Chapter 7: 7. The Outside

For the next couple of weeks, Desmond's schedule didn’t change much, if at all. He woke early in the morning, ate a couple slivers of demon meat for breakfast, and then he ventured out into Calcheth, searching for anything useful that would help him survive. Each day, he would return to the cafe with little to nothing useful on his person, save for extra tinder for the fire or extra clothes that he could use for whatever reason or otherwise. He would eat dinner, then go to bed. Rinse and repeat.

He leveled slowly without any stressful outside influences to push him to work any harder. He only increased his total level once from all the monotony, and only leveled up ⦓Survival⦔, ⦓Small Blades Proficiency⦔, and ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ once each just because using them had become a part of his daily life.

Rain came at irregular times, but it eventually came each time Desmond was beginning to run low on his water reserves. He couldn’t remember if it ever rained this often in Calcheth in the past, but he didn’t spare much thought toward the matter. He preferred to simply think that he was getting lucky.

Multiple times, he wondered if it was the whim of the strange entity he’d seen, but each time the thought graced him, he immediately dashed it away; choosing to focus on reality as opposed to fruitless speculation.

Unbeknownst to Desmond, two months had passed as he continued to live out his strange new life. When he awoke one morning, however, he realized that he had worked his way through the gluttony demon’s corpse rather quickly. Looking it over with ⦓Eye For Detail⦔, he figured he would only be able to get about four or five more days worth of food from it.

That left him with an unfortunate predicament, though.

‘There’s no food in town, I already know that for a fact.’ He thought to himself, scratching his chin in thought. ‘I won’t be able to survive if I stick around here any longer. But...’

He paused, his expression suddenly somber as he looked out the cafe window.

‘...I don’t want to leave my home.’ He finished his thought, running a hand through his white hair, clearly stressed at the idea. ‘It may not be the Calcheth I knew, but...it’s still my home. Leaving here feels...wrong.’

Despite that, though, he looked down at the corpse in front of him, his expression morphing into one of disgust and anger. Impulsively, he slammed the inside of his foot against its head, causing a loud cracking noise to reverberate through the small room as the corpse’s head snapped back like a rubber band and hung limp against the floor.

‘No. It’s not my home anymore. Not after what these...things did to it.’ Desmond huffed, shaking his head as he turned around and left the backroom to gather his things. ‘There’s no point in staying here anymore. If I do, I’ll just starve and die. If I want to live, then I have to leave.’

It didn’t take him long to gather everything he wanted to take with him, considering he didn’t have much anyways. He only had a couple extra shirts, an extra pair of pants, one pair of shorts, some socks and underwear, and a leather jacket that was slightly too big for him.

He started to stuff all of his spare clothes into his shoulder bag, then paused in thought.

‘I should probably keep food separate from my clothes...’ He stood up, quickly exiting the cafe so that he could scavenge some more, looking for things he regularly passed over. ‘Maybe I could wrap the rest of the meat in something...and put them in a box at the bottom. That way, I’m not getting like...meat juices all over my clothes and stuff.’

Within five minutes or so, he returned to the cafe with a small wooden box with a clasp and a roll of thick brown paper he’d found in what used to be a butchery. From there, he made quick work of cutting off the remaining meat from the demon corpse, then cutting them up into thin steaks. He tightly wrapped them in the paper wrapping before stacking them all together in the little box and shutting the clasp with a satisfying click.

Before stuffing it in the bag, he wrapped it in a thin blanket he’d found somewhere around town, then buried it under all of his clothes. All of his spare tinder was stuffed into a side pocket, his Father’s water filter was packed away in another pocket, his knife was stuffed into a pocket on the inside of his jacket, and he was all packed and ready to go.

“Well...I guess this is my last day in Calcheth.” Desmond mumbled to himself as he walked out, looking down at the watering can he’d left outside. He couldn’t, in good conscience, take it with him. For one, it was too big to constantly carry around. Two, it was...ugly. As much as his Father liked it, it would’ve made him look dumb to carry it around.

Instead, he rummaged through a couple of houses for almost twenty minutes before he found a mostly intact waterskin and filled it to the brim before he decided he’d prepared enough as he could. He spared the cafe one last glance before he left down the south main road. There was nothing in Calcheth that he hadn’t seen already after his weeks of venturing through the town to find anything useful.

Yet walking through now, with the intention to leave and most likely never return, left an incredibly hollow feeling in his chest. It felt like he was abandoning part of himself.

But if he didn’t, he’d probably just stay here and die like a weakling. And he’d already decided that he wouldn’t be weak ever again.

So before he could try to change his mind about it again, he picked up the pace and, sooner rather than later, arrived at what once was a large gate, leading out into the outside world. Standing under the ruins of the southern gate, Desmond saw only a long stretch of grassland with rolling hills, and then the tips of trees peaking high into the sky far off in the distance.

He’d never been outside of Calcheth. He was too susceptible to sickness as a child, so it wasn’t safe for him to leave often and risk catching something serious. Now, though, thanks to ⦓Otherworldly Resolve⦔ fortifying his immunity and even eliminating the problems he dealt with before, he didn’t think he’d have to worry about that anymore.

So, with a deep breath to build his confidence, Desmond started on his journey out of Calcheth.

The fields were barren, save for the grass that swayed in the winds as it brushed past him, whistling quietly in its wake. The grass was short at first, but the further he got out into the field, the taller it grew, until it brushed against his knees and became more of a hassle to get through. Still, Desmond hiked up his legs and continued onward, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder bag as he waded through the thick grass.

‘...it’s quiet.’ He thought to himself after walking for nearly ten minutes. Even now, the trees were still extremely far off in the distance, yet he could see clearly how the trees towered over the fields he traversed. ‘I mean, it was quiet in town, too, but...for different reasons.’

Desmond stopped walking, casting his gaze around the fields and finally up to the sky. Overhead, a group of three tiny birds flitted by, heading in the direction of the trees. He could see that between two of them, they held what looked like a small, struggling rodent between them. They were so far up, though, that any noise they would’ve been making was lost on the young boy.

‘That’s nature, I guess.’ He reasoned, watching as the birds and their prey disappeared into the distance. Holding a hand over his eyes, he looked up into the sky. The sun was still high overhead, but he could tell that it was already getting later than he liked. Desmond perked back up and began walking once again, hiking his bag further up onto his shoulder. ‘I should get going. The last thing I want is to be caught out in the open during the night.’

 

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Night fell quickly following that. Desmond continued his trek through the grassland before finally coming up onto the edge of the forest. The trees towered over him, and easily eclipsed the greatest heights of the buildings in Calcheth. But, determined not to be out in the open for the night, Desmond entered the forest with his head held high.

Once inside, though, he came to realize that his confidence was terribly misplaced. The trees were tall, yes, and they were thick as well. Even the smallest, thinest tree trunks were easily twice as wide as he was, and were clustered so closely together, it was a struggle even getting past them. He soon swung his bag to his chest, keeping one hand wrapped around it so that he could squeeze between the trunks better. Even with that, though, it was a struggle.

Before long, the sky went dark and Desmond decided to find some place where he could rest and eat for the night before hopefully continuing his journey through the forest in the morning. He managed to find a small clearing at the base of a rather thick tree with a cavity near its base, exposing its underground roots to the air. It was surrounded on all sides by thick bushes and more trees, so Desmond figured it was as safe as he could possibly find under the dead of night.

He made quick work of setting up his small, temporary camp; stuffing his bag against the roots to use as a pillow, shoving copious amounts of stray leaves against the roots to make a soft spot for him to sleep on, and setting up his makeshift stove a ways away from the trees in a little cavity he dug out with a stick.

Soon after, he’d found a decently smooth stone to use as a stovetop and had started a small fire that he began to cook a couple slivers of demon meat atop. Since he’d leveled up Survival again, and just because he’d been doing it for so long now, he was much better at knowing when to flip the meat and how long to let it cook in general. It didn’t even take ten full minutes for the slabs of meat to be fully cooked through, and he quickly began to eat his light dinner for the night.

As his fire died down and Desmond continued to eat, he felt a small smile slip across his lips.

‘I haven’t been outside for very long, but I’m surviving.’ He thought to himself, taking a short drink from his water bottle. ‘It hasn’t been much of a challenge yet, so I’m sure it’ll get harder later when I run out of food.’

A sliver of light shined down into the clearing, making him pause and look up in wonder. Above the clearing, which was canopied by the copious leaves from the tall, overhanging trees, he caught just a glimpse of the full moon through the foliage.

The scene was almost magical to him. He’d never been out in the wild, surrounded by nature like this, let alone outside of Calcheth in general. The fact that he was able to travel out, on his own no less, and see these kinds of things...it felt like some sort of miracle.

‘But...’ Desmond's smile fell as he averted his gaze from the moon, instead turning back to his sleeping spot for the night. ‘The costs were too great. It wasn't worth it.’

With that sobering thought, Desmond put out his fire completely before turning in for the night.

 

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He woke early in the morning and very quickly gathered his things, replacing them in his bag, and covering his tracks by spreading out the ashes from his campfire and covering it in stray dirt and leaves. Before long, the clearing was clean and natural again and Desmond was quickly on his way once more.

With sunlight keeping the forest bright and clear, it was much easier for him to pick his way through the trees and brush. Though he traveled in one direction with purpose, he realized about three hours into his journey that he didn’t really have a goal or a destination in mind.

Sure, he knew that he needed to leave Calcheth if he wanted to survive, but he also had no idea what to do after that. He didn’t know any other towns in the area, nor did he even know where he was going. He’d just...picked a direction and started walking.

‘Well, it’s better than nothing, I guess.’ He reasoned, ducking under a thick tree branch as he passed by what looked to be the tail end of a clear blue river running through the forest. He stopped to look up and down the river, then decided to follow it leading further into the forest. For some reason, it felt right to follow it up in hopes of it leading to another town, or at least something similar.

Yet as he continued to follow the river, he didn’t come across anything of note. It widened out and got more powerful as he continued moving, but he never once found anything that might hint of it leading anywhere.

The further on he got, however, the more animals he saw; birds flocking throughout the trees and singing their songs around him, and deer drinking from the river before scurrying off at the sight of him. At one point, he swore he even saw a bear drinking lazily from the river before he made himself scarce sooner, rather than later.

After trekking further for hours—with minimal breaks simply to drink and refill his bottle from the river which, thankfully, ⦓Survival⦔ told him was freshwater—the sky had darkened once more and night began to fall over the forest. Desmond sighed in exasperation, but pushed away from the river to find somewhere safe to sleep for the night. Since so many animals populated the river and the area around it, he figured it’d be safer for him to sleep further away from it to avoid as much foot traffic as possible.

He walked for a couple of minutes until he couldn’t hear the flow of water anymore, then began to search for a good spot. It took him much longer than the first time, with nearly thirty minutes passing before he was able to find a rather secluded cavity in a cavity between a pack of trees. He set up his small campsite again and was cooking up his dinner again in less than five minutes.

‘Mm. I’m getting pretty fast at this,’ He thought, feeding some dry twigs from his bag to the fire. ‘That’s probably good. If I end up traveling for a while, It’s better to be quick and efficient.’

As he was eating, Desmond looked up to the sky again, trying to see if he could find the moon, but the canopy above blocked out the sky this time around. He grunted in disappointment, but turned back to his food all the same.

‘That’s two nights down. I only have enough food for another two, maybe three, days,’ He stood up from where he was sitting on the ground, breaking his campfire down for the night so that he could sleep. ‘I’ll probably have to learn to hunt or something while I’m in the wild.’

Desmond shrugged at the thought as he laid down against a tree, using his bag as a pillow.

‘It shouldn’t be too hard, I think. ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ and ⦓Survival⦔ will probably make it a breeze.’ He reasoned with a smirk, letting his eyes fall shut as he relaxed back into his faux pillow. ‘It’ll be easy.’

Soon after that declaration, he drifted off to sleep. Yet, just about merely an hour later, he would be roused awake by a noise; a noise he wasn’t expecting to hear in the middle of the forest.

Voices.

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