Chapter 2. Escape, a hamster and a strange boy.
Even though I thought no one was going to kill me, the rules of this cruel world decided otherwise.
It's been a week since I've been here. Those teenagers occasionally came to me, but I pretended to be asleep, tossing and turning in bed, and they, in turn, simply left.
Sneaking up to me one night, Lan stretched the blades to my carotid artery and almost cut me, but I quickly jumped back, dropping the bedside table that was standing nearby, which woke up the whole ward.
This restless teenager chased me all over the ward, everyone shouted for him to stop, but he kept running after me and shouted at that moment the words :
— I'll kill you, you bastard, work or die! Took the body of my former friend, be kind to repay! - His eyes were burning with a scarlet flame at this time, as if showing how eager he was to finish me off.
Running out of the ward, I began to look for a way out of this hospital. There were only large corridors around, where doctors were chatting pleasantly with each other, but the doctors' dressing room was unusual. It was scarlet.
Continuing to run, I heard screams from behind me.
- Hold him! He betrayed us! Let's end these traitors!
— Come here, you bastard! Helen screamed, and when I turned back, she was also flashing scarlet eyes, ready to finish me off.
What's going on here? What's gotten into them? I lived quietly for a few days, I didn't do anything bad to anyone, and everyone is so eager to finish me off.
Having reached the emergency exit, I rushed down the stairs, but at that moment all the people who were running after me began to catch up with me.
At that moment I felt like the hero of some kind of nightmare, which, as it seemed to me, would not stop soon.
But suddenly a hamster with a soft coat the color of raspberries mixed with lilac jumped up to me. I sat on him and he crashed into the first floor of the hospital, but he did not stop running from this, even maintaining a very high speed. After passing through a huge door that was at the exit, we found ourselves in a forest completely overgrown with vines, as well as half filled with snow. We were still running very fast, even though the crowd was no longer visible. Suddenly the hamster stopped and started talking to me.
- Greetings to you. The whole hospital you were in was influenced by a new kind of mind-controlling monsters. My brothers were similarly influenced, and I decided to find someone else in their right mind.
I thanked him for saving me by stroking his soft fur. He obviously liked it.
The hamster itself was about the height of a short tree, so it was not so difficult to climb it in a sitting state.
- Listen, will you be my pet? I will feed you what I find, if I learn more about this world, I will help you with something else—" I said, in order to have someone at least to support me.
He was obviously very happy with such an offer, showing this influence with his little tail.
- All right, traveler, may fate help us, so that everything turns out well for us and we can save our comrades.
While the hamster was saying these words, I heard the rustle of leaves. I would have thought it was the wind stirring the leaves, but I didn't feel the wind at all, everything was so calm.
And after a few seconds, a boy approached us with incredible speed. His long snow-white hair, which reminded me of the snow that lay not far from us, fluttered as he drove around us.
I was able to stop him and began to examine him. Blue eyes sparkled in the darkness of the forest, a child's innocent face - like nothing unusual. But his clothes were torn and almost useless. Behind his back was a small sword, which for me would rather be like a dagger.
- Hey, uncle, let me go, I won't do anything bad to you! - the boy shouted, as if not in his own voice, trying to escape from my hands and looking with his childish eyes into mine.
I let him go because of his shocking voice, and he, in turn, rushed to the hamster. The hamster just threw him on his back.
- Meet Rail. He is about five years old, although I can't say the exact age… He looks exactly five years old. But everything in our world is determined not by appearance, but by glasses. Pumping your level and killing monsters, you get points. And your name is…
- Nid. You can call me that," I said, carefully looking around the area.
There was not a single living soul around except ours. The forest was at the same time gloomy, but also at the same time snow-white. It was as if this forest was divided between darkness and light.
The boy began to take something out of his tattered pocket. As it turned out, it was a map, most likely of the surrounding area.
Looking into it, I realized that there really are only two states in this world. We were on the border of both of them.
— We are heading to the snowy state, it is safest there now, because monsters almost do not live there, including these filthy monsters of memory— - a boy with a serious face told me. Although he looked like a child, he still knew how to reason. And the voice of this boy was not at all childish ... he was already speaking in a man's, broken voice. I still can't take it for granted…
The road was going to be long, it was clear from the scale of the map. The nearest town was about ten kilometers away. In fact, it was difficult to determine this, because I didn't know much about geography, I only knew the basics…
We made a halt, having walked about half the way. We chose a small clearing in the middle of a winter forest, in which even the cold was not felt. The boy surprised me more and more: he built a fire on his own and somehow miraculously took a tent out of his pocket…
Is the tent in your pocket? I thought to myself.
Although I did not ask the question directly, but as if reading my thoughts, the boy answered me:
- What are you thinking about? You think where did I get the tent in my pocket, right? This is all my magic of the bottomless pocket, which I received from one monster that I recently finished off in the middle of the steppe, which was in the middle of the border. And yes, if you want, I can tell you what kind of magic you have, because I still have the ability to read the characteristics of heroes.
I agreed right away, because it was necessary to know what I was capable of.
"So, you have maximum-level healing magic, but you're vulnerable to using it. You're also called by someone from another world, I noticed that right away, so I decided to tell you about magic. Also, your ability is to receive powers from others, similar to mine, but again vulnerability, you can again lose consciousness or worse and die altogether.
—I need to be careful with magic,– I said with a grin, even though I knew it wasn't funny at all.
- That's not the word careful. I wouldn't let you use these powers at all, it's better to save your life than to die so stupidly… And you also have an elementary skill, without vulnerability - the element of wind. Most likely you got it from someone here, but you obviously don't remember it.
But you can't argue: a week ago I really was an ordinary workaholic, and now in the body of some guy I'm traveling through these forests with a hamster and a strange boy who was not at all like that in his mind.