Limits

I tried to get up from my bed but I couldn't. I couldn't move my hands, legs, I couldn't even roll to my side. Then a feeling of extreme hunger hit me. I had no time to think about any of that as I simply shouted "Shelly! SHELLY WAKE UP". Shelly woke up a bit disorientated and looked at me as if saying 'What the hell do you want?'. I didn't bother with Shelly's mood and simply said "Food, give me food". Shelly ran over towards my bed and started rummaging in the bag that was next to it in order to find some food.

When Shelly finally found some food, it took it out and left it there. I said "I can't move. You have to bring it to my face!". There was urgency in my voice as I was really starving at this point. Shelly immediately came over to my face and feeded me the meat. I ate it like a starving animal and simply asked for more when one piece after another disappeared in my mouth.

When I ate about 2 boars worth of meat, I could finally move although in great pain. I sat up and started to retrieve meat myself from the bag. Shelly also started eating when it saw that I could move by myself. We finished almost all the meat in my bag. There was still enough for our dinner but it wasn't much compared to what we had stored in there.

Even though I ate so much, I still felt pain in all my muscles. 'I will not be able to train today whatsoever. This dream… me training while dreaming is as if I trained all of that in reality' I thought. If my dreams can influence the reality, which they could because the increase in strength from the past was a proof of that but also my exhaustion after every dream was real as well. I could be in deep troubles one day.

'If the dream can and is affecting the reality in some way. Then that means all the training I did in there is kind of real but not real at the same time. It affects my body but at the same time, I'm not able to eat anything while I'm dreaming. That would explain why I wake up so hungry all the time' I thought.

My thoughts continued 'But if I'm asleep, how does the dream affect my real body? I don't know how it is possible but I need to watch out when I do stuff in those dreams. If I trained too hard, I could really starve myself to death and that would not be good'. I decided that any training I did in the dream would need to be limited. That way, I wouldn't starve myself to death while in the dream.

Although I didn't mind being hungry when I woke up but I hated the feeling of starvation and the inability to even move as if something was in control of my life. I now knew I would have to get some more meat stored just in case. My bag had limited space and besides, it would weight the same as the stuff that was inside. Carrying that kind of amount was not only impossible but also inconvenient. I decided to build something to store the meat. I knew that in villages during the winter, people had special shacks constructed that would allow for the cooked meat to stay fresh for longer. Instead of 1 or maybe 2 days that the meat would stay edible, it would extend the edibility of the meat to 4 or 5 days. Not much improvement but having 5 days and 2 days is a very big difference.

I needed to build that kind of shack. The winter was here as well so the coldness would preserve the meat. There was a problem though, I wasn't able to move properly so constructing that thing now was out of the question. I needed to rest in order to do anything.

I said to Shelly "Here, take the mask and run off to play. I need to rest my muscles before I start to move properly". Shelly wasn't very keen on the idea that I would layabout while it would have to train but I placed the mask on it anyway and kicked it outside.

I laid back in my bed and took out the Great Scriptures of Evil Medic. I still had couple of recipes to memorise and due to the recent events, I didn't have much time to study them. Now that I had to lay in bed to rest anyway, I could read it as well.

I read the book till afternoon and managed to completely memorise 2 recipes. My thinking abilities were improved since last time I read this book and my memory got better as well. Shelly came back in the afternoon for me to take off its mask. I was feeling much better now due to the rest but the pain still lingered in my body.

I took out the rest of the meat from my bag and we had our dinner. I ate less this time as I didn't do anything really while laying in bed. Shelly on the other hand ate most as usual. With our meat finished we had no meat left for the next day. This was a problem. If the dream happened again, although I did nothing today, I could be very hungry in the morning as well. With no food available, I would just starve to death. We had to go on a hunt today, no matter what.

I said to Shelly "We will go hunt as we have no food left but I'm not very well yet so you will have to do the hunting. I will try to help in case of problems". Shelly nodded its head and draw on the ground that it didn't mind doing it alone.

We traveled into the depth of the forest at a slow pace. I didn't want to strain my body on traveling alone. We searched the forest but found nothing. Literally there were no animals as if the whole animal kingdom simply disappeared from the face of the earth.

We searched and search and search but we found nothing. We decided to go further, if we didn't find any food today, it would be very bad tomorrow. Shelly could just sleep and save its energy but I couldn't do that, so the meat was more for my sake than Shelly's.

I was getting more desperate the longer we searched. I thought 'How the hell there are no animals when it was crawling with them in these parts of the forest'. After another hour of searching we stumbled upon a clearing. To my surprise there was an ongoing battle happening. To my bigger surprise it was not animals fighting other animals for territory or for food, no. It was humans fighting animals.

The ground was littered with dead animals and I could also see some human corpses in between. I thought 'Where the hell did those people come from? According to my map there are no villages in the vicinity'. I said to Shelly "We shall watch and see how this develops. I don't want to get dragged into that fight and also there may be more animals coming to finish of the humans. If we get lucky, we won't have to do anything in order to get meat". Shelly nodded its head and we hid ourselves to watch the fight.