…

The next thing I notice, I am in a dark place isolated from everything...this dark place feels very eerie but at same time very familiar...I try to move my body but I could not...Am I dead again? I try to look around to see if there is anything of note around me but see nothing...just endless darkness...I should be feeling some kind of feeling from all this but for some strange reason I feel nothing...It is like I have lost all emotion or sense of being...Suddenly a white light begins to illuminate the place..and for the first time in a long time I begin to feel something to the tune of loss, but at same time hope. As I try to reach for the light, the light suddenly explodes and I abruptly awaken. Only to find myself in some sort of cave…

“What happened...did I die and get resurrected for a 3^rd time?”

I take a look around and notice I am in the same cave that I fought the [Giant Rats]. I look around and see that there are corpses of the rodents lying around in blood..I try to get up but find it rather difficult. I look down and see that there is a rat corpse lying on top of me...I struggle and push the corpse off me and get up. Looking around to confirm that everything is safe I take a look at the system messages I see in the corner.

So it seems like I somehow didn’t die and manage to live?

“Status”

Hmm...my stats have gone up a bunch but despite that I feel weaker due to the penalties of [All-Observing-Eyes][Overload] and [Mild Hunger]. Looking at the cooldown timer, I have been out for about 13 hours. Considering how much time I spent traveling through that catacombs on top of sleeping, it is no surprise that I am feeling pretty hungry. I really need to secure myself some food..The question is where?

Before that, the first thing I need to do is rationalize the situation. Right now my stats are terrible and I need to wait 35 hours to recover my stats. By that point I will obviously starve to death. So I am between a rock and a hard place...going to fight means death and staying here means death. That said, it is not all doom and gloom. Since I have been sleeping here for 13 hours and the corpses have gone untouched means that there is most likely no other rats around this part. Adding to it that this place seems like where the rats are nesting, I would assume there is unlikely to be any danger within the vicinity for the time being. Of course at same time it most likely means that civilization is not anywhere close by either.

Putting those thoughts together, it should be rather safe to venture slightly outside the cave as long as I don’t go too far. So my best bet right is to make this place my base for now, build some basic traps and secure some food. That said, there is still one big risk with this plan. While I can probably secure some fruits, mushrooms or vegetables outside and I can probably get supplies to make a fire to cook these rats. Since this is a new world, I don’t know if any of those things are poisonous. So effectively, whatever I eat I would be gambling my life.

Though even with those risks, I think it is a safer bet than going out there while my stats are reduced by 70%. Even a single [Giant Rat] can easily kill me at this point, and I somehow doubt [Giant Rats] are the king of the jungle around here.

With my mind made up, I venture outside the cave and take a peek around. When I reach the end of the cave I see that the cave is located in a burrow surrounded by vast forest. Once I make sure there is no danger in the vicinity, I proceed to collect large branches and begin to cover up the burrow. While I am doing this I pick up any sort of nuts or fruits that I find. I also find a long flat stick and some vines. My goal is to make the burrow into a sort of bunker, than make a makeshift spear which I can attack from the bunker with little risk to injuring myself. While I don’t think I’ll kill anything this way it should be enough to discourage many predators if they happen to come my way. Unfortunately due to my reduced stats, dragging the branches is harder than it would normally be.

After about 2 hours I finally manage to put together the burrow defenses and sharpen a basic spear. Once that is done I go back in and begin to drain the blood and skin the [Giant Rats]. While I am sure that some of this rodent’s materials can be sold for money, I honestly don’t know which parts, and despite my familiarity with working with the knife due to my “adventuring”, I doubt my disassembly is good enough to not damage the materials. My only priority at this point is to procure meat from the rats. This process takes me about 15 minutes and once I am done I again leave the burrow and prepare a fire outside to the side the old fashion way. Luckily I have plenty of experience setting up fire in this way from all my mini-adventures and despite my lower stats I am still stronger than what I was back on Earth which makes the process easier. With the fire started and the meat skewers set up to cook, I quickly run back and hide behind the burrow defense. Who knows what kind of creature would be lured by the smoke. While animal based monsters will probably distance themselves, there is a probability of humanoid monsters with some intelligence following it.

Thankfully even after 15 minutes, no monster has shown up. So I sneak back out of the burrow, take the meat skewers and put out the fire. All the meantime I am drooling...but I know that I have to resist these urges despite how hungry I am…

Now normally I would find rat meat pretty disgusting...for some reason I can’t think of it anything more than delicious meat. Is it because it looks and smells like any other meat skewer? Or is this my inner-Catkin talking? I use [Smell Sense] on it to see if I can locate any odd odors * growl * ...err...bad idea… hold it in stomach just a little bit more …

I build a simple trap using the vines and a few sticks and place it in an area where I have seen a lot of small animals such as squirrels and foxes or at least looks similar to them...probably…I then gain distance and wait for an animal to take the bite. Which apparently does not take long. Within a bit over a minute a bunny like creature takes the bait and starts chewing on the meat. Once I see he is half way done I quickly spring the trap to which the bunny like creature begins to trash violently but ultimately is unable to escape. I pick up a few stones and go back closer to the enclosure to wait out half an hour.. during that time a few foxes tried to approach and snatch the bunny but I used rocks to scare them off. After confirming the rabbit is still fine, I let him go by cutting the vine. I then finally proceed to take a small bite of the meat skewer which has already gotten cold. The flavor is rather bland unfortunately but due to my hunger offsetting my taste buds, it actually tastes better than it is.

After the first bite, I wait another 30 minutes while keeping an eye on my health and status screen to make sure I do not get some sort of poison. And after finally confirming it is safe once more, I gobble it all down like a glutton. Of course I make sure to save a few to eat for tomorrow just in case.

Once I am done I feel energy refill myself as some of my stats are restored.

Now I know what you are probably thinking. “Why in the world did you eat a [Giant Rat] when you caught yourself a bunny?”. The answer is simple really, and no it isn’t because I developed a new taste for rats if you are wondering. Not only is there little food on the bunny due to it being rather small compared to the rats which will even shrink more once I disassemble it. The biggest issue is I have no clue if the rabbits are poisonous or not. That might sound a bit weird but it is actually quite logical. You see, this is a new world where I know absolutely nothing. For all I know in this world all snakes are non-poisonous and all bunnies have lethal poison. This isn’t my old world so I can’t make any assumptions more than I have to. I mean with these bunnies having 3 ears you can never know... And testing if the bunnies are poisonous is much harder than testing if the [Giant Rat] is poisonous. While the foxes eat the bunnies, those bunnies are part of the fox’s diet, so it is more than possible for the fox to have immunity to a poison the bunnies might have. Just like how a Honey Badger is resistant to venom of a snake. In comparison, I am pretty confident that a [Giant Rat] is not part of a bunny’s diet. So if they had some sort of poison, it would be easily apparent.

Now with all the urgent issues out of the way, I can finally start planning on how I plan to proceed in this new world.