I woke up to the gentle light of dawn, the soft rushing sound of waves, and a stream of notifications flooding into my consciousness.

  I frowned, then turned and walked back to the other side of the monument, where I’d left the corpse and handful of leaves and berries from the night before. Unsurprisingly, they were gone. In their place was a bundle of cloth with a letter on top. I sighed. I hadn’t known exactly what I was going to do with the monkey, and hadn’t exactly built up the nerve to consider eating it, but losing the meagre food I’d managed to collect was… frustrating, to say the least. I walked over to the bundle and picked up the letter.

  As I read, I did feel a warmth rushing into my temple, but I also couldn’t be bothered at the moment. Instead, I brushed off any sand as best I could and quickly began to don the outfit. I think I had been subconsciously putting aside the fact that I had nothing to wear, since it seemed like there was nothing I could do about it, but as I put on the outfit I was overwhelmed with a sense of relief.

  My haul consisted of some black underclothes in the form of a halter top and shorts, and then some beige-ish drawstring pants and a short-sleeved shirt that closed over with a large loop-and-toggle fastener. Not the height of fashion, to be sure, but light, durable, and infinitely better than nothing.

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  Immediate concerns taken care of, I decided to focus on the latest stream of information that had flooded in through my mask.

  Apparently I had my own inventory, now. That would certainly help with the whole “dragging my kills back home” aspect of things, and I could imagine the option to “turn in” loot in the future would also be attractive. Part of me tried to picture myself crafting my own items out of the resources or enemies I’d encounter, and it didn’t resonate.

  The opportunity to profit in some way off of what I suspected I would probably have just left alone in the future was pretty appealing. I couldn’t see myself stripping kills for parts. On the other hand, I was rather surprised at how easily I was taking to the idea of killing my opponents. After my lack of reaction to some aspects of yesterday, and this, I was beginning to suspect that there had been some changes to my personality, or some reactions were being suppressed. Whatever the case was, there was some sort of disconnect between what I expected my reactions to be and what they actually were.

  It wasn’t something I could deal with at the moment, so I put it aside. A grumbling stomach reminded me that I now had no food, thanks to the “offerings” I had made earlier. Still barefoot, but at least garbed, and with significantly more hit points, I ventured once more into the forest.