“So, Basic Illusion is up by 15%,” Issac sat down with his back leaned against a tree and checked his stats. Using Basic Illusion on the four goblins increased it by 15% out of 100%. “Then if I hunt 25, no, 26 goblins, this skill will rank up.”
After seeing nothing was wrong with his stats, he got up and dusted his pants. He still hadn’t found a water source. Although he wasn’t worried about food, for the time being, water was a necessity. But his food reserves decreased by one after using the kebabs as bait for the goblins.
Bayes had told him that anything inside the space pouch gets its time frozen too. He tried to verify that by stuffing the bag with street food and seeing how the kebab was still steaming when he took it out - Bayes was telling the truth.
Issac, like before, kept his ears open for any flowing or gurgling sounds of water. Night had fallen. The dense leaves made it impossible to tell time. But Issac knew; it was almost instinctive knowledge.
Issac felt more at ease; it felt as though he was in his element. “Well, if I could use what I did to escape Auburn City, then that’d be swell,” he mused.
He headed westwards, and after walking for half an hour, he finally heard the sound he was waiting for. It was a river! Issac maintained a cautious attitude and walked towards the trickling sound to his left. Gradually, the trees thinned, and the gushing river entered his vision. The crescent moon was reflected in its waters.
Slowly, Issac walked to the river’s shore. The grass under his feet was gradually being replaced with rocks and sand the closer he got. Issac crouched down and looked at the shallow waters. Cupping his hands, he scooped up some water and drank it. It was sweet with a hint of minerals. He repeated this until his thirst was quenched and sat down near the shore. He took off his sneakers and let them air out. On second thought, he took his socks off as well and rested them on his sneakers.
His bare feet hit the sandy shore; the granules seeped between his toes as Issac wriggled them. Finally, he had a moment of respite. He stretched his legs and leaned back, using his arms to support him. The only thing that caught his eye was the beautiful moon hanging up in the sky. But even the moon needed some place to show its grace, and that was the dark night. So many stars dotted the night sky, much more than he’d seen on Earth. The view reminded him of the pictures of perfect starry skies he’d see on the internet.
“Speaking of Earth, t-they’re alright, right?” Issac exhaled deeply. His mother and sister must be frantically searching for him right now. He couldn’t tell them where he was going and disappeared without a trace. Not like he had any choice in it. But looking back on it now, he wished he hadn’t gone out that day.
Issac felt like he was a bit hungry. Taking out his pouch, he grabbed another kebab skewer from inside. Issac quickly bit off the kebabs one by one and ate them, unable to savor the taste. Once he was done, he tossed the skewer in the river and washed his hands too. He might’ve never done something as wasteful as this before, but he was afraid the smell might attract any undesirable creatures to his location.
“On that note, I haven’t heard any suspicious noises for the time I’ve been here,” Issac frowned. He scratched his hair and thought, “Is it because this part of the forest is near the city? That would make sense since, with the abundance of Bronze Rank Adventurers, the lower-level monsters wouldn’t stay at the edges of the forest. The goblins from before might just be a scouting party.”
Issac nodded to himself, feeling that his logic was sound. His shoulders relaxed after concluding that he was safe here. “Time to set up camp,” Issac got up and dusted his pants. The loud gurgling of the river masked any sound he was making. He found some dry leaves and small twigs. Surrounding them with small rocks, he made himself a campfire.
Issac finally remembered something crucial, “Wait, how do I light it?” The two brown rocks in his hands looked unreliable, and he didn’t think just bashing them would be successful in creating sparks. He let them go and dusted his hands. “Can I use magic?” Issac thought about it. Since he used imagination to use Basic Illusion, maybe other kinds of magic also worked on visualization. Raising a finger, he concentrated. His mana began to converge at the tip of his finger but leaked out of his finger as a semi-translucent string of smoke.
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Issac closed his eyes and began to imagine a blowtorch. Swoosh! Like a blowtorch, a concentrated wisp of fire formed on the tip of his finger. Issac opened his eyes and looked at it. The fire looked pressurized, not like the unstable flames of normal gas lighters. “Is it because I imagined a blowtorch?” The pressurized flame seared the air around it. Even though it was dark, Issac could clearly see how the air danced around the flame.
He shook his head and lowered his finger into the kindling. The flame maintained the direction of his finger and quickly ignited the leaves and twigs. Instead of blowing on the smoking foliage to make the fire larger, Issac began to light other parts of the kindling, and soon, the flames converged, and a campfire was created.
Issac quickly cut off the mana supply to the flame. He could feel his mana rapidly decreasing. He had only kept it on for 30 seconds, but it had already halved his mana storage. Quietly huffing, he wondered, “Why does a small flame eat away at my reserves like this?” The matter reminded him of his status screen’s [Affinity] section. “Because I don’t have an affinity towards fire?” He recalled that he had an affinity for the 『Dark』 and 『Ice』 elements.
Issac wanted to confirm his guesses by trying to create ice but decided not to after seeing his leftover mana. If there were an emergency, he would need it. If manga logic is anything to go by, Issac would be unable to move after his mana depletes. Sighing at his predicament, he searched for some sticks to make a clothes rack.
After a while, he found two sticks that looked like an uppercase ‘Y’ and a relatively long straight stick. He set up the former two branches a distance from one another and rested the straight one on them, with its two ends each on the formers’ grooves. The makeshift clothes rack was made close to the fire.
Issac then began to take his clothes off. After his escape today, some parts of his jacket were torn, and everything was dusty. He dusted his pants off for a while before wearing them again. He did not plan to spend the night in his underwear. Issac did the same for his jacket and shirt but also washed them in the river water. The dust and filth he couldn’t get out were washed away downstream by the torrent. After that, he hung his clothes over his makeshift clothes rack and waited for them to dry. Issac exhaled again and began hunting around. This time, his target was easy to find since all he wanted was to gather some leaves and create a clean resting place. Leaves aren’t that hard to find in a forest.
Plucking enough leaves from the trees, he made a mat with them and sat down on it. He would’ve laid on it, but the leaves would’ve pricked his body, making him uncomfortable. After everything was done, he finally rested. The night was filled with the gentle whisper of the wind, periodic chirping of the crickets, the gurgling of the flowing river, the rustling of leaves, and silver moonlight that illuminated everything underneath. He kept the Goblin Sword with him in case of an emergency.
The fire dyed Issac and his surroundings in an orange hue. As the flames danced and crackled, Issac thought back to everything that’s happened till now. He lost his family and friends to this accursed world. “And maybe, I’ll lose myself someday too.” He laughed mirthlessly, the wind carried his musings, but none was there to listen.
He stoked the fire and added kindling when it got dimmer. Looking at his sopping clothes, Issac estimated it would take more than an hour. “I can stay awake till then,” Issac huffed. With nothing left to do, he took out his space pouch. It was made out of fine yet tough cloth and had a symbol in the middle. It was a purple cube. Issac pressed the emblem, and a screen appeared in front of him. It was a list of everything the pouch held.
Contents:
Grappling Gun ×1
Kebab(s) made out of Arrow Hog meat ×3
Cream Bread ×5
Loaf of Wheat Bread ×15
Gold Coins(Mir) ×58
“That seems about right,” he thought aloud. His only regret was not taking a waterskin with him. But nothing he could do about that now.
Issac put more kindling into the fire when he saw that it had dimmed. The fire crackled like it was in joy. Issac lay down on the leaf mat. The stems from the ripped leaves pricked his skin initially, but it didn’t bother him so much after a while. The gentle warmth of the fire soothed him, and the river’s burbling served as a lullaby.
And after an unfortunate and eventful day, Issac slowly drifted off to sleep.