Day 72

I woke up cold, in pain, and annoyed. I looked around, I could see the forest around me, and Lupe resting on his side, still breathing. I was grateful, but seriously concerned as to why my ribs still hurt as they did, I thought the Manaphage was going to repair the broken bone or something. I looked down and saw no puncture wound or discolorization. I crawled over to the boar and was taken aback by the smell, like rotting watermelon. It made me gag, and almost throw up. I shoved it to the side with the Manaphage and continued crawling towards the river.

It hurt like a bitch, but there wasn't much I could do and continued dragging myself onward. Eventually, I reached the river and started absorbing water, feeling instantly better. This made sense, the Manaphage had been entirely drained of mana, and snow hadn't been steadily supplying it with mana. I noticed the health bar icon in my vision was in the top right, and blinking slowly, a picture of my rib cage, with a shattered rib highlighted, “oh, cool” I muttered to myself, realizing that it really only appeared when there was something damaged, or when I summoned it up.

It's nice to know now, but at the time, I was more interested in the crack in the bone slowly healing up in the H.U.D. Little lines of black crisscrossing, probably the Manaphage. After a couple of hours, it felt fully healed, and looked like it too, as the H.U.D. Disappeared and as I got to my feet I no longer felt like absolute shit. The sun was rising slowly in my vision, telling me that I had spent the night out here with a broken rib, and Lupe was still laying there, sleeping away whatever pain he had had.

I checked his vitals, the emoticon above his head showing a tired rested face, and when I picked him up, he curled into my arms, snuggling into my chest. It was adorable, and before I forgot to, I kicked the boar into the river and watched it quickly float away. I was walking home, annoyed, the day was shot, and I didn't even catch anything, and some of my food might have even spoiled by now, I had to keep refreezing my water barrel full of meat.

I was walking home when Lupe woke up in my arms and started getting restless, and I put him down, letting him stand on his own feet. He limped on his back leg for a second but found the leg wasn't hurting. I rubbed his head, he looked up, a little sad, and I think regret, the emoticon above his head looked a little confused. “Maybe next time bud, but don't go for the throat as soon as you see it.”

“Bur”

"Yeah, but you got knocked on your ass, and got me knocked on my ass”

“Rur” he responds sadly,

“Lessons learned, c'mon, we got comfy beds calling us” he started following me, and I reached into my pocket, and threw him a strip of jerky. He happily caught it, and soon we reached my spike trap. I had forgotten it was on the way back, but, thankfully I had remembered the look of the area, and, also, it had been triggered. Another boar was laying under the log, gasping its last breaths.

I raised a hand to the sky, and thanked whatever deity or thing was watching over my dumbass, and picked up a rock, super heating it, before whipping it directly into the boars head, exploding inside, and killed it immediately. Lupe started forward and took a bite out of its back leg. I lifted the log off, and with some water I had, cleaned off the blood, before draining the blood surrounding the area, and drying the body of the boar in a minute or two. I slung it over my shoulder, grateful for at least things going right. I reset the trap, and started home, my accidental kill lifting my spirits. Next trap was going to have to be a pit trap, that way less meat will be ruined, maybe.

I got home, the sun high above my head, but I was too tired to care, and shoved open the door to my house, to find it completely ransacked. I dropped the boar, and rushed upstairs, to find the hatch up was wide open and the trapdoor above blasted away, my bedding scattered around the floor. I rushed downstairs, to find my sled was overturned, and my boat was missing. “MOTHER FUCKER!”