On the river, Hunt sent me out to collect wood to make a fire, while he tried to catch some fish for dinner.

I used the assessment skill again while I was collecting wood. However, I got a small nosebleed, which didn’t affect me much and stopped the assessment.

With plenty of wood collected, and the bleeding stopped, I returned to where Hunt was. He was behaving oddly.

I approached him to ask him what he was doing and after he told me to shut up. I could see him moving, knowing how the fish would move. I had them all totally spotted.

He jumped into the water, submerged completely, the river barely covering him, at most reaching his knees. But he dove in flat. When he came out, he had a fish in his hands. He threw it to me and told me to evaluate it.

It was a Bartom, a non-poisonous fish for human consumption. The fact that surprised me the most is that the fish also had the same stats as Hunt and me. It had 10 health and 5 mana. But the skill slots were empty.

After confirming to Hunt that we could eat the fish, he set to work and landed 3 more. While he was fishing, if that can be considered fishing, I tried to make the fire.

It took me a long time to get a small flame. But the wood I got earlier was very dry, and it ignited in a few seconds. We inserted the fish on a stick and cooked them slowly as it got dark.

+Exp, +Exp, +Exp.

Every time we took a bite of that fish we moved up a level. The notifications were annoying so Hunt taught me how to remove or rather mute them.

We dined in the moonlight. The leftover fish we decided to save for another time.

Before storing them I evaluated them, the food had a timer. “Preferential consumption” 2879:35:456. According to Hunt it would take 2 days for them to go bad.

To be on the safe side we stoked the fire and slept in shifts. I offered myself first so that he could rest, as he was the one who had been fishing most of the day.

In the morning after washing our faces, we continued walking down the river, hoping to find some kind of village or town. But we found nothing.

Despite spending a day walking it didn’t look like we were anywhere near a human trail. I spent the whole day assessing plants and rocks. I could have assessed over 100 types of new plants and over 23 types of rocks that I had never seen before.

At night, already hungry, we decided to eat the fish from the night before, and it was then that I realised what a great power we had, and how formidable the item box ability was. The consumption time of the fish had not dropped even for a second. Moreover, they were still warm.

Hunt and I asked ourselves hundreds of questions: Is it another dimension, is it in an adiabatic box, is there air inside, what is the pressure inside? As engineers, the analytical vein did not come out and we were experimenting most of the night.

That morning we decided to catch as much fish as we could and cook them so we could move on without worrying about food.

We stocked an immense amount of fish. There seemed to be no end to our inventories. We spent all day cooking and fishing.

As we saw no sign of civilisation we decided to stay in the forest and build a base or camp ourselves.

We went several metres into the forest to make a hut.

We collected sticks and logs, but as we didn’t have any tools we couldn’t do much. So before we started we went back to the river and rummaged around in the river bed and found a few stones in perfect shapes to make knives.

Our performance as prehistoric craftsmen was not what we thought it would be. We tried our best to create a sharp stone but we didn’t succeed.

Defeated, we returned to where our house was to be and arranged the logs in such a way as to recreate a shelter.

But we didn’t get the chance to go in when a giant wild boar hit our shelter. It had cost us so much.

It was a huge boar, probably over two metres tall and weighing several tons. It had red skin and a black crest running all the way down its back. Two tusks like two swords had us in their sights.

The Animal stopped after tearing our creation apart and a deep growl paralysed us.

[< Name >] : ” Drink crimson demon boar “.

[< Age >] : 5

[< Level >] : 150

[< Life points (HP) >] : 1500

[< Magic Points (MP) >] : 800

[< Damage >] : 1010

[< Defence >] : 900

[< Agility >] : 590

[< unique ability >] : ” ” [< special ability >] : ” [< ability >] : Super

[< Status >] : hungry.

We were lucky because I was able to analyse the Boar. And communicate all the details to Hunt. After analysing it I could only think that the animal was passing us over 100 levels and how it was possible for us to defeat it.

Hunt stopped, facing the boar. Like a toreador he dodged the boar at the last second. Hunt signalled to me, to run in one direction.

The animal charged into a large tree, despite having a large diameter trunk, the boar broke the tree in two and took a few moments to get up.

We ran until we came to a cliff, Hunt had something planned as he probably saw something with his mapping ability.

We were surrounded by the emptiness of the cliff and the dangerous wild boar that followed us at high speed.

Hunt stood in front of me, with one hand outstretched in the direction of the Boar and the other hand pointing into the void of the cliff. And in an instant, Hunt opened the entrance to his item box with one hand, the boar entered, closed the portal, and opened it again with the other hand. The boar exited the inventory at great speed, crashing to the ground in a violent manner that ended its life.

But luck was not on our side, the piece of land we were standing on collapsed and we fell off the cliff.

Imitating Hunt, I opened the portal to my inventory and he fell in. While I was falling, I tried to open the portal at the base of the cliff, but could not.

I felt that the fall was infinite. I felt like I was on a roller coaster. I thought of Hunt, who acted bravely to defend me, I couldn’t let him alone look like a Hero.

I was trying to open the gate again and again, the stress I felt was comparable to the minutes before an exam. In the last few metres, I was able to open it. Hunt was coming out slowly, but not completely out. I shouted for him to summon his item box.

I fell into his doorway, inside the darkness was total, I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move and after a few seconds it opened again, I got out gently and lay down on the floor.

We sat on the floor to catch our breath, stared at each other and started laughing. We nearly died several times in less than 10 minutes.

It took us both a few minutes to stand up from the panic we felt.

●— That was amazing, I said as I patted him on the back.—

■— Not as much as your reaction when we fell. He said as he stood up.—

We caught our breath. We decided to perform a macabre experiment as the body of the boar. It seemed to be almost intact. Using item box we dismantled the boar into several parts.

According to our experiment, if an object protrudes from the portal. It was divided into two parts, one inside the inventory and the other part remained outside.

We never spoke about this “technique” again, we decided never to use it against anyone or anything, it seemed too cruel.

Days went by and we were still in that damn forest. Despite walking hundreds of kilometres we found nothing.

When we ran out of fish, we decided to eat the boar meat.

We prepared the meat as best we could, on a small fire. The taste of the meat was strange, it tasted like cardboard and was chewy.

We were so hungry that eating that meat didn’t seem so bad. When we finished eating, we cooked the other parts to save them so that we could eat them later.

Out of a spark of curiosity I decided to evaluate myself after eating that meat. An icon appeared on the right hand side.

Altered state speed increased by 10%, I analysed Hunt, and he also had this new state.

●— He, Hunt, by ea ng this meat, we are granted an altered state that increases our speed by 10%.—

■— This means that if we eat another piece, it will increase our speed even more.—

I don’t think so, there is also a 10800 second timer. Time of the altered state.

■— Exactly three hours. When the effect is over, we have to test how many grams we have to eat to get the effect.—

We continued to run through the forest, taking advantage of the head start. As we are engineers we don’t have a lot of physical capabilities so we had to take several breaks.

I guess every cloud has a silver lining, and just as we were about to despair and return to the river, we found a hut in the middle of the forest.

It was abandoned, filth and an unpleasant smell greeted us.

The hut was small, with only one room. It had three beds, a table with two benches and a single chair. A small fireplace and a wooden cupboard.

In the chair sat what we assume to be the owner. He appeared to be long deceased. Using evaluation, I was able to find out his name and cause of death.

According to the description, he died of an illness.

In one of his hands he held a letter. Hunt picked up the letter to read it and realised that despite being in another world we were able to read that language.

The letter in question had two pages. On one of them we could find a poem for his wife and on the other side, a story for his son.

Both were written with love. Each sentence reminded us of the family we left behind.

The other sheet of paper contained so much text that there were almost no borders or letter spacing.