It doesn’t take me long to reach a point where the river has slowed down enough for me to drink from. Which I do, but thanks to general knowledge I remember that after being dehydrated for a while or starving I shouldn’t overwhelm my body with too much stuff at once, so I only take a sip and move on.

Not long after that, just a little further down river, the river actually flows into a smallish lake. Another thing I notice, thank you parallel processing, is that the trees here are actually a different kind than back the way I came from.

Their bark has an off-white coloration to it. And it’s also not green. It’s actually a pretty standard birch tree. As much as a tree from a different world with a different evolutionary line can be considered a birch tree.

And, the most important thing to note about the trees that surround the lake. The actually look dry. Not dry as in dehydrated, but dry as in not covered in man-eating slime. That’s a win in my book.

Thanks to being near a lake I can also once again look at the sky. The canopy stops a couple of dozen meters before the shore.

I check the horizon for the position of the scroonusi. And they are no longer in front of me! Yes, there is the possibility that a got lost in the forest a little bit and veered off course, but I’ll choose to believe that I arrived at my destination.

At last, I’ll be able to rest, settle down (for the foreseeable future until they return from the other side), and maybe even figure out magic. That’d be nice.

I plop myself down near the lake and just lay there for a good while. Yes, a part of me is still listening out for sounds, but the majority of my mind can finally relax.

But a major drawback of my fortified mind rears its ugly head at last. Due to getting what I’d consider an iron will, I can no longer properly procrastinate, at least not while I’m still in a technically life-threatening situation.

Hmm, can I dedicate a part of my mind to relaxing while I go ensure my life doesn’t abruptly end due to incompetence? No, I don’t think I can. That just doesn’t make sense.

So, I go about doing just that. But before that, some more water.

Ah, it truly is refreshing. The cool river water soothing my parched throat after the stress of the last couple of day is truly heavenly. Hold on, hasn’t it just been two days? Weird, feels like ages.

Ok, so now that I have water, the next things are food and shelter. Shelter, while not exactly easy, is pretty straightforward. There are a bunch of trees here after all. I’ll just have to find a way to cut some of them down. Maybe until then a dwelling made of branches will suffice.

But food… now that’s going to be a tough nut to crack. Mostly because I haven’t been able to find any nuts in the forest. Or berries or anything I’d consider edible.

I have the weird feeling that I’m missing something. Something extremely obvious to my subconscious that I can’t remember right now. Good thing that I have a skill for that. C’mon general knowledge! Show me what you got!

Straining my mind to its limit, which is obviously an exaggeration, I don’t come up with the info I’m missing. But I do remember to identify the birch like tree nearby, just in case they also hide a nasty surprise like the Sappards in the forest.

Birch tree

This temperate tree possesses a characteristic white bark. Though some people claim it to have magical properties, this is an exaggeration of the many uses its bark has.

Hmm, gonna go back to this later. But more importantly, I remembered what I forgot!

As the description so helpfully provided, birch tree bark really is super useful. And one of those uses is that it’s edible. I’ve personally never tried it so I can’t be sure about the taste, but at least it’s something. Good, I’m going to keep that in mind.

Now, back to System speculation. While I’m not a birch expert, I for sure know more about them than the damn Decomposing Sapwood tree. So why in all the hell is the description of this one so much shorter?! Was my earlier theory completely wrong?

No, surely not. There’re just more complex rules governing this skill. That has to be it!

Good, now then, what now?

I don’t exactly remember if the birch bark is edible uncooked, so I’m going to need a fire. Birch wood should also be good as firewood if I remember correctly, so that’s taken care of. What’s going to be a problem is actually cooking it.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

So, I’m going to need a container to hold water. A fibre basket made out of birch bark won’t work for that, I’ll need something that does not leak. And since I’m near a lake, clay come to mind.

The only problem with clay is… okay, there are multiple problems with clay. One, I do not know if it’s found in rivers, so it’s possible that I just make a bowl out of mud. Is there even a difference between clay and mud? Two, the firing process of clay is pretty complicated. If you put something made out of still wet clay into a fire, it’s going to crack. And I don’t know if I can wait for a couple of days for it to dry. I mean, sure, physically it is possible, but what about my mental state? On second thought, my enhanced mind may be able to take care of that.

Ok, so maybe I’d be able to make a pot to boil the bark in, but how am I even going to get the bark in the first place?

I’ll need a sharp, knife like implement to do that. And river rocks are usually anything but sharp.

Eh, I’m sure I’ll figure something out. Let’s start with getting some clay.

Walking into the lake, I’m immediately assaulted with the biting freeze of cold water. Damn, and this felt like such a good property to have when I was drinking it.

I manage to wade in only up to my knees before it’s too much and I have to stop. Fortunately, the lake bed here feels sort of slimy. And while I have had some bad experiences with slime recently, it actually does belong in a lake as far as I’m concerned. And besides, that’s a good sign that I can find some clay.

I reach inside with my hands and instantly have to clench my teeth to withstand the pain. Pushing on, I touch the floor and realize, this isn’t going to work. Clay likes to stick together and it won’t be easy to separate it with only hands.

So, I wade out of the shallow water. The wind exacerbates the cold even further, but at this point I’m too far gone to stop now.

I rush to the treeline where I grab a sizeable stick and head back towards Despair. That is the name I’ve decided to give this lake, for it’s cold as fuck.

The pointy end of the stick actually manages to penetrate into the, hopefully, clay lake bed and, using it as a crowbar, I dig up a decently sized chunk of clay. Which I promptly throw onto shore and repeat the process.

After maybe ten minutes of this I have a small mound of greyish brown clay on the lakeshore. And I also have hypothermia. Maybe. Probably not. I think one of the symptoms is that you start to feel hot even though you’re cold, and I’m very much still freezing.

That’s why, once I get out of the lake, I immediately take off on a run around the lake. It’s not the best strategy as I’m going to sweat, but gotta warm up somehow.

Eventually I do get up to a barely bearable temperature and get back to work.

Next up is shaping the clay into containers, or perhaps even plates and cutlery. Not cutlery, it’s too brittle for that. And since I don’t have a potter’s wheel, I’ll have to do it all by hand. Sigh, it’s going to end up ugly, isn’t it?

I do manage to get a vaguely bowl-shaped object out of my first try when I get an awesome idea. Surely, I’ve unlocked a skill by now to make this easier, right? Last night I actually changed my ‘System setting’ so that it doesn’t show me even the new available skills, so maybe there’s even something better than what I got up until now. Seriously, who wants a skill called slimework?

Actually, maybe it’d help me with this ‘slimy’ clay, but otherwise it seems too specific.

So, let me see what I have unlocked.

Aha, this may be just what I need! A perfect skill for any situation.

You have learned the skill: Improvised implements!

Accept?

This sounds absolutely perfect! I’d guess it helps me with crafting and also using improvised tools. And, if the trend of skills getting more varied the higher level they are continues, I may be able to apply to not so improvised stuff later on as well.

Hmm, but is it actually worth it? Sure, right now I’m in pretty dire need of it, but I won’t be forever, right? Right?

Then again, I can imagine myself needing it even if, I mean when, I eventually get back to civilization. And besides, the rule not to take skills I don’t utterly need is a self-imposed one.

So, equipped with a new skill, I get back to making some shitty pottery. And while the effect isn’t noticeable immediately, I do improve in just a couple of tries.

After a couple of hours, I had maybe a dozen misshapen pots laying all around me. The first one was definitely the worst one of them all, but they all looked pretty wacky.

Oh well, as long as they hold water I don’t really care. Maybe just a little bit.

Leaving them to dry in the sun, I decide that that’s enough work for the day. What? I’m not used to this and besides, I’m still recovering from the stress of the world dying. Yes, let’s use that excuse.

Laying there, I begin to ponder, something I haven’t been able to do. I’ve just been too preoccupied with walking silently, watching out for danger, occasionally watching imaginary TV shows and coming up with my own language.

Speaking of, that is a lot harder that I first thought. Without even taking written word into account there’re a thousand things to create. That is why, for now I’ve just decided to come up with words for objects that come to mind.

I make up a word for an object, let’s say an apple and then repeat it until I think I remember it. Then I move on to another object and do the same, except after that I also repeat the new word for the previous one and so on. I’m sure I’m going about it the completely wrong way, but who can stop me?

Anyway, I digress. What I was thinking about before going on this tangent is, why? Why am I here, settling down, when I want to leave this world as soon as possible?

I only have a single skill related to transportation and it definitely won’t level by me remaining in one place. Then again, it would have to be an obscenely high level that would allow me to step between worlds.

No, I have a better chance if I go with the magic route. Yes, that option has the giant question of whether magic even exists, but I’m sure the chances of it not existing are lower that it existing. I mean, I survived the end of the world, got isekaid into another one, the new world is threatened by eldritch horrors, there’s fucking carnivorous trees and to top if all of there’s a System that makes achieving the supernatural super easy! There’s no way that if all that is real, magic isn’t.

So, the next step, after I ensure a stable food supply and maybe shelter, is magic. And for that I’ll to get really good at meditating. Yeah, might as well get on with that before I start reaching for magic.