Arriving at the wooded area on the edge of the forest, North stood at the intersection of the snow-white glowing area and the wooded area where the sunlight barely penetrated, looking nervously at the forest in front of him.
With a vast, endless forest ahead of him, dark as night, full of unknown dangers and inhabited by an alien species, it was impossible for him not to be nervous.
He, who carefully entered the forest, thought about what to do in this three-day period.
'I need to explore a bit before nightfall and find a place like a tree hollow somewhere without predator tracks. It's the only way to get through the night safely.'
While he thought about these things, he also thought about the battle and the bloodstains he had encountered before entering the forest.
'If those bloodstains are from someone with pointy ears... Anyway, as long as I stay on the edge of the forest, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.'
His worries were not in vain, while people of the same race could do all kinds of evil to each other in this world, it was hard not to think about what an alien species could do.
When his physical strength and endurance were added to all this, the idea of encountering an alien species that could face a herd of predators alone and survive even if wounded naturally frightened him.
As the ground wasn't covered with snow due to the dense forest and was mostly permafrost, he had spent a span of two incense sticks looking for a safe place without worrying about leaving a trace.
Finally found a clearing where the sun shone overhead and gently illuminated the ground, without any sign of any large predator or large herbivore.
In this open space, there was a dead tree trunk, thick enough for three adult men to wrap their hands around, with a hollow in the trunk wide enough for him to fit through.
He, pleased with the situation, inspected the dead tree and the area around it once more and, finding no problems, decided to spend the night there.
Thinking of the few edible mushrooms and plants he had found in his search for a safe place to spend the night, he began to prepare for the night with glee, but watched every movement around with his sharp black eyes.
In fact, there wasn't much preparation he could do. While lighting a fire at night in the days before the disaster was nothing more than an invitation to predators.
The only thing he could do was to find a piece of wood that would cut off the hollow's contact with the outside once he entered the hollow in the tree trunk, so that if a predator approached the tree it wouldn't be able to make eye contact with him.
As sunset approached, he found some small tree branches and some bark around his newfound shelter.
He tied them together with some of the few pieces of fabric wrapped around his body and made something like a makeshift lid, large enough to cover the mouth of the hollow.
Sitting on the ground with his back to the tree hollow, he took out a piece of dried animal skin from his bag and ate it with the mushrooms and vegetables he had found in the forest.
Before entering the hollow, he smeared various parts of his clothes with herbs he found around, creating a bad smell that small insects and flies didn't like.
This would reduce the smell, which was unfamiliar to the forest, and also would protect him from fly and insect bites.
North had entered the hollow after sunset and was in an uncomfortable position in the cramped space closed tightly by the wooden lid he had made.
He couldn't sleep until late because of the tension.
Now, he was in a light sleep, woken by the slightest noise...
...
At the edge of the forest, a span of a few incense sticks away from North, a figure tightly wrapped in fine cloth, except for pointed ears and eyes, ran as if running from something.
This person was none other than the person whose bloodstains North had seen before entering the forest.
Realizing that it would be impossible for her to return home safely at night after entering the forest wounded, the pointy-eared human had begun to search for a safe place to stay.
Although she had found a tree hollow and entered it like North, she became the target of a carnivorous one-horned deer-like beast that had come to the scent of blood before the span of an incense had passed.
The pointy-eared human's bad luck was evident from the fact that this deer species lived only in the depths of the forest, but it suddenly appeared at the edge of the forest and pursued her.
They were known to hunt alone or in small packs, and were very sensitive to the smell of blood.
From a distance, they looked like four-legged grass-eaters, but their red eyes glowed faintly in the night light and they would attack anything that smelled of blood.
With such a predator on her tail, there was no way she could outrun it or return safely to her home deep in the forest without getting rid of the smell of blood on her body.
With this deer chasing her, she had no way to clean her body.
While running through the forest at midnight, the pointy-eared human thought about how to clean her body of the smell of blood, and realized that the best option was to bathe, but the nearest hot water pond where she could bathe was in the interior of the forest.
'If I can't kill this deer, I'll never have the chance to bandage the wounds on my body and replace the bloody clothes with new ones.'
While thinking like this, the pointy-eared human also planned how to kill this predator.
'If I find a high branch I can climb on, I can shoot this deer with an arrow,' she thought. She looked around and continued to run.
She stopped at regular intervals, tore off a piece of her blood-stained clothes, and left it on the edge of a tree, then changed direction and started running again.
After running in this way until almost dawn, she finally found a very suitable place for her plan.
In this place, where the ground was a little higher than the rest of the forest, with a small opening through which the moonlight came in, she approached the edge of a dead tree with a wide trunk.
This time, she placed not only a torn and bloody piece of cloth but also a small rodent she had killed for use along the way.
Then she moved away from the small clearing where the tree stood and found a high branch, ideal for archery, where she could cover herself with the darkness of the night and at the same time have a full view of the target.
With the arrow in her bow, she waited for the deer to come and approach the smell of blood at the edge of the tree.
...
North got a good night's sleep in the calmness of the night.
However, as dawn approached, he was suddenly awakened by the sound of footsteps and listened nervously, trying to understand what was happening.
The footsteps were very faint, but they came at long intervals. The only problem was that the footsteps belonged to something with two legs.
As the voices got closer and closer to the tree where he was staying, his cold expression turned into a frown. He tried to remain motionless while controlling his breathing to hide his presence.
As the sound of footsteps reached the edge of the tree, he unconsciously tensed and held his breath, ready at any moment to throw off the lid covering the mouth of the hollow he had entered and leap out.
Whatever was outside made a circuit around the tree, then stopped on the slightly opposite side of the mouth of the hollow where North had entered and placed something on the ground.
The footsteps then slowly faded away, almost inaudibly, but he heard them on a nearby tree before they disappeared completely.
After a while, as the sun rose and the forest began to wake up slightly, North was waiting in the hollow of the tree for the two-legged person nearby to leave, while the stranger stood on a branch, ready with her bow in the shade, waiting for the deer to arrive.
Unaware of what awaited it, the deer slowly approached the smell of blood from a distance of a few hundred paces.
Meanwhile, the pointy-eared human tried to understand why the deer was behaving so strangely.
As far as she knew, these deer usually lived alone or in groups of two or three, but they could also be seen in small herds of five or six.
Although this species was sensitive to the smell of blood and showed aggressive behavior to it, it was unusual for a single deer to follow something for most of the day simply because it smelled of blood.
'Why is it so aggressive, why do its eyes glow so red?' She thought to herself, 'maybe it's because disaster is about to strike, but I've never heard anything like this before..'
CRACK..!
She was so lost in thought that she almost forgot why she had drawn her bow when she suddenly heard the sound of a branch breaking nearby.
Instantly, she tensed up. The aggressive predator she had been waiting for had arrived at her trap.