"That's…"
Theo stared at the system prompts floating before his eyes, not sure how he was supposed to even comment on those.
Yet, prompted by the feeling, he moved towards the nearest tree and then reached out towards it…
Only for absolutely nothing to happen.
'Well, that doesn't tell me much, but…'
Theo pressed his lips together.
'If I start slamming my bare hands into it only for a cube of wood to be removed from its trunk while the rest of the tree will just… float mid-air, I won't get struck down by the almighty Copyrightous, will I??'
Eager to check the extent of his system, Theo closed his fist and took a deep breath, before slamming it into the tree's trunk.
[Logging: 3%]
"Auch!"
Not even the new system prompt popping up before his eyes could win over the stinging pain of slamming his knuckle into solid, hard wood and bruising his skin against the sharp ridges of its bark.
Still…
"So it's possible, huh?" Theo muttered to himself, torn between exaltation and despair.
'Well, this is real life. It's kind of obvious my hand would hurt if I did that. The question for now is, however,' Theo's face darkened a little, 'do I have to just grit my teeth and do it, or is there another way to go about it?'
For now, Theo learned an important lesson.
There was a difference between just reaching out with his hand to harvest something, a process that appeared to only cost time, and actively trying to gather some sort of resource—even if he was to do it through something as stupid as trying to beat the shit out of that poor tree.
'Maybe it has something to do with the size of what I'm trying to pick up?'
Noting down the observation for later, Theo temporarily retreated away from the forest's edge.
"They wouldn't call this place an execution ground if it's just about surviving in the wilderness," he muttered to himself, strategically turning his back to the massive wall so that he could keep his eyes on the forest—just in case.
'And my mission would likely be something else than just… surviving the period of my banishment.'
"Oh, on that note…"
Eager to raise his odds of survival even higher, Theo stretched his hand out towards the ground and… willed for something to happen.
Yet, just like it was with the tree, this clearly wasn't enough.
'Maybe if I…'
Before he could even fully form the thought, Theo closed his fist and fell down on his knee only to punch the ground with it.
'Still nothing…'
Puzzled by the lack of consistency, Theo squinted his eyes.
"Maybe I need to make the actions a bit… clearer?" he muttered as he opened up his hand and then brought it back to the ground again, as if to shovel the grass and dirt below it away.
[Digging: 7%]
Finally, the progress bar appeared!
"Heck yeah!"
Forgetting about the potential dangers of the nearby forest, Theo failed to control his voice as he exclaimed in jubilation, only to quickly cover his mouth and cast a sweeping glance ahead.
Thankfully, save for the treetops dancing on the slight winds, the forest didn't move. And while that couldn't be a proof there were no monsters creeping up its edge… as it was something Theo had no control over, he decided to simply not waste his time worrying about it.
Yet, this quick check on the forest came at a cost. For with the action now broken, the progress bar vanished, leaving Theo with nothing but a handful of grass and dirt stuck on his hand.
"Well," he muttered, making sure to lower his voice to a safe level of a mere whisper, "let's take care of my safety first."
With a clear goal in his mind, Theo shoveled with his hand at the ground, summoning the progress bar once again. And just like expected… the former progress vanished.
[Digging: 7%]
[Digging: 14%]
[Digging: 21%]
…
…
…
[Digging: 91%]
[Digging: 98%]
[Digging: Completed!]
Poof!
Just as Theo came to expect, a cube of roughly half of a meter long side suddenly vanished out of existence, only to reappear in the form of yet another system window.
[Dug out: 1 block of earth]
Theo raised up from the hole he just dug out and shook his hand to let it rest after the slight exertion.
'Just how much of a lazy bum was this body in the past, for something so simple to already tire me out, even if only a bit?' he despaired, only to shake his head, grit his teeth… and then get back to digging.
He excavated one block down the already existing hole only to then drop down and repeat the process again.
[Dug out: 1 block of earth]
"Woah!"
Knowing what was supposed to happen, Theo braced himself for the sudden loss of footing… but even prior knowledge didn't stop his body from panicking when the ground literally popped out of existence right below his feet!
Yet, rather than despairing, Theo grabbed at the ground around him… and started to climb.
In theory, he could just dig a staircase out for himself for an easy way out of the hole, but doing so would defeat the purpose of his plan. Only when he finally managed to climb to the point where he could comfortably sit down on the hole's edge did Theo breathe a sigh of relief.
'Now, if something were to try to jump me, I can just drop down and…'
Realizing the one flaw of his plan, Theo searched through all the system prompts for the one crucial element of his system that he didn't inspect yet.
No matter how hard he searched though, the pop-up window for his inventory simply wasn't there!
"Just where the hell is it…?" he asked himself, clenching his fists as frustration started to settle in his heart…
Only for the very window he was looking for to appear out of nowhere, listing out all the items stored in his inventory in a clear and extremely familiar array of various images decorated with a simple number in their bottom-right corner.
'One stone and three blocks of earth,' Theo thought, confirming the details of his inventory before focusing on the latter…
And by doing so, invoking yet another change to his vision.
This time, however, it wasn't a system notification window.
No, this time, an overlay suddenly covered his vision, adding up a transparent, bluish cube that followed wherever he looked. Only when he brought it over to his hole, eager to ensure he could close it off at will, did the color of the projection change from blue to red.
"Right, I can't place it if I'm in the way, huh?" Theo thought, only to dismiss the whole overlay with but a thought and then lean back as he looked up to the clear, blue sky, leaving nothing but his inventory.
'Now, what am I supposed to do next?' he thought, weighing all sorts of different ideas that popped up in his head.
Clearly, this wasn't just the direct clone of the system Theo knew from the world's most famous block game, not with the progress bars, not with how he could pick up smaller objects by simply fanning his head over them for a few seconds.
His abilities, whatever they were, were different… and yet still familiar enough for him to understand how they worked by raw instincts, raw gut.
That, however, left him in quite the pickle.
"No matter what, the next step would be to get some wood, huh?" Theo muttered to himself as he raised his eyes up to the trees ahead.
"The question is, do I yolo it?" he muttered, gritting his teeth as he realized that with each passing second, he was starting to like his current circumstances more and more. "Or do I try to be as careful as realistically possible?"