CH_17

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Takuma lumbered his way through a stretch of long golden grass, his eyes sweeping through his surroundings, taking account of everything around him. He put his hands under the straps of his backpack and adjusted the weight on his back by pulling on the adjustable straps.

His eyes caught something he recognized, and he picked up the pace to exit the long grass and reached a shrub-like bush with blackberries, but red and purple, growing from it. They were raspberries. He checked for more signs. The leaves were alternate, compound with three-to-five leaflets and serrate margins. He picked one berry, and it left behind a core on the stem. He was sure he had found raspberries. He ate the ripe ones from the bush.

They were sweet.

Takuma glanced at the sky and squinted his eyes from the sun in his eyes. By his estimates, it was already around noon. He hoped he was right; telling time from the sun wasn't his specialty.

Using the sun to take note of his direction, he looked eastwards where he was headed. He looked back westwards, and he already couldn't see any of Leaf village or signs of civilization. The thought of turning back and returning home crossed his mind, but he squashed the thought and continued to trek deeper into the wilderness.

After a couple kilometers, Takuma audibly sniffed the air. The scent of moisture was heavy in the air. There was a water body nearby. His eyes shined with excitement as he strained his ears for any sound of water. He knew there was a lake around here somewhere; he had checked it on reliable maps while planning for this excursion.

'There,' the faint sound was coming from the right. He ran towards the sound and entered a stretch of trees before the view opened up, and Takuma found himself staring at a serene lake that reflected the blue sky doubted with clouds like the world's smoothest mirror.

The sight stunned him. He had always lived in a city and never got the opportunity to visit the great outdoors. All the trips he ever took were to metropolitan cities. The only time he had gone somewhere away from the fast life of a city had been on a middle school trip to a farm, and even that was full of comfortable amenities.

Even the Leaf village, with its overflowing greenery seemingly built into the design of the city— it was still a fast-moving city. A place that was a hub for the shinobi population for an entire nation could never ever be considered anything else than metropolitan.

This was his first time looking at such raw nature with nothing manmade in sight.

He took a step forward to get closer to the lake when he kicked something. A metal can sat a couple feet from his foot; it seemed he was wrong... there was something man made near him.

Takuma picked up the can and sighed. The soda can had DO NOT LITTER clearly embossed on the top, yet someone had done just that.

He put the can in one of his pouches. His attention was now taken away from the beautiful lake and focused on the ground around him. If there was a can nearby, then there were good chances he could find a camp sight used by someone else.

'—It is usually like that; the best spots are always used by someone else before—'

Takuma walked around until he found what he was hoping for. A perfectly flat piece of level ground framed by big stacks of old and decimated thick tree logs on three sides. He crouched and touched the dirt— it was dry. The perfect place became even more perfect.

Taking a step back, Takuma observed the area when it struck him.

"A cabin... this was a cabin," he muttered to himself. The logs were the remains of a cabin that stood on the ground once.

Takuma felt fortunate, very fortunate. Finding a place to camp so quickly after his arrival at the destination was nothing less than a blessing. And looking at the sky, it would've been a problem if he hadn't found a place to camp quickly.

This was going great, Takuma thought. Out of his checklist, he partially had two items checked off— a place to camp and a water source. To completely check them off, he would need to build his shelter and set up a fire to get the water boiling. And in making the fire, he would've checked off the third item on his list.

He put his backpack down. It had been a while since he had used it other than carrying groceries. But since he couldn't use storage seals, he had to carry the extra baggage in a backpack.

'I wonder when he will teach me fuinjutsu,' Takuma thought as he took out his sleeping gear from his backpack.

Before he could set up his shelter, he needed to clear off the campsite in preparation. He retrieved a kunai and began slashing off the low-hanging branches of the trees around him— it would've been a problem if one of those poked him in the eye.

As Takuma was cutting off branches, he froze. He hurriedly looked up before breathing a sigh of relief. There was nothing above him that could fall on him and kill him when he was either sleeping or not paying attention.

"Always-always check for widowmakers," he repeated to himself with a hand above his heart.

After the preparation work, the sleeping gear came out. Takuma used the jute rope he had brought to tie up a large tarp(he had found for very cheap) to nearby trees and stumps to make a roof over his head. The tarp was big enough to provide cover to three people, but Takuma knew it was only suitable for one person because if it rained, only the person in the middle would be dry. And under the tarp-roof went a thick wool spread he had brought to use as a mattress.

Next was the most important part of the shelter— the bug net. Takuma didn't know how nasty the bugs were this season, but he had purchased a bug net anyway as an investment. He hooked the net to the tarp ceiling and used heavy stones to pin the net around the wool mattress spread.

"Alright, next is fire," Takuma shook his hands together to get the dust off.

A dozen steps from his bed, Takuma piled up the rocks he got from the lakeside into a Well shape with a stone base.

"Starter... starter... starter," Takuma squinted his eyes as he tried to remember what he had learned about fire making. Firewood was the fuel to keep the fire burning, but a starter was needed to produce the embers that could later turn into a fire.

Takuma wandered around the woods, looking from tree to tree to find what he could use as a starter. After half an hour of searching, Takuma found his requirement near the base of a birch tree. The birch tree shed its dry outer bark in sheets that fell near the base— and while it was a waste to the tree, it was a treasure for Takuma.

Back at the fire-well, Takuma took out the most advanced piece of technology on his person. A Ferro rod. Making fire out of scratch was unbelievably tough— he had tried it training and had failed to produce even a ghost of a spark— and because of his poor mastery over chakra, he couldn't use the survival class of jutsu like Katon: Nokoribi no Jutsu (Fire Release: Ember Technique) which would produce a decent puff of fire hot enough to set wood on fire.

Fortunately, technology had given birth to a Ferro rod. Takuma had no idea about the science behind it, but what he knew was that it worked. He placed the birch bark in the fire-well and squatted near it with the Ferro rod in one hand and his kunai in the other. He scrapped the sharp edge of the kunai against the length of the Ferro rod, and as the rod of it, sparks shot out towards the direction the kunai moved. He repeated the process until the birch bark caught one of the sparks and started to burn.

He threw the rod and kunai to the side, and as he had practiced a few times before, he breathed on the burning bark to keep the embers alive and burning hot. He hurriedly placed the dry branches he had cut off during the camp sight preparation into the fire well and breathed into it to fan the flames until the branches caught on fire.

Takuma leaned away with a bright smile. He had secured a fire in the wilderness.

However, the job wasn't done. The branches were only going to keep the fire burning for so long. He needed to get more fuel... fuel that would burn for a while.

But first, Takuma took out a lidded metal pot from his backpack and emptied out the small packet of salt and a tiny plastic bottle of oil inside. With shelter and fire secure, water became the most essential priority.

Takuma went to the lake and scooped the pot full of lake water. That water, however, wasn't drinkable just yet. Takuma brought the pot to the fire and put it into the fire-well to get the water to a rolling boil.

"Time to be butch," Takuma took off his shirt and went topless. He picked up the long forest ax hanging from the side of his backpack and went to the nearby woods to find a tree to cut off.

He returned with thin logs cut from two long and narrow trees. Removing his shirt was a wise idea. He didn't have a change of clothes, and ax-ing down a tree made him work up a sweat. He dumped two of the many logs into the fire and went down into the lake to take a dip in the cool water while the water in the pot rose to a boil.

By the time Takuma returned from the lake, the sun had dropped down and pulled the evening along with it. Refreshed, he sat down beside the fire, waiting for the boiling water in the pot to cool down till he could drink it.

The beauty of the surroundings sucked in Takuma. He could hear the gentle brushing of the leaves; they seemed to have so much more depth than the one he heard back at home. The ground beneath him was cool and felt nice even if he was sitting in loose dirt. As the sun turned down, the water glimmered in a mesmerizing light, and Takuma could make out the fishes swimming just under the surfaces.

Seeing the fish made Takuma think about food. He hadn't brought any with him. If he wanted to eat, he needed to procure food on his own. And looking at the lake in front of him, fishing seemed to be the best option to get food.

'Can't do it now,' Takuma looked above the evening sky. He didn't have much time left in the light. He decided that foraging was the better option right now.

The water had cooled down, ready to be consumed. Takuma licked his dry lips as he raised the pot. He had run out of water long before he reached the lake; this water would be his first drink in several hours. He gulped it down hungrily while making sure not to waste any by spilling it on himself. Even though boiled lake water tasted different from the one he got at home, after several hours of thirst, it was the most satisfying he could drink at that moment.

The pot emptied before Takuma knew it, so he went to the river to refill it. When he returned, the fire was out. Takuma groaned but had a fire going in the next quarter hour.

He then hurriedly set out to forage for berries around the campsite for dinner. He found raspberries and winter berries in the bushes and wanted to look for some mushrooms, but the insufficient light restricted his movement and forced him to retire to his camp.

For dinner, Takuma dined on berries from the forest and water from the lake. It wasn't filling at all, but he knew his body now had enough sugar to keep him going.

He gazed up at the dimming sky as the sound of night crickets filled his surroundings. Sitting there with nothing but a tarp as his roof, Takuma felt exposed like he had never been. He didn't know what time it was— maybe somewhere between six and seven— if he was in the village, he would be finishing his evening training session and returning home to start dinner preparations, but because there was no artificial light, he was preparing to go to sleep just like how it worked before normalizations of candles and then electricity.

And tomorrow, he was going to wake early at the first sign of light to start his day by preparing for fishing in the hopes he would get some chunky protein that would fill his stomach so that he could survive one more day in the wild.

As for today, he was going to sleep.

But not before re-making his poorly lit fire that had gone out yet again.

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