CHAPTER 10:

THE PROBLEM WITH HIKING IN THE WOODS IS THAT IT INVOLVES WALKING, AND BEARS

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A squirrel had just woken up yawning in his little hole in a tree. It rubbed its cheeks, overworked from the last afternoon's productive acorn hunt, and spared a gaze at the beautiful morning sun playing hide and seek behind the leaves. 

"Chirp chirp chirp." It heard the birds singing, dancing joyfully with their little feet, the sound of water gently flowing from a river nearby, and decided today would be a great day to move out. Yesterday it had passed a hole in another tree, seemingly abandoned but in mint condition, with all the leaves and twigs padding the floor - a luxury for the squirrel. So, it excitedly went back in its home, stuffed its mouth with acorns, climbed out with the intention of moving its stash to the new one, and was met with the face of a monster on its left.

"#$#&#@&!#@&?!!" It spat out the content within its mouth like a machine gun and screeched. The poor squirrel had never seen such a terrifying thing before, even if compared to this forest full of monsters. Its face was covered with unruly black hair, its eyes bloodshot, its skin full of scratches and its whole body was soaking wet. It was walking with unstable steps, supporting itself with a tree branch acting as a cane. The squirrel was petrified before it, unable to move due to fear.

Fortunately, the monster didn't bother to spare a glance at the squirrel. It just walked past and continued to wobble through the forest, its mouth chanting "buurn...buurn...buurn~" as the squirrel finally broke free from petrification and quickly ran back to its home to hide.

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"...I'll burn this goddamn place and everything in it to a crisp the moment I lay my hand on a fire!" I cursed as I unsteadily dragged myself through the forest. The moment they heard a sound, those monkeys immediately jumped on me before I had a chance to take out the knives. And even though I was able to afterward, and also killed a few of them, they just kept coming non stop, so I had no choice but to run.

But to my dismay, even though I had teleported the maximum distance away (100 meters), they still appeared out of nowhere and swarmed me. How did they do that I didn't know, and it's not like I had time to figure that out as I was in the middle of being beaten down. Worse, while avoiding them, I tripped on a rock, fell into a river next to it and was swept away by the flow. 

"At least the monkeys stopped chasing me", I thought, but while I was trying to swim to shore, a school of fish started biting me all over. And in the struggle to ward them off, I failed to notice the reason why the river flowed so violently. There was a waterfall at the end, and it pulled me right down. 

"WHY IS THERE A WATERFALL IN A FOREST AHHHHH!!!" I shouted as I fell. The waterfall was actually not that high, only about 5 meters, but on the way down I hit all the rocks behind it. Finally, since the river wasn't very deep, I ended up hitting the river floor with my face.

I must've looked like a kappa when I emerged from the water. And here, you'd think, was the end of that. Wrong. Because the moment my head surfaced, a pair of brown eyes and a mouth full of teeth were snarling at me to my right. Apparently, my arrival had disturbed the fish in the river which a bear was currently trying to catch, and it of course got mad. So I had to wrestle with the bear, rolling around in the shallow river till I finally was able to kill it, but not before getting a body full of bruises. (It was hard to fight in the water okay, shut up).

Fortunately, since my body was extremely resilient, all the bruises and bite marks quickly faded away in a few minutes afterward. However, my mental strength was badly drained, and I could only spend the next hour wobbling around while cursing this damned forest. 

"Mother nature is kind they said. Stop staying in the house all day, go outside and receive her love they said. Well let's see how she'll love it once I burn every single tree to dust and grill every single monkey and fish into fine charcoal. He. Hehe. HeheheheheHE!" I laughed, and with my newfound motivation, I pressed on.

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