The stares showdown went on for a whole thirty seconds but to Elliot who was focused to avoid getting attacked when he lowered his guard it was just like 30 minutes had went by.
Suddenly he heard a similar sound to when the crab jumped out of the water earlier and understood why the crab wasn't moving.
'I'll die if I stay here !'
Suddenly to the first crab's surprise Elliot jumped at it and tried to stab through its shell but the knife broke in half straight away !
In the same time the crab's blade-like claws flew towards Elliot's neck at an insane speed, Elliot pushed with his right foot against the ground and dodged both attacks, the front one he saw and the one coming from his back.
'Oh my god this place isn't human-friendly at all, I would be dead if I waited even a second later...'
While he was thinking about scary stuff he looked at the two crab's but realized something weird had happened in the split second he had jumped.
'Is my luck this good ?'
One of the crab's has been cut in half by the other one, it's corpse was now lying on the grass split in two, above it was flying a small ball of light the size of a hazelnut.
The second crab was also injured as it had unluckily lost one leg, without losing any time it jumped back into the river and disappeared from Elliot's sight.
"What the fuck was that..."
Elliot said while walking towards the corpse of the dead crab and looked curiously at the white light ball floating above it.
'What's this?'
He tried guessing some stuff but he had no way to check his hypothesis so he gave up about thinking and tried acting, he picked up a small branch fallen from a tree close to him and tried poking the ball indirectly.
The ball distorted and then started infusing it's glow to the wood stick and then to Elliot's arm !
"Fuck ! Stop stop stop !!"
Elliot didn't know if it was dangerous or not and started panicking and trying to stop it from going inside him, but there was nothing he could do. Everything happened so fast that he could only watch as the light went into his arm but contrary to anything he expected he felt good, the light moved through his body and he started feeling a light feeling of bliss as if he had been blessed by a holy light.
[Scissors claw's soul has been absorbed.
Experience points +180.
Level +1.]
A pop up appeared in front of Elliot suddenly and startled him.
'Huh?
Experience points? Level up ?
You mean like a game ?'
It really was looking similar to a game, Elliot tried his best to understand how this world could be so different from he one he knew but he also knew that he had to get used to it fast. He extended his hand and tried to touch the pop up but his hand went through and he didn't feel anything at all.
'So how do I see my level ?
Wait... is everybody able to level up ? I never heard anything about that from the guys who leaked information about this place... were they forced to keep silent about it ?'
A lot of weird things had happened in a short time so Elliot wasn't able to focus on got lost in lots of different thoughts but was suddenly jolted awake by the sun setting down.
"Fuck I have set camp yet !"
He stopped thinking about all this, put it to the back of his mind and thought about something else.
'I bought a tent but I think it's better if I can see around me, I'll be more aware of the dangers and will be able to react faster. I guess I'll sleep in the sleeping bag under the moonlight tonight.'
Elliot only pulled out the rolled up sleeping bag from his backpack and put it on the ground at a safe distance from the river as he was afraid a crab might attack him while he will be sleeping, he also dry branches from trees around him and started a fire, although it might attract some attention he didn't have much of a choice since the weather was getting really chilly since the sun had set down.
He pulled out dry crackers from his bag and a can of food, he had bought a total of 6 of these cans. If he ate one a day he still had 5 days to find a source of food. Even though one can a day definitely wasn't enough for a grown man's nutritional needs he could hold on with this until he found something else.
Suddenly his eyes shifted to the dead crab that was lying not too far from the river.
'Is that edible ? It should be fine right...?'
For a long while he hesitated because of how bad that thing looked but still went to pick it up, he put water in the can that he had emptied on a plate and left if boiling, meanwhile he started eating the canned food.
When the water started boiling he put the crab inside and closed the can, he wanted to take the less risks as possible so he left it to boil for a whole hour !
During that time he thought back to the level up pop up he had minutes ago.
'So how should I check what my level is ? Was it an illusion ?'
He started trying tons of stuff he thought could work such as, weird hand movements, yelling "STATUS" and other stuff that would have probably made people think he was insane if they saw him doing it.
'Is there a substance in the air here that made me hallucinate ? I hadn't drank any water yet or eaten anything so it couldn't come from that...'
But while thinking of that he suddenly saw a small thing in his peripheral vision, it was three white dots almost invisible. When he tried focusing on them a new pop up appeared !
In front of him appeared a list of menus just like in a game, there was no doubt now.
[MENU :
•Status
•Inventory
•Shop
•Map]
These were the four things in the menu, Elliot extended his hand and once again it went through the pop up. He didn't think much about it and tried to focus on the Status page just like he did with the three small dots earlier and finally he was able to see it, he didn't chose one of the three other options because Inventory and Shop had a lock to them, he guessed he wasn't able to open them yet and he was more curious about his status page than the map.
[ Evans Elliot :
Level : 2
Experience: 130/200
Race : Human
Title : Player ( Effects : decreased tiredness, increased focus and player system activated.)
Class : None
Stats :
Health : 301/301
Mana : 0/0
Strength : 17
Defense : 8
Agility : 18
Intelligence : 14
Wisdom : 16
Luck : 2286
Skills : None.]
'Okay... that's a bug right ?'