With the mirage blanket neatly tied around his shoulders like a cloak, Owen skulked through the dense foliage. Large flowers which looked like sunflowers aside from the enormous black and pink petals grew in batches almost everywhere he looked. They followed his movements whenever he got close, which he vaguely recalled seeing in streams. Other than that, they were harmless. They only snagged small insects with their petals from time to time.

Large viney bushes sporting small blue berries with crunchy outer shells gave plenty of cover for him to hide within whenever he encountered bristlefur wolves or spineback hogs. The hogs were warthog-like beasts with black or brown fur, elephantine tusks, and anywhere from ten to fifteen large black spikes with red tips along their back which reminded Owen of rockfish. If he remembered correctly, the hogs were slow, but the spines on their back contained a mild poison. Perhaps they would look more appetizing if not for that trait.

Occasionally, he encountered smaller animals like furrells, the squirrel-like tree-dwellers with greenish-brown fur and ridiculously fluffy ears and tails, or jarbits, the rabbit-like creatures whose heads reached up to his knees since they mostly hopped around on powerful hind legs in order to use their front paws for gathering food. They also had gray or brown fur, goat-like horns, and purred like small cats. However, he wondered how deep he was in the forest since he didn’t see any kangas, rat-like creatures who stood on powerful hind legs like kangaroos, or rattilas, skinny capybara-like mammals with dark fur and sharp predatory teeth. Still, seeing all of these other creatures up close rather than through the lens of a streamer was rather surreal. It felt like walking through a dreamland where danger lurked around every corner.

Eventually, he found a furrell on the ground that wasn’t scampering everywhere like a toddler who just ate a pound of sweets. Instead of running through the otherworldly oaks, maples, and willows of the forest, it was nibbling on some of the countless little berries littering the ground. Thanks to the effect of the mirage blanket, he was able to sneak right up behind it. When he started drawing his wakizashi from its sheath, the furrell stopped nibbling on the crunchy berries and stood on its hind legs. Its small black eyes, filled with the fear common to all small herbivores, stared right at Owen. The small sound had alerted it.

The fearful gaze of the prey caused him to hesitate. He had never intentionally killed anything other than insects before. Life was a precious thing. Killing an animal, even if to fill his stomach, was a large jump from beating down an opponent in a ring. In fact, now that he thought about it, how would he cook it without drawing the attention of the predatory beasts living in Barkstone Forest? Wouldn’t he have to skin it and prep it, too? Those were skills he never learned. That primitive living channel he sometimes watched never released any type of video about that since there would have been an outrage from a certain animal protection group. Few people in his generation even hunted to feed their families. Hunting and dismantling were almost forgotten skills thanks to technology making food processing so easy.

Maybe I can just eat these berries instead?

Sighing, he clicked the wakizashi back into its sheath and sat next to the berry bush alongside the furrel. Since it could eat the berries, then why couldn’t he? Of course, he would need to hunt animals at some point just to maintain his health, or even to get some fur clothing in order to not look like a streaker, but for now, berries should suffice. One step at a time as they always say.

After gathering a few berries for himself, Owen realized the furrell had left. He didn’t even notice it scampering off into the trees. Rueing his softness from living in a big city, he popped one of the berries into his mouth. It crunched like an apple on the outside but felt like a raspberry on the inside. The skin was extremely sour while the inside was extremely sweet. In the end, the two flavors balanced each other out. It wasn’t as flavorful as the genetically modified fruits he was used to, but it tasted alright.

After downing a few handfuls of the berries, he stepped over to one of the nearby oak-like trees which sported scratchy dark brown bark and three-pronged leaves as big as his head. He tore off one of the leaves and wrapped up some of the berries in it for later. It may have been an unnecessary gesture due to the bountiful numbers of berry bushes, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

From there, with wakizashi and berry-filled leaf in his hands, he set out deeper into the forest in search of the Plathume River which flowed through the forest from the nearby mountain range to the south, or at least what had been south in the game map. Only a small portion of the river had been open in the closed beta since both the mountain and plains it flowed into after curving into the bounds of Barkstone Forest had been blocked off by an invisible barrier, though he had a feeling the barrier only applied to players. Two of the streamers he watched had found the river while playing together. Afterward, the area quickly became a hotspot for stronger players to catch rainbow-scaled fish with fat bodies and bulbous antennas. The fish, apparently called khitefish, were apparently a hot commodity in Raylea and sold for more than the furs of the forest beasts aside from witherbear fur. If he could find the river, perhaps he would be able to find players, if any existed here. At the very least, he would be able to drink fresh water and possibly catch fish. That would probably be easier for him to accept than hunting in the forest for now. Perhaps he could even try making some of the nets or lures he saw on that primitive technology channel he occasionally watched. Fishing would likely be easier to learn and grow accustomed to than spilling blood with his bare hands.

Basing his sense of direction on his limited knowledge of the game’s map of Barkstone Forest, he headed in a somewhat south direction. The sun here, although much redder than Earth’s sun, seemed to have a similar rotation cycle. He hoped he could use it as an indicator of his direction.

As he traveled through the forest, he heard all kinds of birds and insects chirping and buzzing. They sounded similar to when he watched streamers traveling here, but now that he was here alone without the extra noise from commentary and combat, the world sounded far more vivid. It was almost deafening to his ears which were accustomed to the silence of the indoors. Pungent aromas and stenches assaulted his nose. He couldn’t tell which smells originated from which plants or animals. Too many mixed together for him to make any sense of it. It was a far cry from the fumes of a bustling metropolis.

Aside from that, he often swatted insects similar to gnats, flies, and bees away from his face. Their incessant buzzing made his ears ring. A few even flew into his mouth, forcing him to hack and spit until he could get the taste out of his mouth. Unfortunately, the blanket didn’t keep them away at all. Or maybe it did stave them off and it was his fault for unknowingly walking through a cloud of tiny gnats. Either way, he started to think encountering an aggressive and unfriendly bristlefur wolf would be more enjoyable then having to deal with the annoying things. They completely stole his attention to the point that he didn’t notice the sudden lack of other animals in the vicinity.

While paying the insects more heed than they were worth, he suddenly stumbled over a small bush. One knee dug into the moist soil, but he didn’t fall. Before getting up, he started dusting off his knee. Amidst his carelessness, he heard some beastly grunts followed by a bone-shattering crunch. He looked up from dusting off his knee and immediately noticed an enormous mass of bulging muscle and matted grey fur in the middle of a clearing half the size of a football field. A witherbear.