Kay opened his eyes, thin rays of sunshine bouncing off his face. He turned from his makeshift bed, to see the moth girl shift around in her tree, waking up. The words of the god echoed in his mind. Of course he didn't know the girl's exact age, but she couldn't have been older than 10, yet she'd already died in her original world.
She gently leaped down from her perch, softly floating to the swampy ground with the assistance of her wings. Kay thought that they seemed pretty useful, even if they didn't allow her to fly.
"So, I guess we'd better find that tower, huh?" said Kay awkwardly to the girl, unsure how to address her now that he knew she shared his circumstances.
He wasn't able to interact with her the same as yesterday. The knowledge that she had died at such a young age lingered in his thoughts. She had probably lived a hard life, it would've explained why she seemed so self-sufficient.
"I'm sorry to say this… Wait, no I'm not. I'll be heading there by myself," said the girl, gathering up the few supplies she'd gathered yesterday.
It wasn't much, but she took half the mushrooms and other plants she had foraged for them, as well some of the flint for starting fires.
"I thought we'd travel together," said Kay with a hint of desperation.
Even though it hurt his pride to admit, he would be lost without the little girl as his guide. Reaching the tower quickly would seriously affect his future; he needed her help. Though, he sadly knew the same couldn't be said about the girl.
"Now that I know this is a race, you'll only slow me down," she said, having finished loading the pockets of her plain white dress with all her supplies. She gave one last look at the overgrown man she'd known for a mere day, with a fraction of pity in her cold, dark eyes.
"I wish I could help, but my future depends on this."
Just like that, she left, darting through the maze of trees, leaving her former partner standing dumbfounded and alone.
It took Kay almost an hour to accept the stark reality of his new circumstances. The unwelcoming jungle that he'd bumbled around for yesterday suddenly seemed brimming with danger. Aside from the small amount of mushrooms, nuts, and berries the girl had left him, he had nothing.
Studying his surroundings, he realized that he hadn't paid much attention to where the girl had led him the day before. He thought he remembered the location of a nearby pond, but that provided little solace. Trees loomed around the small clearing where the pair had settled last night, and with little light passing through the canopy of trees, the enclosed world felt startlingly dark.
So, to recap, he was in a totally unfamiliar environment, had no weapons to defend himself from the beasts of the jungle, and had nobody else to relay one. Yeah. he felt pretty screwed. His lack of self-confidence only made matters worse. Though he considered himself booksmart, being thrust firsthand into an unfamiliar situation he found himself clueless on how to proceed.
After going over his limited options, he decided to follow the direction the girl had headed in. With his weight in mind, he knew he would never be able to match the swift girl's pace, but hoped that something might come of following her lead. He knew that expert hunters tracked animals with signs like broken branches and footprints, but Kay knew that such things were beyond him. Faced with no other choices, he could only move forward.
Moving into the thicket the girl had run into, he immediately ran into trouble. The trees were spaced enough that the girl had been able to fit pass, however, someone of his weight would not.
So, he altered his course slightly to the left towards a less thick part of the forest. When the trees to his right began to thin, he figured that he could go in the direction he'd seen the moth girl head in. He hesitantly advanced.
Soon, he ran into another problem. Though the god's words echoed in his head, urging him towards the tower, his body seemed to have other ideas. After spending the last day trekking in an unfamiliar environment each of his body parts seemed to have something to complain about. His legs were strained from fighting against the squishy pull of mud benarth his every step. A dull pain in his head was building, perhaps due to lack of hydration, and of course his stomach complained that it wasn't getting enough to eat.
Though the moth girl had been kind enough to find some edible vegetation for him the night before, he had quickly worked his way through his limited resources. After the girl had abandoned him, hungry and stressed, he had foolishly devoured his remaining food, which didn't help. The meager offerings of the jungle weren't substantial enough to satiate his hunger. Furthermore, he didn't even remember what the plants had looked like, so he was unable to find more.
Every hundred feet or so his stomach would tremble, begging for more food, and for the first time in his life Kay was forced to ignore it. Yesterday had convinced him that he was totally out of his element. The moth girl clearly knew how to forage, and he did not. Afraid of poisoning himself with bad mushrooms or berries, he was forced to endure his hunger pains.
He stumbled through the jungle until his body gave up, which wasn't more than a couple hours. Heaving, with the remaining water of his body clinging to his suit in the form of sweat, he was completely spent. Night would fall in a mere hour, and he wanted to find someplace to rest, though finding a good spot proved to be challenging.
Far deeper into the forest than he'd been yesterday, the trees and vegetation were thicker which meant more competition for space. Sprawled between various trees were spider webs spanning a length of several meters with fist-sized spiders crawling above.
He walked a little further, only to find trees marked by the claws of some beast.
'I really wish that the moth girl was still here' he thought to himself, though he knew how pathetic that sounded, a grown man relying on a child for help.
Even his attempts at finding drinkable water ended in failure. The only river he could find was being used by a large species of monkey. While some bathed in the steam of water, others sipped greedily from the fresh water, though Kay didn't dare face them. He'd once heard that a gorilla could tear a grown man in half, a feat the group of monkeys seemed capable of.
In the end, he ignored his aching body, backtracking the progress that he'd made today. Finding the camp the moth girl had made for him, he collapsed onto his plant-woven bed; the soft fibers crushed under the force of his tired body.
In his head he went over his situation: no food and not one step past where he started today, not mentioning that had no skills or assets to benefit himself.
"Dammit," Kay whispered under the dark canopy of trees.
Just then, a blaring sound like a siren permeated the jungle. It overpowered the skittering of insects, rustling of leaves, and Kay's thoughts. He wasn't sure, but he thought it came from the direction that he'd seen the moth girl go in. Then, all at once, it stopped. A voice followed.
"Hello, future reincarnators!" the voice of the shapeshifting god pierced the jungle.
"I just wanted to let you all know that one of you has already reached my tower, and they've gotten seven points, as I promised. If I were you, I'd hurry. Well, that's all." said the god.
The transmission cut out, and sounds of the forests returned, couples with Kay's sighs.
If he were made to guess, it was probably the moth girl who had reached the tower first. She looked like she knew where to go this morning. He was happy for her, even if she had abandoned him. Alone it had taken her a day; had he tagged along weeks might've not been enough. This whole contest was beginning to leave a bad taste in his mouth.
He doubted there was a single way in which he surpassed his six competitors, aside from weight. From the brief glimpse he'd gotten in the dream: the knight was stronger, the elf wiser. The cyborg kid had technology on his side, the Japanese businessman looked diligent, and the vampire lady was attractive (useful for the trials, probably not, but it still wasn't fair).
Then, there was the moth girl he'd briefly traveled with. She seemed perfectly suited to whatever trials the god had prepared for them. Kay wondered what kind of life she'd lived to bestow her with that unparalleled adaptability.
Frustrated, he left the threaded blanket the moth girl had made him. Though each step caused tremors of agony to race through his tired body, he forced himself to find the small pond the girl had shown him. It was bad that he was starving, but dehydration was a much bigger threat. A human does live for weeks without food, while water was a matter of days.
Arriving at the pond, he looked into the bluish-green moss infested pool. The area where it was located was slightly less arbourous than the rest of the jungle, letting dim threads of moonlight break through the normally dense forest ceiling. It was a picturesque scene, and exhausted though he was, Kay was forced to admit that maybe the jungle he'd grown to hate wasn't so bad.
Staring into the murky pond water, he'd remembered how he'd heard that you were supposed to boil dirty water before drinking it, but it didn't matter. He didn't know how to start a fire. A small chuckle unintentionally escaped his lips, as he contemplated those words.
"Heard" he mouthed with an abundance of self-loathing. During his forty six years of life, he'd heard many things. He'd heard of fictional characters doing a number of cool things: ending wars, finding love, even simple stuff like being able to start a fire to fight off the cold.
Countless times he had browsed the internet looking for answers: how to lose weight, how to talk to people, and what's the point of life? He found lots of answers, and although he'd read various articles on how to solve his problems, he'd never put anything into practice.
He'd had forty six years to live, nearly five decades to do something with his life. Anything would've been fine: getting married, improving a skill, or even just forging bonds with people around him would've been fine. Yet, at the moment his body had hit the floor, the moment his heart stopped in his singles apartment, he had nothing.
Violently, he thrust his entire upper body into the mossy pool and screamed all of his frustrations into the lukewarm, dirty pond. An eruption of bubbles spilled forth from his mouth, as his lungs filled with water.
At the moment he'd died, Kay thought he'd understood that his life had been a waste. After all, there were so many things he had left undone. However, being thrust into the wilds of the jungle with nothing but his own skills put into perspective how worthless his life had been. It could be said that for nearly half a century he hadn't been alive at all.
Now, he had a chance to be reincarnated and he was going to waste that chance as well. If things continued the way they were going, he was going to be reincarnated in the worst possible circumstances. He had already wasted his past. Was he going to squander his future also?
Choking on the pints of water which had flooded his body Kay pulled his head out of the pond. Falling backwards onto the mud, he coughed and purged his body of the excess liquid. Taking a moment to recover, he sat there breathing deep, plentiful breaths of the jungle air. A moment later he stood, and gazed into the pond.
He was able to make out his haggard appearance. Over the last two days his once pristine suit had been riddled with small tears and caked with dirt. His pudgy face looked gaunt, his shaggy unkempt black beard was frizzy from the humid jungle air. Though his black hair was normally curly and wispy, it now damply clung to his forehead. He looked like crap.
Except, for his eyes. They had always been the one feature he'd taken pride in, the dark blue eyes he'd inherited from his parents, which shone like lapis lazuli. There was a glow to them now, one that conveyed that he hadn't yet given up.