He reached the woods pretty quickly, strong legs letting him move faster than ever with little fatigue. Every person he passed caused a surge of fear and hunger that he quickly pushed down. He did his best to keep his head down, but he felt their eyes burning into him. His arms sizzled slightly, burning even through the thin jacket he wore. He wanted to run or curl in a ball and cry, but only his strict self-restraint kept him together. As he reached the edge of the town, the last cracked road that faded into trees made him pause. This was it. He'd left, and now what? What was he looking for in the woods? Could he remain near the town and prey on his friends, or would he be lost in the forest and die quickly? Would he look for other vampires or strike out on his own? He didn't know what to do. He wished that he could head back to his apartment and curl up and pretend it was all a dream, but he couldn't. He'd lost everything. And he knew who's fault it was. That vampire that turned him, the one that ruined his life and cost him his friends, his job, his safety, his happiness. There was someone in the world who was responsible for all of this. They'd turned Emile into a monster. To turn someone into a monster is to make yourself a monster. Emile didn't want this, he didn't choose this, and he'd never have been in this situation if it wasn't for that vampire.

For one of the first times in his life, rage swelled within him. He was made into a monster, so it's time he got to be a monster. He was going to hunt this vampire down and kill it.

That decision at least gave him a purpose to the useless wandering. After he'd reached the forest, he just continued pretty directly forward, not knowing what to look for. He knew nothing about the vampire that turned him and had no idea what to do to find it. He assumed that it probably retreated to the woods, but after that... well, it could've gone anywhere.

Emile had never left the town of Emberbrot, leaving him with a certain lack of knowledge that could lead him through this new world. He'd taken the standard lessons on the surrounding geography and overall layout of the world, but that was years ago and he never put more than a basic effort into it. Even with the constant shovelling of information into his brain, he'd retained remarkably little of it due to the school system's defeated attitude toward education. As such, he had a vague idea of the town of Bracksbur off to the... North? He could place it on a map, but that did not translate into actual navigation. The forest surrounded most towns, cutting them off from each other, and isolating them except for a system of treacherous roads. Treacherous simply because they were wise spots for bandits and thieves to set up traps. Lone groups travelling on them wouldn't last long, often being stripped of their valuables and left beaten and broken for the animals or vampires. Often, groups would be taken in to slavery, as labor was always in high demand. These slavers were outlawed everywhere, leading to a slow but steady ascension in the rate in which they were wanted. Despite the developments in technology, a lack of a united force kept the towns from doing anything effective against the problems plaguing them. There was no collective protection for the roads because the renegades that often guided and protected their journeys were well-paid and had little incentive to spur change. There was no force mobilized to stop the vampires from preying on the citizens because it was often considered too dangerous or not dangerous enough. With a recent attack, leaders would argue that any attempts to stop the vampires would be useless and only end in death, and with a lull of attacks, they would argue that there were much more pressing matters to attend to and vampires were hardly a threat. In reality, those in power were simply too concerned with their wallets and convenience to do anything until they ran out of time.

(For any seeking clarification, this takes place in a world with about our level of technology, but likely considerably behind and lacking many of the applications we have found for it, except instead of our united and overcrowded populations, they live in small towns adrift in an extremely large forest. Instead of dedicating their time and money to confronting their issues and solving them, they have, in typical human fashion, concerned themselves only with their personal gains, letting the vampires and bandits run rampant. It will likely never be clarified if vampires come from a source of science or magic, so you may draw your own conclusions. Emile has made his opinion on the matter clear and will likely continue to. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, but I do not guarantee an answer because I simply cannot think of everything.)

There were a few larger towns, ones he'd often heard described as cities, but they were individual and had little impact on his life so he never put much weight in their existence. He'd often thought that this knowledge would never truly matter, and this was the first time he considered it genuinely important to his life. That didn't make it sensible for him to have learned it the way he did in the first place, but he figured it didn't matter. As he pondered this, he continued walking deeper into the forest. The canopy of the trees gave the effect of blocking out the majority of the sunlight, making it darker in the forest and also ending the burning on his arms. That occurred to him as another reason vampires dwelled in the forest, and he felt just a bit idiotic for not thinking of it sooner. Attempting to reroute his mind away from that slight embarrassment, he tried to make a plan to find the vampire that turned him. He'd never seen evidence of a vampire civilization inside the woods, but that was not entirely out of the question. Even so, their attacks had never been of a large scale or coordinated in any fashion, so it was highly unlikely that there was a united group of all the vampires. He didn't think it would make sense for him to recognize the vampire who turned him because that would serve no purpose to the existence of the disease. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if this mission was impossible. It was extremely likely that he'd never find the single vampire, but he didn't have much else to do. He couldn't go back. Even if it was hopeless, at least he had a direction to move in. The most he could do was scan the woods for signs of vampires and continue on.

The sun would be setting soon, and he had yet to make any progress. That's fine, he told himself. He had time. He set up camp for the night, aka rolled out his sleeping bag and laid down on top of it. He could see better in the dark than ever, he wasn't feeling tired or sore, and he wasn't even hungry or thirsty. He was miserable.