After a one hour march in the west, Claud found an cave in an mountain wall. It was about 10 meter deep and 4 meter in height. It wasn't big by all means but protect Claud from weather, cold, sunshine and the biggest issue, big monsters.
When he walked, he inspected the body of Cloudius van Hera and realized that he was relatively big now. He was about 1,85meters in height and weighs around 200kilogramm. He was fat and lazy with no combat experience, like Claud.
On his way in the west, he found many skeletons, some he had seen before, some completely unfamiliar and some strangely familiar ones, he had read before but never seen before.
Most of the skeletons had human origin, some a little bit different, some the exact same. All human-like skeletons had the same kind of gear laying around them.
Old rusty swords, broken bows, stretched spears, dull daggers and other weapons out of the medieval times left behind in the forest were the most common. Some fresher bodies had rings, necklaces, earrings and other trinkets, while others had expensive looking armor out of gold, nothing like the rusty metal armor from the foot soldiers.
Claud, the greedy brat he is, of course picked lots of stuff up. When he saw the seemingly abandoned mountain hole, Claud decided that it would be his first base of survival in this forest.
„Haaa" Claud sighed as he looked at the evening suns and couldn't help but wonder about the earths revolution. In his walk, he noticed that there are three suns in the sky, they start together in the morning, splitting apart in noon and coming together in the evening, disappearing by night making way for five moons that have the same cycle.
„Looks like I gotta collect dry branches for a fire, if I want to have warm and maybe have a little bit protection." he thought but couldn't help but ridicule himself as he remembered the massive creatures he saw.
Claud was on full alert since he wanted to rest on a mountain wall he came by, just for the stone wall to open in the middle, revealing a massive black eyeball.
Just the thought of this monster sent shivers down his spine as he left his little home with a rusty double sickle, with purple patterns carved on it, in both of his hands.
Only a few places in the forest were agleam by sunshine as the big jungle trees blocked the rest of it, which reduced the field of vision of humans by a large amount.
Claud walked around a hundred meter radius around his base to find firewood. As he decided, he collected enough dry bark and leafs and wanted to return to his recently found base, he saw an familiar silhouette in the dark, a shadow, almost making an happy dance in this cursed, dark forest, could Claud see to his left.
As he turned in the direction of the shadow and focused his attention on it, he could recognize a human shaped figure, dancing in the middle of the dark forest, not caring about monsters and wild beasts.
Crrrsh
Dry leafs crushed under Clauds feet, as if to warn him not to come closer to the seemingly friendly shadow.
Claud ignored their warnings and stepped further away from his base, his only safe zone in this nightmare-like forest.
90 meter, 110meter, 150 meter. The distance between Claud and his safe house became larger and larger while the distance between him and the mysterious shadow smaller and smaller.
50 meter, 30meter,20meter. Claud was only a few steps away, standing right before the dancing silhouette, as he noticed two reflection from his torch coming from behind the shadow.
Claud started coming to his mind as he moved his torch closer to the shadow to get a better view of whats behind it. As the flame made the shadow visible, a dark green human body was revealed. It had several holes everywhere and the skin looked more like the skin from a fish than from a human.
When Claud looked further up to his head, or where it was supposed to be, he could only see a rod that leads further into the dark. As Claud saw that the shadow was used to turn predators into prey, he immediately turned around to his mountain hole.
The silent predator wasn't going to let him live as he bounced of from his hiding spot, that was a few meter behind the shadow, and ran after Claud, tearing down little trees that blocked its way.
Claud looked back to the giant shadow in the dark and threw his torch with all his strength at his doom. As the torch hit the dry ground, a massive fire was created almost instantly, exposing the giant creature.
Under the violent flames, Claud could see the details from this nightmare creature that was blocked by the bright flames.
It had a massive, black, turtle-like shell with thousands of weapons stuck in it. Four crab arms were visible with one missing a claw and it had a giant anglerfish-like face with razor-sharp teeth. It had two dozens of prey dummies on his shell, some looking human-like while others goat-like.
It was at least 20 meter long and had a triple tail with spikes behind his shell.
„Fuckk. Is this hell?! Shouldn't this be my second chance in life and not my second execution ground?! Shiitt! How can I defeat this shit if I can't even survive if???"
Claud fought while full-sprint turning around and running to his base. The fire fighting monster saw that it's prey escaped bug couldn't do anything as it was nocturnal and very sensitive to light and heat.
But it wasn't going to let Claud live as it held its tail high above its head and swinging it down at full speed, sending some spike flying towards Claud, missing him by a hair's breath.
Claud freaked out when he saw the pierced trees that were hit by spikes and began running slalom, making cover behind trees.
75 meter,30 meter,20meter. Claud could see his base becoming bigger and bigger, but just as hope returned to him, he heard a air piercing sound from behind and felt a massive force pulling his left leg forward.
„Arrghh!!"
The force was so stronger that it almost ripped his leg of and he was send flying onto the ground. Claud was in a daze as he crawled into the cave with a sharp pain coming from his left thigh.
He reached the cave entrance and pulled himself into cover, all while creating a massive blood trail.
He lay onto a bunch of artifacts he took from the corpses before losing consciousness.