Chapter 11 – 011 Awakening
“…….”
Hwanin, who opened his eyes to the feeling of a tingling sensation in his throat from the cold and thirst, blinked a couple of times as he looked inside the pit that looked gray.
The sunlight doesn’t shine outside what can be seen through the cracks in the roots of the trees…… It seems like it’s night, but why is it so bright?
Normally, I could only barely see the outline of my hand, but I put my hand in my pocket and took out a corona berry and ate it without even having time to question the gray world where you could even see the pattern on the earthen wall.
After chewing it a few times, the sweet and sour juice gushed out and moistened my dry throat.
Quack.
Hwanin looked at the emergency rations crying as if he was asking for them with wide eyes. After spitting out the seeds, he took out two slightly crushed corona berries from his pocket, put them in the beak of the emergency rations, and hugged them in his arms.
Kkuh?
…… Warm. Thinking that the duck down parka was not expensive for no reason, Hwanin patted the back of the emergency rations that lingered in his arms.
Hwanin, who had been quieted by Hwanin’s gesture, crouched down a bit more while holding the emergency rations, then closed his eyes again and went to sleep.
I don’t know how much I slept, but I think I’ve gotten a little better.
I don’t know if it’s gotten better or if my senses have become numb and I don’t know, but it was welcome in that I felt less pain.
After waking up several times, eating corona berries and going back to sleep, after eating all 21 corona berries and even the corona berries picked for emergency food, Hwanin was able to get up.
“He died and came back to life…….”
His physical condition was so bad that he wondered if he would be like this if he competed in a triathlon and even played 12 rounds of boxing.
Arms, legs, and face can only be touched. Even the joints of the fingers are exposed. When I press on the stomach, it goes in.
It looks as if all energy has been consumed while treating the body.
I looked at the clock and it was 1:00 PM. It wouldn’t have been a day…… Two days? Or three days?
Quack…….
The emergency food placed between her legs cries helplessly.
It seems like it’s because I’m hungry, but can I say that about three days have passed?
Hwanin was also hungry, so he staggered and leaned on his staff to get up and get out of hiding.
Hwanin, his eyebrows furrowed due to his blinding eyes, takes a spear that has fallen at the entrance of the hideout, takes out emergency rations, and puts it on his shoulder.
“…….”
Feeling the weight of his emergency rations pressing down on his shoulders, Hwanin realized how bad his physical condition was right now.
The weight of emergency food, which is only about 2 kg, is such a burden.
There is a little bit of your own mind…… Got weird? Changed? He felt something changed.
Before, there was no hesitation in wanting to slaughter emergency food, but now, thinking of eating emergency food, I felt a bit of a reluctance.
If you think about it rationally and coolly, even if it’s a little dangerous, the answer is to bake emergency food in a hideout and replenish your physical strength.
However, Hwan-in thought that he should go out and get something to eat instead of eating emergency food, so he naturally left the hiding place.
After thinking for a while, Hwanin concluded that it was because he received considerable comfort from the existence of emergency food.
Fragments of memories from my student days pass by.
-Why, when you wake up from a nightmare, having someone by your side is incredibly reassuring. Have you ever felt anything like that?
-No.
-Really?
– I’ve never had a nightmare.
– Hey, you’re really great.
Was it when you were in middle school? I can’t remember who I was talking to.
That’s not what’s important, it’s that I can feel that sense of security now.
To think that I would be so relieved by the living little warmth in my arms.
Hwanin, who looked at the emergency rations snooping around as if looking for something to eat, thought quietly.
Escape the jungle…… If you fail to escape and you are in a situation where you will die, you will have to release emergency food.
Hwanin, who used his spear as a staff and escaped from the crack in the ground, clicked his tongue slightly.
The hiding place is in a gap wide enough for two people to pass through due to the earthquake, so to escape, you have to climb up a wall about 3m high or go around and get out.
‘I couldn’t even walk 100m, but I was out of breath.’
I didn’t have the stamina to grab onto the tree roots and climb up, so I took a detour and walked the route, but after walking about 100m and coming out on a gentle slope, my breath became rough enough to make me feel sick.
It is clear what will happen if you run into a monster now. Hwanin kept his voice as quiet as possible and began to roam the jungle looking for something to eat.
It’s not about wandering aimlessly without a destination. The goal is Corona Berry, and the location is toward the forest where an unknown beast lives.
This area can’t be saved because the green and beast-headed monsters have eaten all the corona berries.
To save it, you need to go somewhere where they don’t roam.
The shelf life of corona berries is about 3 days. It was Hwanin who was planning on taking as much as possible while he was out and going back to the hideout and recuperating for a few more days.
Sup- Whoa……. Sup- Whoa…….
Hwanin, who was moving while suppressing the sound of his breath, got down on one knee due to dizziness that suddenly came to him.
‘Maybe the supply of oxygen was insufficient because he was breathing well.’
Inflate the lungs with his mouth and nose and breathe quietly, feeling that he is sucking in air.
Maybe it’s because my body is so tired, even though I’m just taking a deep breath, my thoughts disappear and my mind becomes clear.
I once studied at a temple in the mountains in preparation for the college entrance exam, and this is the feeling I felt when I first meditated according to my schedule.
Hwanin, who opened his eyes feeling that his head and mind had somehow become at ease, flinched, shrugged his shoulders, and gave strength to his eyes.
“…… What.”
Another color was added to the world. It feels like a very light fog filter was put on the world and another color was added on top of it.
Brown tree trunks appear reddish-brown, and green bushes and tree leaves appear amber, ash-yellow, and buff.
Waaeng-
“…….”
Originally blue, something like a bee flies in front of my eyes with a greenish color.
Quack.
The emergency rations also cried a little as if they had seen the insect, and Hwanin, who saw the emergency rations, furrowed his eyebrows. Even the emergency rations, which were green, were dyed a pale yellow-green.
Not only the emergency food, but also his body was dyed light green.
Hwanin, who was unusually flustered, rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand as he could see his hands of the original color and the color of his muddy coat through the pale green.
“…… ?”
Then, emergency food found its color and the world returned to its original color.
Hwanin, who had been frozen for a moment, came to his senses and looked at his hand as he limped. Then he squeezed and opened and then shook his head slightly.
‘To see even nonsense, my physical condition is worse than I thought.’
Hwanin did not stop even though he slowed down a little, hoping that he could find something to eat not far away.
After about an hour of walking like that, my body gradually became easier to move.
The right thigh and lower part, which had been stabbed and burned, are still numb, but the other parts are said to have awakened.
‘Maybe it’s because I’ve been dead for a few days and my body is stiff. It loosened up a bit while walking.’
It wasn’t a bad situation anyway. That is, if it wasn’t for continuing to see futility.
After taking a deep breath and seeing an illusion or a hallucination, the world was overlaid with another color several times whenever my concentration dropped and my head went blank.
Then, with a little effort on the eyes, the basic colors of the world are painted over.
“…… Are you experiencing a drug reaction in your body?”
I even suspect that some unknown germs have invaded the wound on my thigh and my head has gone bad.
There’s nothing wrong with over-painting, except that all sorts of colors make your vision a little strained.
Hallucinations do not run amok, but can be controlled according to one’s own will.
“You care.”
From the moment you meet the green monster with a cane, things that are difficult to understand are happening one after another.
The phenomenon that something is happening to one’s body seems to be an extension of that event, and it is frustrating because the identity is unknown.
Anyway.
Hwan-in, who kept going without encountering a monster on the way, found a bush with the first corona berry on the 3rd hour.
Satisfy your hunger while collecting corona berries that you can eat while feeling relieved inside.
Cackle.
Hwanin, who diligently collected the ripe ones while giving them to emergency food and eating only fully ripe ones, inadvertently strained his eyes and narrowed his eyes at the color of the corona berries.
‘Light green?’
The color painted on the orange corona berry is the same color as the color itself.
A hypothesis passes through Hwanin’s head.
I quickly turned my gaze to the bush and inspected the fruit. It is jasper color when it has just begun to bear fruit, but when it grows to the size of a little fingernail, it becomes bright green, and when it grows a little more than that, it changes from milky green to milky blue, and from the size of a 10-won piece, it becomes light green.
First of all, I picked all the light green berries, put them in my pocket, and looked around the bush.
Have. A mushroom similar in appearance to oyster mushroom, but with a blue cap.
Wild mushrooms are representative creatures that should not be eaten even on Earth without proper knowledge.
It was easy to find near the corona berry bushes, but I didn’t touch it because of the danger, but the mushroom was purple.
After looking around for a while, I removed some of the mushrooms with the tip of the spear, and then poked the mushrooms into a tree branch and brought them close to the beak of the emergency rations.
Queek. Quack.
Emergency food that refuses to eat while turning its beak around as if to get rid of it.
Throwing away the blue but purple mushroom, Hwanin looked around. And I found a coral-shaped mushroom growing on a tree trunk not far away.
Its original color is yellow, but in hallucinations it is bluish-green close to light green.
After removing it with the tip of the spear, I brought it to the beak of the emergency ration, and unlike before, it ate like lightning.
“…… !”
Hwanin felt his mind brighten.
The color seen in hallucinations is a unique color that determines the essence of life.
If you eat something of a different color system from your own, it becomes poison, and if you eat something with a color similar to yours, your body will not suffer.
This hypothesis was confirmed more clearly with the help of emergency food.
Organisms generally have five colors.
Red color system.
Yellow system.
Blue-green system.
Purple system.
Achromatic color world.
She and her emergency food are light green or light green in the blue-green color system.
Of course, it’s light green, but Hwanin himself is light green, close to infinite green, and his emergency food is light green with a hint of blue.
As for emergency food, they ate anything from blue to green with about 10% of blue mixed.
Green, milky blue, chrysanthemum, yellow-green insects, fruits, tree bark, and roots are all.
But blue or blue never touched my lips.
What a profit!
Kirruak!!
A test to see what would happen if you ate something of a different color system was done by a green monster.
Hwanin, who encountered two green monsters while confirming the hypothesis, subdued them at once with an overwhelming reach, and then conducted a living experiment.
Talent… Gurgling…… Wow…….
Key, Kikihi…… Kick kick…….
They were forcibly fed blue mushrooms (the hallucinogenic color is purple) that grew near a bush to those who were as dark green as their skin color, and within 5 minutes they vomited, diarrhea, and hematuria, fell into a coma, and died as their airways were blocked by the vomit.
The hypothesis was correct.
“It’s safe to say that there are no food problems now.”
My body was very heavy and tired, but my heart was light.
It was also learned that there is no harm to the body even if you eat something that has become white.
Hwanin, who was curious about how the color of berries, mushrooms, and insects would change if they were roasted, collected as many types of mushrooms, berries, tree roots, barks, and insects as possible and experimented with them.
If you bake it moderately, the original color gradually fades and then turns to white at some point.
The achromatic type of experiment was done by three beast-headed monsters who came to the campfire.
They were green, close to blue, but the beast-headed monster that ate the charred coral mushroom suffered from extreme stomach pain, while the beast-head monster that ate the well-baked coral mushroom (hallucinatory color is turquoise) was fine.
“I can’t eat monsters.”
Since the hallucinogenic color is similar to turquoise, I wondered if I could eat the beast-headed monster if I roasted it, but the animal-headed monster’s blood and intestines were purple, and after killing it, the color gradually turned black.
When I cut off the paws and baked them, the purple color didn’t disappear, but as it was baked, the smoke that came out started to take on a faint purple color, so I hurriedly covered it with soil and extinguished it.
If I could eat monsters, I really wouldn’t have to worry about food.
After completing the verification process, Hwanin started collecting edibles in earnest through his hallucinatory vision.
Tree inner bark and corona berries, roots of unknown grass and various mushrooms…….
Surprised that there was so much food in the jungle, Hwanin took off his suit coat and gathered food there, even though he packed enough to eat in his pockets.
The amount collected like that is a whopping 5 kg amount.
Hwanin, who tied his coat like a bundle and carried it on his back, headed for the hideout while eating coral mushrooms that had no taste but were soft and chewy.
My mind was light, and the pain in my body and legs felt relieved.
