And a long night it was, between the absolute lack of comfort from sleeping on rock hard wood wide enough to be a trunk in and of itself, and all the inconsistencies in the texture, hurting him in all worse possible places. It also got surprisingly cold out there, even with his sleeping bag, certainly not helping one fall asleep.
But all this was the least of his problems when it came to fall asleep. Indeed, how about you go ahead and try to get a wink of sleep in the middle of a forest in which you are convinced everything is after your skin. Not easy huh. He was too scared to even light up a cigarette to help the stress away, thinking it would be like a beacon for anything with nefarious ideas.
In the end though, exhaustion got the better of him, and after hours of trembling like a leaf, flinching at every single noise, and thinking about whether or not he'd still be there to see the sun tomorrow morning, he finally greeted Hypnos.
Not eternally though of course, but just as a brief passage, as he was woken up the next morning by some ruffles of leaves and grunts that sounded like they were too close for comfort.
Groggily opening his eyes, he tried to look down towards the ground without making any sound, which was a pretty tough operation considering he was on his back in a sleeping bag, the kind of thing that makes a comically large amount of noise at the very moment you are supposed to be quiet.
Agi found a simple alternative though, his phone still had some battery left since it was basically useless now, and he could put his camera in selfie mode to see what lied beneath him.
He proceeded, and what he saw almost made him wet himself. Standing right next to his tree trunk was a group of four individuals composed of the same species as the one he saw dead the day before. When intact, they looked to be way taller than humans, probably above three meters, and unless these were specialized in powerlifting, then they seemed way stronger and more muscular too. Their skin was dark brown, and seeing them next to the trees, it was clearly as a camouflage, they also had green patches that looked like moth spread all around their bodies. Other than that their pilosity was greatly lacking, in fact he couldn't see a single strand of hair anywhere, which also meant that as they were butt naked, everything was laid bare in front of his eyes.
They communicated in signs and grunts, and had weird club like weapons, one of them even seemed to want a swing at the tree, which he would have greatly dreaded, but for some reason, he was stopped before he could finalize it. In the end, their only problem seemed to lie in the vine tied to the trunk. By reading their behaviour, he could make out apparent anger and maybe confusion, but not much more than that. In the end they ripped the vine off and left just like that.
Agi, for no obvious reason stayed up in his tree, unmoving as a statue for one full hour before adventuring himself down.
His heart was still on edge, and he felt overall pretty terrible about the whole situation. His actions from yesterday brought about an indirect interaction with one of the very groups he wished to avoid making any contact with. For all he knew, they might just come here again at regular interval and even thoroughly search the place out. He had to move, and fast.
After getting his stuff packed up again, he moved at a quick pace along the river's path, and the opposite way the hairless brown gorillas went, as he would call them, for lack of a better word.
He only stopped when his legs could barely move anymore. Terrified by the fact that these creatures might be able to track him down, he just walked as far as he physically could, which was around 12 kilometers, and once settled down once again, he decided to refrain making any new kind of landmark anywhere for fear of the consequences.
With the long walk, the search for a new suitable tree, the collection of water, and a couple of solid looking sticks to hopefully make his sleep at least more stable, the day went on rather fast and it was soon time to spend his second night out in the hostile wilderness.
Fast forward a bit, and Agi managed to successfully survive a full week in this hostile wilderness. The new spot he had chosen ended up being a very good choice, as he hasn't encountered a single animal for a week now.
The first few days remained very stressful, but as nothing happened for a while his mind started to settle down once again. He even proceeded to qualities of life upgrades up in his little tree, be it foliage for comfort, or branches for stability. From up there he even had access to a whole web of trees thanks to the forest being so dense.
However, in all this good fortune, a not so new problem peeked its head out again. Even though he tried to ration himself as much as possible, his packs of noodles, canned goods, and dried meat was running thinner and thinner.
Over the last few days he even started to implement the few berries he had come to learn of on his trip into his diet. Unfortunately, he learned the hard way that no stones were left unturned when it came to changing the environment. And for the berries, let's just say that the learning process was feverish and explosive. In the positives, though, he had to get accustomed to spending more time on the river bed, to wash his small pan, plastic plate, and the two elements making up his cutlery. After a few days, this list extended to his clothes and his body.
This is also why his first idea to fix his food issue was to try and catch some fish, wondering that even though convinced the system could create some bizarre monstrosities in the waters, they wouldn't be found in a four meters wide, not even two meters deep, slow currented river.
The question of how he would fish was rapidly answered after staying for hours on end up a tree over looking the clear river and not seeing a single disturbance in the water, much less any kind of underwater life: he wouldn't.
In fact with how dead the river seemed, it would be counter productive to waste any time trying to get food out of it.
His thought therefore turned to animal life. From all the noises he could hear all day (and night) long, he could safely say the forest was quite a bit more lively than the river ever will, besides, how would the species he had a small encounter with a week ago even survive and maintain their bodies without a solid source of food?
The problem here is that while he had gone fishing on several occasion in the past, he has no experience in hunting game. Never set up a trap, tracked , shot, or anything like that. He would say he is decent with a bow, but he doesn't have anything remotely like that under his hand and his craftsmanship is nowhere near good enough to put together a makeshift bow and arrows from some random branches and vines, strings, or whatever you can find around here. And while he did have pretty good endurance, stalking an animal long enough for it to fall from exhaustion is not up his alley. Even if it were, running for maybe hours would tire him a lot, and make a lot of noise, so not optimal with what lurked around in this forest.
The only option he saw was to take pointy sticks, or even make some, and sneak around an animal, in order to, once close enough, try your luck at a throw. He already has the muscles for a powerful throw, just no aim or technique, but maybe with some basic training and beginner's luck he would manage somehow.
It is also to mention that he hasn't encountered any animal life except for the brown gorillas, and staying idle waiting either for starvation, or a miracle wasn't at the top of his list. Therefore, he would have to move. Even if that increased his chances at putting himself in danger, a chance at life is certainly better than certain death.
For this new nomadic lifestyle, he would have to shed as much weight as possible from his backpack, taking only the essentials: sleeping bag, cooking wares, the dull machete, first aid kit, the water filter, and the remaining food, making it a whole lot practical to move around.
Having some lingering attachment to the place he stayed a safe week at and still some time to spare, he made the choice to spend one more night here, before moving out early tomorrow.
He used the time left before dusk to approximate how deep in the mud he just was by practising throwing with just about any somewhat straight somewhat long sticks he could find.
After the first couple of throws he thought himself royally fucked, but the more it went on, the more efficiently he managed to put his muscles to work for the throw, making them quite powerful for what they were. Most of the work would therefore have to be put into accuracy. His aim with the bow was pretty good, but it took time for him to get there, and this was also very different, and he also had no visual reference to correct himself.
His equipment wasn't working to his advantage either, as most sticks ended up breaking after a few throws, their weight and shape differences also made it really hard to adapt aim wise. Some of them he would be able to throw accurately lots of times in a row, almost until they broke, unaware if it was only a coincidence or not, and others not a single one would find its mark.
After a couple of hours of looking for branches, throwing them, and gathering them back, his lower back started to feel some wear, that combined with the repetitiveness of the task, he just decided to stop and go on to the stack of carefully selected sticks he found over the past few days, which were of much higher quality than the ones he has used so far for training.
They numbered six, just enough to not be cumbersome to take with him, and all had the relatively same shape weight and length, the only work he would have to do on them would be some trimming and sharpening.
More time past and it was now to dark to work on his future javelins, he would just have to quickly finish working on them tomorrow morning. For now, he was getting ready to spend the last night here in the place he called home for a very short while, and move out onto a nomadic lifestyle, rarely again sleeping at the same place twice in a row.