BUILD A SHELTER.

I eyed the text at the righthand corner of my vision with a grimace. The mechanics of this place— this world?— would take some getting used to. For now, I cleared my thoughts of any lingering questions and anxieties and instead focused on the task in front of me: building the damned shelter. Thinking back to my survival games, I remembered a few items that were needed to build them, including: sticks or logs, giant leaves, rocks, some sort of binding material like vines or sap.

“Inventory.”

It opened, and I grabbed out the hatchet and flipped it over in my hand. Truthfully, I hadn’t been the most keen on exercising before I ended up here, and so the tool felt heavy on my arms— but I would have to get used to it.

The area near the stream was cluttered with long grass and bushes. Already, I could tell that areas like this would look a little too inviting for snakes. Gripping the hatchet in my hand, I swung at a bush. It connected awkwardly in a puff of leaves and small twigs, but the bush didn’t fall. I swung again and again, trying to connect with the same spot. After awhile, the bush came apart and I plucked it from the ground with force, gulping down air as I did.

As I tossed it to the side for later, I realized that a chunk of the bush was still jutting from the ground— but I ignored it. My goal was to make it livable, sprucing up the place was the least of my priorities.

With the bush aside, I cut down two more that were slightly smaller in size. My arms ached from lack of use. Not only that, but the hatchet was already heavy on its own, and the longer I held it, the more it weighed my arms down. I tossed the bushes to the side. Perhaps out of pride, I ignored my stinging arms and focused on clearing out the grass. It proved to be a little more tedious. The grass wasn’t thick or hard to cut, but it was the fact that there was so much of it that made me want to grind my teeth in frustration.

It felt like it took forever, but in reality it likely only took an hour or so. Regardless, my camp was clear and ready for me to start building. I thanked whatever game master was listening that they woke me next to a stream as I sat next to the pile of bushes and started cutting off the excess branches— when a thought occurred to me.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

I shook my head, racking my brain for all the shelters I had seen in video games, and then looked at the small sticks I had managed to get from the bushes. They were… small. Way too small for me to build something I could fit inside of. Sure, they might have been good for supporting the top coat of the shelter, such as laying leaves on top of them, but other than that, they were useless.

I clicked my tongue in thought and looked up at the trees around me. I would need something bigger— much bigger. Glancing at the hatchet in my hand, I knew that cutting down an entire tree was impossible for me, but that didn’t mean it was hopeless. I rose to my feet, looking around.

There has to be fallen branches around here somewhere. I’ll even take an old log. Anything is better than cutting down an entire tree.

With that goal in mind, I stood back up and groaned. The muscles in my arm were already throbbing. I ignored the pain and started walking around the area, keeping the stream in sight while still venturing out further than I had before. After another hour of searching, I managed to find one large fallen limb, a branch that was only slightly smaller, and sapling.

I started with the medium-sized branch. It looked the easiest of the three, and so I picked it up at the end and dragged it back to my camp, yanking it around trees with thick trunks and patches of briers, and then left it in the clearing. Next, I decided to tackle the sapling. To my surprise, it was easier than expected— almost easier than the bushes since it was a clean cut. As it tumbled to the ground, I grinned to myself and dragged it back to camp, setting it neatly on top of the other. With those at the camp, I cast an uncertain glance in the direction of the fallen limb.

It was much wider and longer than the other two. The end of it was as close in diameter as it got, but even that was very rotund. I circled it for a moment, frowning to myself as I looked for the best place to chop. Doing some rough measurements in my head, I put a small marking on the limb where I assumed would make the limb about equal in length to the others.

“Here goes nothing,” I mumbled, rolling out my sore arms.

I gritted my teeth and swung the hatchet down. Instantly, the hatchet became lodged in the branch. I put my foot down and yanked it out, nearly falling over in the process. This repeated over the next half hour, in which I finally struck the final blow and then wiped my damp forehead with my arm.

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That was brutal. It doesn’t look like it should be that hard, but I just barely managed to chop it in half. And it’s almost sunset.

I looked up at the clouds and felt a small surge of unease run through me. If I didn’t manage to get the shelter up, I’d be sleeping in the cold tonight. Already, a chill wind was cutting through the area, made worse by the trickling water nearby.

All that’s left is to get it back to camp.

Holding my breath, I heaved up the end of the branch and faltered. Since it was wider, it was much heavier than the other two that I dragged back to camp. Slowly, I pulled it through the forest. My body screeched with the strain and my heart hammered, but knowing that this branch could mean my survival kept me going. It felt like ages passed, but I finally reached camp and dropped the branch on top of the pile without feeling the urge to be particularly gentle.

I fell into a sit and huffed in air. Then, I hobbled over to the stream and drank water until I felt ill. I laid on my back by the stream, staring up at the treetops.

“Why is this happening?”

I didn’t realize I said it out loud until the words cut through the silence. My stomach growled, but I didn’t have anything to eat, I was lucky to even have water— though lucky wasn’t a word that really resonated with me right now. When the blue sky started to fade to orange, I slowly climbed back to my feet and looked around.

Right. The smaller limbs on the bush are really bendy, so I’ll try using those to tie the sticks together into an upside down V. I remember seeing a shelter like that in The Forest.

I didn’t know much about building shelters, but I had played survival games that started you out in the wilderness. The first shelter you made always was the small, makeshift one. Ignoring my aching arms. I grabbed the hunting knife from my inventory and sawed off the tinier limbs. After making a small pile of them, I practiced tying them together. There were a few failures, but for the most part, it looked like they would hold together.

Taking the limb and the sapling, I tied them into the upside down V. My knots were sloppy, but the best way I found was to tie them diagonally, both ways, in the shape of an X. When that seemed secure, I carefully worked to balance them in the air. This lasted for a few minutes, most of which had me groaning in frustration, but after awhile, the best course of action I found was to lean them slightly against a tree for support.

I shot daggers at the heavy branch and muttered, “Now for you.”

Gathering all my strength, I hauled up the end of the branch— but it wasn’t high enough. I tried to lift my arms but found I couldn’t lift them any higher than they already were. My lips sputtered as I maneuvered my back underneath the branch then pushed it up with my arms as high as they could go.

Only a few more inches.

Taking a deep breath, I stood on my tiptoes and dropped the branch in the middle of the upside down V, right in between the sapling and the limb. Once that was done, I gulped in as much air as I could and stared at the sight before me in disbelief. After a moment, I moved around to the front of it and surveyed my work. It was staying. It was actually staying.

Okay, now I need leaves— tons of them. I’ll use the rest of the bush limbs to support the leaves, and then I’ll coat the top of my shelter with them. This part will be much, much easier.

Feeling a little better than before, I turned away from my shelter and started searching for something to coat the top of it. It was the height of summer, and so there weren’t many dead ones just lying around, but I was sure I could find something similar to an elephant ear plant (the ones with big, bushy leaves) in a place like this.

I searched for a few minutes, but I hadn’t seen any possible plant candidates. As I was walking back towards camp, I heard a small creaking that I couldn’t place my finger on. It sounded like it was coming from the shelter. I took a step forward.

Snap!

The rope binding the shelter together broke apart, and one by one, the logs of my shelter tumbled to the ground. I stood there with my mouth agape as the sapling rolled and bumped against my foot. Any semblance of hope that I had whooshed out of me, replaced by a lingering feeling of dread.

I hated this. I had played so many damned survival games that I should have been able to do this, at the very least. But I couldn’t even build a simple shelter. It was so frustrating.

I dragged my feet over to the fallen branch. As annoyed as I was, I just needed to try again until it worked. There were more small twigs, and I should have enough to tie it together again— only this time, I would have to be sure that the knots were sturdy.

Sitting on the ground once more, I tested a few of the twigs. Nighttime was approaching fast. As careful as I was trying to be, a sense of urgency washed over me and had me stretching the twigs experimentally between my fingers as quickly as I could.

Thunder rolled above.

Oh no.

I looked up. There had been no clouds before— I was sure of it. The sky had been perfectly clear. But now, the clouds were nearly black as they washed over the sky with threatening rumbles.

Snatching my twigs from the ground, I tried to tie the sapling and limb together again. The first drops of rain fell onto my hands. I cursed, my hands shaking as I tied the knots, but they felt weak when I pulled on them. I grabbed more twigs and tied more and more knots. It started sprinkling as I balanced the upside down V. Grabbing the branch, I hauled it onto my back and tried to do the same thing as before, but my arms ached in protest when I tried to lift it.

“I can do this,” I whispered frantically. “I can do this. I can do this.”

I pushed the branch up, standing on my tiptoes, and put it in place once more. This time, the shelter didn’t snap. Once that was done, I spun my head around, searching for anything I could use to cover the shelter— but there was nothing.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

And as if on cue, the rain started to pour.