Eimear dropped her clothes into the fire as the notifications and new information overwhelmed us. It took all my willpower to not scream with the pain, or from anger at our situation.
"What? What does that all mean?" My mind raced with possibilities.
"That Cyril is a fucking asshole." Eimear cursed as she grabbed her steaming gambeson from the fire, and stomped out a small dry section that had caught.
"Don't curse," I said as my eyebrow twitched as I stared up at her, barely processing her naked body.
She laughed. "Aight. But that doesn't change this bull--" She stopped herself from instinctively cursing as she pursed her lips.
"No it doesn't," I played it off. "So..."
"You also get that weird memory status update?"
I nodded.
"Mine's at fifty seven percent."
"Forty one for me."
"How are you so much lower than me?"
"I'm a complicated woman that can't be summarized with just a number?" I said with feigned derision.
She burst out laughing, before catching herself, clutching her gambeson close to her chest. "Da... Darn right."
The fire crackled between us as neither of us knew what to say.
"Why do you think they're doing that?" She clenched her fist. "They're erasing who we are. Can we fight it? Keep something?"
"Tell me about yourself. What's the most important thing to you?"
"My cats. I've got three of them, Biscuit's a chonker of a Persian, Missy's a grey alley cat we adopted, and Moggy's our newest pure white kitten. Otherwise my life is super boring... I think. Single woman, standard (...) wage slave spinning yarns to keep the (...) overlords happy that escaped with gaming and weed between shifts. What about you?"
I ignored the pauses and responded. "Studying (computer science) so I can make (video) games." My mouth made all the sounds for the words, but it felt like some vanished into the void as I said them.
"Studying what?" She dusted dirt and sand off of her gambeson and trousers before slipping back into them.
"(Computer science)." I tried to say, but once more, no sound came out.
[ Warning: Verisimilitude filter detected anachronistic dialogue. Please do not try to work around the filter, and engage with the world as it is intended. Repeated violations will result in penalties, up to and including repurposing resources for better usage. ]
She raised an eyebrow at me. Her eyes flickered red with mana and were full of curiosity.
"I can't say it. Stuff like..." I gestured around us vaguely.
"Fuuuuu...." she started, I glared at her, "dge."
"Thank you."
She shrugged. "Eh, easy enough to roleplay being a..." She paused as I could tell she had also gotten the verisimilitude warning. "stooge?" She finished as her eyes flicked skywards. "So... We have to play nice with the world? Fine. But..." Her face darkened as she conjured a ball of fire into her hand, "I refuse to let them win in the end. I don't care what they take from before, but I won't let them get away with it."
I nodded along, unsure of what to say. After an awkward beat, "What about the level up notifications?"
She brightened up. "Oh yeah. I got a ton. If we can keep this up, we'll be on top of the world before you know it!"
"On top of the world? Won't we die if we try to do that?"
"Who knows." She cracked her knuckles. "But it's common knowledge. In situations like this, you have to go hard to go big. Risk it for the biscuit and all that. We're going to run across so many folks that believe in a might makes right, and the only way to fight them is by being stronger, smarter, and higher level."
"Isn't that dangerous?"
"Extremely. "
"Then why didn't you go with the away group? That sounds exactly like what they're doing, isn't it?"
"Oh, I'll risk it all, but I'm going to be smart about it. I could dive straight into combat, and maybe die, or I could learn about the world before going in and winning." She laughed as her expression soured. A little bit of my focus drained away as my NA told me that she was thinking about Tо̀rcan's death. "Besides, it turned out I chose the riskier option after all."
We sat in silence for a little bit, both mourning the loss in our own way.
"I also got a bunch of skill ups." I broke the silence, getting better at redirecting conversations from emotions that I wasn't ready to deal with. "No stat increases, but I unlocked a bunch of basic crafting and social skills. I got Concentration to three too."
"Nice!" She beamed. "That's a big one isn't it?"
"Yeah. It lets me keep more spells running at the same time."
"I didn't get any combat increases, but I got Tracking, Perception, and Awareness up." She looked out to the woods. "Let me swap around some abilities, then we can head out."
"You didn't already?"
"Couldn't."
Right. Respecialist was what let me do it when I wanted, but everyone else was limited to once a day. We ate the next portion of meat in silence as we played around in our menus, working through our options to adjust our abilities to help us survive.
After dinner, we grabbed our meager supplies and left the chim-fang-zee corpses -- we didn't want anything smelling and attracting monsters on us.
I cast Repository to be able to remember the path back to the river, Sense Monsters to make sure we didn't get ambushed, and Sense Allies in case we ran across anyone friendly. Eimear summoned three balls of fire that orbited her to light our journey further upriver. After half an hour or so, she pointed to a stream and turned up to follow that.
I kept my head on a swivel, waiting for the inevitable monster attack, but it never came.
Ten minutes after we branched off, we were at the base of a mesa that towered fifteen meters above us. The side was rough and craggy, we could maybe climb up in a pinch, but we didn't have to. The stream flowed from a small crevice hidden behind some vines in the side of the mesa.
"Damn. It's too narrow," she said.
Neither of us could get anything more than a forearm into the opening. But we could see moonlight streaming from inside leading to a beckoning cavern.
"Light means there's a sky entrance." She looked up at the cliffside. "Climb over and go in?"
"With what rope?" Not to mention, I had no climbing skills.
She grabbed a vine and tugged at it. It snapped under the pressure and she glowered murder at the poor plant.
"I have an idea." I double checked my Sense Monsters to verify we wouldn't be running headlong into a trap, then I dropped Sense Allies to cast Retract Earth. At base level, it allowed me to move a quarter cubic meter of earth per minute of concentration. I dropped Repository to cast a second Retract Earth to go faster.
My mana plummeted, but just as my mana dropped to zero, I finished pushing the rock back in on itself to widen out the opening with barely enough space to squeeze through sideways. All while Eimear kept watch behind me, there were a few howls that echoed through the woods as crickets and cicadas provided a constantly buzzing soundscape.
Inside was an escape that was worth working for. The grotto was gorgeous, hidden away from the world, untouched by any living thing. Vines dangled from a two meter wide hole in the center of the ten meter high ceiling through a few meters of rock and eroding dirt above it. Below the opening was a small pool that the creek swirled in. The room itself was about twenty meters in diameter and an oblong shape with the narrow side connecting to the outside.
The creek came from the far left side of the room flowing from a caved-in tunnel with large rocks damming the flow then meandering through the center of the grotto. The floor had been eroded over time, the banks led up a few meters in a gentle slope, but nothing was flat.
It was perfect.
Eimear whistled in agreement.
"Just needs a door," I said as I nervously looked at the opening and the monster calls beyond it.
"Tomorrow. I don't want to be chopping and making noise while it's dark out."
"Yeah.... Should we make a fire?" I shivered as the cold was starting to get to me.
"We don't have blankets, and we need the warmth," she said. "Can you make a fire pit?"
"Give my mana a moment." After a few minutes of meditation, I cast my spell and retracted a half meter bowl in the ground, then flattened out a small area next to it for us to sleep. While I did that, she went outside in search of enough firewood to last the night.
While she was still collecting firewood, I ran into a new issue I didn't realize I would need to deal with. I had to pee. Badly. And I had no idea how to go about doing that with my new set of anatomy.
There was no way I could ask Eimear for help without giving up my secrets. I cast Sense Ally to make sure she couldn't sneak up on me and I walked outside to figure out how to relieve myself.