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Sympathy

An old man and a petite ‘woman’ sit in a restaurant. The place is filled with mercenaries, adventurers, bounty hunters, and plenty of other people with dangerous jobs.

“...see this man?” The old man says, showing a picture of a tall man to the girl, the man in the picture is covered in an assortment of cloths and strapped with gear all around his body. Concealing it. “He was known as the greatest bounty hunter of his time, ruthless, efficient, hard to kill, he traveled across the entire world and more, with connections all over the places he has been to… until he got beaten by a little girl, namely, you.”

“Pshh, yeah. That… that was my father.” The girl says.

He does a double-take at her. Eyes wide in disbelief.

“Wait, WHAT!?, but– girl, how old are you again?”

“...10?” She answers.

“10!? You– you massacred the entirety of the Ursula spire! Tore it down to nothing but dust and rubble–”

“I DIDN’T WANT TO!...” She almost screams, tears dropping from her cheeks. ”I didn't have a choice, I never wanted to kill those people, never wanted to have so much blood in my hands, but– but the things they did to those people, the things they were going to do to me… it was an accident, I swear!”

The man sighs deeply with deep regret and sadness lacing his wavering voice. Dropping his head in his hands he says:.

“Just… God… Just what the hell has this world come to?”

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Day 7

“Behold! My greatest creations!”

I shed a tear at the sight of my first ever tool of survival, my first step, a clumsy one, but a step nonetheless. Towards civilization. Hopefully.

I crouch down to grab my ropes and take them with me. What am I going to use them for? You ask? Well, a rope can be useful for many things. Tying things together, climbing, a whip, traps, a belt, pulleys…

I don’t have or don’t know how to do more than half of the things I listed but just being able to do the 2 crucial ones right now is what's important.

Climbing and tying things.

With this I won’t need to spend time sharpening sticks or bones to climb a tree every night when I need to sleep, plus, I can make a net, a proper one this time, to increase my inventory capacity.

I made an improvised backpack with rope straps and interconnected dry branches for structure. It’s a big, unwieldy, uncomfortable boxy thing that chafes my back. But it gets the job done and I don’t have to carry everything by hand anymore.

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I placed my lovely stick, the remaining fish ribs, and the extra coils of rope I made inside. Occasionally when I find food, I pause to eat and store the extras inside my backpack to eat later.

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Day 13

“Ouch… It hurts… why do I have to go through this?”

It’s currently pouring water from the sky and I am once again taking refuge on the top of a tree. The canopy doesn’t do much for shelter, so I'm sitting up near the trunk in one of the few dry spots.

I became lazy once food and transporting issues got solved, thinking that was the end of my problems until I reached the vantage point. In reality, though, I wouldn’t try to improve until the metaphorical problem is banging on my door, now I pay the price of my ignorance.

“...I hope this doesn’t attract unwanted company,” I say as I carefully massage my bloody feet. Picking off dirt and removing small pebbles that punctured my skin, the wood gets stained into a dark red color as I wash the wounds in the rain.

I had overestimated my body’s hardiness. I had thought that because I haven’t caught a disease after all this time and the freakish level of regeneration I witnessed, I thought that things would be easy. That I would not need to worry about dying of disease and some other infectious wound.

“HNNNG!” I pulled off another pebble “...Stupid.” No, I’m not crying, it’s because of the rain.

After so many days of sleeping, eating, and constantly walking… barefoot. My feet became completely grated and filled with cuts, not to mention completely black from all the dirt I trekked on.

*Sigh*

It’ll probably heal in a day… maybe two…

I curl around my backpack and attempt to sleep. It’s hard to. My head gets swirled into a whirlpool of thought as the cool air around me seeps the heat from my bones.

I’m heading in the direction of those massive trees… but is it even worth it? There’s no guarantee I’ll find anything from a higher vantage point. There isn’t even any guarantee that this planet has civilization! The way things are going right now… I will not last long.

My main weapon is a stick! Not a stave, not a sword, not a spear. A. STICK. There’s no way I will defeat a monster with this, as good quality as it is. It's only blunt damage.

I don’t have a… home base. To return to. To store food for the winter, to have a comfortable sleep. I don't know how to make traps, weapons… Anything! These ropes are a miracle fluke at best…

My voice wavers as I continue to think about what is to come. I feel a ball of anguish rising in my throat.

I try to think about how to make shoes to distract myself… Blank, nothing useful comes to mind. More anguish arrives in my head with each passing second.

I hug my tail tightly. Gulping down my tears.

Try not to cry.

Cry, a lot…

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Day 15?

…I wonder how much time I wasted slept.

. . .

“Finally… I have arrived”.

I crank my neck backward to gaze at the whole ‘world tree’ in its entire glory. It’s difficult to even see the top. Feels like staring at a wooden skyscraper. Very large and unbelievably tall.

And also absolutely covered in thick wooden vines, creating a straight undulating pattern that climbs upwards, with lots of holes and dark rifts formed from the vines growing on top of each other, I can’t even see the original trunk from here.

With so many things to grab onto and footholds to stop and take a rest, climbing shouldn't be as hard as I expected. And the ‘wood caves’ that I can see here and there can provide shelter from the storms and for the night… I just hope that other things didn’t have the same idea.

Hopefully, there will be only birds living here…

“Fuu…“ I take a deep breath.

“Is there anything I should do before climbing?” I consider my options.

I could use a lot of rope to use when I eventually need to descend… yeah, no. I would need to make a lot of rope for that, I don’t think I could even fit anything else in my backpack if I decided to carry more than 100 meters of rope. I’ll have to climb down by hand then.

I don’t know if there’ll be food I can find in this tree outside of dubious mushrooms and moss. I have plenty of food stored… they’ll last at least a day or two. Going up and down this giant tree will take a lot of time, but I estimate that it will take 2 days maximum.

I glance at my dirty hands.

…They’ll probably be bloody red and my skin will be scraped off at the end of this. *sigh* Leaves and bark don’t work for makeshift gloves because they get ripped apart too easily. I've tried before and ended up with green mush and splinters stuck in me.

Oh well…

I tighten my grip. Steel my resolve.

“Let’s get this over with.”

And began climbing.

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