chapter 14 annoying things (work in progress)

Daniel was still looking around, it was impossible that everyone would get lost, so obviously, the terrain changed to confound the challenger, and make him die because of the radiation poisoning, Daniel for the first time found himself in a pickle, he remembered every plant and rock on the way but they had clearly changed from how they were before, not only that, even mountains and boulders had moved

he really didn't know how to find his way back to the safe zone, going in a random direction wouldn't help, so he stood in front of the spaceship and knowing from which direction he came from he started to look around, and after a minute he noticed something had not changed, and that was the constellations in the sky, they stayed the same as when he came in

without any technology to rely on, he used the sky as a compass and arrived at the safe zone just in time, the symptoms were growing stronger and he had a high fever at this point

the cold voice taunted "with equipment in this kind of environment it's easy to survive, but without it's a nightmare" then went silent again, he seemed to be telling Daniel that he was still watching

after a few minutes with a total of 40 to 50 minutes of in-game time, without counting his earlier internet research, Daniel had already found something that irked him

Daniel thought that the way radiation poisoning works in this game was totally unrealistic, at home he would need powerful healing and purification spells to heal, but here the radiation was just slowly dispersing from his body on his own along with the symptoms, what kind of goodly being does this body belong to? so he sighed and said with some disdain without even noticing "after all it's just a game"

then Daniel started reflecting on what happened and what he knew from the comments, comparing the knowledge he acquired from the collage he made from the salty comments, he extracted the trustworthy usernames and erased the one who wrote wrong information, making his knowledge more complete and secure

after resting for a while he started to suppose the real order the mission parts should be completed in, even if he went for the broken suit, and should repair it and complete the first part, he started to doubt the trap was even deeper than what he originally thought "if I go now for the trixium I can probably go but the acid will corrode the suit even more without the hazard protection active, and repairs might be impossible afterward, I can only use it when I finally locate the backpack and repair it, I'm starting to think the poisonous zone it's the last one I should go in"

with equipment, in this kind of environment, it's easy to survive in, but without it's a nightmare, the cold voice was right, but some people ignored the mission objective and entered the other zones to explore thinking the objective was a trap, this went to Daniel advantage he now knew thanks to the past challenger what the cold zone and the hot zone contained more or less, especially after refining the knowledge in the radioactive zone, and was able to determine what the next step was, the hot zone

Daniel left Gregosh's suit on the ground in the safe zone, and was now looking at his status, he was still in perfect health, but he will need water and food in the future, if he went to the hot zone like this, he would soon have problems, so he looked at what he had at hand, and his eyes fell on the fun ball on his neck, this wasn't like the real one and he had an idea, after taking the laser cricket and after setting it to the lowest level he used it to open a hole in the ball, after dumping out all the silvery stuff in it, he used a piece of his leather trench coat to make a leather cork, and a makeshift bottle was made, after he used another piece of the trench coat to make a holster for the laser cricket to attach to the belt on his jeans, luckily even after making a bag with the trench coat there were a lot of excess pieces flapping around, and he was now equipped with a bottle, a holster, and a small bag.

after he finished he went to the force field separating the safezone from the cold zone as he was about to enter a notification popped up

before continuing the tutorial mission a small rest it's advised, do you wish to leave S.L.B ? y/n

Daniel said "not for now" and entered the outskirts of the cold zone, as soon as he entered he filled the makeshift bottle with snow, and immediately returned to the safezone, after all, no one limited the entry and exit from the various zones, so he could take advantage of it, after 10 minutes the snow was melted he drunk it, then re-entered the cold zone to fill the bottle again, and with his new gear, a full water bar, and water bottle, plus a little coldness debuff he entered the hot zone immediately.

the cold voice, who can be referred to as the examiner, was now paying more attention to daniel actions, of all the people that went through the anomaly tutorial very few tried to make things to help them, and the pistol was found by less than 5% of them, this already put Daniel in a better position, the examiner believed that Daniel was just interesting to watch, after all, there aren't many kids with this kind of guts

Daniel started walking in the hot volcanic environment, strange trees who had already turned into charcoal were around him with various rocks some black some yellow, and some almost glowing red from the immense heat, further decorated with strange orange bushes

this was the atmosphere around the gigantic volcano that was in front of him and daniel had to soon change his plans because of the extreme heat, he originally wanted to retrieve the mineral extractor, that according to many comments was in a creature nest halfway up the volcano, but he wouldn't survive the trip like this, so instead he decided to hunt some creatures for food and pelt to challenge the cold zone first

at least he couldn't sweat that would have been really uncomfortable without a t-shirt, he was also not loving the horns of his avatar, as his hair would wrap around them as soon as some wind hit them

anyway he found several snakes and scorpions on the way, luckily they were all weak and small critters that didn't directly attack him, the only brave scorpion was easily defeated with a single shot from the cricket

and here is where the second thing that irked daniel appeared, the scorpion body dissolved leaving 2 transparent orbs, one containing insect meat, and the other containing a poison gland

Daniel said "this is so unscientific" and then kept walking, he didn't like the smell of that meat so he left it there, he still had time before reaching his limit.

soon after a strange noise was coming from behind a large rock, and from how it sounded he immediately knew that it couldn't be a snake or a scorpion so he slowly approached, with the laser cricket in his hand, trying not to make any noises

alas Daniel was not a hunter, and the creature soon heard a feeble noise coming from his steps and run away, but he had a chance to see the creature while it was running, a strange goat with a long fur, blacker than black completely monochromatic

being used at being a prey as soon as she heard noises, the goat started to run like hell was chasing after her at an unbelievable speed "interesting, till now I didn't found any really dangerous creatures, but with this type of reaction, there must be big predators around here"

Daniel would have liked to hunt the goat, but she was too fast, and running behind it would make too much noise and attract the predators, so he gave up on the idea and continued to walk slowly

after a couple of minutes walking in a random direction he heard the sound of an animal suffering, he crouched immediately and started to slowly walk towards the noise, soon he saw the culprit another goat was present, but this one was on the ground and a big 6 meters long red and orange snake of the Boidae family was swallowing it whole while it was still alive

this wasn't one of the puny little snakes he saw till now, but a genuine monster, and a part of daniel was scared of it, even knowing this was a game and the danger wasn't real, for the first time he was feeling genuine fear, but maybe because of the spiritual beast's lessons, he calmed a little, knowing, that a boa snake after ingesting that big goat would not be hungry for more, because of it's slow metabolism, or at least he hoped the game programmed it realistically

he began to slowly walk back, and after seeing that nothing was following, he changed direction and continued walking, daniel was really happy that the snake had already found his dinner, but he also walked more cautiously, because boas are ambush predators so the danger was greater now.

after another 10 minutes as he was about to change direction and go back to the safe zone, he heard a noise again, the same as the one he heard when he meet the first goat, he immediately concentrated on not making any noises, and with the cricket pointed, he slowly walked around to found a clean line of sight and try to shoot it, slowly, he reached a tree and saw the goat eating the orange bushes, he pointed the cricket and shoot, trying his best to aim at the head, the beam hit the goat on the left side of the stomach, but luck was on daniel side and the goat fell to the ground dead, this time three orbs appeared, volcanic goat horn, meat, and pelt.

Daniel approached the orbs and suddenly had an idea, with the scorpion after touching the orbs with his hands the protective layer disappeared, so daniel this time tried a different approach because he didn't want the goat meat to stain his bag, he opened the bag and used it has a net to catch the orbs, and it actually worked, the orbs were inside his bag,

Daniel didn't know if he should laugh or cry and just said again "this is so unscientific" while he started to walk towards the safe zone, he would have preferred, to have more pelt to make more layers of cold-resistant clothing, but he was near his limit and couldn't stand the heat anymore.

while walking back he suddenly got curious as to what the boas would drop, he had never eaten snakes but knew that boas are not venomous so he was suddenly interested, but it wasn't enough to risk facing one of those monsters, so he gave up on the idea, and continued walking, and soon, he was almost back to the zone full of little snakes and scorpions

but he dropped the guard too soon a red shadow lunged at him from under a bush biting his left leg, luckily he was still scared, and even if he dropped his attention a little due to tiredness, his hand never left the cricket in the holster, without even looking he just shot beams at whatever was biting his left leg, and soon realized it was a 5-meter long boa snake, it's strange for this kind of snake to attack humans but daniel is 120cm high in the px55458 avatar

if he was on four legs he wouldn't be much bigger than a goat, in other words, he was the perfect size for dinner, the boa after the bite was ready to strangle him, but the random shots hit it in the head 2 times leaving it stunned and before he could move, daniel who didn't stop shooting till the boa snake stopped moving, consumed half a battery