With these thoughts in mind Mike both felt and heard a growl come from his stomach.
'I hadn't eaten since yesterday'. Ready to find something that could satiate his hunger, he began bemusing his options.
As he thought of his options he stopped, recalling everything that had happened so far he shivered the only thing he had seen out here so far were plants and bugs, he hadn't met any animal to speak of.
"Are there no animals in this forest?" That couldn't be, this is an ecosystem, the last time he had learned anything about this was in high school but it didn't take an ecologist to know that there should be animals around this area here due to there being a stream
"Unless something happened here there should be at least some animals around here"
"Well I have only been here for an hour or so I think so it's not unusual for me to not see an animal."
"It's not like I know the first thing about hunting an animal anyway" with these thoughts in mind Mike continued to walk around the area to check for anything that looked even somewhat decently edible.
✵
With an hour passing and the hunger growing Mike couldn't take it, he had to get something to eat soon or there would be bigger problems for him besides not finding any animals that want to kill him. Walking further along downstream away from the source and skimming the area looking for something to eat, Mike came upon a weird path that seemed to lead to a clearing on the other side of the stream, even skimming would show this path due to its obvious showings and missing of trees down a little farther of it.
"What could be over there that has its own clearing? Maybe someone built a house over there?" with that urging him on, Mike quickly jumped over the stream and headed towards the clearing, his hunger masking any semblance of doubt to stop him.
Walking upon the path Mike felt and heard something strange, or the lack there of, the bugs were no longer chirping it was completely quiet except for the occasional crunching of leaves or gust of wind near him. Even with some more apprehension Mike continued on thinking about the person he might be able to find in the clearing.
On the crux of hitting the clearing Mike stopped he saw exactly what was in the clearing, it was something he was hoping for though it wasn't what he expected, It was an apple tree but something felt off settling about it, it was in its own clearing, no other plant besides the moss as the floor would dare go near it, the apples were strange as well they were shaped like a box and from the glow from the stars they were bright red almost verging on pink, However Mike didn't care about these things as soon as he got in range of that tree he smelled the fruit, Mike threw caution to the wind not caring about anything else other than eating some of that fruit.
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Once Mike was closer to the tree he saw the way the tree was as well. All the bark on the tree was a light golden color reflecting the light once you got closer to it, the leaves on it were a shade of white that didn't look exactly white either, the entire tree was shorter than the other trees but it felt like it was looming over Mike, almost like it was laughing at him. With no semblance of caution in mind, Mike as quickly as his aged body could climbed the tree and grabbed as many apples as he could find. Doing so for about 15 minutes. Once Mike came down and rested looking a bit tired and worse for ware he looked at his spoils.
"5 weird box shaped apples, huh?" as if not being hungry Mike held one of the apples weighing it in his hands for a moment on the verge of throwing it away, however when hunger ran over reasoning, Mike took a bite and tasted it.
"This tastes...quite plain actually" being too hungry Mike ate the entire apple, however as he was finishing it, soon he started to regret doing that.
"What if that thing was poisonous I don't know where I am and earth certainly doesn't have natural boxed shape apples and this color tree or color leaves." as if to laugh at himself Mike felt a surge of pain shoot through his body, collapsing like a dead man Mike could do nothing about the horrendous pain racking his body. It felt like people were skewering him with swords and scraping his bones a little bit at a time with forks. All of his bones were being broken and repaired only for the torture to continue. Any man would go absolutely crazy going through this pain.
For what felt like hours Mike laid there in sweat, tears, and a lot of grime as he couldn't even scream over his pain he went through many small flashes of unconsciousness only to be woken up again by the pain hitting him at an all new level. After it was all over, Mike immediately passed out. The feeling of the air hitting his skin awoke him slowly. The raggedy thing called a suit draped over his body tightly. The skin that was once slightly loose and wrinkled had gained an all new sheen. The molted and dilapidated face had regressed back with a head of new blackish brown sheened hair, all of one color.
"What just happened?!" Mike felt his new skin crawl as he looked at the brand new look he had been dawned with. The recent scars of torture were still fresh in his mind making him scared of it happening again.
Again, as if someone or something was mocking him he heard a soft dinging sound echo throughout his brain.
Looking at the ground there appeared a strange occurrence.
he was looking at a boxed screen with a background matching his current environment. Mike felt his delusional and craziness from the torture was not over. Everything was flashing by too fast in order to comprehend what was going on.
{ Explorers Log Unlocked : CLAIM }
Looking at this beautiful floating screen in front of him it felt like a dream, who would ever in their right mind have this in front of them without it being future technology?
As if automatically looking at that big button with the words "CLAIM" on it made his finger gravitate towards it, he clicked it. This push caused the box to disappear instead a bright light flashed showing another box closely resembling the first one but this one had different content.
with an empty window in the middle used for most likely writing records down, to the left of the writing area were tabs some saying: Materials, Fauna, Flora, and Ores and some more that had the words blurred out.
Atop the middle window used for writing was his occupation and the name of this thing in bold white letters 'The Explorers Log'. "Explorer?" Mike worded out quietly pondering on what it meant he was supposed to do, beside it resided the number 0 meaning he was a level 0 Explorer.