Chapter 4. You Picked the Wrong Fight
[The Origin of Human Civilization! You have discovered fire!]
[Don't Give Up! (3/100)]
“F-fire! Fire! It's fire! Aaah! Huaaah!! Waaah!”
I had no idea how much time had passed in the game, but I had somehow managed to make a fire.
The reason it had taken so long was because my stamina had already been completely depleted, making it difficult to keep working on the fire.
The wood was also damp, as if it had rained.
Of course, my own incompetence played a major role too.
The moment I finally saw a tiny flame, I became so excited that I scooped up some dry grass I had barely managed to find—sand and all—and dumped it straight onto the fire.
The despair I felt at that moment…
Seriously…
If I hadn't known about the Indomitable Will title, I would have given up and turned off the game.
Of course, I would have come back because I was being paid.
Still, it was incredibly fortunate that I managed to make a fire before sunset.
I couldn't see even a trace of a proper house.
But I had my precious fire.
“My… precious… fire…!”
I knew it.
I knew I probably looked like I had lost my mind.
But what could I do?
I had reached the limits of my mental strength, and this was the result.
[The sun has set and the temperature is dropping! If you do not raise your body temperature, you may suffer a status abnormality!]
They sure used a lot of words just to tell me not to catch a cold.
Still, I liked it.
It felt like a proper game.
The exclamation marks at the end of every sentence also gave it a lively feeling that somehow encouraged me.
But what was the problem?!
I had made a fire!
Right?
I made a fire!
Even if this entire forest burned down, I wasn't going to let it go out!
Well, that was true.
I really did intend to keep it burning.
But objectively speaking, my situation wasn't exactly bright just because I had made a fire.
My body was already exhausted to the limit.
It was nighttime.
And I had absolutely no tools or surroundings prepared to protect myself.
If a monster quietly appeared from the darkness of the night and stood in front of me, I was completely prepared to die without being able to do anything.
If this was a game, shouldn't I at least have received one or two basic weapons when I started?
Was giving me one thin piece of clothing really all they were going to give me?
New players receiving starting rewards later wouldn't even know that clothes like this existed.
“If I had known this would happen, I should've asked them to drop me off at some decent-looking village.”
“I'm seriously an idiot.”
There was a saying that someone who was normally calm suddenly changed 180 degrees the moment they got behind the steering wheel of a car.
Apparently, this game was my steering wheel.
Normally, I hated doing anything at all.
But the moment I entered this game, I was sweating while working hard and feeling proud of myself.
And all of this was happening inside a game that had absolutely no effect on my real life.
…Well, testers get paid after they're finished, right?
That makes this a pretty productive activity too.
If I thought of it as a job, I felt better.
And it wasn't even technically wrong.
Rustle.
Rustle.
“Ah.”
[An unidentified beast has been detected!]
A beast?
Didn't animals normally fear fire and avoid approaching people who had a fire?
Had I been mistaken?
I hurriedly stood up and grabbed a burning branch.
It was my only weapon.
“What is it? Where is it?”
“I heard something!”
Crack.
Along with an intense presence so overwhelming that I could barely turn my head, something made a cracking sound right beside me.
“Grrrrrr…”
A huge wolf was standing right next to me.
It must not have felt any heat at all.
It had stepped directly on the campfire I had struggled so hard to make.
It bared its teeth as though it were about to bite me at any moment.
I had apparently been dropped into a high-level area.
Yes.
This was a place inhabited by monsters cruel enough to casually crush the tiny fire I had miraculously managed to create after sacrificing an entire day.
Rustle.
Rustle.
More and more large wolves began approaching from the edge of the light.
They slowly surrounded me.
This was beyond anything I could deal with.
There were too many of them.
And the difference in physical ability was simply overwhelming.
Whoosh!
The wolves clearly understood the difference between themselves and me.
No matter what I did, they didn't care.
They merely made mocking breaths as though laughing at me.
If they had watched me struggle to make that fire, they must have laughed at that too.
That was why, even when I raised the burning branch that represented an entire day's worth of effort, they didn't react.
They simply watched me struggle as though waiting for me to make some final desperate move.
