From the bottom of my heart, thank you to my p4tr0ns: Morpheaus, and RTB <3 <3 <3 Become a p4tr0n too and read up to FOUR chapters ahead!:
h t t p s : / / w w w . p a t r e o n . c o m / t r a s h w i t h g l a s s e s
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I hadn't been teleported straight to the encampment of the Coyote Clan. If there was a portal straight to that place, Sunburned wouldn't need to walk a perilous journey through the wild just to bring supplies to the Bear Mountain, after all.
Instead, I found myself on top of a mountain, watching over a vast pine forest wearing mist as a gown.
"So, where do we go from here?", I asked myself with a sigh, my respiration condensing before as soon as it left my mouth.
Fortunately, from that height I could see a little clearing far into the forest, from which smoke clouds rose up into the skies. So, I tightened my grip onto my stuff and started walking. It should take about three days of walking to get to that place… for a normal person, that is. I didn't want to get there with my explosion and shield technique so as not to scare everyone, but I knew instinctively that didn't need to sleep anymore, and could simply walk day and night with a conjured torch in hands.
In fact, I didn't need to eat or drink anymore either, but it was a good distraction anyway, so I chewed on some dried meat on my way to the encampment.
"Raagh!", a huge lion jumped on me from the bushes during the night.
With a swift movement and without stopping walking, however, I pulverized the entire body of the beast with a single punch from my left hand, from head to toe the huge lion being reduced to but a red mist.
I continued my march through the night without other encounters.
Until the next day, that is.
"Gyahahaha!", a humanoid figure in the shape of a hag with long, clawed fingers laughed at me from the distance. She pointed her palm at me, started to conjure a spell, and… "Ahn?", She asked herself, as I had crossed the entirety of the twenty meters separating us in the blink of an I, and got my hand around her face.
I closed my hand completely, and exploded the head of the attacker effortlessly, the body falling to the ground motionless afterward.
Weak. Everyone was so weak, I didn't even need to use magic, much less my specialty, just my sheer strength was enough to deal with most of them.
And I didn't feel a thing while shedding blood.
"Hphm. I suppose this isn't right, is it?", I asked myself, staring at my bloodstained hands. "It doesn't matter anymore."
I got back to walking.
After 24 hours straight of walking without stopping a single time, I entered a clearing, and there it was: about fifty round houses of wood and straw, a path of beaten dirt, and bonfires all around. Not too dissimilar to the Red Ochre tribe, children ran around playing with sticks, mothers prepared food, and men came in with games on their backs and strapped to their wastes.
Half of them had coyote ears and tails, and all of them stopped to look at me coming.
I twitched my ears, scratched my nose, and… Well, what was I supposed to do then? Say hello and introduce myself?
"Skyblue…?", someone stepped ahead of the crowd. An old man with kind eyes and tanned skin.
"Sunburned…"