After making his decision, Cloud stood up from the rock and headed once more toward the two decaying corpses.
With hesitation evident on his face, he finally mustered the courage to remove the man's bag. After setting it aside, he proceeded to take the woman's bag from her shoulder.
He quickly began opening one of the bags—the man's. He struggled with it for a while, but after several attempts, he figured out the right way to open it and began searching through its contents.
The bag was gray and seemed to be made of leather. There was a symbol on it, also found on the clothes of the two corpses—a golden eagle inside a square—which was also on the other bag.
The first thing Cloud pulled out was a small map. He set it aside and kept searching for the thing he wanted most at the moment—food.
While searching, he found two loaves of bread at the bottom of the bag. Unfortunately, due to the passage of time, they had gone hard. But despite that, he ate them.
Cloud could eat anything edible. Due to the harsh conditions, if he didn't, the only thing waiting for him was death.
After finishing the bread, he resumed his search through the man's belongings but found nothing except a small pouch of silver coins. Then he moved on to the woman's bag.
He rummaged through it quickly, and what he found filled his heart with joy.
Two loaves of bread and two apples!
The sight made Cloud incredibly happy, and he quickly transferred them into the man's now-empty bag.
"With this, I can survive for two days... Then I'll try to find something else to eat," he said while taking the map and placing it inside the bag. He was genuinely content with this small amount of food.
He dug further inside the bag and found a small pouch with a few silver coins and two small books with different titles—one was a Guide to Swordsmanship, and the other was How to Train Origin Energy.
He threw both coin pouches and the two books into the bag, slung it over his shoulder, then picked up a small box that had caught his interest.
The box belonged to the woman. It was silver with golden edges and looked like a treasure chest. But after opening it, Cloud's assumption changed. A strange expression formed on his face as he pulled out the contents.
Inside was a blue card with a clear word written on it: Teleportation Activation.
"Teleportation Activation...?" Cloud muttered with a puzzled look on his face. Suddenly, his vision became blurry, and he felt as if he was losing consciousness.
Somewhere inside a forest, Cloud lay unconscious beneath a giant tree. The tree wasn't larger than the others around it—in fact, they all stood tall and similar in height.
A small bird landed and started pecking at Cloud's head with its tiny beak, causing him to wake up.
Nothing had changed in Cloud's appearance. His slim body was the same; only the tie that held his black hair had come undone, letting it fall over his shoulders.
His skin had regained some of its color after eating. It had been pale from starvation and lack of sleep due to monster threats.
He opened his dark eyes to find himself in an unfamiliar place. He looked around, turning his head from side to side, but he couldn't tell where he was.
"Where am I? The last thing I remember was searching through the belongings of the dead bodies, and then... ugh…" Cloud grabbed his head as a sudden wave of pain hit him. After it subsided, he tried to stand up.
After picking up the bag that had been lying beside him, he began walking through the forest.
"There was no forest near the village. Could it be that I was teleported because of the card? No... that's impossible. Wait, everything has been strange—from the corpses and the books to the card and this forest I'm in now."
Cloud had no idea how much time had passed since he was at the corpses. Countless thoughts and theories raced through his mind, but one thing he was sure of—he was very far from his village.
End of Chapter.