"For the sake of all that is holy!!! How in the hell do you keep finding me?!!!"
Jeremiah was beyond fed up at this point.
The snail has been pestering him since he'd crawled out from that damned crevice.
He'd stomped it, kicked it, cut it in half, buried it three feet down, and thrown it down a cliff into a damned river.
Nothing had worked.
The accursed thing just kept on finding him.
He'd really considered the possibility of it just being different snails of the same species, but he was now sure.
The damned thing was the same thing he'd tried and failed to kill multiple times.
He could swear it had the same crazed eyes as the one he'd thrown down the cliff last time.
It was slimy, it was blue, it had white stripes, and it was just disgusting from every angle. At least if it had a shell like the normal ones he knew, it would've been easy for him to pick it up.
But no! It just had a slimy coat.
He needed some salt, but where was he to find salt in an accursed forest?
Jeremiah stood up from the overturned tree he was using as a bench and plucked a leaf from his leaf skirt.
Two more of the leaves fell from his skirt, but Jeremiah didn't mind. Being naked was the last thing he cared about at this point.
He wrapped the snail from the tree with the leaf. With a heave, he hurled it as far as he could.
There, that should give him at least a dozen hours before it finds him again. Logically, a snail shouldn't ever be able to catch up with him, especially as he was constantly moving, but here he was.
Jeremiah picked up the piece of bone-shaped jade from the ground.
It was something he'd found in the crevice he had crawled out of.
It looked valuable, so Jeremiah kept it with him.
From the looks of it, it seemed like he was in a different world.
In his world, as far as he knew, there weren't any trees that could tower over the skies and cast their shadow over multiple mountain ranges. And there sure weren't any creatures the size of trucks.
He was sure it wouldn't have escaped his notice if something like that existed.
Maybe the government had gone to such lengths that they hid it somehow? Jeremiah had this stray thought.
He proceeded to imagine 121 reasons why the government would want to hide a big tree and big animals.
He had all the time in the world anyway.
He'd been walking for 3 days straight now, the things he'd consumed being wild berries and water from the streams to quench his thirst.
Maybe he should've tried roasting that giant Lizard? But he was panicked and hurried at that moment, that thought didn't cross his mind.
Aside from that Giant Lizard, he hadn't encountered any hostile wild animals, and the ones he thought were dangerous just avoided him.
Well, he did make sure to climb up the tallest tree as soon as he spotted anything remotely dangerous. Maybe that helped?
He didn't know. Jeremiah was just glad that he hadn't forgotten how to climb trees. He'd climbed his fair share of trees in his childhood, on his parents' farm, but none since he'd gone to the city to continue his rebellious streak.
'Wait, does that snail count as a wild animal?'
Stray thoughts kept assaulting Jeremiah's mind, and he could feel it.
Jeremiah emerged from the bushes, hearing the soft sound of water rushing.
He saw it.
It was a dirt road, parallel to the river and diverging a few hundred meters down.
"Finally!"
It was a proper road; he could even faintly discern what looked like footprints and wheelmarks on the dirt!
He'd spotted the river from up a cliff. Only he knew the hardships he'd gone through to get to the river!
He'd read somewhere that settlements could be found on the banks of rivers.
Now he just needed to pick a direction and walk. He was sure he'd find some humans!
He looked around, picked left and started walking.
He didn't choose randomly.
To his left was the massive tree, towering like a mountain, casting its eternal shadow on the world.
Surely, the settlements would be close to such a massive attraction.
His makeshift leaf pouch still had some wild berries he'd picked. He was sure it would last him the journey.
Jeremiah still couldn't take his eyes off the big tree, though.
'Something that massive should slow down the Earth's rotation or something, right?!'
…
Jeremiah peeked over from the bushes, looking curiously at what was happening before him.
He'd heard the shouts and screams from a bit away.
He didn't continue walking down the path rashly; he had entered the bushes and had tiptoed around to get a better look at what was happening.
Lo and behold, it was a bandit attack on what looked like a caravan.
Up ahead was a clearing. It looked like the place where people stopped to rest on their journeys.
There were three guys on horses, surrounding the caravan and cutting down anyone trying to escape.
There was already one man dead beside the horsemen, one pinned down to the ground by the horse's hooves, his body riddled with wounds which leaked blood incessantly.
Some people, women, children and men, were huddled together, and two who looked like samurai were practically rolling on the ground fighting two bandits with baldes that looked different from the samurai's katana.
Now, Jeremiah wasn't discriminating; the bandits and the defenders were actually quite easy to distinguish.
The bandits looked like they hadn't washed their clothes in years, but the samurai's –judging from the katana, armour and hairstyle– looked like they took particular care to maintain their looks.
Jeremiah respected that. Although he, at the moment, hadn't taken a shower in who knew how long.
Now, he was faced with a choice.
Should he intertwine?
He really wanted to, what with the children huddling together with who looked to be their mom.
It was a sorry sight, and who knew what would happen if they were captured by these bandits?
Jeremiah didn't know the language they were speaking, but he was damn sure nothing good would be happening to them.
How was he to help though?
Hell, he was butt nake-
Swish!
Jeremiah couldn't continue to ponder as he felt a jolt.
He stumbled back into the bushes.
There, on his right chest, was now an arrow, embedded deep within.
Well, here he was thinking about helping the people, and he already had something sticking out of his chest.
Jeremiah closed his eyes in resignation.
It hadn't even been a month since he had died in that nuclear explosion.
And what he had experienced after that didn't leave him particularly pleased.
Sure, he knew he was hard to kill at the moment, but getting a stick up one's lung still hurt.
'My lord in heaven, why must I suffer this way? Couldn't I have just stayed dead?'
He could hear the dried leaves crunching as someone came up to him.
Jeremiah cracked his eyes a tiny bit open to see a man with a bow walking toward him.
He lay still, letting the man with the narrowed eyes get close to him.
The man stopped three meters from Jeremiah and fired one more arrow through the bushes.
It pierced Jeremiah's bald head.
Jeremiah inevitably twitched with a gasp, and the archer snickered. Now, he was satisfied.
"All good."
He signalled toward the man on horseback, who had his eyes on him.
The horseman nodded.
When did beggars start to think they could get away with playing dead in front of him? Did the beggar think he hadn't seen the sharp thing he was clutching on with his dear life? The man found it hilarious.
He walked closer, intending to retrieve the arrow. Arrows were expensive.
Just for good measure, he kicked the body before leaning over. There was no response.
What a poor beggar he was. He couldn't even afford a proper rag, instead resorting to wearing leaf skirts.
He had briefly considered the idea that the bald bastard was a monk in disguise, hence his first apprehension. But, looking at the asymmetrical, scrawny body of the man, the archer doubted it. The monks had standards.
Just as the man leaned closer and gripped the shaft of the arrow, Jeremiah's right hand, which still had the sharp thing gripped, whipped out with such speed that it pierced the man's skull straight through.
The man didn't make much noise as he fell into the bushes. It was instant death.
Jeremiah was sure the man wouldn't be making any noise.
Unless, of course, the man was like himself.
Jeremiah stood up, pulling out the arrow stuck in his brain.
The sickening squealch was new, and he wasn't liking the sensation of having his brain matter twisted.
Jeremiah didn't have much time to ponder, though.
There was a shout, and one of the men in horseback was now striding toward the bushes, his spear held at ready.
"Araaki??" the man was calling.
Jeremiah held the arrow tighter.
As soon as the man closed in on the bushes, Jeremiah lunched forward, using the tree by the side as a foothold and jumped.
Jeremiah had underestimated the man's reaction time, though.
The man had his short spear ready and had thrust it forward as soon as he saw Jeremiah jumping forward. The short spear skewered Jeremiah right through his guts, but Jeremiah, with gritted teeth, still thrust the arrow deep into the man's neck.
Doing parkour while in his rebellious phase wasn't for nothing.
Sure, it had cost him some broken bones as a teenager, but what did it matter? He was now using it to kill people.
Jeremiah didn't flinch at the sickening smell of half-digested berries as he pulled out the spear stuck in his gut. He had smelled worse.
The man with the arrow stuck on his neck fell off the horse, but one of his legs got caught on the saddle.
The Horse didn't stop for its master; it ran, dragging its dying master through the ground.
Jeremiah wasn't relaxed enough to laugh at the man.
He held the spear like a javelin and hurled it at the second man in horseback, who was now charging at him.
The man, who had a samurai pinned under his horse's hooves, had beheaded the warrior and had charged at Jeremiah.
And the man was wielding a rather long katana.
Unfortunately, Jeremiah hadn't learned how to throw a javelin at a moving target, much less someone who looked like a trained rider zig-zagging at him, screaming murder.
"Oops!"
He missed the mark by a few feet, and the man had closed the distance in that moment with a charge, swinging his long katana.
Jeremiah didn't know how practical a long blade was behind a horseback, but he sure didn't want to find out.
He turned and tried scrambling back into the bushes.
Key word, tried.
It was too late. The man's long blade came crashing down, bisecting Jeremiah by the waist.
Jeremiah's bisected body fell to the ground, and his upper body hit the bushes headfirst.
The arrow stuck in his chest snapped, and the rest drove deeper into his body.