Sandrine woke up quite easily, having slept really well. She checked the time on the game screen and found that it was 5am.
"I guess I'm a morning person. I really woke up in one go, I'm not even groggy !"
Learning a new thing about herself felt good. With a big grin, Sandrine stretched her hand in the darkness, trying to grab the lamp. It had turned off during the night and she needed to turn the lever again.
After recharging it quickly, she pressed the 'on' button.
"Oh my gosh !"
There was a distorted face with cloudy eyes just a few meters away from her, staring right at her.
"Scared the hell out of me…"
The monsters didn't leave while she was sleeping. If she had been someone who moves a lot in her sleep, she could have died without knowing anything. Thankfully, as she had just discovered, she did turn on her side while sleeping but she didn't move around. The straw was still piled up neatly underneath her.
One less thing to worry about.
Now that she was awake, Sandrine felt a bit restless. She wanted to move around.
"Am I the type to exercise in the morning ?"
It felt like it. At least, her body told her that it was used to moving around in the morning.
Sandrine sat up and immediately growled in pain. Her whole body hurt, she had terrible muscle pains because of all the horse riding she had done yesterday.
If she had had a saddle, it may have been different, but unfortunately she had bounced and flopped like a puppet without strings yesterday, hitting all the worst places and contracting her leg muscles as much as possible in order not to fall.
She felt terrible and sitting up made cold sweat drip down her back. She really wasn't in good condition.
But she couldn't possibly give up, she had to live. So she slapped herself awake and tried as best as possible to ignore the pain, slowly standing up and taking back the straw into her inventory.
She tried to stretch widely, hoping to relax her muscles, but it didn't have much of an effect. However, while stretching, a foul odor hit her nose.
"Is it me ? Am I smelling ?"
With furrowed brows, Sandrine pulled on her collar, sniffing inside, and immediately let go, blinking and teary eyed.
"Sweat and dirt mixed with horse smell… Woah, it's attacking my eyes !"
She smelt so bad that she even felt sorry for the monsters. How hungry were they to stay near her despite the smell ?
Unfortunately, she didn't have enough water to wash up. As long as she didn't have a sustainable source of water, washing up would only be a dream.
Muscle pain and terrible smell, it was really a perfect start for a survival day.
After making sure that the wounds on her thighs were looking good, Sandrine walked to Paquerette. The mare snorted as a greeting, but her eyes were still closed, sleepy. Sandrine didn't try to wake her up, the day only started at 6am so she had a bit more time to sleep.
"Let's see… Considering what she ate and drank… I'd say she eats 10 to 12 kg of hay per day. As for water… She drank 11 or 12L total but she still finished everything which means it isn't enough."
She leaned towards the mare, trying not to wake her up as she was inspecting her. She spoke softly to herself, trying to stay quiet but being unable to keep her thoughts to herself.
"Still, her eyes and nose are humid and colorful, she doesn't look dehydrated. I think she can survive on 10L of water per day, but it would be better for her to drink 15 or 20, especially if she spends her days moving...."
Having finished her assessment, Sandrine was glad that she finally had a clear goal about what she needed to acquire each day. 12kg of hay, about 20L of water for the both of them, and things to eat for Sandrine. If she kept eating bread, she would get sick quickly.
Thankfully, she had a can of corn. She opened it with her machete and directly plunged a spoon inside, eating it as breakfast while munching on bread. She couldn't be picky right now. Just then, Paquerette raised her head and looked at her from the corner of her eye.
"Want some ?"
Without waiting for an answer, Sandrine walked to the mare and dropped two spoonfuls of corn into her plastic container serving as a feeder. Paquerette immediately buried her head inside, searching for the corn among the hay.
Sandrine watched while eating, clearly in a good mood. It would have been better if she had a table and a chair, but she wouldn't complain. She was eating while standing up, alternating mouthfuls of corn with bites of bread. It really wasn't a good bread, clearly not artisanal, way too regular and without any patch of flour holding onto the crust. It was a bit sad.
But curiously, it didn't taste overly industrial either, it just tasted like the very basic taste of bread, like the perfect degree 0 of everything, not good but not bad, just bread.
It was like those cans she found, without any brand or any company on it. It was just the very basic design possible, indicating what was inside and a shelf life. The taste was equally bland, the corn tasted like corn. Not industrial corn, not organic corn, just the degree 0 of corn.
It was as if all the food in the chests was computer generated as is, not actually harvested and processed.
With breakfast taken care of, Sandrine was a bit thirsty. She had only a bottle left from what she used to clean her wounds yesterday, nothing else. She drank a gulp, just enough to moisturize her throat, and turned to Paquerette.
"Thirsty ?"
The mare ignored her and turned away from the container used as a through.
"I guess that means no."
If she had more, Sandrine would have given it to the mare anyway, but she needed to keep some water in case of an emergency.
With 6am fast approaching, Sandrine cleaned up everything, put the rest of the hay and the containers in the backpack, and started to stretch thoroughly. She then ran a bit in place. She needed to take care of her stamina, who knew what would happen next !
However, today her body really wasn't in good shape, so she only did a bit of exercise and then stopped. When time seemed about right, she used a chest and a rope to climb on the mare and bring them back in her backpack.
Underneath her, Paquerette felt really warm, like a walking heater. It was even more obvious since Sandrine wasn't wearing pants.
Yes, she had given up. There were clothes in the trade center, but people asked for outrageous things in return. Sandrine decided that she was the only one on this road with Paquerette anyway, and that a survival game wasn't a place to be shy in.
So she was in her underwear, with her thighs bandaged and shoes on.
She took the lamp from her mouth, she had put it here to have her hands free when she climbed on, and shone the light in front of them. The monsters seemed to be slowly retreating, walking towards the side of the road where the black mist usually was.
"Now we know what's in the fog, I guess…"
Nothing good, that was for sure.
Anyway, it was almost 6am. Time to check everything out and make sure she was ready for the day. First, she opened the backpack.
[Ravioli can, cassoulet can, half empty 1L water bottle, empty 1L water bottle x9, rope x2, fabric x2, tape, wooden chest x10, straw x10, hay x2, plastic container x2, pitchfork, machete, cooking pot, washbassin, bowl x2, big spoon x2, bar of soap, sewing kit]
No more bread, no more water. She still had a few cans, but those were meals that needed to be cooked. Goal for tonight : Making a fire.
After organizing her inventory, she checked out her info.
[Player : Sandrine Legrand
Nickname : 84jojo84
Species : Human
Vehicle : Paquerette (Select to see profile)
Job : None
Health : 42
Fatigue : 17
Strength : 5 (Average human : 7)
Constitution : 4 (Average human : 6)
Agility : 9 (Average human : 7)]
"My health has greatly decreased compared to yesterday… It must be because of the wounds and the muscle pains. However, my constitution went up by a point. I guess it's good ?"
If stats made a real difference, making her constitution go up was a good thing. With a good constitution, there was less of a risk of being sick, and she would have more stamina. She definitely needed to exercise more.
However, she needed to keep an eye on her health. She didn't know what would happen if it went down to 0.
Then she switched to Paquerette's screen.
[Name : Paquerette
Species : Earthen equine
Lvl : 1
Favorability : 10
Health : 97
Fatigue : 3
Strength : 12
Constitution : 17
Agility : 6]
Except for health and fatigue, nothing had changed. Only the favorability had gone up a bit.
"We're slowly getting to know each other, huh ?"
Sandrine smiled, very pleased that her companion was starting to warm up to her. Neither of them were in a good situation, but if they had to stick together, they might as well enjoy it.
"Level 1… I guess you need to level up to gain stats ? People will probably upgrade their vehicles progressively, so it would be great if you could level up. There isn't any experience bar, so I don't even know how far you are from leveling up, nor what action can make you level up… Not very intuitive."
At this moment, everything turned bright and Sandrine groaned in pain, covering her eyes.
It was 6am, it was the start of the second day.
The loud buzz filled her head again and the hologram appeared in front of her.
[Players who didn't reach the required mileage will disappear]
[9,447 players enter the second day]
[Congratulations on entering the second day]
[Required mileage for today : 40km]
[Time left for the newbie protection period : 13 days]
Sandrine rubbed her eyes and carefully read the notice.
"Will the mileage continue to increase ? If so, Paquerette really needs to level up so that her agility stat gets higher, or we will quickly reach a point where we can't catch up."
This was a real issue. If not reaching the required mileage resulted in death, Sandrine was at a disadvantage.
She rubbed her face. There was nothing she could do anyway. She could only pray that everything would go well.
"If we don't keep opening chests, we'll die. So there's nothing else we can do, right ?"
Paquerette shook her head and started walking.
"Yep, you're right, we better get going !"
The horse moving woke up the pain in Sandrine's body, and the spine was really painful to sit on without any equipment. She thought that maybe she had bounced too hard yesterday, and she might have bruises between her legs and on her butt. But she couldn't really check during the night, the light was too bad, and she wouldn't take the time to do it now. They were already in a disadvantageous position. Besides, what could she do even if she had bruises ?
She just blocked off the pain from her brain and decided to completely turn it off and blank out. In this manner, she didn't know how much time passed until Paquerette stopped in front of a chest.
Sandrine slid down her back, clenching her teeth to keep the painful groan from coming out, and glanced at the mare. Calm. No danger.
She opened the chest and looked inside. It was a bit different from what she got yesterday.
"Water, bread, and… Underwear ?"
It was a small plastic bag with 3 panties inside, the kind of pack you could find in the supermarket. What was strange was that it was perfectly her size.
"Did they prepare my size, or… Are those rewards computer generated based on who opens the chest ? Maybe the size is undecided inside until I open it… Or maybe since it is a game product, it will automatically change to the size of the person who owns the item ?"
Sandrine was a bit interested in this world's mechanics, but not that much. She was mostly happy to have other underwear to change into. She packed up everything and climbed back up. Then, she spaced out again. It was really too painful.
The day was spent like this, in a daze, between consciousness and unconsciousness. At one point, towards 11am, after 5 hours of enduring the pain of the trot, Sandrine puked out of pain, bending into two, shaking all over. Her health was slowly climbing down on her game panel. Even Paquerette seemed worried. But what choice did they have ?
Sandrine could only endure, trying her best to focus when Paquerette signaled danger, moving mostly on instinct, incapable of thinking clearly. She took everything from the chests without really looking, until things couldn't fit into her backpack anymore. Only then did she force herself to focus.
She contacted AlphaWolf, exchanged fuel for a few useful things, and the rest she traded for hay. Then, she tried to make her brain work, grabbed a rope to tie two chests together and put them on each side of Paquerette's back, with another rope to tie everything around her belly. Now the horse had two chests on each side, like a working donkey has baskets. It made it more difficult to get on the horse's back, but it could also help Sandrine alleviate the pain by using the chests and ropes as footing.
Paquerette stopped at some point, it was about to go dark. Sandrine didn't know how she had survived the day, the mare really carried her !
She slapped herself, trying her best to focus.
"Did we eat ? Yes, at noon I gave you water and hay, and I ate bread… Did I drink ?"
She touched her dry lips.
"Maybe I didn't…"
She was completely out of it.
Sandrine checked out the mileage. 71km. A whole day, from 6am to 9pm, and they had only done 71km. The other players' cars could do it in an hour.
After confirming that it was over the required mileage, Sandrine decided that night or not, it was time to rest. She slid down Paquerette's back and felt as if her hips were dislocating. The rest of her body ? She couldn't even feel it anymore.
She would probably get used to it at some point.
On her game panel, her health had fallen all the way down to 21 and her fatigue had reached an astonishing 67. She was really on the verge of collapse. However, maybe because she had maintained such a terrible condition for an entire day, her constitution gained a point and rose to 5. An average human was at 6 but she was an office worker with a bad spine due to staying in front of her computer, so this was impressive enough.
Sandrine took a deep breath to calm the nausea and the vertigo. She had work to do. First, she checked out her backpack.
[Ravioli can, cassoulet can, white beans can, sausage and lentils can, jar of pâté, bread loaf x17, bag of chips x3, 1L olive oil bottle, 1L water bottle x13, half empty 1L water bottle, empty 1L water bottle x12, 5L fuel x2, rope x1, fabric x5, tape, wooden chest x24, straw x24, hay x17, plastic container x2, pitchfork, machete, cooking pot, washbassin, bowl x2, big spoon x2, sewing kit, bar of soap, lighter, underwear pack, vehicle upgrade fragment x7, battery x4]
There were a lot of things inside, Sandrine felt dizzy just watching. She could vaguely understand that, according to her calculations, she had enough food for tonight, but the water was still a problem. It was enough for today, but once again they couldn't stockpile.
There were also things in the chests on Paquerette's sides, but Sandrine was too tired to look inside right now. Anyway, even in a daze she wouldn't forget to stack the water bottles in her backpack.
She tried very hard to focus and make her brain work.
Vehicle fragments seemed important, made for people to upgrade her vehicles. However, it was completely useless for her. Same for the batteries : Essential for electric vehicles, useless for her. Even her lamp was manual. She would need to trade those things for something useful.
Before she felt too weak or forgot, she immediately set up Paquerette's containers and filled them with hay and 10L of water. At least, the mare needed to be cared for. As for Sandrine, she had said that she would heat up a can today. She really felt too weak for this, but she knew she would feel good afterwards, so she pushed through.