[Terror Bird meat added to Inventory]

[Terror Bird meat added to Inventory]

The description that the system showed seemed to line up more with what he thought of it than any further scientific information. Back when he first received the notification, the fish he caught was just simply a fish instead of being any particular type of it. Perhaps if he learnt the proper names of animals, if these things could be called animals, he would get some proper feedback from the system.

For now, though, he was just focused on filleting the bird parts that were in front of him. He tried to get some cuts that were reminiscent of chicken, but with the Terror bird being land-based and without significant wings, the most meat was found on its powerful and thick thighs rather than the breast. "It would have to do," he sighed, slashing another moderate-sized piece he hoped wouldn't rot that quickly.

The kitten was munching on a small part he cut out for it, and it didn't seem to mind it being fresh and bloodied. At least it wouldn't go hungry and try and eat him, or at least he hoped that would be the case.

The only water running through the forest was a stream outlined on his map. It was a short way from his current place and would provide him with proper water, hopefully. Since he was in the forest, he wasn't sure where exactly the stream went, but its exit from the forest would bring him closer to the village as it was going the same way he planned to travel. He felt safer near small bodies of water than without them. He wasn't sure why. Statistically, more animals were bound to be next to running water, so he should be expecting more wildlife instead of less, but if push came to shove, he had water with him he couldn't lose and a direction to follow instead of going through the forest haphazardly.

This was a different affair from the forngle he left. Much more dry and with shorter trees, the forest was actually a bit more lit by the sun than what the previous foliage, so he could see far better into the distance and around him. It would explain how a bird seemed to be such a prominent predator in the area, considering their usually superior eyesight to any other sense.

He knew he had to prepare food and eat something before he went further inwards, so he went around to find a decent clearing in the otherwise dense forest populated mostly by trees and without much of a shrubbery, leaving him with more branches and fewer leaves to deal with. Leaves would be useful when he inevitably needed to answer the call of nature. There wasn't really an ability to produce paper out of thin air, to his dismay. A village would be most welcome in that regard.

He set out to make his second camp in this reality, built similarly like the one before it, a small, hand-dug, clearing lined with a couple of rocks and pure hope he wouldn't cause a forest fire. He got some of the branches that were sitting in his inventory, and others that he scavenged from the forest floor. He wasn't really sure what time of day was, but it was probably somewhere around afternoon judging by his general energy level, hunger, and the lacklustre attempt at estimating time travelled. His exploration and survival knowledge still had a ways to go before he felt comfortable with it. What he was doing right now would probably look like bare minimum and amateurish.

With the campfire started relatively fast, and a cursory check over his options to see if he could jump-start the process somehow, the smell of meat grilling spread around from his makeshift camp. With his mana sitting at 1, something he attributed to his need to close the wounds and being hungry, he would be useless in case something actually came at him. Maybe he'd just surrender the meat and run away. Didn't seem like such a terrible option, but running away didn't seem to get him close to his goal most of the time. The experience with the bison would disagree with that, but there was more to life than running from bison. One day, he'd get back and stand his ground against them and beat them at their own game. Whatever game that might've been. He wasn't really sure.

He wasn't about to take many chances with his meal, so it was decided in a quick vote of himself versus himself that it was better if the meat was slightly charred than raw. The cat decided on its own fate as all cats usually did, and he wasn't about to try and change that over the course of the day.

Finally, when he considered the humble meal of just meat, literally just unseasoned meat, ready he stuffed his mouth in a hurry to move onwards. The quicker he ate, the less time he would spend stationary and in the middle of a cloud of a smell of food.

He actually noticed some small animals scurrying about, but it was mostly squirrels and what looked like some kind of a lizard. None of them decided to approach close enough for him to inspect his lunch visitors with more scrutiny, but he couldn't blame them for it. The Crocodile Hunter guy he was not, and he preferred any wildlife stay away from him if able. Maybe except for the cat. It was fuzzy and cuddly. Maybe the cat will do.

When he felt decently sated, he popped some of the charred meat into the Inventory, figuring that prepared meals would last longer. He hadn't prepared all of the fresh food because that would just extend the time he needed to stay here, and he was already preparing to go. With a swift check that everything was safely in the Inventory, which had yet to show a meaningful limit or an actual way to display the total or individual weight of items, he set out.

With a few branches, several pieces of fresh meat, few pieces of cooked food, an empty water flask, two daggers (the third one he regrettably left to the Fleeing Goblin), some mushrooms that he didn't want to test the edibility off yet, and both Terror Bird claws (as he found out he could actually use them as bludgeons) in extra-dimensional tow, and the cat in the otherwise empty backpack, he left for the general direction of the stream he was sure was in this forest somewhere. It was only a question of when he was going to find it. It better be before nightfall.