Chereads / A Lone Traveller's PUN-ishment / Chapter 10 - Calm before the storm

Chapter 10 - Calm before the storm

Putting forward his hand Alfred gestured for the rabbit to come.

'I hope I haven't been that rude to you, I meant no harm in my actions. If at all possible can you lead me to some plants that I can eat? I'll be in your favor.'

Seeing its only chance to escape the rabbit nodded and started moving.

'Hey! Wait for me!'

Quickly standing up from his original kneeling position Alfred managed to catch up to the rabbit right before it made it to the tree line.

After Alfred and the rabbit had spent a good twenty minutes in the forest they finally came across a stream. The stream went through a clearing and the only other notable landmark nearby is the massive apple tree, which had roots that were spread into the water.

'Oh, This is perfect little buddy! I'm sorry I forced you to bring me to some food. To pay you back I'll grab some fruit for you.'

Approaching the apple tree Alfred made several attempts to climb it, all ending in hilarious failures.

It took Alfred twelve attempts before he realized he could simply warp up onto some of the lower branches. Laughing to himself, he reached out to grab some of the riper looking fruits and dropped them to the ground, before jumping himself.

Once on the ground, he looked around, seeing the lack of a rabbit he sighed.

"Of course he ran away, I would do the same in his situation."

After picking himself up off the ground and patting his clothes off he made quick work of the few apples he'd tossed down.

After he was done gorging himself he felt incredibly sleepy. Since he was so tired and had absolutely no clue as to how one would go about setting up a camp, he sat down against the tree and let the nap take him.

It was an incredibly poor sleep. The cold kept on waking him and he never actually had the chance to get in a deeper sleep. While tired, this was for the best. If he'd really dreampt then it would surely be about his insignificance, a feature that only detracts from his capabilities.

Once awoken Alfred stood up, stretching as to remove the unfathomably stiff knot in his back and neck.

"Ah, that's the last time I ever sleep in the open. I mean, if I can help it that is. There's a good chance this will happen again if I'm so darn incapable."

He'd just finished his thought as his hunger began to resurface.

Thinking back to his stat page he decided to look at the note he made on his phone before he left for the job.

Physical:

-Average muscle strength: 100kg

-Average muscle accuracy: >millimeter

-Average cellular density: 7.9%\100%

Mental:

-Computational speed: 2.7 petaFLOP

-Computational effectiveness: 5.2%\100%

-Mental block 0.0001%/100%

Psychic:

-Telepathy

-Short range phasing: 5m/100m

Points: 0

"So, that's my physical strength, right? While it may not be capable of knocking it down I should be able to just shake some apple's out of the tree right?"

After thinking aloud to himself for a while Alfred decided against shaking the apples out of the tree. He could just warp up there and be done with it, which seemed a tad less strenuous than shaking the tree down for some apples

(Note: I don't know if people will actually catch this so I'm going to just say that it's a pun, a bad one.

Shake the tree down = literally shaking the tree so apples will fall out

Shakedown = Harass another party in order to take their belongings.)

Once Alfred had gathered up an armload of apples he set off on a trip to survey the land.

If he wanted to actually complete his job he'd have to find some way to get to the underwater base of the hylotols. Even though he might be able to create a bubble around him with his mental block ability he had no assurance that it would last against the pressure of the ocean. As such, he has to resort to finding some form of a base on land. It would be through this that he could finally make contact with the aliens and explain his situation.

In only three hours Alfred had finally made it to the beach, taking much longer than before because he had no familiarity with the terrain.

Alfred decided to move some logs in order to mark where the apple tree clearing was inland.

Once he was done with the arrow of wood he set off along the beach to find some form of structure.

He spent half a day searching the coast, wandering in search of any other sign of intelligent life.

He'd left massive signs spelled out in stones, logs, and anything else he could possibly find.

Once Alfred had finished off his small supply of apples he decided to head back. It got very cold at night and it didn't seem that being next to a massive, cold ocean would help.

Moving inland, Alfred finally began to notice familiar landmarks making his solo journey inward last half as long as it did to go out to the beach in the first place.

Once Alfred arrived at the apple tree gathering once more he decided that something had to change. With a good amount of effort, he managed to find some relatively dry tinder and leaves. It was with this, the aid of some nearby metallic rocks and Alfreds own massively enhanced strength that he finally managed to construct a fire.

While it was unbelievably difficult Alfred still felt a bit proud for his accomplishment. After he added some larger pieces of wood to the fire he got some more apples down from the tree.

"Huh, this harvest is much more FRUITFUL than before."

Laughing at own joke Alfred laid down on the ground setting the apples beside him.

"Well lets SEA how good this rest is compared to last night's!"