Deadworld Isekai

There was a very real limit to the number of berries that Matt could eat. Even though they weren't exactly real, the berries still had some mass to them.

It was a weird experience. Matt ate until he could eat no more, only to feel the berries digest in a matter of minutes. The system wasn't lying when it said that he would only receive a small fraction of the nourishment that real food would give. Matt ate to capacity multiple times, and in the process, he cleaned off entire bushes of berries. Green, unripe, overripe, they were all fair game.

Despite his efforts, Matt's hunger only got slightly better. He was still starving. It was as if he had broken a fast with just a single piece of bread. It was something but, in some ways, it made him feel much worse.

After a few repetitions of eating to his limit, Matt realized he was stalling. If he got out into the real world again, he’d have to see whether the repair stone actually worked on his water source. If it didn’t, his chances of dying of dehydration in the dirt of an alien world would skyrocket.

He was more afraid of this gamble than he wanted to admit. It was like escaping a desert island by going out to sea in a rowboat. Hoping, even praying, there was an island in range before he ran out of resources or hit a big wave and drowned.

Sighing, Matt finally stood up, dusted off, and mentally recalled the “dungeon complete” window.

Dungeon Objective Complete!

You exterminated the Clownrat packs, and the forest is back in ecological balance. Congratulations! You may leave the dungeon whenever you wish.

Rewards: Selected Dungeon Prize

Exit the dungeon now? Y/N

“Yes.”

—

The trip out was weird, but less so than entering the dungeon had been.

For a moment, Matt didn't exist. The dungeon wiped out everything he was, like a whole-body blink that blocked off his entire existence. Then suddenly, without any fuss, he was back in a hole in the red wasteland of a dead planet. There was no hanging in the aether as pure thought this time. It was all business. Just plain teleportation with no fanfare, like it wasn’t even a big deal.

Matt turned back to the gate only to find the doors were closed to him. Pushing and pulling on them didn’t seem to have any effect at all. I guess no repeatable dungeons, he thought. But as he approached the doors, he did get some more “would have been nice to know earlier” information, courtesy of the mandatory dungeon level warning that the dungeon had given him.

Warning! The difficulty of this dungeon exceeds the average level of your party. Proceed with extreme caution.

Dungeon Difficulty: LV3

Average Party Level: LV2

The warning was nice, but this seemed like bad news. The dungeon had been absurdly difficult relative to what Matt could actually handle. Before the notification, he would have guessed that it was at least a level 5 dungeon. The level was one thing. The part that worried Matt was the implicit idea that dungeon difficulties were balanced around the assumption of entrants having a party.

If there was one thing that Matt was sure of, it was that he was alone on this burned-out planet.

Even with a level up, Matt wasn't sure if he could have cleared this dungeon without facing real, substantial danger. Given that this dungeon was just level 3, there probably weren't too many easier dungeons around. He tried to imagine what a level 5 dungeon would be like and couldn’t get an accurate picture in his head. All he knew was that it would make pretty short work of killing him.

His only chance at success were level 3 or lower dungeons. If he could find them.

—

Getting out of the hole took some climbing, but wasn’t particularly dangerous. Matt took it slow, dug out a few footholds, and managed to get out without too much trouble. Trekking back to the water stone was similarly banal. He was low on water, and if things went poorly, he could hopefully just extract more with his still. If he were lucky, it wouldn’t be an issue at all.

Finding the water stone again wasn’t that hard. He could roughly orient himself using the system compass as a guide. But he didn't even need that. He could see the stone from surprisingly far away, probably due to a combination of his increased perception and the fact that any difference in the landscape was highly visible. His hastily carved out hole in the ground was still there and stood out like a sore thumb even at a distance.

By the time that Matt reached the water stone, it looked to be in much worse shape than he had remembered. It might have been the exposure to air or being moved after so long, but it seemed to pop and hiss more than it had before.

It was possible it wasn’t even working anymore. If the repair stone failed, he’d have to take what water he could, walk off into the sun (there was no sunrise or sunset), and just hope for the best. As abstract as the problem was, his body seemed to understand the stakes. A surprising amount of tension had built up in his chest. It felt as if he was back in the dungeon, waiting in the bushes to ambush the terrifying clown-rat hybrids that the system had built.

No use dragging it out, I guess. He fished the repair stone from his bag, held it to the water stone, and willed it to work. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, suddenly, the repair stone was gone from his hand. It didn’t pop or glow, it was just suddenly not there anymore.

Ding!

Repair stone consumed. Water stone repaired.

Water Stone (repaired)

A common water stone, used in a home or fountain. Produces water until the container it’s stored in is full, then automatically shuts off. This water stone has been repaired from a [broken] status and has reduced durability.

Item durability: 10/50

Matt was not the type of person who showed a lot of emotion. When he found out he had cancer, his doctor was probably more emotional than he was. He didn't yell, scream, or cry. He just accepted the reality and moved on. Even when his friends told him that it was ok to show emotion about dying, he had held back. To him, even the slightest reaction would give the illness another victory over him, and he didn’t want that.

But here, over a suddenly working water stone that was visibly pumping out moisture? He did a little dance. He wasn’t good at dancing, and he guessed he looked silly, but he didn’t care. There was nobody there to see it anyway. For a minute or so, his boots made squishing noises in the wet alien dirt as he celebrated his biggest victory yet.

Was 10 durability out of 50 a lot? He had no idea. Maybe it would last him years, or maybe it would last him a day.

It was still more than he had yesterday, and it would give him a much better chance of reaching his destination. Even if it didn’t get him there, he might find another dungeon. He might find some actual honest-to-god ruins that he could scavenge from. Or something else. He didn’t know. All he knew was that this was the first time things had really gotten better, and he was going to celebrate that.

He gently scooped up the stone. There was no use wasting the durability it had on watering the dead soil here. The description for the item had been unusually detailed, which Matt attributed to the system “paying him back” for the expenditure of the repair stone. He probably had some right to know what the stone had done, which meant the system had to tell him about what it had fixed. He could imagine situations where that might be useful as a sort of poor-man’s identify spell, and filed the idea away for later.

He brushed the mud from the stone as well as he could, then knotted some of his rope around it for protection before dropping it into his canteen. Staring into the mouth of the canteen was disorienting, since it was bigger on the inside than the outside. It was like a miniature version of the system assistant truck avatar experience. His mind struggled to parse the sight, it was like the universe suddenly didn’t fit around his body. Luckily, he didn’t have to look for very long. Within seconds, there was noticeably more water in the thing. It was working.

Sitting down, Matt began to organize his things for his trip. He still had no idea how far he had to go, but he was prepared to walk until he dropped.

—

Socks were a very good idea.

The survivor's garb was nice. It was built for a specific purpose, and felt like it would last years and years of normal use. In some ways, it reminded Matt of his old tools. In a world where most things were disposable, tools were almost always a little more real than everything else. They had a job to do, and a hammer or a wrench felt more heavy and durable in a way that a TV or laptop didn’t. The garb was like that. It felt substantial enough to do a job with.

But the garb didn’t come with socks, or underwear for that matter. The underwear he could do without, as awkward as it was. Socks were a must though. Especially when Matt was about to walk endless distances in heavy, durable boots. He didn’t have the ability to conjure fabric, but what Matt did have was the starter robe he had been dropped to Gaia in. Using his knife, he cut it into strips and bound it around his feet as well as he could. Once in the boots, the strips were held in position by the pressure from the laces. The boots had been a big improvement, but the socks made it better. Much, much better.

Matt had drunk some water before, but was limited by what the still could pull out of the soil, which wasn’t much. He now realized how dehydrated he had been while subconsciously rationing his limited water supplies. Now that he had a steady supply of moisture, he could give himself permission to catch up on his hydration. As he walked, he felt a remarkable improvement. It was like he was getting less tired, not more.

Now all that was left was to keep going. It might be hours, days, or weeks to his destination. He had no way of knowing but the time for prep was over. He was either going to make it or die trying.