Not wasting much time, he skimmed through his stuff to look for his knife, his matches, and his lighter. He still couldn't believe it, in a forest where all life except for non-fruit bearing trees, vines, and thorny bushes, had seemingly disappeared over the course of the week and a half he spent here, seeing such a thing, here was nothing short of a blessing.
He knew how it got here but not why, and now wasn't the time to question it either. He had to eat or he was done for.
He was in luck too, it hadn't rained at all in all the time he had spent here. Agi quickly gathered some dead branches and sticks from all around, pretty much the only resource he was sure never to run out from, assembled them in a small stack, not even caring to make a dead zone around it, this forest could burn for all he cared. For the fire starter, he cut out some cloth out of his only spare shirt
He brought the lighter to the base of the piece of cloth, and pressed down. Only, nothing came out, not fire and barely a spark. He tried again, again and again. Not once did he manage to get more than a couple of sparks. After such a long time in an unfamiliar environment it wasn't so surprising that his lighter gave out, after all plenty of factors could have made it so that the chemical reactions would stop working.
He didn't mind it much, he had plenty of matches, which don't need any complicated combustion mechanisms, only some friction.
And that he was right, the first match worked as intended, and the cloth started burning. Quickly, he put it in the middle of the pile he created and blew on it slightly a couple times. Only, after all that the fire didn't spread. In fact, it died out pretty much instantly. Agi started a fire this way more times than he could count, and this time more than ever he was sure he hadn't messed up. He cursed and even thought the system made the branches fireproof in order for the forest not to burn down, but after trying again and again this hypothesis slowly became somewhat obsolete.
First, he only managed to light one match in three, which was already quite strange, but then every time he did, the branches only caught on fire for a very short time before dying out.
Just as the last of his matches choked on itself, so did his hopes of eating cooked meat. Though at least it was now clear, at the same time as every single food source was drying up to extinction, so was the oxygen in the air. He hadn't realized before because it happened so gradually, but looking back, what he blamed all on his fatigue was also probably also the result of a lower oxygen level. If things kept going in this direction, he wouldn't end up starving, but slowly suffocating to death, though if this acclimatization was supposed to be survivable it would probably stop shortly before, right?
For now though, he had to steel himself up to eat his fill in raw red gamey meat. Not just for the taste and smell, but also for all the health hazards eating raw red meat from unknown origins brought.
But between starving today and falling ill tomorrow, in his current state he would choose to get sick one hundred percent of the time.
His hunger taking over his body, he jumped onto the deer, and grabbed one of its thighs and dove mouth first into it, taking three bites at a time before barely chewing and swallowing, his efficiency at the task was probably as good as that of a professional eater, if not better. Not built like one though, his jaw rapidly fatigued and his stomach quickly filled. In his mind, he knew that after such a long and devastating fast, the last thing he should do was eat a lot, instead he should slowly let his body used to eating more and more over time. He had plenty of experience fasting and bulking, but in such a state, his body didn't listen, which resulted in the urge to stop and take a well-deserved nap after barely ten minutes of eating.
He was woken up probably hours later, with the sun shining bright, and some loud noises coming from several places around him. Over the last few days, since pretty much no noise except his own and the one of the wind could ever be heard, Agi had gotten more sensible to this kind of thing, especially when there isn't supposed to be any noise at all, for example when he sleeps. This change in the environment was therefore pretty efficient in waking him from his digestive slumber.
After all, this could maybe mean that the forest had come back to life, and everything was back to normal.
However, this short lived dream of his took another turn when, all of a sudden, he saw coming out from behind the tree hedge, a group of 5 bulky figures. These were of course the only live thing he saw in this forest besides himself, the plants all around, and the morphing creature who was stalking him.
Upon his sight, one of the bipedal dark brown apes pointed at him while grumbling something incomprehensible, before they, as a group shouted and started running.
Seeing this himself, Agi got up as quickly as physically possible and bolted in the opposite direction, all the while cursing his feeder that he just had to steal food from hostile killer monkeys.
Soon after he started running, he realized that in his current condition, he wouldn't be able to maintain such pace for long at all, moreover, his senses weren't fully awake yet, and he had trouble navigating around all the now impoverished forest.
And barely a minute into this frantic chase what had to happen did indeed happen, he tripped on an exposed root, and plunged head first into a thorny bush, narrowly managing to close his eyes before they came ripping into his skin all over his body.
Without time for pain, he rid himself as best as he could of the branches stuck in his body while getting back up, at the same time, a quick glance back let loose another dose of adrenalin into his body.
They were right on his tail, uncaring for any obstacle in their path except for the thick trees. The one in front even prepared to swing his arm holding a massive club that would probably kill him the moment a contact happened.
Something else he noticed is that he might have to rethink the degree of intelligence these creatures possessed. Not all of them were mindlessly running after him, in fact only one was directly running behind him, two more were in his right and left respectively, and the last two were nowhere in sight.
They also seemed very adept at moving in this environment and with this fall his chances at escaping them by running in a straight-ish line through the forest looked slimmer than an ifbb pro's waist.
Recognizing that there was no direct physical escape he decided to try and win over their psyche. He stopped running and immediately turned around, forcing the most menacing looking glare he could muster.
The first desired consequence did come into existence, the three apes that were within sight stopped running at the same time.
Agi's current objective was to escape of course, but if doing so seemed impossible as it was the case right now, then he would try to stall as much time as possible betting on the fact that the polymorph was simply temporarily absent and not simply watching him get torn apart
After a staredown lasting no more than five seconds, Agi put his hands up in the air and started doing very wide gestures to see how they would react. After a couple of seconds, he also started shouting as loud as he could mainly curse words, all in an attempts to scare them off.
They didn't run away though, instead they only seemed more alarmed, but still as determined, at least he managed to plant a seed of doubt in their mind.
Using this opportunity, he jumped up to make himself look even bigger before suddenly sprinting towards them. This act finally shook them off their feet, and the one he was running to even stumbled back a little.
This played in his favor even more than he imagined, as he could now potentially even go for a punch as a final effort. Though he knew nothing about punching, he knew that the place to aim for was the jaw roughly, and also that his body was trained enough to put decent weight behind his fist even having never trained for it specifically.
And so, once in range, he arched his arm back, hips and shoulders turned, and all of his weight on his hind leg.
After that all he had to do was use his imagination to create a mental image of himself lifting a heavy dumbbell with his left arm, and his muscles all activated at the same time. His left leg pushed to the ground as hard as possible, his hips then shoulders swiftly turned from left to right and most importantly, his arm shot forward with strength he didn't think himself capable of mustering in his current physical condition.
The punch connected right on the jaw bone of the hulking humanoid creature, it was already stumbling backwards before and had now properly lost balance, to this sight Agi didn't wait a single more second, and used his forward momentum to bolt away as fast as he could
Seconds later he realized that his wrist might be broken from how much it hurt, just how hard was that monkey's bone, had his blow done any more damage than just make him lose balance?
In the end, his curiosity won over and he threw a glance behind his back, what he saw made his blood run cold, all three were already right on his tail, he couldn't even make out which one he punched from how intact they looked.
Looking back was a decisive mistake, it not only served to scare him and rob him of all the confidence he had accumulated to make that move, but it also prevented him from looking where he was going and therefore avoid obstacles, therefore, once looking back in front, he didn't have time to stop his body from crashing into a tree trunk, only barely enough to put his arms in front of his face and squeeze his muscles hard, bracing for impact.
The impact was hard, but not nearly as hard as he expected it to be from a huge log, his brain made the connection before his eyes could even identify what he was looking at. He had just been intercepted by the two stragglers, and was now sandwiched from the front and the back while sitting dizzily on the ground.
He quickly had to shake himself out of it though, as the one he bumped into wasn't going to nicely let him escape, and indeed, the next thing he knew, he had to avoid a massive fist coming towards his face by grabbing a nearby root and pulling himself away with it. He got back up with the momentum, but was now surrounded by all five of the treelike apes.
Agi was completely lost, he couldn't possibly squeeze his way through this predicament, and he couldn't keep his eyes on every single one of them either. But still he didn't give up, stayed on his guards and ready to seize an opportunity if it ever came.
After a short standstill, he heard a noise coming from behind him, and before he knew it, it was already too late. He barely had the time to see from the corner of his eyes, a huge fist coming straight for his torso, his body moved on its own, crouching a bit, putting his arms in front and one of his legs up, but that barely did anything. The force of the punch sent him flying through the vegetation, only to land and roll some dozen meters away.
He expected to be absolutely knocked out cold or at least very disorientated, but getting up, he only felt slightly dizzy. A punch that could probably destroy a wall, tanked so easily from his body, which he thought he knew so well, was impossible, and in the back of his head, he knew it had to do with the system in some weird way.
He didn't have much time for respite though, as they were already onto him, and while his tattered body didn't feel too bad, that didn't make him react any better, this time he took straight on a club hit which sent him flying even further away. At this point he knew and he felt that even if his body had gotten a bit more resistant, it was far from invincible, therefore with all the lucidity he had left, he climbed up a tree, hoping they couldn't follow him up there, and when he didn't hear any footsteps or signs they were coming, he opened up the system to see if his intuition was correct:
< You have grasped the concept of Conatus >
< You have gained new mods >
< You have gotten two new achievements >
< You have levelled up >
He didn't even make it through half of these notifications before fainting for good.