Gar woke up lying in a muddy river bank. There was no slow waking, not knowing where he was or what happened for him. The pain was the first thing he noticed and that reminded him of everything that had happened. The pain wasn’t the same agony as it had been, his health was at 33 out of 136 but it was still immensely painful. He took a moment to take in his surroundings still lying as he was, he was fortunate the current had flipped him over before he drowned. He had travelled most of the way across the cenote down the river; he could see where the river went into a cave in the cliff wall about a hundred meters away. Gar tries to sit up, only to get a strike of pain from his back. He had stopped bleeding the indicator in his vision had gone but the wound hadn’t, pushing through the pain and twisting slowly to try and see his injury. He couldn’t see it fully but found a mass of mud, grass, and debris stuck together with dried blood all across his back. The possibility of infection worried him but washing off or removing the mess could bring back the bleeding and he had no bandages and he had even lost what remained of his shirt in the river. Gar just laid back down, unsure what to do.

  As he lay there he thought; about his actions over the past couple of days, what he should do next, and the fear he felt. What had possessed him to attack that bear, why? He didn’t need to, what was he thinking? Before the conrex the other day he hadn’t killed anything bigger than a spider and now he thought he could kill a bear, and not just a bear but a massive dire bear, and of course there were two of them. How had he been so careless? Taking a massive risk and not even paying attention to the fact the level was different; it had been as obvious as a name tag letting him know it was a different bear. Gar had all this going through his mind; he couldn’t understand it why was he taking such risks? Why was he fighting everything? Even the conrex had been a risk he didn’t need to take. And now here he was with massive wounds and not even a shirt, and that’s another thing that came to his mind why had he been so quick to abandon the rest of his stuff.

  Gar lay there in the mud of the river bank, his mind racing with thoughts and fear, he tried to cover the fear with thinking but it was still there. Gar was unsure how long he lay there in the mud but he came to several conclusions; One, since he arrived here he kept making decisions he normally wouldn’t. Two, he still wanted to live and to do that he needed to stop taking risks and making dumb decisions. Sitting up again, slowly, Gar was surprised when his back didn’t hurt as bad as he thought it should, looking at his health meter it had filled up, although it was almost as if part of it had been greyed out and it couldn’t fill up any more. Tentatively Gar got to his feet, it hurt but the pain was manageable. During his thinking Gar had decided to fix one of his first mistakes, he had to get his stuff. For the first time as Gar stood there he noticed something, he was on the other side of the river.

  “Crap” Gar said aloud, he already felt like just lying back down and giving up. He couldn’t do that he had just decided he wanted to live, so to do that he had to push on. With little other choice Gar started walking back up stream, looking for a good place to cross. It was actually quite a peaceful walk, Gar was keeping an eye out for any predators but he saw none. It was a pleasant stroll along the riverside the sound of flowing water helping to calm his mind and the walking allowed him to organise his thoughts. He had been walking for quite a while when he came to a particularly wide part of the river and realised this might be the place to try and cross. He had looked at a narrow spot earlier but the water had been so fast he wasn’t willing to risk it, despite part of him thinking he should try, as it was a short distance. Gar had kept moving though, he was done taking unnecessary risks. Although the river was about two hundred meters across at this point, Gar wasn’t worried he had always been a reasonable swimmer and he could probably wade across a section near each bank, most importantly the current was much gentler at this point and the current was the bit he was most worried about. The walk had loosened him up, this was the calmest section of river he had seen, he was ready to cross the river here and now was as good as he was going to get. Gar knew all that, he knew that without any equipment he would die, but still he hesitated.

  He paced up and down for a bit before with a sudden splash he jumped straight in. only to stand a second later and realise the water wasn’t even up to his waist, feeling a little foolish he waded on. The river did get to a point where he had to swim, he could only really do a slow one armed crawl, his injured shoulder stopping him doing more but it kept him afloat and moving forward, and while doing so the current carried him down stream, Gar did not fight it but let it take him along as he continued across. After all the fretting about crossing, the actual journey had been relatively uneventful.

  Getting out the other side Gar slipped a bit on some stones twinging his back but was soon stood on the shore, wet but surprisingly not particularly cold. With the grassland before him he set off. Before he even got off the stony river bank he stopped. He had been about to take another foolish risk he knew these grasslands had the conrex in them and with no weapon and not even a stick to flatten the grass it would be stupid to just walk across, besides he didn’t even really know the correct direction to get back to his bag. Stopping and thinking Gar realised his best option for finding his stuff and for getting across the grassland was to find the path of flattened grass he had made the other day. So that is what Gar did with a turn he set off continuing along the river bank heading upstream to find his flattened path. It took a while and just when Gar was contemplating whether he had missed it he came across his path. Not all of it was as flat as he had left it but it was still pretty flat and was as safe a path as he was going to get. Gar spent several minutes scanning the path with observe and mana sight and there were no signs of any conrex or any other animals hiding on his path so leaving mana sight and observe on he moved off following his path.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  When he got to the tree where he had left the spare conrex hanging, another mistake he had made wasting them, the only sign of any of them was some blood on the tree and ground, but even that seemed less than Gar thought there should have been. It was starting to get late in the day now so Gar didn’t hang around long and simply moved on, he was tempted to jog to help get out of this grassland sooner but it had been over a day, in fact closer to two, since he had eaten so he didn’t want to push himself now and end up in trouble later. So he restrained himself to a quick walk, sticking to the centre of his path of flattened grass keeping his head moving always on the lookout with mana sight and observe continually active. He wished he could keep the active all the time but it was too much information, it was mentally draining. He would work on it trying to use them more, but for now he was going to have to use his best judgement for when to have them on, which worried Gar as it seemed his best judgement wasn’t that good at the moment. Gar got a bit of luck and the trip through the grass was uneventful, it seemed his cutting a path through the conrex was to recent for them to have moved back in.

  It was getting dark as Gar made his way into the trees, even so between his path putting him in the right area and his marked trees pointing the direction it allowed him to find the bag pretty easily, also a large bag sitting in a tree wasn’t exactly hard to see, another mistake he hadn’t even made an attempt to hide it. Once he was back at his bag Gar wasn’t sure what to do next, the sun was setting and it had now been two days since he had eaten anything, he was less hungry than he thought he should be, but still was worried about getting some food, but also worried about his proximity to those dire bears he wasn’t sure exactly where they were from here but where still far too close for comfort, deciding he wasn’t willing to risk a fire and draw attention possibly bringing those bears to him if he cooked anything. He was still terrified of those bears. So with his dark vision letting him see in the dwindling light he laboriously climbed the tree only really using his right hand to anchor himself not using it to climb as his shoulder wouldn’t allow it. Settling down near his bag, he fished out some rope and tied himself to the tree, closing his eyes to get some sleep.

  Gar got to sleep easily and slept deeply but still woke before sunrise. His health had increased, as it seemed the wound on his back had healed some more over night, but hunger was certainly starting to become a problem. The darkness of pre-dawn didn’t seem to be much of a problem for Gar’s Gargoyle eyes, so after untying himself from the tree he unsecured his bag and lowered it down, with only a bit of a thump. Then climbed down after it

  “New skill acquired Climb level 1”

  The skill gain was a bit of a surprise but a welcome one, perhaps if he levelled it up it could even provide a way out of this pit. Back where he started again but with a new perspective on things he still had the same priorities Food, water and shelter but a new one had been added to the list. Get away from those bears. He decided that to do this he should get across the river; he would not be able to settle while still on the same side of the river as them, he would prefer to be even further away from them but that wasn’t really an option at the moment. So across the river would have to do. How was he going to do that though with all his stuff, Gar hefted his pack to test it and the extra point in strength did seem to make a difference but it was nowhere near enough to let him carry his pack the distance he needed to go. He considered putting all his free stat points into strength but he wasn’t sure that would be enough to let him carry his bag all day besides his shoulder and back still wasn’t fully healed. He wasn’t ready to start investing those points yet when he hadn’t had time to investigate he was still lacking too much information. Instead he thought for a bit, this was when his hunger made itself known and kept distracting him but Gar pushed it down knowing he could hunt some more Conrex’s as he crossed the grassland and would stop to eat once he crossed the river.

  First though he had to work out how to bring his bag with him. His initial idea was of some kind of cart, but wheels would be complicated and take too long, he could just drag the bag that would be less effort than carrying it but it is likely to ware and rip before he got far. Realising he was going to have to make something but needed to keep it as simple as possible Gar eventually went with a simple sled he could pull behind him. The material was easy enough to gather from the woods around him, a number of sturdy branches about the same size, straight, and a bit over a meter long and all tied together to another branch across them top and bottom, it took some trial and error and time to work out the knots and to get it all tied together solidly but by the end he had a sturdy sled and a new skill.

  “New skill acquired Knot work level 1”