A Quick Jaunt Through Turkey
As it turned out, the plane had been going to Turkey. A place I knew nothing about. There were no houses, only tall apartment buildings, and the roofs were all wavy pink tiles. Subways and trains crisscrossed the landscape, and I could see a skyscraper-filled city in the distance.
And nothing was in English.
After I'd teleported out of the airplane's cargo hold, I had been delirious with hunger. No food for twenty or so hours would do that to a kid.
So I'd wandered around the streets of Ankara, dodging cars and pedestrians, and following a strange scent that had caught my nose.
It was the smell of delicious, freshly-baked bread.
I followed the smell to a bakery at the foot of an apartment complex. Inside, lined up in row after row, were all sorts of confections, pastries, and breads.
I wanted them. I needed them. Desperately.
Had I been thinking clearly, I probably would have gone about things a little differently. But unfortunately, hunger was seriously messing with my judgement skills.
My first mistake was strolling into the bakery.
I was immediately noticed. In case you hadn't realized this, but Harry Potter did not look Turkish at all. He looked pale and British.
So yeah. While I was in there literally salivating over the breads, the guy manning the counter was rather confused. He probably thought I was the kid of some tourists, and I'd gotten lost or something.
Yeah, sorry pal. I'm actually a reincarnated game character in the body of a cursed ten-year old fugitive wizard. I don't blame you for not guessing.
He turned out to be a nice guy. Borderline angel. He gave me a whole loaf bread, free of charge and told me to wait as he called the polis (police). Or at least that's what I thought he said, since he said it in Turkish.
I didn't know Turkish.
Anyway, the police came and got me a little while later. But the thing was, I was too fixated on the bread to remember.
I hadn't eaten in forever. My stomach had been growling for days. I was as thin as a stick, down to the bone. That Emaciated debuff wasn't for show.
So when suddenly, a huge, fresh loaf of bread was quite literally plopped into my lap, I started devouring the thing like I was crazy.
By the time I'd finished it, I was at a police station, sitting in a chair. An officer was sitting across from me, trying to get my attention.
"Ismin ne?" He started, before realizing I didn't understand. "Do you speak English?"
"Yes." I said.
"Your name is?" He asked, in an accented voice.
"Harry Potter." I truthfully replied. Had I been thinking clearer, I might have lied.
"Your parents are where?"
"I don't know." I lied.
"You are from where?"
"England." Truth.
He wrote something down on a clipboard, and stood up. He patted me on the back and left. In the other room, I heard him talking to his fellow cops. I didn't know what they were saying though.
My eavesdropping was violently interrupted by a horrible pain from my stomach. But it wasn't hunger. It was something worse. A new debuff.
Refeeding Syndrome (-10 Str, Vit, and Int)
Dammit! I must have eaten that bread too quickly!
I felt weak and faint. Waves of nausea assaulted my body, stemming from my abdominal cavity.
The polis were milling about in the other room, trying to find out if there were any 'Potters' in the country.
I could no longer focus on them.
I began teleporting, moving as far as I could, with the MP I had.
Apartments were replaced by houses, which were replaced by trees, forests, and then mountains. Each teleport took me further and further from that police station, out of the city, and into the uncivilized wild.
<Poison Resistance Lv.7 -> Poison Resistance Lv.8>
<Teleport Lv.4 -> Teleport Lv.5>
Each hop cost 10 MP and took me 1.6875 kilometers. I didn't bother keeping my jumps in a straight line.
<Teleport Lv.5 -> Teleport Lv.6>
I paid no attention to the system, which was informing me of the level-ups in its robotic voice. I had run out of MP. All 1130 of it.
Instead, I doubled over clutching my stomach, which seemed to want me dead.
<Pain Mitigation Lv.2 -> Pain Mitigation Lv.3>
An undetermined amount of time passed like that. But eventually, the pain died down and the Refeeding Syndrome debuff disappeared.
<Faint Resistance Lv.8 -> Faint Resistance Lv.9>
I looked around. I didn't know how far my teleports had taken me, but I doubted I was anywhere near Ankara anymore.
Light filtered through branches above, and giant roots crossed the dirt around me. Smaller plants sprouted between the roots, feeding off of whatever sunlight managed to make it through the giants above them.
Birds called. Leaves rustled in the wind. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear a wolf howl.
There were no humans.
I sat there for a moment, getting my bearings. I'd just gone through a horrible sickness after being a stowaway on an international air vehicle. Now I was in the wilderness of another country, far away from the bullshit of wizarding Britain.
What better place to start a new life?
---------
Through the next few days, I quickly learned that this forest was no ordinary one. It was a magical one.
Strange, humanoid insects flitted through the trees. Odd, tentacled funguses grew on the ground, grabbing and dissolving any bugs dumb enough to get close. Furry six-armed monkeys jumped across the treetops, swinging from branch to branch like their mundane cousins.
The strange plants and animals weren't the only odd properties of the forest. It also had strange purple clouds of fog that swept through the forest on occasion. Whenever it did, I would gain a level in Poison Resistance.
It was clear to me that anyone other than myself, who had a system, probably wouldn't be able to survive in this place. After all, magic was dangerous. Therefore, magic forests are way more dangerous than normal ones.
But this was a good thing for me. It meant this forest had no humans, which meant I wouldn't be discovered.
And I could live with that.