Name: Daniel Blackwell
Age: 15
Gender: Male
Body/ Strength: 6/ Endurance: 6/ Toughness: 5
Mind/ Acuity: 27/ Wisdom: 3/ Intelligence: 3
Soul/ Destiny: 0/ Fate: 3/ Radiance 9997
I was only able to check my status screen out of the corner of my eyes because the forest proved to be just as boring as the snowfield before it.
There was nothing. No movements. No sounds beyond my own crunchy footsteps. Just nothing. Just silence all around me. The snow muffled any quiet or distant sound I might have been able to hear otherwise.
Then I pause and do a double-take at my stat screen. "Oh hell yeah. Finally." I mutter as I notice that, finally, after days of walking and doing hard labor, my endurance has finally risen by at least one.
My toughness, too. But I suppose it makes sense that the two stats are closely tied together in this regard. It was the first time this body was put through the wringer like this, based on how chubby it is.
`A real victory over here, boss. Only gotta do this like 4 more times before I catch up to where others my age are.` Not that I can celebrate too much. This was only a single, tiny step in the right direction.
But even so. I now know for sure that as long as I work out, my physical stats will rise. Meaning that just like my mind stats, they are directly tied to what this body knows and can do.
And while I still don't know if spells and skills actually have minimum stat requirements like in the game, it can't hurt to up all of my stats whenever possible.
`Then again, who is to say-` I stop myself from thinking too much about this with a facepalm. Because I've had this conversation with myself before. Multiple times. And I wasn't about to repeat it.
Not when there were more important things to do. Like paying attention to my surroundings.
Sure. The forest was as quiet as can be, but that doesn't mean I should keep my head on a swivel. It doesn't mean I'm allowed to let my thoughts drift. I need to stay focused.
So I banish my thoughts and do exactly as I should.
And it's a good thing too. If I wasn't paying precise attention, I might have missed the first sign of life I saw in this world.
There. About fifty meters away from me, something moved. I focus. Staring hard at the spot I saw it at.
Then I see it again.
A squirrel. Running up the tree and disappearing somewhere up in the branches.
A sigh escapes me. My tense posture relaxes. "Just a squirrel, huh?" I mutter. But even so. Even if it was only a squirrel, it was a sign of life nonetheless.
The first animal I've seen since coming to this world. And while it proved to be mundane, I wasn't surprised.
The devs didn't pay too much attention to the wildlife beyond a few special instances. Filling the normal animal slots mostly with resized or recolored animals from Earth. And sometimes they just took an animal as is.
Like that squirrel I just saw. To me, from a distance, it looked like a common American red squirrel.
But that was good. Because it meant that if I could hunt one, I knew how to prepare and cook it. Since, for all intents and purposes, it was just an animal from Earth. And most of those were pretty similar. At least in terms of what you needed to do before eating them.
Not that expending energy on hunting squirrels would make sense. However. If Squirrels were here, then so must be other animals. And those other animals might just be worth hunting for food.
For an ecosystem to work, it needs a lot of moving parts, after all. And this ecosystem, while slow and boring, appeared to be healthy. Or so I guessed now that I finally saw an animal go about their business like normal.
`Knowing my luck, it's probably winter up in this bitch. All the big animals are probably either further south or hibernating underneath the snow.`
It was a very real possibility. One that would make things infinitely more difficult for me. So I held out hope that I had just been normal amounts of unlucky with my encounters with animals so far.
Though before making the spear in my hand, I probably wouldn't have felt comfortable facing anything like an elk or other large mammals.
But now that I had a spear, I felt like I could take them. And they would make for good hunting. No. Excellent hunting. A single grown elk could easily feed me for weeks if I managed to hunt one down.
So I refocus. To not miss anything going on around me. Stalking through the woods carefully. Lifting my feet up high and putting them back down flatly to soften my steps. Like I learned in the military.
Not that it helped much with all the crunchy snow on the ground. But every bit helped. Or so I would like to believe.
Regardless of my attempts to be quiet, though I didn't really see any animals for the rest of the day. Only one other squirrel that quickly scurried up a tree by the time I finally saw it.
The day drawing to a close without me even having had the chance to hunt anything. But it wasn't like I was expecting to get a kill on the very first day of being in the forest.
So I wasn't upset. Instead, I needed to focus on something else. Building a Shelter. Because now that I was in the forest, I had other options besides the snow cave.
In fact, the snow cave would be more difficult to make now since the snow in the forest wasn't as deep as the snow on the plains. Probably thanks to the trees and soil soaking up any melting water, unlike the hard rock that covered most of the plains.
But I needed to be careful with what I chose. Because of the howling I heard before. An open shelter was out of the question. And so were any that gave away my position easily.
Though I fear that whatever was howling in the night can probably smell me regardless of any camouflage I'll manage to build. Putting me right back to square one. But I'm not out of ideas. `Never am.`
The idea I came up with is rather simple. But effective. I'm going to simply use a young larch as a base and main support pillar for my new shelter. Hoping that having a sturdy tree behind me when I sleep will also stop any predators from sneaking up on me.
"Alright. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds reasonable." I get right to work after planning out my shelter. Starting by apologizing to the young tree I picked as my target before I start chopping.
Just like before, I use my shovel to hack most of the branches off. Until one side of the tree was freed from branches. I then use the branches to form a small perimeter around my shelter. Like an impromptu fence.
Keeping in mind that it won't stop any motivated animal, much less a monster, from attacking me, but it may just give me a warning before I'm set upon. And a warning was better than nothing.
Then I plant both of the spears I had crafted into the ground about two meters away from the tree. So they combine with the trunk of the tree to form a triangle. A triangle that can hold my tarps up just fine.
One tied around the tree and draped over the spears. Secured in place by some rope. And the other tarp was placed on the ground to insulate against the cold. Though again. The clothes I was wearing were doing a perfect job of that.
So after some consideration, I decided to use the second tarp as reinforcement for the shelter. The rudimentary hut I built is not looking good. Nor looking very sturdy. But I wasn't done yet anyway.
Because now it's time for me to reinforce my shelter further and camouflage it as best as I can. By going around and shoveling snow onto it. Until just the low entrance was left open and free of snow.
The whole thing ended up looking very much like a poor man's snow cave. But it was easier and quicker to build in these conditions than a snow cave. And I was happy with it.
Mostly because this body was screaming at me from all the physical labor I had subjected it to today once again.
So I was all too glad to finally sit down and eat something. Though I wasn't brave enough to open any of the canned food, just in case it attracted any animals during the night.
After eating and drinking some snow, I once again. I crawl into my shelter. Place my backpack against the entrance for safety and lie down to try to sleep.
Although I'm not sure how much sleep I would be getting. What I heard yesterday throughout the night kept me on edge more than I usually am while trying to fall asleep.
However. Eventually, exhaustion triumphs, and I fall asleep. Surprisingly undisturbed. I hear nothing but the gentle snow falling outside my tent.