The Clone had survived in this forest for a month with a sharpened stick and three stone cups he’d carved by hand over the course of a week. His clothes were basically rags by the end and he slept on a tree branch twenty ters above the ground every night because anything lower ant death.
Eren walked into the sa forest with a folding camping chair strapped to his backpack.
He also had two kobold scimitars on his belt, a composite bow Rosa had ordered online with a quiver of twenty arrows, his drone in a padded case, three full water bottles, a bag of dried fruits and nuts from Migros, a first aid kit, a flashlight with spare batteries and a pair of binoculars.
The Clone would have killed soone for binoculars.
I’m basically glamping in a death forest.
He set up the folding chair next to a stream about two kiloters northeast of the portal point and drank from his water bottle while the morning light filtered through the canopy above. The stream water was clear and his Poison Resistance didn’t flag anything dangerous about it but he still preferred the bottled stuff he’d brought from Earth. So habits from civilization just didn’t break easily.
The chair was actually comfortable. It had a cup holder on the armrest and everything. He’d paid forty lira for it at a camping store in Kuşadası while buying solar panel cables and the cashier had looked at him funny because who buys a folding chair and sixteen ters of industrial cable in the sa transaction.
If only he knew where this chair was going.
The first encounter of the day ca before he’d even finished his water.
His Apex Predator Awareness pinged a heat signature moving fast through the canopy about sixty ters to his right. He was on his feet and behind a tree trunk before his conscious brain even caught up because his Predatory Reflex had already handled the movent.
The thing that dropped from the upper branches was a serpentine body about four ters long with scales that shifted between dark green and a muddy brown. But it had wings. Wide feathered wings that shouldn’t have been able to carry sothing that heavy but sohow did. Its head was flat and triangular with a beak where a mouth should have been.
Soone fused a snake with a hawk and then tripled the size of both.
He used observe skill waiting for it to fail as always. But surprisingly skill worked!
Maybe it was failing Clone for his level was usually lower than his targets but Eren was different in this case.
[Observe: Target Identified: Venom Shriek Wyrm - Level 37]
The thing opened its beak and Eren was expecting a hiss or a screech but what actually ca out was a focused pulse of sound that hit the tree next to his head and cracked the bark in a perfect circle. The air vibrated where the sound wave passed through and his ears rang for two full seconds after.
"It has a sonic attack.." he muttered while rolling sideways. "A snake has a fu*king sonic attack."
He activated Lovely Eyes mid-roll and the wyrm’s head snapped toward him, drawn by the skill’s charm effect. Its pupils went wide and its whole body language shifted from hunting aggression to confused attraction for about one and a half seconds.
That was all he needed.
His first arrow caught it in the wing joint right where the feathers t scales. The wyrm shrieked with a real shriek this ti and dropped three ters before catching itself on a lower branch with its tail.
[Congratulations! Your skill "Charming Voice" levelled up]
-Level 3 > Level 4
He frowned and nocked another arrow. Wait, I didn’t even use Charming Voice. That leveled from Lovely Eyes usage?
The two skills shared a Charisma base so maybe using one in combat conditions trained the underlying stat interaction that both drew from. Or maybe the system was just being weird again.
Wouldn’t be the first ti.
The wyrm pulled his arrow out of its own wing with its beak and spat it on the ground. Then it looked at him with an expression Eren could only describe as personally offended. Its feathers were puffed up around the neck and its tail was coiling tight around the branch.
"Don’t give that look," he said while adjusting his aim. "You shot sound at my face first."
It lunged and he activated Kinetic Flux Runner to dodge sideways while keeping his draw steady. The skill made the transition from still to full sprint seamless and he released at the peak of his dodge. The arrow caught the wyrm in the lower body where the scales were thinner.
The creature hissed and retreated up into the canopy with blood dripping from two wounds. It circled him from above twice trailing dark drops on the leaves below and then flew northeast.
Eren let it go. A Level 37 wounded flying snake wasn’t worth chasing into unfamiliar territory for zero experience points.
He walked back to his chair and sat back down. The folding chair creaked slightly under his weight but held.
The Clone used branches and rocks and dirt as furniture for a month straight. That man was built different. He’d been desperate every single day from the mont he opened his eyes in this forest until the day he died and he never even knew he was a copy. He just fought and survived and died thinking he was the real Eren the entire ti.
The thought lingered for a second so he ate a handful of almonds and washed it down with water and moved on.
Two hours of walking northeast brought him into a stretch of forest he hadn’t explored before. The trees here were taller and thicker than the ones near the portal and the canopy was so dense that the forest floor was in permanent twilight. His enhanced night vision handled it easily but the reduced light made everything feel heavier.
He spotted the deer from about a hundred ters out.
There were six of them grazing in a small clearing where a gap in the canopy let actual sunlight through. Their fur glowed with a faint bioluminescence and soft blue-white patterns pulsed along their sides and down their legs. They looked peaceful and beautiful with slender builds and wide dark eyes that reflected the light from their own bodies.
Those might be the prettiest things I’ve seen on this entire planet.
He slowed his approach and used Observe on the nearest one.
[Observe: Target Identified: Mana-Gorged Phantom Deer - Level 33]
-Status: Unstable
- Mana saturation at 340% of biological capacity. Proximity Warning
Proximity warning? Since when does Observe give warnings?
The closest deer raised its head and looked directly at him. The glow on its body pulsed brighter once then twice and on the third pulse the air around the deer rippled and sothing slamd into his Poison Resistance hard.
[Your skill Poison Resistance tries to resist "Ambient Mana Toxin - Hallucinogenic Variant"]
The deer’s glow wasn’t decorative. They were leaking excess mana into the surrounding air and that mana was toxic in high concentrations. The "pretty light" was an overflow symptom from creatures that had absorbed more magical energy than their biology could contain.
He backed up imdiately and the Poison Resistance notifications kept firing with each step until he was about fifty ters out.
[Congratulations! Your skill "Poison Resistance" levelled up]
-Level 7 > Level 8
Free level-up just from getting too close to so glowing deer. I’ll absolutely take it.
He gave the clearing a wide berth and filed it away ntally. Those deer weren’t dangerous in a teeth-and-claws way but spending too long near them would lt your brain through hallucinogenic mana exposure. Earlier in his exploration he’d almost walked into a flower clearing that did sothing similar and backed out just in ti. Apparently the "accidentally get high and die" hazard was a recurring the on this planet.
Aradne really needs a tourism warning label.
"Deer can poison you if you get too close."
..
The next creature he found, the slug was worse than the deer.
Eren slled it before he saw it.
The creature was about two ters wide and covered in a translucent mbrane through which he could see internal organs pulsing with a greenish fluid. It moved along the forest floor at maybe half a ter per minute and left a trail of dissolved vegetation behind it. Every plant and root and piece of bark that the slug’s underside touched turned into a brown-gray slurry within seconds.
[Observe: Target Identified: Greater Dissolution Crawler - Level 44]
Level 44 and it dissolves everything it touches on contact.
It was heading toward a cluster of thick trees and as its body pressed against the base of the nearest one the bark started hissing and bubbling. The acid was eating through wood that Eren’s scimitar would have needed ten full swings to cut through.
"That’s just a living pool of acid in a see-through bag.." he said to nobody while watching from a safe distance. "If I shoot it and the mbrane breaks.."
The splash zone would dissolve my boots. And probably my feet. And then my legs. And then I’d be a torso in the dirt wondering where the rest of went.
He decided that discretion was the better part of not having his feet lted off and took a wide detour around the slug’s path. So fights weren’t worth fighting when the reward was zero experience and the risk was losing his entire lower body.
The Clone would have engaged it probably because the he tried to examine and find so useful things from everything.
Unlike him, Clone was really desperate and alone and every stat point mattered because he had nothing else. Eren had the luxury of walking away from a disgusting acid slug because his afternoon wasn’t a fight for survival.
Eren suddenly rembered that one adventure book -Gulliver’s Travels. But unlike that book, exploring an unknown wilderness in real life was a deadly ordeal at every turn.
He continued walking, hoping his luck would be as good as that of the heroes in adventure books.
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