Survivalist Shenannigans
Those survival shows they play on the television always had the protagonist go into the woods, chop down some trees, and then somehow build a log cabin from scratch.
I quickly learned that that wasn't how it worked at all.
For one, I had nothing to cut trees with. No saws, blades, or anything. Just my fists, and maybe my Telekinesis skill, if I could figure out how to make it cut things.
For another, I had no idea how to build structures from logs. I hadn't exactly been an architect in my past life.
That was why I gave up on searching my memory for those old survival shows.
Instead, I searched the forest for a cave. I didn't have to build a cave, and it would provide shelter all the same. Or so I thought.
To my delight, I found one at the base of a cliff.
Elated, I walked inside to check out the place. There were plenty of stacalites and stalagmites or whatever. Water dripped, sending *plink* sounds through the darkness. I couldn't see the end of the cave, which meant it was likely to be a whole cave-system, rather than a single chamber.
Pretty awesome. I thought myself lucky for discovering it.
But like the log-cabin thing, I quickly learned why the cave wasn't such a great idea.
I made my way through the darkness, straining my eyes and ears to pierce through the progressively-decreasing light-levels. Eventually, I passed into a tunnel with a dead end.
At that moment, an update chimed from my system's voice.
<Gained Skill: Darkvision Lv.1>
And right in front of me was a giant green bear. It was the size of a freaking van, had machetes for claws, and was casually crushing rocks with its jaw.
*Crunch*
*Crunch*
It turned to look at me, and upon seeing me its face contorted in a very un-bearlike manner, forming an expression that I instinctively understood to mean: 'Really fucking pissed'.
It bared (heh, get it?) its teeth at me and roared, a shockwave of sound blasting from its open mouth.
A debuff appeared, and I crumpled to the ground, my legs no longer supporting me.
<Paralyzed (-100% Str)>
That was when my flight senses kicked in and I teleported as far as I could away from that beast. In less than a second, I found myself back at the cave's entrance. I was unable to move and my heart was thumping as if I had just run a marathon.
That was a disaster.
I spent the next few minutes there in the dirt, contemplating my failure.
I'd stumbled into the cave with zero preparations and didn't expect it to already be occupied. If that bear's roars stunned instead of paralyzed, I would be dead right now.
Thank goodness for teleportation.
The debuff finally wore off.
<Gained Skill: Paralysis Resistance Lv.1>
Great. At least I got something out of that encounter.
But it was clear that the cave was off-limits, for now. I didn't want to test my luck against that bear. I was nowhere near strong enough for that.
Well, not yet.
---------
Due to the bear, dubbed Green Bean for its green fur, the cave was no longer a housing option.
That's why I did the next best thing and climbed a tree. Or rather, I teleported to the highest branch, lost my balance, fell off, and teleported again to a more stable one.
The trees of the forest were a lot larger than normal ones. Like, Giant Sequoia-level large.
So large in fact, that there was enough space to comfortably sleep on a branch.
This meant that unless I discovered dangerous predators in the treetops, it looked like this would be my new home.
I'd always wanted a tree-house, but not like this...
Whatever. I couldn't be too picky about jungle real-estate.
I laid down on my back on the branch in the classic 'relaxed' pose, and put my hands behind my head. I stared up at the treetops, from which light filtered through the thick layer of leaves.
A tree house. That didn't sound like a bad idea.
I used to have one, back in the childhood of my old life. It was where I went to read my books.
Kind of ironic that I'm currently living in a tree inside the world of Harry Potter, rather than just reading about it in a tree-house.
God, I missed my childhood. I missed my old life. I missed the things I once took for granted.
Things such as basic safety and a stable source of food, water, and shelter. Not to mention that I didn't need to worry about my mental health back then either.
The only, and I mean only, good thing about being reincarnated in the world of Harry Potter as Harry Potter was the magic. Everything else was horrible.
I sighed, closed my eyes, and returned to reminiscing of better times.
---------
I woke up later with a horrible headache and a growling stomach. It was night time, and the starlight barely shone through the treetops. I was lucky to have the Darkvision skill.
<Hunger Mitigation Lv.3 -> Hunger Mitigation Lv.4>
Wow. How long had I been out, to become so hungry?
I shook my head, clearing my thoughts.
With how things were going, needed to focus on something I'd been neglecting thus far. Finding food.
That meant either hunting or foraging. And judging by that bear, Green Bean, hunting may be more dangerous than it was worth.
Hopefully not. Hopefully Green Bean was an abnormally powerful creature of this forest, and most others were beneath him.
But if my time in this Harry Potter world had taught me anything, it was not to get my hopes up.
I groaned and sat up. Time to search for food. If things got dicey, I could always teleport.
I'd said before, and I'd say it again: Thank goodness for teleportation.
I used said teleportation to descend to the forest floor. I then began looking around for edible things.
Not that I knew how to recognize what was edible and what wasn't. I had a feeling my poison resistance would be greatly increasing in the near-future.
---------
Within a radius of about 8 kilometers from my sleeping place in the tree, I'd found approximately twenty-two berry-bush and mushroom patches. Out of those twenty-two, eighteen were poisonous.
Strangely, the patch I liked the most was one where blue-and-black-colored poisonous mushrooms grew. That was because the mushrooms were both tasty, and interesting from an evolutionary standpoint.
They would lure in unsuspecting prey with a sweet scent and an even sweeter taste. Then they would use their poison to kill whatever ate them. Finally, they'd use the corpse's energy to grow and proliferate, restarting the cycle all over again.
I dubbed them Killshrooms.
It was strange, picking them off the rotting body of a creature's corpse.
Poor thing. The dead body the Killshrooms had been growing on was that of a small humanoid creature, about the size of a child (so about my size). It was green-skinned and skinny, certainly not any animal I'd ever heard of.
It must've been magical in nature, like everything else in this forest.
Regardless, I picked a few Killshrooms and headed home.
<Poison Resistance Lv.9 -> Poison Mitigation Lv.1>
I smiled at the system's voice. The new, evolved resistance would let me eat even more Killshrooms at once without dying from the poison.
They really were tasty mushrooms. I'd have to be careful not to get addicted.
---------
Four days later, I'd fallen into a comfortable rhythm.
At dawn, I'd spend a few hours foraging, and come back with a bunch of Killshrooms. Then I'd dump them in a slowly-growing pile on the tree-branch, and call it a day.
The creatures of the forest had probably learned to avoid eating them, since they were so poisonous. But that meant that to me, who has Poison Mitigation, there's a relatively steady supply of Killshrooms, since no one else is competing with me for them.
So food was secured. And I was proud to say that I had finally gotten rid of that Hungry debuff.
I wanted to get rid of the Emaciated debuff too though, since if I did, I'd finally have all of my Str and Vit available to me, which would make me stronger and more durable, respectively. Important things to be in this jungle.
But the problem was, if I wanted to get un-emaciated, I needed to eat something other than Killshrooms. An homogeneous diet was never a good thing.
In other words, I needed to put some meat on the metaphorical table. And that meant hunting.
Well, my whole game-system-thingy was based around killing. After all, murder was the only known way to gain xp and level up, as my Aunt, Uncle, and cousin had demonstrated so many days ago.
Hopefully, that meant I'd be a natural at hunting.
---------
I was not a natural. Not at all.
It took days of trial and error to develop a working method of attack.
I started out with sticks, like any primitive human would. I sharpened one end to make a crude spear and elongated the other, to keep it pointing forwards when thrown.
Then, I'd found some small birdlike creatures to hunt.
And that's when I realized that non-magical hunting methods weren't going to cut it in a magical forest.
The birds I'd found were magical birds. Speedfowl, I called them.
As the name implied, Speedfowl were fast. Extremely so. Moreso than normal physics should allow, which made sense, considering they were magical birds.
But their speed meant that my slow, predictable, physical spear-throws had no chance in hell of hitting them. They'd see the spear coming and be ten feet away from where it would be before it had even gotten close.
If I wanted to hit them, I'd need to be faster myself which was physically impossible, which meant I needed to turn to magic.
That was when I headed back to my home-branch and really began innovating.
Firstly was my criminally underutilized skill, Telekinesis.
All this time, I had the power to move things with my mind and I hadn't been using it!
Well no more. Starting that day, I would be using it to help me throw my wooden spears.
I hunted the Speedfowl some more the next day and got a bit closer to hitting them using my telekinetically assisted spear-throws. But it still wasn't enough.
That's where teleportation came in. It was hard hitting the birds from a distance, but I didn't need to.
Instead, I'd begin to throw, torquing my shoulders to release the spear and preparing to accelerate my projectile as much as possible using telekinesis. At the last second, I teleported right next to my target.
The Speedbirds were extremely fast, but a telekinesis-assist spear throw from a little more than a meter away was almost impossible to dodge.
Some birds managed it. A testament to the sheer speed of these birds. But most, I was able to hit.
And just like that, meat was on the menu.
---------
My Emaciated debuff didn't disappear quickly. It took two weeks. And during that time, I'd run into trouble.
Do you remember that strange humanoid creature I'd found the Killshrooms growing on? Well as it turned out, that creature was just one of many.
One of many who were intelligent enough to be dangerous.
I'd been thinking of them as goblins, as in Goblin-Slayer goblins, but that would be an affront to this world's version of Goblins, who were not rapists or murderers and actually ran a very successful banking service.
That was why, to differentiate the two, I would be dubbing the forest goblins Greenskins.
As I said before, the Greenskins were intelligent enough to be dangerous. By that I meant they knew how to use tools, hunt in teams, and build rudimentary shelters. Plus, they could climb trees.
I'd observed them wielding bone clubs, stick spears, and rock knives. They wore clothing, but only for protection, rather than decency.
I'd watched them hunting, using group tactics to corral prey into disadvantageous locations for easy slaughter.
I'd seen their homes. Small villages, usually with a central fire, beast-skin tents, and rocks to sit on. They often interacted with each other, displaying a surprisingly complex social system.
These were no mindless beasts, creatures, or monsters. The Greenskins were a community and a society.
One that competed with me for the forest's food.
That was how I found myself in conflict with them. On my daily teleports, I'd noticed groups of Greenskins hunting swaths of magical creatures across the jungle. They seemed to be following their prey's migration patterns, which coincidentally led through the area that I was active in.
In other words, there would be conflict between us. If I wanted to keep my slowly improving diet of meat and mushrooms, I'd need to deal with the invasive Greenskins.
Fight or starve. I knew my answer.
---------
System Status (At End Of Chapter):
Name: Harry Potter
Titles: Hardened Rock, Arsonist, Unhinged, Fugitive, Survivalist
Race: Wizard
Level: 15
HP: 1090/1090
MP: 1050/1320
SP: 900/950
San: 88%
Vit: 37 (Emaciated: -6)
Str: 19 (Emaciated: -6)
Dex: 30
Int: 45
Cha: 22 (Emaciated: -6)
Skills:
-Mana Manipulation Lv.4
-Pyrokinesis Lv.9
-Telekinesis Lv.6
-Teleport Lv.8
-Cooking Lv.8
-Gardening Lv.5
-Cleaning Lv.6
-Darkvision Lv.4
Resist:
-Heat Resistance Lv.9
-Cold Mitigation Lv.3
-Cutting Resistance Lv.3
-Blunt Force Resistance Lv.9
-Pain Mitigation Lv.3
-Fear Resistance Lv.9
-Poison Mitigation Lv.2
-Hunger Mitigation Lv.4
-Suffocation Resistance Lv.9
-Faint Resistance Lv.9
-Paralysis Resistance Lv.1
Buffs:
Debuffs:
-Emaciated (-6 to Vit, Str, and Cha)
-Claustrophobia (-50% to San when in enclosed spaces)
-Cursed (Horcrux)