One way or another, I had to get out of the situation I was in. In my haste, I pulled the magic shirt off Hinata's now-familiar corpse and tried to get out onto the field as quietly as possible.
When I crawled out, I found that my new dead friend's friends were gone; they had gone in the other direction, as I'd been told. I saw a hill in the distance, but it didn't seem like a good idea at first. Because I didn't know where my potential pursuers were, or what abilities they had.
The whole time, I wondered what was in the bag that made these guys go on a killing spree, and what kind of boss they had that could kill Hinata, since I could tell from the conversations that he was very strong. Where's there already if even his corpse was able to defeat that thug on the beach.
I had a bit of a panic attack, because I didn't know where I was going at all. My leg was still bleeding quite badly, but I was unexpectedly lucky. It was just enough to pull myself together a little and catch my breath for a few seconds, as I saw the forest in the distance. Ahead to the south there was a forest in sight. I didn't notice it right away, because the entrance was blocked by a dense field of wheat.
Perhaps, of course, it is at the entrance to the forest that the gang will meet. But either way, at least I could hide there. But first I had to get the wound cleaned up.
The cut wasn't very deep, but I didn't have any alcohol or bandages. It would have been great if Hinata had some malt whiskey in her bag, for a reason she was so heavy, but I couldn't find any in there. Just a 0.5 bottle of water, which I simply rinsed off the wound and tied it with a magic shirt. I could only hope that his blade wasn't poisoned or somehow enchanted to kill him slowly and painfully. On the other hand, I'd be done with this circus faster, and I'd drown in endless nothingness.
That's what I would have thought before, in my past life. I still don't know what kind of place I went to and whether I survived that accident or not, but now my whole gut, all my thoughts and actions were focused on survival. I had no idea that I had such a strong will and desire to live. Are they my own? Or is it just one of the biological mechanisms, just if the second is rather strange, I do not think that such a willless creature like me is very useful for the evolution of its species.
But it doesn't matter as long as these mechanisms work for me.
Limping and walking in the hot midday sun, I barely made it to the entrance to the forest. Strangely enough, my leg continued to hurt, but it seemed to hurt less. Maybe I'm just tired and imagining things, but when I decided to bandage it, I found that my wound was a little smaller, and it wasn't bleeding at all.
I read a lot about magic, of course. I grew up with the Harry Potter books and watched cartoons and anime about wizards, but I never experienced magic in reality. Yes, when I went on tours to an old church I could hear the story of how incense cured cancer and how people kissed a sacred icon and were healed in a couple of days, but never in front of my eyes.
On the other hand, I have always been a bit skeptical, so there was still the possibility of a poisoned blade, the poison from which, having hit far enough in my body, began to cause hallucinations and I did not have much time to live.
I needed to take a break, get something to eat, and regain my strength.
To my shame I had never been to a real forest in my life. Well, I had walked through parks and places that might have resembled a forest. But all of that was a sham compared to this forest. At least because there were no trampled paths for pedestrians. And if they are not here we can make a simple conclusion that people are not frequent guests here, and if guests are not frequent, then there are a lot of different animals. And in addition to cute squirrels and rabbits, most likely there are wolves and bears, which are attracted to the smell of my blood and they decide to eat my delicious dinner.
In general, since childhood I have not liked animals very much, or rather I was very afraid of them, and most of all of dogs. It was all because of our dog, whose name was Chestnut. He lived at my grandmother's house, and in fact, he loved me very much. That's probably one of the major true omissions of my past life. I was told a story about when I was very young I dropped my pacifier next to him, which Chestnut hid and guarded in his kennel. And I was stupid all the time I was afraid of him. If I had been smarter I would have realized that he was just happy to see me and wanted to play with me, not tear me into little pieces.
Alas, he died before I knew it.
I have another stronger story about animals. It's strange that I, a person who isn't crazy about them and tries to avoid them as much as possible, has such great stories in my memory bank.
The second story is about my cat Tasia. She lived at my grandmother's house, she was very independent and proud, often hissed when she didn't like something and could yap when someone allowed herself more than she could. She even had a very proud expression on her face. But in spite of this, the incident that happened when I was 12 years old at any age caused me to cry a little, even though I tried to hold back.
It was already evening and I was walking with my friends in the playground. As I said before, I was very much afraid of dogs. And so we were walking, and my grandmother and Tasya were not very far from the playground, until suddenly one of my friends came out with his huge sheepdog, who saw us running and ran to us.
I didn't know then that it was his dog, and it doesn't matter when you see a huge dog running at you.
When I noticed it coming at me I got scared and after running about three meters I stumbled and fell down. At that moment I thought I was dead, I imagined I was going to cover myself with my hands and the dog was going to chew on them. But when the dog almost got to me, Tasya ran out between me and him and started hissing furiously at him. The sheepdog was dazed and stopped, and I was a little shocked.
After that incident, Tasia and I formed a special bond. we loved each other, only she died too, three years later, hit by our neighbor's car. I don't know this for sure, but we found her under the car. The day I got back from soccer practice.
It's a very sad memory, but it warmed me up a bit, because if I had been in that forest with Chestnut and Tasa, I would have been able to feel completely safe.
But alas, they are not around me, so I had to think of something. The first idea that came to my mind was the best one: climb a tree and spend the night there.
The trees in this forest were much larger than the ones I had seen before. About ten of me could fit into the diameter of an average tree in this forest. And they were so tall that I couldn't even see the end of them. This made it even more surprising that I hadn't noticed this forest before.
There were only a couple of problems. I wasn't the best climber, and the other was that I probably didn't know what animals lived in the woods and whether they could climb a tree like that. Plus I was hungry because I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday.
Hinata and his bag helped me with the last question, in which I found a packet of crackers of very dubious taste, but they were very nutritious, probably the local equivalent of the military cookies my military friend once gave me to try, but it did not matter, because I had satisfied my hunger and had to take care of more important matters.
After spending about an hour in the woods, I picked the perfect tree, which was near a large clearing with raspberry bushes. Some of the branches were hard to see from the clearing in case those guys gathered here. Plus it was pretty tall and I assumed I could see the entrance to the forest from it. And the main reason it was perfect was that it was wrapped in some strange vines, strong enough not to break under my weight and perfect for climbing.
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The branch I had chosen was not as high as I would have liked, but it was at a safe distance of eight to ten meters, so even if I fell for some reason, I would definitely stay alive. Unless I broke my neck, in which case everything else wouldn't really matter.
There was still a problem with animals, because Bears are great at climbing trees, both big and small, and I didn't know if there were tigers or panthers in these woods.
The only weapon I had was the katana of the guy who had attacked me, and that was it. There was nothing else in Hinata's bag useful for survival.
From some videos or encyclopedias, I knew that bears are kind of afraid of people and they are not particularly eager to meet them, only if for some important reason, such as a mother bear looking for food for her children and then obviously not in the person of a man, or it is a young bear, which as if he had not had time to learn the fear.
The only thing left for me to do was to be ready for battle and put on this strange shirt, which in the meantime had almost completely healed my leg, and in the morning had essentially protected me from the sword.
Even though it didn't seem like much time had passed, it was already getting dark outside. I didn't have a watch, but considering that it was summer or spring, and it was starting to get dark outside now around 8 p.m., and given that I woke up pretty early, I was hell-bent on sleeping.
It was a unique day, of course; I almost got killed, I might as well say, killed a man. I hurt and healed a leg, found a strange forest, hid from criminals, who most likely had either already found their friend's body or were looking for it. Fought off various sad memories from the past and all with the fact that I still don't understand where I am or what happened to me? Am I alive? Or am I dead and is this my kind of eternal nightmare dream in which I'm trapped for centuries? I don't think so, because the pain was very realistic.
As I replayed the events of the day in my head, I didn't notice how I fell asleep. The branch was as wide as the top shelf of a train, so there was little chance that I would fall.
-How have you enjoyed your first few days?
- Why?
- I'm asking you, how are the first days of your new life?
- Are you Dumbledore? And we're at Kingcross Station?
- Hahaha, what makes you say that?
- Because everything here is white, and for some reason I woke up on a bench, even though I fell asleep on a tree branch.
- You're asleep on a branch now, it's just that we're in your dream.
- In my dream? So I'm dreaming about you?
- Kind of yes and kind of no. I'm not a figment of your imagination, except for this place and my appearance. I don't really like beards, they take a lot of care.
- Well, I thought you were Dumbledore.
- Well, if I'm Dumbledore, where's my wand, and why should I even meet you, since you have no talent for magic at all?
- What about my incredible intuition and natural beauty?
- Haha. That's what I always liked about you. Even wounded and in your sleep, you always retain that slightly sarcastic sense of humor. But you never found out who I was, don't you wonder.
- In general I have a lot of questions, too many, I'm just a little tired of being surprised. First I find myself in some obscure field, running on the beach and swimming in the clear sea, then I find a corpse almost dying, a shirt like in fairy tales heals my wounds, and now I wake up, at the train station and Dumbledore asks me strange questions.
-Well, you should actually be thankful for that last point, because I couldn't just leave you without explaining anything at all. And stop calling me Dumbledore. It's all in your head.
- Well, if I were more kinky, you'd be like some kind of cat girl or something worse. So who are you? Depending on that, I'll know what else to ask you and why my head hurts so much.
- Your head hurts because you leaned on a hard bark, but of course there's another reason, but I can't tell you about it.
- Why?
- I don't want to spoil your party.
- What kind of party? If it's your birthday party, why don't we go to the McDonald's kids' room?
- Haha I like your jokes, but we don't have much time, and if you pay attention, my head hurts more and more by the minute. So let's get to the important stuff.
-I already asked who you are?
- I'm kind of like you, but also everyone else you knew or didn't know.
- What do you mean? Are you like God?
- No, we use a different word, but to explain in terms you know, I'm kind of the thinking shell of the concept of life in that decagon you live in.
- What, the decagon, the concept of life? How is that in a good way different from God?
- God in your mind is all-powerful, but I am not. I'm just a cog in the system that performs his function, but you've disturbed my peace of mind a bit.
- What do you mean? How did I violate?
- That's a question I don't have an answer for myself yet, but as soon as I get it, I'll be sure to share it with you. So pick another question.
- Okay I'm dead?
- Are you breathing now?
- Right.
- So you're alive.
- I mean me, the one who was hit by a car two days ago.
- That you're kind of alive, but kind of not.
- I don't get it.
- I don't understand everything here, either. The only thing I can tell you is that this place is neither heaven nor hell, but just another alternate universe in your Dexagon. I think you've seen cartoons or games about an alternate world in your world.
- So did I get into issekai? God, that's a shame.
- Hahaha not really. Such cases occur, except that all the trapped, got into worlds outside their dexagon, but you got into a world in yours - this is the mystery to which I can not get an answer.
- You didn't answer what's wrong with me in the other world?
- You are neither alive nor dead. You exist in these two worlds at the same time, and if you die in one, you die in the other. As far as I know, you are in a coma in that world, and your condition is not to be envied.
- Am I in a coma because part of me got here?
- No, because of the accident you were seriously injured and you could die any minute now.
- So I can die here, too, at any moment?
- That's right!
- Great, so then what's the point of this rebirth?
- Well, I told you it didn't go according to plan. You were not a perfect person and according to the plan, you were supposed to go after death in your world to another one, outside this dexagon, to perform certain functions, but only you had an accident and now you are between two worlds and I and other moderators of this dexagon can not understand how it happened and what to do with you.
- So I'm a little confused, what is this dexagon anyway? And how is it that you - CONCEPT OF LIFE don't understand what happened? You're clearly not handling your responsibilities.
- What is a dexagon, I will tell you next time, because it is very long, and as for your claim, I certainly understand you, but please do not rude me. The fact is that the bottom of this iceberg is much bigger than you think. In your mind there is the world, people and God. In fact, everything is much more complicated, dozens of dexagons, thousands of hexagons local deities, alternative constructions, physical concepts and abstract ones. And apart from people like me, as you would say "deities" who can influence your fate there are at least a thousand, of which according to my investigation about 18 could be interested in it, but their motives are still not clear to me.
- Mm-hmm. You poured it.
- Okay, you need to wake up soon, so I'll leave the explanations for another time, there's one last question.
- Can I be reborn in the Pokemon world
- Are you stupid? Yes you can, but give me a normal question.
- Okay, although I'm already happy, I'd ask about the likelihood of me getting there, but okay. Usually in all such iskai, people are reborn with cool new abilities. As I understand it, there's some kind of magic in this world. What kind of abilities did I get?
- None.
- What do you mean?
- Yes, that's one of the omissions. You are in the most dangerous of all the worlds in this dexagon, but you have no powers. There are thousands of different supernatural powers in this world for your world, but you don't have the prerequisites to learn any of them.
- What do you mean by that? In other words, am I the most helpless ant on the most crowded street in the world?
- Well, I'm sorry about that, but I'm telling you, it was a mistake to move you here. Or someone else's bad luck. To be honest, I sense a kind of power in you, but it's very dark and not typical of this world that you find yourself in. So you can't use it either. But I don't know that for sure, so you can try to figure it out on your own.
- On the one hand a lot of new information, but it did not become easier and clearer. There are only more questions.
-I enjoyed chatting with you, the whole time I was watching you, I wanted to meet you in person, except you and I have to go now. We'll still have a chance to talk, so you'll understand more. My suggestion is that you try to survive in this world while I figure out what happened. And then we'll figure out what to do next. Okay?
- It's like you're an amateur doctor trying to absolve yourself of all responsibility before the surgery. Well, what else can I do. How long before we meet?
- Very, very soon. Bye.
Before I could answer, I opened my eyes. What was that all about? It's hard to realize, especially when your leg is sore and you haven't slept at all.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I wasn't dead. But this news is not very positive, because I could die at any moment.