Survivor 3295743

10

Staying in the hollow slowly but steadily became more and more of a problem. Just that first day alone involved two fights as predators came to hunt the scavengers. After that, the jungle slowly but surely wore more down over the next few weeks as scavengers and predators surrounded my tree at nearly all times of the day and night.

Sustaining a fire during the day and night became harder and harder as I went out less and less to remove myself from the local ecosystem. The gecko tail lasted for about three days of heavy consumption after spending an entire day slow roasting it in large portions. However, food was never far away.

What WAS becoming further and further away was firewood that was safe for cooking. After the first week I could only start a large fire in front of the entrance to the hollow with a border of large charred logs while I slept. That, too, became an issue though.

If I was only staying here for a few days like a smart person, it would have been fine to have a fire going inside of the tree. However, by the time I finally left that hollow my fires had enlarged and distorted the space inside the giant tree. Having a fire anywhere in it, also, would cause at least a third of the floor to start cindering.

Out of sheer familiarity I headed back to the fallen tree with the crater under its roots near where I first woke up. Because I had left the bodies of three giant rats behind to elude potential pursuers, the crater and roots already had an inhabitant. Luckily for me, it was another feline.

I had long since left my hide bundles of belongings in a tree before approaching the area from above, wearing only my rodent teeth spear and a pair of broad daggers. The daggers were made by filing and honing the ivory down with my suit and letting it dry at the top of the hollow entrance when I went to sleep the same night I made them.

I was actually quite proud of them.

Simply dropping down from my tree branch perch some forty feet overhead, I tightened my suit and body to create as little wind resistance noise as possible while falling right on top of the feline with my spear clutched to the body. The shaft of the spear actually snapped when I landed on the feline's exposed side and ran the spear straight through to the ground below.

However, there was still plenty of shaft remaining to keep it pinned to the ground while I mounted its shoulders and thick neck to draw my daggers and deliver the final blows behind and under either of its ears.

After having hunted a number of animals close to my home base in the tree, I had actually gotten pretty good at these ambushes. The first few animals I had tried to impale this way had gotten away due to hearing or seeing me, but while asleep even this feline could not react to my attack. I could only count myself as lucky as I hurriedly dragged the body far away before skinning it and removing the head and neck.

Just the meat on this beast's neck alone could feed me for a day or two, the rest of the body would set the stage for my new hunting ground. Those two days were spent chopping young trees with a double-sided ax made from the new ivory pieces and using them to make a leaning wall and roof over my crater home. I had not slept at all during this process and was heavily feeling it.

Sadly, if I wanted to continue working on a more sustainable home I had to get more food before anything else. This was a simply performed task of impaling a small scavenger and scaring off the others with my sudden appearance. I took the legs as well as the head and neck this time, each part of the body could hopefully keep me going for a day apiece.

I went to sleep only after hanging up my meet to dry over a large hole containing my fire and then filling the rest of the crater with short wooden stakes and spears. I had learned after a while that daylight predators were much less troublesome as long as I did not draw attention to myself, making it easier to sleep during the day. Night was recently the only time I encountered actual fights.

The better part of the next week was spent fortifying my home with a ten-foot wall of saplings surrounding the crater up to the trunk of the fallen tree. If something really wanted to rip my face off then none of my fortifications would deter them. A fence was mostly to keep scavengers out.

Over the last few weeks I had also received another couple of sponsor offers, but the only new benefit I came across was being able to telepathically contact one random survivor from anywhere in the world. If they thought something like that was actually of interest to me then these people must have thought that I was lonely or something. I was, but not that lonely.

By the time I had spent almost a month in just this one spot, I had covered the roof and wall of the shelter with vines and branches to reinforce it and make it somewhat waterproof. It had rained twice since I moved in here which probably meant the seasons were close to changing. Since it was usually bright and sunny I could only imagine it was spring time when I first woke up here.

The days were longer and the gravity was less, now, so the seasons were probably as much as an extra month long compared to before the aliens. If the rainy summer seasons were coming, I would probably need to find a better place in general to start living. A hole in the ground in a jungle only half an hour from the river would not be a safe place to sleep.

Since I was smart enough to make start the life cycle for hunting roughly a hundred yards away from my home this time, it was more or less okay for me to actually leave this time. In the tree, I would have to kill something every time I wanted to go get firewood. Now, I could easily sneak away like a thief in the night without anything noticing.

Finally came the moment I had been waiting for when I was forced out of my hole from the rain. The other rains had just been short showers that lasted for a couple of hours while the sky slowly but steadily thickened with clouds. When I suddenly woke up soaking wet in my hole it was to find a heavy downpour outside that had already put out my fire.

The bottom of the crater was two inches deep in watery muck and I had even been sliding down into the middle if not for the diagrams of short spears planted in the ground at odd angles. After an hour with no changes in the heavy rain and another inch or so of water in my crater, I simply tightened my suit around me and gathered my belongings. I had no choice but to move on to another new home.

This time I followed the river upstream toward what I was sure was higher ground. From the treetops I could see at least a hundred times further than a human could on flat land and I was fairly certain my new eyes were stronger than before. Only a few miles away did the ground slowly start to rise upward and then far in the distance were the vague masses of what could have been 'small' mountains. I did not want to go live in the mountains, at all, but higher ground was a must at this point.

The rains lasted for almost an entire day, turning the jungle carpet I was familiar with into a thick sloppy mess of mulch and earth. The biomass around the river was even slowly bleeding out into the water so that the surface was a dark and clouded murk. I could not even tell if there was a nightmare eel following me through the water.

By the time the rains stopped I had already traveled over a dozen miles through the trees and fought a plethora of animals from giant birds to groups of scavengers. All life was forced to a halt as they hid from the rains that could probably drown them in their usual homes on the jungle floor. If not for the fact that fighting seemed to improve my ratings I would have felt bad but I was constantly hoping to get the attention of somebody who wanted to make a real investment.

What did I consider a real investment? I had no idea yet, but I knew there would either come an offer that was too good to refuse or a time when I would just stop being bothered with these sponsorship notifications. For now, I could only keep myself busy in an attempt to make myself look good while collecting useful parts of the animals I killed.

A predatory bird's talons were the size of swords and could definitely be made use of at some point. All of the animal skins I was keeping could be put to use as waterproof walls and roofs in a shelter. Using all of these things and establishing myself in this jungle without the help of sponsors were just the things I needed to improve my rating.

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