Day 6.
Kaiser sat on a rock, eyes fixed on the forest canopy. The sky was the same—soft blue melting into faint clouds—but everything beneath it felt alien. Hostile. Unforgiving.
His stomach gnawed at him like a dying thing.
The last can of food was gone. Water he had. Fire he could manage. Shelter, at least for now, was a half-decent cave.
But food?
He sighed, resting the crude crossbow on his lap.
"Time to hunt," he muttered.
Not like a hero. Not like those webnovel protagonists who snapped their fingers and slaughtered beasts.
No. This was the dirty kind of hunting—the kind where you miss ten times before landing a blow, where you track something for hours just to watch it run. Where hunger is your only motivation.
He loaded a bolt. It didn't sit right. The string was uneven. His crafting was still rough. But it would have to do.
It took him three hours to find something.
A rabbit.
It hopped lazily near a patch of grass, oblivious to the human watching it from behind a cluster of ferns.
Kaiser raised his crossbow, took a shaky breath, and fired.
Missed.
The bolt thunked into a tree, and the rabbit vanished like smoke.
"Damn it!" he hissed, slamming the weapon against his thigh.
He spent another hour stalking shadows, his stomach tightening. He cursed everything—this world, the chat group, and most of all, himself.
"Back home, I couldn't even kill a cockroach."
Eventually, he stopped trying to shoot. He remembered a diagram from one of the offline PDFs: a basic snare trap.
Simple rope, a bent sapling, and bait.
He gathered materials, followed the steps, failed once, tried again.
On the third try, he got it to work.
By late afternoon, he heard a high-pitched snap followed by a thrashing sound. His heart pounded.
He rushed back to the trap.
The rabbit was still alive. Struggling. Its leg bent unnaturally.
Kaiser froze.
The rabbit looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. Its nose twitched. Its body trembled.
It didn't beg, didn't speak—but it didn't have to.
Kaiser knelt down.
His hand hovered over the rusted knife he'd picked up earlier and finally decided to use.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
Then, with shaking hands, he did what had to be done.
He vomited behind a tree.
Twice.
Then he cried.
Not loudly. Not for long. But the tears came—hot, ugly, full of self-loathing.
He wiped his face on his sleeve, picked up the rabbit, and returned to camp.
He had work to do.
Gut it. Skin it. Clean it. Cook it.
He had no idea what he was doing, but the guides helped.
His hands were stained with blood. His clothes, too. The smell clung to him.
When the fire crackled and the meat finally cooked—burnt on one side, raw on the other—he took a bite.
It was awful.
Too tough. Too chewy. Too real.
But he swallowed it anyway.
Later that night, he stared at the flames, silent.
The fire danced. The world around him didn't.
The stars above didn't care that a boy from Earth had killed something today.
He opened his diary, flipped to a fresh page, and wrote:
"I used to hate webnovels where the MC hesitated to kill. I thought they were weak. Soft-hearted. Stupid."
"Today I killed a rabbit. And it broke something in me."
"Maybe those MCs weren't soft. Maybe they were human."
Kaiser spent the next day learning.
Trap types. Cooking techniques. How to keep meat preserved without refrigeration—salt, smoke, shade.
Thankfully, he'd packed plenty of salt and spices, just in case he needed to play merchant in a medieval world.Back then, he thought he'd sell cinnamon sticks for gold coins.Now, he just wanted to not starve.
He used the fire openly now. There were no predators nearby—that much he was confident in.
Still, he kept the flame small, and always scattered the ashes, doused the embers.
The rabbit meat barely lasted. He needed more. And he needed better tools.
He made a mental list:
Improve crossbow.
Craft better traps.
Learn to process meat properly.
Create a weapon for human confrontation—just in case.
Because eventually, he would leave this forest.
And when he did, he had no idea who—or what—he'd meet.
"Meeting a human might save me," he wrote, "or it might be the end."
"If I meet the right group, maybe they'll help me. Feed me. Teach me the language."
"If I meet the wrong group, maybe I'll wake up with my kidneys missing."
He chuckled bitterly.
"Transmigration stories never tell you how scary other humans can be."
He worked into the late afternoon, carving makeshift tools and modifying a long branch into a crude spear.
His hands blistered. His back ached. But he felt something shift in him.
Not strength.
Not pride.
Just… survival.
When the sun dipped and the cold crept in, he sat by the fire and looked at the faint glow of his laptop screen. 38% battery.
He opened the chat.
Still no one else.
Still just him.
kaiser[1]: No golden finger. No system.kaiser[1]: Maybe I'm not the protagonist.kaiser[1]: Doesn't matter anymore.kaiser[1]: I'm going to survive. I'll crawl if I have to. Bleed, scream, bite. Whatever it takes.kaiser[1]: I'm getting out of this forest. I'm going to find people. Learn their ways. Speak their language.kaiser[1]: And if I ever get home, I'll burn every webnovel that lied to me. :)
He closed the chat.
Leaned back.
And for the first time since arriving here… he didn't feel like a visitor anymore.
He felt like a part of this world.
Unwanted. Unprepared. Unchosen.
But surviving.