in both mind and body, which meant that the boy could easily be led.

The elders of his tribe probably wanted to wash their hands of their rambunctious youth, pointing him to the softer ‘warm lands’.

The tall man began to take off his armor, but I raised a hand to stop him.

“We had best practice in the ‘metal-skin’. Consider this training for the both of us, as well as a test,” I offered, seeking to test out if I could improve my combat skills with the novelty of the situation.

Would I be able to gain a level in the Heavy Armor skill by ‘fighting’ the strong man? Also, a small part of me wanted to win, my own youth and eagerness spurring me on. The other reason why I chose to have our friendly competition in full armor was that I needed to, no matter how marginally, even the playing field a little. Kidu had, until very recently, been unfamiliar with wearing metal armor and was still unused to moving about in it. I would be gambling that my own Armor skill would be higher than his, giving me an advantage.

Grunting and rolling his shoulders, he put down his spear and stood to his impressive full height.

Truth be told, he was an intimidating sight. The man positively towered over me. Strangely, I felt no fear, for there was a warm smile on his face that promised only a friendly challenge. I knew next to nothing about wrestling. The only nugget of information I knew was that it was beneficial to keep your center of gravity low. Against his superior Strength, I would do well by just keeping my footing. Still, from what I saw from his status, I would be able to at least put up a challenge. The gap between our abilities, though large, was not insurmountable.

Adopting a grappler’s stance, he sunk low to the ground and I assumed a similar pose. Without warning, the man rushed me, seeking to end the competition there and then. It was a move more reminiscent of an experienced pit fighter.

I could barely meet his charge. According to my Identify spell, despite us possessing a similar level of Strength, physics still ruled, in part, in this world as I was soon to find out. His solid mass hit me and it felt like getting struck by an enraged bull. Luckily, my armor absorbed most of the charge and, looking at my status bars, I saw only minimal damage to my Health. The raw force and sudden surprise of the attack had taken me completely off guard, but he had failed to take me down to the ground.

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Elwin shouted words of encouragement from the sidelines, giving up all pretense of actually doing any of the morning chores.

“Get in there my boy! Wahoo! Go fer it, the pair of you!” he hooted and hollered, genuine excitement on his face as he continued egging us on.

Having survived Kidu’s initial rush, I could feel him try to sweep me off my feet - and we danced, locked against one another, as I avoided his thick legs. For long moments we remained locked before he tried to overpower me to the ground, giving up on technique, seeking to win there and then through sheer force.

However, I sunk lower and I was able to roll him across my hip and actually used his own mass against him.

Perhaps it was my own limited exposure to the refined martial arts of my world or the memory of one of the many videos I had seen in my formative years, or it simply could have been all the stars aligning correctly with my plans. Whatever it was, I had succeeded in pulling off a maneuver that would have been impossible in my old world. Did the system of this world factor in my heavy armor skill and attribute points before rolling a die and deciding in my favor?

However, Kidu, with his lightning-fast reflexes, was able to hook his leg against mine and we tumbled to the soft loamy forest floor. There we grunted and heaved, desperately seeking leverage to pin the other down. All thoughts of technique were forgotten as we rolled about.

After a long while, our Stamina flagging, we both lay on the carpet of leaves and grass, exhausted. Elwin was breaking down in tears in laughter, the pent-up stress of the past few days or months having been released by witnessing our harmless fun.

“A good… match…” I was able to say between labored breaths, seeing nothing but the green of the arboreal forest.

“Not… bad… for a hot lander,” answered the big man, his breaths akin to the heaving of mighty bellows.

“Quite a beautiful show of the beast with two backs!” quipped Elwin, chuckling merrily at the pair of us. I felt a shot of annoyance flare up before I decided to laugh with him instead. It simply felt good and, soon enough, Kidu joined us as my group finally found some small measure of catharsis.

So focused was I on winning that I had forgotten my initial reasons for challenging the big man. I quickly checked over my notifications, and sure enough, everything seemed to have followed my prediction.

You have learned Unarmed Combat (lvl.4) You have learned Heavy Armor (lvl.4)

You have gained 1 Strength

You have gained 1 Dexterity

With the increases to my base attributes, my maximum Health and Stamina had improved marginally and I had also gained a nominal amount of experience from the encounter. Wanting to see if Kidu had attained anything by the encounter, I cast Identify on him.

Kidu - Hunter (Human lvl.13) Health 297/315 Stamina 13/58

Mana 7/7

Apart from Kidu’s own gains in his physical attributes, I noted with surprise that somewhere along our journey, Kidu had gained a point of Mana. It seemed that the large man was learning a little Wisdom somewhere. More surprising to me was the fact that I seemed to be, at least in raw attributes, catching up with the taciturn man.

The natives of this world had no idea about the ‘system’ and it would be impossible to ask Kidu about an increase in his skills. He would probably think I was raving mad or having another one of my ‘god touched’ moments.

“Well enough with all these fun and games, you two best get off your backsides. We’ve got to get back and I need to be spending some well-earned gold on strong drink and loose women!” exhorted the Rogue, eager to be back in the welcoming arms of civilization.

Taking a moment to gather ourselves, we slowly rose up on unsteady feet. Despite our exhaustion and aggressive clash, we found ourselves smiling at each other. I realized that I was noticing the weight and restriction of my armor less and less as time went on. Was it just human adaptability, my increased attributes, or simply just the very nature of Heavy Armor skill? Possibly it could be a factor of all three, I surmised as I slowly got my breath back.

Once I had suitably recovered, I decided that it would be best if I helped here and there about the camp. Between chores, I scoffed down a few bites of lizard meat, which helped restore some of my Stamina and a tiny amount of Health. I chose to dilly-dally a little, as I wanted my Mana to reach at least five points before we ventured forth on the return leg of our journey.

Finally, when we were ready, I let my companions lead the way while I held our donkey’s reins and followed along behind them. The sounds of the forest followed us wherever we went, and I could see various woodland creatures skittering about the upper boughs of the trees. I also saw a massive creature that looked like a gigantic millipede from Earth’s prehistoric past raise its antennae at us as we passed. My hand had reached for the weapon at my hip, in combat readiness, before Elwin shouted at me to stand down.

“Just a Happyfeet, no need to get your underclothes in a twist. They eat mulch and leaves,” explained Elwin as he turned around to look at me, his eyes rolling in exasperation. “Sometimes I really just can’t get the measure of you, you can do some of the most incredible things yet at other times you're like a babe just newly born,” he chortled, eyes alight with mirth.

Suddenly without any preamble, Kidu called for us to stop, holding up a hand. The wild man stooped low over a fallen log, inspecting it for something.

“Boomhead,” he stated simply as he took out a knife to gather the mushrooms.

“Broomshead,” corrected Elwin, which drew a small grunt of annoyance from Kidu and simply caused Elwin to shrug.

“May I try?” I inquired, interrupting their little exchange as I knelt down beside the log, hiding the shade of eagerness in my voice as best I could.

“Yes, I will show you how,” said Kidu flatly, pausing for a moment to look at Elwin, before continuing, “Cut as deep as you can to take the soft wood too. Roots of the mushroom come with us and it will help it keep for longer.” Kidu then began to cut around the mushroom slowly, explaining in his usual curt manner, how to best extract the fungus.

I could see from the corner of my eye that Elwin was probably fighting a war to restrain himself from correcting Kidu’s use of the common language. Even with my own limited understanding, I could see that he had mangled the sentence structure in places. However, it was not important to me in the slightest as I had a hypothesis to test out.

The Broomshead mushroom only had a passing similarity to its namesake. It had a short stem, with dark gills under a large brown cap covered with black small hairlike fibers.

Mimicking the Hunter, I cut as far as I could with my knife around the base and harvested as well as I could. Using the knife in such a manner would no doubt dull the edge and the flowing snake-like blade was already a devil to sharpen. As we continued collecting nature’s bounty, I was finally given a new notification informing me of my latest achievement.

You have learned Herbalism (lvl.2)

It was annoying that I did not earn an extra point in Wisdom along with the skill. However, I felt that I was making real progress in understanding some of the rules and the nature of this world. The small amount of experience gained was also welcome, and perhaps the Hamsa would reward me with a little extra for bringing him more of the mushrooms. Puzzling on the ins and outs was, in a way, just another test, another challenge that I would have to overcome if I was to thrive in this magical land.