• Published 12th Jan 2018
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Meta Gamer in Equestria: Odyssey - reflective vagrant



A fairly standard Human is sent to Equestria and transformed story. This time into the form of his own custom RPG character.

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Chapter 2. I Survived. (Wilderness, Part 2)

Once I gave up wandering around aimlessly, just trying to get out, I managed to get my bearings pretty quickly. While I still wasn't sure what way I might find civilization, I was able to learn the area immediately around that lake for about a mile by the end of the second week.

The bark wasn't the best tinder for my fire making kit, but I was able to find other things that smelled less unpleasant when burned and were easy enough to use. I think it must have been the rotten state of the bark. My diet still largely consisted of bugs I could find, and I made a point of searching for them away from my camp at the lake as soon as I was sure I wouldn't get lost foraging, so that I didn't totally exhaust my local resources any more than necessary. The cooking tin was the veritable godsend of my supplies. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to purify water from the lake and I'd have to eat the bugs raw.


I saw bear tracks in the area the first few days into that second week and decided to yank my bedroll into a makeshift hammock up in the trees. It was a pretty stupid move though, because the bear I saw at the lake the morning after seeing the tracks looked to be quite the prime example of its kind: Big, toned, and still young enough to hold dominance in the area for years to come. I knew within moments of seeing him underneath me in camp that he could easily climb my tree if he wanted to. While he didn't seem bothered by me in the tree as he happily sat on the warm ashes of my campfire and chomped on his morning catch, it was pretty clear which of us was the top of the pecking order—and it wasn't me.

I could also see an intelligence in his eyes. Not like the bear was another person, mind. He was still only an animal. I couldn't recall exactly what language, but I had heard rumor that some Native American languages used the same word for brother as they did for bear. Looking into those eyes, I could understand why. I just hoped he understood I meant nothing but respect when he looked up into the tree and stared straight at me. I waited patiently for him to leave, though it did take a little bit of time for him to get up off the comfortable ashes.

Finally, he gave a powerful yawn and meandered off with the ashes making a large white spot on his otherwise brown coat. Once I got down I made a point to spend the rest of my day looking for somewhere, or rather someway, safer to setup camp while keeping an eye out for that bear. For all I knew, the entirety of the area I had mentally mapped was within his turf.


Ultimately, I decided that I wouldn't be able to climb, swim, or crawl anywhere that Ash, as I decided to call him, or some other predator couldn't also get to. I would have to build a shelter that they didn't know how to enter and couldn't simply bust down. After finishing off my reserve of bugs for lunch, I spent all day using my crowbar as a digging stick to dig out a part of a nearby dirt hill to make a den for myself. I knew I had chosen wisely to use the soiled wrappings from my medical kit to protect my hands because by the time I finished they were still sore and one was mildly blistered. I could only imagine what would have happened if I had done it with only the thin protection of my fingerless gloves.

I was getting hungry by the time I had gathered the branches I'd use as a ceiling to make sure the thing didn't collapse on me during the next rainfall. Every time I thought of something I might want to use as a door, I kept shaking the idea out, thinking a predator would just pry open anything I would be strong enough to pull in front of the entrance. Ultimately I resigned myself to skip looking for supper and instead found a thorny bush to uproot and pull into the doorway to act as a deterrent.

With the thick branches solidly embedded into the dirt at the sides of the ceiling, the makeshift den dug a good way upward into the hill to keep water from flooding it and the thorn bush acting as my "attack door", I finally managed to feel safe enough to wrap myself up in my bedroll, tie my attack door to said bedroll as a warning should something manage to yank it in spite of the thorns and work on trying to get some sleep.

There I was, hiding in a crude dirt shelter that took me the better part of a day to build, with a weakly rigged door between me and everything that goes bump in the night around here, on a mostly empty belly, waiting for dawn to bring relative safety again. I couldn't help but be reminded of something.

"Eat your heart out, Minecraft. Hehe..."

I had laughed. For the first time since arriving in this wilderness, I managed to laugh. A bitter laugh, but still a laugh.

* * *

The next morning, I was working on getting my breakfast from a spot a bit further out than my hut, with a pace that was quite impressive considering my empty belly.

With a basic meal in my belly again, I wandered around looking for a sharp rock or something else I could make into a crude knife. I had gone too long without one and I found it was about time I fixed that. Of course, I was also filling my tin with whatever bug and grub spots I found while looking for something sharp. It was only practical.

I had found a few candidates for my knife by the time I went back to the lake to stir up my leftover fire from breakfast. Making anything with blistered hands was hard and I had learned that morning that making a fire with blistered hands was especially hard. So I just made sure I left some coals for getting started on lunch instead of torturing my poor blistered palm again.

The bone I found was too old to hold up to any work, and the heavy lump of flint didn't really want to break off right. But in spite of my lack of any real knapping skill, I managed to use my not blistered hand to get at least a few bits of crude flint that had some sharp sides. When I fixed them to some sticks with a bit of cord pulled from the end of my rope they looked more like miniature axes for play sets than a solid knife, but at least they were blades. I could start carving some wood tools now. I hoped I'd get at least one or two before the thing broke.

It was then I realized I had depended on my crow bar just as much as my cooking tin. It was undeniably the tool I leaned on the most for general purpose, but it was still no blade. It also wasn't a spear, or a snare, or anything I wanted to risk losing in the water trying to fish. But while it wasn't a proper survival kit tool, and even looked like it belonged in a museum rather than a hiking pack, I had grown appreciative of the curved rod of crude iron.

I thought about working on a spear before I ended that day, but then I heard Ash splashing around in the water a bit less down the curved shore of the lake than I was comfortable with. So instead, I decided to take the small victory, pack up my stuff as quickly as I could while being quiet, leave the still quite heavy flint stone at the shore for later and head back to camp to rest up.

As I rested near my den, watching the sky shift brilliantly to the approaching sunset, I saw another one of those winged creatures in the sky, or rather a small flock of them. They looked smaller than I remembered though. These were clearly smaller than I was, about half my size, while the other one I saw on my first day here was at least as big as me.

I still didn't get too good a look at them though, as they were zooming across the sky pretty fast. The one thing I did notice was probably just a trick of the light with the sky changing so fast, but I could have sworn they were colored like pastel candy.

* * *

The next day my blistered hand was feeling even more achy than before, but I figured that was a good sign that it had started healing. Using the sharper side of my crowbar as a weird sideways axe that felt more like a garden hoe, I managed to fell a young sapling. Fixing it under the elbow of my blistered hand's arm and using my flint blade from the day before, I managed to make a crude fishing spear.

"Finally," I called out in another small victory cry as I got the tip sharpened to a point I hoped was sharp enough to spear a fish.


With my newly found spear, I set out diligently on fishing, expecting to fail horribly and be forced to eat bugs for dinner yet again. But surprisingly it only took me about an hour of bumbling around that lake shore to spear a decent sized fish.

"Yes! I'm finally turning my luck-" I started to say as I turned around, only to see myself only a few yards away from a young adult black bear waiting for me at shore.

"Figures..." was all I could say just as he gave a good roar at me.

He had pretty much cut off any chance of me getting to shore. He was barely any larger than me but was clearly able to move faster than me on flat ground and I had about two feet of water slowing me down. I just tossed my fish to shore off to the side, hoping he'd take that, and started backing up into deeper water.

It was just then that I heard more roaring behind me. Turning my head, I saw Ash running out of the woods and into the lake at another nearby part of the shoreline as he ran straight for me.

'Whelp... when it rains it pours' I thought to myself. I only had one crazy idea that might save my hide, and while I wasn't about to second guess myself given the situation, as hesitation inevitably led to death, I was still yelling at myself that it was totally crazy.

I dove, or at least I tried to. I tried to seek refuge deeper into the lake, only to horribly fall into the water right where I was at, caught by the ankle on the underwater plant life.

I tried to wiggle loose to no avail, knowing that Ash was charging full speed towards me. I honestly began to panic, trying to bend forward to untangle the knot and failing. It was right as I slipped at tugging at a part of it that I bent back upright... On my back in the water. Before I could try again, I felt a strong paw that felt almost as large as my chest shove that same chest down into the mud below, sinking me into it a few inches and knocking the air right out of me.

A moment later the paw lifted up, only to have another stamp down on my good arm, sinking it into the mud too. I could feel Ash standing upright on top of my arm and heard his roar through the water. I couldn't pay this much mind though. The only thing my panicking mind cared about was getting some air and getting away from the bears.

I struggled futility under the weight of Ash, my arm not moving in the slightest. I was in such a frantic state that I didn't even know what I was doing for a few moments. I finally got a hold of my marbles again and mentally forced myself to calm down and stop my panicked breathing.


...Wait... Breathing? I was breathing? Underwater? How?


No sooner had I reflexively taken another breath and realized my lungs were indeed still providing life giving oxygen with said breath, I felt my captor shove down harder for a split second and then finally leap off of me.

I just uprooted the plant I was stuck to, sank my bare heels deep into the mud and launched out and up as hard as I could.

I came to the surface and found myself spitting up water as I exhaled. I swam for a few seconds into the lake while getting air back into my lungs.

With a preliminary distance established and the sounds of the bears not sounding like they were following, I dared to turn around to see Ash laying into the other bear. It was then I realized that he wasn't going after me! He was going after the other bear invading his territory! I just happened to be in the way.

I finally managed to get to shore a good ways across the lake, to see the black bear's corpse with Ash standing proud over it. Before pondering what to do next, I saw him snatching up my catch of the day off the shore and going off to lick his wounds without so much as looking in my direction.

"...Much appreciated, Ash. Worth every penny," was all I managed to say.


I could only gather my supplies left on shore, resign myself to my small reserve of roasted bugs for supper again and get away from that lake. I looked down at the corpse of the black bear, oddly not losing my lunch, but rather wishing I had a good proper knife on me. My little wood carving blade wouldn't suffice to cut that thing up right. Constant hunger will do that to a person. All I could do was finish tearing off the leg that was almost torn off, and hang it in a tree for the next day. I just didn't have the nerve to sit out in the open and cook it right then and the smell of blood wasn't a good thing to be bringing back to my den.

I took one last look at that lake before I left. I couldn't help but feel a little frightened. But, as I spit up a little more of the water I had learned I could breathe, another thought came to mind.

"Worth every penny indeed, Ash. Please, don't do it again."

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