Yorid

I am creating a kind of alternate world so some locations won’t match up, some will. If you want to sleuth around and try to find where Brace is now, go ahead. I honestly don’t know how you could

A path and a sign post. The best sign that humans were nearby. I guess another would be the long winding path, that on closer inspection is more like a small road. It didn’t appear to be a car travelled road, maybe a quad bike or dirt bike road. 

The path was just over a creek that I hadn’t noticed before during my hunt. The Doe was probably trying to reach the creek to swim over and hopefully escape from me. Which honestly was a stupid idea cause I could easily breeze through what actually looked like a small river instead of a creek. I guess it worked in the past so it thought it would work with me. It didn’t.

Leaving the Does body, I walked closer to the river (I’m just going to call it a river). Once I had reached the river bank I looked closer at the sign on the opposing side

Looking at the signs I instantly got hit with a wave of nostalgia. The signs were park signs, you know the ones. Made of wood and stuck into the ground, the boards on it shaped like arrows that pointed down the paths. The same name, distance and direction schtick that happened in any park that had tourists.

They read exactly like I thought they would, helping me understand just how far from civilisation I was. It also just showed me how reclusive my new forest home was. And that was very. 

Durashire 57 km => said the first sign I read. Which was a harder task than you thought, because it was pointed 40 degrees off the main path. Following where the sign pointed, there was a small used walking trail. It was the common rocky dirt covered path that (when I stood up on my toes to see better) looked very twisty and seemed woven between the trees and boulder

Shriner falls 71 km => said the next sign. It pointed left from where I was standing, straight on along the 3 feet wide dirt road. Thinking for a second I looked back at the Doe. ‘Shit is the Deer 5 feet or 4? I really am shit at spatial estimation.’ Turning back to the road I honestly can’t really describe a simple dirt road any better. Just think of the dirt paths you’ve seen in the past and it’d be bang on with what I was seeing. All I could add was that it looked to be parallel to the small river.

Grove Of The Patriarchs 47 km => the last sign on the post. Just like the previous it pointed along the main path and I wasn’t planning on describing it again. What I could add is that there appeared to be a massive distance between each major sight. 

I could firmly say that I was a good hundred + kilometres from humanity. 

Why do I know this? Because any closer and the signs would have given city names, or the path would be made of tarmac not dirt. The sign also showed signs of degradation showing infrequent management of the local path. Another give away was that vegetation was slowly encroaching the sign and paths.

Slowly I felt the tension in my muscles melt away into the wind. I hadn’t even realised that I was wound up, but I knew why. I was not ready to meet humans. End of sentence, full stop.

I was pathetically weak compared to contemporary humans / modern humans with shooty sticks and moving boxes. Maybe if I met later on when I was stronger, but me now? Not a chance. I would, as I stated earlier, become the most interesting toy for scientists and live a life of prodding and touching that would give a bimbo shame. 

ALSO somehow politicians will use me. Maybe after quote ‘discovering’ what atrocious thing had been done to me by the scientist. While broadcasting to the entire world they would release me into the wild or city to live my life as a minority showing just how accepting they are and why they should be president.

I didn’t want to deal with that so I turned around and walked back to my kill, I would have to drain its blood and somehow skin it. I could use the skin as a welcome home mat or something. Pausing mid step, I turned around. A light bulb went off in my mind and a devilish idea had formed. 

Turning back to the river and road I started pacing with purpose towards the sign. Getting closer to the torrent of water I looked for the shallowest part to cross, finding the shallowest spot I walked through the 10 something feet wide river. The water barely went to my knees so in a matter of strides I was at the other side. 

Looking left and right to check there was nothing around, I crept slowly towards the sign.

There, I was now in front of it and could now begin my plot. Hunching over I tried to pull the sign from its base. It didn’t work, probably concreted to the ground. Deciding on plan B I snapped the sign in the middle. If you didn’t realise what I was doing, I was now ‘borrowing’ a sign to use as furniture in my new cave. I do a bit of trolling some times and this was waaay easier now than when I was a human.

Hoisting the now freed sign onto my shoulder I was now ready to head home. Stepping back towards the river and the forest behind, I did like most good crimi- samaritans did and covered my tracks the best I could. Scuffing up the places with paw prints and covering them with a few precise kicks of soil.

I continued my destruction of evidence all the way back to the Doe. I now had to carry both her and the sign back… fuck. I’m not much of a thinker sometimes. I just act on what I think would be funny or cool. To be honest they usually worked out fine for me, so no real reason to change yet…

A bolt of lightning practically struck me when I had a thought that would change my life forever. I have an Inventory don’t I? Checking the stats, yep right there. I had a full blown pocket space!! Don’t go complaining that I could have used it earlier or should have remembered it. Think of all the times you’ve got a new tool, appliance, item and completely forgot about it after you got it. Think of all those mouldy birthday present gifts hidden in a closet or attic somewhere in your house. Crying where they have been forgotten by the world, waiting to be found and used again. You monster.

Enough of the degrading, it was time to test this bad boy. Saying Inventory in my mind the sign post in my hand disappeared abruptly and I could now see it in my Inventory. Pulling it out again, I repeated the process trying different things. 

Conclusion as long as I am physically touching an object it will be placed into my inventory. 

Objects in the Inventory can interact with each other. If I put a clean leaf into the inventory and dumped in some soil when I went to pull out the leaf it now had soil on it. Meaning that if I put something that is on fire into the inventory then everything else inside could be caught on fire.

Time passes in the inventory, how fast you ask? Don’t fucking know. Deal with the fact I’m not omnipotent.

Living creatures can go into my Inventory, as a poor ivy on the floor could attest to. It however helped me understand that if an object is in something or part of it Inventory refused to take it. More tests helped clarify that if I tried to stuff mushrooms inside the inventory it wouldn’t work, but if I plucked it it was fine. Same with if I dug up the actual fungus roots and separated it from the earth. Learning is so fun :).

There were also 5 different slots in my Inventory that I could place stuff into, which was pretty neat. The size? Keep reading to find out.

Finally the Inventory was MASSIVE. Well I assume so, because over a metre tall boulder fit inside, but I may have just not reached the limit yet.

Done with my fun, I put the Doe in my designated food slot, which was slot 4. Usually in games it would be the last slot on the bar, however I used that spot for miscellaneous items. Example of such an object? The sign I had just pilfer- tak- for fucks sake the jokes old, I stole, yes stole. 

The system accepted my naming so now slot 4 was food, slot 5 was miscellaneous. Now that I knew that I could name my slots I got down to naming. Slot 1 Important - as the name states important or pivotal items I could need soon. Slot 2 Resources - basic resources like wood, stone and other materials. Slot 3 Water - it would just have a tonne of water in it, of course filled with crisp clean water from my stream. Slot 4 and 5 you already know about.

Everything ready and set I started trekking home, of course covering my tracks the best I could.

Walking back took A LOT longer than I thought it would, a couple hours to be exact. It took so much longer cause I was collecting fallen branches, logs and rocks along the way. And covering up tracks takes more time than you expect. However I now had a large haul of dryish wood and stone. I also tangentially decided to pick up some long grasses and vegetation to use as bedding… I’m too big to make a bed out of grass.

Sighing I recognised that I was a chonky boy that needed a chonky bed. And I didn’t have the time or will to make that. All I would get was a pillow that would be like 3 feet long.

I was now approaching my cave and I could now make an approximation on how far the road was from my home… REALLY far. Hey! don’t blame me that I can’t know how far I have travelled just based on walking. If I were to guess, like 40 km. A lot for a human that’s average walk speed is 4 km per hour. Like… a day worth of travel. 

For me? A couple hours. I was taller and took longer, faster strides allowing more distance to be covered.

Arriving at my entrance I stooped down to my hands and crawled in. Impulsively I yelled, no one but myself would hear it but I did it anyway.

“I’m back!!”