I went back down the stairs.

  This was a bit of a shame since it took me some time to reach the top. I would have guessed multiple cigarettes worth but I hadn’t smoked during my climb up the steps. They were incredibly awkward, mostly because they were equally as high as they were long and pretty big too. Getting winded again on top of my mounting exhaustion didn’t help either. An earthy smell and shafts of light greeted me at the top, and roots, just so many roots.

  The exit, or entrance depending on how one looked at it, ended up in a tree hollow, or root hollow to be pedantic. My software engineer buddy would’ve been proud. My fear of insects kicked in but faded as closer inspection revealed an almost disturbing lack of them. Thoughts of pushing myself through thumb-thick roots were interrupted by my third yawn in the past five minutes. Exhaustion had won the war against survival instincts. It had been close to midnight when the world ended and worse yet, I’d been drinking.

  The problem was that it wasn’t safe, possibly anywhere. Despite my unwillingness, there were few alternatives and my ability to think degraded rapidly, which implied even worse results for any potential fighting. A nap beckoned.

  I descended about halfway down and then shuffled around in an attempt to find a position which would let me wake up without slipping a disc. The curving walls turned it into something of a challenge. They also made the hallway narrower. I ended up curled diagonally, in an awkward belly-down arrangement with my head in my arms. Uncomfortable, but I was well past caring.

  How to avoid dying in my sleep? That was the big question. Knowing myself, an attempted nap was more likely to end up as oversleeping instead. It had been on my mind for a while. There was really only one precaution available. I closed my eyes and opened the interface. The yellow-outlined black panels remained visible even with my eyes closed. If a beasty neared it would hopefully trigger the warning and jolt me awake. Gambling used to be more fun. I resolved to think of absolutely nothing, especially because a mental breakdown once more circled my vulnerable self, ready to strike at any moment...

  I jarred awake, on high alert immediately. My sword appeared in my hand and it took me a moment to realize my interface was still open. Heavy heartbeats passed before a nightmare about getting stabbed in the face resurfaced. A few deep breaths calmed me down, yet my eyes drooped soon after, demanding to close. Lying down again kept the worsening headache at bay. Checking my mana revealed I’d slept for three hours. Pushing on in this state felt futile and I quickly dozed off once more.

  I woke up naturally this time. A reflexive stretch caused immediate regret. It got my blood flowing, which to my great detriment awakened the headache in full force. My skin felt sensitive and my throat itched slightly. My left arm began to throb like hell. Something smelled.

  A few dozen winces later I’d pulled back and rolled up my slightly ruined and bloody sweater sleeve. On the positive side, the wounds were definitely smaller than before, but not by much. Sadly that didn’t really weigh up against the negatives. A pit in my stomach punctuated the fact I was going to die, for real this time. It didn’t take a specialist to recognize the early stages of an infection. The signs weren’t subtle either. Green-white stripes lined the reddish scratches, laced with pus. Desperate staring failed to alleviate the issue. What the hell am I going to do? This shit needs antibiotics. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Formerly interesting factoids of how infections killed most soldiers in wars now resounded in my head, a death sentence reverberating.

  Thoughts of cutting off my arm were quickly interrupted by the fact I couldn’t. Not just because my magic sword was friendly, but I simply didn’t have the cojones for something like that. I also liked my arm, we’d been through a lot together. We survived the end of the world, side-by-side. Did it actually count as survival if you died but pulled a Jesus shortly after? I decided it did, which mattered since I’d recently become an authority on the subject. Even spiraling insanity appealed over confronting how royally screwed I was. Options, options…

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I checked my mana, 13. At least I’ll die well-rested. Further staring accompanied my attempts at remembering every medical tidbit to have graced my ears. It calmed down a little. How fast does this go south? Days at least, right? It’s been one… A sense of foreboding doom settled in.

  It was high time to focus on the task at hand. I probably had a couple of options. Amputation was out. Cauterization sounded like a gamble, trading a few open wounds for a couple of third degree burns, already infected. It made for good cinema but bad medicine, I knew that much at least. Bloodletting maybe? Is that even a real medical treatment? I only had an idea almost guaranteed not to work. It might make things worse. No choice. Dumb idea. Fuck it, no choice.

  First I had to clean the wound. Only one method seemed viable while keeping step two in mind. I scraped the wounds with my magic sword. It caused more bleeding, so a little bit of bloodletting too. Hopefully, it served to wash out the wound. It felt like scrubbing with a cheese grater, but removed a fair amount of... bloody, nasty shit. After that, I wanted to cauterize but pussied out in the end - still didn’t have the stones. It took a surprising amount of determination to hold a lighter flame against a body part which already hurt a whole fucking lot.

  Next I had to gamble. My life involved an awful lot of high-rolling with no fallback lately. Alright with money on the table, but less so with my life on the line. One could always get more of the former but the latter was limited in supply. I didn’t count on the System bringing me back a second time. Mending.

  Now, there was a reason I thought of this as a gamble. Mending, at least in D&D, had been a repair spell, not a healing spell. An enterprising mind might have argued. What was really the difference between repairing fabric and repairing skin, after all? A particularly patient dungeon master could allow a question like that to spark an argument at the game table. It had surely happened thousands of times across the globe. Well, any arguments could be shelved. I had the answer. The difference was pain. My scream echoed in the stairwell as my mind blanked.

  I hadn’t really passed out, but recovering from mind-rending pain felt quite similar, or so I learned. My clothes were soaked in cold sweat, my headache had been overruled and the argument sustained. The effect was instant, even though the hurt lingered. An examination of my forearm showed remarkable consistency across previously broken skin. A good chunk of it also felt rather raw like enthusiastically peeled sunburn. I resigned myself to a cigarette, with filter this time, and a heartfelt self-promise to never do this again.

  Even so, the procedure seemed somewhat successful. It was hard to tell so soon after, but at the very least some time had been bought. Finishing the cigarette provided some distraction, but my nerves remained frayed. My headache keened, a sick weakness pervaded my body and anxiousness capped it all off. I thought about giving up. I just wasn’t built for this shit. If I wanted to patch wounds and treat infections, I’d have gone for medical school and failed to get in like a proper aspiring doctor. Throughout rising desperation, something else anchored me. Spite.

  I went up the stairs and was greeted by... still daytime. It hadn’t even crossed my mind until right before the spiral evened out. I took a deep breath and relished the scent of lingering cigarette smoke mixed with shiver-sweat and an earthy breeze, then pushed myself through the roots towards the west, since that had been working out so far.

  My efforts were rewarded by a scene of grass, daylight, bushes, trees and rootballs. They weirded me out a little, because all of the trees were on top of the rootballs. I turned around and saw my rootball was the same. They made a half sphere, with the apex four or so meters off the ground and a big fat tree on top. It made no fucking sense, there was no way the roots could support that kind of weight. Looking up helped me figure it out.

  The trees obscured the sky. Instead, a latticework hung overhead, of what must have been giant branches spreading in every direction. They reached everywhere; up, down, diagonal, horizontal, and everything in between. There were so many I couldn’t see through the tapestry as they blended together. The forest surroundings had given me hope, but I had a sinking feeling this was going to get complicated.