Someone was groaning.

That was me.

I was groaning.

I was also lying face down.

Everything was pain.

What was I doing again?

Where was I?

Had I fallen asleep on my desk again?

I hoped I’d remembered to end the stream, or chat was gonna laugh at me.

The lights were pretty dim, though.

I should go back to sleep.

Good idea.

…

Ugh, bright.

Who’d turned on the lights in the middle of the night?

Oh, that was the sun.

Hadn’t I pulled down the blinds?

Ugh, I didn’t feel like moving. My entire body hurt.

Why did everything hurt? Had I done another 3D stream yesterday?

No… What?

Why did my mind feel scrambled?

I hadn’t been drinking on stream again, had I?

God, I didn’t wanna get up yet, though.

Let’s just go back to sleep.

But the light was annoying… No problem, just turn my head to the other side.

Problem solved.

Good night.

…

Ooow… My head…

What time was it? What day was it? God, I really didn’t feel like getting up, but I needed to pee.

I forced my eyelids to part and saw grass right in front of me. I was lying face first in it.

Confused, I pushed myself up into a sitting position with my wobbly arms and blinked the sleepiness away.

There were trees around.

What the hell? Where–

The memories of the past few days suddenly came back to me and I froze. I looked down at my small hands, then I looked back at the trees in front of me, and then finally, I craned my head around to look at the city dungeon and its gate I had been lying in front of.

I stared for a good few seconds as I tried to remember exactly what had happened through the pounding headache.

I’d fought the archer zombie woman, got poisoned, then… tried to flush the poison out of my bloodstream by shoving life ooze into it.

That had been so dumb, but it had kind of worked? I couldn’t remember very well.

And then what? I remembered stumbling toward the door and vomiting at some point, but not much else besides that. But considering I was out here, I must have made it back outside before I’d collapsed.

I continued staring at the gate as the horror of what I’d experienced slowly sank in.

Then I took a shuddering breath and let it out. I hugged myself, hung my head, and then took another breath. Then another and another. Before long, I was hyperventilating and tears were streaming down my face.

Haha… And I’d thought I’d gotten used to this world’s bullshit.

I could get lost in a dungeon for days and it was fine. I could collapse from lack of Ether in a dark locker full of sentient clothes and have a mild freakout, but otherwise be alright. I could face a flying laser shark in an arena with completely screwed-up spatial physics and it didn’t even bother me that much.

All of these had been so crazy that maybe my mind just hadn’t fully registered the very real danger I’d been in each time. But there was something that felt much more real about being shot with arrows and then feeling sick because of the poison.

I didn’t even know how long it had been, but I still felt like shit and I was pretty sure I had a fever.

“…Chat?” I whimpered as I finally raised my head and looked into the group chat window.

The last few messages were cheers that I was still alive, and everything before then were various ways to say that I was dead. Great.

“How… long has it been?” I rasped out before breaking out into coughs.

JamieWasTaken3: fuck you sound awful

JamieWasTaken3: like two days

KaiEbikoOfficial: nanaaaaaaaaa you’re okay?!

I blinked blearily, trying to keep my focus on chat, but it was getting hard. It actually reminded me of back when I’d run out of Intra…

“Two days…? What?” I coughed again and then shivered when a wind blew past me. “H-Hey, Ebi. I’m– I’m alive… but probably sick. I didn’t even know I could get sick.”

Did that mean that at least viruses and bacteria existed in this world? Or was this the poison’s doing? Was some of it still in me?

God, my head was killing me and I was parched. I’d never even needed to drink in this world. Maybe the life ooze was fluid enough for that? I should eat some of it anyway just in case it helped me recover.

Also, I really needed the toilet.

KaiEbikoOfficial: nooooo

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

KaiEbikoOfficial: I told you to build a house!

JamieWasTaken3: yea you got poisoned two days ago

KaiEbikoOfficial: you could have rested in it now!

JamieWasTaken3: then slept the whole next day

JamieWasTaken3: and now its morning again

I groaned and reached into my backpack to retrieve my bucket to get some more ooze.

But I couldn’t find it.

“What… Where…” I muttered in annoyance before remembering that I’d brought out the bucket back when I’d tried to treat the poison.

Had I just left it inside the dungeon? Fuck.

I’d left my naginata and my key sword behind too. Double fuck.

There was no way I was going back inside right now. Not when I felt this awful. Maybe I could find another ooze lake nearby…?

Hold on. This city sat on a river, didn’t it? I could just drink actual water instead of eating more ooze.

With great effort, I pushed myself to stand, took a second to decide which way to circle around the city to reach the river.

Then I remembered that my bladder was about to burst and summoned John to look away. Sure, the stream was supposedly censored when I did my business, but it still made me feel more at easy when I did that.

I was in a very grumpy mood, so I pissed at the dungeon’s main entrance as revenge for getting me poisoned.

That ought to teach it.

Once done with my business – washed with the glove and dried with the towel like always since I had yet to get infinite toilet paper from a dungeon – I followed the city walls back around to where I’d come from.

It took a painful half an hour until I reached the river again. I knelt down by it and nearly vomited again straight into it, but managed to settle for just a pained groan.

Luckily for me, the water level was high enough for me to reach with just my short arms. I reached in, definitely didn’t almost get swept by the currents just by doing so, and quickly rinsed my hands out of habit first before pooling some of the water in my hands to drink it.

I repeated the motion a few more times until my throat didn’t feel like a desert anymore and then proceeded to lie on my back.

Normally, the sound of the river would be soothing, but with my head pounding this much, it was anything but. Unfortunately, I also didn’t really feel like moving much. Both my mind and my body were still spent even after apparently sleeping through an entire day.

What the hell even was that poison? Some kind of Ether and Intra-draining concoction from hell? God…

I lay there for a little while with my eyes closed, waiting for the nausea to abate a bit. When I opened my eyes and properly looked at the sky, I couldn’t help but groan.

Naturally, when it rained, it poured. This time, maybe literally. I watched as the giant dark cloud on the horizon slowly waltzed its way in my direction and from the look of things, I had at most an hour before it was above me. And from then on, it was anyone’s guess whether it decided to dump all its water on me or not.

Getting drenched sounded like a terrible idea when I was already sick.

…I really could have used that shelter, dammit. There was absolutely no way I was going to risk sleeping inside one of the houses in the dungeon. Especially when I was still feeling this weak and useless.

What the hell was I going to do?

“Chat… What do I do? That cloud is going to kill me.”

KaiEbikoOfficial: build a basic shelter

KaiEbikoOfficial: something out of sticks and leaves

“But how? I don’t know anything about wilderness survival.”

Well, I’d played plenty of survival games, but I highly doubted much of that would apply to real life.

JamieWasTaken3: ok i got you

JamieWasTaken3: step one find some trees

I narrowed my eyes in confusion. Jamie knew stuff about wilderness survival? Well, that was unexpected.

uptonMIKE: are you strong enough to cut down trees yet?

“I don’t know? Maybe? Ugh, but I left all my weapons behind like an idiot…” I moaned before remembering the key sword’s innate skill.

I wasn’t sure whether there was some kind of distance limit or whether I could still summon it from within the dungeon, but I still tried.

To my immense relief, the thing magically appeared in my outstretched hand, confirming that I could indeed still use it.

uptonMIKE: good then you should go to the forest again

JamieWasTaken3: step two find two yshaped trees near each other

I sighed, but forced myself to get up again and headed toward the trees.

“Y-shaped trees?” I mumbled. “Why those?”

JamieWasTaken3: step three put a log on top of them

JamieWasTaken3: so like they hold it in their ys

I blinked as I took in Jamie’s crappy wording.

“Oh, I get it… Alright.”

JamieWasTaken3: step four lean more logs on the suspended one

JamieWasTaken3: make like a tent shape with them

JamieWasTaken3: step five cover it all in branches and leaves

JamieWasTaken3: and theres ur shelter

I nodded while looking for any trees that might work for what Jamie had described.

“I had no idea you were a survival expert, Jamie…” I murmured as I noticed two trees in the exact shape and distance from each other that I was looking for.

JamieWasTaken3: I read it from a guide lol

“...Oh. That makes more sense.” I hummed in understanding as I looked around for a tree I could cut down to serve as my roof.

JamieWasTaken3: hey!

JamieWasTaken3: Im smart

“Smart enough to look up a guide, mhmm…” Just because my head was killing me and I wanted nothing but to drop dead into a bed didn’t mean I couldn’t tease my viewers. It was my duty as a streamer.

JamieWasTaken3: smart to know when to ask the internet for advice!

I huffed a laugh and narrowed my eyes at a tree that I thought could work decently well. I would just have to cut out some of its branches as well.

Now the only question was whether I was strong enough to cut the tree down and then lift it up. All while sick and completely exhausted.

Ugh…

The key sword was actually perfect for cutting down trees since it was sort of shaped like a saw with its teeth. It took a lot of effort and a few breaks, but I did manage to slowly saw through the tree and topple it down as the orange smoke poured out of it. Once I was done, I cut off all its branches one by one as well.

One look at the dark cloud of doom on the horizon confirmed that I didn’t have much time left and I probably wouldn’t be able to finish it in time.

Well, shit.

I was still going to try.

I grabbed the log and began dragging it in the direction of my chosen trees. It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. The log kept getting snagged on random rocks and branches on the ground, which was annoying, but otherwise, my arm strength seemed to be just enough to pull it off.

To be honest, I was quite a bit stronger than I had any right to be considering my tiny child body, but then again, there was magical logic at play.

Actually, maybe it had something to do with my Ether? Since Ether was supposed to be the physical energy or whatever, getting more Ether also made me stronger? But I hadn’t increased my Ether by that much, had I?

I grunted and fell on my butt as I finally got the log all the way to the two trees. I felt a little nauseous again. Maybe exerting myself like this was a bad idea when I already felt so terrible.

Go figure.

I didn’t want to just give up now, though. Not after going through all the trouble to get that log. Not when the cloud was so close.

But how the hell was I supposed to lift the log up to snag it between the tree’s branches, though? I was way too short to even reach the Y intersection of the trees. I would need some kind of pulley or at least a rope, which I didn’t have.

Dammit. This wasn’t going to work.

uptonMIKE: it might be better to find a cave or a hollow tree for now

It probably was, to be honest.

Ugh, why the hell had I gone through the trouble of cutting down a tree? Stupid sick brain. And stupid Jamie for suggesting it.

“Yeah… Cave might be good,” I mumbled under my nose and set out to find something, leaving the log in the grass.

God, I was so tired though. Stupid cloud. Stupid poison. Stupid log.

By the time water began to trickle down from the sky, I hadn’t yet found a good enough shelter and was forced to either keep looking or wait it out below some branches.

I chose the latter.

Sure, my clothes might have some anti-cold properties, but I really didn’t want to risk getting even sicker. The fact that I was exhausted in more ways than one might have played a role in the decision as well.

From the sound of things, it began to really pour over the course of the next few minutes, but the spot I’d found protected me from the worst of it. I didn’t even have to find a shelter. The trees were so numerous and dense that their leaves served as decent protection anyway.

“Don’t even need a special shelter,” I mumbled as I sat next to the tree and patted its bark. “Thanks, buddy…”

Then I saw a flash of light and startled moments before I heard the thunder in the distance.

“Oh… It’s a thunderstorm. Great…”

Now, usually, I loved thunderstorms. But that was assuming that I was at home, looking out of my window at one.

“It’s fine, chat… It’s gonna blow over soon…”