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Chapter ??? - Thoughts of the Dead

Chapter ??? - Thoughts of the Dead

 

Day 62

 

I woke up cold, on the damp rotting floorboards of my cabin. It was funny, because I had furniture for a while, but I went out to gather supplies and came back to find all of it gone. I have no idea what the people who took it used it for, but hopefully it came in handy. Maybe it gave them a nice bed to sleep on. Yeah, maybe.

 I sat up and stretched my aching muscles, which had been cramped up and uncomfortable splayed out on the floor like that. But I guess when I come back from scavenging I get exhausted. I barely made it back last night, too. Those creatures are hard to avoid.

 Rolling my head around on my shoulders, I looked at the sunlight peeking through the boards covering my windows, and the hole in the floor I’d taken the boards from. I’d smashed one window accidentally while swinging my axe around, trying to get a good feel of it, and someone else smashed the other one to grab all of the glass. So then I used my axe to lift up some boards and cut them to fit exactly into the window frame. Unfortunately it wasn’t very accurate, seeing as I have nothing to measure with, so a couple of boards had to be wedged in with whatever I could find.

This cabin is damp, dark and horrible. It smells really bad too, but this is the safest place I know. Aside from a villager’s house. So really, it’s pretty good. It would be better if I had someone to share it with, or at least someone to guard it when I’m gone. I get worried that I’ll come back and someone hostile would’ve taken over it.

I stood up, stretching and yawning, glancing at my axe.

That axe has been an absolute life saver. Literally. I killed my first creature with it a couple of days ago. But unfortunately the axe is something that will probably get stuck in things a lot. I don’t want what happened to James to happen to me.

Yes, I know it was my fault. Shhh.

I checked my bag was fat and full of supplies.  Lots of bread and potions, some pieces of cloth for temporary bandages and some trinkets for selling. I picked up my axe and put it on my temporary and badly crafted holder thing on my back. There’s no where else to carry it, and seeing as I’m neither living in a tree nor carrying a sword I might as well use that belt for something else. I’m quite proud of it, mostly because I’m surprised it actually holds the thing. After I put the axe in the holder, I put my heavy bag on my back too, shuffling so the handle of the axe didn’t dig into my shoulder blades.

Sighing, I kicked the ash from my burnt out fire and headed towards the door. The fire took a lot of attempts to make, but I managed it eventually. I’m glad I did too, I’m not sure how I’d survive without a fire to keep me warm.

I opened the door and headed outside into the hazy warm air, down the steps that sink beneath my feet and darting across the patch or bare ground, only littered by tree stumps. There’s something about the open air I just don’t feel safe in. Glancing back at my decrepit safe house, I sighed, before scuttling through the forest. I’ve found that chests around here get reset every few days. Which is useful. Unfortunately, that’s too easy for this game, so when they do reset they pop up somewhere new. But they always stay in the same sort of area, so I know this patch of forest has three or four chests. Maybe more.

I found the first chest easily, but it only had useless things like gold and health potions. Both of which I have plenty of. I collected more mint leaves and chewed one as I walked.

Then suddenly I was hit with this awful smell. Like death itself. It smelled like rotting flesh, or at least what I think rotten flesh smells like. Pulling out my axe carefully, by the blunt end of the head of the axe, I started creeping closer. It was hard to be quiet, because every movement rustled the foliage around me. I held my axe ready, and followed my nose to the source of the smell.