The time is the middle of the third day I've been in this forest. The sun shining through the trees is pretty warm but for once that's not the only thing helping my cause. My last few hours have been spent making a solution to the problem of me being completely naked. It's not that warm, it's not that structurally sound, and it's definitely uncomfortable, but it's grass based clothing. It’s more than what I had already done on the first day. I now have a noob set of something, a poncho and a skirt.  Well, not really a skirt more like a loincloth but it's… yeah it's a skirt. I couldn't really be expected to craft pants, I have no clue what i’m doing. Pants would have definitely fallen to pieces with me walking while this skirt design is more fluid and moveable. There are no other options, not even animals. For whatever reason there's nothing alive in this forest, not that I'd know how to catch and kill anything that was. I'm really happy with the results actually, this has been the first objectively useful thing I've ever made. 

Also, thankfully, another saving grace had shown up. I found a stream. Not really sure if it's a stream or something else. It’s wide enough that if I tried to lay in it with my head on one bank and my feet on the other I’d just fall in and it's deep enough that I'd probably end up drowning afterwards. I don't actually know how to swim after all. Not a drinking stream for sure but a guide to hopefully find civilization and a way out of this bastard forest forever. If I'm still following this river until late tonight I'll drink from it.

For now I can't help but notice the lack of fish or even bugs in the water. Once again I find it strange that the entire forest is devoid of anything alive but plants and fungus. You'd think that when wandering through a woods like this, considering how long I've been doing it, that you or I would find an insect or a small animal like a squirrel.  Nothing. This entire place is dead. To me it seems that if I wasn't able to reset myself at midnight I would be dead as well. Then of course that may be given, after all I am kind of bad at this. Is it bad to wonder why the hell someone like me would be chosen for this type of thing?  I keep thinking of this time and time again but the hero job isn't really suited for the loser type.  What the hell does she mean “hero”, anyway?  From what I know about this type of thing you can't just become a Hero. Heroes are people that do special things, not someone who is dropped in the middle of a scary empty forest and expected to perform a duty he doesn't even know exists. Sometimes you have to count your blessings but there's also time to have To wonder whether or not it's a blessing in the first place. For all I know, that “A” Goddess is actually some sort of screwed up Demon who is playing a trick on me and expecting me to die. This does seem like the kind of situation that would pop up in a  Story book depiction of the Underworld. I've been imagining horrible situation after horrible situation for a while now, After all I have nothing better to do, and they all somehow depict me getting torn apart piece by piece and then regenerating to have it happen all over again. This curse really is a horrible thing to have if I'm going to be getting stuck somewhere tortured by some yet unknown evil. One thing, I have noticed a notable increase in my pain tolerance. Even without calluses on my feet, with them resetting every day, I'm still able to walk through this forest without stopping every few minutes to address the fact that I am in awful pain. Seems to me that the one thing that doesn't reset is my  mind, probably something to do with memory. I can only imagine how much it would suck if my memory reset every day with my body but if that happened I wouldn't be able to remember it anyway. Guess I wouldn't be able to be a hero if I lost my memory either.

From the corner of my eye I saw something float by from behind me. I'd decided before when I found this in the first place to follow it downstream rather than upstream, so the thing that was floating was being floated past me from the direction I came from. 

It was a deer, I think. Not like any deer I'd ever seen nor heard of but at least it was recognizable as a deer somehow by its body. This thing had a pure white pelt, except for the gruesome chunks taken out of it,  and what almost looked like a crystal Crown of horns growing out for its skull. Its face definitely wasn't like a deer's either, in fact, what was left of it looked eerily human yet all of its teeth were stained blood red and appeared to be fangs. Whatever had gotten to this crazy rotting monster I am sure glad I was walking away from it at that time.  I stopped in my tracks and slowly watched as the "deer" floated past. Honestly though, could this really be considered an animal at all? I sure wouldn't call this an animal if I saw it at the zoo, I'd call it a chimera straight out of Chernobyl.  

The water around the monster was fizzing as it slowly floated past me. I bent down, trying to see a little closer what exactly was happening there. As I looked down into the water and at the rotting corpse floating in it I realized that the fizzing was coming from the water itself and not the monster. 

“Oh, Shit…”

I thanked the A goddess and any other higher power that may be watching me that I had not decided to drink this water. Swarming around the carcass of the rotting deer thing where  What looked like millions of little tiny fleas slowly chipping away at the things flesh. There was something alive here, all right, and until now I was lucky enough to not have encountered it.

This world is scarier than I thought. The monster carcass was swept away by the river faster than I walked into the current. I hoped diligently that wherever this stream was going it wouldn't be too somewhere those things lived and it would be somewhere that the water was a little bit friendlier. Whether it was 11:59 at night or 12:00 in the morning I sure as hell would not be drinking from this stream.

Hours passed as I followed the flow of the water farther into the wilderness. The bad status effects were starting to take their toll on me again and rather than resting every ten minutes I was resting every five. The day slowly crept on. The bank that I was walking on slowly became more and more rocky, and with that harder to walk on. The previously gentle downwards slope of the ground started to become more and more harsh. The river, which had been small and close to where I was standing morphed itself into a deeper and deeper ravine. 

I stopped, looking forward into a giant gaping hole in the ground. There are rivers that lead into caves, I know that, I just wasn't expecting this to be that. The water rushed down into the hole via a giant defining waterfall and from the top I couldn't see the bottom at all. 

So, I guess this was a dead end. 

Out of curiosity I picked up a good size rock and chucked it over the edge. I bent over the rocky cliff looking into the darkness, looking to see if I could at all see where it went. It bounced off the side and disappeared from my sight.

I turned away, dusting off my hands. All I can really do is keep going but this time without following a river.

“Who dares awaken the master of the silent forest?!”

From behind my back a giant voice boomed out of the pit. There was a great warmth and when I turned my head I saw a massive pillar of fire erupting from the ground. Stream rose through cracks forming in the rock around me as the ground shook. At the bottom of the darkness a clawed hand reached out and pulled along with it a creature that looked like something Godzilla would fight. Is that a lizard? A bug? No, maybe a dragon would be the best word to describe this monstrous thing. The waterfall was pushed back as the dragon monster crawled out of the giant cave, spitting fire from its mouth the whole time. In an air moving push the massive beast breached the surface, all the trees bending away from it, with one snake-like eye in the side of its head trained right on me.