I have never been in a jungle before, sure I have heard of what it is. Dense vegetation, intense heat, humid and heavy air, wild dangerous animals and insects. Even though I have never been in one, I have a lot of experience in the woods, in the wilds in general, so, I think I can hold my ground just fine here.

It’s been 6th days since I passed the door. I had my legs and arms broken multiple times, I have been scarred everywhere on my body, I’ve nothing but weird fruit and root, and I sleep less than an hour each night. In fact, I wonder how am I still alive.

No, I know how I did survive until now. This power, this magic I acquired, has made tremendous progress. I run fast, I am strong, tough, I can go several days without sleeping, without eating. I can extract water from plants and trees. I can regenerate and heal myself pretty efficiently to, a broken arm is completely recovered in less than a hour. I basically became a real superhuman, at least I would be at home. Here, it doesn’t means much, it’s the bare minimum you need to survive.

In this hellish place, everything wants to kill me, half the plants are poisonous, the air is unbelievably hot during the day and freezing at night, and so heavy it’s sometimes hard to breath. The fauna is dangerous, I have to run away from even the smallest and weakest beast.

To be fair, after a few days and seeing my magic improvement, maybe I can take some of them on. But there are still a few that I absolutely don’t want to come across. I even made a top 3.

Third. Gorillas, alone, he is not that dangerous, he is really strong but the main problem is that he is too smart. They rarely react to feint, and if they sense that I have the upper hand, they run away and come back with reinforcement. Fortunately, they seem to only live up in the trees, so I have low chance of coming across one of them.

Second. I don’t know how to call it or what it really looks like, but there is a plant that create a poisonous mist, I survived only because I saw a beast die from it and managed to leave before getting too exposed.

And first place. A bee. Well, I presume this is a bee because I didn’t really see it. It is so fast, even with all the magical focus I can put on my eyes, the most I could do is see a black and yellow little blur. The only sure thing is that it make a lot of noise, and it is so fast it could probably pierce my skull like a piece of paper. It actually happened the first, well only, time I saw it. A gorilla was in front of me, then I heard a loud noise, and the gorilla had a hole in his head.

Of course, this is a non-comprehensive list of all the things that could kill me, but that’s what I am the most scared of at least.

The most frustrating part, is that I have no clue how long I have to stay here. The Quest book is, yet again, vague about the objective.

“Struggle#1

Objective: Survive

Sub-objective: none”

I don’t even have a sub-objective! Who wrote this shit?

My theory is that the deadline is tomorrow, I mean, one week would be good right? I don’t want to raise my hope to much, but I have to find a reason to stay motivated.

The night is falling down. Good, the wild activities seems to lessen a bit during night, so I can sleep a bit. Well, I can nap would be more accurate, because if I stay at the same place for more than an hour, I am certain to be surrounded. It happened on the first night, and that is when I got most of my scars. I am lucky there were mostly small fry, even though it took me more than a day to escape them completely.

Most of the night passed without any problem, but as the sun was soon to rise, I come across some issue. 3 meter long, fast, strong, even for this place standards, and with claws and teeth so sharp it can leaves marks in. Never actually see one of them fight, But surely, I am in troubled. A sabertooth tiger is just 10 meters in front of from me.

‘Shit, should I run for it? No, it would catch up instantly. Shit shit shit!’

There is no way around it, I have to fight.

I took a stance, the path between us was relatively clear. Even with an enhanced body, I don’t know if I can take a hit. On top of that I have no idea how to wound it. I guess I’ll have to improvised.

“FUCK”

Without realising it, I instinctively left my right arm up and shouted. The tiger’s claws came in contact with my forearm, I blocked the attack, but was projected by the power its power against the closest tree, 2 meters away.

I was relieve I could actually defend, but the joy was immediately erased when I felt the huge amount a magic directed towards my arms. I had taken heavy damage.

Don’t look at it, even if it is broken or torn apart, I can’t do this with only one arm, so as long as the pain don’t kick in, it will do.

He is faster than my eyes, but I have experienced his speed, and I know I have a chance now. I won’t have many opportunities for a proper strike, I only have one shot.

The second assault came, I didn’t react to it, for the simple reason I had predicted it. I managed to drop my body a split second before, and I was now right under his stomach. It’s now or never. With my silver dagger in my left hand, I gathered as much strength I could in both of my arms, and strike the beast from under.

So heavy! I managed to blow him away, but I couldn’t pierce his skin. Shit! What a fucking monster!

We are back to square one, and my right start to tingle. The beast is enraged now, I guess it doesn’t understand how I am still alive. It roared, preparing to charge once more. My concentration was back at its peak. Time flow had slow down, I couldn’t hear anything, see anything or feel anything except for the tiger in front of me. And it disappear from my sight.

I have a feeling of déjà-vu, I found myself lying on a tree, with a huge pain from my right arm.

‘I did it!’

Actually this time I didn’t guard.

“If you use the same patern, you get predictable.”

My dagger was covered in blood. At last it have an exploitable weakness. Their fur and skin may be sturdy, but their paws have to be soft right?

I looked up at my opponent, and he clearly couldn’t use his right legs any more.. I guess I paid the price though. I can’t lift my right arm either. To top it off, the beast was really was even more angry now.

This is the last straw, I definitely won’t be able to survive another blow. Everything will happen in a split second. He may be faster than me, but I have my own hand.

One last time, he jumped. One last time, he disappeared from my sight. I was now pushed against a tree, with a huge and sharp pain in my back. My arm was buried inside the tigers mouth. I extracted it, and the beast corpse fall down to the side.

I survived?

I survived! I killed it. I fucking survived! I wanted to shout but I was to afraid of attracting another crazy monster, and also I was too exhausted to do so.

It was also at this moment that the sun began to show itself, and light started to spread to the combat scene. My pocket started to light up to.

My left forearms have been damaged with that last assault, but if I can go out of this place I can move it for a couple of minutes without a problem.

I rapidly took out the book.

And opened it.

"Struggle#1

Objective: Survive

Sub-objective: Kill a sabre tooth tiger – Meet with the jungle king – Exit the jungle”

This is a joke right?