So, I Transmigrated Into The Heavenly Realm

9. A Connection is Made

9

Dax woke up again.

He had no idea how long he had been unconscious. The lack of sunlight here in the cave made it incredibly hard to judge the passage of time and the temple fire was burning with the exact same intensity as it had after he had stoked it.

There were still visible remains of the handful of leaves he had thrown into it glittering in the light of the dancing flames. A small pile of the golden leaves he had collected but had yet to burn lay in a corner of the outer temple room undisturbed. As he moved through the room, he found several new leaves on the floor that must have floated or been blown in here. Light reflected by them made shifting specks of colour on the ceiling of the temple.

Despite sleeping he could barely keep his eyes open and the only thing he was absolutely sure of, was that his stomach was growling. It clenched furiously and he was hit with a wave of faintness that led to him having to grab hold of a shelf to not fall to his knees.

'When was the last time this body actually had something to eat?' Dax thought massaging his stomach with his free hand. 'Actually, how long have I even been here?'

Before sleeping, Dax had hung up his sodden clothes and the bandages he had found underneath them to try and dry them. He ran his hands over them, feeling the hem and the places where the fabric was folded over itself to check there weren't any still damp spots. The fabric was incredibly wrinkled but it was dry and that was all that mattered.

Despite the fire and the blankets he was wrapped in, the cave air was still cool enough that he didn't want to sit around naked in it for longer than absolutely necessary. Putting them back on was significantly more awkward and painful than taking them off had been. Getting his arms up high enough to navigate the armholes without popping open one of the barely scabbed over wounds had been a struggle. The buttons were so small that Dax found himself fumbling with doing them up to the point that he almost gave up halfway up his chest.

Now all he needed to do was find food.

Dax scoffed. 'All I need to do...'

Finding food was a task that he was extremely unconfident that he would be able to fulfil.

He was a born and bred city boy. Literally the only thing he knew was not to eat mushrooms you found in the wild, or berries...especially berries. It was probably one of the earliest things you get taught as a child anywhere near a plant.

Don't put it in your mouth if you don't know one thousand percent what it is.

Here he was surrounded by giant fungi that were glowing purple.

Glowing mushrooms were probably toxic as hell right? Or radioactive or something? Dax really didn't want to chance it. Dying by ingesting poison was just below drowning in his top ten ways he didn't want to die.

Dax decided that at least for now he would sweep the golden leaves out of the outer room to pay back for the hospitality. There were probably a few other things that he could clean or put away nicely for the Deity that this place was dedicated to.

He glanced back at the fire that was steadily burning and wondered whether he would need to top it up again but it seemed to be perfectly happy now. It didn't look like he was going to need to intervene with it anymore. Despite that he gathered the leaves together and placed them in the empty space where wooden logs would normally be stored. There was no harm in being prepared.

It hadn't been a waste to collect them.

The leaves that had been scattered over the floor of the temple's outer room had to have blown in here. They had to, there was no other way that they could have ended up on the tiles without it. He'd searched the entire circumference of the cave before finding this place and hadn't found even the smallest of cracks or holes where air could have entered the cave.