CHAPTER 3: PART 1 OF 2
Lucas took another deep drink and filled his empty bottle. The clear, clean water felt wonderful. Without another source of water, he was limited in how far he could travel safely from the river. He was desperately hungry, maybe even ‘raw badger’ hungry. Chowing down on the corpse of a random forest animal came with its own potentially terminal problems, however. It had taken every bit of his strength to stay alive this far, so getting sick now would definitely end up with him dead. Lighting a fire and cooking it was likely also a death sentence. The light and smoke would be like a beacon for any monsters nearby. He would have to choose soon, either way.
He climbed out of the ravine while he mulled over his situation. Cupping water in his hands and willing it into his inventory hadn’t worked. He got a vague impression of his ability searching for the boundaries of what he was trying to store in his inventory. Perhaps it was the bottle that he was storing, since it had hard and distinct boundaries as an object and the water didn't. He was starting to suspect these game-like functions were, if not totally created by his own mind, at least attached to his consciousness somehow. As if their functions used the machinery of his brain to do the work. They also seemed to be adapting to his needs on the fly, or perhaps he was learning to use them in different ways, like his Map helping him track the Spriggan.
On the other side of the ravine the forest continued on, almost indistinguishable from what he had left behind. Lucas began making his way carefully among the trees, trying to make as little noise as possible as he pushed his way through the thick shrub. He regretted having never done any kind of survival training, only a few snippets he had picked up from movies and games.
A watertight basket made by weaving bark could solve his water issues, but with his survival skills there was little hope of making something better than a colander. Probably a massive waste of time. A rope would definitely be useful. Once he had that knife he might be able to cut bark into strips and make enough rope to set traps. A lot of options would open up with the knife, just holding it in his hand would help him feel more like the hunter and less like the hunted. What he really needed, though, was just to not be alone. If he could find someone, anyone, he could get some real answers.
Lucas stopped. He had been thinking about what kind of Australian animals he might have trapped, but… Badgers? Oak? And well.. A Spriggan didn't belong on earth at all. Everything had been happening so fast that he only now realised that he was not going to be able to walk home. Getting home at all might even be impossible. A fresh wave of dread welled up. He pushed it back down, trying not to think about his family. Daylight was limited, and he had to focus on his immediate needs or he would not survive.
He had water, food was another issue. The Spriggan had been eating hard little seed pods. They had a caustic sting that made him spit them out immediately. The Spriggan was so alien that it wasn't surprising he couldn't eat its food. That badger was still in his inventory. It was the only option he was likely to get before starving, so he would either need to eat it raw or risk a fire. Having no clothes or shelter was his next problem. The only light at the end of that tunnel was his Quest System offering him some pants if he did enough exploring. The air was already cold, and the temperature continued to drop steadily. He wasn’t sure how cold the night would get, but he had a bad feeling about it.
Lucas continued in the same general direction, watching for trees tall enough to break above the canopy. The terrain began to climb, giving him a clear view of a promising oak tree at the top of the hill. Despite the brief rest at the river his body was protesting the climb. Stopping to rub his calves, Lucas surveyed the slope; more rubble from ancient ruins. A stone pathway, still recognisable as stairs, ran up the hill at a 45 degree angle. It disappeared into the soil as the hill got steeper, only to reappear as it evened out.
‘Maybe this whole forest was once a city.’
Symmetrical rows of stone stubs that might once have been crumbled pillars, passed him on either side of the climb. This entire hill was, apparently, a massive buried building of some kind. It was probably hollow inside. Phantom pain from where the robot that had stolen a chunk of his skin put a quick end to the notion of looking for an entrance. The roots of a mighty oak crowned the top of the hill like a bad haircut. The bark was rough on his exposed skin, and arms felt weak and wobbly as he lifted himself up into the lower reaches. The air got cooler as he climbed, but the exertion warmed his cramping muscles. A clear sky began to open above. Fresh air and wide views washed away the claustrophobic anxiety of the forest floor.
Well above the general canopy now, he took a deep breath and looked around. The sun was shining over a green sea of billowing leaves. Thousands of birds squawked and swooped in great flocks from one part of the forest to another, loudly heckled by the birds nesting in treetops. Do birds count as monsters? Is there any distinction between monstrous and non-monstrous wildlife or is it up to the Quest System to draw the line? Worth experimenting with if he could find a way to game the system, or get his hands on one of these birds.
Looking out over the direction he had been walking, the terrain dipped, then continued to rise into a large wide hill that he couldn't see past. Based on the position of the sun compared to where it was a few hours ago he figured that was probably north. To the east the forest stretched on as far as he could see, however there was a small but obvious gap with no trees. It stretched to the horizons north and south, straight as an arrow.
“A road?” Lucas wondered out loud.
A road meant people. If it wasn't in regular use the forest would have swallowed it up like the rest of the ruins. Lucas felt a lump form in his throat.
‘Please please let that be a road. Humans needed to work together, supporting each other to survive. A solitary human in the wilderness, naked, with no tools, seemed hopelessly doomed. It was of consistent width the whole way, which was promising. It might have been a river but a river would wind and bend, while humans like straight lines.
Hope was quickly building inside him like a warm little fire, and his eyes stung with the threat of tears. Working his way around the trunk, he looked back south; the way he had come. Forest forever. To the west the forest grew gradually more sparse. A grassy plain stretched to the horizon. Some improbably massive herd animal meandered over the grasslands. He looked back towards the ‘maybe-road’, squinting against the sun. It might have been five kilometres away; maybe even ten. At his cautious pace it would probably take him days to reach it.
Checking his map, Lucas zoomed out with a thought. The hill in front of him obscured the terrain to the north but otherwise a massive expanse of his Map had been lit up. The road looked even more road-like from his Map. It was actually named ‘The Road’. He also found ‘The River’, back to the south. Could they have been named that way just because that's how he had been thinking of them? Would the map update to the real names if he heard them from some locals? What if the road turned out not to be a road at all? Would his map change accordingly?
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Probably. It seemed like his abilities didn't have access to information he didn't. He could never have remembered all the details of the terrain his Map was displaying, so there was still something supernatural about it. The same could be said for all the details from his Character Sheets and Analyse ability. His abilities could gather and store information in special ways, but they still relied on him to climb trees and Analyse monsters. The Map now also had a distance scale, no doubt from his attempts to guess how far the road was. It placed the road at 7.5 km from his location. Lucas chuckled as he realised that was exactly halfway between his 5-10 km estimate. He closed his Map. As soon as he did, another screen popped up.
[https://i.imgur.com/8ST4q6I.jpg]
“Nice!”
Lucas closed the screen and opened his Inventory. Sure enough, new icons for ‘Crude Pants’ and ‘Leather Shoes’. He had been noticing the limitations of his new abilities lately but making pants from nothing was pretty amazing. He took the pants out and put them on awkwardly while balancing on his branch. Despite being called ‘crude’ the fabric was strong.
‘Hemp maybe?’
They fit perfectly. The shoes came next, ankle high and made of hard leather. They looked nice, in a grandpa kind of way, but not very practical.
‘Better to be a grandpa than shoeless I guess.’
Moving to put them on gave Lucas a glimpse of the bottom of his feet. He was surprised to see thick hard skin, nothing like the soft tender feet he had started today with. He stared blankly for a while. What did that even mean? His feet had changed to suit walking barefoot in a matter of hours? He looked more closely at the rest of his body, he had a light tan on skin that should be pale and milky. It also looked like he had put on a little more muscle, at least he certainly looked more toned.
His body was changing as if he had spent days or even weeks in the wild. One more strange thing about a strange place. This was, however, definitely helpful. Lucas put the shoes on and looked back at his Inventory. A familiar light headed feeling of not having eaten for too long, convinced him to stop putting off the inevitable. He brought out the Badger Carcass. It flopped wetly into his hands. His stomach flipped at the overwhelming coppery scent of blood. Swallowing down a gag reflex, he looked it over grimly.
It was more tendon, gristle and ligament than meat. Not having a better way to approach it, he simply bit into the shoulder. The flesh was so incredibly hard and tough that he couldn't bite through, no matter how hard he ground his teeth into it. After spitting out some blood and retching repeatedly, he started investigating it more carefully. Eventually, he found that the stomach near the groin was the softest part. It was a little bit fattier than the rest. He had to close his eyes and really dig his whole face in, but he managed to chew a few mouthfuls off and swallow them. The first thought he had as he came up for air was making an Instagram post about burying his face in a dead badgers crotch with the hashtag #lifegoals. Unwilling to tolerate more than he absolutely had to, he put the rest of the carcass back into his Inventory.
“Well, I know where I'm headed now,” he muttered to himself, trying to wipe blood off his face as he looked at the road on his Map.
Climbing a tree at the start of the day would have saved a lot of time. It was doubtful that he could reach the road before nightfall. Regardless, he had a real goal now. One that might eventually lead to other people and put an end to this nightmarish solo survivor scenario. Lucas admired the view to let his body rest a little more, and to help his salivating nausea settle as the taste of blood faded. He honestly felt a lot better having something in his stomach now. The canopy from above looked like a green ocean in a storm. The wind seemed to be making waves as it rolled over the treetops, sunlight glinting and shimmering off the twisting leaves like ocean spray.
His battered body started cramping painfully the moment he tried to start climbing down again, every muscle had gone stiff and weak. Resting had made him worse as his muscles cooled. He almost slipped on the first step, jarring his cramped legs painfully. The slick leather of his new shoes had no traction at all. He took them off again and put them in his inventory. ‘Grandpa shoes!? Really?’
Climbing down took even longer than climbing up, and by the time he got near the forest floor it had become much dimmer and cooler. He would be travelling in the dark soon. Without a light source he would be helpless prey to any nocturnal predator, so that wasn't an option. He needed to find as safe a place as possible to sleep.
Lucas jumped the last couple of metres and heard a hissing sound to the left, nerves fired into action instantly as he turned. A creature that looked like a rat, but many times bigger than it should be, was leaping past him. He slapped it hard across the face mid leap, diverting its trajectory to the side. As it landed he grabbed its hairless tail and yanked. Swinging it around, up over his head, he brought it down hard. The rat-thing squealed loudly as it bounced, desperately scrambling to get away.
Without pausing he swung it around again, adjusting his angle slightly towards a rock that showed through the mossy ground. He slammed it down full force. Its head hit the rock with a satisfying crack and the rat went limp. For good measure he swung again, muscles burning, this time a bright splatter of red painted across the ground. The rat's Aura burst, lines of energy snapping as the field dissipated and energy whipped through the air.
[https://i.imgur.com/rOnjzOK.jpg]
[https://i.imgur.com/FKEYq5g.jpg]
“That went pretty well,” Lucas said as he breathed heavily, leaning on the tree.
Rat Fat sounded pretty gross, and useless. Hoping it wasn't meant to be food, he took it out of inventory. It landed in his hand with a wet plop. Lucas cringed at the sloppy mass as he used Analyse.
[https://i.imgur.com/rsRpcT6.jpg]
Lucas’s brow furrowed as he read. His Detect Aura tooltip told him that life here was powered by the Mana in Auras. Evolving body fat purely as a way to stay warm seemed contrived. Did life here evolve at all? Was it kind of derived or reflected from his world somehow?’ Now that he thought about it, there was no reason at all for a completely alien world to have rats and badgers, even if they were magically ‘angry’. There had to be some kind of relationship between this world and his.
A small hope ignited, burning fiercely in his core. He wasn't lost forever. Lucas froze. He had been refusing to think about how lost he really was. Suppressed emotions bombarded him. He forced himself to breathe calmly. Now was not the time for that - he had only a little while left till night fell. Wincing as he realised he was still holding the glob of Rat Fat, he tried to store it.
It didn't work right away. Again he felt his ability searching for substantial boundaries to define what he wanted to store. Lucas kept his hand very still so the jiggly fat would settle, which did eventually allow him to store it. He wiped his hands on his pants, grimacing at the greasy mark it left, then chided himself for caring about something like that. Opening his Map, he confirmed the direction of the road and began winding down the slope.