A few minutes after the profanities and deranged plans for the apprehension of whomever the perpetrator could be, he quenched his rage and laughed. Daft to the events around him, he fell into the unfamiliar trope of being careless. Abject truth or candid lying, the fact remained that his supplies were swiped underneath his nose hairs. He knew he needed those supplies, however as he just healed some of the injures, he was famished and not in a perfect condition in this unknown place.
Experiencing the uncanny and voracious manner of the plants, the animals living in this inhospitable ecosystem would need to adapt, migrate to a different area or simply succumb. Obviously the corpses he saw were truth of the later, but as he yet to meet the cunning and wise locals besides the green mist phenomenon, he was hesitant to greet with a calling card. In fact the green mist beckoned him to prioritize the level of precaution he would take against the fauna as it could be a potentially a worse threat than the flora. To make matters worse, he didn't know the extent of the changes vested within himself as he only deciphered the first page of the journal using the codex; so for matters concerned, he was inexperienced, non combative, and probably hardly a match in physique compared to the local ecosystem. Unless he got an appropriate grasp of this environment, his best plan would be to suffer the loses and move to a place that is a tad bit more amicable, if that so existed.
Dampening his mood further, he was within a days reach of the lab and although the storm had covered most of his trail, he was not gullible to think they stopped searching for a prized test subject. To get his thoughts straight, he would count inventory before going on an excursion following the trail. In the vicinity, he had a nano tech blanket that was thermo regulated and possibly worked as a low grade camouflage device, a torn up weather jacket, a high performance extraction knife in his left pocket he took from the lab, the mostly indecipherable journal without the codex, and lovely electrical burn and few grapefruit sized bruises that prevented him from doing some of the more serious exercises, keeping in mind he was already worse for wear than when he came out of the lab in a half drugged state.
He felt the blanket and coat were highly redundant, but as the coat was expressing wear and tear, a higher priority on preserving the blanket would be an order. A cold breeze passed by. Since he was not as acclimated to the cold, he would lose more energy over time. He decided to use the blanket to wrap around the coat as it could provide camouflage towards the unknown as well as patching up the holes; he only hoped that as a result the blanket would not get too many rips.
He stood up and got a better look at the tracks. He observed the ground to be arid but firm. The impression of the idents were rather smooth, which left him to assume the bag was dragged at a moderate but unchanging pace. The important part was that this also told him that the animal was low to the ground, and probably was not able to completely lift the bag. He looked for obvious signs of other tracks than just the bag but did not find anything that would cry of the perp. He looked for scales, tufts of hair, excrement, or any remains but found nothing other dried out Lichen and boulders on the sides of the ravine.
This only confirmed that the perp was experienced in stealth habits and the only reason it gave itself up was that it could not carry the bag, or it knew of his presence and wanted to lure him into a more advantageous point of attack. Tsk...another trial I must overcome. He sighed and followed path slowly out of the ravine. Coming across the fallen tree again, he saw dried blood, probably his, blending in with dark brown hues of the bark. He reasoned that he could not remove all the blood without drawing too much suspicion of his intervention.
It could still be used to throw off any would be followers, so he collected a piece of the bark on the ground with a few splatters, stowing it into a free pocket in his jacket with a zipper. It would not be as perfect as Ziplock or sealed apparatus to quarantine the smell of the blood on him but it would do the trick for now. He followed the trail again until it abruptly ended about 400 meters away from the ravine. Roughly 80 meters ahead lay a small campfire with 6 figure and a silver rat one of the figures shoulders. He was still too far away, and as the foliage was blocking most of their camp, he could see the images dipping in and out between the trees. As he didn't want to draw to much attention, he stopped approximately 30 meters from the camp.
——————/In the camp/——————————
"How long do you think until the poor bloke realizes that he is not as hidden as he thinks he is" Pebortune said to the sayter next to him "Well impart it is your and your companion's fault for stealing belongings of other people" Dunbar said. "Rather not offend another high class bitch, so you should return the items" Ghox said. Four of them agreed, while the other were just asking for trouble. "Well we are leaving anyways, although he does not look to dangerous, it is better to be safe then sorry"Pebortune stated as he added a few green spiked spheres into the bag. "That should be enough remuneration , let us get to the commission"Ghox brashly stated not withholding the greed within his eyes. Shortly after the group left not caring and leaving the bag to the side.
———————————————————————
On the other side of the camp, the mc was trying to make sense of the events that just occurred. The group had some kind of comradely and amicable relationship, and were discussing some undisclosed subject before disappearing. As he walked closer to the camp, he noticed the bag was left on the side, and was in the same ripped fashion as of the cliff but this time. He look through the bag and found 5 unknown spiked spherical objects which he was hesitant to handle. Looking further in the bag, his rations were still there but the codex was missing.
Although he was relieved seeing all the food items, he was weary from the fact the people in camp knew he was there by the five "gifts". While the first impression did not end in confrontation, he did not think he should escalate it to that level over some book however vital the information was. The 5 unknown spheres had some sort of significance, but until then he found just what they were used for, he put them aside.
To make matters simple, he didn't know whom these people were and neither did they know anything about him hopefully. He would just cut he losses here and find another way to decode the journal. Another reason to stay out of their way was that they seemed to be ready on a dime in case anything attacked them. No harm, no foul; keep it that way. Learning his lesson he gathered three of the five packs that were opened and smushed to consume them, tossing the other two into the embers. As potentially a magnet for other predators, he preferred to limit their attention to him, lest another situation far worse than this one might occur.
After finishing the 3 food packs, he placed the backpack on his shoulders and picked a random direction to walk in. As he didn't have a clue about the surrounding, as long as he didn't got in the direction of the base he should be fine.