*Chapter 22*
*Ordinarily Unordinary Days*
There was a litany of fruits, vegetables, roots, grasses, and leaves scattered all around Leo. He was sitting atop a chopped log, his hair in disarray, his eyes bloodshot red, staring at the pot of boiling water in front of him.
He'd been hard at work, trying to create the popping powder for 24 hours straight without sleeping. Besides taking a break for a quick bath, and preparing some food for the animals, he'd been mixing, combining, boiling, cutting, chopping, and everything else he could think of, all in an attempt to replicate the popping sensation.
No luck thus far, however.
He did create some other strange combinations--such as creating a grape that, once bitten into, exploded into a spice bomb that made it difficult even for him to breathe afterwards. The lizard with the fiery tail, the one similar to the creature from a certain, popular show, seemed to have enjoyed it quite a lot, though no other animal wanted it.
It was similar with most other of his creations--unlike his stew and the fruit juice, his new concoctions were quite niche, and usually enjoyed by either just one animal, or a few at most.
For example, he somehow managed to create a 'cookie' of sorts that, when bitten into, cracked like glass--and, not only that, but sounded just like it. When he first bit into it and heard it, his instincts from living back on Earth kicked in and he nearly screamed out in horror, briefly believing he'd truly bitten into glass and now its shards were lodged in his mouth.
He'd gotten into such a concocting frenzy that he hadn't even considered that any of his already-made 'foods' would be enough of a surprise. In the pursuit of specific purity, he was blind to everything else without even realizing it.
It didn't matter, however.
His failed byproducts were being gobbled up as soon as they were made, with very strange creatures occasionally emerging from the depths of the forest. Just a moment ago, a dog-sized creature scurried from out of the bushes, its body graceful and lithe, elongated in a strange manner. It had an asymmetrical head, where one side curled up into a series of concentric rings, at the center of which was a floating, detached eye. It had six limbs, all flexible like tentacles, and it used them to snatch a strange, oozy paste that Leo made. The effect it had was rather simple: it would 'pulsate' like a living, breathing thing while being swallowed.
It made him gag and throw up the fingernail-sized portion that he took, but the creature seemed strangely bewitched by the thing. Nobody else tried to stop it or take it; rather, all other gathered animals looked at it strangely, and had Leo took notice of those looks, he would have come to the simple conclusion that, whatever the creature was to use the ooze for, it had something to do with sex. And that would be where his inquiry would end.
As does a candle, he, too, burned out soon enough.
His mind felt foggy and thoughts came to him slower, forcing him to finally distance away from the experimentation. There were some twenty various things that he'd made, all of which had been gobbled up save for one--his last concoction. It was the closest approximate to what he wanted to make, and though it wasn't exactly like the popping powder, it was likely the best he was going to make within such a short time frame.
It was a piece of hard candy, fingernail-sized, that, when it became wet would 'come alive', as it were, and begin dancing around like mad. Luckily, getting wet also softened it, meaning that all that bouncing around didn't hurt. It was quite a queer sensation, and not one Leo was keen on getting accustomed to, but it was what he decided to go with for the quest. Whether it would satisfy the creature or not, it was now up to the fate.
Sighing, he forced himself up and over to the pond, taking a quick bath before retreating into the mud hut, falling asleep.
At some point, his eyes snapped open because he realized he couldn't breathe. It wasn't long before he figured out why--there was a furred bear cub lying on top of his chest, napping. Leo wanted to cry but he first gently nudged it, waking it up. It sprung into action as soon as it opened its eyes, leaving his chest and sitting by his head, licking him repeatedly.
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Leo finally began to breathe again, realizing that mud huts weren't enough any longer--he'd have to build a proper cabin, all for himself, a place that the animals couldn't just saunter into, sit on top of him, and suffocate him.
"Hello to you too!" he didn't let any of his thoughts seep out, laughing instead and intertwining his fingers against the cub's thick coat around the neck, scratching it.
He finally managed to wrangle himself free nearly a minute later, yawning as he exited the hut and immediately pausing as his heart leapt into his throat. Sitting there, just some fifteen yards from the hut, was a massive behemoth of a bear--the cub's mom. She was sitting rather strangely, almost like a dog, lowly growling in a strange cadence toward one of the creatures that Leo had noticed in the passing: a black-furred weasel with golden stripes. The weasel squealed back at the bear, and it truly seemed as though they were having a proper conversation.
Leo firmly rejected the notion, in part because it still seemed somewhat impossible, but largely because he was desperate for it to be not true. It was one thing to have had people talking behind his back; them, he could at least understand. If the entire forest was engaged in some sort of a chat about him, wasn't that his absolute worst nightmare? Wouldn't he be living that weird Fermi Paradox solution?! It even had a forest in its name... and he was living in a forest!
Shaking the dismaying thoughts away, he greeted the animals with a smile.
"Mornin' everyone," he said. "You guys hungry?" the world shook for a moment as he got the resounding 'Yes' in many-a-vocalization, prompting him to smile further.
As all the vegetables have already been gathered, all that was left was the water. Just as he was about to leave, he recalled something that he'd, embarrassingly, forgot. When those two kids killed that Foundation Realm boar, one of the rewards he got was something called
However, there wasn't much to do in this world, ultimately, and now that he'd remembered it, he would feel too guilty if he'd simply forgotten... again. Thus, he closed his eyes and brought to the forefront the ingrained memories of the martial art--it was rather simple, as per the name, and was equally simple to practice. It was just the matter of moving in a zig-zag pattern repeatedly, but at different speeds.
He hummed a low tune on his way over the pond and back. However, as soon as he stopped and set down the jugs of water, he felt his knees give out and he found himself lying on the ground, unable to move his legs.
A simple "Huh...?" escaped his lips, and he was left to reevaluate a lot of his life and choices while on the ground, waiting until his legs could move again--which happened a few minutes later. Though he could move them, they were very, very, very sore, to the point he began to severely miss a massager.
"Alright, lesson learned," he whimpered lowly, but knew that he couldn't just stop. If he was this out of shape that a completely ordinary art was draining him, it meant that he had no chance of survival. He lucked out once with the kids being here when he needed protection, but would there be somebody else a second time? What about the third?
He was in a dangerous world, now, one bereft of all the luxuries and safeties he used to enjoy. He was alone, adrift in a forest, surrounded by things that could kill him rather easily if they so desired. And he was weak--so weak that he collapsed after just jogging for a little while using the most simple martial art.
As means of distracting himself from the soreness and the pain, he began to prepare the food. He'd gotten rather good at it--whereas it used to take him between half an hour and a whole hour per serving, he cut it down to merely fifteen minutes, and that was only because he didn't know how to start a stronger fire.
Nonetheless, even with the shortened time, it still took a while to feed everyone since the number of animals had also grown in number.
He only finished about an hour later, once again taking a quick bath before packing the 'Bouncer' as he named the candy and heading back north. This time around, strangely, he was alone. It was rather eerie, he realized, how silent the forest was when he wasn't being accompanied by any of his friends.
Even the wind seemed to have quieted down, and the ground beneath ceased crunching under his weight. It was as though the whole of the world shuttered all sounds in reverence of something else.
The red-capped mushrooms soon began to fade behind him, and he once again found himself in the silent dark, at the boundary of where his heart was allowing him to be. A step further, he felt, would mean he would die. He didn't know how he knew... but he knew, for certain.
He merely took out the candy, having wrapped it in a leaf, and laid it down onto the ground before retreating a few steps, waiting with a knot in his throat for what would emerge from the shadows--what kind of monstrosity was controlling most of the northern area of the forest, scaring off all other life around it.