8. Survival Rule #1: Don't Eat Anything You Pick Up (2)
8. Survival Rule #1: Don't Eat Anything You Pick Up (2)
"Stay hidden in the shelter."
"Yes!"
Karina answered so readily that it threw me off. Wasn't she supposed to ask why first? I looked at her as she nodded vigorously and asked.
"...You're not going to ask why?"
"There's no way Yohan would say something like that without good reason. And it's obviously connected to what happened last time..."
Well, the reason I was sending her to the shelter was obvious, so it stood to reason she'd catch on right away. I hadn't been sure I could explain it all, and here she was being this sharp. That made things a little easier.
I mentally reviewed the locations of the various items stashed around the house as I walked toward the storeroom at the back. Things salvaged from the wreck and assorted objects I'd made as a hobby.
Among them, what I needed to grab were the poisons I'd stockpiled.
Powders ground from toxic herbs, spore powders extracted from mushrooms, and venoms milked from the venomous snakes that occasionally wandered into my territory and wound up as barbecue. To survive in the wild, you always had to keep a trick up your sleeve.
It wasn't the strong who survived; the survivors were the strong ones.
"Maybe I should've brought the dung bombs?"
They stank to high heaven, which made them excellent for driving off monsters.
Sure it was filthy, but so what?
A weak human trying to survive alone in the wild had to work himself to the bone. If you got picky, you'd end up as a lukewarm piece of meat on someone else's plate. No one stupid enough to be choosy lasted long. Besides, while human shit was useless, animal shit had plenty of uses.
You could spread a predator's scent to keep other animals away, dry the dung for fuel, or even try using it as fertilizer, though that didn't accomplish much. I didn't know why human shit was so useless, but animal dung had many applications. If this had been a desert instead of a deserted island, I would have filled a shed with camel dung. I'd heard it burned extremely well.
Anyway, when would I finally be able to talk comfortably with her?
If she had been an ordinary-looking woman, I might have found it easier to open up, but she was so beautiful that even speaking to her felt intimidating. She seemed like the kind of person I'd never have had any connection with in my life, which made it difficult to close the distance.
Then again, it wasn't like we'd spend our whole lives like this... no, wait, wouldn't we just go our separate ways once we escaped anyway?
After all, Karina was a Saintess, and I was nothing more than a random castaway with no connections whatsoever. So there was no need to get any closer. It wasn't like I was the protagonist or something.
"...Come to think of it, who even is the protagonist of Survival Academy?"
I remembered that leaving everything unset started you with the default settings, but the details were fuzzy. It had already been ten years, and I'd never once looked at the default setup, so I knew next to nothing beyond secondhand rumors. Whoever it was, all I really knew was that they'd go through every kind of absolute hell before graduating.
Not that I should've been thinking about that then. What mattered was figuring out how to deal with the crisis that had arrived uninvited. Even if I used every means at my disposal, I couldn't be sure I'd survive.
I didn't know its identity. I didn't know its weaknesses. Nothing was more lethal than that.
If I had one advantage, it was that there wasn't a corner of the island I hadn't visited. Few things mattered more in war than knowing the terrain, especially on an island crawling with creatures that could crush a human like a crumpled can.
"...I think there was a telescope in the stuff I salvaged..."
I rummaged through the pile of odds and ends stacked haphazardly, looking to see if there was a telescope, but unfortunately, I didn't spot one. Was I going to have to make one myself? But I didn't know how to make a tool like a telescope.
The Craft Skill didn't work if I didn't already know how to make the thing, so that was a dead end. I seemed to recall learning how to make a telescope in some comic book ages ago, but in the end you still needed lenses. And to make lenses, you needed glass... right?
Lenses... Did I have any lenses?
I searched the storeroom for a long time, but unfortunately, there were no lenses. That meant I'd have to observe with the naked eye.
When I'd investigated the snake bastards and bears, I'd run into them by accident and nearly died. Did I really have to take the same risk again? Couldn't life cut me a little slack?
"I'd be better off making something for concealment."
Since a telescope was out of the question, I'd be better off making a camouflage suit to reduce the chance of the new intruder spotting me.
The camouflage paint was a bonus.
"Life..."
Putting on camouflage cream in the army had been fucking awful, and now I had to smear it all over my body again.
"...Tomorrow is going to be a really shit day."
----------------
"Please be careful."
"...Stay safe."
I quietly shut the door to the shelter. For a while, this door wouldn't be opening.
More precisely, I had to hope it stayed that way. If someone other than me opened the door, or if a monster broke in... I stopped that ominous train of thought.
I slung the leather bag—as heavy as a full combat pack—over my shoulder and started walking.
My destination was, of course, the bears' territory, where the unidentified enemy should have been. I didn't know how many days it would take, but I had to settle things.
As always, time wasn't on my side.
The longer I delayed or hesitated, the closer this new disaster would draw. From then on, I had to gather information somehow, set traps, lure the enemy, and kill it.
"Hope the poison works."
If poison could bring it down easily, nothing would be more convenient. I happened to have a large supply saved for recoating the traps. Still, I wanted to end this peacefully if I could...
As if that could ever happen.
Based on my ten years of experience on the island, those eyes had contained nothing but killing intent. Could I possibly have a peaceful conversation with a creature that looked at me that way? I didn't think so. If that were possible, would I have gone through the backbreaking work of covering the boundary of my territory with traps?
If so, I'd just be shouting about how we were all friends and cooperating with each other.
Tch. If my Skill had been related to druids instead of crafting, life on the island would've been a little easier. If I could've befriended the bears, the difficulty of my castaway story would've dropped to baby mode.
People might choose Hard Mode in games, but everyone wanted Easy Mode in life. Ah, that was not the time for idle thoughts. I needed to focus. I would soon be entering that deadly place again.
"...Just what the hell is this bastard doing to tear up the forest like this?"
That thought came to me as soon as I entered the territory and saw the broken trees and frequent signs of disturbed earth. For something that behaved like violence incarnate, was it a herbivore? Why had it dug up so much ground? Was it eating roots? Or...
"...Gotta camouflage first."
I took out my shovel and dug mud from the damp ground. The rich scent of nature rose as I brought it close to my face. I had smelled it more times than I could count, but that day I was even more sick of it. I smeared mud over my entire upper body. Brown mud clung to me in thick patches.
It had been years since I'd last done this. When I'd first landed on the island, I'd tried every imaginable thing to survive. Covering myself in mud was nothing; when necessary, I'd even smeared bear shit on myself... I'd sworn I'd never do this again.
"Fucking life..."
Spitting out the curse, I looked over my mud-covered body, then lowered my stance and examined the dug-up spots. The holes weren't very big. They were more like something had been dug up carelessly by human hands. When I lightly dug into a spot that had been gouged out with my shovel, something like a pure-white lump surfaced among the dirt.
Something about the size of a fingernail.
Very carefully, I scooped the thing up with the blade of my shovel.
"...A mushroom?"
It was soft and looked appetizing. It definitely seemed to be a mushroom.
Eating mushrooms? On this island? The place had to be crawling with poisonous mushrooms. Was the intruder resistant to poison? Or could it be...
"!@ㅑ#ㅛ#!&*(!#*!)!"
"My ears..."
I reflexively covered my ears, but I couldn't block the shock that had already reached my brain through my eardrums. The world swayed. It felt as though heat haze had filled my vision. I hid behind a tree, pulled a medicinal herb from my pouch, and chewed and swallowed it whole.
Bitter.
Disgusting.
But I had to eat it.
Gritting my teeth against the taste, I chewed and swallowed the herb whole, then pulled myself together as my vision slowly returned to normal. The source of that roar was obvious.
"...Phew. Still, gotta do what needs doing."
I straightened up. A roar like that probably meant something was going down.
My head hurt. But then, when did it ever not? Island life was a nonstop sequence of headaches. This time was just one more headache. I couldn't keep running forever on this cramped little island in the first place.
So let's go see the face of whoever was shouting first thing in the morning.
From a very safe distance, of course.
A brave coward, I headed toward an invader whose face I hadn't even seen.