Smells of leaves filled the air. The rustling sound of trees ran around his ears. The soft and spiky grass danced around his feet. The waves of the water were a feast for his eyes. That dying man was the joy of his day. Wait, I got it wrong, this is the perspective of an animal. Now where is Callan…


    Ahhhh!!! I never learned how to swim! Oh yeah, he was in the pond. Callan was drowning, literally. He spawned in the middle of a small pond. For someone who could swim, it would have been easy to get out. There were no animals in the pond either, it wasn’t much of a problem. But Callan, he doesn’t know how to swim.


    Just keep kicking! Kick! Kick! Gather water with your hands! Callan struggled. It was like a dog and a frog combined. “Blrlblr!” It was the ugliest form of swimming the world will ever see. And it’s funnier that he was drowning every turn of the step to land.


    Callan struggled, but eventually, he made it. “Ahhhhh!!! What the fuck!” He was hugging the grass. The soil turned dark and ate a little of Callan’s body. His legs spread. His arms were stretched. He laid face front to the ground. And his face was facing the side. As his ears got played by the grass. Which was starting to feel uncomfortable.


    “Ahhhh!” He stood up immediately from shock. He wriggled his ears with his pinky and washed it down with water. He soon did notice his entire body was now colored mud and his white shirt was now colored black.


    [Welcome To The Second Floor]


    [Retrieve The Treasure Beneath The Pond]


    “Say what?” His body shivered. His gulp was louder than the forest. Callan stared at the depths of the pond. It wasn’t that big but it sure was deep. The water was clear, it was beautiful and captivating. There was not a single animal in the water. Nor was there any dirt floating. The only thing on the pond was the leaves floating above it.


    With that pond described, you now know that the pond’s bottom is visible from the very start. But what if it was visible? That was the problem, it was visible. Callan kept on gulping his saliva.


    “Fucking hell…” Callan took off his shirt and his pants, leaving only his underwear on. “Muscles my ass, I look like a twig hahahahaha.” Callan wasn’t a scaredy cat. Or whatever other words you can call someone like that. He fought a goblin, a monster he had never even seen in his entire life. In real life at least.


    But such a thing will still make you fear it. But Callan… he wasn’t really someone who fears death. More like he just feared of not achieving anything before he died. But before learning how to swim, he first lowered his head. “Man! I was so thirsty!” He drank the pond water, he didn’t care if it was healthy or not. Water is water.


    So, Callan jumped in the water and started training to swim. How do you swim? Well, I don’t know. Neither does he.


    Callan just started to wiggle his feet to first learn how to float. Running for an hour wasn’t as tiring as just trying to swim. Whatever the reason was, Callan looked stupid doing it.


    Wiggle and wiggle. Wiggle your feet making your engine fleet. It was going to take ages before Callan could swim properly. And so he just did another routine. Try to swim and also train his breathing.


    The pond was as deep as 5 times the size of the trees. It was incredibly deep. Way too deep. And Callan couldn’t hold his breath that long. At the same time, it didn’t even seem like there was something under the pond. What was he supposed to gather there? Nothing? Just reach it? Dirt? A stone?


    Well, I wouldn’t bore you with the swimming of Callan. Time passed and Callan started to get hungry. He was already hungry when he was just staying on the ground in the endless white void, but Callan was someone who was trained to not eat. Not because of some religious training. No, it was because he was someone who didn''t do it till he was reminded of it.


    He was always so focused on writing and playing that sleep and food were just a waste of time. Unlike water, being hungry just makes your stomach grumble, it disappears soon enough. But thirst wasn’t something like that. Your saliva will never be enough to just be water. And your body really needed water more than food.


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    But at this point, it will almost be 2 days and Callan hasn’t eaten anything. In his progress, he has started to finally be able to float for a full 20 seconds. It wasn’t actually perfect, he seemed more like someone calling for help while drowning.


    But that has taken way too long, and food was now needed. Callan didn’t take his white shirt and headed towards the forest. He first picked up some rocks and leaves to use for marking. “Well… I could try to make a weapon.” For a story, which is now seeming to be such an advantage for Callan. He once searched how things were first discovered. And one thing that intrigued him the most was making rope from tree bark fibers.


    Callan doesn’t know trees, so he doesn’t know what trees were the best used for making a rope, but he did know he just needed tree bark and that the best thing to use was dead tree bark.


    “There! A ripped-off bark. Ok, so I just have to pull this...” Callan didn’t know everything perfectly so please don’t nitpick his process. “Ahhhh!!” Callan yelled as he used his whole strength to rip apart a loose tree bark. It took him more force as he pulled out almost half the entire tree.


    “Ok, this wasn’t how you do it… do you…” Remember this is fiction, if you want it to be correct, then fuck you! Just kidding.


    Callan picked the thinnest tree bark he could find and just ripped it from the thick piece of trunk he pulled out. “Ok, so I just… oh!!! This is much easier than I thought.” There were many pieces of tree fiber already loose. Callan just kept pulling and pulling. It was like trying to pull apart pieces of chicken.


    After he completed the piece of bark he got. He continued with the others. And because the task wasn’t that tiring or took a lot of energy. Just like his normal life, Callan got distracted and forgot that he was supposed to hunt food.


    He pulled so much tree fiber that you could sleep on it and it kind of feels good if you don’t pay attention to the pain of lying down on wood. Callan slept, he slept like a baby on top of the wood fibers. And so a few hours passed and he woke up from the pain in his stomach.


    He was once again hungry. “Shit, I forgot to eat! Wait? I’m not in my house… I’m in a forest…. And I forgot to hunt food… hahhh…” Callan had enough tree fibers to make a long rope. In actuality, the amount was far too much. Callan was just planning on making a simple wooden spear. But with that amount of rope, you could almost make a hammock.


    “Ok, I will first look for a sharp enough stone.” It wasn’t that hard to find stone. The pond was full of it. And Callan didn’t even need to swim. It was just lying there in an area you could walk on. So, after a minute of looking, Callan was able to find a perfect stone that was sharp enough to puncture anything.


    “Well, time to make my rope.” I’m tired of talking, you can just listen to Callan as he narrates himself. He is an introvert, the person he has talked to the most was himself.


    “I just place all this together… 1 bark, 2 fiber, 3 bark, 4 fiber. Ok, I don’t know what to call this thing. Is this a bark or a tree fiber? Ehhh who cares.”


    “Ok now that’s thick enough… wait it might be too thick…”


    “Ok, a thumb thick is enough. The fibers or bark are not that thick and it’s very str-o-ng!!! Tooo!!!”


    “Man that was hard to break…”


    “Now I just need to spin them together. Now one end goes to my feet. Step on ya bitch! Ok, now I’ll just make a spiral out of these fibers.”


    “Ok, now… how do I tie this… I just make a knot right? Yeah, a knot sounds good.”


    “Ok, so a branch that is both long enough and also wouldn’t bend.”


    “There! Perfect. Ok so now I just place the rock to the side and then tie it together with my rope.”


    “Well… I didn’t expect to run out of rope… guess I just have to make more.”


    “Ok there! Finally! A stone spear!”


    Callan raised his spear to the sky! Also, I’m back. Callan wanted to test the power of his spear. He faced a tree and inflicted a blow at it. It left a hole as big as a fist, it didn''t even take that much strength either.


    “Shit! That was good! Ok, now… to look for something to eat…” Callan couldn’t stop but hear his stomach scream. It was painful, but he could handle it.


    “Now to the forest, I go.” Callan walked into the forest as he left tree bark on the ground as a mark. The forest was vast. He couldn’t even see the end. All he could see was the bright sun above the sky.


    “Grr!” Callan may have fought with goblins. But that was something in an open area. That fight could be won as long as you have the willpower and strength. But a fight in the forest. Now that’s a different conversation.


    “Ughh!!” Callan was tackled by an animal. He was pushed back and hit the tree to his side. Fucking ambush!