As Flynn cautiously walked through the forest he winced every time he had to put weight on his right foot. He was trying to keep a good lookout for any potential predators but the constant pain was not helping him maintain focus.

To keep any potential predators off his trail, Flynn tried doing things like going through bushes or mud pits. Flynn didn’t actually know if these maneuvers would help, but better safe than sorry.

As the sun rose in the sky, the thick mists began to thin out until the sun shone high in the sky, drying up most of the morning moisture that had seemed so prevalent earlier.

Around what Flynn roughly guesstimated to be noon he took a break on an overturned log covered in moss to eat a lunch of one of his 2 remaining fruits. The intense sourness of the juices helped to distract from the pain that had now turned into a dull ache in his foot.

While Flynn ate the fruit, he realized he might not be able to find more food so easily and stopped eating. Should he hold off on finishing the fruit to save it for later? No, it would probably start to brown or get mud on it or something. Best to finish this fruit now and save the other for tomorrow.

With lunch done Flynn continued on his way, trying to avoid putting too much weight on his right foot and keep out of sight.

As nightfall approached Flynn began searching for a shelter to stay the night in but couldn’t find anything that would work as a shelter. With the encroaching darkness came desperation to find somewhere to hide and bunker down for the night. Eventually Flynn was forced to settle for just worming his way into the center of a slightly thorny bush and hope nothing went bump in the night.

It was a much more stressful night than his first, no longer having the solid and reassuring tree trunk around him. While a bone deep exhaustion had let him just pass out last night, paranoia and fear kept him up this night. In the distance it was easy to hear the cries of what sounded like wild animals accompanied by more monstrous noises. Every time the wind rustled the leaves of the bushes and trees around him his heart rate skyrocketed.

Luckily such intense focus makes one very tired and after many sleepless hours Flynn managed to enter a fitful sleep.

The next morning, Flynn awoke to a screen hovering in front of his face.

===================

Regeneration has leveled up! Level 1 → Level 2!

You have earned 10 SP!

===================

Flynn’s half wake mind took a couple seconds to piece together the meaning of the words before understanding dawned on him. Flynn untied the mud splattered wrap/bandage and took a look at his foot. Yesterday there had been a hole in his foot big enough to put his index finger through. Now there was nothing, a completely unblemished (if mud covered) foot.

Flynn smiled, his [Regeneration] skill may not be fast acting right now but it did work. And he had found out how to earn skill points, leveling up existing skills.

Flynn’s smile morphed into a frown as his mind connected the dots. If [Regeneration] was his only skill that he could level up, and to increase a skill level he had to use it… Flynn did not like the idea of [Regeneration] practice.

Flynn didn’t really know what to do with the cloth wrap now that he was uninjured so he just tied it around his bicep. With his stomach beginning to feel the pecks of hunger and only one fruit left, Flynn decided to hold off for now.

With this morning being much less misty and cloudy than the last, Flynn's only current option for water was a muddy puddle of brown water next to the bush he had slept in. Grimacing as he knelt down next to it, Flynn debated whether or not he really needed moisture so desperately and immediately. His drying and scratchy throat insisted that, yes, you do need water to live dumbass.

Flynn lowered part of his already filthy and mud splattered shirt into the puddle, filtering small amounts of water through it before drinking. It tasted just about how you would expect muddy water to taste, like mud. Flynn just hoped that there wasn’t any kind of otherworldly bacteria in the puddle that would eat his brain or something. Fingers crossed.

As he drank, Flynn kept a keen vigil just in case something happened to find him. Flynn froze as his eyes settled on a footprint the size of his torso in the mud next to him. Whatever had made it had several claws that made clear imprints in the mud and the footprints continued on in the direction Flynn had been coming from. Flynn shuddered at how close he had been to whatever had made these tracks without even realizing it.

After drinking enough to calm his hungering stomach (which wasn’t very much with his child body) Flynn squeezed out as much of the moisture from his shirt as he could and moved on. While he wasn’t trying to get away from any potential predators anymore, Flynn had come to the realization that he had to keep moving.

Flynn was fairly sure that the tried and true wilderness survival method of staying in one place and waiting until a search party found him wasn’t going to work in another world. Thus, his only option was to find civilization himself!

As clean flowing water was the lifeblood of civilization, Flynn’s best bet was following a river downstream until he hopefully found some kind of city. Or a village. Or a tribe. Flynn wasn’t really picky at this point.

The next few days passed fairly quickly. Walking all day in search of flowing water, finding nothing, drinking dirty water and dew, and sleeping in tree hollows or bushes. After eating his last sour fruit on the third day, Flynn had searched around and found a bush of small orange colored berries that resembled raspberries on the fourth day.

By the time he had found them, he was so hungry that any thoughts of poison flew out the window and he gorged himself on their succulent orange juices. Flynn decided to call them orangeberries and they had a flavor similar to mangoes. Flynn picked as many as he could reasonably carry and held them up in the front of his shirt.

Later that day, Flynn found a well proportioned walking stick beneath a tree and smiled at his luck. Maybe things were starting to go his way.

As if to disprove him, on the 5th night a shambling horror had passed close enough to the hollow Flynn was resting in for him to see it through the foliage and hear its distinctive never ending screech.

On the 7th day, Flynn accidentally found himself walking right by some kind of saber toothed deer with sharp sword-like antlers. Luckily the monster had been more focused on eating the carcass of an iguana the size of a mini cooper with scales that more resembled rocks than organic material. Flynn had tried to flee as quietly and quickly as possible.

During the 10th night a monkey with 4 arms climbed into the hollow Flynn had found just as he was about to fall asleep and simply grabbed the boy with all 4 arms and flung him out of the tree and onto the forest floor. Flynn swore the monkey had been laughing at him as he rushed to the relative safety of a nearby thorn bush.

By the 11th day, Flynn was worn ragged, out of fruit, had lost his walking stick in the scramble the previous night, and was sick and tired of drinking muddy puddle water to quench his thirst. As he stumbled through the underbrush looking for something to eat Flynn discovered something miraculous, a pond of glorious crystal clear water resting in a small glade.

Instead of running toward it and drinking his fill of the pure water, Flynn instantly went into full alert. It was simply too good to be true. There had to be some kind of trick or trap to it, there was no way a source of clean water like this wasn’t the territory of some kind of monster, just waiting for prey to let their guard down while getting a drink.

While Flynn looked around for any kind of ambush predator waiting in the wings to swoop down on him he picked up a stone and tossed it into the water to make sure it was actually water and not some kind of giant see-through slime. Flynn hadn’t actually seen anything resembling a typical fantasy slime since he had come to this world but with what he had seen so far it didn’t seem like an impossibility.

Flynn’s worries about one giant slime disintegrated as the stone plopped into the water like normal but that didn’t eliminate the possibility of smaller slimes hiding in the water. Or maybe some kind of water spirit just waiting for him to come closer so it could drown him.

Despite the hunger and thirst gnawing at his body Flynn hid in a bush at the edge of the glade, waiting to make absolutely sure that it was safe before going in for a drink. After nearly 15 minutes of sitting there with his head on a swivel, Flynn saw movement.

One of the skinny trees that were common around the edge of the glade moved. No, Flynn’s eyes widened as he saw it, that’s no tree, it was a leg! A leg as thick as an aspen tree that held up a body obscured by the tree canopy!

As Flynn trained his eyes on the thick tree canopy he finally beheld the creature that called this pond home. It was a crab! It was similar in shape to a Japanese spider crab from earth, but much bigger, with longer and thicker legs and a brown exoskeleton that resembled wood.

Putting the pieces together in his mind, Flynn searched the tree canopy around the similar ‘trees’ and found himself proven correct. Surrounding the clearing were dozens of similar crabs all hiding their torsos in the coverage of the thick leaves.

Flynn turned his observations back to the first and closest tree crab that he had discovered. Its long clawed limbs were reaching back and forth, bringing something to the crab's face. Was it consuming some kind of arboreal prey lured here by the pond!? No… it was, eating leaves?

W-were they herbivores?

That could be either very good or very bad. Some herbivores are peaceful giants that don’t bother you as long as you don’t bother them. Meanwhile other herbivores would run you down just for looking at them wrong, so which category did these tree crabs fall under?

Flynn really didn’t want to find out for himself.