Someone was groaning.
That was me.
I was groaning.
I was also lying face down.
Everything was pain.
What was I doing again?
Where was I?
Had I fallen asleep on my desk again?
I hoped Iâd remembered to end the stream, or chat was gonna laugh at me.
The lights were pretty dim, though.
I should go back to sleep.
Good idea.
â¦
Ugh, bright.
Whoâd turned on the lights in the middle of the night?
Oh, that was the sun.
Hadnât I pulled down the blinds?
Ugh, I didnât feel like moving. My entire body hurt.
Why did everything hurt? Had I done another 3D stream yesterday?
No⦠What?
Why did my mind feel scrambled?
I hadnât been drinking on stream again, had I?
God, I didnât wanna get up yet, though.
Letâs just go back to sleep.
But the light was annoying⦠No problem, just turn my head to the other side.
Problem solved.
Good night.
â¦
Ooow⦠My headâ¦
What time was it? What
was it? God, I really didnât feel like getting up, but I needed to pee.
I forced my eyelids to part and saw grass right in front of me. I was lying face first in it.
Confused, I pushed myself up into a sitting position with my wobbly arms and blinked the sleepiness away.
There were trees around.
What the hell? Whereâ
The memories of the past few days suddenly came back to me and I froze. I looked down at my small hands, then I looked back at the trees in front of me, and then finally, I craned my head around to look at the city dungeon and its gate I had been lying in front of.
I stared for a good few seconds as I tried to remember exactly what had happened through the pounding headache.
Iâd fought the archer zombie woman, got poisoned, then⦠tried to flush the poison out of my bloodstream by shoving life ooze into it.
That had been so dumb, but it had kind of worked? I couldnât remember very well.
And then what? I remembered stumbling toward the door and vomiting at some point, but not much else besides that. But considering I was out here, I must have made it back outside before Iâd collapsed.
I continued staring at the gate as the horror of what Iâd experienced slowly sank in.
Then I took a shuddering breath and let it out. I hugged myself, hung my head, and then took another breath. Then another and another. Before long, I was hyperventilating and tears were streaming down my face.
Haha⦠And Iâd thought Iâd gotten used to this worldâs bullshit.
I could get lost in a dungeon for days and it was fine. I could collapse from lack of Ether in a dark locker full of sentient clothes and have a mild freakout, but otherwise be alright. I could face a flying laser shark in an arena with completely screwed-up spatial physics and it didnât even bother me that much.
All of these had been so crazy that maybe my mind just hadnât fully registered the very real danger Iâd been in each time. But there was something that felt much more
about being shot with arrows and then feeling sick because of the poison.
I didnât even know how long it had been, but I
felt like shit and I was pretty sure I had a fever.
ââ¦Chat?â I whimpered as I finally raised my head and looked into the group chat window.
The last few messages were cheers that I was still alive, and everything before then were various ways to say that I was dead. Great.
âHow⦠long has it been?â I rasped out before breaking out into coughs.
I blinked blearily, trying to keep my focus on chat, but it was getting hard. It actually reminded me of back when Iâd run out of Intraâ¦
âTwo daysâ¦? What?â I coughed again and then shivered when a wind blew past me. âH-Hey, Ebi. Iâmâ Iâm alive⦠but probably sick. I didnât even know I could get sick.â
Did that mean that at least viruses and bacteria existed in this world? Or was this the poisonâs doing? Was some of it still in me?
God, my head was killing me and I was parched. Iâd never even needed to drink in this world. Maybe the life ooze was fluid enough for that? I should eat some of it anyway just in case it helped me recover.
Also, I
needed the toilet.
I groaned and reached into my backpack to retrieve my bucket to get some more ooze.
But I couldnât find it.
âWhat⦠Whereâ¦â I muttered in annoyance before remembering that Iâd brought out the bucket back when Iâd tried to treat the poison.
Had I just
it inside the dungeon? Fuck.
Iâd left my naginata and my key sword behind too. Double fuck.
There was no way I was going back inside right now. Not when I felt
awful. Maybe I could find another ooze lake nearby�
Hold on. This city sat on a river, didnât it? I could just drink actual water instead of eating more ooze.
With great effort, I pushed myself to stand, took a second to decide which way to circle around the city to reach the river.
Then I remembered that my bladder was about to burst and summoned John to look away. Sure, the stream was supposedly censored when I did my business, but it still made me feel more at easy when I did that.
I was in a very grumpy mood, so I pissed at the dungeonâs main entrance as revenge for getting me poisoned.
That ought to teach it.
Once done with my business â washed with the glove and dried with the towel like always since I had yet to get infinite toilet paper from a dungeon â I followed the city walls back around to where Iâd come from.
It took a painful half an hour until I reached the river again. I knelt down by it and nearly vomited again straight into it, but managed to settle for just a pained groan.
Luckily for me, the water level was high enough for me to reach with just my short arms. I reached in, definitely
almost get swept by the currents just by doing so, and quickly rinsed my hands out of habit first before pooling some of the water in my hands to drink it.
I repeated the motion a few more times until my throat didnât feel like a desert anymore and then proceeded to lie on my back.
Normally, the sound of the river would be soothing, but with my head pounding this much, it was anything but. Unfortunately, I also didnât really feel like moving much. Both my mind and my body were still spent even after apparently sleeping through an entire day.
What the hell even was that poison? Some kind of Ether and Intra-draining concoction from hell? Godâ¦
I lay there for a little while with my eyes closed, waiting for the nausea to abate a bit. When I opened my eyes and properly looked at the sky, I couldnât help but groan.
Naturally, when it rained, it poured. This time, maybe literally. I watched as the giant dark cloud on the horizon slowly waltzed its way in my direction and from the look of things, I had at most an hour before it was above me. And from then on, it was anyoneâs guess whether it decided to dump all its water on me or not.
Getting drenched sounded like a terrible idea when I was already sick.
â¦I really could have used that shelter, dammit. There was absolutely no way I was going to risk sleeping inside one of the houses in the dungeon. Especially when I was still feeling this weak and useless.
What the hell was I going to do?
âChat⦠What do I do? That cloud is going to kill me.â
âBut how? I donât know anything about wilderness survival.â
Well, Iâd played plenty of survival
, but I highly doubted much of that would apply to real life.
I narrowed my eyes in confusion. Jamie knew stuff about wilderness survival? Well, that was unexpected.
âI donât know? Maybe? Ugh, but I left all my weapons behind like an idiotâ¦â I moaned before remembering the key swordâs innate skill.
I wasnât sure whether there was some kind of distance limit or whether I could still summon it from within the dungeon, but I still tried.
To my immense relief, the thing magically appeared in my outstretched hand, confirming that I could indeed still use it.
I sighed, but forced myself to get up again and headed toward the trees.
âY-shaped trees?â I mumbled. âWhy those?â
I blinked as I took in Jamieâs crappy wording.
âOh, I get it⦠Alright.â
I nodded while looking for any trees that might work for what Jamie had described.
âI had no idea you were a survival expert, Jamieâ¦â I murmured as I noticed two trees in the exact shape and distance from each other that I was looking for.
â...Oh. That makes more sense.â I hummed in understanding as I looked around for a tree I could cut down to serve as my roof.
âSmart enough to look up a guide, mhmmâ¦â Just because my head was killing me and I wanted nothing but to drop dead into a bed didnât mean I couldnât tease my viewers. It was my duty as a streamer.
I huffed a laugh and narrowed my eyes at a tree that I thought could work decently well. I would just have to cut out some of its branches as well.
Now the only question was whether I was strong enough to cut the tree down and then lift it up. All while sick and completely exhausted.
Ughâ¦
The key sword was actually perfect for cutting down trees since it was sort of shaped like a saw with its teeth. It took a lot of effort and a few breaks, but I
manage to slowly saw through the tree and topple it down as the orange smoke poured out of it. Once I was done, I cut off all its branches one by one as well.
One look at the dark cloud of doom on the horizon confirmed that I didnât have much time left and I probably wouldnât be able to finish it in time.
Well, shit.
I was still going to try.
I grabbed the log and began dragging it in the direction of my chosen trees. It was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. The log kept getting snagged on random rocks and branches on the ground, which was annoying, but otherwise, my arm strength seemed to be just enough to pull it off.
To be honest, I was quite a bit stronger than I had any right to be considering my tiny child body, but then again, there was magical logic at play.
Actually, maybe it had something to do with my Ether? Since Ether was supposed to be the physical energy or whatever, getting more Ether also made me stronger? But I hadnât increased my Ether by
much, had I?
I grunted and fell on my butt as I finally got the log all the way to the two trees. I felt a little nauseous again. Maybe exerting myself like this was a bad idea when I already felt so terrible.
Go figure.
I didnât want to just give up now, though. Not after going through all the trouble to get that log. Not when the cloud was so close.
But how the hell was I supposed to lift the log up to snag it between the treeâs branches, though? I was way too short to even reach the Y intersection of the trees. I would need some kind of pulley or at least a rope, which I
.
Dammit. This wasnât going to work.
It probably was, to be honest.
Ugh, why the hell had I gone through the trouble of cutting down a tree? Stupid sick brain. And stupid Jamie for suggesting it.
âYeah⦠Cave might be good,â I mumbled under my nose and set out to find something, leaving the log in the grass.
God, I was so tired though. Stupid cloud. Stupid poison. Stupid log.
By the time water began to trickle down from the sky, I hadnât yet found a good enough shelter and was forced to either keep looking or wait it out below some branches.
I chose the latter.
Sure, my clothes might have some anti-cold properties, but I really didnât want to risk getting even sicker. The fact that I was exhausted in more ways than one might have played a role in the decision as well.
From the sound of things, it began to
pour over the course of the next few minutes, but the spot Iâd found protected me from the worst of it. I didnât even
to find a shelter. The trees were so numerous and dense that their leaves served as decent protection anyway.
âDonât even need a special shelter,â I mumbled as I sat next to the tree and patted its bark. âThanks, buddyâ¦â
Then I saw a flash of light and startled moments before I heard the thunder in the distance.
âOh⦠Itâs a thunderstorm. Greatâ¦â
Now, usually, I loved thunderstorms. But that was assuming that I was at home, looking out of my window at one.
âItâs fine, chat⦠Itâs gonna blow over soonâ¦â