The Al-Sazine, in the Ashkanian tongue known as the 'many-roots' or 'the rooted', are less of a culture and more of an organisation. Other than the Ashkanian Empire and the Bone Tower, they are the only known group to endure repeated cleansings. Perhaps this is due to their close relationship to the World Tree itself, though none could accuse the Al-Sazine of having its favour.

They are fanatical in their belief that 'a better world is possible' and that the World Tree will be the one to usher it forth. They emulate its example and search all corners of Tsanderos for individuals to raise up. Many attempts have been made to pin down a consistent ideology underpinning the actions of its members, but the Al-Sazine appear to work against their own interests, unknown as they may be, as often as they further them.

Indeed, organisation is possibly the wrong way to classify this group. It acts as more of a loose conglomeration of cells with very little formal hierarchy and frequently conflicting goals. The only constant is the desire and ability to train those who need it. Much like the World Tree itself, it is unknown how the Al-Sazine choose who is worthy of their training and attention, although it has been suggested that this is more a case of there not being a consistent standard in the organisation, as opposed to the unknowable will of the ancient tree. In either case, the Al-Sazine are secretive and unlikely to share their purpose and identity with outsiders given their persecution throughout many parts of the continent.

- Excerpt from 'the cleansings – what came before and what endures' – by Jasmine Carnehal, third speaker of Ortesia

Weeks passed in a blur following my first successful hunt. I was now closing in on Cloven Rock, the dramatic formation towering into the sky before me, rising prominently above the ridgeline it perched upon.

My back was almost fully healed by this point, a couple of jagged scars present but nothing more, and the same was true of my shoulder. I sported a number of other fresh scars too, but only one major injury. A clean bite through my waist, thankfully missing any major organs, required me to rest for a few days before it closed and I could continue on.

That had been a particularly scary encounter, where a small deer had surprised me with a nasty pair of fangs when I had closed in for the kill, gripping onto my side and refusing to let go even when I stabbed it through the chest with my horn. I had needed to jam my knife into its eye and physically pry its dead jaws apart to release myself from its grasp, and that had led to another emotional spiral at the brutality I was forced to endure and unleash to survive here in this new world.

Only a few short days after though, I was ready to hike again, and no more than a day later I had moved back to a light jog. The perks of enhanced endurance, I suspected.

Scars and trauma weren't the only things I had received in abundance over the weeks though. I'd also gained experience. I'd levelled seven more times, the rate slowing dramatically as I reached the double digits in level. Once I was dealing with creatures of a similar level to my own, a single battle wasn't enough to get me over the finish line, and it had been days since I had last felt the rush of new attributes.

My skills had improved dramatically, and so too did my attributes. I had poured the bounty of the boar fight into strength later the same day. I'd expected to immediately feel stronger, and half expected to fill out with muscle in an instant. I was half right, as I had felt an instant rush of power, my muscles flexing slightly, blood rushing to them and filling them with purpose, but alas, no obvious physical changes abounded.

I'd tried jumping and lifting a few rocks, but I couldn't really tell much of a difference. I'd felt stronger, sure, but I had never really measured how I high I could jump or how heavy the rocks around me were before I'd allocated the point into strength, so it was hard to measure the difference.

That new strength made itself known as soon as I'd started running, however. Running was something I was intimately familiar with, and the increase in strength had let me run fast. Honestly, it was a kick. I'd sprinted off down the goat-track I'd been following, and it felt like simply a strenuous run. With each step, my thigh muscles bunched and pushed my foot into the ground with force, rocketing me forwards, each pump of my arms feeling like it carried momentum I'd never before experienced.

That was also when I'd learned a lesson that presumably everyone in this new world was taught as a child; after increasing your attributes, re-learn how your body functions. With a strength attribute of nine to my agility of six, I was badly unbalanced. That might have been fine if I had spent time moving about with that disparity – presumably many people pursued specialisation with their attribute allocations – but I hadn't, and lacked the preternatural agility I would have needed to save myself from misfortune.

I'd always been surefooted – and now had a Skill to prove it – but I had made a mistake, and the time to pay my dues had arrived. Misplacing my foot, I'd slammed to the ground and sprawled into a pile of limbs like a foal taking their first steps.

As soon as I could, I'd raised my agility, and again with the next point a day later after a lucky ambush on a couple of large salamander-looking creatures both at level 14. Another two levels a week later led to two final points in agility, before I switched back to strength for the next two, craving more of the new speed and power I could output with it.

I'd meant to test each different attribute to understand what they all did, but the mental attributes, as I had dubbed perception and cognition, had started a lot higher than the others, and I had yet to encounter any problems that their lack brought about. I was intimately familiar with my deficient strength and agility compared to the creatures I was hunting, so it was hard to worry about the effects of cognition at the time

I did end up assigning the attribute point from my most recent level into cognition though, worried I would be unable to keep up with the pace of the world I now lived in without it.

I could move much faster, for far longer than before, and had a much better sense for my own body. I found my balance easier, could change direction smoothly even towards the upper limits of my pace, and had excellent control and awareness of my own momentum and sense of balance. All good so far. The issue was that I was struggling to keep track of this wave of proprioceptive information constantly flowing into my mind.

Again, this was likely a problem I would get used to with time and a bit of training, but while it sometimes might have felt like I had nothing but time… I was in the midst of a race. Perhaps Jorge, Vera and Nathlan would wait for me at the trading outpost they'd mentioned even if I was delayed. Perhaps the red-cloaked mercenaries that I'd so unfortunately bumped into were all dead or gone and I didn't need to fear them pursuing me.

But the fact remained, I was in a race for survival every single day out here, and my opponents were the denizens of the endless valley. I'd seen the corpses of predators I'd shiver to even contemplate facing in my journey so far, and those had been killed by something. I thought of the enormous hunting cat and its eviscerated body.

I didn't have time to get used to my physical changes. I couldn't risk slipping in a fight because I was unfamiliar with my new strength, dodging a hair too slow because my mind couldn't process what my senses were telling me quickly enough.

So I'd spent that final attribute into cognition, and instantly things had cleared up once more. I could once again process at the same speed my body could move at, months of reaction training condensed into a single glorious moment.

With those changes complete, I had finally grown confident enough to not rely on ambush tactics. While it had certainly been effective – seven levels in a few weeks bringing me to the cusp of level 15 – I still began each encounter with the fear that something would go wrong and I'd be stuck facing a creature on even footing.

After several weeks of cautious approaches and skin-of-my-teeth victories, I was beginning to chafe at that feeling of weakness. I'd flirted with the idea of fighting a monster – for there was surely no better word for some of the animals I'd encountered – directly, and while I'd gotten side-tracked with the exploration of the attributes, the final point into cognition recently had confirmed my commitment.

When I had first arrived on this new world, my pride had skittered away on its many metaphorical legs at the first threat to my life. I had scavenged like a rat amongst the dead, stealing corpses to devour in hiding, and I had done so without shame. My change from scavenger to hunter had my pride slinking slowly back into the light. It was still skittish enough that any sign of a large hunting cat or many-toothed lizard would send it running for the hills, and me along with it, but now it had grown brave.

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The repeated levels and changes brought about on my body and mind in quick succession had built a hunger within me to see what I was truly capable of. Could I wrestle a wild animal to the ground and kill it with my strength alone? Could I fight a beast to a standstill without the aid of trickery? Obviously, I couldn't match the raw physicality of many creatures, especially the ones that out-levelled me, but with a weapon in hand, could I fight and win through superior skill and technique?

I wanted to find out.

Status:

Ancestry: Human (unevolved)

Level: 14

Class: None

Titles: God-touched

Attribute allocation:

Strength: 11

Agility: 10

Endurance: 12

Perception: 9

Cognition: 9

Available attributes: 0

Current skills:

Sure-footed: Level 3. Passive

Hill Foraging: Level 3. Active

Meat Preparation: Level 4. Passive

Running: Level 3. Passive

Simple Traps: Level 3. Passive

Improvised Weapons: Level 2. Passive

Open skill slot

Open skill slot

As I set to the grisly work of butchering my most recent kill with a smile on my face, I heard a sound that made it freeze in place. The combined hunting calls of at least a dozen overgrown wolves shattered the peace of my valley. I could see them silhouetted on the ridgeline, small shapes standing out starkly against the setting sun. They howled in a discordant harmony, over and over again, proclaiming their position as predator and all others as prey.

I stared mutely for long seconds, the partly dissected corpse in front me of entirely forgotten. My earlier ecstasy and joy dissipating as the harsh noises continued above the valley. I could probably kill one or two before they took me down, perhaps a few more if I used what little time remained before they reached me to prepare some surprises. I couldn't take out the whole pack though, and I would be cornered quickly.

So it was either head down and hope to cross the river – it was near enough a hundred feet wide by this point and flowing fast and white – or head up to Cloven Rock and hope for a wall the wolves couldn't scale or climb around. Given that I was pretty sure wolves could swim just as well as I could, only one decision seemed sensible.

The month or so out here alone had certainly taken its toll on my sanity, but there were advantages to my fragile mental state. For one, I no longer spent much time deliberating on a decision. What was the point when I had nobody to bounce ideas off?

I heard the call, and after only a few seconds, I simply started to run.

I tried to take this seriously, I really did. I knew that I was in danger, and any delay here could cost me literally an arm and a leg, but I just couldn't bring myself to care. I was having too much fun.

I'd never felt so alive, and gratitude poured from my soul that I could experience this, no matter how briefly. Sunlight beat down upon the bare skin of my back, encouraging beads of sweat to form small trickling paths down to pool on the cinched waistband of my trousers.

My socks were tucked into my boots, which were themselves trussed up neatly with my shirt inside my cloak. I had tied the makeshift cloth satchel into a tight bundle and strapped it under my left arm with some twisted vines of ivy I had scavenged, Simple Traps nudging me towards the supplest vines I could find. That had been an interesting thing to learn – I could gain innate knowledge from the skill only if I was intending to use it for its stated purpose, but the knowledge stayed with me afterwards.

While looking for a vine to use as a trip wire, I had instantly known that the thickest ivy branches would be less optimal than their smaller counterparts, due to their increased brittleness and lack of flex. This fact wasn't wiped from my mind though, and while the knowledge wasn't innate and intrusive – guiding my actions and decisions without conscious thought – I still had the memory and could learn from the experience as if the skill was a teacher.

I had my knife and fire-lighter tucked into my boots as well, and carried my broken horn in my left hand, with my right free to act as a counterweight to my body as I slipped past boulders and twisted with the animal trail below me.

Everything I could claim to own was strapped to my body, and I was still able to glide along mountain trails with ease. My breath was regular and steady, filling my body with energy with each inhale, and pushing myself further up the steadily climbing path with each exhale.

I was surrounded by a glorious vista, the natural world on full display, unmarred by even a hint of human presence. The haze still hung over my memories, but something within me told me that this was right. This was what I had longed to do before everything changed; run through the hills and glory in the majesty of nature.

The hunting calls I heard every few minutes echoing out behind me only made it all the more thrilling. How many people could say they had run with wolves? How many lived to tell the tale?

Rather than conjure panic, the thought made me laugh – a mad burble of mirth bubbling up from deep in my belly. I could almost taste Cloven Rock above me, looming perhaps a mile or two away. The wolves were still loping through the forest, and I guessed I would have perhaps five minutes between them breaking the treeline and making it to the rock-strewn ridgeline above.

I picked up my pace, whooping as I heard another keening call from somewhere behind. The constant feeling of separation, of distance between myself and the world around me, had slid away quickly during my first few weeks in this world. Now that I fully accepted the position I found myself in, I was able to truly savour the range of experiences on offer.

As the wolves closed in behind me, I closed in on the ridge. The cool breeze wafting down from the ridge contrasted delightfully with the warm sun shining down from above, and I ran through the titanic valley with nothing short of joy in every step.

There was a flow state that could sometimes be achieved when running on trails, but it was fleeting; here for but a moment and gone the next. Now it felt constant. Each step was placed perfectly, each lift and hop over stone and knoll was effortless.

All good things must come to an end though, and the end of this exhilarating experience came swiftly in the form of a fifty foot tall cliff face, sporting a wide crack climbing diagonally from the base right to the very top. The goat track I had been following ended at the base of the wall, forming a shallow basin marked with indentations from hundreds of hoof prints around the small tarn filled with fresh spring-melt. This tiny lake spanned the score or so feet across the ridge, before another goat track extended down the other side.

My path was clear and so I scurried to the base of the wall and after stuffing my horn into my improvised cloak-pack, I started climbing. It wasn't until I had made it roughly ten feet up and saw the first members of the pack emerge onto the ridgeline that I realised how close I was cutting it.

I frantically searched for secure handholds, taking risks I probably shouldn't have to pull myself up the cliff face and into the crack. I turned my body into the rock, wedging my feet and hands against opposite sides of the crack and forcing my back into the cliff face. That gave me a great view of the wolves stalking forwards towards the cliff and the remaining joy from earlier soon fell away.

There were at least twenty of the creatures, and they looked very similar to the Tarkenzi Maned-Wolf I had killed all those weeks ago. Long, slender legs supported muscular bodies, their large paws splashing softly in the shallow water as they stepped through the lake. Elongated snouts swayed at the end of their sinuous necks, occasionally sniffing the air and yipping to one another.

I couldn't tell if there was very little sexual dimorphism in this species, or whether they were all just males or females, but either way; they varied little from wolf to wolf. Two stood out though, standing taller and broader than the rest. By the way they moved through the pack, lazily brushing past other members to emerge at the front in a casual display of dominance, I assumed them to be the leading pair.

The comforting coolness of the rock behind me was all that prevented me from trying to back away further from the unnerving gazes. I started to shimmy my way up the crack, spending extra care to keep my limbs braced in opposition to one another. Small pushes from my feet to lift me up a few inches, followed by bracing my shoulders to keep my upper body in place while I moved my feet up, before repeating.

It was an easy climb, even before my enhanced attributes came into play, but carelessness was costly and arrogance was deadly. A momentary loss of focus was all it would take to see my overbalance and swing out of the chute, and that would be that.

I tried to put the wolves below me out of mind and focus on the climb, but a flurry of movement drew my attention. One of the larger wolves seemed to communicate with the rest of the pack, snarling and moving its head around in lithe, swaying patterns. The pack responded by splitting, half running around the cliff face on my side of the valley and skirting the bottom of the rocky section. The other half did the same on the opposite side.

I fervently hoped they wouldn't find a break in the jagged knife-edge ridge any time soon, but I knew it was a longshot to hope that the ridge would stay unbroken for miles. They had already spent at least an hour on my tail at this point so I doubted they would give up soon. Perhaps I could hole up overnight at the top of the cliff or further along the ridge. It might not be comfortable, but at least I would be safe from predators.

The two largest wolves remained below, watching intently as I climbed further. It was unnerving, how their gazes never wavered. Predatory yellow eyes bored into my own, as if trying to pin me to the rock by sheer force of will.

I heaved myself over the lip, slumping for a moment before standing and turning back to stare down at my pursuers. They watched me, sitting eerily still and doing nothing but glaring at me in ominous silence. It felt like a threat.

A faint ringing heralded my most recently acquired Skill, and I acknowledged the system notification as I turned away.

Skill gained – Scrambling. Open skill slots available, Skill integrated.

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