Eric will head in about the opposite direction as the building had been, offset by a slight angle to avoid predictability. He'll want to make it to the ocean soon, where he can travel without being attacked by monsters, and fish for food. But he'll travel on land whenever that's the most direct route to escape.

Did he know that if he steps in snow that is too deep, he starts to sink into it and is overwhelmed with freezing jolts of pain? He does now!

He will travel in a slightly different slightly different angle!

Wait! Before he keeps going, does he want to stop and take a look at whatever this is?

...fine.

Bad idea!

Baaaaaaaaaack on the trail then!

How's he going to handle night time? Just hide in a hole again?

No, he's already given the hunters too much time to catch up. He's going to try to fight past the monsters, by which he means "run past".

There's deep snow in front of him and spiders behind him! Where is he going to run?

...to the leeeefft!

There's snow on the left!

Then you can probably guess where he's going!

He'll go through a jungle and find a river, but along the river is yet another one of the structures with the black half-rectangles.

Seriously? They've made it to here too? Or is it someone other than the grey hunters; maybe another group? He thinks back to the person who had thrown bottles of liquid at him in the cave; maybe there are multiple structure-building species here. But whoever it is, what's the point in building these things?

He'll loot the chest and keep travelling along the river.

The chest includes a strange object made out of gold, as well as a white rock and a black rock, which for some reason form only a single item.

He's going to have some trouble with that "travelling along the river" thing, though.

He's... a little more concerned about whether the zombies are sentient, now. Although they're clearly not too smart.

Run on foot! He can craft a new boat later!

Once he makes it to the ocean with a new boat, he'll pass over this underwater structure.

He really wants to explore it, but he will resist the urge and keep sailing.

He'll make it to a strange sort of desert with a new type of zombies.

It seems to have manmade tunnels, too!

It doesn't take long for him to run out of food. It's daytime and the monsters seem to be gone, so he should probably take a break to fish.

All right. But he'll be watching his back.

Did you know that it is not safe to eat raw pufferfish?

He sure fucking does now.

He'll also catch a little piece of wood with string tied to it, as well as a bow with magic powers?

Good or bad magic powers?

Only one way to find out!

(It's good powers. When he fires an arrow, it lights itself on fire as it flies through the air.)

This is almost compensation for the golden pants stuck to his legs. Almost.

After some more travel - and a great many monsters - he'll see this in the distance.

What is that, a whole town of them? He's getting the hell away from here. Run in a slightly different direction?

Or - wait.

It is not that large of a village.

He can see one of them sleeping in its bed.

He can surprise them with his magical bow and flaming arrows.

Why is he not just going to kill them and take their stuff?

Is he... seriously worried about ethics?

They're not actually sentient. This is a dream, realistic though it may be, and it does not matter if he kills figments of his imagination. Besides, they'd probably want to kill him.

No, brain, he's not going to check if they're going to kill him first! That would give them time to sound the alarm and take away his element of surprise!

But they could be potential allies?

This is blatant rationalization because you're too weak to kill imaginary people. What kind of a lieutenant governor is too scared to kill parts of his own brain?

Fine! He'll break into one house, surprise the sleeping person, give it an opportunity to cooperate, and then kill it only after it inevitably tries to kill him. Even though this risks his own life and is objectively stupid.

He sneaks in through the door of the closest house, and boards up the door and windows.

Come on, look at this cute little villager? You don't want to kill it, do you?

"Get up," he whispers to it.

No response.

"Get up," he snarls, a little louder.

No response.

He smashes the bed with his pickaxe.

The villager awakens. It stares at him blankly.

That is... not open aggression. Although this may be because he is holding a sword at its face.

"Do you understand me?" he asks.

"Hmm."

"Do you understand me?"

"Hrrrm."

"Look, if you do understand me, hear this - if you shout, I kill you. Every single person I've encountered here tried to kill me. Now, you are clearly intelligent enough not to attack the man with the sword, but I have no way of knowing whether you'll kill me once I turn my back."

"Haarrmm. Hmm. Hoom. Hrrrrrm."

"No, you don't speak English." He sighs.

He points at his own face. "Eric. I'm Eric. Eric Underwood. Do you - how do I signal friendliness - I probably can't signal friendliness anymore, what with the sword and all - here, have a fish."

It does not pick up the fish.

"Hrarm." It turns around.

...how sure is he that this one is sentient. Maybe it's just occupying a village created by someone else.

He'll open the chest.

He's going to have to put away some of the items in his inventory right now, but he'll get some green gems, some more bread and wheat, and what looks like dead bushes.

All right. He'll leave for now, and explore the other houses.

There's another chest, but it doesn't have anything interesting.

He wakes up a few more villagers, but they don't seem to have any hostile intent. Nor does the giant metal man walking around the village.

Good to hear!

Does that change if he begins harvesting the piles of wheat around the village for food?

Nope!

All right!

Then after he's harvested enough wheat for a large supply of bread - and maybe tried a couple more times to communicate with the villagers - he'll get back to travelling.

He's no longer all that sure that he's near any of the grey people that he saw before - it looks like there are multiple species of semi-sentient beings around here, and not all are hostile. But either way, he'd want to keep moving in order to find more useful items.

He finds another one of those tunnels with wooden structures, cobwebs, and railroad tracks.

He'll explore this one. Hopefully whatever built it isn't going to kill him.

Also, can he mine the tracks and cobwebs?

The tracks are easy to mine. The cobwebs take a while to mine at first, but if he uses his sword, they drop string.

And it turns out the tunnel doesn't actually go anywhere.

He'll soon find another village! It looks pretty similar to the first one, although there's one building that's taller than any of the ones in the first village.

Great! Loot the chests?

Nothing interesting.

Keep travelling.

(It's night!)

He can handle it.

After another day or so of travel, he's going to make at least a temporary house. If he's not being actively chased, then he might want to get back to trying to finding things to craft.

He'll discover watermelons while clearing out the area!

Ooh, tasty.