Tom was quite happy that he managed to survive the bear attack. But then again, he was currently bleeding out, he could barely use his leg, and to top it all off, there was a dead bear on top of him. As Tom tried to push it off from on top of him, his hand touched something pulsatingly warm. However, he ignored it, as stopping yourself from dying tends to take precedence.

Tom finally managed to get out from under the bear, then he immediately ripped his shirt into stripes and did his best to tie his wounds. To Tom's relief, the wounds weren't too deep, he had mostly panicked before, but that wasn't all that surprising, as the pain he felt was all too real.

After fashioning splints into his leg, he managed to put some weight on it, but using the leg without crutches would be difficult. Tom knew that if he ran into another murder-hungry beast he would surely be done for. Using all of his brain cells, he decided that, just maybe, it would be a smart idea, not to draw attention to himself.

He decided to check the bear's corpse. After all, even if the game felt much too realistic there just were some universal rules when it came to games. You kill something. You deserved some loot, right?

Tom's arm went instantly to the spot where he had felt the pulsating warmth, It was right where the stick had penetrated the bear's skull. Surprisingly there was no blood, just some misty sap flowing out of the hole. Tom noticed the wood was tougher than any wood he had ever seen. He yanked the piece of wood out of the skull and tried to pry the hole wider, to no avail.

Realizing that using the piece of wood as a wedge worked the last time. Tom got to work, placed the sharp stick into the hole, and hit it with his bat.

He was baffled by what he saw. How part of his former 'spear,' just a 15 cm long stick, now had sunken into the bear's skull. Like it wasn't some super resilient wood. But the same couldn't be said about his bat, as the stick had gone through it, and finished what the bear had started, as the bat had been split in half.

The bat was now utterly useless to him. Not wanting to give up. Tom dug around and found some small rocks. He used them to hammer the stick into the skull at different angles in order to make the hole bigger. After five minutes of work, he could finally see some light coming from within the skull, so he doubled his efforts to open it.

Not long after. Tom was entirely covered in the sap. But he could see the source of the light. Tom struggled to pry the object out of the bear's skull. When he finally managed to do it. He looked at a one euro coin-sized green glowing gem, utterly mesmerized by the small light show it was performing on the palm of his hand. He was sure it had to be something important, but the only problem was, he had no idea what it was.

Tom decided to think about it later, as he was already surprised that nothing else had come to eat him. Because he had already spent far too long at the scene of the battle.

While limping away he decided to pick up the other pieces of his spear, as if they were also as sharp and tough as his sharp stick, there would be many uses for them. After that, Tom picked a random direction and started limping that way, using a long stick as a crutch.

After limping for an hour, he noticed his leg was working much better. He checked it and realized that the scraps of his shirt were covered in the bear's sap. The wounds that had more of it on them looked much better. As he wasn't completely clueless, he managed to put one and two together and realized that the sap had healing effects, which was quite a pleasant surprise. Tom had no idea what kinda death penalties this game had, but he was not that eager to find out. This opportunity had cost far too much for him even think about wasting a second of it.

After walking for a while longer, Tom spotted a tree he could climb. With a bit of struggling, he managed to haul himself up into the tree. His speed hadn't been the greatest while limping away, especially as he had tried his best to not leave a bloody trail to where he was headed for, so he had only managed to get roughly a kilometer away from the site of the fight. But it should be enough, as he needed some time to rest and think about what he needed to do.

As Tom sat on the branch, he looked at the glowing gem he had obtained from the bear. He could feel the pulsating heat coming from the gem. After studying it for a while longer, he decided to try the standard game tricks, as he said. "Inspection." And nothing happened. Then he listed every other command he could think of, hoping that the command would be something else. " inventory, map, chat, communications..." and many others, the result was always the same, nothing. After that, he said. " Status." He just wanted to check if he still was in the game, and if this wasn't some sick trick where he had been kidnapped and thrown into the wilderness. But to his relief, he saw the agonizingly little information the status offered.

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Name: Tom Palmer

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If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Tom turned his focus back to the gem. He noticed that the pulsating heat he had felt earlier was now much more focused. And it was going straight to his arm. He slowly lifted his arm to study the phenomenon. But to his horror, he noticed how there was a brand new branch millimeter from his hand. And as he tried to move it away, it latched on like a leach.

Tom went straight back to panic mode. As he tried to jerk his hand away. Wich, he managed to do. But he soon noticed that the tree was not trying to grab onto him but to the gem. The branch didn't even try to stay attached to his arm, but when it came to the gem, he had to enter into a tugging match with the annoyingly resilient thin branch. Left with no other choice. He used his nice sharp stick to cut through the branch and hurriedly climbed out of the tree while the tree's branches tried to stop him and take the gem from him. Luckily the bigger branches could barely move, only the little ones were somewhat mobile, so he managed to escape its clutches with only a scare.

After finding a spot with a bit less shrubbery and trees, he once again stopped and sat on the ground. "So the whole forest want's to kill me..." Tom thought, " But this time, it wasn't because of my tasty meat. That tree clearly wanted the gem..." Then he remembered how he realized what the tree was trying to do, it was drawing the heat toward it. " Maybe, I can do the same?" Tom thought excitedly. After all, to his imminent pleasure, this was not just a recreation of the Earth as he had initially feared. So maybe there was something like magic in this world? This would be one exhilarating piece of news. Because the alien had said that this place was as accurate a copy of reality as they could make it to be. This would mean there was something like magic out in the universe. But before he lost himself in his fantasies he focused all his attention on the gem and announced to the world," I will absorb you, even if it kills me."

Tom focused all of his attention on the gem. He sensed the pulsating heat and tried to draw it into himself, but alas, nothing happened, even after fifteen minutes of trying. Each time the gem pulsated, he could feel how the heat stayed on top of his hand, but no matter what he tried, nothing else happened. It just stayed there for a while. And then he couldn't feel it anymore, shortly after, the new pulse would occur.

Tom was stupified. Wha was he supost to do? He knew if he could just go to the town he probably wouldn't even have to purchase anything to find out what this gem was, and what its purpose was.

"It has to have something to do with energy..." Tom thought. As he remembered how the tree hand managed to draw a concentrated wave of heat towards itself.

"If a stupid tree can figure this out. Then I should be able to do so too. Unless it's something innate for trees." Tom thought. Then he looked at his surprisingly sharp stick and an inkling of an idea formed in his mind. He placed all the pieces of the makeshift spear he had used on the ground and compared them. It was instantly apparent that the stick he had hammered into the bear's skull looked a lot different. It looked much better and healthier, almost like he was looking at a freshly cut tree, and not some broken piece of it that had been on the ground for who knows how long.

To confirm his suspicions, he took the best-looking piece into his hands, and with it, he stabbed and cut at the other pieces. And as he suspected, it was like the good-looking stick was from a completely different tree, as it effortlessly cut into the other pieces and destroyed them.

Tom didn't know how to react to this revelation. On the other hand, he had finally figured something out and even performed a test to prove his hypothesis. But the problem was that he did not like what he figured out. It seemed like he couldn't absorb the heat the gem was emanating, but trees and even sticks could do it without any problems.

So either this gem could only be absorbed by things made of wood, or he was missing something important, which he was leaning towards. As one very narrow test was not defined proof against it. At least, that was what he kept telling himself.

Another problem with this was that. Tom wouldn't be happy even if he could make his stick into a terrifying weapon by letting it absorb the gem, as he dreaded that it would react like the tree had and turn on him when it had gathered enough energy. An even scarier example of this was the wooden bear. This gave him quite an interesting idea of how it came to be. But he didn't have a death wish, so he didn't plan on testing his theories or even letting his nice stick be in contact with the gem.

"Must keep on testing. If this is truly magic, I must have it. This is my chance, and I have to grasp it." Tom thought. While he stabbed the fancy stick into his arm in a momentary lapse of judgment. His more ambitious side took over and relieved to the world that this careful and calculative man had a more ruthless and ambitious side to him which would be willing to push his limits to reach its goals if not suppressed by thinking about the fact that there were consequences to his actions.

As the stick had gone half a centimeter into his arm, he placed the gem on the other end of the stick with his other arm. This time he could feel how the stick drew the heat from the gem. How the heat spread evenly through the stick. As the energy neared Tom's arm, he tried with all his might to draw it into himself. He visualized it coming from the stick into him. Then he flexed every muscle he knew how to flex, and tried all the others, he even made up a couple for good measure. Alas, all of the efforts were to no avail. A couple of times, Tom felt like something had happened, but when he checked, everything looked and felt absolutely the same. There was no burst of energy or him seeing the world full of new colors. No, the only thing he felt was the stick getting sharper and cutting deeper into his flesh, so he stopped his experiment.

He still had one idea of how to absorb the gem, but he didn't like the idea one bit. " What if? I put the gem into a place where its energy has no other way to escape than by getting absorbed by me. Like my stomach..." At the same time, he thought that the more likely series of events would be that the energy builds up in his stomach, and he explodes. Or, in the best worst-case scenario, he would just throw up.

As Tom looked at the stick, which looked even fancier than before. He did not dare to let it touch the gem anymore or it just might grow legs and run away with it. Tom reasoned that even if he couldn't use this gem, there must be others like it, and maybe there would be one that would work for him? The encounter with the bear and the gem had instilled him with hope. And he was not going to give it up unless reality beats the hope out of him.