"Now how do I close this screen in front of me." Miguel tried swiping with his fingers, but it won't leave. Everytime he changed the direction in which he was looking, the screen would follow his vision and plaster in his front. It was truly a distracting thing. Playing with the screen, he finally came up with his hypothesis, that it was connected with his thinking. He concentrated on closing the screen in front of him, and finally the status window closed itself.
The screen disappeared, replaced with another one. This one showed different options. But Miguel saw that most of those options were dull, and when he tried to concentrate on them. He found that it showed an error. It said to reach higher levels to unlock them.
'Damn, the options look like the one he would find inside the game' Miguel thought. Now paying his attention to the only two options that were visible to him.
[Status Window]
[Missions]
He had already seen the Status Window, it was time to look at the missions. How they were going to affect him on his journey. Opening the Missions option, he saw that it was blank, so he truly had no idea what could help him get out of this place.
And even when surrounded by the leaves, Miguel didn't feel safe at all. From time to time he would hear noises, noises that didn't make sense, but all of it was enough to reconsider his decision of going away from the tree. To look at other places. He tried closing the screen in front of him and he succeeded in the first try.
'Finally I am getting a hang of this screen.' Miguel thought between despairing thoughts. The second the screen had closed another one opened in place of it, this time it was smaller than the others. He narrowed his eyes looking at the new text. Which said.
[New Mission]
[Having newly arrived in this world, you are like a newborn. Being a newborn it is better to gain a better understanding of the place to increase the chance of survivability in this unknown environment.]
[Mission Goal - Find inhabitants of this world.]
[Reward - Vocal Translation Skill]
'What the hell is this thing saying, increase survivability. Am I going to die here?' Miguel thought with a frown. Was the thing playing with him? Asking him to go and die. How did the system thought, that the inhabitants would react to seeing him?Thinking about that, he truly felt the grim chances of his survival.
For some time, Miguel just sat there. He wasn't going to listen to the screen. He truly thought that there may be a chance that someone or something will come to help him. But with the increasing hunger he felt in his stomach. He knew he had to do something before long. Find someone or something.
The environment around him was truly dark. It might have been due to the giant tree blocking the rays of the moon or sun from reaching here. It might be even possible that there was no sun or moon for the saying. He thought of the mission the screen had given to him as well as the reward associated with it. Vocal Translation Skill. It might be something useful to him. Thinking about that, he chose a direction and started walking along it.
It was now that he truly felt the immensity of the tree. He had been traveling for over 10 minutes, but he still wasn't out from the canopy. The good thing was, he would occasionally see some animals that looked like squirrels, but it looked smaller, and it was able to blend with the leaves on the ground. He was fortunate enough to see it, otherwise he didn't think he would be able to find it, even if it was near him. Another time he saw something slithering in the ground, a black snake. The good thing about it was that it was focussed on eating something. Blood dripped from its jaws as it feasted on some poor animal. The bad thing though was Miguel felt like it was looking at him. As if it was deciding on his next snack, a big one. Miguel had felt his blood run cold and he hadn't waited for the snake to finish its snack, before he straight bolted out in the other direction.
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He ran until he was so exhausted that he had to stop to inhale air. Huffs and puffs of breath escaped his mouth, when he finally felt that he was good enough to walk, he looked up. He was surprised that the tree canopy that used to hang over him was no more, instead in its place was a sky, there were no stars in the sky. No clouds even. For an instant Miguel was relieved to see the moon in the sky, but it wasn't a normal moon, it was blood red in color. Even the moon was not alone, instead there was a huge black star, near it. The edges of the black star were lit with a yellowish glow but even that was not enough to lit up the sky. Miguel could only smile ruefully looking at the bizarreness of the sky. It freaking defied science.
That was not the only thing. Now that he was out of the tree's presence, he could finally see other trees, though of a normal size as he knew them in his world, but some of them had their shapes twisted. As in the sense that they almost looked mutated, they looked more scary than the rest.
It wasn't long before he found himself sweating. He wasn't sweating due to the exhaustion from the running. It had been he didn't know, an hour since he had run. Although there was a sweet stream, air was constantly hitting him, creating a sense of comfort. The surroundings grew more and more strange. It still was the night time, and whatever he could see was due to the moon light that lit up the path straight against him, the growing sense of eeriness contributed to him getting nervous as he walked.
It was only after some few minutes that Miguel realized his anxiety was creeping up very fast on him. The loud thumping of heart beats that didn't follow the rhythm, the occasional buckling of legs, the growing sense of weakness. All was an indication that he was in an extremely bad condition.
Watching his own condition, Miguel couldn't help but open up the status window to look at his condition.
[User is experiencing an acute attack of anxiety. Reason UNKNOWN.]
The screen was darker red, and looked like it was kind of a warning to him. He was aware of his condition long before the screen had told him about it. But still it disappointed him, that he couldn't find any solution about it.
Miguel had to change his opinion of the screen, because just the next moment he saw another message. This one created a hope in him.
[Self Healing Activated]
The instant he saw the message, he couldn't help but genuinely feel glad about whatever the screen was. The healing was not instant, and as Miguel walked further in the darkness of the environment. He found out that even if his sweating and his shaking had decreased a little it wasn't able to improve it more than that. But it was sufficient for him, who had experienced worse.
[Self Healing Failed.]
[Self Healing Activated.]
[Self Healing Failed.]
…
The messages from the screen continued in the attempts of success and failure. Miguel decided to turn off the screen. It was now that he felt the crawling of rats inside his stomach and with his condition it only made it worse for him.
'How much do I have to go roaming aimlessly to even find someone.' Miguel thought. He was constantly fighting the urge to just stop. His condition demanded him with that. But he also knew one more thing, that is, if he stopped right now. He might not be able to walk until some hours later, the constant hunger and thirst he felt right now, was a sure fact that he might die if he decided to wait. There wasn't even a certainty that he would find someone. What if, it was just a jungle, a jungle were no one lived. What was the possibility that he would find his way home, even if he met those people?
Despite his body failing him, he gathered his courage to walk on. Much later, he now had to use his mouth to breathe, he was getting weaker. The temperature of his body had increased, much faster than he had expected. But the wind helped him decrease the temperature. It wasn't long before he saw another curious sight.
Miguel had to widen his eyes, to just be sure that what he was watching was even real. He had to find one person, but he could see many silhouettes standing far from him.