《The Confused Explorer》Chapter 14: Towards the Mountain!
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In a damp and humid jungle of his own creation, Mike conjunered up creatures he remembered that existed inside the environment that he was in.
"A jaguar would be a good first bet, and lets put an animal for it to hunt somewhere nearby." Speaking aloud to himself even in his dreams, Mike gained his first test subjects.
From the ground came the almost viscous and floaty gray gas, with its appearance and Mikes demands, a jaguar and a tapir walked out from the gas at two different ends away from each other a little ways.
Looking at both animals Mike hid back slightly incase they would react to him, but chances are they would not since he created them.
Whilst the panther and tapir moved about Mike watched them, though he didn't know anything at all about these two animals habits, he'd expect them to exhibit certain things that all animals showed that was impossible to mask from species to species, such as resting or going too the bathroom eventually.
Once awoken from their stupors of just being created the panther and the tupir did the same exact thing, they walked around not really doing anything in particular.
As if aimless enemy characters from games these two walked with soulless eyes that reflected no intelligence. This didn't make sense, when in the gray sea without a place created, the animals reacted and looked completely normal, so how is it that here, in their natural habitat, that they'd be like this?
"Why is it that here these animals are like this?" Clouded over this question Mike continued to watch these two aimlessly walking dream creatures.
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After ages of waiting and a little manipulation the panther and the tapir met, and like time had just stopped, the animals stopped as they stared at each other. Almost like the panther had only been acting before it quickly gained a fire in its eyes. Instead of roaring, or jumping away, or something like that, the jaguar not missing a second immediately attacked the tapir leaping onto the animal with a mighty bite and latching on to the poor creature.
Dragging the tapir down even closer to the ground and shaking it about, the jaguar swiftly killed it, climbed a nearby tree afterwards, and proceeded to eat the animal in which it just hunted.
Surprised, Mike just continued to monitor the jaguar eat the tapir, even though they were both fake and that the tapir was dead, it didn't disappear? It seemed like he had a lot to learn about this new power of his.
Watching this fake animal act so real was kind of mesmerizing, it was like watching all of those geographical episodes on Animal Planet, except he was in the jungle as the camera man.
As soon as that jaguar finished eating, it jumped down and acted like the last 30 minutes had never happened.
Seeing enough, Mike willed the jaguar away into a puff of gray gas, as well as the tapir corpse.
Thinking and walking through the thickets of grasses and trees into small clearings, hills, or valleys and looking at this world that came only from his head, Mike was amazed about how realistic it was, as even memories fade yet this place seemed to have dug deeper than memory in order to procure this scenery.
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Stopping at the perfect place to rest of very large trees and small amount of shrubbery, Mike thought of which animal he should create in order to test his powers. Thinking of one, Mike willed it into existence. A slow crawl of gray gas came out of the ground, eventually turning into a cloud. The creature that walked out of the cloud was a somewhat large white fox, Mike had decided on an animal that lived almost exclusively in snowy areas, the Arctic Fox.
When this somewhat large for its species Arctic Fox came out of the gas, it instantly looked at the surroundings. Seeing this really out of place animal in a jungle, it seemed even it realized that it wasn't supposed to be here.
This fox, after searching anxiously, crouched and shrinked into the ground trying to hide itself from its surroundings, almost as if to become invisible.
Following the foxes movements with his eyes, Mike saw how it reacted like an actual animal as soon as it was created, so it's to be assumed that whenever a created creature gets an external stimulus that causes reaction for it, it becomes sentient again.
Dispersing the fox, Mike continued the experiments with a couple other animals and critters to test his new hypothesis, turns out it was fairly simple and right the whole time.
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Looking at his surroundings, Mike realized he'd been here for hours and needed to get back to the cave with Turul, so he willed away the surroundings and wished to be back in reality.
Twisting and turning the space around Mike shattered and vanished as his sense of direction was warped horribly.
Awakening slowly Mike once again stared at the familiar roof of the cave as it shined and glowed with flora in all its beauty.
Looking at the cave once more, Mike sat up to his surroundings. Staring at Turul who was still beside Mike looking around making sure that nothing would happen, Mike assessed his option on what to do next and what had happened.
Getting up for the uptenth time today from this caves ground, Mike decided to leave now instead of waiting, not thinking of the clean up that he'd have to deal with later on, and instead on what to do next.
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As soon as they left, the cave glowed with a vibrant green all around as the plants stretched like they were waking up and yawning as they wriggled slightly, growing with the density of the green glow.
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Walking from the cave, Mike and Turul sat down by the now dead campfire as Mike was still thinking of what to do next with a lot on his mind.
The whole adventure in the cave felt like an entire days worth of stuff with a gaining of one too, yet Mike wasn't ready to just throw in the towel and sleep after that, especially because he couldn't with how much he slept in the cave.
Thinking it over, Mike decided the best idea was for Turul to carry him on his back as he flew so they could look for a location of interest, as well as so Mike could get a lay of the land and figure where about they were exactly.
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An interesting idea in mind, Mikes eyes sparkled with the next plan as Turul crouched down as he felt something was wrong with the way Mike smiled at him.
Within minutes Mike was on Turul's back as they stretched for the skies, but within seconds Mike wasn't having as much fun.
Riding Turul was like riding a small horse as it sped through a rocky terrain with it being constantly bumpy and rocky, making anyone sick. Mike didn't even have a chance to look around before feeling like he was dying.
Even Turul was having a bad time with Mike being taller than he was, it caused him no small amount of effort in order to reroute his wing path in order not to hit Mike over and over again as he held onto his back for dear life.
Forcing himself to look around for brief periods of time, all Mike saw was forest and could not tell where he was or what else there was around. On the last look arounds Mike stopped feeling sick as he looked the the almost picturesque scenery of the world. The glow of the sky was more vibrant than ever with the trillions of stars blinking around constantly, and a forest that stretched as far as the eye could see with the occasional glimpse of beautiful flowers and plants as they glowed a beautiful light blue in the darkness of the forest.
Looking to his right there was a mountain surrounded by trees from what he could see, it was so huge, Mike could barely even see the base before it sped of into a hazy light of fog and clouds that surrounded it at cloud level.
Mike couldn't see anything else besides this beautiful scenery, and he was pretty okay with that, no matter how much he could get used to living here, this scenery was something that would always be beautiful with the sort of fairytale like beauty never before seen.
Flying back down, Mike knew exactly what he wanted to do, he wanted to explore that mountain all the way up to the top. It looked very steep so he would need Turul's help but they could do it if they tried.
Pulling himself out from all the fantasies of Treasures, Monsters, and Items on the mountain for his taking, Mike thought of how long it'd take to reach that mountain.
"At least 3-4 days, that mountain, from the pictures of Mount Everest, had to be at least 5 times the size of any sort of mountain I'd ever seen so it's to be assumed that it is actually very, very far away instead of as close as I thought it was." Dreading, Mike had barely even been here as long as 3-4 days, and now he was supposed to spend the amount of time it took him to get here to get to a mountain?
Looking back again at all of the things to be found on the mountain and all that it could hold, Mike's conviction flared up again as he really wanted to go there.
Looking back at the somewhat unhappy Turul, Mike knew it'd be a long journey so they'd better eat now and have some off time before they go.
Pulling Turul back to the dead campfire, Mike spent about 15 minutes of his time creating a new fire, becoming very adept at it.
Getting Turul to go catch fish by flying in and scooping them near the camp fire, he managed to get 10 before they stopped. Cleaning the fish, Mike one again started cooking, and hoping for a better result this time Mike put them on.
Eating the still bad tasting fish, Mike and Turul had gotten some off time before they headed towards the mountain.
Sitting down on the bear rug, Mike pulled all of their valuables in front of him, this included The Gods Tears, the Golden Carp bones, and Broad Bears claws and teeth.
Checking inventory, Mike put them back and looked at The Explorers Log, all of his tabs were the same with no updates on anything, strange even though he logged the 'Elemental Star Light' before drinking it, so either he didn't study it the right way, or it gave him all the information.
Not bothering with it, Mike continued on, he looked at his information. Mike managed to upgrade once bringing him to Level 8, Turul also managed to Level up three times bringing him to level 5!
Happy about all of the gains, including Mike's new found abilities of being able to create stuff in his dreams, Mike happily laid down and thought of any sort of way in which he could use it in a given situation.
"It'd be best to use to make tools and such on the go. I don't know how powerful of an item it can create or if it can make things instantly, but I think its abilities will be opened up with time and using it a lot." Minding such things, Mike decided to test out his creation abilities and testing how long it can last in the real world.
Pulling himself in and out instantly after creating an item, which was surprisingly fast, Mike decided to make a knife for cutting, thinking of making it as sharp and durable as he could imagine.
Taking the new found weapon in his hand and walking to a tree, Mike slashed at it as hard as he could. With no sound the knife left a deep cut into the tree, however, before Mike could get happy, as soon as his concentration deviated slightly, the knife puffed out of existence.
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