After a few hours of fitful sleep, during which John was too worried about his fire burning out to reach meaningful unconsciousness, he decided, for the first time in his life, to rise with the sun. It made for a nice alarm clock. John could understand why people paid top dollar for devices that simulated the effect in their bedrooms. Fortunately for him, you didn’t need technology like that when you were missing a good portion of your roof.

With the aid of soft morning light, John found his task of collecting sticks much easier than the night before. Instead of groping at the snow near trees by the light of a rapidly diminishing shrub-torch, he could now clearly see bits of fallen branches sticking up from the powder. His efficiency skyrocketed. He made two firewood gathering trips, one after the other, and when he was satisfied with both the size of the fire and the height of the firewood pile beside it, John set off on his primary errand of the day.

He needed warmer clothes.

His t-shirt and shorts weren’t cutting it. Like the other things he had brought with him through the portal, they had been changed by the journey into simpler, less sophisticated versions of themselves. The t-shirt became a roughspun shirt with no tag or collar, and the shorts became… well they were still shorts but they seemed like they were made by hand rather than in a factory. All the tags, elastic and machine stitching were gone. What didn’t change, however, was how poorly the flimsy cloth kept him warm. If John was going to survive, he needed to find something much, much better.

Maybe he could find some friendly people nearby? Perhaps he could reach more stone buildings like his current shelter, and inside one of them he might find a chest of drawers with blankets or ancient long johns or something. In other words, maybe there were things around here he could loot. That’s how it worked in video games, anyway. If not, worst-case scenario, John could drag back an animal corpse and try to skin it into something he could wear. The bloody thought sent a shudder up his spine. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.

John began by surveying the area around his shelter. Thin, conical evergreens rose from the snow to a height of a modest city skyline, reminding John again of overgrown Christmas trees. While these lacked ornaments, they did have a festive frosting of white on the skyward-facing portion of their needles. The trees were surprisingly spread out from one another, leaving wide stretches of mostly undisturbed snow. They struck John as organic columns in a grand hall, connecting a floor of glimmering white with a ceiling of pale blue.

Avian chirps mixed with other, less familiar calls to form a consistent white noise, like one of those nature sounds apps. Or like actual nature, you fucking dunce. While it should have been soothing, something within it filled John with unease. Occasionally, amidst the piping of small birds and chittering of what sounded like cute, furry mammals, something more sinister would break through. Something would growl or scream with rage. If nothing else, the jolting sounds were a good reminder not to relax here. As if John needed a reminder like that.

Though the sun had yet to peek above the treeline, it had foreshadowed its appearance by illuminating one area of sky much more than the rest. Obviously, John didn’t know how cardinal directions worked in this world, but that direction, for practical purposes, was “east.” It was in that direction John spotted what appeared to be another stone structure like his own, this one was also made of vine-covered stone and roughly the size of a Taco Bell. Vigilant for wolves, or anything that moved, really, John plowed barefoot through the snow towards his destination.

By the time he reached it, his body was thoroughly numbed. He was still in better shape than the night before, at least. He hadn’t become more resistant to the cold, necessarily, but he had gotten better at separating himself from it, keeping it to one side of his mind while he thought with the other.

This second structure was even worse-off than the first. A solid three-quarters of the stone building had crumbled away, making it little more than a glorified pavilion. Only an eerie, frost-coated nest populated its snowy floor, the grapefruit-sized eggs inside iridescent white and smoking with mist. A powerful instinct told him not to investigate further. Something about that nest seemed dangerous. This time, it seemed, John had struck out.

No surprise there. Striking out is a specialty of yours.

He located another structure peeking out from behind a tree to the north. He made his way there, only to discover it was almost entirely gone. The single wall still standing had fooled him through its unfortunate angle into assuming there was more. This process essentially repeated itself several more times, until John had lost track entirely of how many turns he had made and in what directions. He had just made up his mind to turn back to tend to his fire when he arrived at an unbroken building.

Like his own shelter, which was essentially a stone cube with a domed roof, this one had outlines along its walls where doors and windows should be, as though the perimeters of the openings had been cut with lasers but the stone inside never removed. Unlike John’s however, the "front door" of this one was slightly ajar and moved when he pushed it. Even though it was difficult to move, it gave easier than it should have, as though swiveling on some sort of axis.

It took a great deal of grunting and pushing, but John managed to force it inward enough to squeeze his fat body through. If his muscles weren’t so numb, they would have probably been burning like mad right now. All of this winter exercise might help John shed a few pounds, at least.

You need to shed more than a few, fatass.

The interior was dim, lit only by the sliver of light allowed through by the cracked door. John’s heart knocked a single, thunderous beat as he saw a form sitting against the far wall. He froze - which seemed to be his primary adrenaline reaction - until he got a good look at the face. The skin was dried and desiccated like old, wrinkled paper. The corpse had decomposed to the point of having no nose and empty eyesockets. Its mouth hung open in lipless surprise.

Three items lay near the body. One was a leather satchel, its long, thin strap indicating it looped diagonally across the body and rested at the wearer’s side. The second was an empty glass vial. It had the cone into cylinder shape of a laboratory beaker, and its glass was cloudy and cracked. T

he third item, which seemed the most useful of the group, nevertheless gave John mixed feelings. It appeared to be a common axe, like the kind used to chop wood. This was, in John’s humble RPGing opinion, the worst variety of the worst class of weapons in existence. Axes were universally dumb, and wood-chopping axes were the dumbest. Still, though, he did need a weapon. It was better than nothing. Barely.

Dubious quality aside, John had secured his first loot.

Satchel secured around his torso and axe hefted beneath its head, John paused at the door. The corpse, he now realized, was wearing what appeared to be a set of leather armor. The outfit’s overlapping segments, straps and buckles rang a bell for John, who recognized a vague resemblance to the basic leather armor from Nordic Runes. It wasn’t the same, necessarily, but close enough to suggest relation, like a cousin twice removed.

Quickly weighing the pros, namely having armor that might protect him and keep him warm, against the cons, which was putting armor against his delicate skin that had been worn by a rotting corpse for probably the last hundred years, John hesitated.

As much as he hated to admit it, the choice wasn’t really a choice at all. He propped his lame-as-fuck axe against the wall and got to work.

The unfortunate duo of freezing air and rigormortis made the task much more difficult than John anticipated. More than once, he had to snap a bone to get the body into undressing position. Worse, when he actually did manage to get the chest piece off, he had to deal with a decomposed torso right in his face. If there were underclothes at some point in this guy’s past, they were certainly disintegrated now.

He was more mentally prepared when, with a spine-tingling sandpaper sound, he managed to pry off the trousers, but that part was still the worst. Bits and pieces eroded by the ravages of time. Fun.

John held back vomit as he squeezed the pants onto himself. There wasn’t a smell, really, probably because of the cold, but it was hard to forget where the pants came from when the naked mummy of their previous owner stared at him eyelessly from across the room. They were a bit snug, but okay if he left the crotch partially unlaced to account for his girthier waist size. John hadn’t been able to button any of his pants for a year now, so it wasn’t a big deal. The only real problem was the gaping hole in the left thigh. Not a deal-breaker, though, especially when he had no other options.

The chest piece, unfortunately, didn’t fit at all. John had to saw slits at the bottom with his dull axe blade to even get it onto his body. It was still too tight, but it got the job done, at least. The boots and gloves, miraculously, fit perfectly.

Regardless of its questionable acquisition and fit, John now wore a full set of leather armor. Basking in the newfound warmth of insulated attire, he checked his Inventory for information.

Simple Fur-Lined Leather Armor

Quality: Poor

Rarity: Common

Simple Fur-Lined Leather Trousers

Quality: Poor

Rarity: Common

Simple Fur-Lined Leather Gloves

Quality: Poor

Rarity: Common

Simple Fur-Lined Leather Boots

Quality: Poor

Rarity: Common

It was exactly what john expected. The lowest level of both quality and rarity, as if he had plucked the items straight out of a dumpster. Still, he shouldn’t complain. Compared to the shirt and shorts alone, his “new” armor was absolutely god-tier. They gave him some measure of both protection and warmth, which was far better than none at all. Oh yeh, and he had a stupid fucking axe now too.

Woodsman’s Axe

Quality: Poor

Rarity: Common

“You know what?” John said, holding the axe up and speaking to it like an insane person, “I’ve never had a weapon before. Unless you count my baseball bat, which I don’t because I couldn’t even hit a baseball with that thing. I think I’ll give you a name.”

The axe remained silent, its head pointed towards John with… no expression at all, really, because it was an inanimate fucking object.

“I’m going to call you… Jackass. Yeh, Jackass. I think that name suits a weapon of your quality, don’t you? What do you think? Do you like it?”

Jackass the axe offered no opinion on its new name.

“Great!” John said. “We really should head back home. I’ve been gone a while now, so the fire’s probably getting low. Come on, Jackass. We’ve got a long day of being cold and hallucinating weird shit ahead of us. You’re going to love it.”