First Winter, Two Residents (3)

"Sniff, sniff."

A bear far gaunter than most came prowling through the forest, nose to the wind. Its hide ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had thinned and its frame wasted until the ribs showed faintly beneath the fur — less a proper bear than some oversized dog.

But the hollow gleam in its eyes and the drool stringing from its jaws carried a bloodlust and savagery that no ordinary beast could hope to match.

"Sniff... sniff..."

This winter had been unusually cold. A bear was supposed to wake partway through hibernation and feed, but the freeze had driven every scrap of prey beyond reach this year, leaving the animal no choice but to clutch its starving belly and sleep on. Had fortune not sent it prey sheltering from a blizzard — prey it chased down and devoured — it would likely have starved, or simply wasted away, before spring. Even so, the season had bled it of strength, and for its own survival, this bear had to find food. Whatever it took.

"Sniff. Sniff, sniff..."

But something was off about its surroundings. This was its territory, swept clean of every rival predator — and yet a foreign scent hung in the air. Worse, the trees that had once grown thick overhead had vanished, and drifting through the gaps between the stumps was a smell this bear knew well, one it had tasted more than once.

The smell of humans. A faint hint of char, a savory sweetness. It was the scent only humans gave off — the ones who roasted things over fire — and the instant it caught it, the bear's mouth watered so hard that drool spattered the ground.

Humans were delicious. They carried all manner of tasty things, and they were tasty in themselves. And, fool that they were, they had wandered right into its domain.

"Sniff, sniff. Grrr..."

Anticipating the taste of human flesh, the gray bear broke into a swift run, trailing the scent. The leisurely gait it had kept to conserve its strength might never have existed; it moved as if it could devour its prey that very moment.

For this hunt I'd brought my crude shortbow and seventeen crude arrows. I'd made twenty, but three had snapped during practice — and that was the whole of my armory.

There it is.

The bear came into view across the river. Measured against the stumps left over from my logging, it wasn't much to look at. Predators that routinely preyed on humans were usually the old and the weak, the ones edged out of the competition against other beasts — unable to hunt properly in the wild, they went after people instead, since humans made the easier mark.

Put in game terms, it's an early-game enemy. Making it too strong would be a problem, so they probably tuned it down on purpose.

That said, even a smallish bear like that could tear a human apart at close quarters.

Thwack. Thwack.

I'd planted my arrows in the soft dirt ahead of time. I had no quiver, but even with one, yanking shafts from the ground beat fumbling them out of a container every time. Watching the bear draw near, snuffling at the air, I slowly drew my shortbow.

Creeeak...

With my breath held, I rested the shaft lightly on a cord tied to the bow's limb, aimed a touch higher than my mark — and loosed.

Thwack!

"GRAAAGH!"

The sting between its shoulders made the bear lurch upright and whirl around, but of course there was nothing behind it. I seized the opening and sent another arrow after the first.

Thunk.

When the shaft buried itself in the dirt at the gray bear's feet, it finally found me — and bared its teeth in a roar.

"GRAAAAAGH!!"

Height-wise it was about my match, but the pelt, the forepaws, and above all that murderous glare — the look, quite literally, of a man-eater — were another story. They say even the old hunters who'd bagged tigers felt their breath catch when they met a beast's eyes head-on, and for an instant I nearly lost my draw myself.

Stay calm.

I deliberately frosted my fingertips to force my mind back into focus, then fired a third time.

Thud!

But an arrow whittled sharp from plain wood — no proper head to it — couldn't punch through the bear's hide even at this range.

"RAAAAGH!!"

The bear charged straight through the icy river, swollen with snowmelt, as though it were nothing, lunging to bowl me over — and I lowered my bow. There was no more need for arrows.

"GRAAAAGH!!"

The gray bear, eyes clouded with prey-lust, reared up the moment it scrambled from the water and swung its forepaw down at me — and at that instant, the wooden traps laid into the ground sprang.

CRACK!

All I'd done was dig out a stretch of earth and lay a few simple traps inside it. Then, so the beast couldn't double back and circle around elsewhere, I'd acted as the bait myself and lured it straight into the trap zone.

"RAAAAGH!!"

They weren't much by way of traps — no special mechanisms, just sharpened stakes driven into the ground, the kind anyone could build. But simple didn't mean harmless. On all fours, the bear might have gotten away with a scratch; rearing up on two legs meant its full weight came crashing down with it, and a stake drove deep into its paw. It thrashed hard enough to snap one, but with its forepaws unable to reach the wound, that hind leg was as good as forfeit.

Howling in agony, the gray bear dragged itself at the trap zone, tearing apart everything I'd labored to set in place.

"Tch... now I have to build it all over again."

Then I began hurling snares woven from vines, binding the bear's limbs one by one. If I'd held them by hand it would have yanked me around like a fish on a line, so I tied one end of each to a tree and, gripping only the other, simply walked away until the line pulled taut. By the time four snares were fastened, the bear was thoroughly trussed — too tangled to even attempt an escape.

"Done."

With the bear now a fine, stationary target, I drew again.

Whump!

This time the arrow sank in a little deeper than before.

Three more shots, and my marksmanship went up. The arrows still barely pricked the hide, their heads lodging no deeper than the surface — but that was clearly worth more than firing at a wall. Practicing against a living target, and a considerably powerful one at that, was sharpening my archery fast.

Twang!

I fired all seventeen arrows, working perhaps ten of them into its body, but that plainly wasn't enough to finish the bear off.

Crackle...

So for the rest of my ammunition, I turned to magic, conjuring sharp arrows of my own. My skill wasn't up to crafting fletching — all I could manage was a pointed ice spike, and I couldn't guide it through the air freely either.

Shnk!

But I could set one on the string and send it flying. I conjured ice arrows until my mana ran dry and my head swam, fired them, rested, conjured more, and fired those too. Repeating that cycle through the night, my marksmanship crawled up to a hard-won 3, and my magic rose to about 1.8.

By the time the sun had set and twin moons had climbed over the darkened forest...

At last, the bear was well and truly dead.

"Already?"

I'd planned to keep it strung up for days as a living practice dummy, but the stakes driven ankle-deep into its leg must have opened a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fatal bleed. There was no more benefit to shooting or casting at a corpse, so the moment I let my tension go —

Thump.

The strength went out of me, and I slammed face-first into the tree beside me and fell asleep right there.

After eight hours of sleeping in the forest, I woke drenched in dew, skin prickling with insect bites. When I finally made it home, Elena was fretting and fidgeting over my absence, so I sent her off to haul back the trussed bear instead of me and stilled a fraction of my hunger with the fruit I'd picked in advance.

Come to think of it... how many hours was I shooting and casting for?

Normally, even with deliberate effort, I could manage maybe two hours of focused archery and spellwork at most. Archery devoured concentration all on its own, and magic carried the same heavy mental fatigue — even going easy on it, I'd be wrung dry after that long. But last night I'd kept shooting and casting as if something had possessed me... without feeling hunger. Without feeling tired.

"Could it be?"

End of World had always had a Manual Combat Mode. By default, the residents of End of World could be given a handful of commands, but otherwise they handled their work on their own, according to priorities they'd preset and their own abilities. You could almost call it an idle game — though actually idling in a game with difficulty this miserable was a near-guaranteed loss. Manual Combat Mode was what summoned those residents, each of whom ordinarily saw to the village's work unbidden, and set them on alert against raids. It canceled every need and every action and forced them into a combat state — and when that state released, the deferred hunger, exhaustion, and everything else came flooding in at once, and all hell broke loose.

In fact — collapsing into a dead faint the instant combat status lifted, and feeling this ravenous now, my stamina drained to the bottom — it all matched the side effects of a combat mode tripped by accident, left running, and only belatedly switched off. In that state, you ate nothing. You rested nothing.

I tried to trigger it through Elena once, and it failed. Since it was one of the game's most basic systems, when it wouldn't apply to a villager I'd assumed the feature was gone — but it seemed it had been running automatically ever since the raid struck.

"Did it activate on its own because of the combat situation? Or... what if I can trigger it deliberately?"

Manual Combat Mode had never been for combat alone — in the game, it fired for house fires, for evacuations, for forced relocations too. So, still clutching my starved belly, I picked up my bow once more, murmuring to myself that this, too, was a combat situation.

Not hungry.

The chills wracking my body, the itching skin, the hunger gnawing at my gut — none of it pressed on me anymore. It felt as though it had all been shoved behind some far wall, leaving only sharpened, honed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠senses to read the world around me in crisp detail. One thing after another, I cataloged everything within sight — then released the tension again, and the itch came flooding back, along with a body shivering so hard it felt like ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a full-blown cold, and a ferocious hunger, the kind that made me feel I could tear into frozen venison with my bare teeth.

It was dizzying, all those vanished sensations returning at once as if restored from the dead — but experimenting like this showed me exactly how the thing worked.

In the game, activating Manual Combat Mode often locked interaction down to the orders given and nothing more. Finish the task, then stand in place until a separate release command arrived. But right now, I was... a resident and the village chief, wasn't I? Which meant, systemically speaking, shouldn't I be able to switch it on and off at will?

"Played right, this could be a straight-up cheat exploit..."