Night came quickly as I waited, scared out of my mind, for something… anything to happen while holed up inside a hollow tree trunk. My heart was a mess, beating so fast I thought, at times, that it wasn’t beating at all, which is weird, because I shouldn’t even feel my heart if I was in a normal simulation.

Which, in a sense, confirmed what I had heard before in that strange interference, this wasn’t a normal simulation and my mind didn’t feel any difference between the simulation and reality, filling in with what I would expect being in this kind of situation.

Heart stopping dangers call for a fast beating heart, after all, so my mind filled in with the details that the simulation was incapable of, well, simulating.

This was perfect system for replicating close to life systems, why hadn’t anybody thought of using the human brain itself to compensate for a lack of computer processing power? Maybe they had and Bluelight had been the first ones to disregard all of the potential dangers…

I was trapped inside a virtual space, after all, and if the other parts I had heard in that interference were to be believed, they didn’t know how to take me (and potentially my other classmates) out of said space.

The night in a forest was surprisingly active. I could hear sounds all over the place, and I was, honestly, too scared to move an inch from where I was. I kept on whispering commands, trying to get something to pop up or happen, but nothing ever did.

I was trying to keep myself as mentally occupied as possible to avoid falling asleep when a flashing red shine caught my attention in the corner of my eye, a light seemingly coming from within the bushes right outside the hollow tree that I was in.

I held my breath and, suddenly, all of the forest appeared to go eerily quite. I focused on the sounds that I could hear, and what I heard filled me with dread.

Somewhere, something was shuffling around the forest ground. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the remember the area surrounding my log, in an attempt to see, in my mind, where the sound was coming from.

To my surprise, a very clear 3D representation of the world around me appeared in my mind as soon as I tried to imagine. It wasn’t an actual 1-1 3D model of the world, it was more like a simple 3D mesh approximation of what I remembered seeing.

And in that representation, I could see not one, but three red dots moving in a straight line towards my log. I noticed that, the moment I took my mind off the sounds around me, the dots began to fade, meaning that what I was seeing was a direct representation of what my senses could gather.

I shifted my senses back to the sounds, and I began to use as much of the brainpower I had left between taking note of the map and listening for sounds, to think up a plan of action, because, at the speed they were moving, whatever the dots represented would be arriving at my log in, at most, three minutes.

I placed my hand on the handle of the knife and, slowly brought it out of its sheath. I noticed that, from the angle they were coming from, they shouldn’t be able to see me, as the hole I had used to enter the log was in the opposite side of my humble abode. That could mean that I should be able to run in case they stopped outside the log, but it also meant that, in case I did run, they would, most certainly, notice my presence, as I would probably make a lot of noise moving around with mail and plate armor on.

Whatever I did, I would have to make a last minute decision, and that moment drew ever closer as the dots moved nearer and neared to the blue dot that represented me.

The sound of rustled leaves reached my ears as the dots stopped moving somewhere some three meters away from me, closely followed by what I interpreted to be some sort of language. It didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before and it was mostly made out from rough sounding consonants, strong clicks and very few vowels. Also, whatever was speaking, was doing so with a certain command in its voice.

I heard the things move around the same spot they had stopped at, almost circling the same area, and I heard some higher pitched grunts and grumbles that seemed to come from the other two, clearly smaller beings.

I heard the two smaller things struggling to do something followed by the sound of the bigger one speaking on its short, rough language something that felt to me like an order. The two smaller ones began to slowly move back, following the same path they had come from… But the bigger one remained.

I finally noticed I had been grabbing onto the knife so hard that my nails had dug into the palm of my hand, drawing a little bit of blood, and outside my log, from three meters away, I could hear the last of the beings sniffing the air.

The creature moved closer to my log and, this time, it was obvious it was trying to make its presence unknown, as the shuffling sound I could hear before almost entirely vanished, making it harder than before to keep the red dot from disappearing from my mind map.

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A big thump somewhere in the forest followed by a short, high-pitched cry almost made me jump, which would have, for sure, revealed my location, but it also seemed to call the attention of the other being, who snarled, said something that definitely didn’t sound nice and sprinted towards the sound, joining with the other two dots that had previously vanished from my map but were now, again, showing in full.

I almost expected the bigger one to return, but apparently seeing that the smaller ones were not capable of carrying out whatever order he had given them on their own, the bigger one continued walking with the other two, leaving my hearing range.

I was suddenly washed over by a huge sense of relief. I wasn’t sure I was out of danger right away, but I was, for sure, better off than a few seconds before. All the fear and stress suddenly leaving my body, though, proved not to be very good, as I quickly felt my eyelids grow heavier as I fell asleep for the first time in this new world.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

Sleeping proved to be a strange thing in this virtual space. What does someone dream inside a dream anyways? Well, the answer seemed to be “a jumbled sensory mess that appeared to come from the real world”.

For the few hours I could sleep, I only felt like my body was constantly trying to wake up but was kept from doing so by some external forces, kind of like taking a sleeping pill and trying to wake up before the effects faded.

It wasn’t anything like an inception type of situation as I had hoped, anyways.

I woke up tired, but I wasn’t sure if it had been due to the posture I had fallen asleep in, the shitty almost-sleep-like state I had fallen into or my body’s answer to all the stress I had been accumulated throughout the previous day.

Probably some combination of all of those.

I thought of staying inside my log for the day, and maybe waiting to see if the people outside could pull us back during the day, but my stomach was desperate for something to eat. I hadn’t spawned with any sort of food after all, so I would need to find something.

Maybe in a virtual world I could go on without eating, as my body shouldn’t actually need any nutrients to work (it being virtual and all), but if my mind was able to fill in the details for my heartbeat, I wouldn’t brave facing the consequences of it thinking I haven’t been eating.

I slowly got up to my feet and came out from hiding trying to be as silent as I could. After yesterday’s (and yesternight’s) events, I could tell that, most certainly, the forest was full of creatures that could (and would probably try to) kill me or hunt me down.

I looked around and saw the bushes that the creatures had been moving through and around the night before, and noticed that it was covered in small, blue berries. I moved towards it and took one. Focusing on the berry I asked myself “What is this?”, trying to replicate what had happened with the dragon the day before.

[WILD BERRY] Edible?

“Wow, such useful information, mister appraisal ability.” I whispered as I looked at the bush and tried to remember what I had read oh so long ago in a book somewhere.

If the system wasn’t able to tell me if I could eat it, I might as well just try it myself.

I checked the bush and saw that, although it had some thorns, they were very small and in the same green color of the bush and the berries weren’t clustered together, which would imply they could be poisonous. The leaves also didn’t look like poison ivy’s to me, so I broke a branch of and waited for sap to come out, if it was white, it was probably poisonous. After nothing but a clear liquid came out, I focused on the berry in my hand.

I crushed it and pressed it against an exposed part of my forearm. Again, if I developed a rash, it was probably poisonous and I shouldn’t eat it. After nothing happened except for painting my arm blue, I brought another crushed berry to my mouth and pressed it against my lips.

After it didn’t sting or hurt for a few seconds, I threw another one into my mouth and sat next to the tree as I began chewing. After a few minutes of chewing, if my mouth went numb, I would spit it and decide they were poisonous, but after that didn’t happen after some 10 minutes of chewing, I just swallowed and eat a couple more.

They were sweet, really sweet, and surprisingly juicy for their size, and after having something to eat, my stomach began asking for more, but I had to wait. If I had any bad reaction to what I had already eaten in around 20 minutes, I should probably abstain from eating any more.

But nothing happened, so I stood up and began eating berries by the handful. They were delicious.

As I began to run out of berries in the outer bush, I began to move into the clear that the creatures had been moving around the night before, and it was then when I discovered what they had been looking at.

By the time I saw the half covered blood in the ground, it was too late, my leg had already stepped on the hidden piece of rope in the ground, tripping the trap that laid in wait of creatures that fed on these tasty blue berries.

I heard a snap and tried to move away, but a large branch moved towards my leg faster than I could move it away, impaling it and throwing me to the ground, screaming in pain.

For the first few seconds I could see and feel nothing but red pain and red anger at myself for not being more careful, but what I saw when I managed to control myself scared me even more.

The branch had snapped, but it had left me with a wooden spike that seemed to be very comfy resting inside my left thigh.

It was horrible, the worst thing, by far, that I had ever experienced, and as I tried to stop the blood from coming out, I realized it would only get worse.

I heard the noise of rustling leaves behind me accompanied by a barrage of gleeful noises. I turned around trying to shift the weight into my good leg and saw that green creature around waist hight wearing nothing but a leather loincloth.

I used my left hand to put pressure on the wound and my right hand to pull out my knife and point it towards the creature.

My breath grew heavy. “Now…” I asked. “What the fuck are you…”

Whatever it was, I hoped it was alone, because as things were going, I would need to fight my way out of this.