“Fuck!” Frank exclaimed as he found himself sitting at the base of a massive tree, sprung awake as his body hummed in pain. ‘Why do I hurt all over?’ A mental quandary he received no answer to, and he doubted saying it out loud would do more. It was thankfully already fading, so he decided to just let it rest unless it reared its head in the future.
Looking down at himself, he found that his clothes had changed drastically – that is to say, he was actually wearing something proper. His upper body was dressed in a slightly coarse but otherwise thick and comfortable dark green tunic and a softer light green undershirt. Down below, he wore a pair of rough bark-brown pants with a little extra padding on the knees; they were held up by a leather belt with a simple metal ring for the buckle.
As he got up from the ground, he discovered that the simple pair of leather shoes were far more comfortable than expected. They were of course nothing compared to solid pair of modern hiking shoes, but when limited to just leather and when paired with woolen socks, they actually felt quite nice.
From his belt hung two mostly rectangular leather pouches, one on either side. Like his belt, each had a small metal buckle to keep the lid closed and they could fit about two fists worth of stuff each.
He only then realized that he had been almost naked when he appeared before the gods. “Damn… There goes that good first impression. But at the same time, I don’t think they really cared. Nothing I could’ve done about it anyway.” With his mind already wandering and wondering about pointless stuff, he figured he had better things to do. “I should probably start with getting a lay of the land. Now, where was that sapling she mentioned?”
Finding the tree in question was much easier than expected; he just had to pay attention to anything besides himself. “Holy shit, woman… In what world does this count as a sapling? Actually, scratch that; this one.”
At a glance, he could barely make out the sky between the branches and leaves of the massive canopy far above him. On the ground, massive, multi-meter thick roots snaked in and out of the ground. And in between them, he saw a bunch of trees and bushes scattered about; the smell of fallen and fermenting fruit made it clear that a good number of them were of the fruity variety. A few hundred meters in the distance, he could see a proper forest start.
Craning his neck, some of the canopy’s madness became apparent. The most obnoxious one was a tiny point on it that was trying to blind him, similarly to someone directing the sun with their phone screen. Somehow, even the branch that could best be described as a massive crystal was less annoying in how it reflected the light. He could even hear the sound of running water, in the distance and it took at bit to find the source, which was a constant stream of water pouring from one branch onto another tens of meters further down. He could even see what appeared to be smaller trees growing on the larger branches, a few of which had burning canopies, though he saw no smoke.
As he slowly followed the edges of the branches back to the trunk – on the way discovering a section where lightning silently arced between a few of them – he eventually had to turn around. Immediately, he was face to face with the trunk. Massive did not feel remotely adequate to describe it, given how he had to back up a lot before he could even take in its proper width, which was 20 meters at minimum. And notably, it was many times taller than the trunk was wide. “Geez… What have I gotten myself into.” He quietly mused to himself.
Slightly overwhelmed by the sheer physical presence of the tree, Frank turned his attention back to his more regular surroundings. Of the sparse trees and plentiful bushes, some appeared to have dropped all of their leaves like it was winter, despite it being a comfortable temperature. Simultaneously, a good chunk of them were also in full bloom and loaded with fruits, while others looked ready to drop their leaves.
Besides that, there were quite a lot of bushes, mushrooms, and whatnot growing as well, especially wherever one of the branches or roots were accessible. The bushes, like the trees, also appeared to carry quite a lot of berries. All in all, it gave rise to an incredibly earthy smell far beyond anything he had ever experienced, discounting Lydia’s area.
“I see why she called it a Tree of Life.” In saying that, he noticed that something was a little off. “Actually, I don’t see any animals beyond a few insects on the ground, and I would expect there to be something in such a wide area beneath a tree with that moniker. Though, I can’t discount that they’re out in the forest or that my appearance scared some of them off- Oh yeah! She mentioned that it kept larger animals away, so it’s probably that.”
While pondering how the tree effected the environment was all well and good, he soon recalled that he had to figure out a way to survive out here. To do so, he recalled the priority list his father taught him:
- Find a water source.
- Get a fire-starting kit together and prep something for boiling water in.
- Find a place to camp.
- Forage food.
For a second, he considered that water flowed between the tree branches. “Yeah no, I ain’t getting up there anytime soon; a pond, river, or creek it is.” However, before setting out to look for a water source, which was the highest priority, he took a moment to inspect his surroundings. His previous look had given him a rough overview, but he wanted to know the specifics of what he had to work with a little closer.
The excess of berry bushes and fruit trees would serve as a temporary solution if he were to fail in finding water today. But for that to be a viable option, he needed to figure out which could be eaten, which was easier said than done. ‘It’s a bad idea, but I kinda want to just eat one or two berries and see what happens. After all, I can’t even trust that my old knowledge on what might be safe signs hold up here.’
He stifled a small laugh at that thought. ‘Nah, who am I trying to fool. I’m just curious about how much the immune system boost Lydia mentioned is.’ In the end, Frank had spent far too much time actually camping and foraging in the wild to go and do something that stupid.
Instead, he started to go between the different berry bushes to search for a few to test out. His main focus was the darker ones and those with clustered skin, blackberries being a prime example. They tended to be on the safer side, and though that may very well be different here, he figured that he may as well start with what he knew and update his information from there. Besides, with proper testing and the boost to his immune System – even if he didn’t know to what degree – he should have a decent shot at finding something edible.
After spending what felt like too much time going between bushes and just inspecting them, Frank concluded that actually finding berry bushes that fit his existing knowledge was much harder than anticipated. A bush with neon red, blue, and green berries and equally intense smell? The cluster of five of them stood out like a sore thumb. They were only just beaten out by those with berries of all the rainbow’s colors.
Of the bushes with black or dark blue berries he found, one had a foul stench close to that of a rotting carcass, so he made damn sure to stay away from that one. Of the rest, four of them had clustered berries similar to blackberries and raspberries. Back on Earth, this was often the biggest possible sign of an edible berry, so he decided to test out those.
Initially after finding red, green, white, and orange cluster berries as well, he was a little unsure whether or not to test them. In the end, he wanted to test one of each color as well. Since, besides the red one which reminded him directly of a raspberry, all the others were completely foreign. What caused the hesitation was that green, white, and orange berries were typically ones to avoid unless you really knew what you were doing. However, them being clustered and his improved immune system gave him enough confidence to at least include them in the first test.
Said test was really quite simple. Frank took a berry from each bush and squished it against the underside of his left forearm. To keep track of which berry came from where, he left an increasing number of sticks at each bush.
As he finished with the last of the berries, he smiled softly as he recalled back when he been taught this. He had been on a longer hiking trip with his parents and a larger group. During it, the guide had taught them about a bunch of different ways to figure out if something was edible.
In this case, if his skin had any reaction to any of the berries, he would know that he should avoid eating it. If it were to happen, he would also have to wash it off immediately…
“Fuck… I had completely forgotten that I should have found a source of water first. Well, better get too it then. If any of this acts up, I’ll just have to make do with leaves if I have yet to find anything.”
With that additional motivation, he set off for the forest proper. His only measure of direction was trying to follow any slope downwards. Water flowed down, so heading down gave him a larger chance of stumbling across flowing water. While moving through the forest, he used a stone to mark the trees to make the path retraceable. Finding the slope down was initially quite easy, as the first few tens of meters of forest had a gradual decline, but it soon flattened. A little more walking around would later reveal that the Tree of Life sat upon a bit of a hill.
While walking, he only spent a little time looking at the plants in the forest. The trees were not only the most insane mix of unique and distinct species he had ever seen, with trees from all types of climates and eco systems somehow living together here. “It looks like the Tree of Life really lives up to its name.”
Interestingly, the forest somehow felt both lusher and more barren than any he had seen previously, at least outside of Winter. The temperature was quite pleasant, like late Spring. As such, it felt incredibly weird that at least a quarter of the trees he saw were without leaves, as if they were dormant like in Winter. About half of that amount appeared to be in the process of dropping their leaves. It was quite akin to what he had seen with the fruit trees and berry bushes back at the Tree.
He wondered if seasons were really a thing here, or if it was the Tree influencing them to have this behavior. The only thing his gut told him was that it wouldn’t be seasons and no Tree influence. Unless, of course, Lydia had altered how biology functioned on a base level, which in fairness, wouldn’t surprise him all that much. Though if that was the case, his Earth trained gut would be even less trustworthy than expected.
That said, the lush part was lush beyond anything he had seen on Earth before, be it during Spring or Summer. The sheer variety of plants was similarly mind blowing. Everything from acacia to trees to palm trees to more flowers than he could reasonably count and everything in-between. Though, while some of them definitely looked familiar, he was not certain that they actually were the same.
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Despite not paying too much attention to the plants around him, he tried to make mental notes of where some of the more interesting and potentially useful trees were. The most notable example he encountered was a single large willow tree. He would have included palm trees and bushes and similar, frond-bearing plants in the notes, but they were common enough that he didn’t.
He had walked for about half an hour by the time he managed to pick up on the sound of running water, during which he was getting an increasing sense of something being wrong with the forest. Soon after, he found a small creak of seemingly clean water running through the forest. For a moment, he considered whether to follow it up stream in the direction of the Tree of Life or further downstream. He ended up walking upstream. Because needing a half hour walk through a forest of unknown danger every time he wanted water didn’t seem optimal.
As he walked, he looked less at the incredible forest around him and focused on the stones and mud in and surrounding the creek. For the stones, he was looking for any that looked and felt suitable for knapping to get some tools. That is to say flint and the like. With the ‘mud’, he was actually looking for clay to make ceramics out of.
While most of his attention had been on the creek – his pouches already being weighed down by a number of promising stones – he had also been keeping an eye out for a properly climbable tree. With the forest being full of trees 20 meters or taller, often with full canopies – it was as if the plants needed less sunlight than back home – even the dormant trees had their views covered by neighboring canopies. As such, he needed to ascend a tree quite far to actually get a good view of the Tree of Life.
That was so far the biggest boon of the sheer bio diversity, it didn’t take too long to find a tree that looked good to climb quite far up in, at least with his experience in tree climbing.
What he saw after scaling the tree was quite shocking. It had nothing to do with the forest, as what had him stunned was the presence of what could best be described as three moons, each one a different color. The moons were respectively black, yellow, or red. None of them glowed like a full moon did, despite them being full, but neither did Earth’s moon when spotted during the day, so he couldn’t draw many conclusions from that.
In the end, he didn’t have the luxury to stay in the tree and observe the sky however much he wanted to. “So what if there are 3 moons, this is another world. Besides, even Mars has multiple of them.” But even that half-hearted reasoning didn’t make it any less fantastical to witness nor was his desire to stay and observe curbed significantly. “Nope. I have a forest to survive, and I will have all the time I want for that later.”
After another minute or two, he finally turned his attention to his original goal. “God damn it’s big – wait, would it be gods damn instead? – anyhow you really cannot appreciate the size standing beneath it.” The Tree of Life was even easier to spot than he had imagined a hundred plus meter giant would be. Despite his earlier misgivings about it, he still spent a few minutes just taking in the view before descending.
The resulting trip back took about 20 minutes to get back. He hoped to cut it down to 10-15 minutes as his familiarity with the forest grew. Which is why the following hour or two was spent making the trip repeatedly while looking for usable materials in the forest and at the creek.
It was during this time that he finally figured out what was ‘wrong’; it was the lack of any real noise beyond the wind and himself. It was most prevalent within a few hundred meters of the Tree, after which he could start to hear a bit of occasional bird song or insect noise. The same went for traces of wild animals, they were entirely absent from the first bit into the forest, this somehow included most insects as well. He chalked that part of the forest thriving up to the Tree’s influence, as the lack of this many insects should’ve probably had some consequences for the breakdown of dead plants.
After the first hour had passed, he had gathered an acceptable pile of rocks, sticks, and whatever dry burnables he could find to use as tinder and kindling. A few rocks striking each other later, he had the most basic knife possible: a rock with a sharp edge.
Using said knife, he went to a tree he had noted for looking to have relatively smooth bark. By etching two circles around the bark and a line to connect them, he used a slanted edge of a stick to help peel the bark from the tree. Was there a chance of this harming the tree? Possibly, if not likely. Was he in any position to care? Not in the slightest.
It took a few attempts and a couple of different tree types before he had a nice and clean strip of bark to work with. Using four sticks as clamps – he had partially split them using smaller stones as wedges – he folded the bark into a rectangular ‘bowl’ that he could use to carry water back to camp.
Next up, he went looking for a fallen tree or branch about the width of his head and of a draggable length. It took a bit of searching, but after finding a simply frustrating number that were just too large and heavy, he eventually found a suitable branch to bring home. Like that, this exploration of the forest was brought to an end.
Then came the tedious part, using the old stick method to get a fire started. So, he set up a ring of stones next to the large branch and prepared the campfire before getting to work making embers. This was not the first time he used sticks to produce embers for a fire, and he wasn’t looking anymore forward to it this time.
The location he had decided upon was in front of where one of the larger roots surfaced and created an arch 4-5 meters long before diving below ground once more. It was also relatively low on mushrooms growing on it, so it seemed like a decent place to take shelter if the weather took a turn for the worse.
After too long, he finally had enough embers to make the tinder ignite and get the fire started. By now, he had become quite thirsty, but he still had some more to do before he’d feel even remotely safe drinking the creek water.
Using a pair of temporary tongs consisting of sticks, he brought embers from the fire over to the large branch. Then he carefully burned away the wood without actually igniting it, creating a charred hole large enough to hold both some water and hot stones. Thinking ahead, he had already placed a few non-creek stones in the fire to heat up. Thus, the moment he thought the branch was ready, he filled it with about a quarter liter of water and placed the stones in with his tongs after a quick rinse.
Since he wanted the capacity to handle more water at a time, he had actually been working on two pits on the branch simultaneously. However, he didn’t fill the second with water immediately. Instead, he continued to work on it to further improve its capacity.
Once the water in the first pit had boiled for at least a minute, he returned the stones to the fire. After the water had cooled down, he could finally take his firsts sips of water since arriving in this world. It was a little awkward to drink, seeing as he was essentially trying to drink from a stationary bowl, but he got it to work.
By now it had also been long enough that he felt comfortable enough with the results of his first food safety check to proceed. One of the black berries had started to itch some time ago, so he had carefully washed it off at the first chance he got. For the rest, he visited each bush and put a berry close to his lips before giving them a careful taste, ready to spit them out at the slightest hint of it being bad. To his relief, only one of the berries tasted off, and it was a red one.
He was admittedly rushing the safety testing a little and making it less reliable by doing multiple trials at once, but he needed to at least find a temporary food source sooner rather than later, and he had that immune System buff to help him. Therefore, he’d give the six berries a few hours to start digesting. If he didn’t throw up or start feeling sick during that period, he’d try a larger amount of the first berry type.
The next while was spent back by the campfire once again, this time with some carefully selected stones in his hands. Using a few select stones, he was striking a larger one with precise strikes, steadily knapping it into a very basic handaxe.
Frank gradually observed a myriad of small cuts appear his left hand, which was holding the handaxe; a result of the many sharp flakes flying off in all directions during the stone knapping process and him being out of practice. ‘I really hope these cuts don't get infected.’ he thought. ‘Well’ – He dusted himself as he stood – ‘This will be a good test of my enhanced regeneration.’
The finished product wasn’t anything particularly special, but it had a good grip and enough of an edge to work. This edge wasn’t like the one he had gotten earlier on the carving rock he cut bark with. Where the carving rock was explicitly meant for simple cutting, the hand axe was meant to be slammed against trees repeatedly, so the edge was a lot thicker.
In the process of making it, he had finished the larger boiling pit as well. It was a lot larger, and he estimated that it could hold about a liter, including stones. Thus, the time had come for another trip to the creek with his bark bowl. As he walked, he noticed that it was starting to get darker around him. Not quickly, but a look towards the sun informed him that it was starting to get out of sight from the forest floor.
Other than that, he kept an eye out for one key thing; any young trees that looked to have particularly fibrous bark. It didn’t take long to find quite a few. In fact, as he looked more around, he noticed that an unusual number of trees bore fruit, at least compared to a usual forest. Granted, the ratio of fruit trees to regular was a lot lower than right beneath the Tree of Life.
Back to the young trees and them being easy to find. Once found, some hits with his hand axe were all it really took to peel off a bit of bark and check if it seemed fibrous. His experimentation showed that a lot of the young trees that he had pinned as fibrous were indeed, though he was far from perfect at spotting them.
Once back with the water, he got himself a handful of the first type of berry, a black berry. After quenching his thirst, he went out to find one of the young trees to cut down and bring back before it got dark.
The process of cutting the tree down was quite arduous, but it was thin enough that once he had cut a deep enough circle into it, he could use his body weight to just bend it far enough that it almost snapped, allowing him to finish the job with the hand axe.
By the time he had dragged it back, the light was fading rapidly. He used the last remaining light to make a large line down the log just deep enough to reach into the cambium; the layer of the tree that was actively growing the bark and the tree itself. Then he went to the cut off end and began to peel it. It was a slow process to peel the bark, but once he had enough off to put his foot on it, he used that as a wedge to make it much faster.
Besides not needing to cut down further, the cambium layer of a green tree was usually quite smooth and splinter free. So, after joyfully noticing that the cuts on his hand had almost healed fully by now, he opted to use his bare foot for this for now. He didn’t really know how sturdy his shoes were or how long he needed to make them last, so he would rather not risk damaging them unnecessarily. ’Good to see that the cambium here is smooth as well.’
With the trunk debarked, he placed it into the campfire to save his dwindling bundle of firewood for tomorrow. Since the tree was green, he knew it’d take some time for it to start catching fire, and even after that it would take quite a while to actually burn. Figuring that he wouldn’t stay up for too long, he also prepared a small hole to put the log into to extinguish the fire once he was done.
Then, after eating a few handfuls of the berries since he still felt fine, he began separating the inner and outer layers of fiber. It was quite tough on his fingers, and while he knew of a much easier method, he didn’t exactly have a week or month to spend waiting for all but the fibers to rot away in a pond or creek.
Night had come not long before he finished removing the inner fibers and splitting them into thinner strands. Making them into cordage would have to wait for tomorrow. He was getting tired, and it was much nicer to operate in the light of day. Now just came the negative part of having to sleep; he didn’t have any kind of blanket, sleeping bag, or sleeping pad.
Luckily, the temperature was not too unreasonable, sitting at probably 10 degrees Celsius. That was still cold, but his clothes were unusually good at keeping his body heat contained. They were actually suspiciously good at keeping his body relatively comfortable all around. A fact he could only chalk up to them being made by gods. With that in mind, maybe he shouldn’t have been too concerned about wearing them down by debarking a tree.
Regardless, since he had placed his campfire quite close to where a large root from the Tree of Life snaked in and out of the ground, he could sit up against the root to reduce ground contact while still close to the embers of the fire. Which is exactly what he did after putting out the trunk.
Looking up at the large canopy before he closed his eyes, he recalled the multiple moons he had seen earlier. While he was a little curious if that had changed since then, the sky was effectively blocked out by the canopy, such that he couldn’t really look for them, especially not where he sat. However, it wasn’t like it was particularly important, so he pushed that for later.
It was only after he had shut his eyes that he was reminded of the very thing that he had heard when this mess all started; something that had completely slipped his mind due to his focus on survival. But, before he could think anything of it, he went out like a light.
[Survivor Class obtained]
[Survivor Level 3]
[Skill – Basic Crafting obtained]
[Skill – Basic Shaping obtained]
[Skill – Sparks obtained]
