After saying goodbye to Mermaid Morty, Morty clenched their only weapon—a toothbrush—between his teeth and crawled out of the cave where they had been hiding, dragging himself forward on his elbows as though Rambo had possessed him. His gaze instantly sharpened with determination as he kept hypnotizing himself.
In the forest, there were only hunters and prey. If he did not want to die, he had to make a successful kill today.
But it was too hard. Far too hard for an utterly ordinary boy.
Morty's specialty was drawing naked girls: he would draw a stick figure, then add two big circles to its chest. Since his allowance was not enough to buy "finished product" magazines, this was usually his "spellcasting material."
His deficient artistic skill could be made up for with imagination, so from another perspective, his imagination ought to count as a superpower.
Every morning, he would mutter the name of the girl he secretly loved, hide beneath the blankets, and practice spellcasting with his four-inch "wand." Every night before bed, he would give each of his ten toes three deep kisses to train the flexibility of his spine, hoping that one day he could become "self-sufficient."
But now, none of those skills helped with wilderness survival.
"Hang in there, Mermaid Morty. Don't die before I get back."
Morty took the toothbrush from his mouth, tested the sharpness of its bristles with his thumb, and quietly muttered to himself.
He began moving stealthily through the woods, doing his best to avoid being spotted by fiercer predators—or something even more dangerous.
Yet two hours passed just like that, and Morty found nothing. This forest was simply too barren. There were no animals at all, not even poisonous mushrooms.
This was awful. Was he not even allowed to use poisonous