Shōko lied on the cold ground, sand sticking to her previously wet body. She was fluttering in and out of slumber the entire night, too sore to properly fall asleep and too sore to properly get up.
Her eyes fluttered open slightly, the light too bright to see anything. She felt something on her right arm, like a ticklish tapping.
She rolled onto her left side, groaning as she stuffed her eyes into her upper arm.
"Argh, mom, leave me alone… I'm tired… let me sleep…!"
Despite her words, she kept on feeling the ticklish feeling now, only at the back of her elbow.
It was slightly different now.
It felt soft.
And wet?
She opened her eyes and looked back over her shoulder, and saw a small fox-like animal licking her arm. She swung her arm, scaring it off before dropping her head on her arm again with a groan.
"Auugh… Why can't this have been a dream…"
She lazily pushed her aching body up into a seated position. She glanced around and spotted her coat and dress scattered on the floor. She crawled towards her coat and pulled out her phone from one of it's inside pockets. She turned it on and checked the time.
Three o' clock.
She dropped her phone before sitting up straight. Her back was aching, probably from sleeping on a hard, cold surface the entire night. She looked at the water surface of the lake she plunged into. It's clear. Crystal-clear, fully see-through, like glass.
She pushed herself up off the ground and stood up on shaky legs, the pressure on her foot agonizing, her vision turning black from the sudden change in blood pressure. She stood there for a couple shaky seconds before her vision returned to her.
She looked down at her shirt, gripping the edge of it and pulling it up off over her head, practically peeling it off her skin before tossing it onto her coat. She took off her boots, then pulled down her pants and underwear, leaving her fully bare. A sudden chill coursed through her body as the cool air hit her bare skin. Which woke her up a bit, but it wasn't enough.
She limped forward towards the lake, entering it. First her feet, then her knees, followed by her waist and torso. The water was cold— frigid, even, which shocked her awake. It wasn't too bad though, as she was used to always taking cold showers back at home.
She continued trudging further into the icy water, making sure to keep her arms raised up, out of it.
The water was now at clavicle height, and her arms were still dry. She took a breath to steel herself before slowly lowering her arm into the water. It burned against her raw, red skin, making her grit her teeth, but she kept lowering her arm. The raw flesh felt like it was burning all over again. She rubbed her arm with her left hand, brushing off scabs and cleaning it.
She dipped her head into the water, letting it soak in through her hair and onto her scalp before coming back up. She splashed the cold water into her face, wiping her eyes and rinsing her mouth.
The water tasted like sand…
After soaking in the cold water for a couple minutes, she slowly trudged out back onto the bank, her limbs cold and numb. Especially her right arm. She stood underneath the leaves, letting the filtering light dry her body.
"I wonder where that damn cat is, and why'd he even jump down for that hat anyway?! What color was it, pink?" She questioned, monologuing to herself. "That color didn't even match his outfit! N-not that it looked particularly bad, though, but—"
By the time she finished her self-monologuing and yapping, she realized she was dry. She dusted her clothes before putting them on, the warmth comforting.
She then threw her coat and dress onto a random nearby branch to let them air-dry.
While she waited, she sat near the bank, nibbling on some dried fruit she had in her purse, while checking her phone. Despite the plunge, it seemed to work fine, so she opened the map app and checked her current location. It was about three and a half kilometers away from Isenn Station, and the way the cat fell wasn't more then a few tens of meters away from the station. So all she had to do was walk back to where the station roughly is, through the weird forest-like place.
She continued looking at the map app, specifically at the forest she was currently in. It had a weird skull symbol next to the name. Or, at least, where it's supposed to be.
She used the keyboard arrows to select the symbol, and a small info bar appeared.
This forest is very unexplored and in turn is very dangerous, due to unknown flora and fauna. Enter at your own risk…
"Are you serious…? I'm seriously stuck inside this unexplored, unnamed forest?? Oh, Mila, this is not my day…"
She turned off her phone and gently put it onto the ground. She finished her piece of dried fruit before getting up and gathering her clothes off the branch and putting them on.
She gathered her other things – phone and boots. But before heading off, she looked around and found a perfect cane-shaped stick to use, since her right foot was injured, probably even broken at worst.
She followed the map's directions, making sure to avoid any underbrush and rough terrain. Time went by and she hadn't encountered anything dangerous, mostly just small vertebrates and invertebrates like foxes, squirrels, raccoons, some small reptiles, and weird bugs. She was about a kilometer away from her destination when she spotted a small stream and decided to take a break. She took out a small glass bottle of water, which she emptied along the way, and filled it with the stream's water.
I should probably boil this water. "But I don't have any materials for boiling water on me..."
Being a bookworm, she's obviously read a lot of books, some of those being about wilderness survival and outdoor camping. And with her acquired knowledge, she knows that even if the water is clear, she should boil it. By using that knowledge, she could probably even start a fire with a couple of tries. But without anything to boil the water in…
She thought for a bit. Naturally, her gaze landed on her right arm. The red skin around her hand made her think back to when she was on the clouds, using her ability. The heat it generated was definitely enough to boil a small bottle of water.
She took off her coat, folded it, and gently placed it onto the ground. She then rolled up her left sleeve before grabbing the bottle with her left hand. She started to control her breathing once more. Using her diaphragm to breath in deeply through her nose, then slowly out through her mouth. Feeling the oxygen merge with her blood cells and feeling it flow through her arm and yadayadayada…
Her arm started heating up as it filled with blood. Since glass is quite a good conductor for vibrations, the spiral energy quite easily transferred from her arm into the bottle and through the water. She made sure not to focus too much on her arm as to not have it end up like the other arm.
To aid this, she did it even slower. Hyperventilating every few seconds to deactivate her technique, then reactivating it to heat up the water, then deactivating it and repeating the cycle. This went on for a few minutes, and as the bottle started reaching boiling temperatures, she submerged her hand in the stream to still hold on. The water started bubbling, and she remembered to remove the cap before the pressure got too much.
She held onto the bottle for as long as she could before it got too hot. She hyperventilated to deactivate her power, put on the cap and left the bottle in the stream to cool down.
She sat down onto a nearby rock, using her folded coat as a cushion. Some of the tension in her body escaped with a deep sigh. She waited for the water in the bottle to cool down, occasionally glancing at the bottle the water from the stream, it's water morphing in shape as it rushed over it.
The seconds turned into minutes, and she wondered if any of the 'dangers' in the forest would find her, before shaking her head wildly. "Argh, Shōko you idiot, don't jinx it. The dangers can wait till after you officially become an Adventurer…!!"
But despite her words, she knew that hoping that danger would wait for her to be ready was wishful thinking. Something only a one-dimensional protagonist in some dumb shōnen manga would actually believe…
She turned her head to the right, away from the stream and towards the trees. The light breeze seemed to die, and she heard the faintest sound coming from the direction of the trees.
"Log Splitter..!"
A flying bladed object was whirring to her at a high speed. Her pupils contracted, and she seemed to see things move in slow motion, the swaying leaves and branches along with the bladed object spinning towards her, then—
*Blshh*
The weapon – an axe – hit her directly in the left side of her face, lodging itself into her skull. She slowly fell backwards, landing on the sand of the bank with a thud, her arms splayed wide, and an absurd amount of blood leaking out of her head, pooling onto the ground and staining the sand.
Shōko just died…