With a sigh, he set aside his contemplations and donned his trusty pack once more. He rose to his feet and stretched out his back, prepared to resume his journey deeper into the heart of the bog.
He planned to hike for another few hours before finding a place to hole up for the night. As Nick walked across a wide-open patch of dry soil covered in knee-high grass, he passed by a patch of gorgeous pumpkin-colored flowers with fat blossoms bigger than his fists.
Now a habit when encountering anything conspicuous, he hit the growth with both size up and foraging from maximum range. His encounter with the ravenous creeper vines on the Searing Isle had left him with an instinctive wariness for eye-catching flora.
To his surprise, not only did both skills indicate that the orange flowers were harmless, he was left with a strong impression that they were edible and highly nutritious to boot. After a brief internal debate, Nick’s curiosity overruled his mistrust. He hesitantly walked over to the closest blossom, plucked a single petal, then stuck it into his mouth.
It didn’t taste like much until he crushed it between his molars and started to chew, at which point a wonderous sensation broke over his palate, saturating his tongue in both sour and sweetness. It was so intense that it took him a minute to adjust, but once he became accustomed to the taste, he decided that the flavor of the flower was absolutely divine.
The aftertaste reminded him of strawberries and watermelon. Summer and sunshine along with hints of spices for which there were no earthly equivalents. An alien flavor to pair with the exotic terrain he was exploring.
Nick enthusiastically devoured all the petals on one blossom and stored the other three flowers in his pack. He would save them as a special treat, after removing any seeds he found, in case he was able to plant them later.
Nick resumed hiking with a spring in his step. He soon realized that not only were the petals significantly more filling than any flower had a right to be, they had topped off his thirst as well.
There must be some manner of magic at work, he decided. If we can learn the flowers’ secret or cultivate them in mass, it might dramatically improve the quality of travel provisions once we’re back on Earth.
As an added bonus, the petals had a mild stimulant property, filling him with a wave of longing for his dearly departed coffee. The flowers offered only a tingle of euphoria compared to caffeine’s brutish rush of energy, but he couldn’t complain, as it was still a pleasant surprise.
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As he made his way across the endless mire, he spotted countless species of insects, along with the occasional bird, amphibian, or reptile. Nothing that looked warm blooded, or whatever passed for mammals on this planet.
Unlike Nick’s tutorial, the various critters all appeared to have evolved on this world, and fortunately, they were more concerned with each other than they were with him. They were similar enough to creatures from Earth that he wondered if life throughout the multiverse had common origins or trends, or if the System was deliberately sending him to worlds similar to his own.
Either way, he appreciated the familiarity of it all. It made crossing an alien landscape a little less lonely.
Two hours later, he spotted his first beasts since descending from the precipice. They looked like giant yellow otters, leisurely swimming their way across one of the larger pools. Although they didn’t register any hostility when Nick used size up, he gave the curious creatures a wide berth.
He had learned firsthand that while not all beasts were aggressively inclined, they were invariably formidable fighters. Not that regular animals couldn’t be just as deadly. Although he might be able to survive a bite from a cobra or another venomous critter with his high toughness, it would still be a crippling blow, leaving him vulnerable to attack from a bigger predator.
On that note, massive creatures were still perfectly capable of killing him without using magic, even though he was able to dish out far more damage these days.
While he was already superhuman by the standards of his former life, Nick held no illusion that he could take on an elephant, saltwater crocodile, or great white shark without some manner of elaborate setup. Although I might be able to handle a large bull or small bear if I managed to get the drop on them.
Nick laughed to himself before abandoning the strange train of thought. There would be plenty of creatures to battle on the bog without imagining more. He returned his attention to where it was needed, watching the terrain below his feet and anything approaching from the water.
Fortunately, it was impossible to get turned around and lose his bearings, thanks to the ever-present tower looming in the distance. The unimaginably immense black pillar rose to pierce the clouds above. A bridge connecting soil and sky, like the finger of god reaching down from above. The product of magic or science far beyond any he had known.
Shaking his head at the marvelous strangeness of it all, Nick kept putting one foot in front of the other, heading toward the mysterious tower jutting up from the heart of the bog. He was certain that danger would rear its ugly head sooner rather than later.
His hunch was born out only a few hours later.
Later that afternoon, as Nick was crossing through a series of winding valleys formed from a long string of low hills, he realized that he was being followed. Or, more accurately, Nick was being stalked.
It seemed that the first battle for his life on this planet had arrived right on schedule. Now it was time to find out what he was dealing with and come up with a way to begin the fight from an advantageous position.