A long pained groan left me, I found myself lying on a grassy plain, a headache shortly follows as I slowly helped myself up, holding my head as if I was trying to massage it.
I took a look at myself, I didn't find anything out of the ordinary, just my school uniform, I then noticed and picked up my bag, wearing it on my back
"Just where am I?" I asked to no-one in particular, I was stranded, around me was a limitless sea of brown and green, these trees were gigantic, dwarfing me, maybe even dwarfing a 5-story-building, I didn't get into specifics
Then there was something I felt was missing, something that had slipped my mind until now, I opened the zipped up backpack and rummaged through my notebooks, wallet, umbrella, pencil case, lunch and water bottle, everything a student needed to survive 4 years in college, then there it was, a mystical device that is now a necessity of modern-day living.
"My phone!" I hugged it tightly, caressing it as if it were a baby, I inspected the screen by shining it on the sun
'No scratch' I said to myself, which was something I tend to pride myself in, a scratch-less phone.
I opened my phone using my finger, pushing it through the fingerprint recognition system, I was greeted with my live2D wallpaper of my waifu.
She greets me enthusiastically, a certain feeling rose within me, I felt healed, but now wasn't the time to dwell on this, I took a look at the reception bar, there was no signal, which meant that I truly was in the middle of nowhere, but where in nowhere? I haven't seen this type of monstrous tree before, I think?
I took a picture of it, making sure that no wild predators were around.
A flash from my phone and the image was immediately stored in my phone.
I pondered, stopping for a second to collect my thoughts.
'What happened to me?' It didn't make sense, the situation I was in, 'who would do this to me?' No clue, 'Where am I?' I'll find out later
All I knew for now was that I was stuck in the middle of a forest, nothing seems to have been stolen, I blank out after I went out of my house....
Someone must've struck me from behind then? But I don't know why...
Was this a death game then??? I panicked internally, but why leave my phone with the person you kidnapped and supposedly left to rot in a forest?
The more I thought about it, the more my head hurts.
Then a drop of water, it trickled down to my scalp, then two drop near me, three on my head, four on each shoulder until I was finally hit with water on every part of my body, the rain kept pouring down as I took out my umbrella then walked to the cover the trees gave.
I thank whichever god gave earth these trees as I hunker down for a bit.
Watching as the sky turn gray, I thought about what to do, how will I reach out to emergency services? Where should I secure food, water and shelter? I wished for this to just be a nightmare, for me to wake up from my cold dark room and prepare for school.
"Ouch" I said as I finished pinching my face, this was reality I guess.
I took out a notebook from my bag, it was a cheap notebook you can get from any supply store, it had my name and section on it, as well as the name of the subject that read out "Computing Fundamentals 1"
I leaned on the tree as I wrote my objectives, this was the best time to start a plan, I decided to use a pencil instead of a pen as I had a whole box of these for Animation.
I wrote down everything off the top of my head.
1. Secure Food, Water and Shelter.
2. Make markings to never lose my way.
3. Conduct survey of the area.
And lastly....
4. Survive.
This was a very simple to-do list, but I wasn't strong nor resourceful, I was mediocre at everything I did.
"Wait!" I suddenly remembered.
I used to watch a lot of mushroom and survival videos, not out of curiosity, but out of boredom, I do this when I am struggling to sleep, well granted that I don't recall the majority or the specifics of those videos, I hoped that by watching these, my automatic downloads should've downloaded these or similar videos to this.
...
"Oh, thank the heavens!" I might be able to survive after all! I saw at least four 1 or 3 hour videos detailing woodland or forest survival.
I might be luckier than I thought; I had my lunchbox and water; my food will only last me a day, but as long as there's a river or other non-stagnant water source, I'd be living it.
I waited for a few more minutes for the rain to stop; maybe I should've made a rain collector, but it was so sudden.
I cursed at myself for this wasted opportunity.
Most of the day was spent on searching for shelter; before I realized it, it had gotten so dark that I could barely even see without my phone's flashlight.
Deciding that I didn't want to spend the night on damp dirt and tree roots bursting out of it, I walked for a few more minutes.
Running out of time, I walked faster, This was a strange foreign land, with no cell tower and no means of outside communication, I had to be faster, making sure that I didn't trip, I travelled deeper into the woods, occasionally making markings on the tree barks, I decided to make the mark that of the Buddhist symbol of peace.
I think I made at least 10 markings around the forest—10 too little but it will have to do; darkness crept.
'Finally!' I crouched towards a small cave opening; it had a small clearing around it, perfect for outdoor expansion.
Shining my flashlight through the opening, there didn't seem to be anything until I entered.
"...woah" Barrels and chests of what looked like gold coins, all dusty, preserved in this small cave. Was Europe or America or whatever this place was so gold-hungry? I didn't even think for a second to come across pirate booty!
I would be rich if I survived! I dug my hand into one of the chests, the flashlight shining on it, it reflected and glowed a golden light like a disco ball, it was exhilarating looking at all of that money. I mean, who wouldn't want four chests full of gold coins! But that was just the chests; I couldn't wait to see what was in the barrels!
I pried the cover open, and the cover flew with a loud thud echoing across the cave, I didn't care about the noise; greed got the better of me.
Turning off the flashlight, I opened the camera app and took pictures of the gold coins and me, It was mostly me posing as if I were in a party, though I don't know how party people would pose, so it was very awkward, I couldn't help but chuckle at my own awkwardness even though there was no-one here.
This cave was perfect now that I delved deeper in; there was as much space as a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment, I was just making shit up at that point but it was pretty large for one person to sleep in, and noticing a downward slope, there was room for expansion when I get stone equipment.
My stomach made very uncomfortable noises. Well, I was getting hungry so I sat on the floor with my bag to the side, I used one of the chests as a table and ate my lunch, It was a pretty cold lunch; it had four scoops of rice on the first compartment and tempura and karaage on the last compartment, sprinkled in with some cabbage and carrots. I would've loved to plant the carrots but it was already cooked so I couldn't.
It was a filling dinner, but now I didn't have anything to wash it. Well, I'll look for a river tomorrow, so there was no stressing over it.
....
Late at night
I could hear some kind of rumbling, a light shortly burst with my phone notification chime playing, but I ignored it, it was probably just a game of mine. I made sure there wasn't any signal anyway.
The Next Day
I woke up, checking the time on my phone; it was 12 PM already, half a day wasted on sleeping.
"Ah fuck" was all I needed to say, I was hungry, I decided to look through my saved videos, but something caught my eye before I did that.
"Real-Time General has finished downloading?" I read aloud, What the fuck is Real-Time General? But before I could ask, something occurred to me.
That was what that light was! And THERE WAS FUCKING SIGNAL LAST NIGHT?!? I waited and waited to see if there actually was a signal, but to no-one's surprise, there was nothing—nada, NOTHING.
So how the fuck did this app get downloaded and installed? Beats me, beats my phone too! I tried calling emergency services back then and that didn't work!
"AH WAIT! FOOD!" My mind was a mess. I should prioritize getting food and water first before worrying about some app getting mysteriously downloaded!
I embraced the second day of sucking; there was a waterfall 5 minutes from here, I made a trail using a long stick and beat the ground with it, I also made markings on the trees too, just in case, It was my first time in a while seeing a waterfall this beautiful, it was peaceful, there was no stagnant water, so it shouldn't be dangerous; and I was upstream too, which meant that I had a limited chance of getting sick from this water. Next was food, though, I didn't know how to make a net, so I scoured through the videos I had, One of the videos told me I needed to make string, which was obvious, of course.
The question was...
Where do I secure string?
I looked through the video and luckily it had a segment on that, which was supposed to be super obvious, but I for some reason didn't think about until the last second.
I looked for a tree where the bark could be separated and used, I managed to find one but there was a limited supply of them, so I had to plant more, I decided to relocate them near my cave in the future once I get a proper axe, The cutter I had just wasn't going to last a long time, same with my scissors.
Starting a fire close to camp was also essential to the string-making process. The video explained that I had to boil the bark to make it, then coil it around to make it thinner but stronger. The process would take me hours until I finally managed to make the net. It was almost the second night, so I decided to eat two of my biscuits. All I had for food left was four more biscuits and two granola energy bars. I had an unlimited source of water now, so I didn't need to worry about it.
To make myself full, I had to drink more than I needed to and ration the biscuits; it wasn't that effective but I had to do it in order for me to survive.
Night came an hour later, I had my phone charging on one of my solar power-banks I brought and used it as a lamp to write the things that I had done in a binder notebook; this acted as my logbook/diary.
It was strange to me, now that I recall, there didn't seem to be any animals here, there weren't even any birds nor bugs, The only source of food that I could rely on was the fish swimming peacefully in the somewhat shallow pond connected to a river, There should've at least been an encounter with a deer when I walked to the waterfall to drink.
Something felt odd about the forest, I had this feeling on the first day here, I know that I might be overly suspicious but there's this uneasy feeling between me and the environment here.
"Just where the hell am I?" I asked myself.
I ended the log on that note and opened my phone.
It was already fully charged so I detached the cord and played an offline game about connecting color-coded dots to their partners.
Then I remembered the game that got downloaded; I exited out of the game and looked for it on my home screen...
I stared at it for a second, then tapped on it.
A loading screen was what greeted me, an image of a tank and a couple of soldiers from the 2nd World War, then the image switched to a dogfight between four planes with a battleship getting bombarded, then it turned into a tank battle, The eras would change, from World War II to the Cold War to the Modern Day to some sort of Semi-Modern Semi-Futuristic Era with Spaceships and stuff, but the loading screen ended, I took a glance around the menu, it was like a clash of clans rip-off honestly, it kind of sucked as I skipped the tutorial.
Then the busty woman in an Army Officer's uniform disappeared; she asked me to select a nation.
The menu showcased all of the major nations in the war, there was Japan, Germany, Italy, the USA, the UK, France and the USSR, I was honestly surprised this game even knew that the French were a major power, I thought it was going to be another one of those cheap and somewhat lackluster CoC Historical twist type of games.
There didn't seem to be any buffs or debuffs when selecting a country so I decided to pick Germany, it was purely cosmetic and I really liked the uniforms, it was a shallow reason.
The next prompt that showed up was to pick alliances.
Maybe they meant alliance? I decided to pick the Axis since I was playing as Germany; it would be pretty funny to choose the Allies though.
Then the last prompt was asked.
'Please enter your name: General.'
I decided to name myself "General Heinrich."
I thought that was the last prompt, but now the game asked me a weird question...
"Would I like to build the base here or would you like to build somewhere else?" I hesitated so I picked to build somewhere else—a strange question but I didn't think anything of it.
It suddenly revealed a map, I checked the map closely...
"W-what the..." The map was showing a live satellite feed of where I was! J-Just how?!?!?
"I was thrown here on purpose!" I jumped out of the ground I called my bed and zoomed out of the area; I could see it.
I could see...
Everything...
From where I was to where I needed to go, there was a small village a few hundred kilometers from here, but it stopped just where I was at; it immediately zoomed back in on my cave, and to where the grassy plain was...
I tapped on my current location, and an error appeared.
"Not possible; please select a site with a clearing, General Heinrich!" The game said.
'I wonder if a base will actually be built there...' I decided to tap on the grassy plain.
"Good choice, General Heinrich!" The game congratulated me, showcasing drone shots of the place being built out of thin air. I watched as a massive headquarters was built with multiple gun towers, a barracks, and a rally point.
"Just what kind of sicko... Just where was I?" I only watched in shock as the final piece was finished.
It was finally done...
"Welcome to Real-Time General!"