NOVEL SIMPLE Ch. 11: Foraging
It was only when Cass was a good distance away that she relaxed again, though she kept Stealth active. Was every animal in this world enormous and bloodthirsty? She just wanted to go home.
She shook her head. She wasn’t any closer to that than she’d been when she’d gotten here. She was alone with no idea where she was or where she should go.
Would she even find people today? What about tomorrow? Should she reprioritize to surviving the night? What time was it anyway?
Cass ran a frustrated hand through her hair. She didn’t know anything. She couldn’t even tell where the sun was through the thick forest canopy and thicker cloud layer. How long had she been passed out after her fight with the terrorcat? What time had she even arrived here?
No answers.
She wasn’t hungry, so maybe not that long?
That was as good of an answer as she was going to get.
She sighed. She might not be hungry now, but it was only a matter of time. If she waited until she was hungry to start looking for food, it would already be too late.
What was edible in this forest? The corpse of the terrorcat flashed in her mind’s eye, raw and bloody and torn apart by scavengers. Cass chased it off. Even if she was willing to try to eat it, that option was gone. She wasn’t going to go try to take it back from the badger, no thank you.
But there had to be plants or berries or something she could eat. She didn’t know anything about the plants here, but maybe Identify could help her.
Cass started Identifying every plant she passed, no matter how small or large. Everything from the lichen on the trees (Evermore Lichen, not actually a plant, but rather a symbiotic relationship between algae and fungus) to the low-lying ferns (Scertious and Elbian varieties primarily) to the climbing vines (Mors Creeper, noted as being an irritant to the skin by Identify, Cass gave it wide berth from then on) to the towering trees (Lightningwood, Stormwell Oak, Hapspatch Firs), she identified and identified.
Identify has increased to level 2
Cass was looking for some note on any of the plants mentioning some part being edible, or tasty, or a traditional staple of such-or-such peoples. Any indication that she wouldn’t make herself sick eating it.
So far, she’d had no such luck.
She had found a stream in her wandering. It was a wide, shallow thing, not even deep enough to touch the leather sides of her hiking boots when she stood in the center. It flowed slowly over muddy rocks. A slender strip of grey sky could be seen through the canopy above.
Cass knelt beside it, running her hands through the cool water. It felt good running between her fingers, but she didn’t dare drink it like this. Who knew what parasites or diseases were running through it. She was going to have to come up with some plan for boiling water at some point, or she was going to die of thirst before she died of starvation.
Cass paused. Actually, could she just summon water with Elemental Manipulation? That had to be clean right? It hadn’t existed before it was summoned to be contaminated with things.
Focus 65/117
Hmm, still not enough to test it right now. Something to try later then.
Lacking a better plan, Cass followed the creek downstream. People congregated around water, and although this creek wasn’t big enough to warrant a town, it might feed into a bigger river which was. It was better than wandering aimlessly.
Cass kept identifying plants as she walked.
Palis Typha - a tall cattail-like plant.
Forg Water Lilies - a white flower with wide heart-shaped leaves. Very poisonous.
Long Kelmgrass - a tall, semi-aquatic grass common to the Uvana Valley and further.
Thunder Sorrel - a low-lying, three-leaved plant. Common to the understory of Lightningwood. This variety is semi-aquatic.
Cass paused. She recognized the species of that last one. She bent down to get a closer look. It grew around the base of a Lightningwood tree, between the creek and the trunk. It was a dense bunch of clover-like plants, with small, blue, strawberry-flower-like flowers poking up between the leaves.
Sorrel on Earth was also common in redwood forests. It was also a plant she happened to know was edible. Or at least, the kind on Earth she was familiar with was. Was that still true here? Not every variety of every edible plant was still edible. Nightshade, tomato, and tobacco were all closely related plants with wildly different toxin levels after all.
Cass bit her lip. This was the first thing she’d found that was probably edible. And Identify hadn’t marked it as poisonous, like it had the lilies. So it was probably fine, right?
She plucked a clover, sniffing it and twirling it between her fingers. It didn’t smell like anything in particular. Her fingers weren’t tingling from the touch.
Hesitantly, she bit off a leaf. It was sour, like lemons or the sour grass she and the neighborhood kids chewed on as children. Encouraged, she put the rest of the plant she’d plucked in her mouth. All together, she liked it. It would take a lot of the stuff to fill her up, but it was definitely better than nothing.
She ripped it up by the handful, shoving it in her pockets for later.
Skill Earned: Foraging (lvl 1)
[Live off the land! No matter where you are, you’ll be able to scrounge up something to eat.
Adds nutritional information to plant or fungus Identification.
Heightens perception of edible entities.]
Well, that had to be helpful. She identified the Sorrel again.
Thunder Sorrel
[A low-lying, three-leaved plant. Common to the understory of Lightningwood. This variety is semi-aquatic.
It does not contain much nutritional value but possesses strong toxin-neutralizing properties.]
What kind of toxins, Cass wondered, nibbling on another bunch of sorrel. Surely not all toxins? That wasn’t how medicine worked.
That was how video games worked though. Cass chuckled at the thought. No way. She probably just didn’t have a high enough Foraging level to know what kind specifically.
Either way, hopefully, Identify would be able to point out better things to eat now.
What was the other thing the skill said it did? “Heightens perception of edible entities”? What did that mean?
Cass focused on the skill, activating it the same way she activated Stealth. A fog descended over her. The world became fuzzy. Sound faded to nothing. Her body felt far away and heavy.
She stopped the skill and that fog immediately cleared up. She was standing in the forest by the river again.
That couldn’t be the effect of the skill. What was the point? It was discombobulating and didn’t seem to do anything.
Cass tried again anyway. Again, the details of the world faded out. She took a tentative step forward, relying more heavily on her staff to check that the ground was still level in front of her.
A burst of color pierced the fog, just behind a tree to her left. She deactivated the skill and carefully made her way over. A viney plant was creeping up the back side of the tree. It looked unremarkable to her ordinary sight. She activated Foraging again. Again the world faded out. Everything but the plant before her. It alone remained sharp and clear.
She used Identify on it.
Vineroot
[Technically a distant relative of the humble sweet potato, this plant is known to climb the trunks of trees, choking them of light and life if left untouched. The tubers it produces among its roots can be eaten uncooked and are quite nutritious, if unappetizing.]
Well, not the meal of kings for sure, but she could work with this. It took her a few minutes to dig deep enough for the potatoes. They were more irregularly shaped than any sweet potato she’d ever seen and colored more blue than purple.
Cass pulled up the whole plant, tearing the vines from the tree’s trunk. A long clump came away in her hands. She checked it with Foraging again.
The whole thing was in focus, not just the potatoes amid the roots. Did that mean the whole thing could be eaten, despite Identify only mentioning part of it?
Cass experimentally poked a fingernail into one of the potatoes. It was hard, her nail barely penetrating. The insides were pale blue, like a sunny sky.
Identify said it could be eaten raw. She hesitated another minute before taking a tentative bite. It took some work to gnaw a piece off. She chewed down on it and had to restrain herself from spitting it out again. The taste almost made it more effort than it was worth.
Maybe cooking it would help.
She wasn’t hopeful.
Cass threw the whole thing over one shoulder. Hopefully, she’d find something better before she had to find out.
Cass activated Foraging again, looking around for another flash of color. There was none and Cass found herself alone in a wash of white. She took a step forward and tripped over a root. She deactivated Foraging as she tipped forward, the world snapping back into full color. She caught herself with her staff, though that did nothing for her heart hammering in her chest.
She could not walk with it activated. She didn’t need to find out how much falling on her face would take from her Health. No, thank you.
She settled for walking beside the river, flaring Foraging every couple of feet, Identifying every plant she could see along the way.
Stealth continued to guide her steps, the subtle swirl of air around her from the skill becoming a familiar companion.
She’d been avoiding thinking about her skills, but with Staff Mastery, and the knowledge dropped in her head, it was hard to keep ignoring them and what they meant.
At face value, they were very cool. Magic powers. Instant competence. It was the stuff of wish fulfillment fantasy for a reason. She’d rather not admit how much she’d daydreamed about it herself before all this. Moreover, she didn’t know how she would survive this world without the aid these skills gave her.
But it scared her. How had it put information in her mind? She had no memory of learning to use the staff or of training on how to move unseen and unheard. But she could certainly demonstrate specific staff stances now and her feet rolled silently through the loose underbrush.
If this System could put these kinds of skills in her head, what else could it do? Could it make her believe things she hadn’t before? Could it rewrite her existing knowledge? Was she just a puppet before it?
How much of what she believed to be her past was even real, if that was the case?
Cass inhaled sharply, recoiling from that thought.
No, no, no, nope! This was not a line of reasoning she could go down. She needed to believe her memories weren’t fabricated or she really would be insane.
She needed Kaye and Robin to be real, and waiting for her.
She took a deep breath and activated Foraging again. Anything to distract from that thought. The world drained of color and texture and sound. Cass pushed her fears aside with them.
Something remained in focus at her feet, half in the creek, half growing up the shallow bank. Its blue-green leaves lay vibrantly against the washed-out world. Marble-sized berries, bubblegum pink, and just as smooth and round decorated the stems. Cass dropped Foraging again and identified it.
Dreamweed
[A sweet-smelling herb crowned with white flowers in the wet season. The leaves can be brewed to extract a soporific tea that calms the effect of most diseases. Honey made with the pollen of these flowers is a popular sleeping aid.]
Cass pulled up a handful. The leaves were soft like velvet. She didn’t think she was sick--though her headache hadn’t lessened, despite her Focus having gone back up to 86/117—but the soporific effect might be useful for sleeping on the ground tonight.
Or maybe magically drugging herself was a bad idea when there were monsters around?
Either way, Foraging identified it as edible, so she’d hold onto them for now. The berries had to taste better than the potatoes if nothing else.
In case the berries also made her sleepy, she elected to wait to try them until she stopped for the evening.