The thunderstorm didn’t blow over soon.

In fact, it kept raining way past midnight according to my bracelet’s built-in clock.

I wanted nothing more than to huddle into something soft and pass out at that point. And while Mr. Gargles could provide the former, the thunderstorm made sure that as soon as my eyes began drooping, a loud bang would abruptly wake me up.

“I hate this, chat…” I whined. “I just wanna sleep off the stupid poison…”

Part of me felt like this was some kind of karma. For being stupid. For not building a proper base of operations when I could. For cutting off ties with my family. For everything else I’d ever done.

Really, why hadn’t I made some kind of base? Because chat had voted to explore? That was just an excuse. It wasn’t as if I always listened to whatever they voted for anyway.

It was because I was lazy. Because I’d believed myself to be invincible. Because I’d thought I would find my back quickly somehow? Because… I’d felt like the protagonist of some epic isekai story? Well if that was the case, then right now would probably be some kind of character development moment where I stopped screwing around and began taking this seriously.

After all, even if I had video game mechanics and chat to keep me company, this was not a game and I needed to stop treating it as such.

Another flash and a bang nearby made me flinch and forget my train of thoughts.

Once I confirmed that no forest fire was happening because of the lightning, I relaxed a bit and hugged Mr. Gargles tighter.

Unfortunately, as nice as the canopy was to protect me from the worst of it, some rain still found its way down to me. I was already soaking wet and shivering even despite my cold-resistant clothes. Lightning my body on fire could only help so much, especially because I had limited Ether now that I’d left my bucket in the dungeon and couldn’t see any ooze lakes nearby.

I sneezed.

This was going from worse to absolutely awful. If I survived this, I had to make quadruple sure this would never happen again.

Never ever again.

Finally, at about three in the morning, according to my bracelet, the storm began to die down and I was left with just light drizzle reaching my ears.

I probably passed out at some point, huddled with Mr. Gargles under the tree, because the next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes to bright and cheery sunlight greeting me through the canopy.

My eyelids still felt heavy and my head was pounding.

“Morning, chat…” I managed to groan out before sneezing again. “...I don’t really feel any better. Ugh.”

What I would give for some warm chicken soup and aspirin. The best I had was pizza and shark meat, though…

I also had that tentacle. I’d thought I never wanted to try eating that, but apparently, my mind was delirious enough right now that I was tempted to try it.

Also, I felt ravenous after two days of not eating anything and couldn’t soak the shark meat, nor did I want to use more Ether restoring the pizza since I was still kinda low after the stormy night of keeping myself somewhat warm.

Tentacle it was.

I pulled it out of the backpack without even grimacing. I looked it over with a frown and tried tearing off a chunk with my hands, but it was a bit too tough for that. I also didn’t want to use my key sword that had been covered in zombie guts multiple times without disinfection. Sure, they had despawned, but it still made me leery.

I rustled through my backpack, mentally trying to find something else that I could use as an impromptu knife. I found a gleaming green gem that looked decently sharp, although I had no idea where I’d gotten that.

…It reminded me of the gem-covered arrow the archer zombie bitch had tossed at me, though.

“...Chat? Did I get this from the archer zombie?” I asked and then sniffled. God, I didn’t even have any napkins to blow my nose into. Should I use the towel? Ugh…

JamieWasTaken3: yea

SpoOo0oOon: you barely looked at it back then

trelipideliberitation: wait is it poisoned?

“That’s what I’m thinking, Trelip…” I mumbled before trying to appraise it, remembering that I’d switch it out, switching Appraisal back in instead of Fire Breath, and finally appraising it.

Infused emerald

An emerald infused with some Ether.

“Huh. Emerald? Doesn’t say anything about poison…”

I was still a tad leery about it, but it was probably fine.

I used the sharp edge to cut off a chunk of the tentacle – it took a bit of effort, but I managed – put the rest back into the bag, and then pulled out the frying pan I’d gotten from the dungeon, before putting the piece of the tentacle on it.

Then I simply shoved my other hand under the pan, made a small fire, and waited until the tentacle was sizzling.

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It actually smelled pretty nice.

Naturally, I forgot that if you try to fry something without oil or butter, you just get burnt food. Chat had been warning me about that, but I was still only half-paying attention to it.

I looked at my blackened piece of octopus tentacle, sighed, and shrugged.

I wasn’t one to waste food.

I bit on the less burnt side and chewed. It took a few seconds for the flavor to come out, but when it did, it was surprisingly good. Maybe I should have judged tentacles so prematurely.

Once done with my breakfast, I clambered my way to the river again, washed my face, and drank from it again.

Luckily, there were no more clouds on the horizon waiting to make me miserable again. That didn’t mean I could slack, however. I didn’t want to scramble for shelter again if I remained sick for longer.

So despite still feeling like crap, I went back to the log I’d cut down yesterday and began brainstorming how to lift it up with chat.

I was too short and weak to do it normally. I could tie the towel around it and lift it up but the towel wasn’t that long. I could explode a bubble under it to throw it into the air, but that was dangerous and not guaranteed to make the log land where I needed it to…

uptonMIKE: does it fit into your backpack?

I blinked as I thought about it and followed that train of thought to its natural conclusion. The items in my backpack didn’t weigh anything, after all.

“Huh. I wonder.”

I opened my magical space-time backpack as wide as I could, placed it on the ground next to one of the log’s ends, painstakingly lifted the log again – ugh, the underside was still wet and gross – and then began slowly shoving it inside.

To my surprise, it actually worked. I was worried that I would finally run into my cap at this point, but the entirety of the log managed to slide in. I stared at the backpack for a moment, then lifted it up, and put it on my shoulders again.

“Well, that makes things much easier,” I mumbled.

trelipideliberitation: wait it can store living things?

“It’s not living, is it…? It’s a log.”

Although to be fair, I never tried storing a living thing inside. Or rather, there hadn’t been anything living around except for me to test that and I obviously wasn’t going to try and climb inside myself.

“I still don’t even know if they are real trees… Maybe they aren’t even technically alive,” I mumbled, remembering the orange smoke.

I sneezed and sniffed again.

That aside, I used my newfound tree-climbing skills and quickly made my way up to one of the Y-shaped trees I’d scouted yesterday before the storm. I thought about how I wanted to do this for a moment before deciding on my move.

I had a pretty dumb idea, but it also felt like it could work.

I found a decently stable spot in the tree’s branch intersection, put down the backpack, and pulled out the log just a tad. I placed that log’s end in the spot where I wanted it, grabbed the bag again, stepped on the log, took aim, and then hurled the bag over to the other tree.

It worked like a charm. The rest of the log popped out of the bag as it flew and clattered on the other tree as the bag fell back on the grass below.

uptonMIKE: uh are you sure about tossing your bag around?

trelipideliberitation: nice shot!

“Yeah, it should be fine…” I muttered with a satisfied smile as I made my way back down. “The stuff inside didn’t even get wet when the bag swallowed all the water, remember?”

I grabbed the bag, checked it over and once I was fairly sure that it was still totally fine, I put it on my back again. Then I looked at the log suspended in the air by the two trees and nodded to myself in satisfaction.

I spent the rest of the day finding appropriate trees and branches to lay against the main one and bracing them against the ground and each other so that they would stay put and subsequently finding smaller branches and leaves to cover the whole thing in and finish up my all-natural tent.

It was… actually nice to have a roof over my head again as I fell asleep that night. Even as scuffed as it was, it made me feel way safer than sleeping inside a dungeon or out in the open where rain could ruin my day at any moment.

Well, rain would still ruin my day, but at least it would be as bad.

The next day, I finally began to feel just a tad better. I didn’t sniffle as much, my head felt clearer, and I only sneezed a few times. I was still hesitant to go back to the dungeon to retrieve my stuff though. After all, it had taken everything I could do to beat that stupid archer woman when I’d been healthy and had all my stuff. There was no way I was risking having to fight an enemy of similar caliber while still occasionally sneezing.

With that said, I spent the day resting again, making my new makeshift home a bit more livable with some soft grass for bedding, and brainstorming with chat on other possible dangers I was still unprepared for.

Poison was one of those, of course. But I was also worried about a dozen other things now that I had a better idea of what this world was like. Mind-control, possession, curses, bottomless pits, teleportation traps… The list went on. There were way too many things I had no answer for and it made me uneasy.

Jeofffff: I doubt there’s gonna be bottomless pits in the city

Jeofffff: feels like it’s about fighting random people from there

bloopbooper: bloop… (っ º - º ς)

“I mean, yeah. I think so too. But you never know with these dungeons. And also, what about other dungeons? Just because this one doesn’t have bottomless pits doesn’t mean there won’t ever be any and I doubt the slow fall effect of the sleeves is that effective in the air if I don’t flap my hands like a chicken.”

KaiEbikoOfficial: there’s no way you can know in advance though

JamieWasTaken3: yea maybe its like ur fighting famous ppl from that city

KaiEbikoOfficial: or maybe you can somehow?

I shrugged.

“No idea how to find out, Ebi. Eh, you think so, Jamie? So far it feels like it’s just random people… Although, it did get exponentially more difficult.” I grimaced. “The first one was barely stronger than a regular zombie from the water park, the second one used magic, and the third one nearly killed me.”

I grunted in annoyance.

“How many fights are left there, even? How hard would those fights even be? I’m not gonna risk going any deeper right now…”

JamieWasTaken3: I bet the final boss is some giant dragon lol

GeorgeDoshington: nah its the castles king

“Why dragon…? Feels a bit random.”

HellEnna: nana?

“Hmm? Hey, Emma,” I said, trying not to sound too cautious. “What’s up?”

HellEnna: are you feeling better?

“Yeah, a little bit…”

Emma had been in the chat a few times in the past few days while I’d been sick. She’d asked me how I felt several times, but it was hard to tell what she was thinking from her flat and emotionless style of messages, so it made me cautious.

I could always call her personally, but… I also kind of didn’t want to. I wasn’t comfortable with actually directly talking to her yet.

And calls with Ebi were just more soothing.

HellEnna: that’s good

HellEnna: I’m glad

I narrowed my eyes.

“Was there something you needed…?”

Ugh, was that too confrontational? I still had no idea how to talk to Emma, dammit.

HellEnna: well

HellEnna: the police wanted to talk to you

I froze with my mouth hanging open.

After a few moments of silence, I sneezed.

“Uh… Okay…?” I asked as I sniffled, a bit dumbfounded.