Four

The Bushlands still kind of creeped me out with the way the air and temperature shifted as I made my way deeper into it, but I did my best to ignore it as my eyes scanned everything around me. I tried not to make much noise, avoiding bushes and loose twigs where I could.

I knew my smell might give me away, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. Thankfully, the breeze that was a near-constant in the Grasslands died out along with all the other weather changes as I trudged along. Maybe it would help keep me undetected for longer.

I wandered for thirty minutes before my constant state of agitated nerves began to wear on me. I stopped and sighed, wondering how ridiculous I must be for thinking I could be on edge for such a long period of time. I was going to tire myself out quickly like that.

I took a moment to stretch, trying to loosen my muscles and reclaim some serenity. As I worked out the tense feeling in my body, I let my eyes wander for things other than threats. I couldn’t see any notable hills from where I stood, and there were no trees to speak of other than large bushes that didn’t look climbable. No vantage points, then.

There was nothing to do but keep walking. I took my time, doing my best to not creep along at least, and moved in as straight a line as I could manage without any landmarks to speak of.

The sun overhead hadn’t really given me a good sense of direction, which was strange. If you were experienced, you would normally be able to tell North and South fairly precisely from the sun. But since I had begun trying to use it to gauge cardinal directions a few days ago, I had a nagging feeling of unease in my gut.

It didn’t really seem.. Constant. On the first day of my efforts, it seemed fine. But the days afterward felt inconsistent, like the sun wasn’t crossing the sky in the same line. Did this planet or wherever I was have a damn wobble or something? I could guess what “vague North” was, at least, but it was not precise enough to find my way back to somewhere specific from day to day.

Instead, since the ground in the Bushlands was some kind of dry dirt with clumps of grass every so often that the bushes grew out of, I just held the butt of my spear against the ground as I walked, leaving a pretty visible trail.

Since there was next to no wind there, it made the whole area feel a little stuffy, but it wouldn’t blow away any tracks. The “Breadcrumb Trail” was the best I could manage for finding my way back.

I went for another thirty minutes before I finally heard something like a grunt ahead of me. It was so sudden in the still quietness of the Bushlands that it actually startled me and made me jump. It was short and low, but unmistakably an animal. The only other sounds I had heard my entire time there had been my own footsteps.

I lowered myself and crept forward, weaving between bushes. A little ways ahead, I peeked through the edge of a bush to see one of those mutant warthogs rolling around in the dirt. At least I thought it was dirt, at first. When the warthog stood up and shook itself off, I saw mud splattering around it as it glistened wetly.

The ground around its feet was darker than normal, and when I squinted my eyes I could see there seemed to be water bubbling to the surface in the center of the wet spot. A Bushlands watering hole, then? Whatever it was, it could wait.

The warthog hadn’t noticed me at all, and I had managed to come up behind it. I watched my feet and the bushes around me carefully, and snuck out into the open for a better shot.

Time to see if my experimentation was going to pay off. I raised my hand palm-up towards the warthog, a small round pebble in the center of it, and focused my entire mind. It floated upwards a few inches before stopping, and after a second it started rotating. I was spinning it clockwise as I looked at it to simulate rifling in a gun barrel. I was pretty sure that would make it more aerodynamic and accurate even if it were just a ball of rock.

It spun faster and faster until it started humming barely loud enough for me to hear. Once I was satisfied I had a firm grip on it and could maintain the rate of spin, I lifted the other hand to point two fingers at the rock hovering above my hand. I didn’t need to do that, but it helped to focus on what I was doing if I had some physical and visual aid.

This part was a little trickier because I was adding some wind control to the earth control, and it was multiplying the effort it took. I focused a tube of air to harden like a little barrel around the ball, pointing at the hog. It was only a few inches long and was only slightly larger than the ball itself, but it was just enough to properly direct the projectile once it launched.

The third part was by far the hardest. I had to hold and maintain two different processes, both of which were different elements, and then layer yet another wind effect into it. The few inches of air tube behind the ball had to be stuffed with compressed air without breaking the tube or propelling the ball before I was ready. It was some tricky stuff to juggle in my mind.

At that point, a small crisis arose. The warthog sniffed the air and twitched an ear, then spun around to look right at me. I almost panicked and lost control of the whole thing right there. Performing under pressure was going to have to be something I worked on. I did my best to ignore the fear that was crawling up from my gut and tried to refocus my efforts on the task at hand.

I held the ball firmly in place with my mind and shoved air against it, stuffing the tube, pushing harder with more funneled air to focus and compress it as much as I could. After a few seconds, it started becoming a strain to keep the ball in place with all the pressurized air I managed to force against it.

I knew at this level of strain that the rock would go through a few inches of decently dense wood, but I was starting to panic a little bit because the warthog was kicking up some mud like it was giving me a warning, so I decided to give it some more oomph just in case.

The warthog was beginning to take steady steps toward me, the noises it made were quickly becoming more aggressive as it got nearer. It seemed it would charge me at any second, and my heart was pounding as I tried to remain calm. I felt a bead of sweat roll down my face from the effort and anxiety.

Once it was within fifteen feet, I figured that would have to be good enough. I tried aiming it as best as I could, thankful that the creature was walking straight toward me, and let go of my hold on the stone itself.

There was a sharp hiss and a quiet crack of sound as the round stone shot forward faster than I could keep track of with my eyes. I was really hoping this souped-up blowgun would be enough to do some damage to this pig, but I had my spear just in case I needed it to finish the thing off.

I was certainly not expecting what happened. The stone hit the hog just off-center between the eyes, which rocked its head back, and the back of its skull exploded in a small spray of red and brown. It dropped and went completely limp immediately, its leg spasmed slightly once, then was still. I think it was dead before it even hit the ground.

I stood there for a moment, panting and hearing my heartbeat drowning out all other noise in my ears, before I settled down enough to whisper to myself, “Well, shit.”

I hefted my spear, walked over to the corpse, and prodded it a few times for good measure. Just to be absolutely sure, I stabbed my spear through the side of its neck, severing the artery I had found when I cleaned the first one. I gave it a few minutes of bleeding slowly into the ground before I finally let myself relax.

I sat down heavily next to the corpse and wiped the sweat from my face. That kind of shot wasn’t going to be very practical in hectic situations. I would not have time to focus and charge something like that. It was, at best, a weapon of surprise. Until I could do better, I’d have to find something simpler and dirtier that I could whip out instantly to defend myself.

The test had been a success though. The hog that had terrorized me was now put in the dirt with one shot. I smiled dreamily up at the grayish-blue sky as I took a break and admired my growth.

I knew, then, that I could definitely follow through with my plans. All doubt that had been a weight on me dropped away and I felt quite refreshed. No scary murder pigs were going to stop me from going where I wanted or doing what I wanted. I was going to be my own man, beholden only to myself.

After my break, I built something of a pyramid-shaped signpost with the bushes around the area, using a combination of my hands and some magic. I stacked smaller bushes on top of a larger one, using their many scraggly limbs to interlock and hold them together. I would be able to see it from quite some distance away, as it was taller and more uniquely shaped than anything in the area.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

My success emboldened me to explore some more, and as I had only spent about two hours of my day, I decided to keep going. I left the corpse behind and meant to pick it up on the way back home.

There was a bit of pep in my step as I made my way further into the Bushlands. I was feeling pretty good after having conquered one of my fears in this new land. The Chumpion himself became kind of a badass when push came to shove.

As I was so swept up and nearly whistling in my moment of self-satisfaction, a stray thought blind-sided me and made me nearly miss a step. Why am I not more upset that I had just killed something? Specifically, I had gone out of my way to find it and kill it. It wasn’t even self-defense. I was going to use it for food and materials, but was that really the deciding factor to make it all acceptable?

I had a rather delicate mental and emotional fortitude, at the best of times. I distinctly remembered falling to pieces and crying at the thought of harming another living being. And here I was, skipping in joy away from a corpse that had been a living creature just moments before I ended its life.

I looked down at my hands, clenched and unclenched them, and frowned. I felt not even the slightest bit of guilt. I hadn’t hesitated for a second, I just executed that hog as efficiently as I could. I had felt some stress in the moment, but that was more like adrenaline and being on edge because of danger.

Dropping my hands to my sides, I looked up at the pale sky for a few moments, trying to make sense of the seeming lack of remorse that was not at all natural to me. After a few moments, I still had no answers, and would obviously not find any just standing here. I would simply have to chalk it up to experiencing a life or death situation and a strong instinct to survive awakening a sense of indifference.

The joy I had felt in triumphing was.. Something of a rabbit hole I was not brave enough to dig into. I shoved that aside and just told myself it was my self-confidence manifesting itself awkwardly, as I had never really had any before I had come here. I was just happy that I was taking my destiny into my own hands. Anyway, it doesn’t even matter how I feel about it, right? Because my goal is just to stay alive. Certain things had to be done. Sure, that’s good enough for now.

Putting all of that behind me for the time being, I once again focused my senses around me and resumed my march of exploration with a renewed sense of determination. Forward is the only direction my life can take.

I traveled for another few hours until the sun had just passed its peak in the sky. At least telling the time was easy and consistent. The supposed wobble of the planet might take or add some minutes or hours in the day, but daylight is daylight, so it mattered much less to me.

I still saw no end in sight of the Bushlands. The Spooky Forest’s edge had angled away from the direction I was traveling, and I had lost sight of it entirely an hour or two prior. From where I was standing, there were just bushes in every direction. I couldn’t see the horizon, I couldn’t see mountains in the distance, and even the sky was an unchanging pale blue as if it were a little overcast.

It felt like I was the only human in the entire world. If it weren’t for the hogs and the slimes, it would feel like I was the only living thing in existence. I had heard at least one more that I decided to go around, so it was apparently pretty populated even if you couldn’t see it. But, the quiet was quite uncomfortable.

The lack of bugs was a lot more unnerving than you would think; it created a sense of stillness that I had never known in my life. The lack of any substantial wind in the Bushlands added to the feeling of being in the middle of a dead world.

This was the kind of thing that could drive people to insanity, right? I shuddered at the thought of wandering forever in a lifeless wasteland and turned around to make my way back to my camp. Traveling was definitely the best choice, I could not just stay put. If I didn’t set off to take my chances out there, I would inevitably crack one day from the crushing solitude this world made me feel.

As I followed my little trail in the dirt and thought about the details of my upcoming journey, I realized that I would have to venture even further through the Bushlands. The realization made me anxious, as it was the most uncomfortable place I had been so far, but I didn’t have much choice.

There was food, and firewood, and I had even discovered sources of water today. That already put it above traveling through the Grasslands to see what was on the opposite end of them. I also did not even consider traveling through the Spooky Forest. It was just too spooky.

I had my mind all made up and the general outline of my plan sorted out by the time I made it back to the hog corpse. First, I poked around a bit at the watering hole the hog had been rolling around in. The water looked clear and came straight up through the dirt with little burbling sounds. The ground itself was firm, considering there was a fountain being pumped up through it.

I shrugged it off and skinned the hog, harvested as much of it as I could carry, and grabbed a bundle of wood for my fire. After a wash in the fountain to clean the blood off my hands, I slung the makeshift bag of hide over my shoulder and trekked back to camp.

There was still some sunlight left in the day when I made it back, but the little valley I was staying in was already covered in deep shadow from the surrounding hillsides. I lit a fire, chuckling at how I managed it with just a wave of my hand, and went on my rounds of checking the slimes.

They had all finished their meals, and each of them seemed to be sleeping. There wasn’t any noticeable difference in any of them, but I thought that maybe they were a little bigger? It was hard to get a proper comparison, especially at night with only a flame floating above my hand for light. They were all in a food coma, so I let them be.

After some work chopping up the meat and cooking it, I had rations to last me for a bit. I wasn’t going to have to worry so much about supplies as I went to see what was on the other side of the Bushlands, so I could make the entire journey on the first attempt.

That meant, once I left, I was likely never coming back here again. The only way left to me was forward, after all. I looked around my first little home, the tranquil oasis of glowy things and blobby boys.

Yeah, wasn’t really gonna miss it. What I did miss was having a bed, a toilet, and food variety. And clothes. I had a hole in my tank top, and my boxers were reaching the limit, they’d start developing holes in them soon enough.

To that end, I took the raw meat and bone slimes and plopped them down on the hide. If they woke up at any time during the night, they could snack on it and turn it into something usable.

As I left some cooked meat for the cooked meat slime, the thought came to me to name the little buggers. I could probably carry them in hide sacks safely, they didn’t seem persistent enough to squeeze through cracks, so a closed bag would hold them fine. So, what could I name them?

The easy option was Meat, Bone, and Meal. Maybe something more clever would have been preferable, but I wasn’t sure I wasn’t just going to drop a couple of them on the roadside the moment they became inconvenient. They were, sadly, also meant for company, but I was not letting myself get attached to some insoles. I went with temp names.

I spent the rest of that night prepping for my journey the next day. I was hoping to get the rest of the crafting done before noon, depending on when the slimes finished, so I could put in some solid distance in the remaining hours of daylight.

Sure enough, I woke up a couple of hours after dawn and the slimes were just finishing up. Lucky me, my timing happened to be amazing. I went to fetch little Meal and set him down next to his brother and sister after they were done.

Immediately, I noticed a difference in them. Meal was much smaller than Meat, but a little bigger than Bone. He was a pleasant, earthy brown, and was nearly completely opaque. His insides were so solidly brown that he seemed to be filled with paint, and I couldn’t tell where his skin began or his liquid interior ended. He sort of just rolled around slowly instead of doing the undulating thing the slimes had done originally.

Meat was huge compared to the other two, at least twice Meal’s size, a good foot across now. She was milky pink and looked like she was filled with something the consistency of pudding. She moved much quicker than the other two, and just felt like she had more pep in her step. Her reactions and direction changes were also much snappier than the other two.

Bone was still tiny, only about four inches wide, and was nearly completely opaque white. He really did look like a ball of bone, and he actually had the feel of a ball of clay when I touched him. His shape always sprung back slowly like a sponge. He had also started rolling around, so I wondered if it was an elasticity thing, they were both much less bouncy now.

Yes, I realized that naming them was becoming attached to them, but I was very conveniently ignoring that. They helped out more than enough to warrant domestication. Hard times call for silly measures, okay? Sure, they would eat me if they could, but just feeding them had helped immensely with my stress and loneliness. They were my little bubble buddies.

Just as I had hoped, I was all packed up and ready to move out at around noon. I had made a tabard sort of thing by just cutting a hole in a long piece of the hide, sticking my head through it, and tying it around my waist. The slimes were in individual baggies in a sling bag. I had more bags inside it with food, some sharp-pointed bones, and my knife. I had a waterskin bag tied to the cord around my waist, which worked surprisingly well at keeping water.

I double-checked that I wasn’t going to miss anything, and disembarked on schedule. I left the Grasslands behind and committed myself to cross the Bushlands into territory unknown.

I spent my days traveling, let the slimes out at night to feed them, killed some hogs when my food supplies ran low, refilled my waterskin at watering holes wherever I found them, and I think I made pretty good time. I practiced my magic, experimented with it, and learned more about it. I even made more clothes from the hide I kept getting, using magic for everything I didn’t have a tool for.

Pants and a basic shirt were a heavenly acquisition, even if my leather stitching was god awful. My legs and arms were protected from being scratched up on the bushes that were everywhere, so it felt great even if it didn’t look pretty. I had so much time to work on things and practice that I upgraded my shoes to something better fitting and far more comfortable. I made an even bigger backpack that even had special pouches just for my bubblies. I even made a wide-brimmed hat in preparation for any weather I might run into later on.

I made myself into a more proper human being, with clothes, luggage, and a walking stick/spear, and through those efforts, I learned and taught myself many things during those lonely nights. The dreadful quiet was only ever broken up by my own thoughts and my own hands working leather to make things I wanted. I worked hard at everything I did, just to escape from the stillness that surrounded me.

My greatest discovery, however, came after many uncounted weeks of monotonous walking through a hardly changing landscape. Something that I had both hoped for and dreaded finding at the same time.

I had found a road.