Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Treacherous Journey to Civilization

Hours had passed since I began traversing the sea of trees that looked to have no end.

At first glance, the Great Elion Forest looked like the southern forest in Siberia, filled with trees similar to pines, spruces, and firs, even though I’d never been there. However, instead of a cold taiga, this place felt like a warm deciduous forest instead. Maybe it was in the middle of summer or closer to the equator. Either way, it was to my benefit.

Numerous kinds of animals roamed the area as I passed through the foliage. Obviously, I didn’t spot dangerous wildlife since I’d gone ahead and prepared a special spray from the Dungeon Menu — [Dangerous Beast Repellent (50 CP)] — that deterred any large beasts from approaching.

Speaking of Dungeon Menu, once I was outside the area of the dungeon, it was no longer possible to access it. There goes one of my trump cards… Oh well, I never intended to rely on it anyway.

Still, traversing the treacherous forest hills and rockeries along the way would have been virtually impossible even after all that training. Luckily, I’d prepared for this and made my new backpack and clothes to be code imbued. The thing was, they boosted their original purposes and even offered buffs in many ways.

Camping backpack (modified)

A large camping backpack that has been imbued with [Programming] to be able to store twice its normal capacity while only having a third of its supposed weight.

Lavish Set (modified)

A lavish set of clothes designed for adventuring. Has been imbued with [Programming] according to the conditions below:

1. Provide movement support to the wearer according to the stored "memory".
2. Harden whenever an object hits or presses against the clothes.
3. Provide additional thrust when the wearer exerts a “certain” amount of force.

I still didn’t know how well this set of clothes would function in real battle. Though the “memory” on the first condition was more about adding “machine learning” to the set itself to have it function as movement support by teaching it experts’ movements — the recordings of the invasion proved to be very useful here.

All the clothes themselves coincidentally functioned as a set thanks to it having a “set” attribute. Because of that, using [Programming] on this Lavish Set had been easier than doing it separately, and they would still work even if I didn’t use all parts of them.

Moreover, the backpack and the set were made of good, modern quality materials, they wouldn’t be able to withstand the many conditions that I’d put in place otherwise. Really, the advent of modern, synthetic fabric was so useful in holding a surprising degree of conditions.

Truly a convenient Vocation. In any case, if it were anyone else that wasn’t a programmer that had gotten this, it would have been worthless or worse — completely unusable.

The sun was soon searing my head and back with its rays. So hot. Even while the canopy of trees had blocked most of the sunlight, my body was like it was placed under a humid tanning bed, sweating nonstop. How much longer…? Why did I have to suffer doing this?

Munching on a biscuit, I stopped to rest under a tree shade before drinking a bottle of mineral water. Thankfully, I’d prepared enough to last me three days and had emptied my stomach prior in the dungeon; I couldn’t imagine myself, a modern man, having to take a dump outside in the wild.

Having rested enough, I continued with my journey. In all honesty, traversing a thick forest like this without knowing better was stupid. But I brought a compass and a map that I’d scrounge— Or rather gotten from the camp that the invaders had set up. This forest was full of trees similar to each other; I wouldn’t know if I had been circling the same spot without those things. Ah… if only there was a GPS…

As a matter of fact, I’d gotten other miscellaneous valuables from the camp like a small tanning knife, a few pouches of gold coins, some usable lanterns, and several other miscellaneous supplies. It somewhat felt like looting in games after beating a bandit hideout.

In the blink of an eye, the once hot, sunny weather began to dim and cool down. I had the luxury of stopping a few times to rest along the way, but from the looks of it, I wouldn’t be able to reach the city before spending a night. And frankly, I didn’t take entertaining the idea very well.

Unexpectedly, while lamenting the fact that I might have to spend the night here, a small shudder appeared behind a thick bush. Of course, it wasn’t a big dangerous beast lurking since I was confident about the special spray — at least it had yet to betray my expectations.

Moments later, a rabbit, the typical kind one could imagine but with scales on its back, hopped up and down in front of me, munching on a tuft of grass nearby. Cute and fluffy. If I hadn’t known that it was a rabbit from the long twin ears on its head, I would have thought that it was an armadillo.

“A perfect target to test my new inventions.”  I swiped the side pockets of my backpack that hosted numerous code-imbued iron balls the size of a pea with a variety of conditions in place and took one out — the “iron bullet.”

For a few days, I’d been wanting to test these new weapons. I’d even managed to tinker with them to obtain the maximum best value in achieving the highest possible result with minimal effort. And with all of them made out of iron, they could hold many more conditions.

When I was about to unleash a homicide on the rabbit, it looked back at me with its two little red eyes as though in a plea for its pitiful life, making me relent. However, I steeled my heart and threw the bean-sized iron bullet at it while muttering, “Sorry, little one.”

The rabbit was faster than expected and quickly dodged the iron bullet I threw even when it was almost as fast as a real bullet. The difficulty of throwing things with high velocity increased exponentially the faster it became because of the nonexistent vector. But that was still within expectation.

Yet out of my expectation, the rabbit actually rushed at me instead of running away. I quickly hoisted another iron bullet, but I flicked it at the rabbit instead of throwing it. It was about to leap at me but got bounced off like it was hit by some invisible force, then laid on the ground, dead.

Ugh. That’s gore…

Somehow… there was a tightness in my heart upon watching the corpse of the rabbit. But at the end of the day, I realized that every meat I ate always came from an animal someone had killed. In addition to that, I’d killed people, so being overly guilty over something petty was no good. That would be hypocrisy.

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“Guess I should dismantle it.”

Since it’d be a waste to just leave it there, I took out a small tanning knife that I’d gotten from the camp before dismantling it. Needless to say, I was no expert, so the result was far from satisfactory, but I was happy since this was my first independent hunt yet.

Piling up a bunch of firewood together on a small empty field amidst the trees, I stuck a sharp stick in the rabbit meat after draining it of blood. Then, I grabbed a lighter from my backpack to start the fire. The fire crackled as I began roasting the meat while humming some popular songs. I also didn’t forget to add a pinch of salt evenly to the meat.

Come to think of it: Wouldn’t lighters, or simply matches, sell like hot cakes in this world? I should confirm that later; the people in this place could wield magic, so maybe fire wasn’t so difficult to make…

Twenty minutes later, the rabbit meat was already golden brown, and once I cooled it down enough, I munched on it with a great bite. A bit salty… mostly tasteless… I never thought that the meat was this bad. Yuck, I should have brought mayonnaise or ketchup…

After forcing myself to eat most of the gamey rabbit meat, I looked up at the setting sun. The sky was already yellowish orange by now. In spite of everything, I had to keep up my pace and go forward as I noticed that the forest had been getting thinner along the way.

Once the sky darkened enough, I didn’t want to imagine what the forest would look like. It wasn’t that I was scared of being alone in a wild forest… Not at all. Maybe. But that would be bad for visibility nevertheless, even while I could use my smartphone as a flashlight.

Two hours later, I spotted a larger clearing with traces of human activity. By now, the sky was already pitch black and eerie with the hooting and buzzing of nocturnal creatures about, giving me goosebumps, so I used my phone’s flashlight to guide my way. And when I arrived at the clearing, what I saw was—

“Finally, civilization!” I couldn’t help but shout when there were pale white, reflective walls some two kilometers away. If it wasn’t for its color being in contrast to its surroundings, I wouldn’t have been able to spot it from such a distance.

This whole journey to town had exhausted me so much that I wanted to sleep like a log right away. Trekking the more than fifty kilometers or so of the forest was such a daunting task for me — a mere programmer student.

How long had it taken? Twelve hours? Probably more…

I forced my brittle legs to move again, only to bump into a shining pile of stone and almost trip over. Wha?! Has there always been a pile of stone here, a shining one to boot?

While cursing and kicking the pile of stone that had blocked my way, I discovered that there was a lantern stuck within like it was purposely used as a beacon of sorts. Likewise, the ground below me was long and flat, like it was made for a runway. It can’t be, right?

I rubbed my forehead, gazing up at the sudden wind noise above. Surprisingly, when I pointed my smartphone’s flash upward and increased the brightness, there was what was much like a small dark dot in the sky, which was getting bigger with each moment.

“Huh. What’s that exactly?” To curb the burning desire to know inside me, I opened the camera on my phone and zoomed in.

Thanks to the high resolution of my phone, I could see what it was… an ultralight aircraft and… a human wearing goggles? But to my alarm, it was way closer than expected, and it was suddenly flying haphazardly! And—

“Get away from there!”

“Shoot!” I propelled myself to jump away to avoid getting crushed under the vessel that erratically crashed to the ground I was standing before. “What the FUCK was that?!”

As the sound of metal crashing against the ground resounded, I covered my head with both of my hands in order to protect myself from getting killed by stray rubble. Thankfully no such thing was happening.

“Ngh! Phew… Oh no!” A voice reverberated from the crash site and footsteps drew closer to me.

I unshut my eyes and got back on my feet only to see the “idiot” person, a girl… that had almost killed me, bowing her head as she clasped her hands apologetically, shouting, “I’m really so very sorrrryyy!!”

“Are you shitting me?! Lady! You almost killed me!”

But I reined my anger shortly after since it was partly my fault for standing on the runway. And, um, I broke her beacon stone…

Above all, since when did this world have an aircraft? Just what kind of world was I in? I remembered that Rowan and his gang appeared like bandits in a medieval sense… So why did it become steampunk out of nowhere?

Too many questions piled up inside my tiny brain that my stomach churned…

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