Book 1 Chapter 4 Han Rowan the Scavenger
…
The silence of the ancient, unknown forest, punctuated only by the drip of moisture from the dense canopy, did nothing to soothe Han Rowan's fraying nerves. He stood on the edge of the clearing where he had only narrowly survived his first, terrifying encounter with the rodent-like creature, the Rodenta. He was alive, yes, but he was painfully aware of his shortcomings.
He had won a life-or-death struggle armed with nothing but a hastily snapped bough and sheer, panic-fueled instinct. The bough, currently resting inside the mysterious interface of his strange bag, was a pathetic excuse for a weapon. He was currently wearing his familiar—and entirely inadequate—jeans and T-shirt. He had nothing resembling armor, nothing that offered the slightest defense, and his only remaining offensive tools were the rock he had bought, now nestled in the bizarre, invisible 9x9 grid of the Strange Bag.
This is absurd, he thought, adjusting the rough, scratchy sackcloth bag slung across his shoulder. His normally phlegmatic temperament was struggling valiantly against a rising tide of existential dread and professional fastidiousness. As an eighteen-year-old on the cusp of a prestigious university career, he was a creature of preparation and careful planning. This entire situation—being dumped into a wuxia-fantasy world, mistaken for a dead guy he did not know, and forced to fight overgrown rats—was the absolute antithesis of a well-organized life plan.
He looked at the dense, undulating green wall of the forest. Without a proper weapon or protection, traversing that would be suicide. Every shifting shadow looked like another Rodenta, every rustle of leaves sounded like a predatory leap. His mind, trained for national exams, ran a quick cost-benefit analysis.
Action A: Proceed deeper, unarmed, hoping for a weapon. (Probability of immediate, messy death: High.)
Action B: Return to the ambush site, scavenge, and arm himself. (Probability of psychological trauma: Extreme. Probability of survival: Improved.)
He recoiled from the thought of Action B. The ambush site. The carnage. The bodies. The smell.
He groaned, the sound weak and pitiful in the vast forest. "I need a sword. Or at least a decent knife. I need a shield. I need… something that doesn't require me to get within biting distance of whatever oversized vermin lives here."
The truth was stark. He had to go back. He had to face the gruesome reality of the battlefield he had just fled. It was the only place where weapons lay within reach—weapons that, judging by the dead ancient robed people, were not entirely useless. He had to turn his stomach of steel, which usually only suffered during particularly bad cafeteria lunches, into a stomach of titanium.
He gripped his hand tight, took a deep, shuddering breath of air thick with pine and decaying organic matter, and began to walk. The path back was mercifully short, though every step felt like a mile.
…
The scene that greeted him was no less horrific than when he'd first seen it, but now he had to look closer. The ground was churned earth, broken branches, and the ghastly, still bodies of the disciples and the ambushers. The crimson stains were already beginning to darken and coagulate against the leaf litter. The metallic tang of blood mingled with the acrid, coppery smell of the corpses, which was beginning to decompose with alarming speed.
Rowan swallowed hard, once, twice. His eyes instinctively sought out the bizarre, familiar sight of the floating interface hovering just past the tip of his nose. It was his only anchor to anything resembling civilization, even if that civilization was a terrifying video game menu.
The interface, displaying the 9x9 grid of his Strange Bag, was thankfully empty save for the sackcloth itself and a rock he had mentally christened "malignant marble."
He steeled himself. This wasn't about decency; it was about survival. He was going to commit light grave robbery, and the faster he finished, the sooner he could repress the memory.
His first target was a dead person who had been disemboweled by one of the ambushers' blades. Rowan averted his gaze, focusing solely on the hands and waist.
"A weapon, a weapon, a weapon," he chanted internally, a low, desperate mantra.
He cautiously reached out a shaky hand, his fingers grazing cold, stiff leather. He flinched, pulling back with a choked gasp. Focus, Rowan. Focus on the geometry. It's a resource node.
He forced his hand to be steady, grabbing a belt pouch. He emptied it onto a clean (relatively) patch of ground. A few dried berries, some useless-looking talismans, and a small, tarnished copper coin. He picked up the coin with two fingers, dropped it into the grid, and watched as the Coin counter in the top-right corner of the interface stubbornly remained at zero.
"Great. Not currency," he muttered.
He moved to another corpse, one of the ambushers, a man in ragged black clothing. This one had a crude, bent metal club clutched in his hand. Rowan gingerly pried the fingers open.
He held the club up. The interface instantly flashed a message:
**Metal Club (Junk)**
Size: 1x3
Damage: 1
Effect: None
Sell Price: 0.1 Coin
Rowan stared at the '0.1 Coin' value. He had risked his sanity for ten cents' worth of loot. The full item price for a basic Rock was 2 Coins. This 'Junk' club was barely worth anything. He dropped the club into the box, which showed "sell". Then he saw his coin, adding an additional 0.1, which is now 0.2 coins.
He moved on, his movements growing marginally less hesitant, driven by the desperation to finish. He found a broken wooden shield—it shattered when he tried to move it. He found an empty waterskin. He found a pair of surprisingly intact leather boots.
**Leather Boots**
Size: 2x2
Defense: 3 (Foot)
Effect: None
Sell Price: 0.4 Coin
Four-tenths of a coin. He kept them for now.
The worst part came when he realized he had to check the bodies of the Rodenta. These were piles of matted brown fur, teeth, and gore. The smell was overpowering.
First, the essentials. Armor and weapons.
He found a few more items, dropping them all to sell, his face getting greener with every addition. The interface's unlimited storage area was rapidly filling up with junk.
Item
Size (Grid)
Sell Price (Coin)
Metal Club (Junk) - 1x3 - 0.1
Leather Boots - 2x2 - 0.4
Broken Bow - 1x4 - 0.2
Rusted Dagger - 1x1 - 0.2
Torn Pouch (Empty) - 1x1- 0.05
He looked at his total haul. 0.95 Coins. Almost a full coin, but not quite. He still needed to sell more to reach the next full coin.
Rowan felt the bile rise in his throat. He stumbled away from the nearest corpse and bent over, dry-heaving violently into a patch of ferns. He swore he could taste the metallic air. This was the most disgusting thing he had ever had to do. He was rummaging through the blood-soaked belongings of the recently deceased, and he was getting paid pennies for it. It was utterly humiliating.
After a solid minute of retching—a moment he knew he would be visiting his therapist for, assuming he ever found one in this dimension—he returned to the interface, his hands trembling.
"Alright. Fine. If I need a full coin, I need to get rid of something bigger."
He spotted a crude, heavy iron helmet wedged under a log.
**Iron Cap (Crude)**
Size: 2x3
Defense: 15 (Head)
Effect: Headache (10% chance of Stun on user after 3 impacts)
Sell Price: 0.2 Coin
"A headache-inducing helmet? Perfect," he sighed, shoving it into the grid. Total haul: 1.25 Coins.
He finally reached his goal. He meticulously selected the Metal Club (0.1), the Broken Bow (0.2), the Rusted Dagger (0.2), the Torn Pouch (0.05), and the Iron Cap (0.2).
He clicked the SELL ALL button.
The items instantly vanished from the storage with a faint, ephemeral shhht-CHUNK sound.
The Coin counter in the interface updated agonizingly slowly.
[COINS: 1]
He had done it. He had achieved the ultimate unit of financial freedom—one whole coin—by trading his dignity for a basket of second-hand gore. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a look of profound, exhausted disgust plastered on his face.
…
With his newly acquired wealth, Rowan immediately opened the Shop section of the interface.
As expected, the shop had refreshed, showing five random items. He instantly noticed the change from his previous interaction with the shop, which had appeared before the first fight. That shop had seemed static. Now, the items were clearly randomized.
Shop Slot - Item - Cost (Coin) - Size (Grid) - Type
1 - Thorns - 2 - 1x1 - Accessory
2 - Stone knife - 4 - 1x2 - Basic Weapon
3 - Shell Fruit - 4 - 1x2- Food
4 - Rock - 2 - 1x1 - Basic Weapon
5 - Leather Cap - 4 - 2x2 - Basic Armor
He only had one coin. He scanned the list desperately, searching for any item he could afford.
Slot 4: Rock. Cost: 2 Coins.
"Damn it. I am exactly one coin short," he grumbled, kicking a loose rock on the ground.
Then he saw it. An option he hadn't noticed before, located right below the shop's title bar: RESERVE ITEM (Cost: 0 Coin).
Rowan's eyes narrowed. He was a student of systems. This looked like a temporary solution to the randomization problem. The tooltip, when he hovered his phantom cursor over it, confirmed: Reserves the selected item, preventing it from being replaced on the next item shuffle (typically after a battle).
He could only afford one thing now, but he could secure a good item for later. He still needed a better primary weapon than his currently equipped malignant marble.
He had two immediate concerns: defense/utility and a reliable weapon upgrade.
Defense/Utility:Thorns (+1 damage to attackers when attacked). This was passive, useful, and only 1x1 in size. A must-have. He couldn't afford it, but reserving it for 0 coins was a no-brainer.
Click. He reserved Thorns. A small, ghostly padlock icon appeared over Slot 1.
Weapon Upgrade:Wooden Sword (4 Coins) was a good next step. But the Rock (2 Coins) was cheaper and would give him a second projectile. A second malignant marble would be a powerful tactical asset, especially after his recent revelation about their functionality (though that revelation hadn't actually happened yet, it was coming soon, so he was operating on the assumption that more weapons equaled better results, a basic video game principle).
"Wait," he thought. "I need to buy a rock now, but it costs 2 coins, and I only have 1. There must be a way to buy it. The established item price for a rock is 2 coins."
Before he could say anything, he noticed the floating interface blink. It looked like some kind of computer glitch or something.
Rowan squinted at the interface again. He suspected that something had happened. His eyes quickly darted to slot number 4.
Shop Slot - Item - Cost (Coin) - Size (Grid) - Type
4 - Rock - 1 - 1x1 - Basic Weapon
Seeing the display, a wicked smile crept on his face.
"Aha. A lucky break. A one-time discount, perhaps to reward my valiant efforts in committing high-stakes, low-return grave-robbing," he muttered, channeling his inner finance major.
He immediately clicked BUY on the Rock in Slot 4.
[COINS: 0]
The Rock materialized as a solid, dark sphere in an empty 1x1 square of his inventory grid. It was his second malignant marble.
Now, back to reserving. He still had the free reserve slot available, as the Rock was gone.
He saw the Stone Knife in the shop. It was sitting in the second slot of the shop.
He clicked RESERVE on the Stone Knife. Another padlock appeared.
Thorns (2 Coins) and Stone Knife (4 Coins) reserved. Excellent forward planning.
…
Rowan cleared his mind and focused on the remaining items on the ground. Most of them were too broken, too large, or too disgusting even to consider putting inside the storage space.
However, two items had caught his attention for reasons beyond mere utility:
The Dagger: This was the short, wickedly sharp blade belonging to the corpse that looked exactly like him. It wasn't 'junk' and carried a strange weight, both physical and metaphorical. He had not sold it, perhaps out of some inexplicable respect for his dopplegänger or because it was the only decent-looking blade he'd seen.
Leather Bracers: A pair of surprisingly durable-looking, if blood-flecked, leather wrist guards. He had found them near a pile of debris, and they seemed functional.
He didn't bother checking the Dagger's value in the interface. He simply picked it up and wrapped the hilt in the loose linen of his T-shirt to prevent blood-contact contamination, before sliding it into the storage space.
He then slipped on the Leather Bracers himself. They were cold and slightly stiff but fit snugly over his forearms. He felt marginally, infinitesimally more protected.
The interface instantly recognized the equipped armor:
**Leather Bracers (Equipped)**
Defense: 5 (Arm)
Effect: None
Size: (N/A - Equipped)
Finally, he reorganized his offensive tools in the Strange Bag. He moved the two rocks—his malignant marbles—to the very top of the grid, 1x1 each. The Dagger was placed in the storage below.
He was also able to get a few dried rations and water canteens from the wreckage. From what he could deduce, the wreckage was a supply convoy that was looted by bandits or something. The rations and water canteens were also put in the unlimited storage of the strange bag.
On the side, he noticed a strange bough.
He picked up a pathetic wooden bough, considered the potential spiritual enlightenment it might afford him, then hurled it into the thicket in a fit of justifiable pique.
"I'm done. I'm out," he announced to the silent, grisly clearing.
He adjusted the sackcloth, double-checked that his meager inventory was properly organized—the two marbles lined up like two little grumpy-faced bowling balls—and began to run in a random direction, away from the scene of the carnage. He ran not just from the dead, but from the memory of having to rifle through their pockets.