There was a calm and peaceful river that had a gentle water flow, the river water was extremely clear and mesmerizing to the eyes but at this moment, one could see something strange silently floating on that said river.
There's a naked body of a man in the river that was swept ashore in front of a cold and dark cave.
The naked man had pale and smooth jade-like skin and he also had a proportionate and extremely attractive body that would make one unable to take their eyes off.
The man was precisely the still unconscious Mirage who had luckily survived his travel on the long river.
It was fortunate that the river was calm for the whole 8 hours that he was drifting and his body hadn't even managed to encounter a mishap or he might've died a pitiful yet embarrassing death.
His unconscious body had unknowingly drifted an extremely long distance before he was swept ashore before the dark cave and his body was all wrinkly due to him being soaked in the water for an extended amount of time.
He's still breathing just fine albeit a bit faint due to the various debuffs that his genetic injury had incurred to him.
At this moment, the tightly closed eyes of Mirage slowly opened.
His face flashed a pained expression before it finally turned into shock and confusion, he could only lie silently on the soft ground as he was still unable to move from his position.
He felt helpless yet he couldn't do anything thus he could only gaze at the dark skies where a brilliant large blue moon hung, for some reason it looked like it was staring back at him and appeared extremely close to his eyes.
He was lost in his daze before it was back to normal, he didn't find anything strange though as he only felt relieved because he had managed to survive the lapse of his genetic injury again.
It was extremely dangerous too as he might've died miserably if he had just made one careless mistake.
He couldn't control nature so he had only left his life to his fate as there were quite a number of possibilities that might lead him to his untimely death and the prime example for that was drowning in his sleep while the other was dying in the stomach of a carnivorous creature.
He was quite anxious and curious about what would happen to him if he really did die earlier.
Would he wake up in his game cabin?
Would he wake up in a game's resurrection point?
Or would he really die and unable to wake up ever again?
He didn't know and didn't have plans to know about it as well.
He felt really glad that he even wanted to know what had happened to him while he's unconscious but it's a pity that the game did not have a recording function or he might've turned on his recorder right before losing his consciousness.
He opened his game screen with his mind.
Then suddenly he felt that his eyes became blurry due to the sudden influx of notifications, he was shocked by their number thus he immediately checked them one by one.
He had received a total of 15 notifications and at least 10 of them were from the side effects of his genetic injury while the others were the debuff notifications of his prolonged stay in the water.
He thought of how could a game perfectly replicate his genetic injury yet no matter how hard he thought of it he had come up with nothing as they couldn't have possibly scanned a genetic level illness right?
He fiercely rejected this absurd notion and convinced himself to think that this was still the same virtual reality game that he had played and was not the real world.
Like, how could he possibly feel his real-life illnesses in the game? Did his real body suffered the injury in reality and managed to affect this 'virtual' body of his?
That's quite possible but he thought that instead of having him feel pain in both worlds, why not forcefully disconnect him out of the game instead?
Then he suddenly thought of the sudden anomaly of the game and subconsciously thought that maybe they were related in some ways.
This link could also possibly explain the reason behind the inability of the players to log out of the game.
He closed his eyes and relaxed his frown while making sure to forcefully suppress the turbulent thoughts in his head as those ideas he had come were just a possibility and not a certainty after all.
Without real and solid proof to back those claims up, he could only set those things aside and focus on his current situation which was to recover from his current state as fast as possible.
The river water was extremely cold and he already felt his body shivering because of the low temperature.
He thought that he should at least crawl inside the dark cave to seek shelter from the cold winds, thus he went on to focus his mind on doing small things one at a time.
He first forced himself to move his toes and fingers until he could finally move them albeit a bit stiff and hard, then he next proceeded to move his hands and feet until he could eventually move his stiff limbs.
Half an hour had passed and his situation became much worse as he was now violently shivering because of the cold temperature.
He was urgently trying his best to move until he felt that his stiff muscles had finally loosened by quite a bit, but it was certainly enough for him to at least slowly move and crawl on the ground.
He did not hesitate any longer and went to crawl inside the dark cave, he first raised his body and secondly, pushed himself forward using his shoulders, he did this repeatedly until he had finally managed to enter the dark cave.
Then he suddenly regretted crawling inside the cave as the air there was obviously more cold than the air outside, but it was already too late to regret as he had already entered the cave.
He was sighing helplessly to himself when he suddenly received various notifications.
[ You have discovered the < Water Spirit Cave >. ]
[ All debuff statuses have been cleared. ]
[ HP, Energy, and Stamina have been restored. ]
[ The Water Spirit Trial is commencing in 3, 2, 1. ]
He was shocked by the sudden notifications and involuntarily let out a voice.
"W-What?"
Earlier, he had thought that he was going to die of hypothermia but then he suddenly received a complete recovery of his health and status like a blessing.
The various debuffs that plagued his body were being removed one by one until he felt that all of his mobility was finally restored.
He even felt that his body was kind of healthier as if his body was cleansed of impurities this feeling was extremely miraculous and he wanted to savor this comfortable feeling when he suddenly remembered that he was in some kind of a trial about a spirit or something.
He hurriedly got up the ground and fished out clothes from his player inventory and he wore them as fast as he can.
Mirage thought that his early preparation had come into fruition as earlier before traveling to the forest, he went to the town market to buy the map but then he remembered that it would be much better to buy some spare clothes, food, and water as well, thus he didn't hesitate and bought the things that he needed using his money.
He tried on exiting the cave when he was suddenly pushed back by some kind of a soft yet mystical transparent barrier.
The exit has been blocked by a barrier thus he could only travel and follow the path that leads towards the deeper reaches of the cave while maintaining high vigilance towards his surroundings at the same time.
The cave was extremely dark and cold and if someone with nyctophobia were to be in his place then he/she might've passed out due to their panic and fear.
One wouldn't be able to see anything inside and he couldn't even see his hands in this situation thus he could only rely on his sixth sense to feel his surroundings.
He was frighteningly calm when he's inside and he did not notice it himself as he was too busy carefully feeling the path when he suddenly heard a faint splashing sound coming behind him.
He had no idea what that thing was so he tacitly dodged his body to the side and successfully avoided the mysterious watery thing that came out of nowhere.
He frowned as he didn't know where did that attack had come from thus he used his heightened senses to carefully feel his surroundings.
This time he heard a faint sound of something unknown that seemed to be slithering on the rocky surface of the cave walls.
He couldn't accurately pinpoint its exact location but he knew that its rough location was just in his southeast thus he used the bone dagger to randomly stab a location in his east.
He was hoping that his aim should at least hit the tail of the unknown creature as he couldn't come up with the creature's rough size with just the sound that it produced alone.