Alex slowly crawled out of bed, dark shadows under his eyes, fatigue evident in his slow movements. The looming sense of dread had prevented him from sleeping through the nights, and his vitality and endurance stats could only do so much.
'I miss coffee.'
Today was a special day, for Alex was now sufficiently confident in his water control, such that he could protect his butt. He grabbed one of the buckets and filled it with river water, before running off to the woods. He'd spent some time practicing yesterday, and was reasonably confident he could make a decent jet of water. Minutes later, a victorious yell could be heard across the whole clearing.
"WOOOOOO!!"
'Today is about the small victories.'
Returning to the river, he began practicing his water control again. He'd begun practicing his ability to accelerate the water quickly and he popped up a ball of water the size of a bowling ball, and he'd shoot it to one edge of his range, stopping it just before it left his region of control, and then accelerate it in the opposite direction bouncing it around like a ping-pong ball.
Alex had learned that he had a limited range of control on his water, his current limit was around a 3 meter radius, though he noticed he had finer control when it was closer to him. He continued his ping pong practice for another 5 minutes, at which time he switched to his fine-tuned control. He pulled a thin string of water out from the river, and practiced weaving it between his fingers, creating a beautiful dance. He continued this for another 5 minutes, before he felt his mana drop to around 10%.
Having completed his training for the morning Alex started contemplating this morning's task. He decided to try using the pitfall trap to replenish his dwindling food supplies, and for that, he needed bait. He grabbed his makeshift bow, which he'd completed last night, along with 5 of his makeshift arrows.
He'd practiced a little, and his accuracy was pretty bad, though in his defense, his arrows were hardly straight, and neither were they properly fitted with feathers.
'It'll have to do.'
Walking through the forest, he set off in the general direction of his pitfall trap to the North, due to his practice on his runs, he could maintain a decent pace while remaining stealthy. Today, most of his focus was geared towards the trees, he was after birds, squirrels, or really anything small that wouldn't put up much of a fight, and be good bait. Spotting a tree with two squirrels fighting, he slowly approached. The two squirrels chased each other around the tree, screeching bloody murder.
Eventually their fight ended, and the apparent victor watched as the other squirrel scampered away, jumping off the branch and landing on the ground, before quickly disappearing into the underbrush of ferns. Alex had managed to get within 10 meters during the fight, the two squirrels being rather distracted, he drew his bow and nocked an arrow. Aiming at the squirrel's body, he let off a shot, and was greeted with a resounding thud, as the arrow struck the branch below his target.
In response the squirrel glared at him, and let out a few angry chirps before climbing up the trunk to one of the higher branches.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, my aim sucks."
Alex stared at the arrow stuck in the branch mournfully, he both didn't get the squirrel and lost the arrow - fantastic. Making a new arrow would take a whole while.
Sighing, he began his search for more bait. After another 10 minutes, he came across another squirrel, skittering along the ground, it appeared to be burying a nut. He readied his bow, aiming at the squirrel, it glanced his way and chirped at him, as he released the bowstring.
The arrow penetrated the squirrel's chest and continued pining it to the ground.
'Victory.'
Bending down, he picked up his squirrel skewer.
'Talkative bait is still bait.'
He then spent a few minutes jogging over towards the riverbank where he'd placed the trap. After double checking the trap to make sure it would still work, he carefully placed the squirrel in the middle of the trap, testing it to make sure it wouldn't collapse under the weight of the squirrel.
He then backed off, and climbed up a tree about 60 meters away, near to the riverbank so he had a clear view of the trap, he basically had a clear view from where he was to the trap, though he couldn't see through the underbrush that surrounded it. Moving up to a higher branch. He began the waiting game.
While he waited, Alex continued to practice with his water control. Fortunately for him, the deer stomach made an excellent water bottle, and he had portable water now. He pulled all the water out of the stomach and spun it around his hand, and twirled it between his fingers, practicing his fine tuned control.
Alex had noted that the less water he used, the lower the mana consumption. He could maintain control of the small amount of water in the deer stomach for a solid 20 minutes, at which point, he felt his mana nearing 10%. At this point, he transferred the water back to the bottle, and smiled to himself.
His control had reached the point where the control of the water was almost intuitive. He willed something to happen, and the water responded in turn. Switching to sensing practice he closed his eyes and focused on the water around him. His increased range made it so that he felt he could almost map out the anatomy of the tree, reaching down to the base of the trunk.
'If I keep this up, I'm going to be able to run around the forest blindfolded.'
He continued alternating his practice, until he was greeted by the sound of cracking foliage, at which point he opened his eyes. Stepping out of the underbrush near the trapwas his fated adversary, the murder chicken.
'We meet again, foul demon.'
'More like fowl demon. Haha.'
…
'I think sleep deprivation has made me delirious.'
Alex watched the creature approach the trap, his heartbeat quickening with excitement. Fortunately, it didn't appear particularly hesitant and it approached the squirrel greed apparent, from the drool forming on it's jaw (beak?) Alex wasn't sure. The creature took a single step onto the trap, Alex held his breath, his adrenaline shooting up - the moment of truth.
Going far beyond his expectations, the creature decided to pounce on the squirrel. Promptly succeeding at falling through the trap and impaling itself on the sharpened stakes below. An enraged squawk filled the air, transitioning into a gutteral gurgling.
'Could you try to be more creepy?'
He slowly climbed down the tree and approached the trap, readying his knife in the event there was any funny business from the trapped creature. He was reasonably confident it had died, but they weren't particularly heavy creatures.
He neared the trap, pushing aside the cover to look at the creature inside. There he could see the dead creature, two spikes impaled through its lower abdomen. Alex smiled to himself, pleased with his victory. Just as he was about to begin climbing down into the trap to retrieve his catch, he heard a snap behind him.
Whipping his head around towards the source of the noise, he was greeted by not one, not two, but three murder chickens. They'd managed to flank him from two sides, leaving only a path towards the river open.
'I'm an idiot.'
Alex had forgotten the earlier encounter in which he'd watched three of the creatures try to hunt the demon bear, possibly because he'd been so focused on the resulting carnage, or maybe because he was sleep deprived. Either way, it didn't matter, and he was in a very bad spot.
Alex knew from experience that these were hateful angry creatures, who wanted nothing more than to disembowel, and presumably eat you. Unlike the encounter with the demon bear, there were only two viable outcomes, fight to the death or flee.
Alex's eyes dilated as adrenaline flooded his system, and he set his sites on the only path to survival - the river. He immediately took off at his fastest sprint, racing towards the river, feet dancing across the stones of the surrounding riverbed. He quickly closed the distance to the river, 40, 30, 20 meters - just a little more. As his feet touched the water, he felt something slam into his shoulder, knocking him into the rushing river.
Unlike the river near the village with slow moving shallows, the river upstream was much faster moving and narrow, making the current stronger and excessively turbulent. Getting thrown into the water rather unprepared, he immediately got sucked under and started tumbling. His world spinning, Alex tried to calm down and tried to sense the water around him, desperately trying to get a sense of which way was up.
Unfortunately, before he could completely orient himself he felt one of his legs smash into a rock, causing him to gasp and inhale a mouthful of water. Pain dominated Alex's consciousness for a solid 5 seconds, his lungs, shoulder and leg were all burning, demanding attention. His leg issued a deep toothache pain that was impossible to ignore. As he was starting to drift unconscious, Alex felt the pain fade away, and despite his numbing body, his mind raged.
'I'm not going to die today, certainly not by drowning.'
'This is supposed to be my domain.'
The numbing of his body and other senses allowed Alex an unprecedented level of control, which he promptly used to still the current around his body. He then generated a current beneath himself, forcing his body to the surface, after which he used his water control to expel the water from his lungs, and took a deep breath.
As the oxygen flooded his lungs, he opened his eyes, and tried to glance around, catching a glimpse of the shoreline - he was going quite fast. He used his water control to dodge a couple rocks and began returning to the shoreline, he needed to get out of the water ASAP, or he was just going to bleed out. He quickly reached the shoreline, desperately struggling, and managing to pull himself out of the water. He crawled for around a meter, and then collapsed, breath heaving.
He was reasonably confident he'd gotten dragged at least a few minutes walk downstream, and that he was still upstream of the village. He vaguely recognized his surroundings.
After lying there for a minute, Alex started trying to assess his situation. He still had his dagger, but he'd lost his bow in the river, next he turned his mind to his shoulder. Ignoring the sharp pain, he used his opposite arm to probe near the area. Just as he was about to stick his finger in one of his cuts, Alex stopped himself.
'What am I going to do with this information?'
'I certainly can't stitch up the back of my own shoulder blade.'
'Even if I make it back to the village, I guess I could try to use the remains of my shirt as some gauze.'
Alex pondered on this option, but ultimately gave up. He ultimately had no idea how far a walk to the village was, and he doubted his ability to actually put any decent pressure on the wounds. Instead, he took what he felt was the best option - continue lying on the ground and hope his wounds clot before he bleeds out.
Taking care not to shift his wounded shoulder, Alex reached down with his other arm and awkwardly tried to touch his wounded leg. He'd hit the rock on his shin, and he wanted to be sure he hadn't broken anything, with his improved sense of touch, he was reasonably confident he'd be able to feel a full break.
He probed above and below the area, starting off small, his fingers getting wet, he brought them back to his face - blood.
'One wound wasn't enough, huh.'
Reaching down again, he resolved himself. Pressing grabbing the end of his bottom of his shin by the ankle, he pulled ever so slightly, yielding an achy pain at the site of his wound.
'Probably a minor fracture, great.'
Alex gave up probing his leg, and instead decided to do the only productive thing he could think of, practice water control. The river was in range, and he pulled a few strands of water from the surface, letting them dance above him. As always, he continued until he ran out of mana.
As he started to begin his sensing ritual, a thought occurred to him. One that perhaps should have been obvious, unless you were particularly focused on definitions.
'Blood is mostly water, right?'
'Plasma is just water, plus some electrolytes and clotting agents, right?'
Deciding to test his theory, he extended his senses to the wound on his back, and there it was, he could feel the blood pooling around the wound. Not only that, he could literally visualize the network of blood in his body. His level of practice was high enough that he could feel the small amounts of blood leaking from his wounds, though he did notice that his ability to perceive blood was drastically reduced.
If normally, he could detect minute flow within the water, and small turbulence, and make out crisp, tiny details, blood on the other hand felt like it was out of focus, the resolution turned way down.
'Is it because it's so dilute?'
'The tree sap was muddy to me too, but this is far worse.'
'Time to test control.'
Alex tried reaching out to the numerous veins and arteries leading up to his wounds and stifling the flow, but found his attempts unsuccessful, due to the sheer volume of things happening. Scrunching his eyebrows, he instead decided to focus on one puncture wound at a time, yielding much greater success. He would focus on one wound at a time, and stifle the flow until he was satisfied that the wound was clotted, at which point he'd release the flow and watch, making sure it held. After a grueling 15 minutes of work, he was satisfied he'd stopped all the major bleeding, Alex closed his eyes, completely exhausted.
While the work used extremely minimal mana, it required almost surgical precision on Alex's part, completely draining his focus. Alex promptly passed out, waking up in two hours to the grumbling of his stomach.
Alex slowly pushed himself up onto his knees, inching his shoulder into different positions and making sure the newly formed skin held. Tightness indicating fresh scabs greeted him, and he grimaced.
'Good enough to get me back to the village, but I think I need to take a full day to fully heal, even with my vitality stat.'
'Now how am I actually going to get back?'
'Crawling is an option, but it will be slow and miserable, and I might open my shoulder back up.'
Alex glanced at the river.
'The village is downstream, and it widens out and slows down there, so if I can make it, it should be quite an easy trip.'
'Lazy river it is.'
Double checking that his mana stat was full, Alex allowed himself to slip into the river, water control at the ready. He slipped in, and guided himself to the middle of the river carefully avoiding rocks, and turbulent sections of water. With his water sense extending 5-6 meters in front of him, the mode of travel was extremely easy, and it took surprisingly little amounts of mana to shift his body's position, he'd just exert small amounts of force on himself here and there, and the river handled the rest.
After another 5 minutes, he arrived back at the village, and he propelled himself over to the shallows.