I'm Contaminated With No Hope Of Recovery

Chapter 4 - Tyrant Sloth

[Day 5: You wake up feeling significantly weaker due to the evil power consuming your vitality...]

Lem's body opened its eyes, allowing him to see the light of the forest again, filtering down from the canopy.

However, the quality of his eyesight had clearly degraded, and the body was constantly transmitting signals of pain and weakness.

He had experienced the ups and downs of four days of simulating, as his body slowly began more feeble. Without a feeling of consequence and with ever-reducing senses, the daytime had grown monotonous, and the nighttime was even worse.

Lem barely paid attention as his body began to walk through the forest again.

The morning passed in utter boredom, as his simulated self stumbled clumsily over large tree roots and uneven terrain.

At one point he was forced to squeeze himself awkwardly under an immense fallen log that seemed to block all ways forward.

Lem himself was slipping into a thoughtless state, when his simulated self suddenly did something strange.

Lem's heart nearly leapt from his chest, as he saw a distant, gray furred figure suspended a few meters above the ground in a large tree with low hanging branches.

A tyrant sloth, one of the killers of the forest!

The specimen in front of him was at least two meters tall, a bulky creature with claws the size of knives!

And yet, his body did not react at all to the threat.

Instead, he walked straight ahead, drawing nearer and near to the hulking beast.

Lem observed that it was busily tearing at the tree bark with its huge claws, seemingly attempting to extract some substance from deep within.

To Lem's astonishment, his simulated self continued walking normally, passing directly below the tyrant sloth.

His eyes moved away, so Lem did not know what the sloth was doing, but he expected to be attacked at any moment. Even as a detached spectator, he felt some fear.

But the attack did not come...

A moment later, the screen read out a new message.

[You pass directly before a juvenile tyrant sloth without understanding the danger.]

Suddenly, Lem's body began convulsing, sending signals of extreme fear. Lem studied his bodily reaction with curiosity. Was the evil power really going to affect him to such an extent in a mere five days?

[Several minutes later, you shiver uncontrollably as you realize what happened. You worry for the health of your mind...]

Lem knew that his body was moving according to the will of a different mind.

It was this mind that was making all of the decisions he witnessed, and it was also this mind that was being degraded by the evil power within his body.

The day continued...

[You pass by mushrooms. Fearing they are poisonous, you do not eat them...]

Lem agreed with the assessment of his simulated self. The bright mushrooms looked suspicious.

...

[Day 9: Your mind has become significantly impaired due to lack of vitality...

You run out of rations...]

Lem stared at the empty bag that only had a few water skins remaining in it. He thought that his simulated self had done well to stretch out the provisions. They should have only lasted a week, and yet they had gone on for a week and a half.

His body was constantly sending signals of hunger to his mind, to the point where it was almost becoming a mild annoyance.

But much worse than this was the fear that was gnawing at Lem's mind, as he anticipated what would await him when he returned to the present...

With little else to do, he had thought excessively about his situation, and fully accepted the simulation.

Watching his life play out before him, Lem wondered whether the simulation would be able to save him in reality.

He knew that what he was currently looking at was his own fate if the simulation could not save him.

Only nine days had passed, and his condition was beyond hopeless.