Chapter 1 “Finding an exit“

Chapter 1

*Swoosh*

A young man with no clothes, except some simple leaves bound around his waist, a bag made of ferns and a black, weird looking spear, jumped over the boulders and rivers. His fine muscles tightening with every jump.

After parkouring for half an hour, he arrived at a huge waterfall. This waterfall came from the water that sinked through the earth and accumulated right at this spot. A big lake was under this waterfall. A river going out of it and going farther than the man could see. Thousands of insects and aquatic creatures were living in and around this lake. 

The man went around the lake, which took him another half an hour. Now, he was standing in front of the waterfall. The heavy, falling water grinding the rocks beneath. 

He jumped right through the waterfall and arrived on a ledge. Around him was a huge canyon. Spreading dozens of kilometers long. This canyon was formed within the cave so there wasn't any sunlight. The canyon itself was so deep that he couldn't see the bottom.

On the opposite side of the canyon was another ledge. That one was being engulfed by the beautiful sunlight that shone through a crack in the earth.

'Finally! It's time for me to escape this cave! I've been stuck in here for so long, that I don't know how much time has passed since my arrival.'

[…]

A year ago within the same cave

'Where am I? A cave?' 

Julian who had just woken up after being brought here by that light didn't know where he was nor why he was there.

'Wasn't I in space when I suddenly went unconscious because of lack of oxygen? How did I get here?'

As Julian was thinking about that, a grumbling noise came from his belly. It felt as if he hadn't eaten in centuries.

'Maybe there is something edible around here?'

He turned his head left and right, looking for a food source. The cave was massive. It seemingly spanned kilometers wide. Him not being able to see the end.

It was also unnaturally high. Hundreds of meters high. It would long have collapsed, if it weren't for the pillars of earth stabilizing it every here and there.

Julian was in a cavern within the walls of the cave. There was a steep way down to the main part of the cave. So he had a good view of how the cave looked.

It look surreal. It had something mystical to it. In this cave was a tropical climate. Huge, tropical trees spreading throughout the cave. Even the smaller plants like the grass was much bigger than normal. About 1 meter high. Vines were hanging from the rocks and stalactites and stalagmites covering the more rocky.

Julian couldn't see any food source, so he started heading down the path to the main part of the cave, but he soon noticed something else. 

"OUCH", he screamed in pain. He lifted up his foot, which still had the shoe on and saw that a pointy rock had stabbed into his boot. Although it wasn't long enough to even scratch his foot. The thing that confused him the most was, that he was bleeding. Not his foot, but his shoe!

"What the fuck is happening?" he mumbled while gritting his teeth.

He tried to take the shoe off but noticed that he couldn't. It was as if it was glued to his foot. The same for his socks, T-shirt, vest and pnats were the same. At that moment he realized that all his clothes weren't just glued to his skin. They were part of his body.

'Maybe because I created my clothes directly with my body they were seen as one organism? That seems to be the only plausible way I can think of why my boot is bleeding.'

After knowing why he was bleeding, he immediately thought of a way to remove his clothes. He knew it would get in his way, if all his clothes got stuck somwhere and ripped. It would also hurt a lot.

So, after sitting down he tried to use the same method he used when he was still in the Void. This time, instead of using his soul to create something, he modified his body back into a naked form and turned the clothes back into his soul essence.

He didn't forget to put his juwels and pistol in their spot.

Afterwards he continued on his way down the path. The wound on his shoe closed up as he returned it to his soul. 

Now, he was careful anywhere he stepped. He didn't want another stone piercing his flesh afterall.

While he was walking down the narrow and steep path, the feeling of hunger in his stomach was getting stronger and stronger. It felt as if he had a hole in it.

Then he saw something blocking the way down. It was an ant. But not a normal one in any way. It was huge. At least half a meter high and two meters long. It's pinchers looked like they could crush his bones easily.

But because of his hunger he didn't care to think as to why it was so big. He saw it as food.

He picked up a sharp and pointy stone and slowly approached the ant from behind.

As he got close enough, he jumped at it, ready to stab it with the stone. 

Julian swung down his hands together with the stone and tried to smash the ant. But what happened next was truly unexpected.

Instead of piercing through the shell of the ant, it just bounced off.

'What the fuck! Is it's exoskeleton made of steel or what?'

After realizing that the ant had noticed him, he dodged backwards.

But it was already too late. The ant used it's pincers to grab Julian by the arm and cut it off.

'FUUUCK!'

Julian's cut off arm dropped to the ground. 

Immediately he rushed back up the path hoping that the ant wouldn't follow. But his hopes were soon smashed by the huge ant following him closely.

'I need to think of something quickly or else the ant will eat me!' At that moment he thought of a way to defeat the ant.

He picked up a sharp stone from the ground and turned around.

After turning around he jumped over the ant's head.

'An ant's weaknesses are it's joints!' He struck down the stone, hitting the ant's joint and beheading it.

'Haha, you damn fucker! That's what you get for cutting my arm off!'

With a victorious smile, he took one of the ant's legs and towed it down the path, not forgetting to take the head with him aswell. Although he still had the strength of his previous body, the ant wasn't all that light.

Soon he arrived at the place where he first met the ant. And his arm was still there aswell.

He stopped towing the ant and instead went to pick up his arm.

'Since I can change my body at will, maybe I can also heal injuries.'

Julian held the cut off parts of the arm together and concentrated purely on connecting both of them again.

'Huh?' While repairing his arm, he actually felt a kind of pain.

'Mmph' The pain was slowly getting worse than getting his arm cut off. But he felt that his arm was slowly reconnecting with his body, so he couldn't do anything but grit his teeth and try not to scream. Since screaming could attract other insects that might even be more dangerous than the ant.

The arm slowly connected itself with his body again. The pain disappeared slowly after aswell.

Julian let out a long sigh 'I hope I don't have to do that ever again...'

With a hungry smile he looked over to the ant. As he made his way to the ant, he was already drooling. He didn't expect it to taste good at all, but he at least knew that he satisfy his hunger with it.

He hastily ripped the exoskeletton open. The green insides looked disgusting, but he knew that this was the only thing he would be able to eat until he got down from this ridge. So he quickly swalowed it in tiny bits, because he didn't want to chew it.

*Ueghh* Julian vomited out the first bits of meat. It really tasted horrible.

'Fuck this shit! When I get out of here, the first thing I'll do is eat proper meat!' Gobbling down the last bits of meat he could eat, he looked at the ants pincers.

'Maybe I could use it as a kind of weapon?'

Walking up to the front, he grabbed one of the pincers and tried ripping it out. This process alone took him 5 whole minutes.

'This ant is really no joke;;'

After taking the pincer he looked at the legs with a childish smile.

He ripped one of the legs apart where the joint was. Waving the leg around in the air he thought that he had a good grip on it. Then he smashed it into the stone wall against him with all his strength. Instead of nothing happening or the leg snapping, it cruhed a hole into the wall.

'What the hell?' Although he anticipated that it wouldn't snap so easily, he didn't think that it would smash the wall.

'Well, lucky for me I guess' Since he didn't have anything to carry the leg and pincer, he had to hold them in one hand each.

A few hours later he arrived on the "ground floor" of the cave. He was already tired, so he gathered a bunch of leaves and branches to build a shelter with.

A few hours later, he woke up, perfectly rested. 

*Yawn* 

'Ok! Now it's time to find out where I am and how to get out of here!' Without another thought, he went to the nearest tree and ripped out some of the tendrils and used them to bind the pincer and ant leg together. He then used the rest of the tendrils to make a body strap to carry this spear on his back. Then he took some fibers to make himself some "underwear".

Then he followed the sound of flowing water to find a river and drank from it.

After preparing himself he went deeper into the forest. The trees were as large as a 5 story tall building and the lower flora were tightly packed on the ground. Making it hard for him to see even a few meters in front. He walked for hours straight until he found a way out of the dense forest. Comming to a nice place with no grass and a cave going into a pile of stone. Next to it there was a river passing by.

'A cave in a cave?' Without another thought he went into the cave.

There he saw a huge bug. Many times bigger than the ant. It was as if a huge truck was in front of him. It's legs were firmly pressed to its body.

'It seems to be dead?' Without thinking much about why it was dead, he went deeper until couldn't go further. It was about 30 meters until the deepest part of the cave. 

3 Months later

Julian made this place his temporary shelter. It wasn't very well made. The only things were: A tent with a straw mat and a campfire fueled by the fibers he found in the forest around him.

When he was looking through the cave to find a spot where he could set up his shelter, he found a strange round, brown crystal which made him feel uncomfortable when he held it in his hands.

As the months passed he grew. It has been 6 months since he got trapped in this cave.

Now standing at 1.80 m tall he was stronger than ever. Ever since he set up his shelter, he trained each and every day. Every time he came across a bug when he was looking for food, he could punch them once and their shell would show cracks. He still used the spear he made the time he got there.

Although his body was made from his soul, since he needed to eat food and drink water to survive, he thought that he should be able to train his body.

Every living being has to abide rules, to be count as living:

 A living being has to be able to move on it's own

 A living being has to be able to metabolize

 A living being has to be able to grow

 A living being has to able to evolve

 A living being has to be irritable

 A living being has to able to reproduce

 A living being is made of cells

Since he the requirement for him being here seemed to be "A living vessel", he had to abide these rules. That meant he could grow and evolve if he trained.

Because he sometimes found interesting and useful things when going out to search for food, he made a bag out of fern and other plants.

'With all the preparations I made, I can finally look for an exit!'

While thinking that to himself, he started walking up the river near his camp, in hopes of finding a way out.

Chapter 1 END