Chapter 2 - Bottom of the Food Chain

Suddenly, I felt my legs were under me, instead of planted on the ground. The disconnect between how I was the previous instant and how I was this instant, made it feel awkward. It seems that my legs had also fell asleep from having been in an awkward sitting position for too long. Opening my eyes I could see.. well, leaves.

Of course, that's good because it means my body wasn't disturbed when I was in the Pokemon world. Grgrgrgret (sound that means your hungry), however, it seems my stomach has still been operating normally even without me. I began to feel both hunger and thirst the second I had returned.

Indeed, having an out of body experience is certainly a dangerous phenomenon. I have to be even more careful of the time I spend in that state in the future.

Focusing my mind again and closing my eyes in the way similar to before I tried to sense the pokeball, to see if I had managed to bring it with me. I found the pokeball in it's spectral form, floating inside the space between my brow, orbiting the spatial orb with the Pokemon World coordinates.

Using the small amount of my mental energy remaining on me, I try to 'summon' or 'drag' the pokeball out of that space and into the world.

The moment I attempted to do so the pokeball began to shimmer and shake apart, dispersing into energy. A small portion of the energy, which shined in a blinding light, condensed into a sort of magical seal on the blue wall. The remaining energy, dyed in red, seemed to exit the mental space and go outside.

I opened my eyes, and for a moment nothing happened. Then, a lightly shimmering spectral body of Meditite condensed in front of me.

"Meditite, we need to find some food and water around here. We need to try our best to avoid detection by any sort of creatures lurking about though. Any one of them could spell death for us right now. Do you have any sort of abilities to detect or avoid detection by others, abilities to locate food and water, anything like that?"

Meditite stared at me for a second then nodded it's head, sending a light mental signal that it can. Indeed, just like in the anime, most Pokemon are extremely intelligent and can easily communicate. Though, I suppose it would be expected for a humanoid Pokemon at least, but I still don't know about a Magikarp.

I got up out of my seated position and stretched my legs a bit to get the blood flowing. Ah~ More than a few things cracked getting up after sitting so oddly for so long. I looked at meditite whose spectral body had appeared in the physical world, it was giving me a blank and judging look.

Don't judge me Meditite, I still managed to beat you in a fight.

"Lead the way Meditite, but make sure to keep low, signal me if we need to find deeper concealment."

Meditite gave me the affirmative and we started slowly moving through the brush.

Luckily I'm able to sense Meditite with my mental energy or I could have easily lost him in this heavy brush.

I follow him at a short distance, and we move through the brush. About 10 minutes into our movement Meditite arm signals me to get down and I duck into some nearby heavy bushes as Meditite moves into some tall grass near himself.

Not long after, although I could only somewhat make it out, I saw the enormous body that was causing that noise as it slowly. The creature appeared to be either a huge boar or a mammoth, or something like that? I can't make out most of its body through the brush and trees but from the body size and hair it should be something similar, or then again maybe not since this is a different world after all.

A few minutes after, it passed into the distance, Meditite gets out and signals me to get up. We continued moving through the brush and eventually came to an area where more light could be seen coming through between the trees.

The thick brush seemed to have been cleared in the surroundings around a stream which appeared about 9 meters in width on average and stretched out beyond sight in length in either direction. The waters in the stream appeared to be relatively calm but also rather deep.

Tracks could be seen all about the edge of the stream, indicating the lack of brush around it is likely due to the trampling of animals coming through this place for water. Meditite signaled me to hold and not move any further, and so I sank quickly back into some concealment.

A number of horse-sized creatures that looked akin to an Anteater came along in a small herd. The Anteaters shot long tongues out of their already long snouts, sinking them like straws into the stream. They spent a good amount of time simply staying there, moving about up and down the stream, flicking their tongues into the water occasionally.

After a short while one made an abnormal jerking action with its tongue in the water. The creature continued to jerk and reel back as though something had caught it's tongue. It would seem there are indeed some predators lurking in the water as well, these fellows adapted to avoid them, but the predator in the water is trying to pull it in.

At this time, two more Anteaters came over to join the fellow that was caught and similarly stuck their tongues into the water next to it. They began to all pull together and a large creature, looking akin to a long bodied catfish with jutting sharp teeth came out of the water.

Finally, I realized I was mistaken, these Anteaters were actually fishing this whole time. Their tongues appeared to be have hooked hairs on the end of them and all three of the Anteaters had lodged their tongues into the sides of the fish as it thrashed about but could not escape.

After they had dragged the fish out of the water for a good distance, they pulled out their tongues and began stabbing into it again in other places. A few other Anteaters came over to joining in on the fun. Some of them sank their tube-like spiked tongues into the water before sticking it into the fish.

It seemed as though they were pumping water into the fish's circulation system to make it easier to suck all of its blood out. Not too long after they all left the fish behind and it just laid there, slightly deflated and deformed, looking horrifying from all the blood being drained from it.

This repeated a few times as they caught different kinds of fish and drained them of their lives. Truly, you can't underestimate any of the creatures in this place.

After they all seem to have drank their fill of fish blood, they all began to leave, moving down along the riverbed. Earnestly, for a good while I was rather nervous some of them might have the intention of coming my way but thank goodness that didn't happen or I might look like a mummy already.

The spectral meditite moved out of the bushes and beckoned me along. It grabbed a long and sturdy looking tree branch and carved out a small channel on the ground, it should be meant for drawing a small amount of river water closer away to eliminate the risk of approaching too close to the river. I went over to the woods and similarly grabbed a branch and began to help.

Not long after we had made a long and narrow channel leading away from the river. Then, at the end of it, we dug out a small hole to allow the water to pool up once it was a short distance into the forest. Meditite followed up and made a separate channel and pool after.

It would seem one is primarily for washing and the other for drinking. We began to collect small stones and other sediment and made a few small permeable barriers on the two channels to the drinking pools. Although it wasn't perfect, using fire and creating a steam apparatus to thoroughly purify it isn't realistic right now.

At the least these basic filters should prevent unseen parasites and a few other things so I don't get too sick...

Meditite now has a body completely made of energy so I don't think this fellow even needs to eat or drink anymore. Or more like, he probably just gets all of his sustenance from the link to my own mental energy.

So at the very least, I don't have to worry about taking care of him much. Does that mean I am eating for two now? Ugh, that's a disturbing and twisted way of thinking about it, let's cease that train of thought.

After getting my fill of water, I turn my eyes toward those mummified fish... eating fish is generally okay raw, right? And I can't really cook anything because fire is bound to draw animals and kill me, so...

I looked about trying to find a somewhat sharp rock, or perhaps a weak looking rock that could be splintered and used as a knife. However, before I got far, meditite approached me. Beckoning for me to hand the fish to him.

I handed Meditite the fish, and he dragged it over near the washing pool and set It down. Meditite formed a karate style knife-hand, and then a small purple radiant arc, flickering slightly, formed off the edge of his hand. Quickly, he brought that edge down on the fish.

The purple radiance smoothly cut through the fish, slicing off the layer of skin on one side and revealing the meat. In fact, this meat looked very healthy, as most all of the blood had been drained in advance there was no mess and only a slight fish smell to it.

Meditite began to shrink slightly as the radiance sliced through the fish. He slowly sliced off numerous very thin layers of meat. The size of the pieces were sliced suitably thin so that any sort of major parasites within would not be able to survive or hide themselves within.

I was somewhat confused on how Meditite knew this method. Do Meditites do such things in the wild or did he see people doing these things somewhere? Then again, he is a psychic type and has a open link to my mind as well so it might not be impossible he drew on this knowledge from my own memories.

From what I could tell, Meditite had used a weak form of the psyblade attack to cut the fish apart. Likely, he wasn't skilled enough to use it in battles and could only bȧrėly form a stable blade to cut through some things slowly. I was certainly thankful for this ability of his though, and the fact he did not try it on me.

After a few minutes, we had a decent pile of sashimi which had been carved off of this big and scary looking fish. I quickly threw the remains of this fish into the river so as to lower the risk of the smell of it bringing predators.

Not long after it began floating something akin to a gigantic eel reared a part of its upper body out of the water and swallowed the remainder of the fish whole. It's mouth seemed sufficient enough to swallow me whole as well. I was even more thankful of not approaching that river now.

We brought over the sashimi to the washing hole and I thoroughly washed the first piece before eating some.

Wow! Surprisingly, it tastes pretty good! I ate only 2 pieces of the thin sashimi before I felt full. It didn't seem like much, but even the fish here probably have much higher energy content than the most vigorous lion or tiger back on earth, so even a little meat goes a long way.

Unfortunately, this sort of meat will likely go bad in just a few hours given the weather, not even long enough to last to the next meal. So I went ahead and ate another piece and a half so that my stomach was basically bursting, as I don't know when my next meal might be.

The rest of the meat and fish carcasses remaining were all thrown to the eels~

After that, me and Meditite made our way to a spot where there seemed to be relatively few creatures about. With Meditite standing watch, I fell into sleep for the first time in this unknown land.