Marcus now had full control over Irene's body and had accepted the dying request of her soul. However, as good as Marcus' intentions are he still knew that he was far too weak to save Lilia. Marcus first had to level up and get stronger in order to have any chance of completing his goal.
'I am still woefully underprepared for fighting against a group of armed men who are definitely higher level than me. Heck right now I probably would not be able to make it out of the woods in one piece. One month I will give myself one month to prepare and by then I should be ready. The first thing that I should do though is dig a grave for all these people, it would be too sad and too disturbing to leave all these bodies lying around.'
With Marcus having decided on his course of action he began looking for a shovel that was not destroyed, and with the help of the fragments of Irene's memories, he eventually managed to find an underground cellar that had escaped the carnage. This was the cellar where the community had stored old worn-out tools that could still be used in case new ones broke or became damaged.
'It took me about an hour to find but without the small amount of Irene's memories I have I never would have known this existed. I was hoping that there would be more room in here, so I could sleep in it, but all these old supplies take up the whole thing. There is barely enough room to walk, oh well I will have to find some where else to rest. Wait, I almost forgot about my item box skill. Even with it's limited capacity of 10 cubic feet I should be able to store all of this stuff.'
Marcus then spent the next few minutes storing everything that had been left in the small cellar getting quite the collection of saws, a few buckets, a well-worn tarp, a couple of shovels, and many other miscellaneous items.
Now that Marcus was fully supplied, he headed out of the cellar and towards the remains of the houses to gather up the people and bury them. After many hours of digging and vomiting quite few times Marcus had managed to dig a grave for the residents of the small community and bury them.
'That was definitely the hardest thing I have ever done, after not having a physical body for so long I had forgotten how being tired felt. I need to eat something and go to sleep… wait I do not have any food. I have water from the well and shelter in the cellar but there is nothing to eat.'
After searching through the entire little community, Marcus was unable to find anything that resembled food as it had all been burned or stolen. He was incredibly hungry, but the day was coming to an end, so Marcus instead decided to go to sleep and making finding food his priority tomorrow.
Marcus woke up the next morning feeling quite refreshed both mentally and physically after the first sleep he had since coming to Mirrion. He realized quickly how hungry he was and set off in search of food.
'I vaguely know that there are some wild nut trees around here somewhere but how far away they are and what direction they are in are a mystery to me. Oh well it is the only lead on food I have so I will just have to search around until I find them.'
Wandering around in search of the fabled nut trees for a few hours, Marcus eventually comes upon them about thirty minutes south of the community.
'Ah finally something to eat, if I do not get anything to eat, I will never have enough strength to level up.'
Marcus then proceeded to fill the buckets that he had acquired full of nuts, and then storing everything back into his item box. He then headed back to the remains of the community and began the long and painful process of cracking open all the nuts he had gathered. After getting to the edible center Marcus began his first meal on Mirrion devouring handfuls of nuts to satiate his hunger.
'God, it has been a while since I have eaten anything, I had forgotten how satisfying it is to eat. Though I wish I had something better tasting and more substantial than these nuts. I know a couple of basic traps from Earth so maybe I can catch something.'
Once he had come up with a plan to try and trap a few animals Marcus headed out into the woods to see what he could get. He roasted some nuts to let the smell attract animals and he set up a bucket so that when he pulled the rope connected to the bucket it would fall. Marcus waited for quite awhile until he finally saw something that had taken interest in the roasted nuts.
'It looks like some kind of large shrew mixed with a raccoon, well whatever it is will hopefully be my dinner. Come on just a little bit closer, you know you want to eat.'
Right as the creature bent over to start eating the nuts Marcus pulled the rope letting the bucket fall over trapping the animal. Marcus ran over and put his hands on the bucket to make sure that the creature could not get out.
'Now that I have caught it how am I going to kill it, can I kill it. No, I have to this is not like before when I just wanted exp now I am doing it also because I need to eat. I am going to have to kill things to survive in this world even if I do not want to.'
Unfortunately for Marcus another way that this world is not like Earth, is that the strength of creatures can be misleading based on their size. The creature that he had trapped soon started thrashing about and the old bucket could not contain its might busting apart. The angry creature then targeted Marcus biting into his leg and locking on.
'Ow fuck, how did it breakout of the bucket, why is it biting me. Ow ow ow get off me.'
Marcus took out the shovel he had obtained and started to hit the creature repeatedly in order to get it to let go. However, the more he hit it the harder it bit until after multiple hits from the shovel it eventually stopped moving. What Marcus did not know was that if not for his blessing of iron the creature definitely would have been able to bite his leg off.
'Ouch that hurts that really hurts, why wouldn't the stupid thing just run away. Whatever I beat it even if it took of 20 percent of my HP and now, I am going to have to wait for forty minutes for my leg to heal.'
When Marcus was able to walk again, he grabbed the corpse of the creature he had just fought to the death with and headed back to his current base. Once there he bled and butchered the animal to the best of his abilities without ruining to much of the meat. He than roasted the meat until it cooked through and let off a delicious aroma and began eating his hard-won meal.
