Dan wanted to sprint until his lungs ignited and his legs gave out, but imposed restraint on himself. He remembered Kipling's description of "the steady wolf's trot that eats up the long miles like fire", made that his aim. There was urgency to get to civilization. His ready supplies of food and of water were finite. But running to exhaustion could leave him weak and unprepared if danger were to stumble across his path. He made a point to keep Unerring Aim active at all times in addition to Eagle Eye and Detect Monster. Whenever his aether pool reached its maximum, Dan aimed a Minor Aether Bolt at a distant bug, leaf, or stone. Aether Abilities had levels, and all of his were currently level one. It was unclear how they advanced or what the benefits of such advancement may be, but aether pool was a renewable resource and there was no reason he could think of not to use it rather than let it sit idly at one hundred percent.

The forest remained verdant and beautiful, but it was also rather uniform. Dan did not encounter any particularly large animals, though a thin, long bodied lizard with delicate purple feathered wings flew lazily past in the distance at one point. That did make it quite clear this planet was not Earth. There were birds. Notably, two that looked just like crows had followed him from shortly after the start of his trek. They kept their distance and showed no hostility, but it was still a bit disconcerting to be followed and scrutinized like that. But, he supposed, Corvids always were curious, and he was likely quite the novelty in these woods. After he ran a couple of hours, a pretty little creek snaked into his vision to the right. He quickly made his way there to investigate.

The water was cold and flowed fast over a bed of gravel. There were thick clusters of clam or mussel like creatures with dull gray shells about the size of his palm. Tiny minnows darted nervously, their silvery bodies almost merging into the flash of water moving over stones. Dan walked downstream several minutes, not looking for anything in particular, just sensing what was there to be sensed. The creek widened into a pool at one point and in the pool there were larger fish. They were roughly eighteen to twenty inches long and appeared quite similar to trout. Stripes of light blue iridescent scales flickered down the length of their bodies and tapered to an end just before reaching their tails.

Time to go fishing?

Time to go fishing.

Dan selected one, aimed a Minor Aether Bolt at its head, and fired. This was an experiment; he had not previously tried hitting an underwater target with Minor Aether Bolt and did not know how entering fluid would alter its trajectory. As it turned out, the bolt moved through water as easily as it did through air. It traveled faster than any of his senses save Sense Aether could track and obliterated the head of the unsuspecting fish. Which was when he realized he didn't have a plan to get the thing out of the water. The current took the headless body and carried it in a twisting tumble down the pool until the stream narrowed again and it hit a submerged branch and stuck there. In the mean time, Dan had removed his backpack, fur cloak, jacket, sweater, shirt, and under shirt. He ran over and leaned out across the water, supporting his weight on his feet back on the shore and one hand that grabbed the thick wet branch that stuck out of the water. With his other hand he grabbed the fish. This worked, but in the future, his technique was going to need a lot of refinement.

Dan made quick work of scaling, cleaning and filleting the headless alien trout thing with his stolen kitchen knife. Its flesh was light and firm, and honestly looked like it would be delicious if he could cook it up. He got together a pile of kindling and set to figuring out how to start a fire with a flint and steel.

This took much, much longer than he'd have been willing to admit to anyone in the future. He truly hoped his grandfather never found out how much trouble it gave him. Dan was pretty sure his grandpa could have just looked at the pile of wood and have it obediently ignite. The first issue was that striking steel with flint creates lots of sparks, but if they have nothing to land on, all you have is sparks - no fire. So he needed something to hold that could take a spark and ignite. Ideally that would be like a dry leaf or something, but it was spring and most plant matter was, to a greater or lesser degree, wet. He finally found a few suitably dry leaves and was able to coax a spark that landed on one to a flame, but then the fire didn't take when he tried to light his carefully selected pile of kindling. Tinder, he needed more tinder. By which he did not mean the dating site. After a fairly lengthy search, enough dry grass was found to make a suitable pile of tinder on his twig kindling on his larger branch firewood. Finally, he succeeded in making a fire. A flame of pride swelled in his chest, chased immediately by a flush of embarrassment at being so pleased with himself over an accomplishment that should be so simple.

Cooking the fish was, thankfully, a much simpler task. Just as he had hoped, it turned out to be absolutely delicious. Dan ate the fish fillets, then made a crude wooden spear from a long thin branch. Another alien trout lost its head, then found its body skewered and hauled back to land, where it was scaled, cleaned, filleted, roasted, and eaten.

Dan drank as much water as he comfortably could before refilling his skin bag from the stream. There was of course a degree of risk that unfamiliar micro-organisms could make him sick, either from the fish or from the water, but it seemed unlikely for three reasons. The first was that he had an aether ability to restore health, which should assist with illness as well as injury, and incredible health regeneration, which again logically seemed like it would apply to his immune response as well. The second was quite simply that it would make no sense for the System to send him to a world where the air, water, or food would kill him. It would defeat the entire point of the exercise, and no matter how much power the System had, it had gone to at least some trouble to abduct him and drop him here. Based on Dan's read of the System and its apparent motives, it wanted to kill him honestly, mauled by hideous alien monsters in a fair fight, not by alien diarrhea. The third was that he had a supernatural Danger Sense which had warned him against eating a few plants as he ran through the forest, and very strongly against eating or even touching one outwardly unremarkable mushroom, but had not had anything to say about the fish or the stream's water.

Dan finished his meal, cleansed himself and his knife, and set off down the path set by his Universal Compass. He kept his fish spear as a walking stick. While it'd be easy enough to make a replacement, it had taken a bit of time to find an appropriate branch, trim it, sharpen it to a triangular point. If there was no need to leave it behind, why do so? Besides, it was nice to have a walking stick, even if he didn't need one. After several minutes of jogging, an unfamiliar creature appeared in the furthermost limits of his vision. In size, shape, and manner it looked very much like a deer, but it was quite clearly reptilian, with small, intricate scales arrayed in a camouflage pattern and an iguana's head, but with deer ears. It had hooves. Dan moved velociraptors up several spots in his mental list of "monsters to keep an eye out for".

A few minutes later, "Detect Monster" detected a monster. It was to his distant left and outside the range of any of his other senses, even with "Eagle Eye" and "Penetrating Sight" active. Should he run, or investigate? After a few moments of deliberation, Dan decided that it was very unlikely the unknown monster could sense him before he could get a look at it. With all the rudimentary stealth he could muster, the human crept through the woods toward the monster, "Penetrating Sight" pushing its way through trees and brush all the while, until finally he saw it. Coiled in the roots of a small tree was a small snake. It looked like a viper, and its pattern closely matched the rotting leaves of the forest floor. Dan used System Identify.

Rootlurk Viper, lvl 4. Monster Type: Serpent

Honestly, it didn't seem that threatening. It was just a little snake. Even if he was willing to posit that its venom was instantly, unfailingly lethal, and that it could strike very fast, it seemed pretty easy to avoid, or kill from a distance. A level one Goblin, from everything he could tell, was a much more dangerous monster. Which worried him. What was he missing? Perhaps it was more durable than it looked, or much faster? Just in case he was missing something, Dan decided to use "Sense Deceit". He wasn't sure what he was expecting to find, and found nothing. It shouldn't be any trouble to circle around the snake. Or he could try to kill it. Well, his quest was to gain power, and that seemed directly connected to fighting monsters, and this did seem like an easier monster to fight than most.

Dan crept around the snake in a wide arc, aiming for an unobstructed line of fire for Minor Aether Bolt. He had tested the ability quite a lot over the course of the day, and its range was vast, at least as far as he could see. The snake hid in the roots of a tree that stood between the human and the monster. Dan could see the snake due to "Penetrating Sight", but the viper, presumably, could not see him until he was in position to hit it. He wanted to stay as far away as possible, but the best he could do and still manage a clean shot turned out to be about two-hundred and fifty feet. His enhanced Agility and Perception, along with Tactical Precognition, helped a great deal in moving quietly, but it was not a skill Dan had much practice in, and at the last moment a broken twig alerted the viper. It turned its head toward him as he launched five Minor Aether Bolts at it in rapid succession. As it turned out, that was overkill.

Monster Defeated, Rootlurk Viper (lvl 4). Aether Gained.

Minor Aether Bolt, even in the weakened form available to him, was apparently a rather potent attack against low level monsters. Or at least against this low level monster. Which had been pretty darn unimpressive. On the other hand, it was clearly an ambush attacker, and Dan's abilities made him the perfect counter to attackers who relied on stealth or guile. Perhaps the little snake was a deadly menace to normal people? Certainly, he would have walked right past it without his System bolstered senses. But how could it have hurt him unless he literally walked right past it? Was it fast enough to chase people down if they got reasonably close without practically stumbling on top of it? But how could it do that while remaining unnoticed? Were all venomous snakes of this world monsters, or just some? If only some, what set them apart? There was still far too much about this world, about monsters, about everything, that he did not know.