Heading back to my tent, I got my filter from my pack and also grabbed both my bucket for pure water and my water bladder for storage. Shaking the bucket open, I headed over to the kayak and assembled the feeder and output hoses. Filling the small bucket first, I screwed the lid on to keep it pure before filling the bladder, drinking my fill, and then topping it back off. With four gallons safe for drinking, I put all of the parts of the filter away and moved everything back to the safety of my tent.
Dipping the clean bucket in I got another three gallons from the bottom. Lifting up the kayak, I awkwardly poured enough water in to top that bucket off, while managing to only spill a little bit. Screwing the lid onto that bucket, I moved the forty pounds of water over to an out of the way spot for safekeeping. I poured a little bit of the remaining water into my second bucket, rinsed the gore out, and then filled it halfway for Gaian to have for later. With only a gallon or two left in the bottom of the kayak, I gathered up all of my dirty clothes and dumped them into the kayak along with half of my concentrated liquid soap.
Fortunately, everything I wore for hiking was stain resistant and pretty rugged. So except for a couple of small holes in the arm of my fleece and one pair of pants that had a hole in the left leg, everything was quickly freshened up and ready to dry. Taking three of the cheap spears, I walked them about thirty feet away from the tent and drove them into the ground, putting the ends together to form a stable tripod.
Going to my paracord on the ground that I had abandoned in favor of the broken bow staves last night, I quickly shook it loose and wrapped one end around the tripod point a couple of times before running it to the tent and tying the other end off. Quickly hanging everything up to dry, I left my repairs for the next day.
With the basic housekeeping done, shelter, water, and food were all secure for at least a week. I had everything I needed to survive so I put off starting a fire for now and got dressed with my last set of outerwear that had yet to be worn on this planet. Buckling my belt, I still had my ax on my right side, with the bear spray right behind it, and my bowie knife on my left side for easy access, this time tying the bottom of the sheath onto my thigh for security. Heading over to the bear, I picked up the bag of cores on the ground and used the tongs to snag the trolls. Putting both of them into my pack, I left everything in the tent for Gaian to guard while I was away.
Grabbing some of the longer scraps of rope that I had cut from the crab trap, I bundled them up and put them into the cargo pockets of my pants, along with one of the rags that I had just finished washing. Picking up my spear, I thought about bringing the shaman's dagger or a club but didn't have a good way to carry them. So in the end, I just left everything in the tent vestibule but picked up one of the two basic shields that the bruisers had dropped in their attack.
Walking the half filled bucket over to the bear, I scratched his ears before telling him I would be back shortly. I was really considering bringing along a couple of the basic iron spears for throwing, but with the shield on my arm, I was already starting to feel a little weighed down. Without a way to swing them onto my back, I just didn't want to be fumbling and drop anything in the event of a surprise attack. So I told my inner packrat to just shut up and soldier on.
Heading to the initial copse of trees that I had gathered firewood from, I wanted to double check the area and make sure there weren’t any surprises waiting there, before heading over to where I had my own original encounter with the goblins. With it being such a short distance away, it only took me about ten minutes to walk the distance over to the smaller grove of trees. I thought about just walking in to explore it, but from where I was standing there were a lot of brambles and undergrowth that would slow me down and announce my presence to anything that might be in the small forest.
Circling around instead, I tried to stay quiet and listen for clues that there might be anything larger than a rabbit in there. Halfway around and all of the gaps between the trees were still covered by brambles. Taking a second to go closer to them, I would have sworn that it was like looking at a blackberry bush back home, only instead of blackberries, they were covered in small bulbs the shape of a blueberry but the size of a strawberry. Also, they were bright purple and seemed to glow with an inner light.
Staring at the first real flora I had seen so far that was truly different from something back home. I think for the first time I really felt in my bones that I was on an alien world and not just somewhere else on earth with a different sky superimposed on it. I wondered if I should risk trying to take one to see if Gaian had a better instinct on whether it was edible or not. With my once again leaving the only kind of gloves that I had back in my pack, I was reluctant and so I decided against it for now. The last thing I needed was for it to explode when I was picking one and for me to find that it was filled with a poisonous face melting acid. Which with my ongoing fantastic luck seemed to be just the kind of results I could expect on this new world.
Continuing my circuit, I paused when I saw a couple of rabbits in the brambles before they saw me. Crouching down, I took a knee and just waited, observing them to see how something that wasn't ravenous on this planet acted.
They looked like the typical cottontail rabbits, with small floppy ears rather than the longer jack rabbit ears I was used to seeing in California. They looked to be about five or six pounds which put them a fair size heavier than I would find back home. So it definitely looked like it was worth trying to come back here and rig a couple of snares after I established a new camp and had gotten Gaian healed up. I was somewhat disappointed not to see the horn that most isekai novels would agree that any off world version should have, but I was willing to take the win where I could find one.
Watching them carefully they didn't seem to be paying any attention to the berries, instead focusing on the grass underneath the brambles. With their hesitation to leave the safety of the brambles, I wondered if the goblins were just that frequent of hunters or if there was another predator nearby that had them too worried to leave the safety.
After watching for five minutes and not seeing anything other than a typical rabbit behavior. I stood up quickly and slammed the butt of my spear into the ground to see how they would react when startled. Rather than darting deeper into the wood, they instead both looked straight at me and started loudly screaming. Faster than I would have thought possible there were soon forty or fifty rabbits all standing in the brambles screaming at me.
It was the most unnerving and creepiest moment in my life, it felt like I was in a horror movie. Only instead of a creepy child or two that under normal circumstances should have no business scaring you, it was fifty rabbits screaming in unison. Seriously, who gets scared of rabbits, doing some quick math in my head, I realized that there was actually between two hundred and three hundred fifty, pounds of rabbits over there screaming at me. With them both outweighing me and having the number advantage I had no intention of starting a fight. Maybe I would have felt a little better if Gaian had been along for the ride. But numbers don't lie and I started walking softly backward into the grass while not taking my eye off the horde of rabbits.
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Just as I started turning I saw a faint glow start building behind the wall of rabbit flesh that was yelling at me. Behind all of the semi normal rabbits, I saw a massive lepenoid, easily two or three times the size of the already gigantic cotton ears. This rabbit had glowing purple eyes, I guess in case its weight and size weren’t enough to differentiate it from the regular ones. Almost the size of a chocolate lab, the purple eyed boss was staring straight at me without making a sound. Its silence was all the more worrying behind the backdrop of ear shattering noise its minions were making. Already nervous at the fluffle’s weight advantage, when you started throwing unknown magic into the mix, I had no desire to stick around, so I went back to beating a hasty retreat. I was after goblins for the moment anyway.
With all of the times I had been here before to gather wood, I was glad I hadn't needed to go farther into the woods where I might have been surrounded before I knew about the danger. I decided to abandon this small wood for now and head over to where I had found the goblins last time. Walking for between forty-five minutes to an hour to reach the next set of trees that was a decent distance away, no doubt why we had only had one night's worth of sleep interrupted so far. Granted we had been here two nights, so it actually wasn't that good of odds. Hopefully, by moving camp once I got back, we could get another break from the attacks.
Heading across the rolling downhill stretch of chest high grass, I walked at a decent pace that wouldn’t cause any strain or exertion. Heading downhill to the next set of woods, I continued to try to walk quietly. Keeping an ear out for any goblin sound, as they were so short that it would be easy for them to come upon me unawares.
Again I stopped a good forty to fifty yards short of the woodline waiting to see if any would serve themselves up on a platter for me again. Part of me was really regretting leaving the troll core back at camp. But the only way I could bring it and keep a decent enough separation from my own skin so it didn’t try to take me over, was by bringing my whole pack. Carrying that much weight would have me way too encumbered to fight, and trying to drop it every time I saw some goblins would make ambushing them impossible. Also, there was a risk that the yellow energy was something the goblins could sense. I didn't know for sure that it wasn't what called down the troop on our camp last night. I hadn't had it on me when I went out for my counter ambush, so they might have scented it and been homing in on my tent.
Wishing I had a wiki for this new world, I could only be thankful I seemed to have been dropped off in a noob zone with the low level goblins and rabbits. With the exception of the troll encounter, this was a remarkably lucky start to my time on this world. Realizing if I was going to be wishing for anything I should probably start praying for a god level fighting style recorded on a jade I could just press to my head and level up my fighting ability. Or just a tracking stone to lead me to my children.
I held back a snort, tired of waiting for goblins to sprint out of their woods straight into my arms again I decided to head in to find them myself.
Heading into the woods with my head constantly scanning back and forth, the first thing I noticed was there was practically no undergrowth, which was very strange for virgin woods. I wondered if it was just the constant movement of goblins moving around, or if there was a different kind of animal that was keeping the grounds bare.
Looking at the trees, these looked to be evergreen, so the needles they were dropping were no doubt a big part of what was helping keep the undergrowth down. Thinking back to earlier, this seemed strange, the other set of woods had looked to be of a hardwood variety. I thought I recognized both oaks and maples when I wasn't stuck staring at the horde of rabbits screaming eerily. Two separate small sections of woods with this little separation between them were only this diverse back on earth if there was human interference.
Hearing some noise coming from ahead of me I quickly stopped my musings and put a tree in between the noises and myself. Stepping into the branches of a giant pine, I used the spear to hold a branch down so I could see what was approaching. Out of the distance came a set of six goblins, two of which were riding on giant boar, both of which had a nasty set of two-foot long tusks and looked to be a good three hundred pounds of pure muscle.
On one hand, while I could be happy that at least they weren't riding wolves, I definitely wasn't going to try and ambush this group. Looking over to my spear, I imagined it would be perfect for killing off these boars, while both keeping out of range of their tusks and the goblin on the hog’s back. I had to wonder if this was salvaged from a fight that the goblins had won with their enemies. If so, hopefully, I had civilization closer nearby than the lack of smoke in the air would indicate.
Wondering what they might be using for shelter, I started debating if maybe there were dwarves in the foothills nearby or perhaps elves in the woods. As the patrol started walking by the pine analog whose branches I was hiding behind. One of the hogs started snuffing in my direction. Cursing in my head as I didn’t want to give any sounds that might give away the game if I actually wasn’t the reason for the signal. As the boar wandered closer, the part of my brain that was enamored with hindsight and loved to second guess past me started its litany of complaints.
“I shouldn’t have come into the woods...”
“I should have been more patient. It probably smells the blood still dripping from your leg...”
“You are an idiot, you shouldn’t be trying to help the bear or gain superpowers for yourself...”
“All of this is ridiculous, you aren’t the hero of the story...”
“You need to be looking out for yourself. It was fun to dream big on the trip here but you are too old for this...”
“If this is proving anything, it's letting you know that without a gun or a bear to hide behind you are useless.”
Shutting the useless nattering of my critical side up, I focused on just breathing softly. In and out just like I was facing the kill energy, calming myself, I let the grip on my spear loosen up, not wanting a tight grip if I was going to have to be thrusting it shortly. My shield was the opposite, even though I was resting it on the ground I still felt my left hand clenching the grip tighter as the hog closed within fifteen feet of where I was hiding. I finally looked up from the muddy tusks to see the goblin on its back smacking the hog's head with a club and just doing everything it could to turn the beast.
“Huh,” I said silently in my head. “You might be okay after all, I don’t think the goblins have a clue that you are here.” As the thought crossed my mind, I couldn’t help but curse again. I don’t know why I can’t help tempting fate, but if I am going to survive in a world filled with monsters, then I really need to learn to control my thoughts.
The hog continued to ignore its master and snuff in the ground for what I could only assume would be truffles with no acorns around. Wondering how the little beasts were able to subdue the larger creatures, my mind left its wandering on my inadequacies and started wondering again about the dynamics of this new world I had found myself trying to survive.
I could only assume that they raised them from babies, but hogs were smart, they had no problems trying to take down something bigger than themselves. Heck, when they were hungry enough they had no problems disposing of a body. I wondered if this was instead a skill linked to a core or something else. Maybe the goblin was new to his job, the other one certainly didn’t seem to have any problems controlling its beast.
As the hog finally realized it wasn’t going to find anything and started wandering back to the group I let out an internal sigh and focused on keeping my mind blank, not willing to send up any more flags to the universe. As they wandered out of view with the smaller goblin still cursing its beast I decided to give it a fifteen minute wait before I tried my luck elsewhere in the woods.
Before long though I saw another group wandering along the same path that the previous patrol had been taking. For the first time in a while, I thought that my luck might be turning. Despite the ache in my leg and arm, this group of goblins looked like they might be contenders. There were only three of them so unless more appeared in the five minutes it would take them to wander close enough to my hiding spot, I might be going back…..
“Nope, I cut that thought right off, not a chance in hell I am giving the universe another excuse to make my life more interesting.”