CHAPTER 14: CHAPTER 14: DIE TRYING

Since then, she’d done what every survivor did... kept going.

The tribe didn’t really have "jobs." Everyone did whatever the hell needed to be done. The men hunted or made tools. The women also hunted, although some of them and only occasionally, tanned hides, wove cloth, shaped pottery, crushed herbs, watched the kids.

If something broke, someone fixed it.

If food ran short, everyone went hungry.

Lyra was the kind who filled every gap she could.

She shaped clay into pots and bowls, wove baskets from reed, stitched animal hide into pouches... anything that could be traded, and bartered for fruits, roots and other edible plants and scraps of meat.

There was no currency here, no shiny coins or tokens. Everything was barter.

Recently she hadn’t gone hunting, she stayed home, taking care of him, working, keeping the fire burning, working the clay with quiet focus. Every move was practiced, mechanical, born from repetition.

Going through the memories he understood that they weren’t just poor, they were dirt poor. The Osari tribe had nothing stable left. They weren’t really starving, at least not yet. But they were close.

The men were too few, no real hunters, no real warriors, no safety net. The strong ones were gone. The young ones were learning too slow.

Real meat was a rarity, shared and divided by the chief, but only when a successful hunt blessed the village, which wasn’t often anymore. The number of hunters was dropping every season, and the ones left came back more often empty-handed than not.

Most days, they lived on fruits, dried roots, nuts or whatever nature felt generous enough to drop their way.

The rare bits of meat were treasured like relics, sealed in clay jars and ash to keep rot at bay, saved for when the cold came crawling down from the mountains.

And when winter arrived, it never came alone.

It brought hunger. Silence. The slow kind of death that didn’t scream, didn’t fight, just waited quietly.

People died quietly too.

The old, the weak, the unlucky.

There were no funerals, no crying fits... just a body, wrapped, burned, or buried, and the living kept moving. Because stopping too long meant joining them.

Winter didn’t care who you were.

It didn’t care if you were good, brave, strong, or kind.

It just thinned the herd and moved on.

Reaching here he took a deep breath and opened his eyes, because it was too heavy.

Looking around, he could see it now. The patched walls, the worn tools, the thin smoke curling from a dying fire.

They were poor... painfully poor... yet everything in this place was maintained with quiet care. Every object had purpose, every movement a meaning.

He looked at Lyra’s hands... the faint cracks, the calluses skin,,at the small frown that formed between her brows when the clay didn’t shape the way she wanted.

She wasn’t shaping pots.

She was shaping time.

Buying them both another sunrise, another chance to breathe, another bowl of something warm.

This was life here... simple, harsh, but stubbornly alive.

And for the first time, he felt the weight of what he’d stepped into... not just a new world, but a dying one. A place where every small comfort was earned, every full belly borrowed from tomorrow.

He looked at Lyra again, her back straight but shoulders tired, that quiet dignity she carried even when her world had clearly kicked her down a few times. Something twisted inside him...not pity, not guilt, but a kind of low burning frustration that he couldn’t name, especially because he had carried almost all the memories of previous self, this feeling was even more intense.

He really hated this feeling of weakness. Just lying here, watching her work, while she carried everything alone. She shouldn’t have to. He knew this was a primitive world and stuff like this was totally normal, but he still refused to accept it.

He didn’t wanted to live a worthless life again, this time he wanted to live fully and feely, no matter how fucked up the world, he will dictate his own fate.

He promised himself right then — no, vowed.

He’d get better.

He’d protect her.

And he’d fix this whole damn food mess somehow.

With his knowledge from the future, It couldn’t be that hard, right?

Okay, maybe that was him being cocky again, but honestly, what choice did he have? Starve quietly? Not happening.

He had something no one else here did... modern knowledge, at least in theory.

Sure, he wasn’t some survivalist alpha who built cabins with bare hands, but just like any other male, he’d read enough to fake it till he made it. Novels, documentaries, random articles... you name it.

Back in the old world, before succumbing to the dark side of the world, known as smut novels, he was the type of guy who’d fall down random rabbit holes at three in the morning. Watching survival videos.

Reading about ancient building techniques. Wondering how cavemen made fire in the rain. He was the kind of guy who’d watch a 40-minute video on "how to make fire from bamboo friction" while eating cup noodles. He knew way too much about water filtration using charcoal and sand, or how to smoke meat in a pit.

Not because he planned to use it. Just because he had to know. I think almost any male(biological) will relate to it. He didn’t know why, like any other men, he also had this weird paranoia of getting stranded in a jungle, on sea and stuff like that, that’s why he took extra time to study stuff like these.

And he’d always been that guy... the type who couldn’t rest until he understood how stuff worked.

Why soap cleaned.

How fire burned brighter with airflow.

How to find drinkable water in the wild.

Why clay didn’t crack when mixed with the right ratio of ash.

How salt preserved meat.

He knew basic principles like these, so it shouldn’t be hard to survive in this primitive world.

He smiled faintly to himself.

Back home, that knowledge made him a bored nerd with too much screen time.

Here, it might make him a goddamn lifesaver.

Yeah, he’d never actually done any of it. Never left his room long enough to test it out.

But hell, if there was ever a time for useless trivia to pay off, this was it.

He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. His body was still all over, but there was a strange lightness in his chest... that small flicker of purpose he hadn’t felt in years.

It had been easy to rot in a room when food came in plastic and warmth came from a switch. But here, there were no shortcuts. No takeout apps. No heating systems. Just raw nature and the people trying to survive it.

He started running through the possibilities in his head... practical, small things first.

Traps for rabbits, if there were any in this world. Drying racks for meat. Better ways to store food for winter. Maybe simple farming... they had water nearby, right? He’d seen plenty of fertile soil on the way in those borrowed memories.

If they could grow something basic, even tubers or grains, it’d change everything.

He thought of the old documentaries he’d watched about the earliest humans... how one small trick, like smoking meat or fermenting food, had changed entire tribes. Hell, maybe he could even build a crude granary with mud walls and thatch insulation. It wasn’t rocket science. Just logic, patience, and hard work.

He chuckled to himself. "Great. The guy who couldn’t cook rice without a rice cooker is now planning agriculture. Perfect."

Still, a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

He wasn’t hopeless. Not anymore.

Whatever it took, he’d figure it out.

And for the first time in a long while, the idea of doing something... anything... didn’t feel pointless.

He wasn’t just going to survive this world, and enjoy all the beauties.

He was going to change it.

Or at least die trying.