"What you said about the blood, is it true?"
"Yes."
Everyone around, except Semen, nodded in agreement.
"Eugene, this is my wife Olga," he introduced her and extended his hand.
"Alexander."
For a while, everyone got acquainted. The guy who unexpectedly regained good vision was named Konstantin, and the shy girl was Maria.
"Alright, you guys keep an eye on Gennadyevich here, and I'll go scout out what's what."
"But what if you get lost?" Semen wasn't as confident as his friend.
"Everything will be fine. With the strength and abilities I have now, I won't get lost."
"It would be disappointing if we were all just delusional and having hallucinations. So be careful!" Everyone looked at Semen.
"And rightly so. We can't wander off because this could all be a hallucination," Eugene broke the silence, "Who knows—maybe something exploded somewhere, or the military messed something up and now we're all hallucinating."
"Well, whether we're hallucinating or not, we need to go scout. No one's going to look for us here, and it's unclear where to go."
"Yes, that's clear," Semen interrupted Alexander, "Go, just really be careful."
Nodding, Alexander got up from the tree and shook off his bare buttocks. He smiled awkwardly at the others and walked away.
Thinking about where to go, he decided to head in the direction away from the mountains visible on one side. After a few minutes of walking, he decided it wouldn't hurt to look around. To assess the surroundings, Alexander had to choose a taller and sturdier tree to climb.
He succeeded. Although the lack of clothing greatly hindered the process, a few minutes of agony completely paid off when he climbed above the main mass of trees and saw that the forest stretched around for quite a distance. One side revealed a mountain range.
Judging by what he saw, the mountains were clearly of considerable size. A high and extensive ridge could definitely be taken as the main landmark. On the other side, away from the mountains, only the forest was visible, but with differences. Firstly, there were no mountains, and secondly, in the distance, and given his newly acquired skills in super vision, significantly in the distance, distortions were visible, which could only be caused by warm air rising above settlements.
Two such spots of oscillating and misty air were visible on the opposite side of the mountains, and another one was to the right side, if facing away from the mountains. The terrain didn't remind him of anything—he had traveled too little and was too uninterested in the surrounding world to say where on the planet they had ended up.
Alexander decided that for now, it would be best to go strictly away from the mountains towards the visible air distortions, and see what happened from there. To find his way back, it was decided to periodically stop and urinate; the smell should lead him back.
Descending, he practically ran between the trees, trying to move in a way that his inner senses told him that the mountains, which were now not visible behind the trees, were still watching him.
While running, he suddenly thought that it was definitely daytime and the strangeness that everything around looked bright and light was probably caused, apparently, by the fact that as a potential vampire, he was a nocturnal creature. Alexander glanced at the sky flickering through the branches. It was heavily overcast.
"What if the sun is harmful to us?" he thought. It was unpleasant. Not only did he now have to get used to the fact that he was a bloodsucker, but it was also possible that the legends were not lying and vampires couldn't tolerate sunlight. The thought of having to hide from the sun made him shudder.
Deciding to distract himself from heavy thoughts, he shifted his attention to the terrain around him and began to observe and sniff— the feeling that the wolf blood had given him was too exciting, and Alexander was quite willing to experience it again.
And that meant not only attempting reconnaissance but also hunting. In this business, smell and hearing were the main tools for finding game. Unfortunately, his nose caught too many smells, and he couldn't yet say which ones belonged to which animals. He only knew what a wolf smelled like, but he didn't sense any other wolves nearby.
However, he did catch the scents of dozens of different animals. As he ran, he noticed a mouse scurrying into a burrow, and catching its scent, he remembered and classified it as the scent of a rodent. Unfortunately, the wolf blood memory could only help partially in the task of classifying scents. Humans perceived smells differently from wolves, and he could sniff too much compared to a predator.
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