Defiance of the Fall

There still was some time left of the day , so after a quick meal he turned his attention to the snake carcass . After a few tries with a kitchen knives he knew the scaled leather was quite resilient to cuts and would make good protection . He brought a few knives from the camper and his hatchet and dragged the carcass some distance away from the camp , and then started skinning it .

He cut along the softer belly , and after 20 minutes he had cut all along the length of the carcass , ruining a knife on the hard scales while doing so . His forearms were burning with strain after the workout . He had ruined most of the meat along the way unfortunately , and it didn’t seem that there’d be much left over to eat .

After that he dragged the skin off from the carcass , and finally scraped as much of the left-over flesh as possible off from the skin with his hatchet . From here he was not quite sure what to do . He had no idea of methods to cure leather . He was an office worker before the end of the world , and he was a few generations too young for these types of things to be considered common knowledge . Zac knew he had read somewhere that urine could be used somehow , but he was not about to experiment with that .

He put the skin aside and dug a hole which he pushed the now mangled carcass into , and filled it with soil . He didn’t want anything to head this direction , even though he was some ways away from the camp .

Zac picked up the skin and made his way back to camp . The skin needed to dry out , so he placed it across the hood of the car , leaving both ends hanging down at the sides . He placed two large rocks down on both ends in order to keep it stretched and stop it from shrinking overnight . He had no idea if he was supposed to do something else , and could only leave it like that over the night and hope that it would work out .

It was starting to get darker , so he decided he was done exploring for the day . He was still feeling beat up even with the rapid healing as well . He took 30 minutes to clean up the camp-site and take stock of his things . Normally he wouldn’t go through his friends’ belongings but these were desperate times . Unfortunately there was nothing of value except some extra changes of clothes and some daily necessities .

With the last of the sunlight Zac found a long fallen branch near the campsite with the thickness of about 3 to 5 centimeters which was about 6 meters long . With a few quick swings with his hatchet he cut off roughly 2 . 5 meters where the branch was the most straight . Then with his improved strength he quickly sharpened one edge into a sharp point , turning it into a makeshift spear . It was likely too malleable to be able to stop anything large like the demonling in its tracks without breaking . However it could hopefully keep some monsters at length if needed . His hatchet was a good weapon , but its length was quite short . It was hard to use while keeping himself out of harm’s way .

Zac finally sat down in the trailer for a meal , quietly staring out the window and seeing the ever-present red pillar . Had it not been for the incursion he might have been able to forget how messed up the world had become for a second .

Life had thrown things at him the last days he couldn’t even have imagined , and it would only get crazier .

Tomorrow he would have to go hunting demons .

Chapter 13 - On the Hunt

Zac crept through the woods , slowly making his way more inland . He was hefting hatchet in one hand and his improvised spear in the right . He had found a camouflaged shirt in David’s bag which he had donned which would hopefully help him blend in a bit . He had planned to make some makeshift bracers and shin guards from some of the snakeskin this morning . Unfortunately it was still a bit grimy , so he had to leave it for another day at least to properly dry out . He still wore the amulet of the gathering array underneath his shirt , which continuously imbued him with more cosmic energy . He had a black backpack on his back filled with a bottle of water and a small batch of medical supplies .

He had actually gained a level without noticing while he was asleep from the amulet . It was still hard for him to know how much the amulet was gathering for him , or how much experience killing other monsters gave . There was no experience bar or notifications of experience gain anywhere in the system that could give him a frame of reference . Hopefully he would learn more about it from today’s excursions . The two free points he had he had split between strength and vitality . When he allocated the points he had felt the energy rushing into his cells again , albeit far weaker when compared to when he allocated 30 points .

The goal of today was simple . He needed to kill monsters . Almost a week had passed since the world was integrated into the multiverse , and in reality he had accomplished very little so far .