I became numb to the pain. My rising toughness stat might have had something to do with it. Whatever happened in the meantime remained unknown, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out my current situation.

  Two scrawny, feral bastards crouched on opposite ends of a small campfire, salivating. Occasionally they’d sneer, grunt or hiss at each other while motioning at my leg. Their clothing, or rather armor, consisted of bones tied together with sinew. I was tied to a pole with one leg splayed forward over the campfire, resting on a forked stick. They were slow roasting me.

  It didn’t make sense at first. The intent became evident after one of the cannibals licked it, which flashed my status to being eaten alive, and gestured by repeatedly tilting his palm back and forth. Not enough salt, yet.

  My squad was nowhere to be seen, although Ruza’s status showed as ‘sneaking’. Robeep had apparently decided upon abandoning us since his showed as ‘walking’. The cannibal who shared a race with Ruza - the other was human - licked me again and the dreaded moment arrived. He flashed a thumbs up. Right before he took a bite, Ruza’s voice erupted in a war cry and she charged out of the nearby shrubbery.

  She ran at them while holding a thick dried branch high. My captors picked up their clubs and went out to the sides. Ruza’s advance ended in confusion while they circled her, and she lost the initiative. They attacked at the same time and she blocked an overhead smash, but the other smashed its bone club into her knee and brought her down with an anguished cry. Soon enough, her unconscious form joined me, tied to a pole at my side.

  Morbid fascination overtook me while I watched teeth sink into my leg in slow motion, right below the knee. The pain overwhelmed me. Tears flowed freely. I screamed until my throat was raw. Desperately fleeing reality, my mind zoomed in on the System notifications as everything else was drowned out.

  Toughness +1

  Toughness +1

  Toughness +1

  …

  It kept going at a rapid pace. My blood bar drained steadily, but the condition of my leg decreased fastest of all. And then it hit zero. A sharp crack and a spike of horrifying wrenching pain shot up my leg, enough to bring me out of my dissociation. It was just in time to see the second blow arrive. They used my metal baton to break the bone and crudely wrenched my leg loose. The status of it crossed out, numbers gone. Violent dry heaves overtook all my senses for a while. Horror became my world.

  It was soon replaced by hatred. Hatred for this place and its insane inhabitants. Robeep had been right. Bloodshed was the only way. My conclusion solidified as they passed my severed leg between each other like a drumstick, squabbling over it like animals, uncaring about how many times the bloody mud or stray ash soiled it. They finished it and let out satisfactory burps. It only delayed them by a few minutes until they started pointing again, apparently arguing whether they wanted another leg or one of my arms next.

  I had been wrong about one thing. Not everything here was bad. Robeep was a true friend and companion, together with Ruza. His actions proved so as he emerged slowly from the nearby river.

  Fury laced his excitable voice while he bellowed, “How dare you meatbags eat my fellow meatbag?! BRAINSEEKER HAS FOUND ITS DESTINATION!”

  They tried the same tactic but Robeep was having none of it. He positioned aside, lining one up behind the other. His weaponed arm spun wildly, rotating blows which quickly tore the blocking club out of the humans hands. The other tried to attack but Robeep’s arm jerked to a stop and his wrist spun. The blow came so unexpectedly it passed the inside guard and stunned the advancing one with an audible crack to the side of its head.

  Its weapon had dropped and the human cannibal dove for it. Meanwhile Robeep pulled back and stabbed his current target in rapid hydraulic motions. In a few tries, he hit it in the eye and the baton sunk in, deep.

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  Robeep’s voice turned into a squeal, “Yes! Yes! Brainseeker feeds on your mind. MORE! MOOORE!”

  At the same time, the other lunged for Robeep with its newly picked up bone club. Robeep’s torso twisted to the side, rotating as if on a swivel. The motion carried and caused him to strike the cannibal in the side and I heard something break. Apparently enamored with the power of the blows, Robeep leaned over his stumbling attacker and kept his upper body spinning at an angle, hitting his victims head over and over while screaming insanities. Soon, nothing but pulp remained.

  Robeep finished his battle with a victory cry, “Two to herald the end of all. Brainseeker shall consume the thoughts of all living things. I am death incarnate! Ha. Ha. Ha.” His status showed as ‘exulting’.

  Mine said ‘dying’, blood was decreasing fast. “Quick,” I said, “untie me! I’m dying.”

  Robeep complied while muttering about the pros and cons of killing quickly versus slowly. Once free I tore off a long piece of cloth that was a part of my armor previously wrapped around my arm and tried to stop the bleeding. Fortunately Ruza came to and got the same treatment. I heard Robeep’s epiphany right before passing out as my blood dropped to 25. He hadn’t killed enough to determine the correct answer yet.

  Ruza fussed over me. Once my eyes opened, she spoke softly, “You’re back. And very lucky. There was a proper dustweed bandage in a locked chest with a note and I used it to save you. It’s a good thing you taught Robeep how to pick locks or we wouldn’t have made it in time.”

  I tried to speak but my voice was too hoarse to get anything out. Looking around revealed a dilapidated excuse of a house around us. Before I got any further, Ruza continued. “Look, we need to do this while the wound is still open or it’ll hurt even more. Blink four times if you think you can take it.”

  Do what? A glance at my status showed my blood had gone up a good bit but I was done with pain. Unfortunately, a droplet of sweat found my eye and caused me to blink rapidly against my will.

  “Alright, here goes,” Ruza said. Tilting my head forwards revealed her lining up one of the metal batons with my stump. What? Wait! No! Another spike of pain and unconsciousness found me when she rammed it in.

  It all started to make sense the next day while our stomachs grumbled in synch and Robeep commiserated with us over meatbag problems. Any questions about why he wasn’t hungry or thirsty just elicited confused responses about us trying to trick him. Ruza had made me an impromptu prosthetic, healed into my leg now, status showing it as ‘peg leg’. She somehow managed to use the bloody bandage to hold it in place, together with my flesh of course.

  We had a few problems, beyond my lost left leg. While we now had plenty of flint, looted from the cannibals and abundant near the water, we lacked food of any kind. The surroundings outside were forest-like but everything was dead, poisonous or both. At least the note told us our current location, the western border of the Great Deluge. It mentioned a ‘village of ninja’s’ several hundred miles to the north and urged any who escaped the Great Womb to go there.

  It was located slightly south of somewhere called the Crab Coast, east of the Flesh Eater Plains and apparently close to Ruza’s home village. As a result, she knew a thing or two about the local geography. There wasn’t anything there for her to go back to. The residents had long since been eaten by cannibals. To get there we’d have to pass through the Great Divides. Those were sunblasted plains so dried out the earth cracked with deep gorges where spinedrinker spiders lurked.

  “That sounds horrible. I appreciate the effort but this legs not gonna cut it for that kind of terrain either. Can’t we take another route?”

  “The alternatives aren’t much better,” she said, “to our west there’s the northern half of the deep mists. They’re full of mutated swarmers, they’re like the swarmfolk but blue, loud, angry and always hungry. I’ve seen a few and they always remind me of fish.”

  “I think I’ve met one already. Maybe we go south?”

  “The ryoshi will be looking for us there, so no. And before you say it, traversing the deluge is impossible. The acid rains will wear us away before we get anywhere.”

  Just fucking great. Fish stick monsters to the west, acid rain in the east, bounty hunters to the south and whatever spinedrinker spiders were to the north. So, horrible death in every direction. Worst Isekai ever.

  I felt like bitching and moaning, but Robeep interrupted me before the flood of frustration escaped my mouth. “I have a solution, but it is confidential. I am capable of informing you that we will find a new leg for you there. Once installed, you might become capable of navigating the Great Divides. I look forward to conquering the spiders and feeding Brainseeker on their spines.”

  “Can you be a little more specific?”

  “No. Such information is not afforded to us meatbags. You will have to trust me. Do not worry. I am an excellent guide. In the worst case, Brainseeker will show us the true path, as it always does. The true path is slaughter. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  With no other choice and the starvation debuff looming, we decided to put our trust in Robeep. The only silver lining was my toughness stat, now at 43. We looted whatever remained in the shitty shack, which had been behind me while tied up. There wasn’t much, just some cloth which we wrapped around a stick for carrying stuff, a rolled up bandage and some cooking utensils.

  So began my quest for a new leg.