[Moving Phantom Barrier is active. 00:53:52]
Obviously, he’d need to find a decent place to set up, and being in the middle of the mob wasn’t meeting that condition.
He shook away any lackadaisical attitude he might have and started actually using his brain properly.
Whatever this was—whether it was a dream, his imagination, or something else—he’d find out about it in less than an hour. He’d better do his part to increase his chances.
First, he needed to look for a good place with no monsters, but with enough access to resources, like food and water. At the same time, he couldn’t stay here, by the lake either.
This was obviously a place where monsters get their water. Would he want to build right next to that? Water was good, but no one would like to taste alien critters’ bath water, either.
Even if, somehow, the monsters here were cleared, it still wouldn’t be a good place. Looking around and looking at the slopes, this small lake was obviously a natural basin where water would collect.
He didn’t know about the weather situation here either, so he couldn’t risk staying here if he didn’t want to be flushed away by a potential flash flood. He couldn’t even swim; such a thing was a surefire way to kill himself.
He knew all these things because he had befriended an urban planner before. He was deciding on where to put his new restaurant, and he started rambling on about the places he chose.
Of course, proximity to water would still be required, so he needed to find a proper compromise for it.
He gulped and stepped forward, looking around. His heart was beating loudly as he stared at the deadly monsters that surrounded him. He moved slowly, not daring to make too many sudden movements.
When he confirmed that they were more interested in his vomit than him, he could finally take a deep breath.
Fortunately, this temporary barrier blocked a portion of sight and smell, too, otherwise they’d be following him around all day, which would’ve made him fail the mission just because monsters were always nearby.
He passed more and more rabid monsters, and he found out that most of them seemed to be in the same species as the other two from before. Well, anyway, both kinds were terrifying creatures, and his stomach felt acidic just by knowing he was surrounded by them.
This was probably why ’death’ was the punishment for failing to do the mission: The monsters would eat him up if he failed.
Finn’s pace increased as soon as he entered the forest, and he immediately started to run.
He took advantage of the barrier to run around the river to find the water sources that led to it. Even if there were no outright streams and if it were underground, there should still be some rough pathways that water from higher elevations would take.
Fortunately, he was lucky and actually found a nice tributary not long after he started moving. It was a shallow stream, no more than a meter wide, but it was enough for him.The rightful source is net
He looked upstream and saw that the gentle slope would, eventually, have a slightly sharper slope and lead to the mountains a few kilometers away. Now, he had less than an hour left, so he couldn’t bother to trek that far at all. However, he could hopefully find a place that met the conditions he needed midway.
Finn increased his pace as he followed the freshwater stream (while also filling up his waterskin). He looked around at the dense forests as he traversed them, memorizing them as much as he could.
Interestingly, at first, it really looked like a normal forest on Earth, except it wasn’t.
He wasn’t an expert on plants, but he hiked a lot, so he did know some things.
For one, Earth definitely didn’t have trees with purple trunks and pink leaves...
Anyway, after a while of running, he encountered fewer and fewer monsters, which was interesting. He soon realized it was because the terrain was getting a little on the narrower side. It was simply cumbersome for those large beasts to move around in places like these.
That said, building right next to a stream might not be practical either. He was afraid of floods and water that could go above his head, so he could get quite paranoid about them.
Water during strong rains would follow the path of the stream, and there was no way he’d be comfortable sitting next to that. He’d build near , though, and maybe he could eventually find a way to channel it to wherever he was.
Of course, that was for later, if he actually survived this shit.
Anyway, from there, he started to diverge a little, aiming to find a place a hundred or so meters away from the stream at most. At this time, he was practically running around the area, looking for a place where he’d find the required 2-meter diameter clear space as "anchor point", whatever that meant.
He avoided areas with dense monster tracks, but not one with a complete absence of them. Absence would not be good either. What if there was a larger monster?
Cringe
However, if there were signs of smaller animals, then it was good. This world seemed to be fraught with terrifying beasts, but also with normal animals (and he was judging purely based on appearance here). If so, they probably evolved in a way they’d survive somehow.
He slowed down his pace now that he was around the area he’d use. He took this chance to do a couple of breathers, also observing the critters appearing next to him, mostly in curiosity.
He watched a small rabbit-like creature with red eyes hop in front of him with a few others. It was creepy but a bit cute, especially compared to the beasts he had seen.
But then a smaller animal went past it and the ’bunny’ opened its mouth— so widely that it ate the thing whole! It was only slightly smaller than it was!
"..."
Never trust cute. Noted.