Along the way to figuring out the secret sauce that made the poison flavor, I discovered several other combination. The aforementioned earth, air, fire, and some others I hadn’t encountered before. I memorized their look and feel in case I came across them later.
It took almost a year before I figured out how the poison flavor was made. My discovery began when I saw tinges of it on the edge of a test fractal. It took a while to replicate the result—the next several attempts showed none of the poison flavor I was after. But when I did, I understood the recipe.
Attempt after attempt got me closer. First it was just the outer edge. Then some of the middle. And finally, I got it all correct. I had long since memorized the fractal I was making, so I didn’t even need Skill Cultivation’s help. When the experience settled into the right shape—with the right flavor—I sent a small amount of blood towards it as a test. There was no pain. It has worked!
That wasn’t the end of my journey. I had one more skill to make. This one needed Skill Cultivation but was so much easier to do. The first attempt failed—the flavor thing was finicky! But I got it on the second try. Finally, after years of effort, I had what I needed to reap the harvest of experience.
I saw in front of a nearby tree. This was it. This was it! I didn’t feel ready, but I also knew it was time. I took a deep breath and cast one skill followed by the other. There was no immediate reaction. I felt doubt and a pang of guilt over what I had just done. Both of those feelings got squelched by my will. It was not the time to fret. It was all part of the plan to save everyone. And it better fucking work.
The next morning, I awoke to see that not much had changed. It wasn’t nothing, but it wasn’t much. The big tree I’d cast the spells on was looking much like it had the previous day. The same couldn’t be said of some nearby smaller saplings and ferns. The smaller plants were blackened and desiccated. Dead. The understory of plants in a hundred-foot radius of the infected tree were all the same. The next fifty feet were in various stages of dying. It had worked!
When I checked my notifications, I saw a steady stream of insects and small animals dying to the infection. My plan was working. I had a good amount of food, and I was hopeful that I could remain where I was until the disease did its job.
As I drank water that morning, I noticed that my throat was a little scratchy. When I checked my status, I saw that I had been infected by the skill. It wasn’t doing much to me. The resistance skill was doing a good job of cutting the damage to a minimum and my regeneration was just about enough to keep pace with the incoming damage. Not quite enough, but so close that the occasional Heal would keep me topped up and symptom-free.
With the disease spreading quickly, I rushed to collect what foragables I could. They would be dead within days, and I wanted to top up what food I had with even more. Dead animals would be another decent source of food—provided they weren’t liquefied by the disease as it killed them. It wasn’t like I could get the disease more than once, so eating the tainted meat wasn’t a problem for me. The toxins could be removed with a skill, so the only negative was the potential for food poisoning.
The hut—after years of being lived in—needed a new roof, so that was my priority over the next couple of days. That the trees were dying and drying out made it even easier of a job to do. When I was done, I had a hut with no more leaks when it rained. That I’d been splashed in the face by rain one morning might have contributed to the urgency of the task!
Around the time the big trees near me finally died, I saw notifications that much bigger beasts were now succumbing to the spreading disease. The cat that had worried me years earlier was one of the first casualties—a fact that scared me. That meant it had been infected early—and therefor had been close by the whole time!
In rolled the experience from deer, bears, squirrels, and more. I wasn’t able to get experience from any humans, but I assumed they would start dying soon enough. It was an inevitability, something made more evident when I took a look around from the skies. The region around where I lived was dead. There was no green, no movement. Nothing. Except me, of course.
It was then I realized I might have miscalculated. The spreading disease was very much an open sore that was visible from space. If anyone thought to find the epicenter of the whole mess, they’d find my hut. Though it had only been a week—and I had plenty of food—it was time to move on.
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I Flew towards the river. I no longer needed my mental map—I’d been to and from the local towns for years by that point. My aim wasn’t to fly super far away. I wanted to monitor the disease’s progress while raiding people’s houses for food and a place to sleep at night.
The desolation—what I decided to call the dead zone—was much larger than I had thought. When looking down at the roads by the nearest town, I noticed that there were no cars. The trees weren’t dead, exactly. At least, not all of them. There was a clear separation between the dead trees and where the smaller plants were already done for.
I picked one of the houses and came in for a landing. I Disguised myself as a middle aged man before getting closer to the house. The house looked as it always had. There was a single car in the driveway but no signs of movement inside. I went in through the unlocked back door.
I carefully moved through the house. I heard no one and I saw no one. The interior looked like someone—or several someones—had packed and left in a hurry. There was food on the kitchen table, and the bedrooms looked turned over.
I peeked in the fridge and found fresh meat and vegetables—something I’d been missing for a while! I cooked and ate my fill while watching TV. The power was still going, so I figured it would be a good idea to see what was going on in the world since I’d been gone for the last few years.
I saw two newscasters talking about the desolation’s spread.
“The government is calling for an evacuation of the entire region,” the man on the news said. “A spokesman for the president confirmed that whatever is spreading is indiscriminate in what it infects. It is incredibly dangerous. If you believe that you have been infected, quarantine in place so you do not spread it.”
“The World Health Organization held a virtual meeting this morning,” said the woman next to the man. “They are asking for any scientists who are willing to study the spreading catastrophe. Finding a vaccine is their primary goal.”
“I hope they can find a solution, Dianne,” the man commented. “Over the past day, cars have been clogging the highways as folks evacuate. With the mandatory evacuation area expanding rapidly, this has made the situation worse. People have begun to panic in nearby cities—”
The scene cut to a group of people with signs protesting the evacuation while others were hurriedly packing their cars to drive away.
“I’m not leaving my home!” one protester said. “I ain’t letting the government steal my property!”
“I’m getting out of here,” said one of the motorists.
“I’m scared, Daddy!” screamed the motorist’s child.
I turned off the news. It was going about as well as I could have hoped. No dead bodies that I could see, yet. That was a good thing for me. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. There was a difference between knowing what had to be done and witnessing its effects.
The doubt and guilt came back in full force to gnaw at my stomach. I tried to push it away, but it was having none of it. In my own little corner of the world, I felt safe and secure. Here—in someone else’s house—I felt vulnerable. Those negative emotions would take any opportunity, and this was a golden one.
When I slept that night, I had dreams of something chasing me. It was a nebulous other. Something just out of sight but seeking me. I woke several times throughout the night, leaving me exhausted the following morning.
After getting some food in me, I decided to make for Max’s house. I didn’t know if that old man was still kicking, but it would be a good enough refuge for a few days, at least. I flew there under the guise of a bird. It was difficult to find—the intervening years, and the desolation—had changed so much. I retraced my steps along the river before arriving at his house.
The house looked much like it had when I had last been there. Except for the desolation. That had been through the area recently, it looked like. Some of the big trees were still green in places. Anything smaller than that was toast, though.
I Disguised myself to look like I had the previous visit. Then I approached the front door. Inside the desolation was eerily quiet. There were no bugs, no birds… nothing that could make a sound but me. The crunch of my steps on the blackened grass was the only thing I heard.
The inside of the house was as quiet as the outside—minus the crunching of grass. The house looked lived in.
“Max?” I called out.
I didn’t hear a reply.
“Max?” I yelled, louder.
Still, there was nothing.
I sighed and walked through the house. I checked room after room, but they were all devoid of people. That was true for all but one room. When I checked the master bedroom, I made a grisly discovery. Max lay on his bed, unmoving. I rushed over and tried to Heal him, but it was far too late. I would have had better luck raising him as a zombie—a line of thinking I briefly considered.
Seeing him there as a corpse reminded me of the good advice he’d given me. It had helped me figure out how to cause this desolation, and yet it was responsible for his death. I was responsible! Even if he would come back to life in a few years when I rewound time, I still felt immense shame and guilt for what I had done.
My eyes grew blurry. I had to sit down. The tears flowed for a long time. I cursed myself, my decisions, and—most of all—I cursed the god that had forced me into this position! I had metaphorical pulled the trigger—yes—but I wouldn’t have needed to if the lives of everyone I ever cared about hadn’t been at stake.
I cried myself to sleep that night, never quite coming to a conclusion. As I slept, the entity chasing me stayed just out of sight. But it never stopped its pursuit. I tried everything to banish it. Light, hiding, fighting it, running away even fasted. Nothing worked. It would vanish and sneak in the shadows. It would pop into my hiding place. It would be immune to any of my attacks, and it was easily able to chase me as fast as I could go—and even faster, if it wanted!
Near the end of the nightmare, it came out of hiding. Instead of a shadow creature like I had imagined, it was red. It was angry. It was fire. Without warning, it lit my surroundings ablaze. The fire spread quickly—the woods were dry and dead. I felt it. I smelled it. I—
“Fire!” I yelled as I woke with a start.