At some point, Jack found a less dense section of the forest. While the enormous great trees that dwarfed everything else were here too, this part of the forest wasn’t heavily overgrown with plants. It was brighter here, and every now and then, Jack could even see the sun peeking between the branches in the canopy high up above.

For some time, he explored this newly discovered section of the forest. The first thing that he noticed about it was that there weren’t too many overgrown insect-like creatures. Instead, this part of the forest was mostly populated by animals.

Jack had gotten so far away from the house he’d bought the other day that he decided to mark it on the map before he forgot where it was. Jack pinned the location of the building on the map and labeled it as Storage One. He didn’t think about that building as his house. It was too small and uncomfortable to be called a home, and he mostly used it simply as a sleeping area combined with a storage unit where he could keep self-heating meals and some other of his things.

He then put two more pins on the map to mark the locations of the two sections of the forest. For the sake of convenience, he named the part of the forest where he’d come from the Darkwoods and the other one, where he currently was, the Sungrove because it was so much brighter here compared to the Darkwoods.

He then continued to explore the Sungrove. At some point, he discovered some bushes with large red berries. They were edible as he learned after using an identification spell on the bush. A little later on, he discovered an animal that looked a lot like a rabbit. Its fur was orange, and the creature had two small horns, but other than that, it was indistinguishable from the Earth rabbit. After he identified it with a spell, he learned that in this world, this creature was called a rabbit too. The small animal scurried away as soon as it noticed Jack.

As it turned out, there were plenty of those orange furry creatures in the Sungrove. Jack also learned that they loved the red berries he’d discovered earlier on. Most of the time when he spotted an orange rabbit, it sat near a bush, taking another berry from a branch with its soft lips and slowly chewing it with its eyes half-closed in delight.

When Jack found a snare trap blueprint in a cave and learned it, he decided to try to catch a rabbit and cook it. To do that, he first needed to craft a snare trap. He knew that the Crafting talent was Intelligence-based, so he put one skill point into the attribute. As he already knew, the attributes put caps on his talents. Now that he’d increased the Intelligence attribute to 1, the level cap for the Crafting talent was increased to 10. With that done, the talent would now go up when he crafted something.

He then brought up the crafting menu and studied the blueprint he’d just learned. He only needed a few long thin branches to craft the trap, and he knew what he could get them from. There were plenty of bushes with long flexible branches. After he got a few such branches, he opened the crafting menu again. To craft a snare trap, he had to pay the system a certain amount of gold. As soon as he did so, the long branches in his hands vanished, and a snare trap materialized on the ground.

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Jack leaned over to examine it. Its design was pretty simple. Now that he knew what it looked like he was sure he could craft it by himself from now on. He then checked his stats. Sure enough, his Crafting talent didn’t go up even though he’d just created a snare trap. Jack knew why. Sure, he gathered the crafting materials and paid the required amount of gold, but it was the system who created the trap, not him. For the Crafting talent to go up, he needed to craft things by himself. It was the same with the Skinning and Butchering talents. They only increased when he skinned and butchered animal carcasses by hand. When he paid the system to do it for him, the talents didn’t increase. So, from now on, he would be crafting snare traps by himself. This way, not only the crafting talent would be improving, but he also would be saving gold.

He put some berries into the snare and pinned the location of the trap on the map. It didn’t take long for a rabbit to get into the trap. When Jack returned to it a few minutes later, he saw a poor animal thrash around in futile attempts to free itself. Jack killed the rabbit as quickly as he could, cutting its throat with his dagger.

Now it was time to cook it. First of all, he decided to build a fire. After tying the rabbit carcass to the side of his backpack, he went to explore the Sungrove for a little more, collecting stones and firewood. When he gathered enough resources, he built a fire, lighting it with his lighter. It was a good thing that he’d been a smoker in his past life. Without a lighter, he would get in trouble. But he needed to find other ways to start a fire before his lighter ran out of gas.

He also realized that while he seemed to have been a smoker, he’d never craved a cigarette since he’d awoken in this world. With his memory loss, this bad habit seemed to vanish too. Which was surely a good thing.

He found two branches that formed a V-shape on one end and dug them into the ground on either side of the campfire. He then found another long stick that he could use as a skewer. After that, he took off his backpack and untied the rabbit carcass from its side. Now that his Skinning and Butchering talents were 15 and 14 respectively, it didn’t take him long to get the job done. After he put pieces of meat on the skewer and placed it over the fire, he wondered if the system could cook the food for him. As soon as he thought that, a message popped up before his eyes, asking him for confirmation. So the system could actually cook the food for him, but sure enough, he had to pay for that. Later on, Jack would learn that the system could cook food for him only when the fire was on and the food was already positioned over it.

For the first and the last time, Jack decided to let the system cook the food just to see how it would work out. He paid, and in the blink of an eye, the meat was cooked. It tasted amazingly good. It was so delicious Jack even teared up a little. He wondered if the food that he’d cook by himself would taste that good too. Probably not. At least not until he got the Cooking talent to a more-or-less high level.

He wolfed down the cooked rabbit and then checked his stats. The Cooking talent was Perception-based, and his Perception attribute was currently at level 2. Which meant that his Cooking talent could currently increase up to level 20. However, since he’d had the system cook the rabbit for him, his Cooking talent hadn’t gone up at all. Well, just like crafting, he’d be doing all the cooking by himself from now on.

After eating, Jack continued to explore the Sungrove to see what else this part of the forest had to offer.