While the first part of the trip through the forest has been like some kind of awful nightmare that just refused to release its grip and let him wake, things changed after the foliasaur. His recognition that the world, or some douchey power related to it, wasn’t going to just let him go meant that he had to acclimate. And not the half-ass acclimation that he had been doing to skate by until he could find some escape hatch. There was no escape hatch. Not that he had any intention of going along with whatever script that had been intended for him. He was more convinced than ever that just going along would mean swimming through an ocean of shit. Go fight some fucking war he knew nothing about and, frankly, didn’t want to know anything about? Screw that noise.

If I can’t get away, fine. I can’t get away. But it’s pretty clear that getting stronger is the one and only hope of surviving here. To that end, he became an ongoing source of disappointment to the chicken-lizard that he finally decided to call Drumstick. God, I’m so bad at naming things. While the frequency of attacks from other monsters went down, they never really stopped. Instead of letting Drumstick eat all of them, he started cutting them open to find the cores. That was a mixed bag of success. Some of them didn’t have cores. From the ones that did, he could only absorb about half of them. Even so, it became a matter of quantity of quality. While he couldn’t track the improvement, he did notice a qualitative improvement in things like his strength, speed, and agility. He also tried eating some of the monster meat, at least from things that looked vaguely like animals he recognized and weren’t obviously filled with venom or poison. He felt like he got something from doing that, but it was more ephemeral or maybe less concentrated. After that, he mostly just let Drumstick eat its fill unless he wanted some kind of meat for dinner

He also started trying to figure out how his own core, assuming he had one, actually worked. He got fairly adept using it to boost his strength. A few times, he even managed to launch distance attacks like the one he’d used to kill those bandits back on the road. Dumping power into his sword remained entirely out of reach, though. He also found that other-Terry and the other-knowledge had stopped intruding on his thoughts or even offering anything like help. What the fuck? You two couldn’t wait to put in your two cents before. Now, you’ve gone mute? While regular-Terry got the distinct impression that they heard him, they didn’t respond. Man, even my other personality is a jackass. Is there some kind of virus in this world that does that to everyone?

As the days turned into weeks, Terry found himself looking at the crude map more and more often. While trial and error had shown him that there was plenty to eat and seemingly safe water to drink, he started getting more and more worried about getting lost forever in this forest. If the weather turned from summer to autumn, he had no idea about how to fashion himself more permanent shelter. He knew in the vague way that most people from America did that you could make shelter from what you found in a forest. He even knew that he could make tiles and basic dishes from clay. However, the only way that knowledge was going to prove helpful was if he found a manual sitting on a rock called, How to Make Shelter, Create Tools, and Fashion Useful Shit from Clay. Maybe he could survive if he found a cave and there wasn’t already something horrendously dangerous living it.

Not sure what else to do, he kept heading southeast and hoping against hope to find the road again. Cutting through this forest seemed like such a good idea, he complained mentally. There wasn’t much heat behind that complaint, though. Someone or something had been watching and following him. He was certain of that much. He was putting good odds on it being people from the Church or one of stupidly pretty people come to drag him back north. Neither option appealed. Not that he dwelled on it too much. At least, not until he started getting a persistent sense that he was being watched again. Since Drumstrick didn’t trigger that impression anymore, and the less dangerous beasts in the forest didn’t seem to do it anymore, that only left two options. Option one was that a powerful beast was stalking him. Option two was that one or more people were now stalking him. Terry found a little grim humor in hoping it was the beast. At least that might provide him with a core he could suck dry to add to his strength.

That turned out to be a fool’s hope. Terry couldn’t even muster any surprise when he didn’t get what he wanted. He had the distinct impression that he was going to keep not getting he wanted as long he defied the role he’d been dragged here to fulfill. When three men in Church garb stepped into view and brandished weapons at him, he just shook his head and kept walking toward them. One of the church asshats stepped forward a little.

“You’re very brave to have survived the Forest of Despair, but you can’t hope to stand against us. You will come and—”

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“Move,” said Terry not breaking stride as he closed the distance with the men. “I don’t have the time, interest, or patience to deal with your stupidity.”

The man drew himself up and self-righteously declared, “We represent the Church!”

“So?”

“Kill him!” bellowed the man in charge.

Terry dropped the head sack. It had served him well, and he didn’t want these idiots to damage it. While he wasn’t eager to kill these men, they’d taken the decision out of his hands. It took him a moment to realize that these Church people were clearly not top-shelf fighters. Damn, they are slow, he thought as he launched himself toward the group. His sword seemed to appear in his hand of its own volition. By the time the lead man had managed to level his spear, Terry was already there. He knocked the spear out of his way by slapping the haft. It flew out of the church guy’s hand. The man had a moment to stare after it in shock before Terry planted a foot in the man’s chest and drove him to the ground. There was a cracking sound as something in the man’s chest gave way.

The other two dropped their spears and went for swords. Terry punched the one on the left in the face. There was another cracking sound as the man’s neck gave way. He just leaned out of the way at the last Church guy tried to cut him down with a overhand chop of his sword. Terry was walking back to the first guy before the last guy even realized that he’d been run through. There was the sound of a body collapsing behind him. Terry pushed away the sick feeling in his stomach as best as he could. Rule Number Two, he reminded himself. They weren’t here to trade recipes. It was you or them. He looked down at the guy he’d kicked in the chest. The man was still alive, even if he didn’t look very healthy at the moment.

“How close is the road?” he asked.

“Won’t tell you anything,” wheezed the Church guy before spitting up some blood.

“Don’t be a whiny loser. You picked this fight. It’s not my fault you weren’t strong enough to win it.”

“The Church will—”

“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll do scary things in a month or three when they realize you’re not coming back. Road?”

“Fool. I’m sworn to—”

“Hey, Drumstick! Come here!” shouted Terry.

The big beast peeked around a massive tree nearly fifty feet away. Apparently satisfied that the fighting was over, it trotted over. It gave the men on the ground a curious look.

“Are you hungry? Do you want to eat this guy?” asked Terry.

He gestured at the wide-eyed Church man who tried to push himself away. All he seemed to do was aggravate his internal injuries, because he spat up more blood. Drumstick leaned in a bit so its huge avian head hovered over the injured man. It let out a little squawk noise that could have literally meant anything.

“You do?” interpreted Terry. “Well, in that case—”

“Half a day’s travel,” gasped the man.

“You see,” said Terry, feigning a disregard for life he didn’t feel in the slightest. “You could have just told me that and saved yourself some terror.”

“Call it off,” pleaded the man.

Having gotten what he wanted from the man, Terry steeled himself. Killing people wasn’t easy, but it was slightly easier when they were trying to kill him. Killing the injured, pleading, terrified guy on the ground was the exact opposite of that. Not that Terry expected he’d have gotten similar consideration if he’d been the one on the ground. He decided to end it quick. He drew back his jian, intending to end it in one thrust.

“Please don’t! My father—”

The jian punched through the man’s heart. Terry gave it a hard twist and pulled the blade free. There was an awful few seconds before the man died, his mouth moving wordlessly, and unbridled fear in his eyes. When those eyes went blank, Terry finally let that sick feeling overwhelm him. He took a few steps away and leaned against a tree. Then, he vomited onto the ground. You’d have to be some kind of a sociopath to thrive in this world, thought Terry. Taking deep breaths for about thirty seconds, he got his rebelling stomach under control again. He went over and searched the men. He was looking for something that they might have been using to track him. Not that he thought he’d necessarily recognize it when he saw it, but they must have had something. It was the only explanation for how they found him. They must have raced ahead on the road and been waiting. All he found were weapons, coin pouches, and some weird Church symbol pendants. Didn’t I take one of those off that priest?

“Oh, I’m so stupid. It’s a world of magic. Of course, they can track those things.”

Digging out the one he’d take off the priest, he dropped it on the ground near the bodies. He stared at the swords with a bit of longing. They looked a lot nicer than his, but he didn’t dare take them. What if the Church could track those? Plus, they were a different style. He got the impression from other-Terry that he wouldn’t be able to use them as well as a jian. He looked at Drumstick. It’d been one thing when he’d making threats, but he wasn’t sure if he could let the beast eat those men. He knew something in the forest almost certainly would, but the idea of letting it happen, watching it happen, was too much like something out of a bad horror movie. He picked up the head sack and started walking.

“Let’s go,” he called over his shoulder.

Drumstick gave the bodies another look before it fell into step behind him. Terry heaved a huge sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure he wanted to try to scare the beast away from food it had already started eating. While the chicken-lizard was a coward, that seemed like a good way to find out if it had violent streak inside of it somewhere.

“Half a day,” said Terry. “Then, I can go look for some civilization.”