Unknown Depths

Chapter 6: Rapture

The world they understood was what they were told of as they were growing up. There are countries so far beyond the area their city is located in, that the idea of visiting them is practically impossible because of the cost of travelling there. They are told repeatedly that the world is peaceful enough as long as they live by the rules they are given. Social distinctions, strict social strata, and absolute trust in the system made them not question more than they should.

But in all that they were told to do, it was only the sky and the sun that were constant and small in all the differences and rules they had to live by. The sky was always blue whenever the yellow sun hung upon a sunny day. They were in their textbooks, telling them that the world was blue because of the composition their planet has and of the light reflected from the young yellow sun.

There was never any color that should be associated with them unless there was some cosmic phenomenon happening.

Though a solar eclipse should not make the sun this bright red.

Lost in what she should be doing, Diane blindly went ahead without any idea of which direction she was heading. Blindly, she tried to make sense of where she was and where her companions were. She worried where Micheal was and how he is now. Judging from her state, the man should be fine as she was, but worry came to her in waves that she was feeling frantic and scared.

It was like she had once been in this situation before. And at this very moment she is reliving a memory she has long forgotten. Fear gripping her like a vice she cannot escape from.

Panting as she took a swallow of her own saliva, Diane fell on the ground as she was not able to see clearly what was before her. It was a thick root of a tree just above. It was something so obvious to the naked eye, but she had a wound over the small blunder of hers. Cursing a few words was all she could do to scold herself for her carelessness.

"You have to calm down, Diane!" Diane scolded herself as she ripped a fabric off her clothing not to make a makeshift bandage to stop her bleeding. "Panicking will not be of any help to you! Stop shaking and start thinking!"

Her words rang into the space like an echo of a particularly loud speaker. Hearing her own voice repeating her words made her feel so alone in the wilderness she had never seen or experienced. Her encouragement to herself was shaking at this feeling as tears unwillingly ran into her face.

Growing up, she always says to herself that she is not pampered to cry whenever she is wronged. She grew up rough like weeds in the wild her textbooks had told them. Baptized by the rain and sun to be tough and unyielding to the harshness of the world.

Crying never helped her get what she wanted. It did not stop the departure of her parents nor did it make her siblings stay with her. It was only the pampered who had the luxury to cry and be consoled somehow. People like her cannot cry because it is only a useless endeavor that only wastes energy they could use to make a difference.

But never did it occur to her that in the face of her situation, that she would once again cry. This time is not because of her grief nor is it because of an inability to do anything. Rather, it reminded her of her helplessness and fear that she had constantly cradled growing up.

Feeling her tears running in her face made her feel so weak. Emotions she had forgone in favor of surviving in the cold society they all lived in. Emotions will not let her pay what she has to pay, being emotional will not let her live well, and being so warm-blooded will not make things better in the merit-based world they are in.

Not letting her digest the onslaught of her repressed feeling running free, a sound not quite human made her freeze in her place. Turning around, she saw a creature never seen before.

It was huge and bulky in form. It walks on four legs and was rather hairless for some reason or it wasn't. It's face was of a deformed dog she had seen in books, vengeful and ruthless with all the pointed fangs slipping past it's rather wide mouth.

Instinctively, Diane knew this creature was dangerous. She does not need her visuals to know danger. The moment she heard the sound, she knew something that could kill her was around.

While her mind was trying her best to respond to the situation at hand, her body had moved away before she could register what she was doing.

Running was what she was doing. With the difference in physics, she knew she couldn't win against the beast. Though she knows that this is not the best solution to her problem, as her stamina is not infinite as she would like to delude herself, she currently has no other method at hand.

She needs to do something! Anything to get herself some breathing space!

Seeing a rather sharp and thorny plant that could provide her cover, Diane did not hesitate to crawl below them to fend off her pursuer. She knows it is dangerous to just let her skin be in contact with just anything in her without testing or anything. But her gut is telling her that this plant is not harmful to her and, as she has been doing her whole life, she follows through with it with her life on the line.

And her gut feeling has not disappointed her at all. The creature saw that she was no longer accessible to her retreat the moment she disappeared under the sea of thorns. Before it left, it made a howling sound that rang in the area for a while.

Diane waited for a while before she crawled out of her hiding place. Her face was now full of dirt because of how unsightly she slid between the gaps. Some parts of her clothing were torn from being pierced by the very plants she had taken refuge in.

Thankfully, with that episode, Diane is more or less calm now. Equipping her was the mindset that has let her live for this long. Learn the rules and adapt accordingly to what those were.

Still, she is hell of confused about how she will survive in this strange place. Other than the unknown creatures lingering and living in this place, she is sure that some plants here are more dangerous than they let on. Else how the hell would that creature leave her the moment she gets into the vicinity of the thorny plant she hid herself with? She is no fool to think it ran away because of the thorns.

Other than that, she also has to save her safety whenever she needs to rest. As much as she would like to believe that they will be brought back to the society they all know, there is a huge chance that they will stay here until Ivan deems it right for them to return. All along he had been aiming for this with how much effort he made at making things happen.

Thankfully, her necklace has solved her hunger issues for at least a long time, but drinking water was the one that made her puzzled as to how she would solve it. Things she learned from the virtual world as well as what Ivan has arranged for them, Diane has numerous ways to obtain water resources to save her life. Only that she lacks the materials to do them.

"....I have to find a place to rest as fast as possible." Her current location is quite ideal to temporarily make her place, but the problem of how to communicate with others raised another problem for her to solve.

She is naturally concerned about Micheal due to their cooperation. She is also worried about others, but more so for herself. She just thinks that she should forget what she has known all her life if she wants to live here. A switch of mindset to suit her needs.

Gazing at the orange-hued skies, Diane traversed the woods with more careful movements. She no longer blindly went in just any direction and walked with caution. Eyes glowing with an unknown excitement she did not know of.

First thing she did was to find some water. Food was no problem due to the pills she got, but the amount of moving she was doing calls for a great intake of water. Other than the fact that water is important for survival, she thinks she needs some cleaning up.

It might be because she is accustomed to cleanliness that she feels so dirty and sticky, but she definitely needs to at least clean the parts of her that were in contact with the thorns. Although there is no physical wound, she has to clean them, let herself be assured. If she somehow ends up with rashes or infections, she does not know if she will have to worry about finding others or worry that she will die there without any treatments to save herself.

Finding a water source has proven to be tough as she continues to wander all over. She met some more creatures of different varieties in her search. Most of them are four-legged, but there are some with no legs to speak of, resembling more of a snake that has mutated quite badly. Though the one that had Diane reeling was those with more than two pairs of legs, those were the real creepers that she could bear to even see if she could avoid them.

As she was more alert this time around, she was not able to attract their attention to her. She just waited for them to pass by as she hid herself in some fragrant plants to hide her scent. It was not the most brilliant way to hide, as she was simply too ignorant of what effects the plants have on her. She heard of fragrances affecting people to some extent, like their moods and concentration; being near an unidentifiable and unstudied 'smell' is simply too dangerous in her opinion.

Following a trail, Diane was able to find a water hole. She hesitated for a while before she came nearer to the hole. In her hand was a small tub of a bamboo-like tubber she had encountered as she was looking for the water source. Due to the lack of materials, they are crudely cut but functional as a temporary container for her water. There was only a small multi-purpose pocket knife she kept from their daily training task that she impulsively hid in her pocket that made this possible.

Carefully, she took a good amount of time before she was able to fill her tube. Afterwards, she directly drank from it without thinking about boiling it due to her limited capability at the moment. Say not to have a flame to heat it up. She does not have a safe place to build one. She then washed her face at the very edge of the pool. Splashing her face some cool water to start planning.

Diane has always considered herself average and somewhat dull in terms of what society demands of her. She spent a lot of time and effort on not falling behind on the courses assigned to her while maintaining the required amount of physical attractiveness the district she lives in is known for. It was her stubbornness and her will to be able to somehow not fall even more than she already did. She did everything as if she was possessed. If she did not have her unexplainable gut feeling over certain things, she thought that she was more of an A.I her main brain was than a human she should be.

But in this strange forest under the orange-hued sky, her blood was pumping vigorously. She felt like a human for the first time in years she had lived away from her siblings. The breakage of her emotions previously had made everything that was so ‘wrong’ inside of her explode and overwhelm her with so many things at once.

Perhaps, like her siblings, she should also be in the asylum too. Reaction was not normal and is considered to be a pervasive thing in their orderly society. But the thrill of running with her life online has greatly stimulated her.

If she could, she would have fought that creature too. The thought was simply too tempting to her if she wasn’t just too unsure of her capability to contend with it.

Feeling refreshed and incomparably coherent, Diane quickly figures out her next sort of action. She definitely needs some place to rest. This place is dangerous with the sun being out, the night will definitely be more so. Therefore, she needs to figure out where she should be hiding during that period.

Next was how to address the matter of temperature. As far as she could see from the position of the sun, the day was not at its peak. The temperature was already astonishingly high given how soaked her shirt was. She had no extra change of clothes to change them, so she was a little worried about the tears she currently had. Because she thinks the extreme hotness of the day will also cause extreme coldness at night. Her worry was more in the night than in the day, as she was more afraid of the cold than the heat.

If she could find a cave she could occupy, she would like to light some fire for a bonfire. It will definitely heat her up, but issues of suffocation might arise due to poor ventilation. Nothing she could not fix, though that would only be addressed if she did find such a cave to hole up in.

There was an option to settle on the trees, but the variables for danger were way too high for her to consider, so she did not think of utilizing them currently. Perhaps if she could find Micheal and work together they could make it work. This also works by being in the open or on the ground itself. Having someone to look for your back is safer than being alone in that set up.

Clear of what she should do, Diane immediately moved and let her instincts bring her to somewhere safer. It did bring her to a suitable place, but it was riddled with some dangers. She had to use everything she had to fend off.

There was a small colony of some giant insects inside. They were like flies, but they really weren’t. They are like a cross mix of some bees and wasps in their equipment, but the most notable characteristic was their fly-like wings that are so mismatched to what their features promise.

It took her almost the whole afternoon to cut the work for her. She first smoked out the cave to chase them away. It was a challenging task as she had to make fire from scratch without any convenient tool such as a match or lighter. Some flint will also do, but she does not have them in possession at all. Thus, she had to resort to the time-consuming rubbing wood together to make fire.

In the virtual world, this was a must-have survival technique that all the mercenary or soldier-type jobs require, so she also learned it. The application of using them in real life was questionable as she never tried them at all, given there is no need for them to go through this hassle. So her doing this was only her grasping what she could and did not expect to actually succeed in making fire this way.

Thankfully, she now has a place to stay for the night with those efforts she made. With a ready made fire she lit earlier, she deftly transferred some of the fire to the cave to prevent the colony from returning. As she was lacking in firewood, she made a quick gathering of them along with some of those bamboo-like tubers. She will have to use those to boil the water she had so that she no longer has to drink some sterilized water and possibly be sick due to the bacteria that entered her stomach.

Under the warmth of the fire, Diane began to seriously check what she had on her being. Other than the pocket knife and her necklace, she did not bother with the other things that were in her being. Though she worried about her clothes, she did not really care much about it as long as she could find something to keep her warm somehow in this place.

In fact, she has already been eyeing some furry animals she could take on to process some clothes. The final product might look barbaric and somewhat prehistoric. Diane is not picky at all with her clothes. If it was not expected of her to always look presentable, she would have randomly chosen some set of clothes to dress herself. She and fashion would probably be in a love and hate relationship if the other was a person who could pester her.

“Almost everything is still the same as I was wearing at that time.” Diane said as she absent-mindedly rubbed the bracelet given to her in the hotel. She remembered Anna, whom she thought to be such a considerate guide, turned out to be a machine made with great finery.

Out of habit, she tapped a code on its surface before remembering that Anna might be the one who transferred her to this place. A bitter smile crept into her face before she took out some of the pills in her necklace to solve her hunger problems.

Just as she thought that everything was going in the right direction, the sky turned gloomy and rain actually started falling. Fortunately, Diane has set her fire on some elevated area of the cave so that it avoids being doxed. The same goes with her firewood that she has trucked on to a dry place that is not too wet. Wet wood might produce too much smoke and suffocate her. She thinks the little wetness is ideal to scare off any predator from entering the cave and attacking her. Though she had to lie lower than intended to avoid the smoke from suffocating her.

Everything she is doing now is definitely a first of hers in so many things. She did not find them bothersome or anything, but she definitely wondered how the others were faring at that moment. Before she closed her eyes to relieve her fatigue, Diane thought about how Micheal should be and what his situation was at that moment.

Without closing her eyes, she did not notice the bracelet on her wrist was flashing.