Level 1 skeleton ogre slain.

  500 xp gained.

  Amid the rubble of ogre bones, Scott stood, battered. His chest heaved, and the wind wicked his sweat.

  His leg hurt where he’d taken a bruising hit. His shoulder felt wrong, so he rolled it a few times after stowing his branch away. He wanted to sit in the sand and catch his breath.

  Instead, Scott moved the pile of bones one by one by tossing them as far out into the water as he could. He felt that leaving them out in the open would lead the lynan right to him.

  Already, with the time it had taken him to crack through the spine of the skeleton until it finally broke, scavenge beetles had sensed him. They skittered through the jungle, burst from the underbrush, and dashed across the sand.

  Scott sighed, and he beat them as close to the surf as he could. He looted each one, and he was surprised to not only pick up twelve flakes of chitin but to also pick up a copper ring from the level 2 beetle.

  “How about that,” Scott muttered as he turned the ring in his palm. Initials had been stamped on the inside. “HB? And where did you pick this up from?”

  The option to loot the skeletons hadn’t been given to him. Looting the beetles seemed worthless; how could he have known that a monster beetle might have items in its inventory. When he could use anything at all to help him, Scott felt like a fool not to loot every chance he had.

  Though the beetles floated on the water after Scott punted them, the waves carried them out. He scooped sand over the ochre-strewn battle site and smoothed it out before continuing south.

  His boots slapped the sand and splashed the surf when it flowed up the sand. The sun rose to zenith over the jungle. The air humidified, and the sight of the city far ahead became hazed.

  The sun was over the sea when Scott slowed to a jog and then a walk. He held his side, and he grimaced as he fought to catch his breath. He brushed sand from his sweat slicked skin.

  A snake hissed in the jungle, and beetle legs skittered. Mandibles clicked. Rolling thumps put the image of a twisting snake upon the ground in Scott’s mind.

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  Armed with dagger and branch, Scott prowled into the jungle. The sounds of struggle led him east for minutes. He swung up a tree and crossed the jungle until he spotted a swarm of beetles around a giant snake.

  The snake had to be as wide as him! Coiled and twisted as it was, it was hard to tell how long it was; however, it couldn’t have been shorter than the length of a school bus. What a magnificent thing!

  It lay unmoving. Scott grimaced. A dozen beetles chewed through its skin. Their mandibles might have well been punching holes in leather and tearing raw dough to shreds. Ah, how fucking grisly.

  In under a minute, the beetles cleaned the snake of everything but bones. Scott was crouched, stunned. The beetles ambled.

  The bones of the snake were intact, and they glittered with that druzy texture. Scott wondered if the texture was because of their mandibles. Was that why the tuaw monkeys were skeletons? They’d been devoured? The ogre too! …The human skeleton? But the ogre had been caged. Were all those captive humans destined to be fed to scavenger beetles?

  Scott scooted to the trunk of the tree and sat with his back to it. He watched the lifeless snake skeleton, and he wondered when it would start moving like all the rest. He gazed northeast where he knew the lynan base lay, where his fellow men and women were caged.

  “No. Trying to save you would be foolhardy. Me against level fifty lynans?”

  He reaffirmed that he had to stick to his guts. And when he at last stood to return to the beach, he wondered if the snake skeleton wouldn’t move on its own. He wondered if the lynans had something to do with it.

  Scott swung over and under branches, and he often bolted across the jungle floor until he returned to the beach. He put the northeast into his line of sight once more.

  “But I’ll be back when I’m more powerful.”

  He ran south along the beach. The sun descended west, and Scott waded in search of giant clams with a few hours of daylight left. After earning 4 xp, and spending almost no extra time prying them open with his dagger, he stowed the meat of one of them into his inventory. The other he ate while he asked the system how food would fare in his inventory.

  Food will keep at the temperature it was stored at. Inventory will not preserve food.

  Clam meat settled his hunger and snuffed his stomach’s growling, but he was thirsty and felt lightheaded.

  “No choice,” he uttered.

  Scott angled southeast. He hoped he could run across some branch of the purple stream he knew ran through the land. He had to come across it while on his way to the city. And if he didn’t find fresh water…

  Even after the sunset, Scott ran. He stopped to remove his boots and wet socks, and he stored them in his inventory. After rubbing his heels, and hissing when he touched his blisters, he resumed his trek.

  His speed was greatly encumbered through the jungle, and he hissed in frustration before turning back to the beach by nightfall.

  The stars once again were mirrored by the sea. If it hadn’t been for the chaotic churning of the sea and the rush of the surf, Scott would have felt dizzy from the seeming emptiness beside him. The purple edge of the surf guided his footfalls. He kept his sights on the steady lights of the city.

  The stars faded when the sun rose beyond the jungle to the east. Clouds drifted over the jungle and hid the blue sky. Scott’s pace did not falter in the chill of the morning.

  He guessed that in two days, at his pace, he should reach the city.