Chapter 39- Insurmountable

Almost half a minute pass as I lie there on the branch trying to breathe through the pain of getting the air knocked out of me and my spinning vision. Eventually however, my strained breathing becomes less and less strained and slowly my spinning vision eases it's whirling and slowly gets closer to normal once again.

As I become able to once again get a feeling for my surroundings, although still hazy, I start searching for what I hope is the remains of the wolf alpha with my eyes only, as I dare not yet move my body.

Hopefully the wolf alpha got done in by my crazy little stunt, because otherwise I will soon be wolf food as I am not in any shape to confirm fighting right now.

After a moment of my swimming vision trying to make out anything, I notice what I believe is a heap of fur and blood a few meters away; It's kind of hard to tell when your vision is all over the place and spinning and all that, really… But I think that is the wolf.

The thing doesn't seem to be moving, though. Probably. And I'm still alive, even after almost half a minute of rolling on the ground; So I assume the wolf is dead and I can feel some of the tension leave my body as I conclude that I am likely safe from immediate danger and instead focus my mind towards recovery.

A minute later, most of my discomfort has stopped and I finally become able to focus my vision and tell my surroundings apart without feeling sick from my swimming vision where everything in my vision just kind of… floats together in a quite trippy mess of colors and shapes.

"Well, I'm glad that has stopped… I was a bit worried I'd puke my stomach out from all the spinning and turning there." I mumble as I carefully get up from my prone position on the hardwood branch and look towards the general direction where I spot the fur and blood.

Spotting the remains of the Wolf alpha, I can instantly tell that the beast is quite dead: It's been bisected clean apart and its torso and its lower parts are lying almost a meter apart from one another in rather impressive amounts of blood.

"How much damn blood can you fit in one of those things??" I question rhetorically as I walk over and start inspecting the wolf corpse; Only to quickly lose interest and stand up once again.

"Well, back to hiking towards Ter'vi's home again, I guess…" I mumble tiredly as I force my tired body to start walking once again; This time along tree branches and using Blink to jump from one branch to another when there is no way to easily cross from one branch to another.

This continues on for a good 2 hours before my hungry stomach's protests finally overcomes my desire to get away from the wolf pack and I shift my focus from hiking towards surveying for food as I continue my walk along branches.

A good while later of continuing along branches, I spot a rather big bird that looks editable enough and promptly fry it with a lightning bolt before I retrieve it with Blink.

"Man, magic sure is convenient, isn't it?" I remark to myself as I inspect the big bird that I have hanging from its legs in my right hand. It looks editable enough; The bird somehow reminds me of a goose, mostly because of its beak which is rather flat for a bird of prey. Maybe it isn't a bird of prey after all? Whatever. Food is food.

"Oh, Wait." I remake as a fact surfaces in my mind. "I need to properly roast this thing… I really don't want magic salmonella; Regular salmonella is bad enough as is." I mutter as I start looking for a view of the ground through the vegetation, so I can get a better idea of the situation on the ground. 'And avoid any monsters or beasts' I mentally add.

Finding a hole in the vegetation where I have a decent view of the ground below me, I take a minute to survey the ground below before I jump off the branch and free fall for a horrifying moment before I Blink down onto the ground proper. "Falling is still a horrible feeling… I don't think I'll ever get really used to it." I mumble as I take in the immediate area and look for any monsters or dangerous beasts. Fortunately, there doesn't seem to be any around so I instead promptly start gathering firewood to build a campfire to roast my latest meal over.

It only takes me a few minutes before I have a roaring fire going with the bird skewered onto a spit which is placed over the fire to cook.

As I wait for the bird to cook properly I sip from one of my water-skins as I tend to the roasting meat, turning it over now and then to make sure it cooks evenly throughout and all the way down to the bones.

I let the thing roast for almost a whole hour, just to be sure that it is properly done through. Even then, just for added safety, I zap it once again with a lightning spell to make doubly sure that it is cooked down to the bone before I rip off a leg and tentatively take a bite out of its meaty leg.

The thing tastes good, kind of like chicken, but… wilder? If that makes any sense at all.

"All those wildlife survival people always liken strange meat to chicken though… Why is that?" I muse aloud as I slowly chew the rather savory bird meat. 'Well whatever. Let's eat and get back on the road; I should be able to see the cliff soon, and once I climb that, the monster and wild beast threat should become less… Well, deadly, so I want to get up there today if possible.' I think to myself as I continue eating my meal.

~~~~~~~~~~('-'!}~~~~~~~~

Once I finished my meal I promptly put out the fire with the blast of an ice spell before I resumed my journey towards the cliff and ultimately Ter'vi's home, this time on the ground.

Only an hour later I notice the cliff off in the distance through the vegetation and hurry over towards the massively tall wall of stone.

Once I arrive at the massive wall of solid rock in front of me, I take a moment to take in the enormity of it; The cliff wall is massive and reaches from one end of my sight all the way to the other I notice as I look along the cliff side. "It must stretch for dozens of miles either way…" I mumble in amazement as my mind tries to come to terms with the scale of the cliff. "That's not the point though, I need to get up and over this cliff pronto." I remind myself as I start looking for places where I can Blink up to so I can begin ascending the cliff.

Unfortunately for me, there isn't any footings where I can simply Blink up to and continue using Blink to ascend; There aren't even any decent looking places to use as footings so I can climb the cliff wall.

"... What now?" I ask aloud as I look up at the massive cliff before me as I ponder for possible ways to scale it.

Looking around for any trees which I could use to get me a height boost and then Blink across to the cliff proves a moot point: There is no footings that I can see that would allow me to Blink to it, and even then it would be another hundred meters or so up to the top of the cliff and I really doubt I could make such a climb, even if I somehow managed to Blink over to the cliff from a tree-top.

'Well this is a problem…' I mentally remark to myself as I look up towards the sky to gauge where the sun is.

'I reckon that I still have a solid few hours before the sun starts setting but the question still remains: How the hell do I scale this damn cliff?' I muse as I let my wander the area as my mind tries coming up with a solution for this conundrum.

Long minutes pass, but no solution is forthcoming no matter how hard I ponder the problem or how far outside the box my thinking gets.

"Well this is going nowhere, fast." I exclaim tiredly before sighing. "Ok. So what do I do now? Walk along the cliff and hope there is a better place to climb the damn cliff down the road?" I mutter bitterly before heaving a sigh and shrugging as I set out to my right along the cliff side.

"I don't have much of a choice in the matter, do I? Hope it is…" I mutter to myself as I continue my trek along the cliff side all the while I inspect the wall for a better place to scale it.

End of chapter 39