…
By the time he was finished with treating his wound, the man felt like he was going to pass out.
Cold sweat dripped down from his face, as his arm felt like it had been cooked, his flesh still sizzling.
The pain was truly unbearable.
Only made worse by the fact that he had no means of numbing the pain available to him at the moment.
He would have to suffer through it, however long it would take.
The man wasn't planning on sitting around during the day regardless, and now that he had to deal with such torturous pain, he decided to set out immediately.
The pain wasn't getting better any time soon, so maybe by doing something he could at least get his mind off of it, even if just for a little bit.
He tried to shut his brain off and just walk towards the smoke's general location, but that quickly proved to be of no help.
'The chances of the smoke, or whoever was responsible for the smoke still being there are slim to none, but at this point, anything is better than nothing.'
The man let out a sigh at his current predicament, before raising his head back up and continuing his journey.
Whether or not he would discover anything upon arrival, he had no way of knowing, but he also didn't have anything better to do.
Even if he had only spotted it while he was on a tree more than 100 meters from the ground. Hell, now that he was on the ground, he might even pass by it without knowing.
With all the trees nearly blocking out the sun from being visible, he could barely see the sky when he looked straight up, let alone some smoke far off into the distance
Be that as it may, desperate times called for desperate measures.
The pain from his right arm wasn't going away any time soon and he couldn't even imagine being able to go to sleep under such circumstances.
In the middle of nowhere, on an unknown planet, in a forest with unknown creatures and in constant agonizing pain.
If the paranoia alone was going to make it hard for him to fall asleep, the constant pain that wasn't going to subside for at least a few days was the final nail in that particular coffin.
He had decided, he was going to stay awake throughout the whole trip.
By his estimations, the smoke's location was about 3-4 days away on foot, but if he never took a long break and only set aside time for eating and drinking water, maybe he could make it in a little over 2 days.
He was used to staying up for long periods of time anyway, however this was uncharted territory even for him.
Based on what he knew, after 48 hours of being awake the mind was extremely weak and susceptible to delusions as well as periodic episodes of microsleeps, where a person loses conscious control over their body for less than 15 seconds.
As long as he could reach his destination in only a little over 2 days however, there should be no major problems.
After all, all he had to do to wake himself up a little was to apply pressure to his right arm.
Even if the smoke turned out to be nothing, it was the only place of interest he had seen.
In the case that it did turn out to be nothing, at worst he would just have to find a relatively hidden place to lay down and recover.
Considering that he was in that very same situation now, there was no reason not to go.
…
At some point along the walk, the man let his mind wander, his body moving on auto-pilot.
Then, before he knew it, he opened his eyes again only to find himself on some ancient battlefield, with tens of thousands of men actively engaged in battle.
They were wearing armor made of unknown material that despite this, he found to be familiar to him, reminding him of the armor the Ancient Romans used to wear.
Yet strangely enough, the man did not find this situation to be strange.
Instead, he lowered his gaze to look down, and found that he too, was wearing similar, yet more impressive armor.
That was not all he was wearing however, as over his impressive armor, he was wearing the snow white bear coat!
Only now, it wasn't so white.
Rather, one could barely even imagine that it was ever white in the first place! Covered with the blood of the enemy, the originally snow white bear coat was now dark red.
Surprised by what his eyes were seeing, the man finally realized that this was one of his forgotten memories,
Before he could try to recall anything however, the scenery in front of the man quickly disappeared, morphing into something else.
A second, he found himself on a large ship.
Different from before however, he was now immediately aware that this was only a memory, which enabled him to recall a bit more.
Such as the fact that he had a strong feeling that this ship represented him leaving everything behind once more.
He might not yet know what he had left behind, but it was this feeling that was strongly evoked within him when he first saw the ship.
Aboard the ship, there were 15 other men aside from himself.
They didn't look like sailors however, rather, they looked like leaders in whatever field they were in. Some looked like warriors, some like hunters, others looked like nobles, hell, one of them even looked like a scholar!
Quite a diverse lineup of people were aboard this ship, but despite this, the atmosphere looked harmonious.
Every one of them looked determined, yet also yearning for something.
It seemed like he wasn't the only one here with the determination to leave everything behind in order to pursue something.
Before he could think any further, a voice interrupted his thought process from behind.