Immortality System The Last Human’s Transmigration

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Humanity’s Final Hours

As the darkness swallowed me, I could feel my consciousness drift in the cold and ever-expanding void. I could not help but reminisce on the days when everything had been fine, simple, and overall…

Normal.

I had lost everyone. I had lost everything.

For countless days before my death, I had been left on the verge of crying after witnessing visions and visions of my family, my friends, and my girlfriend all dying right before me. One could call them premonitions of what was to come while others could label it as a coincidence. However, unlike all these people, I knew better than to give this ability… No. I knew better than to give this curse, a name…

I would get short yet powerful feelings of dread that would make me want to curl up into a ball and cry myself to sleep.

I thought they were nightmares or some kind of horrible visions which my mind created to torture me, yet only now could I understand what they truly meant. Their purpose was clear.

Before this cycle of hell, I had an amazing life. I had a girlfriend named Crystal who I was going to propose to in a few days. I had a best friend named Alex, who I had known for as long as I could remember.

I had a beautiful little sister called Emily who I loved from the bottom of my heart and two unconditionally loving parents who would give up everything they had in a heartbeat for their two children.

To think something as precious as life would have been so fragile in the face of overwhelming power.

This seemed to be my fate.

After all, what kind of normal human would I be if I could change my own fate?

…

“Humans! We, the prestiged elven race have come back to take what is rightfully ours! We shall no longer watch as you dirty our planet. Instead, we shall come back as its rightful owners and the original inhabitants of this planet! We shall annihilate the human race for the sake of mother earth!” A world-shaking voice spoke with a calm tone yet laced with something deep and endless.

That voice had said those words almost 5 hours ago, and ever since that announcement, I had been trying my hardest to survive against the incoming storm of these so-called elves.

However, now I found myself trembling on the floor as two corpses lay in front of me, blood slowly seeping out of them and staining the carpet. Those were the corpses of my parents who had died before I had even arrived back home.

Right behind them, however, stood a young girl with long blonde hair, as well as a pair of long pointy ears poking out from her hair and making themselves visible to the world.

“Please, Julia. I loved you! Why are you doing this?!” I watched as the boy cried out, struggling to get out of the iron-clad grasp of the girl who was holding him up by the neck. Fear, grief, and pain could be seen in his eyes, yet not one of them was directed toward the two corpses below him.

On the other hand, tears could be seen coming out of the girl’s eyes too, yet her resolve was clear while her determination for her species allowed her to carry out her final order. An order that she might never forgive herself for carrying out.

*Snap*

I could only watch as the boy, who happened to be my best friend, drop to the floor, and join the two corpses on the ground to make them three.

I could feel my eyes well up in tears while my body began to slowly heat up with something indescribable. It was not anger, no…

My vocal cords couldn’t perform their job as not a single sound came out of my mouth. My brain couldn’t function and none of this felt real.

A burst of psychotic laughter entered my ears before the girl in front of me dropped to the ground with an audible thud and cried her heart out.

All of this occurred in front of a white-haired man clad in golden armor with deep white engravings, each one creating a symbol of its own. He looked at her with an expressionless face, yet his eyes betrayed his expression since they radiated with warmth, remorse, and even pity.

“Why?” I finally forced out, causing the man’s eyes to dart towards me in curiosity.

‘I guess he really is the boy of the prophecy…’ His eyes narrowed as he peered into my soul, analyzing every fiber of my being.

He looked at my eyes which had begun to stream out in tears. At the same time, unlike the rest of my eyes that were filled to the brim with tears, my irises themselves were as hollow and empty as the Sahara desert itself.

“I see…” A wry smile stretched from the corners of his mouth before his arm stretched towards my neck, grabbing me off the floor like some kind of weightless item.

“I’m going back to the ship. Don’t mourn over the human for too long, you are a princess after all.” The man said his departing words before finally disappearing alongside me.

Everything around me warped and stretched to create a tunnel with millions of different colors, some that I had seen, and others that left me mesmerized.

Before I knew it, I was now at a very high altitude while being held up by the neck, consequently strangling me in the process.

The surface of the area we arrived in seemed to have been made out of a dark gold, bent and molded into plates that had been placed with the utmost mastery.

This was a ship… An enormous one at that.

“I’ll kill you!” I tried to struggle out of his iron-clad grip, yet it was all for naught. My eyes were still dull and almost lifeless, yet deep within them, you could see a powerful burning hatred forming and expanding at a tremendous pace.

“It’s over, Ezra. This is the end of the human race.” He finally let go of my neck, allowing me to breathe again, yet I immediately choked on my saliva and began to cough violently.

Looking up, I ultimately met the eyes of a man in the distance, his blood-red eyes piercing and analyzing me from head to toe while everything from his aura to his black and red armor screamed extravagance.

My body instinctively forced me to look away and into the distant cities that had been decimated beyond recognition, and the city under the ship we stood on was no exception.

A scorching hot trail seemed to have slit the city in half like a hot knife through butter.

I saw countless battles, all of them being extremely one-sided in the elven people’s favor.

This was no longer some kind of apocalyptic event for the human race that would leave barely any of them alive. This was humanity’s extinction, and I was watching it occur while standing on the representation of front-row seats.

Anger flared within my eyes as I tried to look back at the man who was clearly the orchestrator of this one-sided massacre. However, I suddenly felt a sharp pain come from the middle of my chest causing me to fall to the ground while only being able to simply watch as blood spilled out of my body.

While I knew that the white-haired man was someone who had powers beyond my comprehension, I knew that it wasn’t him that had attacked me. It was something I could tell from his facial expression alone.

It was not one of victory, nor was it one of apathy. Instead, his face was filled with shock and even traces of fear.

“This is not a battle you can fight at your current state… You are still too weak.” A voice rang out in my ears before the visual of a foot moved in front of my line of sight.

Before I could react to his words, My vision had already been swallowed by the ever-expanding darkness. A darkness so deep and endless that the moment I focused on it, I felt as if I was before a black hole, slowly sucking me in and bending the fabric of space to pull me into the endless abyss.

I didn’t know why but I could feel my blood slowly seep out of my body and stain the magnificent golden ship we stood on.

My body was becoming cold and my vision had ever so slowly faded.

***

[Ding!]

[You have died]

[Initiating System Activation]

[Welcome… Humanity’s Final Anchor]

Those robotic words were the last things I heard as my soul faded back into the infinite abyss.

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The Awakening

Earth

A man with long black hair stood in front of the corpse of the young man that he had just killed with a single stab of his hand.

A sympathetic smile curved up the edges of the man’s lips before he finally shook his head and took a step back, appearing almost 50 meters away in less than a nanosecond.

“You are quite strong. You must not be human” The white-haired elf concluded aloud, making sure that the man heard the last part of his sentence.

“You are wrong…” The man finally spoke, his deep voice resonating with the air while creating spatial distortions as it left his mouth. “I am human. I am the most powerful human anything in this universe will lay their eyes upon… Yet you seem to not remember me?” the man let out a subtle smirk before once again shaking his head.

After finishing his short dialogue, he did not waste another second as he slid his right foot back. At the same time, he placed his left fist at his hip while stretching his arm forwards, opening his palm, and gesturing to the white-haired man with a ‘Come at me’ movement of his hand.

“Insolence! The human of the prophecy is dead and yet you dare stand against me!?” The white-haired man began to float in the air, his hair floating up and dancing around in the wind while a chaotic red and black aura, similar to the color of his armor began to shroud him within it.

“Dare?” The black-haired man scoffed before unleashing an Azure-golden aura laced in a deep red, an indication of how many people he had to kill to get to where he was today.

“Let us see who the arrogant one is after our clash shall we.” as the aura exploded out of him, it caused his hair to also blow back and flutter in the winds, finally revealing his handsome face without a trace of imperfections.

Simultaneously, his deadly golden eyes with several deep crimson Halo’s around his silver pupils locked onto the flying red-figure draped by a red aura, making that very same figure feel a shudder down his spine, a shudder that he had not felt in over tens of thousands of years.

‘Is it who I think it is?’ The man’s face stretched with a cruel smile reaching from ear to ear. It looked like something straight out of a horror film.

At the same time as this battle began, a figure clad in black from head to toe looked towards earth from an ashen grey sphere outside of earth that just happened to be the moon.

He watched at two lights, one gold and the other crimson-red, begin to shine with enough radiance to blind a normal human even if they were seeing it from space. Those lights eventually began to expand further, becoming larger and larger until finally, they had each covered half of the planet with their aura alone.

“Another failure huh…” The cloaked figure spoke out loud, and even though he was technically in a vacuum, his voice traveled through space as if he had spoken into a microphone on Earth.

His eyes narrowed down as his gaze fell upon the body of an unmoving corpse of a boy less than 20 years old. A hole could be seen through the boy’s chest, blood gushing out almost endlessly, yet their eyes remained lifeless.

A smirk appeared on the face of the man, however, in an instant, the man disappeared into thin air with his final words echoing through the vacuum of space.

“Look’s like I’ve found my next subject…”

***

[Ding!]

[You have died]

[Initiating System Activation…]

[Rebooting Life-force…]

[Decoding the universal Code…]

[Breaking the universal code…]

[Calculating energy needed…]

[Absorbing blackholes for energy…]

[1 supermassive black hole has been absorbed into the system!]

[Soul-Energy deficit!]

[117 874 982 105 wandering souls have been absorbed into the system!]

[Polishing code…]

[Patching loopholes…]

[Creating ‘The Dice’]

[Rolling dice to determine system type]

[Rolling…]

[System type has been confirmed]

[Ding!]

[The Immortality System Has Been Activated]

[Welcome to the Immortality System, a system that makes sure you never die as long as you work for it!]

[Ding!]

[You survived for 19 years, 7 months, 20 days, 05 hours, 53 minutes, and 06 seconds]

[You have been rewarded with 3 Immortality tokens]

[You will receive 1 immortality token after 5 years of survival]

[Immortality Tokens have been locked until the trial period ends]

[Trial period will begin in 30 seconds

29

28

27

26

25

…]

I watched as the number began to tick down every second, and even if I wanted to look at something else, I could not.

Right now I felt like an unknown entity floating in the depths of the abyss that we humans called space. However, unlike what people would usually imagine being in space would look like, I saw nothing but darkness.

There was not a single trace of light, not from the stars that were millions of light-years away from earth, nor the moon that we humans would see when looking towards the sky whenever it is night.

I couldn’t feel my body, nor could I speak, turn my head or even move. It felt like I had become nothing but a conscience floating in the waves of the ocean with nothing but water in sight, being forced and dragged to wherever the waves would take me.

At this point, I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. All I could do was listen to the constant dings that entered my ear every time the timer went down by a second.

[9

8

7

£(“*&

@:$£(%^]

[A error has occurred]

[Transmigration to any nearby planet has been deemed impossible]

[Rerouting…]

[Rerouting has been deemed impossible]

[No foreign intervention detected]

[Contacting operators…]

[Unable to contact operators]

[Finding the nearest planet with life detected…]

[Planet Proxima B: 4 Light years away]

[Habitable: Yes]

[Life: Existent]

[Power: Almost non-existent]

[You will be transferred…]

[Unable to Transmigrate Entity: Ezra]

[Sovereign of time; Lord Chronos has detected a problem with the transmigration process]

[Solution has been proposed!]

[You have received -Time Crystal-]

[-Time Crystal- has been shattered]

[Absorbing black holes…]

[34 black holes and 2 supermassive black holes have been absorbed into the system!]

[Enough energy has been collected]

[You are being sent back in time]

After that final message, I could feel my mind consciousness slipping into a deep slumber, one that might have taken millions of years to awaken from.

***

*THUD*

“AHH!”

The sound of me hitting the floor echoed throughout the forest, subsequently causing me to scream out in pain.

[Transmigration into a humanoid vessel was not possible][Humanoid body had been created in the reference to your previous vessel]

[Vessel had been created]

[You have arrived at your destination]

[Planet: Earth]

[Age: 4.268 Billion]

[Tier: A]

[Description: A world with millions of known species alongside millions of unknown species. It is filled with different climates, from hot to cold, an enormous amount of intelligent races, and high concentrations of mana, some areas richer than others. You cannot ascend past the Astral plane on this planet unless some conditions are met.]

下一页

I don’t want to die…

[You have arrived at your destination]

[Planet: Earth]

[Age: 4.268 Billion]

[Tier: A]

[Description: A world with millions of known species alongside millions of unknown species. It is filled with different climates, from hot to cold, an enormous amount of intelligent races, and high concentrations of mana, some areas richer than others. You cannot ascend past the Astral plane on this planet unless the conditions are met.]

I slowly began opening my eyes that immediately landed on the system notification telling me what planet I was on.

I felt unimaginable pains coursing through my body, but those pains were nothing compared to the amount of psychological and emotional pains I was going through.

After finally pushing myself off what seemed like the forest ground, I finally got a chance to look around at the area around me.

My eyes trailed off before my chin began to rise as I stared at one of the trees with an agape expression. Even though back when I was on earth, there were countless trees in the world ranging from extremely small to huge trees like the ones in the rainforests, none of them would be able to compare to the tree I was looking at.

In fact, none of the trees back on earth could compare to any of the trees I was standing in front of.

“What the…” I couldn’t help but mutter those words as I retreated in fear, my hands shaking while my eyes did not waver from the tree.

After looking up at the trees for a while, I was distracted once again by the clothes I found myself wearing.

‘Clothes?’ I looked down and saw that I was currently wearing the clothes that I had died with, a hole with a bloody texture in the middle of my chest.

“So that’s how I died” I muttered before

[Ding]

[Mission has been received]

[Trial mission: Survive for 7 days]

[Conditions: –

-All system-related abilities have been locked

-All blessings have been locked

-All affinities have been locked]

[Reward:

-1 Immortality Token

-Appraisal

-(The rest of the rewards will be given depending on your achievements and actions during the trial period. You will be graded for your performance)

I looked up at the trees, seeing their size before looking down to see a few ginormous footprints. A shudder could not help but shoot down my spine while my skin began to crawl at the thought of how bad the next few days would be if I even survive that long that is.

I could immediately conclude that I probably wasn’t on Earth anymore, or at least not the Earth I’ve grown to know.

[Ding]

[You have received Chrono’s blessing]

*Shriek*

Before I could even comprehend the notification that came up in front of me, a loud shriek derailed my thought process, forcing me to peel my eyes off the notification to look toward it.

When my eyes finally looked at the location the shriek had come from, I could not help but widen them, terror engraved deep within them with a single glance.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” A sky-piercing scream came out of my mouth as I fell back onto the muddy floor,

Using my fingers, I tried to grip the muddy ground, clawing away at it fanatically as I tried to get away.

To think a single glance at the creature would cause my legs to become dysfunctional almost immediately…

*SHRIEK*

The shriek grew louder and closer as well as the sounds of its legs piercing into the wet ground. Fear was trying to seep into me at a tremendous pace, one that I could not handle/

Before I could even move 3 meters away from my last location, its entire body had become visible to me.

A huge centipede, almost 2 meters in length and could stand 4ft high charged at me with its claw-ended maw pointed to my throat. Not only was the speed horrifying, the power it was coming at me with could be felt through the loud and powerful vibrations it caused every time one of its legs pierced into the ground.

It was only then that I felt a slight feeling within my legs, adrenaline coursing through all my veins, being pumped into every cell by my heavily thumping heart.

In the next second, my vision had turned red, and I had already turned away from the centipede, running at full speed towards one of the trees at a speed I would not believe even the fastest runners back on earth would be able to rival.

Without thinking, I grabbed a fist-sized rock nearby and catapulted it towards the centipede, yet to my dismay, the rock simply ricocheted off its rock-hard scales like a bouncy ball hitting a hard surface.

My face grew paler and paler by the second as I snatched rocks off the ground and tried my best to shoot them toward any exposed soft spots or weaknesses in its body.

I had only hit its eye once, yet not only did it not hurt it significantly, it had only angered the centipede into charging at me with more fervor.

‘I don’t want to die!’ Was the only thought going through my head. Everything else was occurring almost on instinct as if I had awoken a beast inside of me that would do everything to survive or kill the abomination that had been running after me this whole time. Images of my family and my loved ones, all of those who I had lost to those disgusting horrible long-eared beings, flashed before my eyes.

I was on the verge of crying, however, before my panic could grow even further, a cold expression washed over my face while three words rang out in my mind, giving me everything I needed for that moment in time.

“I am not going to die.” My voice echoed throughout the forest while the sound of my own voice gave me enough courage to do the most reckless thing I had ever done.

‘Fight.’

‘Kill…’

‘Survive!’

The whispers of different voices grew louder and louder while also becoming a choir in my ears as if thousands of different individuals were telling me to fight as if millions were telling me to move, to live, and fight.

My eyes were engulfed in a crimson light while a blood-red wave shot out of my body, an illusory visage of millions of eyes looking at the centipede with instinctual rage.

The black-scaled centipede that was once running after me froze its place, the fervor it once had extinguished from its eyes like an unprotected ember in the stormy winter.

Unbeknownst to me, as the surge of crimson aura shot across the forest, every single beast, insect, or animal, in general, looked in my direction with fear. Fear that whatever had emerged in the middle of their forest would soon take over and destroy everything within its sights.

In a cave dozens of miles away from where I was sat a large figure covered in shadows, making it so anyone who would enter would on see the silhouette of the terrifying being that they had just come to face.

The sleeping figure slowly opened its eyes before a membrane-covered eyeball slid to the sides of the eyes, leaving their verticle slits for pupils visible for the world to see. Its wings unfolded and spread themselves wide while Its piercing red eyes darted in a certain direction as it got up.

Once it left its cave, it was finally able to get a better view of the red aura washing over the forest, as well as a red beam of lighting shooting towards the skies, enveloping everything in a crimson hue…

‘That thing… for something so weak to have such a powerful killing intent…’ The figure narrowed its eyes and its legs began to shake violently. This was no longer a difference in strength, but a difference in class.

In the other corner of the forest stood a monkey with fiery red fur. Its eyes pierced through the forest before they finally narrowed down after they landed upon the figure in the middle of the crimson spire.

“Father, is something that matter?” A smaller red monkey asked while dropping to the ground and kneeling towards the other.

“Yes my child. It seems like there is a new candidate. One that can reap the crown for himself.”

Back where I was, I found myself standing in the middle of the forest with sweat dripping down the drenched clothes that I had on.

Eventually,  I collapsed onto one knee because it was only then that I felt the exhaustion of whatever I had done seep into my body, almost knocking me unconscious. something I tried to fight with all my power to the end.

Yet, even after trying so hard, I could feel my consciousness slip out of my mind, sinking me into the darkness of the abyss.

***

When I opened my eyes once again, I quickly scanned my body but was surprised after seeing that I was not injured in the least.

By the time I had woken up, there was not a single scratch on my body.

Images and scenes of the invasion and the deaths of those I loved most flashed before my eyes at unbelievable speed and frequency, but even after feeling the desire to cry my head out, I simply shut my eyes and shook my head, as if trying to shake those memories and thoughts out of my head.

‘I need to get out of here… From what I knew, there is no way that this place was about to stay dormant or peaceful for long. Even though I knew that I should have thrown all my previous knowledge about the world out of the window, I still chose to use that knowledge just in case I was wrong.

Better safe than sorry.

Getting off the ground with my newly invigorated body, I swiftly began traversing the forest with huge trees and animals that were many times bigger than their earth counterparts.

‘Wasn’t this supposed to be earth?’ I inwardly cried

At the same time, I used a walking technique that I had learned back I was on Earth that would allow me to traverse places like forests or jungles by landing on the side of my foot first before slowly beginning the rest of my foot onto the ground to minimize the sounds of crunching or twigs breaking. I had already mastered it to a certain extent to the point I could jog while using it.

My speed while jogging wasn’t spectacular, but it would do for now. However, I do have to note that even though it could be considered jogging, I was still moving at a slower speed than the average jogger due to me having to use the walking stealth technique at the same time.

After traversing around 50 to 100 meters, I finally heard the sound of rustling as a small yet extremely quick figure moved towards where I was laying barely a minute ago.

‘I was lucky…’ I could not help but feel a tinge of cold sweat forming at the back of my neck as I tried to move even faster, away from where I last laid.

After around 5 minutes of jogging away silently, I finally heard another sound that echoed throughout the silent forest, a sound that had immediately sent a shiver through my spine the moment I heard it.

‘Crap’ my eyes shook and my heart dropped as I finally realized where the sound had come from.

Looking down, I looked at the foot I had landed on just to see a twig that had broken into two.

While this might not have meant much back on earth, everything on this planet was much stronger, larger, and more powerful than their earth counterparts. While before, a bat might have been able to locate everything within 30-60 meters with their echolocation, a bat in this world would probably be able to double if not triple that number.

*SCREECH*

*SQUEAK*

*ROAR*

下一页

Sole Anchor

Every hair on my body stood up at the same time as I threw all caution out of the window and began running even quicker.

‘I don’t want to die’ My eyes began to soak up tears once again as I ran at my fastest, jumping over the enormous tree roots and avoiding all the mud in the way that could have probably swallowed me whole and fossilized me for the future archeologists to find me.

‘Wait… That system thing said that I was traveling through time… It said Earth was only around 4.2 billion years old… Earth is 4.5 billion years old… Did I just get sent back to the carboniferous? Wait no, it should be the Triassic. Right? GODDAMNIT! I should have revised!’ I felt like all the knowledge I had gained from my geology and geography classes were failing me.

*ROAR*

*SCREECH*

*ROAR*

Countless and continuous roars rang out through the forest yet again, causing shudders to go down my very being. Yet, even after feeling so much pressure…Even after fearing for my life at every step, I swallowed down my fear and ran. Ran like hell itself was right behind me, waiting to devour me into its deepest depths and burn me for my every sin.

*ROAR*

To my dismay, even after everything I had done to run away, I watched as a maw got closer and closer to me from the corner of my eye.

The maw was humongous while the sheer power, that I for some reason could feel now, radiated from it like heat radiating off the surface of the sun.

My instincts kicked in almost immediately, causing me to do something I would have never thought I would be able to do in a million years.

In a split second that it took the maw to reach me, I spun on my heel and performed a roundhouse kick, hitting the creature in its eye.

Even though I didn’t think it would have done anything, I was still surprised to see that it did not even receive a scratch.

I did not waste another second because while it might have not flinched, my kick did surprise it to the point where it did not attack me straight away after failing its first attack.

Without knowing what had come over me, I felt like millions of years of muscle memory hit me at the same time, and while I might have not had the physique to perform everything that I was about to do, it was still beyond my capabilities of anything I could have imagined a human to do.

*Swooosh*

Before I knew it, I had already pierced the giant hippo’s eye with two fingers sticking straight into them without a single hint of hesitation.

*ROAR*

The hippo’s roar shot through the forest and could be heard by almost all the creatures that lived in the forest within a 5-mile radius,

I chose to not waste another second a quickly jumped away from the hippo before sprinting in the other direction of where I had come from and where most of the roars had originated from.

For the next 10 minutes, I ran with my life hanging from an untethered thread.

I could not count the number of close calls I had, from the maws of large lizard-like monsters snapping their maws shut an inch away from my head, to almost landing incorrectly and falling back into the deep mud that would have killed me within minutes, if not even less than that.

‘Survive!’ Was the only word that rang out within my mind. I could think of nothing else as my brain worked on overdrive to find me the best way to get out of the situation without dying, let alone losing a limb or two.

As if a light bulb went off above my head, I felt like my mind had become clear and my instincts told me exactly what to do.

In the same instance, my eyes flashed with more determination than I had ever felt in my entire life.

‘Survive!’

Looking around, I ignored the constant noise from behind me and looked forwards. Immediately, I could spot at least 4 different animals getting ready to ambush me, yet that was not what had caught my eye.

‘SURVIVE!’

Within the split second between seeing the vine and moving, I felt as if my whole body began to move on its own again, finding the best way to survive without me having to do anything on my own

I knelt and shot through the forest at a speed I did not think was humanely possible, yet due to my adrenaline, I could not feel the pain of my muscles working to their limits as my heart rate rose to be sky-high.

‘Sur-‘

I halted my steps for a single second, allowing me to completely avoid the huge maw from biting my body into halves.

‘-VIVE!’

My hand blurred as I moved it away due to all the hairs on that arm rising at the same time as a shiver that went down my spine.

In the same millisecond, I watched as something swooshed past me before crashing into the huge dragonfly that was right on my trail.

‘I will not die!’ Tears began to well up, but they quickly dried up.

Looking forwards, I could finally see the vine from up close.

Luckily, the vine didn’t have any spike but even if it did, I would have been forced to use it anyway.

Jumping off one of the enormous roots that I was running on, I grabbed hold of the large vine and swung myself across a lake that I did not know the existence of.

I planned to simply swing to cover more ground, but instead, it seemed like I was fortunate enough to have a lake under me, something I doubted that any dinosaur or animal would ever choose to go through, or that was what I thought anyway.

*SCREECH*

A screech rang out from behind me, causing my skin to crawl in both fear and confusion.

Looking back, I could not help but exclaim the obvious.

“THEY CAN FLY!” I exclaimed, having, completely forgotten about their main ability of flight.

Panic finally started to set in as I slowly swung across the lake, and even though the speed was technically faster than I had been moving before, due to the lack of trees the flying oversized dragonflies and bugs had a much easier time moving, therefore allowing them to also increase their speeds.

‘Please! God! God, I beg you!’ I cried inwardly. To me, this was the end of my life. The life that I had preserved through the sacrifices of my family and friends. What were the chances that I would be the final human and the last human to perish? Luck… I had been saved purely due to luck, but who knows if I would have been the best choice. The system could have chosen a billion people better than me, yet now that it had chosen me, I only served to fail every human that had died to the hands of those elves.

I had nowhere to run, I had nowhere to hide…

I was powerless.

*SPLASH*

*SNAP*

As I watched my life flash before my eyes, I heard a loud snap alongside the splashing of water echoing from behind me, causing me to look back with hope and fervor lingering in my eyes for one last time.

“Oh my god…” I muttered under my breath, unable to believe my luck.

From what I could see, a large number of huge frogs had come forth from around the lake, snapping their tongues toward the insects that had been flying toward me.

At the same time, the insects were unable to run away, being instantly swallowed whole by the long maw of a crocodile, yet unlike normal crocodiles, this one ran with the same theme of being overly huge.

After a few more seconds passed, I found my feet landing on solid ground once more.

‘I survived’ I thought while panting.

“I SURVI-” I almost exclaimed out loud in joy, but I quickly covered my mouth and looked around, hoping that there wasn’t an animal or beast nearby.

‘I survived! How? I was so dead! How did I do it? Is this fate?! Is this good karma? Did I do something good in my last life for this to happen?’ Tears of joy started to pour out of my eyes while low muffled sobs could be heard if one were to listen hard enough.

The forest, however, was no longer silent. Instead, it was bustling with noise.

After taking a breather, something finally hit me.

‘Wait… Gaint toads? None of this makes sense. Even the centipede and those insects are way too big to be normal. This is supposed to be the Triassic, right? I know the oxygen levels in the atmosphere are high and all, but still. There is no way anything should be that big, especially toads!’

After pondering for a bit, I finally dropped the thought as I had something much more important to think about.

Right now I was stuck in the middle of nowhere and I had been given a mission.

‘Survive for one week, huh… If the beasts of the forest don’t kill me, dehydration, hypothermia, or malnutrition will kill me first. Plus, there might be some ancient diseases in this place that could probably kill me in less than 24 hours.’ I sighed in exasperation before rubbing the bridge of my nose with a complicated glint within my eyes.

‘I guess I’ll just call this goal something like “Mission Impossible” hahaha’ I laughed in self-mockery at the situation I had been dropped into, not knowing that this same laugh would become the sole thing I would lean on for the next few adventures as I struggled to keep my sanity in check.

But eventually, my dreaded laughter had turned into the loud and wretched wails of a boy who was now in pain… A pain that very few would have experienced. The pain of complete isolation with nothing to look forward to, and no hope in sight.

This was too much for any human to take, and it would at least time me a few days to get used to.

Despite being surrounded by greenery and different beasts, it felt like I was stranded alone in the middle of the infinite cosmos, in a ship that was slowly losing oxygen as the freezing cold of space seeped into the ship, slowly but surely killing me, making the very ship I had to put my hopes of survival on, my very grave.

下一页

The Pains…

[You have assisted in killing a Dragonfly]

[You have gained +1 EXP]

[You have assisted in killing a Dragonfly]

[You have gained +1 EXP]

[You have assisted in killing a Dragonf…]

I heard the distinct ‘dings’ that came from the system as it informed me of my kills, yet due to my wails of agony and my tear-filled eyes, I could not see or hear the screen before me, as if my mind was trying to ignore its existence as a whole.

Sorrow filled my voice for a short second, yet when I finally realized what I had been doing, I quickly rose up from my position and finally wiped my eyes of the moisture that had accumulated around them.

Even though I was crying, it was not because of my family’s death, the death of my closest friend, nor was it due to the death of my girlfriend in the hands of those disgusting, deplorable aliens.

Instead, I was simply crying out of agony.

I felt in pain.

The pressure of wanting to survive.

The adrenaline streamed through me for so long that I had become numb to its effects.

The fear of death hitting me at every corner and turn. It might have seemed selfish, but at the moment, I could only care about myself and nothing else.

I needed to survive and therefore, I simply did not have time to grieve. If I didn’t survive, then who would carry the memories of my family? The memories of my sister, my closest friend, and the person I held most dear to me?

And no matter how cowardly it might have seemed, running was the only thing I could do…

And therefore, I was going to dedicate every part of my being, every organ, tissue, and cell, to make sure that I would survive… To make sure I run as fast as possible while surviving for the next 7 days.

Getting up, an unworldly amount of determination flickered in my eyes as wiped off the tears and snot that had trickled down while I had been sobbing silently.

‘I am weak… I don’t have anything that would make me stronger than the beasts in this forest… The oxygen levels on earth in this moment of time are way too high, meaning everything in this forest would be enlarged making them extremely strong in the process.’ I touched my chin and began thinking of ways that I would somehow be capable of surviving for more than a week.

It was only then that an idea hit me like a lightning bolt crashing down on my very being as if the thing was right in front of me the whole time yet I happened to be too blind to see it.

‘Of course!’ A wry yet excited smile stretched at the corners of my lips as I looked towards the location where I had come from, unable to understand how I had been lucky enough to survive the encounter with the dragonflies.

***

5 hours quickly passed as my encounters had dramatically dropped ever since I had been chased by dozens if not hundreds of beasts. I couldn’t understand why I was the only one getting chased since many of the beasts I saw were instinctually enemies, yet I could only guess that the reason was due to the red energy I unleashed before collapsing into a slumber, yet even after 5 hours of thinking, I could understand how and why it occurred.

Besides that, even though one would think that the encounter with the hundred beasts would have been all that happened that day, they would be severely mistaken.

Currently, I was jumping from tree root to root, making sure that I didn’t fall off one of the roots since that would automatically mean death for me.

The expression on my face was one of a man who was scared beyond comprehension, yet the slight glint of determination within my eyes never extinguished… Not for a single second

After jumping a few more times, I finally glanced back at the lone dragonfly as I saw that I had gotten close to the area I wanted to get to.. finally allowing me to execute the plan I had been hatching for the last 5 hours that would allow me to obtain food.

When I finally saw where I was, I dropped down to the floor and began running in a straight line between two large trees with a narrow gap that would barely allow a single human into it, yet it was more than enough space for the dragonfly to fly right through it without any obstruction.

Since the dragonfly was moving in one direction now, it was much faster than it was before, making this a race of who can reach the narrow pathway before the other.

I did not dare look back for even a single second as the buzzing of its wings got louder and louder. Eventually, however, I was finally able to run through the narrow pathway between the two trees before turning around and finally looking at the dragonfly head-on.

Even though it was quite determined to kill me, the moment I had turned around and made direct eye contact with it was the same moment when it was forced to halt its movement forwards, yet since the momentum was already carrying it toward me, the halting of its velocity failed and it shot towards me without control of its movements at all.

Without thinking twice, I immediately took a step forward and lunged toward the dragonfly while taking something out of the belt of my trousers and thrusting forwards with all my might, yet in the same moment, I could not help but close my eyes and wait for the outcome.

*Spluch*

Opening my eyes slowly, I found that my arm was still intact as well as the rest of my body seemed virtually unharmed. On the contrary, the dragonfly that had been trailing me for so long had been impaled by a long yet slightly blunt wooden stake.

When I had gotten an idea 5 hours ago, the first thing I thought of in the spur of the moment was the question, ‘how did humans survive for so long?’

While yes, they might not have needed to survive through a Triassic period with dinosaurs and enlarged insects, they were still capable of living through the extremes of the world’s climate as well as becoming capable of hunting animals much bigger than them until they eventually became the beings at the top of the food chain.

The key to all of this was their intelligence which was superior to every other species on the planet as well as the sweat glands that allowed them to run for much longer periods compared to the cat species or the dog species who could not recuperate their stamina while running away or towards something, causing them to take breaks and halting their attacks due to being exhausted.

I knew that, while I might not be the most intelligent person in the world, I was more intelligent than these beasts that worked purely on instincts therefore easily being able to outsmart them in situations like these where-…

*ROAR*

Before I could even process what had happened, the smell of the blood and organs that had splattered everywhere had already wafted into the noses of other beasts nearby, causing them all to simultaneously roar whenever the smell would reach them.

Without thinking twice, I dropped the stick and instantly bolted in a random direction that the roars had not come from.

For the next half an hour, I ran with extreme caution, making sure that I did not make too much noise as I avoided every living organism within the forest, but after a while, I finally looked at the screen that had been urging me to look at it for the last half an hour, yet when my eyes landed on it, I could not help but widen my eyes in surprise.

[You have killed a Dragonfly]

[You have gained +10 EXP]

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I’m tired…

Eventually, after all the running and hiding I was no longer capable of maintaining such a lifestyle.

After some consideration on what to do next, I had chosen to sleep yet, just like everything else in this world, it was much easier said than done.

Sleeping was close to impossible without dying or being eaten while being asleep.

Alongside that problem came another.

“Where the hell am I supposed to sleep” I blurted out, the bags under my eyes as evidence of my lack of sleep alongside the amount of stress I had endured in the last day alone.

My normal human body was not used to having to be alert at all times no matter what, and due to it being this way, I had become incredibly exhausted.

I felt as if every bone in my body began to grind against one another while my muscles had become sore to the point where trying to move was more painful than being stung 20 times in a row by random flying insects.

Thankfully, right before I was about to pass out from exhaustion, I had found a seemingly empty cave at the top of the mountain.

I wasn’t sure why, but the instant I had been enveloped in the aqua blue light that had been blocked by the trees of the forest, I felt extremely safe.

However, I did not think about the feeling as the only thing that ran through my exhausted mind was the pain that continuously coursed throughout my entire body due to it being pushed past its limit more than a dozen times within the same day.

Finally entering the cave, could not help but look around even in my exhausted state.

I kept having this constant premonition that I would be attacked at any moment, to the point I would even have visions of random beasts coming to attack me from all sides, as if I was an animal dipped in blood and lifted high for all of them to smell from miles away.

However, even if I was trying to be cautious, even if a beast was hiding within the shadows of the cave waiting for me to lie down and become helpless, there wouldn’t be anything I could do to retaliate, even if I were to find it.

Not realizing this, however, I kept looking around frantically like a crazed man, looking into all the different shadows in the room as my bottom finally touch the ground, making my exhaustion all that more prominent.

Failing to find anything, I slowly lowered my head onto the rough, hard ground, allowing my face to grind against the bumps of the surface of the cave’s floor.

Looking up with tired eyes, I recalled the system message I had gotten a hours ago, and as if the system was waiting for this thought to pass through my mind, a screen appeared before me and caused me to widen my eyes slightly.

[Level: 1]

[Progress: 20/100]

‘Seems like this is just like the games I used to play’ I sighed and immediately closed my eyes.

Even though I would have usually been annoyed or agitated by the condition of the surface that I would be sleeping on, the only thing I could feel was the relief of finally laying down alongside the exhaustion within me slowly percolating out of me to seep into the ground under me, as if the ground itself was soaking up all the hours of hard work, all the hours of running, all the hours of hiding…

Everything that I had done for the whole day slowly seeped out of my body as my conscience finally fell into a deep slumber.

***

In a space where the only color that could be seen was white, a white that seemed to span out infinitely sat a single person on a throne made out of what looked like it had been created out of all the elements on the planet.

The strange glints of blue light reflecting off the diamonds from an unknown source of light intertwined with vines, metallic textured ores, and all sorts of other materials one would be capable of finding on earth.

It was as if it was sitting on miniature earth that had been morphed into the shape of a throne, yet even though one would feel a sense of harmony while looking at it alongside the throne, one could also feel powerful chaotic energy fluctuating around it.

Even though this was the case, it seemed like chaos and harmony were living alongside each other, as the molten lava that would have set the world afire flowed alongside the green vines and the brown roots of trees, even intertwining with one another as if they were made to live alongside each other.

The person who was sitting on the throne was a woman with ivy green skin and beautiful silky emerald hair that reached the floor.

The emerald hair seemed to reflect the light of the unknown source of it, radiating the place around her with a green aura that made her look even more divine than she already did.

Her face was motionless alongside the rest of her body, while her eyes seemed to be closed as if she was in a peaceful sleep that nothing in this world could shake her out of.

However, suddenly her eyes had fluttered open, allowing her emerald eyes to shine onto the space around her with an even brighter light while simultaneously releasing an emerald green aura that seemed to span out the same distance as the white void.

Out of nowhere, her irises began to be enveloped in extremely small runic patterns that slowly moved towards the center of her iris, moving towards the pupil and also forcing it to switch from being black into being pure white.

However, even though this change was small, her eyes now seemed to hold the secrets of the world within them, as if they could see everything yet at the same time, blind to everything they saw.

Immediately after, golden runes began to imprint themselves onto her temple, subsequently causing her eyes to brighten further.

After a few moments passed, her expression seemed to have worsened as creases began to appear and deepen proportionate to her brows furrowing in a grimacing expression.

‘Why is he here?!’ she thought, gripping the armrest of the throne was sitting on while losing control of the powerful fluctuations of power that emanated out of her.

‘Why is a human on my planet?!’

下一页

*Crunch*

*Doom*

‘What is this feeling?’

‘It feels familiar…’

‘It feels like… Home?’

‘But then, why does home feel so uncomfortable?’

‘Why would home make me feel like I was looking into an empty void, where I was but a speck in the infinite cosmos, floating around without any weight… Any meaning… Any help.’

‘I loved my home…’

‘I had everything, didn’t I?’

*DOOM*

‘Then why do I associate this feeling of dread with it?

“Have you already forgotten?” A voice, that seemed to have been manufactured out of the vocal cords of a million people.

It was as if someone had tried to create a sound that sounded like a person’s voice without having heard one.

As if the voice had been created from the unintellectual ramblings of a mad man trying to explain what a voice was to a deaf vocalist.

I widened my eyes slightly, yet it was only then that the barrage of feelings… The dreaded emotions… The terror of dying… The pains and sufferings I had to bear for my survival…

Yet at the same time, I knew that or at least felt like my current emotions were meaningless.

What is the point of crying when everything you would have cried for is now dead? What is the point of wailing if there is nothing left to wail for? I am alone in this… I am the lone survivor yet I dare complain about the pain that I had been struck with?

There are so many others who had died, those who were much better than me… Those who would have sacrificed their entire lives to save a single innocent child without regret…

So why would I complain when I know that they are much worse off than me?

The only thing I can do is survive.

Survive even if it means I have to injure, kill or destroy everything in my way.

That is my fate after all.

“Survive,” I muttered before finally opening my eyes, finding myself in a puddle of my own sweat…

My eyes slowly drifted to the entrance of the tunnel where the gleaming light of the dawning sun pierced through the small cracks in the cave, entering it and leaving behind a beautiful array of lights.

The entrance also had a bit of light shining through it, yet due to the position of the cave that did not correlate with the current position of the sun, the change in visibility had barely changed.

“To think I slept for almost an entire day.” I chuckled to myself, yet that chuckle was more forced than I would like to admit.

When I had finally gotten up to a sitting position, I began to look around the cave to see any resemblance of life having been inhabiting this place before me.

Analyzing the area, I could not help but notice the scratch marks on the sides of the tunnels, the remnants of fur… But, it was not any kind of fur. This first was white, yet at the same time, it was bloodied and almost tattered?

*DOOM*

It was when the feeling of dread finally returned to me that I realized where I was.

‘This feeling… It is the same as the one I felt before…’ I could not finish the sentence even though I was saying it in my mind, yet I knew exactly what I meant by it.

‘I need to leave’

Without skipping a beat, I immediately began to sprint to the entrance, but I had instantly halted my movements as a realization hit me.

‘If something is coming, why the hell would I try to leave through the entrance?’

*Thump* *Thump*

The loud yet at the same time, strangely muted sounds of footsteps reverberated throughout the area, a sound that caused the large burds in the distance to flee without hesitation, while other animals found shelter under large objects such as trees, holes in the ground, and even lakes nearby.

‘Sh*t!’ Without thinking twice, I ran towards the other end of the cave where I had seen cracks in the walls which I could only hope would have been large enough for me to fit through.

*Thump* *Thump*

Its footsteps were getting closer…

The dreaded feeling was now overcoming me like no other.

I could feel it…

It was imminent death standing barely a few dozen meters away from me.

Looking up, I saw that the crack would have probably been big enough for me to fit through if I were to squeeze myself in, but there was one problem that I had to face before reaching it.

It was too far away.

My heart was now racing, pumping adrenaline throughout my entire body.

If I were to fail this task, it would mean the end for me.

Not daring to look back at the monstrosity that was about to enter its cave, the same cave I had accidentally infiltrated, I quickly jumped towards the edge of one rock before swiftly catapulting myself to the other.

*Thump Thump* *Thump Thump*

That was no longer the sound of the footsteps getting closer. That was the sound of my heart beating loudly like a drum.

In the split second where I had jumped, my hand had moved with lighting reflex and had gripped onto the thin ledge.

*ROAR!*

*Thump* *Thump* *Thump* *Thump* *Thump*

I could hear the thing get closer…

My heart was now beating loudly, to the point where it had almost deafened my ears from the skin-crawling roar that the thing had released.

I still did not know what it was, but that only made the experience more terrifying.

My fingers were growing numb by the second, but that did not stop me from exerting all my strength to pull myself up.

*Thump*

It was getting closer.

I could feel the power behind every single step.

*Thump*

Exerting the last bit of power within me, I made a final pull that threw me up and towards the crack in the upper walls of the cave.

*Thump*

The reverberating sounds of its footsteps had only sent more and more shivers down my spine.

I could feel death getting closer and closer with every one of its steps.

My arms from the elbow down were now practically numb, after all, I was not a mountain climber or anything.

I was, and still am just a normal man, with a normal goal that had been thrown into something beyond the scope of my imagination.

I had told myself that the pull was the last thing I had to do, but once again I had found myself telling myself the same lie.

‘One more push’

Lunging myself toward the crack, I found myself barely fitting inside it, but it seemed like I had done enough to survive.

The keyword in this sentence being ‘seemed’.

*Crunch*

下一页

*Screech*

Lunging myself toward the crack, I found myself barely fitting inside it, but it seemed like I had done enough to survive.

The keyword in this sentence being ‘seemed’.

*Crunch*

I thought that I had stopped hearing the footsteps of the creature, and I was right.

I thought that I had escaped from the monstrosity that had been following me, and I would have been right to think so.

The footsteps had stopped… That should have been a good sign, right? The fact that it might have just stopped and simply given up on me… It made me feel a sense of relief.

Who would have known that not looking back would have been my biggest mistake so far?

Right the crunching sound had reached my ears, I felt a warm steamy sensation envelop my arm from the elbow down.

I could almost feel the moisture within the air that had enveloped it.

It was cool, yet at the same time hot and steamy.

It was wet and even felt bad to be around, yet at the same time, it felt comfortable.

Of course, that was only the case until the pain had kicked in.

Within a split second, before the pain had hit, I stepped back and out of range and simultaneously out of the cave.

It was only then that I was given the chance to look down because, for some strange reason, my arm felt light, almost too light.

A warm sensation pulsed out of it while I could almost feel my heart rate through the pulsing heat that came from it.

When I had finally taken a proper look at my arm, I could immediately see what was wrong. It made me almost question why I hadn’t thought of the possibility earlier…

Of course, that was only until the pain had kicked in.

[Emergency Mission has been received!]

[Emergency Mission: Survive]

[Information: Seal the wound and stop the bleeding

-1 Minute and 30 Seconds until you lose consciousness

-4 Minutes until death]

[Reward:

-The Title ‘Seeker of Death’

-Increased affinity with the Death Element.

-20 EXP]

An enormous wave of pain hit me like a tsunami, traveling through every cell in my body…

No…

The pain traveled through every bit of my very being.

If I were to rank the pain at the moment it had occurred, I would have told you that it was the worst pain any human could have felt. How naive would that have been?

A shrill, skin-tearing scream of pain left my mouth, a sound I had, until this moment, only believed could come out of something with vocal cords more developed my mere human ones.

The screech of pain was almost inhuman.

It was not something I had thought would ever come out of my mouth.

Blood gushed out of my open wound like a waterfall of crimson-red liquid.

Everything on my left arm from the elbow down to fingertips had disappeared into the maw of the creature that had attacked me, a creature that I could see now as being a giant lizard-like animal with the maw of a t-rex, the eyes of a snape, and the body of a hippo.

It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was as if the thing had been created on the spot, by an artist that had never seen the skeleton or drawing of a dinosaur.

I was not sure if this thing was a dinosaur or not since dinosaurs weren’t supposed to exist for another few million years or so, but of course, this was the least of my worries.

With my quick thinking, I had immediately taken off my shirt and tore off a piece of cloth before getting enough to wrap and tighten it around what was remaining of my arm to make sure that I kept the blood loss to a minimum.

Without skipping a beat, I slowly jumped down from one cliff to the other, taking precautions so as to not fall from any of the cliffs when moving down the hill-like cave made out of a conglomerate I could not identify, or simply could not bother identifying at that moment of time.

I was bleeding for god’s sake!

*ROAAAR*

The creature roared at the top of its lungs in rage.

How dare I, someone who had infiltrated its territory leave without a fight? Flee like a coward? Not face it head-on?

Those were all the questions that were probably going through its mind, yet even then, I simply did not care.

There was only one word going through my mind and it was to “Survive”.

‘I’ll probably die of an infection at this rate.’ I thought to myself as I gripped what remained of my left arm, something that immediately caused me to wince in pain.

Removing my hand from my left arm, I put it to my side and clenched my teeth before finally taking my last jump, landing safely onto the rock slab under me.

Of course, the ‘saftey’ of the landing, just like everything else in my life so far seemed to be temporary, since the moment I had tried to take a step forward, I had lost my balance and fell onto my backside.

“Ugh,” I grunted, the bone-shattering pain traveling through my body once again and giving me a feeling that would have caused my teeth to rattle in place.

*ROAR*

The creature had once again roared, but this time it seemed to be a little further away while the noise that had been created from its roar echoed throughout the cave, reaching the outside and causing me to pale even more than I already was.

‘Crap’

I found myself whispering “One more push” More often than ever.

My blood was rushing through me faster than ever which not only meant that I was getting adrenaline to calm my pains but also meant that the blood loss from my missing arm would only increase in rate and volume.

Yet, no matter how fast I might have been, I was simply not as fast as I would have liked to think I was.

The ground shook, evident when looking at the rocks that bounced up and down whenever I would hear the footsteps behind me, slowly but surely getting closer to me even though I was moving at my fastest speed.

Maybe I would have had better chances with two arms, but one?

The chances did not look like they were going to be in my favor this time.

Was this going to be the end?

Was I really going to fail everyone and everything that had ever believed in me?

Am I really going to die in vain, just like everyone else?

Was this… Was this really the end?

*Quaaaaawwwk*

A loud, sky-shaking shriek reverberated throughout the lands and swept through the forest, making every creature within it shake involuntarily.

下一页

If that hits…

*QRRRUAAAAAAK*

A loud, sky-shaking shriek reverberated throughout the lands and swept through the forest, making every creature within it shake involuntarily.

Even I, as I ran for my life away from the creature and through the heavily tree-packed woods, could not help but shudder at the loud shriek that overcame my senses for the split second that I heard it.

Even the echoes that bounced off from tree to tree created a sense of gloom and fear.

The dread that I had been feeling for the last 7 to 9 minutes only grew to ache with even more intensity, shaking me to my core and making me exert more strength, agility, and perseverance.

If someone were to look at me in the eyes, they would have seen a flame within my pupils, that no matter how powerful the storm, burned with determination and stubbornness.

‘Survive…’

Those were the words crystal-mouthed to me right before vanishing into the spectral light.

The only words that mattered…

“No” I muttered.

Something, a feeling, an emotion that I could not understand…

It took over me.

Without a second thought, I had already halted my movement and had turned to my right before sprinting in that direction with all the energy that I had left.

I could not understand it.

One second I was completely exhausted, and in the next, I was filled to the brim with vigor?

‘I won’t die’

Droplets of tears formed in my eyes, falling out and being left behind as I accelerated more and more by the second.

I felt like I was Usain Bolt, running at a speed that no other human being could have rivaled.

I jumped, ducked, and dodged trees, swerving from right to left, making sure to create an obstacle in between me and the creature where ever I could.

It was a mechanism that, while maybe sacrificing a lot of my speed in the process, had yielded results that no other plan I could have created in the time frame between leaving the cave and reaching the forest could have.

Every time I swerved past a tree, I would swerve back, making it difficult for something as big as the creature to attack me.

This was now a battle against time.

I didn’t know how much time I would have left, but I knew that my best chance of not dying was for the flying creature to intervene, and from what I had seen and heard so far, I could assume that it would attack the larger prey rather than the small, two-legged one which was practically helping it catch the larger one.

As I swerved from right to left for over two minutes, I finally felt fatigued teach my knees while the constant heaving had caused my chest to become sore, making me feel plains that shook me to the bone.

Clenching my teeth with a glint of determination within my eyes, I jumped and sprinted with almost renewed vigor, yet unlike last time, this time I did not have the aid of adrenaline to numb my pain.

*ROAR*

A distant roar, one that was much further away from the last one forced me to smile widely.

Of course, the smile did not reach my eyes but it still shone with pride, and this was only the beginning.

‘Now, let us proceed with the second stage of my plan…’ My smile grew slightly wider, twitching at the corners as bolts of pain traveled through my body.

As if I could not feel them, I pushed and pushed until I found myself entering a part of the forest that was more lit than before. To be exact, the area itself was less dense in trees as well as having their heights reduced as I got closer to the light in the distance.

Of course, fewer trees also meant that the creature would have an easier time following me, but at the same time, it also signified my victory.

*Thump* *Thump* *Thump* *Thump*

The footsteps were growing closer, almost to the point where I could feel their vibrations through the solid ground.

‘Just a little more.’ I told myself, forcing my body to give a final push, knowing fully well that after this I might not be capable of moving a single muscle.

*THUMP* *THUMP* *THUMP* *THUMP* *THUMP* *THUMP*

The footsteps were incredibly close now. I could almost feel the dread loom over me while the scent of death wafted into my nostrils.

At the same time, I could taste it… The taste of victory stood barely a few meters before me.

‘JUST A LITTLE MOOOOORE’

The creature had already opened its maw, ready to chomp down on my head.

I could feel its warm and wet breath touching the back of my neck.

Every single hair on my body had now stood up.

Was this the end?

*WOOSH*

*Rattle*

*QRUAAAAAAAK*

*Pitui*

*ROOOOOOooooooaaa-*

*BOOM*

The winged creature had swooped down with a war cry that made me freeze in place and feel my eardrums come to the edge of rapturing.

Without hesitation, the winged creature had aimed its talons toward the neck of the creature that had its maw wide open but forced into being frozen in place.

The talons gripped onto the creature tightly, dug their claws deep within the scaly surface of its skin, and flapped its wings, catapulting both of them into the air.

The force from the ascend alone could have decapitated any creature. but this one was sturdy and stubborn, holding on to life by a hairbreadth and a half-destroyed neck.

It roared at the top of its lungs, or at least it tries to, but rather than coming off as intimidating, the roar was reduced to a pained growl which did not affect the absolute monstrosity that was holding it by the neck.

“QRUAAAAAAAK!!!” the flying monstrosity let out the same sound as before, but instead of sounding like a shriek, this one sounded like a dragon’s cry. While I’ve been thinking of running this whole time, the thought had been immediately thrown to the back of my mind the moment I found my entire body paralyzed, not only due to the cry but even before that it had been forced into a halt after my exhaust finally caught up to me.

In the same instant, the flying beast clenched its talons harder and pierced deeper into the skin of the creature it was holding.

Its figure shot up to the boundless blue skies, becoming but a dot within the cyan blue ocean littered with patches of white we called clouds.

For some reason, I felt a horrible feeling overcome me, one that was similar but a lot more toned down than the feeling I felt before Crystal’s, my girlfriend’s death as well as the death of everyone I ever cared for.

I remember feeling the same dread whenever I looked at my girlfriend’s best friend even though it was a lot less noticeable.

After blinking a few times and squinting my eyes, as my vision had become enhanced I began to see what the flying creature was about to do with a clearance that I would have never been able to accomplish in my last life.

‘If that hits…’ panic overcame me, causing me to freeze and drop to the floor. A second later I found myself clawing at the ground with my remaining arm, trying my hardest to move out of the way before-

*Whistle*

*BOOOOOM*

下一页

Miserable

‘If that hits…’ panic overcame me, causing me to freeze and drop to the floor. A second later I found myself clawing at the ground with my remaining arm, trying my hardest to move out of the way before-

*Whistle*

*BOOOOOM*

The sky was a deep aqua blue given a tone of purple by the rising sun shining from the east with all its radiance and glory, overcoming the darkness and turning the sky into a fabulous artwork filled with so numerous colors, stars, and depth far beyond my imagination.

Yet, within the depth was a shadowy figure, given the dark tone due to being illuminated by blaring rays of the sun from the other side.

All I could see of the creature was but a tiny shadow in the distance, and before I had even realized it, the shadow was becoming bigger… No. It was getting closer.

Its speed was something else. Something that broke several sound barriers with each flap, making the creature only close the distance between the ground and it at an extraordinary speed.

With another flap of its wings, the creature was capable of generating enough force to completely stop its descent.

Yet, this was not all since the whiplash effect from the immediate stop had caused the creature it had been holding onto with its talons could only feel the dreaded feeling of them being torn apart and eventually launched into the ground, creating a huge dust cloud in its wake.

The flying creature held the other creature’s head in the grasp of its talons for a few seconds while not breaking eye contact with me… The wide-eyed, shivering, and whimpering me could only watch in awe, fear, and most of all, excitement.

It was an excitement I had never felt before because rather than just enjoying myself, this feeling felt like an addiction corrupting every part of my brain, cell by cell, atom by atom.

Yet, this did not mean that the fear I felt at the moment had nullified, in contrast, it had become amplified causing the two emotions to clash in my mind.

I never broke eye contact with the flying creature that was seemingly using its wings to float mid-air, expanding them outwards to show the thick membrane that formed its wings alongside the bones that went through them, sticking out at the end of each wing-like sharp daggers waiting to stab something or someone…

The flying creature had an elongated head with two eyes on each side capable of moving around and looking in any direction, giving the creature something close to a 360-degree span of vision, leaving almost no blindspots other than the one behind its elongated head which would have blocked the view of anything directly behind it.

Its piercing yellow eyes looked at me with slit-like venomous pupils that seemed to analyze and cut me into a thousand pieces, or at least that was what I had felt.

The tension was only growing, finally getting to a point where once could cut through it like a hot knife through butter.

As the novels back on Earth, or should I say in the future would have put it, I was courting death.

This was not some kind of novel where I was invincible because of some kind of plot armor. Yes, I might have happened to go through time, but for what? just to suffer for days with minimal food and water? To become the meal of some hungry creature that my body would barely nourish due to my small size? To lose my arm and barely have enough time in the day to thoroughly think about anything other than surviving.

Is this the life I want to live? Is there really, in reality, any point in me having to go on like this?

All those questions passed through my mind, yet like the breeze of the scorchingly cold winds of the winter, they eventually did stop, or at least for now, they did.

My eye was still locked with the piercing eyes of the thing in front of me.

Its intense gaze sent shivers down my spine.

My thoughts now were only consistent with the one question anyone as weak as I would have at this moment.

‘Will I survive?’

How would I know, after all, I was just another weak human…

The staring contest lasted for what seemed like hours until finally, it seemed to be repulsed by me, eventually flapping its wings and leaving

behind the corpse of the lizard-like creature that had ripped off my arm.

When the flying creature was finally out of sight, I looked away just to have my eyes land on the headless corpse that lay there, motionlessly…

[Emergency Mission: Completed]

[Information: Seal the wound and stop the bleeding

-1 Minute and 30 Seconds until you lose consciousness

-4 Minutes until death]

[Reward:

-The Title ‘Seeker of Death’

-Increased affinity with the Death Element.

-20 EXP]

[Wound has been sufficiently sealed. Blood loss had been kept to a minimum. Rewards (except EXP) shall be received after the trial period ends.]

“For god sake! I do all that just for it to say that my rewards will come later! Do I look like some kind of joke to you!?” I roared in anger

I could feel an unrelenting rage build up and boil within my very blood.

The rage was like nothing I had ever felt before, and even though I could understand where it had been coming from, I didn’t understand why it was so intense.

A piercing, destructive and chaotic killing intent began to seep out of every pore in my body until I was finally enveloped in a dense red aura.

This was the second time this had happened, but an inkling inside me told me that it was going to be far from the last time.

Before I knew it, my legs had begun moving on their own and I found myself dashing towards the corpse.

When I was finally in front of it, I used everything I had and kicked the body, yet the only thing I received in the feedback of the kick was the mind-numbing pain that reverberated through my entire being, shooting through every neuron.

‘God… DAMNIT!’ I kicked again as if I hadn’t learned from my first kick, making the pain even more intense.

This thing was simply too big, scaly, and overall just too powerful to be moved by something as simple as a kick.

I was also certain that this thing could have been compared to the size and weight of a small truck, and since it did not have wheels pushing it would have been significantly harder than a car.

After a few more punches, kicks, and even some barging, I gave up and began to walk away.

I could have used the creature for food, but its scaled were simply too tough and hard to take off while even if I was capable of taking them off by some kind of miracle, the meat itself would have been too tough for my mouth to chew.

I walked away sulking, my body still aching and my stomach as empty as a bottomless bucket.

I was truly miserable…

I was painfully pathetic…

下一页

The Red Monkeys

On a tree in the middle of the forest stood a figure with tattered clothes and only one visible arm.

Of course, that figure was me, standing on a branch of a large tree that I had painstakingly climbed to find a better spot to look around.

At that point, a day had passed ever since the last encounter, or to be precise, it was the last dangerous encounter with a beast, creature, or whatever abominations this world held.

I knew that something was extremely wrong. Yes, I might have not been the best at my studies, but I was slightly above average and therefore I knew a lot about the periods that Earth had been through for the last 4.5 billion years. After all, I was studying the subject in college.

There were simply no geological records of some of the creatures that I had seen in the last 4 days, including the giant toads, the oversized Dragonflies, and hell, most of the lizard-like creatures that I am seeing right now aren’t supposed to exist before the Triassic period.

Let’s not forget to mention the pterodactyl-like creature that I met yesterday. If a creature with the power to reach the border between space and earth, wouldn’t that be a huge scientific discovery?

Yet even then, even if I juggle through my memories, looking at every single one with the intent to find precisely what I wanted to know, I still could not find any records of something with that kind of power, nor anything being as big as that flying creatures.

However, even after seeing so many things that simply did not add up, I had a suspicion

I had a feeling that not only in this forest but on this entire planet there would be things that were much, much more terrifying than the flying creature.

Creatures that would exceed our understandings of the sciences themselves… Something that would make every one of us question the boundaries between fiction and reality.

However, right now, all these things were the least of my worries. I could have not cared less about the scientific impossibilities or the unknown creatures I had seen, I simply had one thing in mind and it was to survive… To survive through the next 3 days without dying so I could finally activate this system thing that I’ve been wondering about.

[Level: 1]

[Progress: 60/100]

‘Immortality System huh… To think I would have gotten 20 whole experience points for the assist alone…’ I sighed and jumped down one of the branches, landing safely on another, and another, and another until I felt my feet touch the ground.

I had minor difficulties trying to keep my balance, but for some odd reason, I found myself capable of getting used to it quite quickly… It was as if the disability was not there and it was something as easy as getting used to an itch at the back of your neck.

Jolts of phantom pain had forced me awake multiple times last night, but I guess that also must have been for the better as it was when I had woken up for the last time when I had finally heard something pass by the cave where I stayed at for the meantime.

When leaving my cave, I found that the passing tide was one made out of hundreds upon hundreds of monkeys with deep red fur with scattered yellow across it.

I felt a fiery flame within their eyes, a determination I had never seen on any creature before, and also the building power that emitted from every single one of them combined.

The power was more symbiotic than individual, and even though I could not take away the reality that their powers were far higher than my own, they were far weaker alone than the monstrous threat they emanated as a group.

I even theorized that it would have probably been possible for them to take on the pterodactyl with only a quarter of their tide alone.

At that moment, I had looked at the monkeys before looking at my crumbling stomach, causing me to decide that in any other instance would have been seen as being the worst decision I could ever make.

Desperate and hungry, I followed through the forest, jumping around trees and swerving my path to make sure that did not realize that I was right behind them this entire time.

Thankfully, this worked for a while but after a few hours of this, I finally felt the aching pains from the night before assaulting me alongside my limits as a human, simply not being capable of moving for that long without rest.

It was then that I had decided to climb one of the tallest trees with an array of different branches, just strong enough to hold my weight but at the same time not noticeably large enough for them to ever pay attention to it.

These monkeys, while looking and having the agility of monkeys, looked closer to being gorillas instead.

Their weight was probably comparable to a rhino’s while their size was 2 or three times larger than the average black gorilla.

from a distance, one could probably mistake them for being a flock of giant fireflies rather than being apes with red fur, yet even though they might have looked like fireflies from a distance, the danger they emanated was no joke no matter how far away you were looking from.

Getting on top of the tree, I looked into the distance, trying to find out in what direction they were going in since they hadn’t really changed the route, and instead, we were going completely straight, swerving past a few trees here and there but still maintaining the same path as before, as if they were programmed to do so.

Seeing this, I could not help but sigh and take a long spear out of my pants made out of wood that I had carved and sharpened just enough to break the skin of any creature that did not have scaly skin.

This made it a lot easier to eat the small creatures like the giant rats, weakened centipedes, and even at one point I found myself in front of an injured baby bear with no animal in site, allowing me to kill it and take its meat to cook later when I got back to the cave.

My eyes glazed in their direction, not directly looking at them but at the same time looking in their direction. I second later, they flared up in determination, making me finally drop down to the floor, stepping down branch my branch while barely stabilizing my balance before finally dashing in their direction.

***

In the faraway distance, yet so close that one could feel their eyes, a being with pale green chartreuse skin sat atop the canopy of the forest, watching and listening as everything unfolded in front of her.

She had glistening green hair while having a pair of beautiful emerald eyes.

Vines wrapped around her entire body like clothes, covering her from top to bottom with the green ropes which seemed to have a life of their own, twitching every now and then, something one would pick up after looking at them for a while.

She was not sore to the eyes in any way, however, and with all honesty, it might have been the complete opposite.

However, while her beauty would have caught the eyes of everything, from random animals to intelligent creatures, there was one thing that everything found their eyes drifting to and that was the large crystal in the center of her forehead.

The crystal, just like her eyes color, shone with a crystalline emerald. The crystal was barely the size of the tip joint of the thumb, but even then it just happened to find itself being the most eye-catching thing about one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet.

The creature, unlike everything I had seen up to that moment, has a twinkle of free will and intelligence within her eyes.

Her eyes were currently looking in a certain direction, them eventually narrowing when seeing that I was following a herd of red monkeys that ran around in numbers that far exceeded a hundred.

“So that is the human huh… To think he is this weak…” The woman shook her head and was finally enveloped by tree roots which eventually dispersed and left no one atop the canopy.

下一页

Fear

After traveling at a speed at which I could conserve energy, I finally became incapable of seeing the red monkeys anymore.

This was mainly due to the fact that they were abnormal creatures that moved as slow as me, but at the same time could keep moving at that same speed for hours if not days.

The journey so far had not only made me more hungry than before, but the injuries that I had developed from being chased by the creature were beginning to come up once again as if they were old scars losing their ability to seal the wound anymore.

Of course, this was a huge pain in the ass since I knew that there was a very high chance that I probably would not be able to catch up to them, but I had already gotten this far and as if a devil was whispering to me from my shoulder, I chose to not give up and continue to move forward.

After running, jumping, and swerving from side to side every now and then to both avoid large tree roots as well as any ferocious beasts nearby, I finally found evidence of them having gone down this direction, making me sigh in relief.

It seemed like they had all dropped down to the ground for a reason I could not understand since they clearly had the advantage up at the rooftops of the forest, jumping from branch to branch, yet my question was answered rather quickly after I strolled a few hundred meters ahead of where they had landed.

There, in the middle of a battle-ridden landscape lay the corpse of what looked like a pterodactyl…

Its eyes were completely hollow not an ounce of flesh could be seen still sticking onto the bones of the creature.

From how its bones were aligned and scattered, it looked like its organs had been violently ripped out of its body, and destroyed with such a large difference in power that it had taken only seconds to pick it apart.

The creature’s wings looked like they were probably made out of a thick membrane, but at the same time, they contained long jagged bones which went down and reached the end of the wings, probably even sticking out as if they were sharp little daggers.

Its head was elongated, and its talons were like three sharp hooks attached to the end of its legs.

This was the same flying creature that had killed the lizard-like beast that had ripped off my arm…

‘Holy sh-‘

Before I could curse, I heard a distinct rattling in the distance, making my entire being freeze before my head seemed to regain enough energy to finally look back.

My heart was racing at a pace that I only felt when my arm had been ripped off, and now that it was happening again, I knew exactly why…

It was fear…

One would probably retort with ‘Of course you are scared. You are up against complete monsters’, but to them, I would only have one thing to say.

This was not the same fear I felt on Earth, or should I say in the future… No. This was an indescribable fear mixed with a dreaded feeling which would have made any other man puke their guts out the moment they felt it.

This was something beyond the fear of death itself as if I was scared of something beyond it.

When my eyes had found the strength to look back at the thing that was coming up behind me, rattling in the nearby bushes and looking at me with its piercing eyes, I could not help but sigh in relief.

The creature that had snuck up on me looked a bit like a wolf mixed in with a gorilla to make the thing I saw. It was huge, but in no way was it more terrifying than the red monkeys I saw earlier.

I had already given up on hunting one of them by catching it by surprise, but seeing the corpse had been the flag for me to turn right back the way I had come from, throwing away the little semblance of hope that i had within my heart that was telling me that I could probably win if I take it by surprise.

‘I can take on this thing, right?’ I asked myself, clearly and utterly unaware of how weak I must be in front of this thing.

However, I had one thing on my side and that was my intelligence. An Intelligence that I believed that no one on this planet so far could rival.

Carefully, I took out the miniature spear I had created and used rocks that I could find in the cave to make it sharper and more deadly if something were to get stabbed by it.

“Alright, show me what you’ve got.” I taunted the creature, and as if it could understand me, it began to growl and lower its center of gravity until it was ready to lunge at me.

Its deep black fur began to emanate a dark hue that I noticed almost immediately, making me a little more cautious about attacking the thing in front of me.

From what I could tell so far, things in this ‘world’ did not always follow the same rules that applied to us humans in the future.

‘I have to be careful. I only have one arm so I might lose my balance at a crucial moment, but if this thing is as stupid as it seems, I should be able to kill it without having to get injured again.’ I calculated while my eyes darted all over its body, trying to find a weak spot that wasn’t located around its face.

When the wolf was around 5 meters away, I quickly sidestepped to the right, something it seemed to anticipate since it had also turned to at the same moment as me.

However, what it couldn’t anticipate was that the moment it did so, I would immediately take a much bigger leap to the left, something it could not do immediately since it would have to sacrifice its balance, pronouncing it dead in the process.

At that moment, I could see in its eyes.

It had finally realized that I could threaten its life even though I was technically half its size.

And when it saw my sharp spear for the first time pointed towards it, it felt something that it would have probably only felt from something like the lizard-like creature or the pterodactyl from before…

It was fear.

‘Doesn’t feel so good now does it.’ I inwardly mused with a strange smile perking up at the corner of my lips.

Holding my miniature spear, or more accurately, my wooden stake, I drove it towards the eye of the wolf, twisting every joint in the process and using all my body weight to cause as much damage as possible and to dig the stake as deep as possible.

*Pichu*

下一页

Dread

*Pichu*

I watched as the wooden stake sunk into the eye of the wolf, reaching deep inside.

Unfortunately, I could tell that it wasn’t enough to kill the thing and would have just been an injury, meaning it could still fight.

knowing this, I found myself jumping back as I took the stake out of its eye before rolling on the ground, narrowly dodging the bite that was aimed at my head.

Seeing the bite and hearing the sound it had made when the maw closed onto nothing, I knew exactly what would have happened if my head was there.

A vision of a watermelon exploding played in my mind, subsequently causing a shiver to go down my spine.

Without hesitation, I swiftly jumped from my crouched position and rolled to the right, evading the claw of the wolf by a hairsbreadth.

This time, instead of simply staying in my crouched position, I found enough time to get up and stand opposite the wolf before walking around, both of us circling one another and not breaking eye contact.

Its ferocious eyes looked into my determined ones, a spark forming between the two of us as we both tried to calculate the other individual’s next move.

Abruptly, I felt an enormous feeling of dread hit me, and as if I knew exactly what it meant I quickly tilted my head to the left by a few degrees.

A stinging burning pain began to come from my cheek as a tiny droplet of blood traveled down it.

For a split second, I saw it.

A razor-sharp black needle, barely the size of my index finger, shot past me at a blurring speed that I would have not caught if it was not so close to my face.

The needle was made out of deep black color, something I had instantly recognized to be the same color as the fur on the wolf’s body.

‘So it wasn’t taking me seriously before huh…’ I thought with anger boiling up inside me, or that was the only thing I could really explain it as being.

It was, just like many of my other emotions, something that I could not explain with proper words. It was something beyond my understanding and trying to explain it would have made it even more confusing.

However, at the moment I was not thinking about that. No…

The only thing I was thinking of at that very moment was how I could slice the wolf’s throat and chop its head off for underestimating me as if I wanted to teach it one last lesson before ending everything it was with a single slash.

However, not only did I not have a blade to ‘slash’ it with, but I was also too slow and weak to get any closer, but it was then that it had hit me.

‘Every time I’m in danger, I feel some kind of dread… It’s as if I can feel that my life was about to slip out of my hands at the moment, and just like with the razor-sharp needle, or the hippo that had tried to bite my arm off on the first day or second day, I could dodge it in time to save myself by a hairsbreadth.

‘If only I knew this before having allowed the lizard creature to rip off my arm.’ I grunted, but still stood tall and unflinching at the gaze that the wolf was giving me.

If gazes could kill, I would have died a few hundred times by now.

‘I need to kill that thing!’

Without hesitation, or to be more accurate, without me realizing, my entire body had been filled with a vigor that dulled my pains.

I moved with the speed of a top-notch athlete while watching the world around me slow down, every step feeling like an eternity as my feet moved forward, touched the ground, and sprung my body forward once again.

I had become oddly conscious of everything around me, from the leaf on the floor to the calmly dancing trees around us.

Of course in this area, there weren’t as many trees as in other areas around here, but there were a few that I could easily take advantage of, something I did not hesitate to do when I saw the wolf’s hair spiked up, another thing that I didn’t realize had happened before.

I quickly ducked down and rolled to one of the trees beside me, allowing me to hear the soft thuds of multiple sharp needles hitting the ground that I was on before being aimed towards the tree, hitting them with a soft yet hollow sound.

‘Wait…’ My eyes widened in horror while my legs once again moved on their own.

I quickly sprung up my kicking my legs forward and dashed to a nearby tree that looked exactly like the tree that I was behind before.

I had made sure that I moved to my left and the wolf’s right as that would have been his blind side, forcing him to turn his entire head to look at me, giving me a second to reach my desired location before getting shot in the behind.

The wolf had taken a moment to realize that I wasn’t behind the tree, but at that moment he had already short almost 100 spiked hairs towards the tree, finally showing what I had been so horrified of.

After being shot at for a few seconds, the tree had already given out and had mostly crumbled before falling in the direction of the wolf.

‘I knew it…’

The tree was dead.

I already realized this of course, but the same cannot be said about the wolf since it had run back a few dozen meters the moment it had seen that the tree was beginning to fall, something it did not expect to happen even though it had been shooting at it constantly with the aim to kill me.

In the moment of its distress, I had already run past the broken-down tree and through the dust cloud it had created.

As if I could see everything clearly, I shot toward the wolf that was just coming back to its senses and revealed myself by partially separating the cloud in the wave of my exit.

The dust could still be seen trailing off my body as if it was trying to cling on as I only got closer and closer to the wolf in front of me.

Its eyes quickly changed from surprise and shock to anger and rage. lunging at me without a second thought, something that would end up being its biggest mistake.

With all the energy and strength my feet could muster, I placed the tip of my foot onto the ground to its left, the side with its only remaining eye, before shifting my body to my right, narrowly avoiding the jaw that came for my chest with the intention of ripping me to shreds.

I heard a loud chomp as it snapped its maw shut in the area where my left arm would have been.

An agonizing pain shot through my body originating from my… left arm?

I couldn’t understand.

In my moment of confusion, I had been frozen in place unable to move.

The pain was comparable to when I had my entire arm eaten off, but how is that possible?

I don’t have a left arm anymore, so that shouldn’t be possible, right?

I didn’t even feel the same dread that I would have right before being hit.

Maybe the whole dread thing was a lie I had deceived myself into believing?

Maybe I had put too much into a theory I was not even sure was true yet.

I was just a normal human after all.

What kind of normal human has a spidey sense that allows them to avoid danger!

I’m not a superhero!

I’m just a normal guy…

I was quickly kicked out of my confused state and thrown into the real world by another dreaded feeling. This time it was more of a pressure, a pressure that pushed me in a certain direction, a direction I did not hesitate to move in.

I once again watched the maw travel past me with an immense speed which would have been a blur to my eyes if I didn’t have so much adrenaline running through me that made me perceive everything so much more clearly.

As the wolf’s open maw swooshed past me, I could feel its razor-sharp tooth nicking the tip of my nose and causing me to bleed slightly, yet unlike before, this was not enough to cause me to freeze in my spot.

My eyes flashed with boiling rage and a wave of what I would later learn was killing intent, shot out of my body.

With the determination to kill burned brightly within my eyes, allowing me to take the final decision of lowering my already raised arm into the remaining eye of the wolf before me.

下一页

Gift From Beyond The Grave

The determination to kill burned brightly within my eyes, allowing me to take the final decision of lowering my already raised arm into the remaining eye of the wolf before me.

*Pichui*

I stared at my stake as it sunk into the eye socket of the wolf with a wet sound one would expect to hear when squeezing a wet paper towel.

The sound was slimy and wet, yet at the same time, I felt like the more disturbing sound was the pained howl of the agonized wolf.

However, those howls of pain only captured my attention for a split second since it was only then that I realized that the fur on the wolf was becoming sharper and more jagged than it was before.

‘Crap!’

My eyes darted around to find any escape route, yet there was none.

Even if I were to try and run to the nearest tree, I was sure that the wolf would have used its final attack, one that I would not be capable of running away from no matter how far I were to go.

As long as I was within range, I would die a horrible and gruesome death that would have left me as a corpse with as many holes as swiss cheese, if not more.

There was only one way I could survive now, and it was either to try and push down on the eye socket even more than I had already done, or…

A realization hit me, making me quickly take out my stake before putting my weight on my heel and twirling to the front as fast as I could while also gaining momentum.

When I found myself in front of the wolf, I stabbed in an upward motion where I would be aiming for the area below its chin.

I knew trying to stab it from within the mouth would be near impossible as the wolf could have simply closed its mouth and I would be forced to say goodbye to my second hand and most likely die of blood loss since I would have no way to stop the bleeding.

Instead, aiming for below the chin would have been much more successful even though it might seem slightly harder.

The stake was just long enough to pierce the entire head, but for some reason, I could never hit the right angle whenever I tried to pierce the wolf’s brain through its eyes so now I simply resorted to using all the power left in my to stab it from below.

With a final push, my hand moved at a blurring speed, planting the stake through the bottom jaw and even reaching the upper jaw, but no matter how much power I tried to put into it, it simply didn’t go any further.

In a last-ditch effort to survive, I threw my hand back landed it on the floor, and kicked up both my legs hitting them into the butt of the stake, allowing it to finally shoot through the upper jaw and into its brain, causing it to finally die.

I watched as all the hairs on its body went from being razor sharp to completely flaccid within a matter of seconds, like scruffy hair having warm water poured onto it.

With a loud thud that echoed the completely silent wasteland left behind after our battle, the corpse fell with the only sound besides it being the sound of my constant panting.

I could feel my heart pumping the hot adrenaline-filled blood through my veins, each heartbeat sounding like a drum to my sensitive ears.

[You have killed a Dark-Spiked Wolf]

[You have gained 40 EXP]

[You have successfully leveled up]

[You have gained 2 stat points]

[Stats-

HP: 12

Strength: 12

Agility: 12

Intelligence: 12

Vitality: 11

Mana: 0

Defence: 0 ]

[Level: 2]

[Progress: 0/200]

The exhaustion seemed to finally kick in, allowing me to fall backward onto my behind and forcing me to look at the sky as my neck snapped back due to the momentum of my fall.

My neck was too tired to hold up my head anymore which further kept me in the position that I was in.

I didn’t know I was this tired, yet here I was barely able to move.

It was in the peace and quiet where it kicked in.

This feeling wasn’t dread since I wasn’t in danger.

I wasn’t happy even though I had won against an enemy which never in my wildest dreams did I think I could win again.

The thrill of the fight didn’t excite me.

The adrenaline didn’t make me feel good at all.

‘I’m not a fighter.’ was something I told myself not only in the last 4 days but ever since I had my first fight in 3rd grade.

I can’t fight, because I am weak… Because I have nothing to fight for. Why do I fight?

Questions I asked myself for what seemed like a century, yet it had only been 4 days.

In the last 4 days, my face had been covered in dirt while looking like it had simultaneously aged a couple of decades.

It was as if I had lost something deep within me that I didn’t know has existed before. Something precious. Something I had taken for granted.

“Hahahahahaha.” A soft, maniacal laugh left my mouth.

“Hahahahah.” The laugh was croaky and almost horrid.

“Hahahahahaha!” It was no longer the laugh of a normal man. Maybe it never was.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” No… It was the laugh of a man who had lost everything he held dear.

A man who had watched as everyone he ever cared for and loved was snatched away from him without remorse.

Without an ounce of sympathy

By those cruel and horrid creatures.

Spawn of the devil himself.

Demons in the bodies of what looked like humans, but not quite…

He was a man that had no one to care for anymore, nor anyone to care for him.

He was lonely, scared, distraught… Hell, he hadn’t even gotten enough time to allow the situation to fully sink in.

Every day he found himself running from a new danger. A new problem. A new threat that might tear another leg or arm off, and maybe if he were lucky enough, even his head.

“Haha *Sob* HAHAHAHA *Sob* HAHAHAHAHA *Hic*”

Tears poured out of his eyes… Out of my eyes.

They were like glistening waterfalls, each one of its droplets holding a memory that now has come to pass.

“M-Mom… D-Dad… Emily. Crystal. Everyone.” My cries, my sobs, and my wails grew louder and louder.

“Why did you leave me?” I asked with a little bit of anger in my voice.

“Why did you all leave me to suffer alone?” I asked once again, my questions not really directed at anyone. Maybe I was speaking to myself, or maybe I had gone crazy. Who could tell?

Yet there was one thing that I was certain of, and that was that I myself didn’t know how I was feeling.

My echoing laughs intertwined with my wails of dismay and sorrow, further mixed in with my cries of anger.

My body slowly moved in and curled up into a ball that rocked back and forth with my hand grabbing onto my hair as if wanting to rip them out.

My sobs did not waver and my cries of agony were just as loud as before.

The phantom pain from earlier where I felt as if my hand had been bitten into still resonated in me, yet I could feel it being dramatically nullified by the pain of loss.

While I cried my heart out, I slowly felt hands, hundreds of hands placed onto my shoulders and back. The feeling was abnormal as if hundreds of hands passed through once another, yet every one of them touched me at different intervals.

A comforting and soothing feeling washed over my body as if I had been dipped into a cool river after standing in the light of the scorching summer heat.

I could not understand it at the moment it had happened, but one could say that it was a final gift from beyond the grave.

下一页

The Girl In The Forest

It had been 6 days ever since I had been thrown into the hell hole that is Earth almost 250 million years ago, or to be precise, just a million years away from the largest mass extinction to ever be recorded, or that was what I thought anyway.

I was never the best of students and when it came to trying to remember things like these, I usually failed to recall them. For all I knew, the P-T mass extinction was the most catastrophic one, killing 75% of all terrestrial animals as well as 82% of all marine ones.

Yet, the things I’ve seen in the last few days alone had indicated to me that many of the “fun facts” that I knew of before simply did not matter anymore, as now there were creatures that simply defied all logic.

Speaking of defying logic, right now I was standing before the very thing that did so.

It was something that sent shivers down my spine. One could even say that it was my human instinct to be terrified at that very moment, or at least creeped out.

The thing that stood in front of me looked human, dressed as a human, and even stood up-right and bipedal, walking around as if it was a human.

It did not have long ears like those things that invaded Earth. I believe the mangas, games, and comic books called them Elves?

No, it looked nothing like them.

The Elves that I saw back then had crystalline white skin that shone with the radiance of a thousand suns. It was as if they amplified that light that hit them as well as giving themselves a halo of divinity and purity, something incomplete in contrast to the massacres they committed right before my death.

However, unlike the elves, the thing in front of me looks exactly like a human. An average, female human barely 5ft 4 chest long black hair, dark brown eyes, and an average outfit one wouldn’t glance at twice.

I read somewhere before that it was a human’s instinct to be creeped out by things that looked human, but were not quite human enough? If that makes any sense?

I was not quite sure what was wrong with her, maybe it was her skin, he normal teeth, her normal smile, and he naturally long and straight hair without a sign of being disheveled.

Oh, wait… I found it… She looked too normal…

Too calm. She is in the middle of what most people would deem an apocalypse after all.

Too normal. Everything she did was incredibly average.

Yet at the same time, there seemed to be nothing wrong with her.

For a few seconds, after I had looked at her in the dark forest, peering at me behind a tree in the middle of the night, I had thought I was hallucinating.

What kind of creature just looks at you from behind a tree with the most innocent smile? A smile that would have caused animals to submit to her, like a flytrap mixed in camouflage.

I had mistaken her eyes for being normal dark brown eyes that I simply couldn’t differentiate from black in the dark forest, but I was wrong.

Her eyes were pitch black and hallow. It was an abyss one would grow more insane after looking at for too long.

So you might be asking, “How did you get yourself in this situation, Ezra?”

To answer that question, how about we have a pop quiz question.

What do you get when you add depression, sadness, realization, self-awareness, grief, and pain to an armless depressed, desperate person fighting for their life every day for a reason they themself could not understand?

Well, usually, the answer would be alcohol and a lot of it. Maybe even drugs, who knows. I’ve never really done any of those but at this point, I wouldn’t have minded an overdose while I still could, since, of course, I was simply too much of a coward to die normally.

So of course, since none of those things existed yet to my knowledge, I went with the second-best thing.

I went on with my day as if there was nothing wrong.

Not a better way to fix yourself other than repressing all your emotions, am I right, or am I right?

What is the point of being sad if I could just force myself to smile?

And so I did so.

Getting up and wiping my tear-filled face, I threw on a wry smile, one that looked oblivious to everything that was happening.

Any other human would have realized that the smile never really reached my eyes, but I pushed on making sure that my smile looked normal, not that anyone around would have seen it anyway.

‘Smile’ I told myself as I skinned the corpse of the animal I had slain.

‘Smile’ I told myself as I created a fire, something my father had taught me in the countless camping trips we had gone on, despite the wood and flammable materials around me not being as big or as damp as I was used it.

‘Smile’ I told myself as I roasted the wolf’s parts, like the arms and legs while keeping things such as the stomach, liver, and several other organs to eat later, or at least before they rot.

I went on with my day, choosing the end my pressure on the red monkeys or at least put it on hold until some time when I actually feel like becoming a skinless, organless, muscle-less corpse.

I quickly returned to my cave, not caring much about my surroundings as I simply moved too fast and with too much agility to look right or left, since there was always a tree blocking my sight.

Eventually, by following the tracks me and the monkeys left behind, mainly the monkeys though, I finally found my cave, entering it and making more food for myself as I had just run for almost 3 hours straight on the way back.

For the rest of the day, I created a few more weapons for myself, mainly using stones and wood to create stone tools wherever I saw suitable.

An example would be when I had found a sharp and wide rock that would have done amazing as an ax, and so I used it but putting the rock through the top of it and being able to wield it around and attacking things with enough power and momentum that it would pierce their skin, no matter how durable they were, or at least if they were more durable than a sharp rock.

For the rest of the night, I either looked at the stars, the stars which shone brightly in the night sky and illuminated the land below with their radiance, alongside the planets which I for some reason could see almost clearly now.

Looking at the sky like this had only made me think back to what the elf man had said, and when thinking about it, I could not help but as the question that would have been on the mind of anyone.

‘Was he right?’

If I were to look at it from his perspective, humans were just an infestation that managed to repopulate the Earth with intelligent life, yet at the same time due to this, they had made it so the Earth had become polluted, while the beauty of nature was destroyed alongside animals who were enslaved to populate and give us food.

We destroyed habitats like it was nothing, while somehow at the same time causing small extinctions of thousands of animals all around the world, those we know of and those we have no idea exist.

letting out another sigh, I quickly willed for my status screen to open, and before me lay my stats telling me everything about my strengths and weaknesses.

[Stats-

HP: 12

Strength: 12

Agility: 12

Intelligence: 12

Vitality: 12

Mana: 0

Defence: 0 ]

‘I’m still extremely weak so adding a few points to strength won’t change anything… However, I am very good at evading, and even though this might not help in the long run, I know that the best thing for me to do right now is to strengthen my strengths and hope I survive.’

“Put two points into agility,” I said aloud.

[+2 Agility]

Other than looking at the stars which were no longer shrouded by the pollution of the greenhouse gasses we produced without care, I went to sleep in the cave which seemed to be some kind of safe zone in which no creature would enter.

The next day, I went through the same routine, this time however I tried to sharpen my ax but failed a few times, cracking it half on others, and eventually barely succeeding just for it to shatter after the first use.

When I had finally gotten how to do it, I had created my first properly usable stone tool capable of both cutting down trees and killing creatures I could not kill with my bare fists.

Anyway, after looking at the stars, mesmerized by their radiant light as well as the moon’s beautiful lunar light, I fell into another deep slumber, waking up on the 6th day of my adventure with a newfound vigor to explore the forest, something I would deeply regret afterward.

下一页

The Girl In The Forest II

Throughout the last 5 or so days, I had learned to always trust my gut instinct, but at this very moment, I had to go against it.

I knew that going in without a plan would be dangerous, especially since I now knew there were creatures out there that could have probably devoured an entire town in minutes without feeling an ounce of fatigue in the process.

However, I also knew that the food on me would probably last less than a day before growing bacteria and eventually rotting, meaning I would eventually have to leave my cave and find some food.

I had already cut all the meat and roasted it before containing it within a small rock tomb which I had tried to sanitize with both hot water and the fire that I had created.

After doing so, I left my little cave hideout and began to stroll towards the forest behind it.

When I entered, I felt a very light dread, something that felt like it was just a cold breeze passing by yet at the same time, a premonition of something worse to come.

For that reason alone, I had chosen to not go deep into the forest while also making sure to keep an eye on the sun so I could return before nightfall.

Walking through the forest, I encountered a few creatures here and there yet I had already learned how to avoid most of them.

On the one hand, the dragonflies were really easy to kill, only having to draw them into a narrowed space where I could turn around and indent my ax into their heads.

The recurring hippo on the other hand was a lot harder to run away from.

Hippos are bodies of water that are extremely fast, and these were not even normal hippos. These were hippos on steroids mixed in with alligators while also having a tail that seemed to only function for the sole reason of making them swim faster.

Of course, I could just avoid large bodies of water like lakes or larger rivers, but there was also one more thing that made them unique compared to the hippos in my era.

They could camouflage pretty well!

You might be asking, ‘Hey Ezra! How is this possible?’

Well, the answer is quite simple young lad!

They cover themselves in mud and start rolling in leaves and grass, and while that would usually work pretty well on smaller animals, the hippo somehow made it work as they could use their claws! Yes… You have heard me correctly. They had claws.

Anyway, they would use their claws and simply dig into the ground, leaving nothing but their gigantic maw above ground as well as their backs that kind of just poked out yet at the same time was almost invisible to the passerby.

Anyway, today was a different day, however.

I was not looking towards preying on some dragonfly, wasp, or enormous bee that I might happen to find that will most likely have another allying bee close by. Instead, I was looking for fruits!

While fruits might not have a lot of protein, something I really need for my wounds to heal, they have almost everything else I would need to survive, meaning I could just live as a peaceful vegetarian and not eat meat for the rest of my life since I am almost certain that there must be some kind of plant out there that has a good amount of protein.

Vitamin C also is a huge help since it helps with fixing wounds, while the protein simply helps with gaining muscle mass and fixing issues. I think…

As you can see, I clearly was not a biologist.

Anyway, I carried on with my day, avoiding certain animals while simply killing the annoying flying creatures which happened the be half my size and capable of biting my head off.

Eventually, however, I began to smell something. Something pleasant and sweet. It was something that had made my nostrils flare, not out of disgust, but more out of surprise and pleasantness.

“That smell… Its amazing!” My eyes lit up as I muttered those words and immediately began dashing in the direction of the smell.

My instincts were all telling me that the thing would be delicious, to the point where my mouth was uncontrollably salivating nonstop.

When I felt like I was within a 100-meter radius of the source, I suddenly paused and began to look around with caution.

There was no way that I was the only one who could smell the thing, meaning that there must have been a few others around who also came close to see what it was.

At the same time, how did I not notice such a good smell before? It was as if it had appeared out of nowhere which was not so much of a good sign.

After looking around for a few minutes trying to find someone or something that might have been attracted by the smell, I finally realized that the area around my ass was oddly quiet.

“Something isn’t right.” I muttered to myself just to feel a sense of dread coming from my right.

Without hesitation, I quickly jumped back and landed before sliding a few meters back while watching something dash in front of me, grazing the tip of my nose in the process.

‘Crap!’ I thought, ducking again and putting my hand over my head to protect it from whatever was coming after it.

Within the split second, it had taken me to duck, I had felt the creature appear behind me and reach out to stab me through the chest, yet due to me being crouched it had completely missed and instead grazed my shoulder.

With my senses and reaction time being at their peak, I quickly turned around with the ax off my back and now in my hand being swung at full power towards the creature that had appeared behind me.

‘Let’s see you survive this one.’ I smirked victoriously, however, just like every other time where I had smiled before hitting my target, my facial expression quickly dropped to one of panic.

下一页

The Girl In The Forest III

‘Let’s see you survive this one.’ I smirked victoriously, however, just like every other time where I had smiled before hitting my target, my facial expression quickly dropped to one of panic.

Without a second of hesitation, I had already given up on striking the thing and had already jumped back and slid a few meters away from it.

I looked forward once again just to have my eyes land on something terrifying…

It was something that sent shivers down my spine. One could even say that it was my human instinct to be terrified at that very moment, or at least creeped out.

The thing that stood in front of me looked human, dressed as a human, and even stood up-right and bipedal, walking around as if it was a human.

It did not have long ears like those elves that invaded Earth.

No, it looked nothing like them.

However, unlike the elves, the thing in front of me looks exactly like a human. An average, female human barely 5ft 4 chest long black hair, dark brown eyes, and an average outfit one wouldn’t glance at twice.

She was the embodiment of average, almost to a creepy level.

I was not quite sure what was wrong with her, maybe it was her skin, he normal teeth, her normal smile, and he naturally long and straight hair without a sign of being disheveled.

Her clothes as well looked completely clean, as if she had just been thrown into this world, yet not even I had the luxury of keeping clothes that were completely intact since my shirt had a hole in it from when I had died.

While at first, I had thought that maybe her eyes were just a dark brown, the hollow bottomless depth within them said otherwise, making me finally realize that not only did her eyes become dark like an infinite abyss, but the area around me had to become visibly dim compared to when I had last remembered it.

‘Wait… Weren’t there a few hours left until nightfall?’ I asked myself visibly confused to see the lunar light barely pass through the canopy of the forest due to all the leaves and branches that were in the way.

However, even though I had looked away for a second, my eyes landed on the woman before me and began looking at her eyes once again.

“What are you?” I asked, taking a step back towards the area where the scent came from.

I hadn’t come all this way to simply go back without having gotten anything, so of course, the least I could do was find the source of the smell so I could maybe return later.

However, as I stepped back, I watched the woman step forward, the shadows somehow being manipulated to keep most of her body from being seen by me from the angle I stood at.

Yet, even though I could barely see most of her body, there was one thing I could see and that was her facial expression.

The moment I had asked the question, the thing had tilted its head to the right by a few angles to express its confusion, just to give out an unsettling motherly smile towards me, as if it was trying to lure me into a sense of comfort by somehow telling me that everything would be ‘fine’.

I did not hesitate to crouch down and put my ax into a battle position, waiting for the thing to get close enough for me to slash at, yet that simply did not happen.

The smile it had was only growing more unsettling, while the corners of her lips perked upwards and creased her face just for those creases to never reach her eyes.

After what seemed like an eternity I finally saw her feet move forward while his head tilted to the right even more.

*Thump Thump*

*Thump Thump*

My heart was beating rapidly, and she knew that.

With every step she took, the sweat on my forehead doubled and my heart rate skyrocketed even more than it had done before.

I was terrified.

Yet, as if it was my instinct. Something I would have naturally done in a moment like this, I smiled…

‘This is fine.’

The smile was awkward and uncomfortable, nevertheless, I still smiled to the dismay of the woman, no… The creature in front of me.

Her smile froze, quite visibly in fact. While before I could visibly see the smile grow wider and wider, now it seemed like it had paused as well as the rest of her body, her foot simply hovering above the ground as it neither twitched nor moved the whole time as if someone had clicked the pause button on it.

‘I’m going to kill it!’

Finally, as if the pause had been lifted off her and the slow-motion effect had been reduced, I watched as her neck snapped to the side in an abnormal manner. I had almost imagined seeing the bone sticking out of her neck, yet I saw nothing of that sort.

Her neck was just bent there as if it was something natural.

‘On second thought, maybe I should run?’ I thought with self-mockery.

In the next moment, I had already pulled out a long stake and had thrown it toward the creature, giving me a split second to run away.

I had felt it before and it was clear what was happening.

After every step, the dread had increased while the pressure around me had done the same at the same rate as the dread. It was as if the air around me was becoming denser and heavier, feeling like I was moving through water instead of air.

With the hatchet back in my hand, I shot through the forest, moving towards the source of the smell until I finally saw it.

It radiated with a bright light that shone onto the area around it. At the same time, the immaculate smell only became more concentrated as I got closer.

The most surprising thing however was not the light or smell, it was how easily I could breathe around what I had finally found out was a fruit.

While at first, it had been hard to get used to the oxygen levels when I had found myself in this world filled with ‘dinosaurs’ that weren’t supposed to exist for another 10 or 20 million years, alongside flies and animals that weren’t supposed to exist at all, I had eventually gotten used to the oxygen levels.

Breathing it in for the first time felt as if my lungs had been cleansed and my breaths had more meaning than before. It was like being introduced to a much more efficient way of breathing where I could make the most out of every breath I took.

Another thing I realized was that fire was something that I had found much easier to make in this world even though many of the trees, greenery, or wood that lay about were a lot damper than the ones in my era, yet that is something for me to talk about later.

Right now I was still being chased by the creature, which even though had been moving at the same speed as me the whole time, was still strolling rather than running.

It was as if I was being pulled back by a mysterious gravitation pull, or that my steps simply meant much less than one of hers.

However, when I had finally gotten within a certain range of the fruit, I felt something other than the amazing breathing I had felt before.

The breathing before felt twice as efficient as my normal breathing in this climate/era, but now rather than just improving my breathing, it felt as if it was giving me a newfound vigor to run faster than I had ever before.

My body was bustling with energy and even felt like it might have exploded at any time if I was not careful, but at the end that did not happen.

When I was finally 10 meters away from the source, I looked right up at the golden fruit that dangled off one of the branches of the trees before me.

Forcing myself to look through the light of the fruit, I finally saw it.

The fruit which dangled off the tree was like one I had never seen before. It had a stem, just like an apple but at the same time, its shape was a little more angular and elongated.

Its shape resembled that of a crystal-like raspberry the size of one’s palm, being split into different sections as if they were scales that could very very easily be cut into.

“REHAAAAAAAAAAAH”

The woman finally gave out a mind-rattling screech as it saw that I was looking at her, before turning into a blur and coming towards me with killing intent visibly radiating off her.

The killing intent was red yet at the same time, it was mixed with a deep black hue that overshadowed the rest of the red making it seem much less crimson than one would think at first glance.

However, no matter how fast she was, it was too late since I had already found my way up the branch and had cut the stem off with my ax allowing me to put away my weapon and grab the fruit before running away at full speed. At the same time, while I might have been too busy thinking of the best ways to run, I heard a distinct ‘ding’ that could not help but ingrain itself deep into my mind.

[Ding!]

[Obligatory Notification: A mysterious energy is running rampant within the fruit you are holding]

[Suggestion: Do not consume the fruit until full analysis is complete]

Simultaneously, I heard dozens of roars, the most prominent one being the one that came out of the woman’s mouth.

*ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAR*

下一页

True Monster…

*ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAR*

A brain-rattling roar left the mouth of the woman that had now started moving at a blurring speed.

However, she was not the only thing roaring.

While yes, her roar was different from the mind-shaking screech that she had released earlier, there was something deeper about this roar.

After a few milliseconds, I felt like the area around me had visibly slowed down, as if the world had gone into slow motion and nothing mattered anymore.

The dread that followed immediately snapped me out of whatever I had been thrown in.

Out of my daze, I quickly spun my body and barely dodged a tentacle that flew toward me at lightning speed.

It wasn’t that I was faster than it, it was just that I knew it was coming way before it had actually attacked me.

It was as if all my instincts were going overdrive, making sure to do everything and anything to stop me from dying a horrible and gruesome death.

With the fruit still in hand, I placed my foot on the floor and twisted my upper body causing me to spin in mid-air. place my other foot on the ground and give a roundhouse kick right into the face of the oncoming woman.

That kick, while being powerful enough to probably knock out a bodybuilder, was no more of a hindrance than a fly in front of the creature before me.

I watched as her face deformed into a smile that cut through most of her face, making a visible partition between her lower and upper jaw that went all the way back to her hairline.

*SCREEEECH*

‘Crap!’ I thought, yet the smile on my face showed something different.

Of course, it was riddled with fear, terror, and fatigue, but something had visibly changed.

I was no longer just simply going through the motions. I felt stubborn for once.

After kicking the woman, I immediately began running again yet to my dismay, the woman did not even need to run anymore to catch up to me.

Her entire existence kind of just defied reality, making one of her steps worth many of mine and allowing her to move several meters with one step.

It didn’t even look like she was lunging across the land. It was just that when I happened to look back at her, she was always closer to me than before while walking at what seemed to be the same leisure as before… With that same monstrous smile on her face… Ridiculing every fiber of my being.

‘You know what?’

I looked back with a mocking smile and stopped running, simultaneously stopping the woman in her place, mainly out of curiosity about what I was doing rather than out of obedience.

Lifting her hand into the air, I felt countless gusts of wind around me as if something had stopped right before hitting me, and I would be correct to think so.

I could only watch as several creatures retracted their attacks all varying from ones that were invisible to ones that just had a speed I could see to even ones that had long-ranged attacks, an example of one of them being the creature that had retracted back its tentacle right before it had shot through my head.

I had felt all of them about to attack me, yet even if I wanted to dodge, with my current physical abilities it was near impossible.

“Who are you?” I asked once again, yet I did not receive a proper answer.

Instead, the woman in front of me simply gurgled some words while letting out some noises that sounded like what a person with an extremely dry throat would say if he wanted to try speaking.

It was as if her vocal cords were made out of sandpaper, constantly creating soul-shivering sounds whenever she tried communicating.

“Seems like you can’t communicate huh.” I sighed and stood upright with drooped shoulders and a relaxed stance.

I finally looked into the sky, barely capable of seeing through the canopy of the towering forest.

“Looks like this is going to be my grave huh…” I muttered again, yet this time my voice had changed and my smile had turned self-mocking.

“Hahahahahahah.” I finally began to laugh, something that confused everyone including the lady who was now only tilting her head slightly.

“If I’m going to die… I’ll allow myself to be petty one last time.” I finally shouted with a visible sense of craze within my eyes.

Without hesitation and just sudden enough for them to not be able to stop me, I held the golden fruit high and took a massive bite out of it to the horror of the creatures around me.

They had all froze at the same time and I knew this would be my chance.

Slamming my foot into the ground, I leaped a couple of meters before sliding onto the ground making the razor-sharp tail of the komodo dragon that was closest to me, yet I did not stop there.

Quickly taking 2 more bites out of the fruit and quickly gulping the pieces down, I found myself kicking up, throwing the apple into the air and spinning in place while swinging my ax right into the eyes of the komodo dragon.

I felt a vibration run through the wood of the ax I held in my hand the moment the stone had pierced itself into its eyes, but once again I did not stop there.

I felt the dread get more powerful and more concentrated but I simply did not knew which direction it was coming from.

At the same time, a skin peeling screech came out of the woman, not only making me freeze but also everyone else who was attacking me, yet unlike them, I did not stay frozen in place for very long.

Side-stepping to my right, I felt something whiz right past me before the wet sound of it implanting into something rang out and entered my left ear.

Looking in that direction, I saw that a large Cameleon was standing there, now no longer invisible to the naked eyes as it had been before. At the same time, I could see a gaping wound in its head as the tentacle pierced right through it and splatted its brain matter all over the ground.

[You have assisted in killing an Invisibility Cameleon]

[You have gained +5 EXP]

Once again, I felt the dread coming my way yet it was just far enough for me to look up, grab the fruit and take a last large bite out of it.

The woman had seen this clearly making her scream like a banshee in return, yet once again, I was ready for her attack.

Throwing what remained of the fruit away, I had grabbed my ax and swung it with all the strength that I could muster, swinging just at the right time to theoretically decapitate the woman with a single swing.

[Ding!]

*Swoosh*

*Splat*

The sound of my ax ripping through her neck reverberated throughout what seemed like the entire forest because it was just a second later that I realized how quiet everything had become, and at the same time, just how eerily dark the night was.

[You have consumed the Golden Fruit]

[Attributes and benefits shall be ingrained into your soul and the Immortal’s system]

As if being put in slow-motion, I watched her head descend towards the ground, her eyes still locked onto me even after being detached from her body, while her smile seemed to be everlasting, not relaxing a single bit even after being sliced off its host.

“Kekekekekekekekekekekek”

The laugh was soul-shaking.

It was something one would hear from horror films back in my era.

Her laugh was croaky and almost disgusting. Her every syllable sounded like the soft yet sharp tapping of a wooden table.

Simultaneously, it felt as if her voice had a constant creak that made my previous theory of her vocal cords being made out of sand paper sound less plausible.

This was more like two rough pieces of wood being slammed, tapped, and ground into each other until they are finally turned into dust.

This was the sound of a true monster

下一页

Escape

Her voice was closer to sounding like two rough pieces of wood being slammed, tapped, and crushed into each other until they are finally turned into dust.

This was the sound of a true monster.

I could not help but look down at her decapitated head that was now laying on the floor, and that was when I saw it.

A smile larger than ever. Eyes that peered into my soul. A voice that sent shivers down my spine.

Everything about her was wrong. So very very wrong.

“Ahhh!” Out of pure horror, I simply kicked the head and made it fly into the distance, yet what happened next only shocked me more to the core.

The body that was now headless was moving on its own, and unlike how it was its movements were before, mostly being refined and almost graceful, now she looked more like a mindless animal that used nothing but its instincts to hunt.

This time, I watched as the body blurred and immediately entered my reach allowing me to swing my ax on instinct as well.

The body quickly dodged the horizontal ax swing and had now crouched to the floor and ready to jump towards me with its claw-like hands ready to rip off my head the moment they were close enough.

Simultaneously, I felt another sense of dread come from the direction I had kicked my head, allowing me to kick back, and dodge the first attack from the body before swinging in the direction I felt the dread come from.

To my surprise, the head was not where I had attacked and instead, there was just hair that happened to be there at the time.

“Crap,” I exclaimed out loud, jumping up and barely dodging the 3 tree root-like tentacles that had come from behind.

I side-stepped once again, now dodging a razor-sharp tail that swooshed past my face at a hairsbreadth.

It felt like I had an infinite amount of energy… An amount that felt like I was absorbing vitality through the very air I inhaled.

Every single one of my muscles was bustling with more power than they had ever done before and this was no coincidence. No. I knew exactly why this was happening, it was just that I did not know exactly why.

Why did the fruit have such a property?

Was this the reason why everything in this world seemed to be abnormal?

Maybe this is how they gained their powers?

These were all questions that needed answering, yet answers would have to wait since I was still technically in a life or death situation.

‘I can’t win…’ I concluded long ago, yet I still felt the need to say it in my head just loud enough for it to echo within my mind.

‘But I can sure as hell run!’ I thought, this time gleaming with the same awkward smile that I forced my facial expression to form. A mask that might one day convince me that I am fine.

With my ax in hand and newfound confidence, I waited and waited for the right moment until it finally happened.

After dodging an attack from the hair that flew at me like long and thin flexible needles, I felt a sense of dread overcome me from a certain direction as my entire body told me to move, yet even so, I resisted until the final moment where I-

*Pitui*

Tilting my head to the right, I watched as my ear had been completely ripped off, but I could argue that at the moment this was more than worth it.

The tentacle-like root went right past me and hit the woman’s body and shot right through her heart, stopping the body in place while making the head scream in pain and rage.

At that moment, the head of the woman shot hundreds of hairs toward me, yet with the amazing detection skills that I somehow developed in the last 6 days, I found myself dodging and swerving until it finally happened.

Just like with the body of the woman, the hairs missed me by a millimeter, barely grazing my cheek before shooting behind me and implanting themselves into the body of the kimono dragon.

However, even after seeing that she had hit her fellow teammate, she did not stop and instead shot all the hairs out of the kimono dragon’s body, killing it in the process.

[You have assisted in killing a land-dragon variant]

[You have gained +4 EXP]

At the same time, the hairs redirected and began coming my way as well as the tentacles from afar, yet now that I did not have to deal with the body, the invisible creature, and the kimono dragon, I finally felt like I had a chance of running away.

Who would have known stopping for your enemy could be one’s biggest mistake?

I dashed in a random direction in which I had no idea where it would land me.

I could not see the moon due to the trees in this area, and at the same time, the lighting overall was simply just too dim for me to make out anything other than the basic outlines of creatures and trees.

I trusted that my instincts would tell me if there happened to be something lurking in the shadows and that even if there was, I would be capable of dodging it in time before it was simply too late.

*Click Click*

The sound of a wooden clicking, one that sounded like the drumming on an old wooden table, or maybe even the creaking of a 100-year-old door…

The sound didn’t make sense yet what it portrayed was as clear as day.

They were coming, and they were coming fast!

My speed increased a little but at that moment, I did not think I could increase my speed any more than I had already done without banging my head into a random tree.

The thing about the dread was that even though there were cases of it working on inanimate things or even more of a sense of foreboding rather than actual danger, I could not magically activate it whenever I wanted.

It was not a switch I could turn on and off instead it was more of a switch that would turn on by itself, like an automated toilet light or an automated tap that would only activate after entering a room or if my hand moved under the motion sensors.

*Click Click Click Click*

The send of foreboding was getting stronger and the dread was becoming more concentrated than before.

The wooden old and creaky clicks grew louder.

I could hear something…

*Thud Thud*

Was it my heartbeat?

*Thud* *Thud* *Thud* *Thud* *Thud*

No, it didn’t sound like my heartbeat… But it couldn’t be footsteps, right?

Maybe it was the creature that used its tentacles to attack me, but why would it be that? That thing usually stayed high up in trees…

Could it be…?

*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH*

下一页

The Creak Of The Forest

*SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH*

A terrifying screech left the open maw of something terrifying.

It could not have been the woman’s scream, right? Her body had been impaled so many times that I’m pretty sure that no human in existence would be capable of moving from that.

How wrong could I have been?

To think that even 6 days in I would continue to judge the creatures of this era with normal human standards.

These things weren’t humans. Hell, I wouldn’t be wrong to question if they were even mortals like you and me.

These things simply weren’t human or any kind of normal mortal. And even though it might sound repetitive, it is true. They were something beyond human comprehension, something I could on,y understand later on.

For now, however, I could not help but shiver at the screech, as if my entire being was screaming for me to run away.

Since I could hear her footsteps now, it meant that she has her old body back and therefore also indicated that my fate was sealed.

Fighting the body and head individually was hard enough, imagine trying to fight this creature when it’s back to its original shape and form, and on top of that, the creature happens to be really angry at me for eating its fruit?

However, I did not let this dissuade me from running fast, faster than I had ever run before.

Even faster than the time, I found myself running from the lizard beast that got decapitated by the flying creature from before.

My eyes had already begun to shine with a dim gold while my every cell was filled with a golden radiance.

It was invigorating and even felt slightly warm and cozy, but I simply did not have enough time to think about such things.

I used all the power in all my cells to run even faster.

Faster and faster.

This was going to be it!

I was going to survive!

I didn’t know why I was so happy at that moment, just a few days ago I wouldn’t have minded dying on the spot.

But now I was happy?

Like everything in life though, I did not get time to contemplate my existence and only ran for my life, and for the first time, I actually began to outpace the woman.

IT was then that I began to recognize the landscape around me, remembering it as the route I had taken when following the red monkeys and also really close to the place where I had fought the wolf.

‘Maybe I should try losing them? But they would find me really quickly though… I don’t even have anything that could properly damage them either. The closest thing I got to damaging them was through friendly fire, yet even then I can’t really go the friendly-fire route when there are only 2 of us left.’

Cursing under my breath, I quickly shuffled through my brain trying to find a solution to my current problem.

Right now the only thing I could do was to try my best to run, and even though that seemed a little unrealistic seeing how I most certainly will run out of stamina before the two that were coming after me, it was my only solution.

Finally, I felt an idea hit me like a truck while my eyes lit up like two little lightbulbs.

With the same grin on my face as before, I began running, dashing, and even climbing in random directions that did not correlate with what I had done before.

*Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid*

I heard the things hit the trees around me but I did not care.

All I cared about was dodging and moving with a grace that I could swear no one else on earth could have moved with.

Even ballerina’s at this point might have had a hard time competing against the grace of my every movement, my landings seeming like the ones of a butterfly, and my dashes looking as smooth as a perfectly sanded ball.

However, despite being smooth and graceful with my every move, they were all still random.

*Thid*

*Thid*

*Thid*

The sounds still echoed in the forest, continuing to go on and on until they finally just… Stopped?

*ROOOOAAAAAR*

It let another roar. No. This wasn’t the woman anymore.

The roar had come from above.

I craned my head back and looked up, allowing my eyes to meet the piercing hazel-green eyes of a creature that kept most of its body within the shadows.

The only thing that I could see of it which would have even told me it was there were its eyes, but I could already guess that this must have been the creature that was attacking me with the root-like tentacles.

I was not stupid though. It knew where I was and therefore meant that it was about to attack me and so I began to sprint in a random direction once again, yet this time much faster than my random jumps and bursts of running that I was doing before.

*Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid* *Thid*

I once again heard the thing hitting the trees but this time the hits sounded much more powerful. It was as if it was using all its power to create something that would destroy anything and everything within its path.

‘I think I knew what you are…’ I looked up at the creature in the shadows before looking back down at the woman who now had her head back intact, looking around with a confused expression.

‘Seems like all of you are pretty stupid though.’ I smirk crept up the corner of my mouth before finally bursting towards the woman.

As if she could hear my foot slam into the floor, she looked back at me allowing her to see my widening grin as well as an aura of confidence that I exuded like a solar flare.

I knew that the thing didn’t see me as a threat, but at that moment I could see its eyes visibly widening while its face paled.

Its face has always been pale, but the difference this time could have been used as nightmare fuel.

Its face had become as white as milk and as smooth as a blank landscape that happened to have eyes and a mouth.

Watched as its hair sharpened and elongated, finally becoming long enough to shoot through the air and bend in every way possible.

Seeing this, I did not even need my dread to tell me where to dodge as I had immediately rolled to the left, allowing the hair to smash into the tree and this time, right through it.

‘Goodbye.’ I mused with an unreadable expression, the only real emotion within my eyes being the crazed hue of a victorious man. A man who had climbed out of the bottom of the food chain and was now running up it, kicking down anything that might stand in his way.

*Dishhh*

Without an ounce of hesitation, my remaining hand had grabbed onto the ax on my back and had swung it with all the power I could muster, something that in a situation like this was was a lot more than I would have expected. Similarly, however, this could have just been due to eating the fruit from earlier which might have given me more power.

My ax ripped through the air and smashed right into the trunk of the tree and exactly where the hair had pierced through.

I could feel that something was coming my way, but since the dread was extremely low, I ignored the feeling and committed to the ax swinging.

With one more ax swing, I felt a difference in how the ax entered the wood, and as if it was some kind of signal, I ran away the moment it had left the trunk of the tree.

*Kruk*

…

Everything was silent.

*Kruk*

*Kruk*

Nothing seemed to want to make a sound in that instant.

*Kruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurk*

The creak of the wood being bent shot throughout the entire forest.

I could feel hundreds of eyes lock onto our location, yet nothing could move, not even the person who was in the most danger at that moment.

Nothing could move except for me.

…

*SNAP*

下一页

Slice and Dice

*Creeeeeeeaaaak*

…

*SNAP*

The sound of the wood snapping echoed throughout the forest and entered the ears of almost everything within a certain distance, and as if the snap was some kind of sign, everything stayed silent.

It was as if my instincts were screaming at me to stay quiet. To zip it until something happened. However, another side of me just wanted to know what would happen to the woman and what her fate would be.

Will she survive, or will she die? Will the tree even fall on her? She can dodge pretty easily right? But then why is standing still just like everything else in my eye-line.

I did not have to wait very long to get the answer to my question which had come in a loud-

*BOOM*

A dust cloud covered the area where the tree had fallen.

Even though the tree was dead, or at least half-dead, it still weighed a lot compared to the tree that had fallen onto the wolf before.

I had thought that all the trees in that area had died due to some sort of disease that was in the soil, but when you get further away from the epicenter of the plain area with barely any trees, you start to question if all the trees were dead.

In reality, they didn’t look dead, or at least not enough for me to notice it at first glance.

It was only after I heard the hair spikes and tentacles hit the trees that I recognized them as being dead or mostly dead.

The trees furthest from the epicenter looked and felt the most alive especially after they were hit, yet on the other hand, the trees in the middle were the opposite even though it might not have been that obvious to someone like me.

Anyway, I had already seen the tree fall on the frozen woman, her eyes opened extremely wide while her body continued to shudder now and then as if she was trying to move but failed continuously. It was almost like she was bolted to the ground unable to move nor blink at the incoming death penalty.

After the dust cloud settled, my body instinctively relaxed and looked towards where she once stood, my face now holding the same grin it held when I had seen it attack the tree.

However, no matter how confident I was that nothing could have survived being crushed by a tree of that size, I was still very wary of her still being alive, especially since I didn’t get the notification yet.

Another reason I was wary was that I could see the thing within the shadows moving around while making sure to keep an eye on me at all times without failure, no matter which way it seemed to have turned.

It was like new eyes were popping out on the back of its head, allowing it to look at me while simultaneously accomplishing whatever it wanted to do in the process.

When its gaze finally faltered off me for a second, I began to run with all my speed, eventually reaching the crushed woman within a split second, taking out my ax and slamming it into her face over and over again without an ounce of mercy or remorse.

[You have killed a Skinwalker]

[You have gained 200 EXP]

[You you leveled up!]

[You have gained 2 stat points]

[Level 3]

[Progress: 7/400]

In the same instant, I felt an overpowering feeling of doom closing the space between it and me at a speed invisible to the eyes, yet since I seemed to feel it long before it had come, I already had enough time to dodge out of the way.

‘Speed!’ I inwardly roared

[+2 Agility]

The root shot right past my face, this time grazing my eyes in the process but not enough to automatically blind me, yet just enough to cause a gash across my eyelid.

I swing my ax down at the root with enough power to cut it into two, yet just barely. However, even though I had barely accomplished something that seemed so easy to a normal person, this root was twice as big as one of the other roots I tried destroying yet at that time I had failed to do so.

Cutting the root in half did not seem to be the right choice since it had only taken the creature a millisecond to direct the part that was still intact towards my head, yet once again I dodged quite easily.

I could feel that my footwork was getting better after every fight, but at what cost? Every time I fought it felt as if I was on the brink of death and almost every time I seemed to have lost something.

My arm, then my ear, and now maybe even my eyes if I do not take care of it quickly.

I was not a fighter… I was a coward and I always have been. From the day I had been born until this day, I have always been a coward. A scared little boy with limited power. A little boy who just wanted to be liked.

I was not the warrior that I was putting the act on of. I just wanted to run, hide, cry, scream… Yet even now I find myself forced to survive with the once word my girlfriend had mouthed to me still ringing, bouncing, and echoing throughout my mindscape.

“Survive.”

I side-stepped once again, allowing the root to barely graze my arm this time, however, it had not stopped me from carrying out my action.

My ax descended towards the head of the woman, this time shining in an almost golden light that I, in the moment, could not differentiate between it and the lunar rays of the moon.

*PSHCHH*

With that last swing, I watched as its brain matter exploded out of its head, now causing its entire body to shrivel up like an apple devoid of its moisture.

On instinct, the moment I felt the dread once again I had already spun and attacked the root aimed at my head, cutting it into pieces while moving forward.

I continued to spin, this time feeling some muscle memory kick in.

‘Muscle memory? I’ve never used an ax before… But then why does it feel so familiar.’ I thought with a sense of familiarity awakening from deep inside me as if it had always been in a slumber, waiting for me to one day pick up an ax and wield it to cut down an enemy.

I didn’t know why but I closed my eyes.

Anyone would have called me stupid for doing so, hell, I was shouting at myself for closing my eyes yet it was like my body was no longer mine, but at the same time was?

I didn’t feel like I was in control but simultaneously, I was the one moving, choosing to move.

I felt the dread come and go while my arm flailed around, creating what sounded like fleshy cuts, slashes, and slices. Yet, the first thing I felt when flailing my arm around with the ax was the feeling of a soft yet sturdy thud before a vibration would travel through my hand as the fleshy sound rang out again and again until I had finally become semi-numb to it.

When I had finally opened my eyes, I watched my right arm move frantically while the rest of my body did so too. It sliced and cut like a master, and all of this was happening while I wasn’t even looking?

After staring into space for a moment, I only realized where i was when I did not recognize where I was, but then it dawned on me.

*Creak*

*Creak*

*Creak*

Several trees were beginning to fall already, and since it seemed like we had not moved far from the epicenter, it meant that the trees would be lighter and more easily broken.

With a burst of energy, I rolled to the right dodging the root that came towards me, and allowed it to hit a tree around 20 meters away from me. At the same time just like I had done before, I moved out of the way and watched the tree fall in the direction of the attacker.

I could see that it was going to dodge no matter how fast the tree fell, and so I needed to stop it…

I needed to put an end to this.

My body was bruised and battered probably beyond comprehension, while phantom pain shot through my every receptor as if my arm was still there, constantly being hit by some invisible force.

Honestly, the pain from my phantom arm was a lot more paralyzing than any of the pain I felt from having to deal with the attacks coming my way yet I still did not give up.

Gritting my teeth and pushing past the pain, I made a split-second decision of making sure that I would not allow the creature, which I could now see was something close to a tree-golem, would not escape the falling tree.

Of course, later on, I would learn that it was a newly-birthed treant, but the naive me still had a lot to learn.

I used every ounce of power I could muster, throwing my arm forward and flinging the ax towards the treant.

I didn’t know how much power would be behind the throw, yet to my surprise, the throw did not go the way I had expected it to.

As if thousands of years of experience and knowledge flowed through me, I adjusted my body to become more efficient while executing the throw of a lifetime.

With one last push, the ax tore through the air and spun like a boomerang, now curving and-

*Sshhhhhhhhing*

下一页

Set aflame

*Sshhhhhhhhing*

The ax I threw had gained a terrifying amount of momentum, reaching a spinning speed that I could barely keep up with as it became a blur to my eyes.

However, I knew how much power that attack of mine had kept behind its blade, tearing through the air like a howling wind before finally digging itself deep within the neck of the treant.

I heard the flesh being torn apart, or should I say wood?

While treants were mostly made out of wood on the outside, the moment you went through one layer of wood you would eventually meet their real body which would contain its organs that while being similar to any other mammal’s, also had their differences here and there.

The axe was stuck halfway in between its neck, not budging an inch either way as blood gushed out of the open wound.

The blood was a greeny red that shone under the lunar lights of the moon like the reflective waters of the forest, yet this time the green would be illuminated by the lunar light as if it had been charged, making it glow ever so slightly.

The tentacles of the treant stopped moving while its body wavered, rocking back and forth until it finally-

*thud*

With a soft thud, the treant had fallen off the tree branch it was situated on and landed on the hard ground below, my axe still in its neck, the blood continuously gushing out without any signs of stopping any time soon.

“KREEEEEEEHHHHHHHH!” The creature let out a gargled screech as it tried to get up, but it was quickly stopped by something on the side of its head stomping onto its right side.

The pain caused it to screech once again, but I did not stop and looked at it coldly, my crazed smile vanishing into the breeze of the forest as if it had never been there.

My eyes were ice-cold… They were the eyes of a killer.

A dark crimson killing intent washed over the creature and for the first time in its short life, it seemed genuinely scared.

Its eyes were filled with emotion it could not understand, but really, how could it?

It was a mere infant, but what did I know?

It had tried to kill me, immediately making it an enemy in my eyes. I knew that I would have to kill it, and I wouldn’t have stopped even if you had told me it was a child.

Maybe it was only then that it had finally clicked in my head.

There is nothing in this world to judge my actions anymore.

I wasn’t being watched.

Everything was an enemy.

Why would I care about morals?

Why don’t I just do whatever I want?

Why don’t I just destroy everything?

‘Hahahahahahahah.’ My eyes had become devoid of all emotion.

“Keke-hahahahahaha” I finally began laughing out loud.

The fear in the eyes of the treant deepened.

I could see its soul leaving its vessel.

It was terrified… of me.

A mere human.

A mortal.

I had nothing.

I was weak.

Just a normal armless human.

Yet, it had been forced to watch me as I killed all of its companions one by one.

One… By… One…

I stretched my only hand down to grab my ax. Gripping it within my hand, I wiggled it out, something that caused even more blood to gush out.

The stone that I had used the create the blade of the ax had been damaged severely, to the point where it might not even work as an ax anymore but more as a blunt object.

I quickly tilted my head to the left, narrowly avoiding the root that tried to shoot through my eye and into my brain.

I looked deep into the eyes of the treant and with a wry smirk, I lifted the ax to the right and swung it at the root that had attacked me.

With a single swing, I was capable of cutting the too right off, and with a second swing, I had cut its arm off cleanly.

“You think you can try killing me…” I breathed out.

The silence between my sentence was deafening.

My smirk to it must have been the smirk of a devil. How could something as weak as me kill it? I was nothing but an insect to them after all… Maybe I was playing with them? Maybe this whole thing was just a sick game to me? A game of life and death where I am the only decider who leaves this place alive.

Those were probably the thoughts of the thing I was looking at.

“There is no longer anyone to judge me for my actions… My parents are gone… My girlfriend is dead… My best friend had died in the hands of those… things… And my girlfriend’s best friend happened to be a spy…” I kept blabbering on to myself.

“And I’ve been sent to a reality where they do not even exist anymore, or at least not yet, or maybe not ever.”

“My every move could mean that the future had changed. Me killing you could mean that my family would never exist. But at the same time, me killing you could mean that they do exist in the future.”

After realizing what I was saying, I finally looked down at its expressionless, yet somehow terror-stricken face.

I would have wanted to cover the smile that crept up from the corners of my lips, but I simply did not have another hand to cover my mouth with.

“What am I saying… It’s not like you can understand me anyway.” And with those words, I raised my ax once more to land the final blow… The blow that would end my current temporary misery while ending the treants misery permanently.

*Splitch*

[You have killed an Inftant Treant]

[You have gained +100 EXP]

[Level 3]

[Progress: 109/400]

Gradually, I lifted my ax off the treants face, it now being dyed with the reddish-green color of its blood and brain matter.

‘Thinking back, I do believe that I might be covered in the blood of all of them.’ I began to recall all the times they had been injured and other than the invisible creature, everything else had found a way to splatter their blood onto me.

‘Lets just hope they didn’t have aids… If that even exists yet.’ I chuckled to myself, ignoring the feeling of the blood actively beginning to dry and clot on my face.

I gradually got up and stood up straight, now looking at the chaos that our battle had created.

‘To think I would survive all of this.’ I tried to chuckle again completely unaware of the unconscious tears that had begun to drench my face, merely mistaking them for some blood that happened to not have clotted yet and was beginning to fall down my face.

Even the blurry vision was something I cast aside as an aftereffect of having fought for so long and so hard.

With my ax still in hand, I walked out of the plains area and back into the dark woods taking one final glance back before moving forward to never look back again.

Or so I thought until I had chosen to run back, painstakingly create a fire before running away once again after making sure that the two corpses of the woman and the treant had been lit aflame.

‘You can never be too sure.’ I lied through my teeth.

I knew better than anyone else that they were dead, it was just that even in death, I wanted them to suffer a little more or at least not have a body to decompose overtime for the archeologists of the future to see, even though I knew that there was an extremely high chance that the people of the future would never find any of the fossils of the creatures that live today.

Who knew that, while being one of the worst decisions I could have made, the fire would eventually become the very thing that would save me from the troubles of the future?

下一页

Set aflame II

It was finally the 7th day and the last day of this hell.

While usually I am awoken to the piercing lights of the rising sun shooting through the cracks of the cave and trying to burn holes through my eyelids, today was a little different.

I had no dreams so when I woke up, I was not startled at all… Or at least that was the case until I smelt something weird in the air.

I had always heard that the normal human being cannot be awoken to a smell of any kind and therefore that was the reason why smoke detectors were so needed across all first world countries and even any good houses in third world countries.

However, what I had been woken up to was the smell of burnt barbecue, making me even more confused than I had already been.

‘Why would anyone have a grill this early in the morning.’ I thought to myself, slightly wishing that the last 6 days in this hell hole had been just a nightmare that I had finally woken out of and would eventually forget after a few years, possibly already having married to Crystal and with two kids to look after.

I was kept in my daze by this scene. The scene of the two of us in a home, far away from the cities where we could simply look outside and find the waters of the shore washing up the sand and retreating back into the ocean.

I imagined… watched as two kids ran in the distance while I shouted at them to not move too far away from us…

Me and crystal both watched them on our beach bed as we clung tightly to each other like the happily married couple we were.

The feeling… The cold breeze of the oceans passed in between us and made us cling even tighter to each other.

The blazing sun shooting down its rays and scorching our skins, yet at that moment, it was as if nothing mattered.

That was what one would usually call a beautiful and happy life…

A life where I had accomplished everything, and the only thing left for me to do was to make money and raise my children before eventually watching them get married just like parents would have.

But then, I didn’t know why… I didn’t even really want to… I knew that it was going to happen so I didn’t want to. Yet I still blinked, and with that single blink, everything disappeared. It was then that my nose was finally assaulted by the horrible stench that came with the barbecue smell.

A faint glimpse of a burning beach torched and set aflame by some kind of black flames flickered with my eyes before disappearing once again.

The last thing I found myself doing at that moment was looking to my right and having one of the most horrifying scenes engraved and etched deep into my mind.

There lay my ‘wife’, skinless and charred beyond recognition. Nothing but the bone was left, not a single piece of meat still stick to her bones.

With one more blink, I finally found myself being thrown back into the real world where I could look around and fully identify the source of the burning scent that was assaulting my now-covered nose.

I almost felt like puking, yet with gritted teeth and a tightly clenched fist, I got up and shook my head of the ‘memories’ I had seen, allowing me to finally focus on the things around me.

[You have killed a Dragonfly]

[You gained +10 EXP]

[You have killed a Wasp]

[You gained +10 EXP]

[You have killed a Black-scaled centipede]

[You gained +10 EXP]

[You have killed a Dragonfly]

[You gained…]

The notifications went on and on, surprising me to my core before making me nod in understanding.

I quickly shot up from the ground and ran out of my cave before looking back and behind the cave to see what was happening even though it was more than obvious after seeing the various animals running in a particular direction without taking a single glance at me.

“Looks like the fire I made had spread uncontrollably… But what would have I expected from an era where oxygen is almost as common as water.” I chuckled while looking as if it was one of my most prized possessions.

If someone were to look at me, they would have thought that I was almost proud of what I was seeing.

A grin stretched across my face while I had almost forgotten of the scene that I had seen prior to ‘waking up’.

I watched as the flames finally engulfed the trees in front of me and let out a deep sigh of satisfaction with the same smile on my face.

[You have leveled up]

[You have leveled up]

[You have leveled up]

[You have leveled up]

[Congratulations, you have reached Level 7]

[You have gained 8 stat points]

[Level 7]

[Progress: 530/6400]

[You have unlocked the shop feature]

My eyes glimmered for a moment, but I quickly shook my head after realizing what I should be doing.

With that, I immediately turned around and walked back into the cave while taking everything I could hold with me. I had to leave all the remaining food behind but that was a given since they were going to rot any time soon anyway.

“I should be fine if I walk at a good pace.” I thought to myself before glancing at some of the running animals and beasts with the shake of the head.

“What are they doing? It’s not like the fire can get any further without having trees to-” It was only then that I had taken a glance back, a glance that caused the blood on my face to drain while the expression I had frozen at an awkward smile.

“Damn. Who would have known.” I chuckled, but unlike my relaxed upbeat tone, I was now running for my life.

While I might have understood that the oxygen levels were one of the main reasons why the fire spread so quickly, I completely disregarded the idea that the flame could spread quickly on the floor since it was littered with random rocks, patches with no grass, and even a tiny river that ran through the place.

Yet what I saw instead was that not only did the fire not lose out on speed, it had gained it to the extent where it began looking as if it was alive, its embers skipping patches of no grass and burning blades of grass that was almost 9 meters away as if it was nothing.

‘Crap…’ I ran with all the speed I could muster.

I could still hear the constant ringing in my ear as I ran with all the speed and power I could muster.

My sweating had increased to the point where the minimal amount of clothes that I had on was now being drenched with it, making it cling tightly onto me.

This made it a little easier to run since the clothes weren’t really dangling anymore, but at the same time, I felt as if my mobility was being restricted even though my clothes were quite flexible and even kind of big for me.

‘Why does this shirt feel so tight?’ I thought to myself, but after glancing back I did not ponder for longer than I needed to, immediately beginning to run again with a renewed vigor mainly fueled by the fear I felt when I saw that the flames were beginning to close in.

Looking at the direction I was going, it seemed like the only way I could go was a forest that happened to be in front of me, but at the same time, I could vaguely feel a sense of familiarity when I looked at the forest.

“Isn’t this the forest I came from?” I gasped, now remembering that I had landed in this forest the first time I had come to this era.

“Oh well.” With my head down and my center of gravity lowered, I dashed into the forest alongside many of the smaller animals that happened to have a problem running away due to their small physiques.

I could barely care about them, running past them without an ounce of remorse. This was a life or death situation after all. Why would I care about something that isn’t me?

I could only listen to their shrill screams that resounded after they had been devoured by the orange flames that coated the entire land with an orangy-red hue.

Even the sky was semi-orange, something I could only assume was due to the sun rising in the distance.

“As long as I stay in this forest, I am a dead man… I need to find a way out of this” I muttered under my breath, yet even that had become difficult due to the heat that entered my lungs and scorched me from the inside every time I breathed.

The flames were getting closer and closer.

I could feel their heat on the back of my neck as if a scorching hot iron rod was being held up extremely close to my neck to see how long I could go before exclaiming out in pain, yet even doing that would have burned my lungs so I persisted.

‘WHY IS IT SO FAST!’ I inwardly screamed.

下一页

Set aflame III

The flames were getting closer and closer.

I could feel their heat on the back of my neck as if a scorching hot iron rod was being held up extremely close to my neck to see how long I could go before exclaiming out in pain, yet even doing that would have burned my lungs so I persisted.

‘WHY IS IT SO FAST!’ I inwardly screamed.

I could feel the involuntary tears come out and begin heating up within my eyes, possibly even release steam?

That might have been my imagination, but still. I was here running for my life while the screams of other animals and beasts echoed from behind me, yet even then I did not dare look back.

Looking back would spell death, so why would anyone in their right mind do such a thing?

I couldn’t really say that this was the fastest I had ever run before, but I could say that this is the faster than I had ever run while I had been alive if that life could even be considered to have ended.

The images of my family, my girlfriend, my best friend, that elf bastard, and everyone I ever know and loved kept flashing before my eyes.

I could see their faces while my mind recreated their death scenes even if I hadn’t seen them when they had died.

I could tell that every time I watched them die, the images would get worse and worse. It was as if my mind was trying to sabotage me by showing me the worst scenes of my life, even if I happened to not have seen them.

‘Crystal… you told me to survive right? Mom… Dad… Emily… You would all want me to survive too wouldn’t you?’ I inwardly asked myself, a new flicker of determination sparking within my eyes.

Remembering them, my suppressed memories of them had caused me to tear up a little yet my running alone had made the wind strong enough to dry them in an instant.

‘Then I will survive…’

My eyes were naturally dark brown as I had not inherited the same color hair as my parents. I didn’t really inherit much of their appearance either, or at least not as much as my sister had done. Of course, it had made me question if I was adopted or not, but my questions had disappeared after I had seen how much care and love they would give to me every single day.

However, even though my eyes were normally a color extremely close to black, now they were gradually turning crimson, the dark brown being devoured by the invading red lines that extended into my pupils making them slowly turn red in the process too.

At the same time, It felt as if my body was gaining strength close to the strength I had gained when fighting against those monsters from before.

No… This power was different from then.

I had gained that power from eating the fruit that had satiated my hunger even until now.

Now, the energy was a little different… It was as if something deep within me was being unlocked. I power that had been hidden within the depths of my DNA and consciousness.

A power beyond the understanding of the normal human being.

I could feel that my muscles were beginning to bulge a little, but not enough for it to become uncomfortable. The same thing was happening to all the veins in my body that stretched from head to toe before flowing with a crimson red energy.

Simultaneously, my eyes did the same and also began shining with the same color.

My eyes had become bloodshot now, yet the crimson of my irises had a significant difference in their shade that made it easy for anyone to differentiate between it and the bloodshot white of the eyes. That was if I were to not mention that the crimson irises were only around 70% red, the rest of it being a deep black that had resisted the invasion of the crimson light.

I could finally feel that the heat was beginning to get further away. Wait for no… I was running faster, much faster. In fact, I literally have not run this fast ever before. This speed was nowhere close to the speed of the woman I had fought the day before but if I had this power and speed then, I wouldn’t have struggled as much.

‘Maybe I would have even kept an ear.’ I chuckled at my own dismay.

After running for about 5 minutes, I could feel that the power within my body was being drained at an extremely fast speed as if I was a bottomless well that the energy was being poured into.

My body slid to a gradual stop and my head turned back to see if the flames were getting any closer.

The bulging muscles and veins were beginning to fade back into my normal body where I didn’t look like a man who could be killed with a single papercut.

“Phew” a breath that I had not realized I was holding in left my mouth and allowed my lungs to relax.

*Grrrrr*

A low growling entered my ear and made me snap in the direction of the noise.

A strong feeling of dread overcame me from several different angles but that simply was not enough to catch me off guard.

I could tell that the things that were attacking me were much weaker than the woman or the treant, you could call it an instinct that I had somehow developed in only 7 days.

When looking at something, I could feel a sense of danger from the stronger ones while the danger dropped significantly as you moved down to the weaker animals.

Of course, in a world like this, there was almost no animal that wasn’t dangerous in some way or another, but I could easily tell which ones actually threatened my safety while also knowing which ones didn’t.

I would get the same sense of ‘danger’ from hostile creatures, while creatures who seemed to be passive or nonchalant simply released a dangerous aura that suppressed everything around them rather than having a hostile killing intent that attacked anything within a certain range.

Right now, I could tell that the creatures that were attacking me weren’t much of a threat to the current me. Hell, even the old me on earth could have run away from all but one of them.

Still, my eyes darted past every single one of me and analyzed them as fast as I could while I slowly drew my ax and began swinging to the right immediately.

The momentum of my drawing my ax had caused it to shoot down with extreme precision that I would not have been able to gain if I were fighting more dangerous animals/beasts.

The creatures that were attacking me were half my size, most of them either being bugs of some kind while others were some kind of 6-legged animals that I had never seen before.

Yet, they were still much smaller than me so all I had to do was slice them down and destroy their bodies.

I had killed all the smaller ones within a few seconds before finally jumping back and allowing my eyes to land on the human-sized rat in front of me, looking at me with its giant red eyes.

“Nice eyes” I chuckled with an enormous grin on my face. I had no idea that my eyes were red just a few seconds ago, and remnants of that crimson red still remained in my irises.

“Looks like I’ma have to kill you too big guy.” I let out another chuckle that made it growl slightly and try to get down into a fighting position, yet without missing a beat my body had already burst from my position and had lunged itself towards the rat, slashing towards its throat with my ax with all intentions to decapitate it on the spot.

However, The rat had moved back slightly making my ax’s blade barely graze its neck, allowing a small amount of blood to flow out of the wound without any signs of stopping any time soon.

The cut wasn’t deep enough for the rat to drown in its own blood, yet it was not shallow enough for it to simply overlook as a battle injury.

It was only then that it had chosen that the best course of action was to run, a decision that made me pause, look at the running rat and laugh mockingly before lunging towards it at full speed.

Thankfully, however, I was way too slow to catch it immediately meaning that I was likely to never catch up to it especially after you see the speed it was moving at.

You might be asking yourself right about now, ‘why thankfully? Isn’t this something bad?’.

Well, he is the thing, it would be considered a bad thing for my prey to run away in normal conditions, but at that moment it could not have been better.

As the rat had begun running at full speed in another direction, I watched as the bushes to its right rustled, and before the rat could react it saw the insides of an enormous maw that had enveloped most of the rat’s body before biting off everything other than its legs.

下一页

The Flame Of Determination

As the rat had begun running at full speed away from me, I suddenly felt a tinge of dread come from the bush beside it.

Before we had even realized what had happened, the rat and I could only watch as a huge maw closed the distance between it and the creature that had been too busy running away from me to recognize what had attacked it in time.

Snapping its maw shut, the creature that had left the bushes had swallowed the entire rat whole leaving nothing but its tiny feet outside as if it was some kind of memorial piece to remember that rat by.

Honestly, while I wouldn’t usually laugh at a horrifying scene like the one I just watched occur right before me, I found it quite comical, especially after watching the feet fall backward in such a fashion.

This only caused a stifled laugh to leave my mouth before I had closed it in hopes that the thing that had taken the rat would not notice my existence.

‘Why the hell am I laughing!?’ I screamed at myself but it was already too late.

The creature had already looked at me with its huge eyes, and at this point, I knew that there was no way I wouldn’t face it.

‘C’mon… I foughts against a human looking thing and a treant. What is the worst that could happen?’ I inwardly chuckled.

*ROOOOOOAAAAAR*

A sky-shaking roar left the maw of the creature before it stood up, allowing me to finally perceive it at its full glory.

Its body was several meters tall and several meters wide.

Its hands were slightly small compared to the rest of its body. Feathers poked out of the back of its head like a beautiful crown of red and yellow.

Its piercing eyes stared down at me with an enormous pressure that would have made an elephant feel as insignificant as an ant before its presence.

Such a domineering power stood before me and I had found myself completely frozen, the previous humorous act now out of my mind while the only thing I could think of were ways that I could somehow survive this encounter.

I did not want to admit it, but I was scared… Scared to my core.

“So you must be the creature that caused all the fuss I kept hearing about… I heard you even killed my child.” The creature spoke… but it didn’t?

The way it had spoken was weird. Its enormous maw did not move yet I could hear its voice as clear as day without a single sign of it being muffled or suppressed.

At the same time, as it spoke those words I could not help but feel curious… A curiosity that almost fought back my fear of it.

The keyword in that sentence being “almost”.

‘That was its child?!’ A boiling rage began to rise from deep within my conscience. I could not believe that the very thing that had taken my arm was the child of this freak, yet at the same time, I could believe it.

My mind was being riddled with fear, anger, and curiosity which all made it hard for me to think straight.

My curiosity was speaking to me, telling me that its words sounded plausible yet my anger did the opposite.

My fear on the other hand was screaming at me to do nothing but, yet there I stood motionless and unable to move even if I tried.

I was not sure if it was the fear that had caused me to freeze or the anger and curiosity that had told me to stay and even fight the creature.

“That was your child?” I asked, rage evident in my raspy voice.

“Yes. Do not worry though, I have many children all across these forests. That one happened to have been a mutation that I kind of wanted to see grow but seeing that it had fallen to something as weak and pathetic as you, it meant that it was not worthy of my attention.”

I didn’t really understand why but those words had only made me angrier.

However, I did not act out of emotions and instead had closed my eyes and gritted my teeth in front of this thing.

It watched me with curiosity, even lowering its body and putting its eyes right in front of me.

Its eye alone was as big as 70% of my body.

A thin membrane would come from the side of its eyes and envelop it as if it had its own method of blinking that was unique to only itself.

It was only then that I looked up to the eyes and stared directly into its pupil.

Its eyes were a bright yellow that got deeper as it got to the edges of the iris. Its pupil on the other hand was just as black as any other pupil, the only difference being that they were slits rather than rounded ones.

“The flames are coming…”

“You think I can’t run away from them? I can even take them on.” The lizard opened its maw for the second time since I had met it to release a loud and raspy roar-like laugh. Yet even then, the eye did not leave its place and only looked more fierce as it looked into my very soul.

To its surprise, I also began to laugh.

“Hahahahahaha” It was a low and even croaky laugh. To anyone else, it might have seemed fake, but the creature knew otherwise.

I could feel the burning hatred within my eyes when I had looked at… It could sense the mockery and craze in my laugh.

“You are interesting. How about you come with me? We can have a little fun?” It chuckled

“I’d rather not be experimented on.” My laugh halted and a huge, almost desperate grin stretched across my face.

‘I’m sorry crystal…’

I grabbed the hilt of my ax with my remaining arm and swing it at a blurring speed that even the large lizard in front of me struggled to react to.

‘But I’m not going to die without a fight’

It was that day that the fire finally ignited in me.

It was a fire that had been trying to emerge for days now, yet it was only now that it had been released from its chains.

The fire of an unbreakable determination.

A fire that symbolized my will to fight! My will to live!

With a crimson light now erupting out of me like ashes from an erupting volcano, I felt my arm move, but this time I was in control.

With all the red energy left in my body, my arm had taken the ax and sliced up, plunging the ax deep into the eye of the lizard and splattering its blood all over me.

下一页

T-Rex

With all the red energy left in my body, my arm had taken the ax and sliced it up, plunging it deep within the eye of the lizard and splattering its blood all over me.

The blood began to sizzle on my skin causing me to grimace in plain, yet the blood left no visible wound so I chose to grit my teeth and endure it.

‘If I lose focuz for even a second, it would spell death for me… I need to survive.’ I closed my eyes and opened them again, this time both my irises containing crimson red rings around the pupils as if wanting to highlight.

*Roaaaar* The ground shook in front of the brain-rattling roar, yet not only did I not cover my ears when I heard it coming, but I also stood there unflinching as one of my ears began to bleed, a trickle of blood leaving its canal and dropping to the floor.

As if that was some kind of signal, I stepped forward right before the blood would have touched the ground before squatting down and jumping up, ax in hand, and ready to murder everything before me if it meant that I could survive.

“You think after all I went through…” My expression turned into one that morphed into rage and contempt, something that seemed to have made the crimson red ring become brighter than before.

“I would submit to a bastard like you!?” I bellowed with a fury like never before.

[Emergency Mission has been received!]

[Emergency Mission: Survive against a Prime Tyrannosaurus Ancestor]

[Conditions: –

-Survive]

[Reward:

-Receive the skill ‘Life Drain’

-Instant Level Up]

With my anger fueling the power behind my attack, I swung down with the ax and aimed toward the head of the T-rex in hopes that I could slice it in half.

How wrong could one person have been?

*Cre-ak*

*Snap*

My eyes widened while my heart dropped.

I could only watch the stone of the ax shatter while the wooden part snapped into two pieces.

‘Crap’

I tried my hardest to get away but I was mid-air. Yet even though I was mid-air, I still technically had the advantage since the T-rex seemed to be in an enormous amount of pain after having an ax plunged into its eyes.

When I had gotten close oversized lizard, it had automatically opened its other eye and peered at me with hostile intentions flickering wildly within its eyes.

‘That look…’

It felt so familiar.

‘I don’t like it!’ With newfound vigor, I shifted my body and plunged into a descent, my foot aiming for one of its eyes while the other foot got ready to spring the rest of my body away if need be.

“Eye for an eye asshole!” I roared one more time, my speed of descent increasing by an entire margin due to my posture reducing my surface area and therefore also reducing drag.

*ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAR*

Another roar had left the maw of the creature, yet unlike the other times where it had simply roared to scare something off or to establish dominance, I could feel something different about this one.

Instantly, as if I had been hit by a truck, I felt an enormous force hit me directly before shooting me into the air.

‘Sound wave? No… That simply isn’t possible.’ I was still in a state of shock, however, I was still capable of slightly changing the way I would land.

Right now I was several meters off the ground and the only way I could land without breaking something would be if I try using my legs to break the fall.

Using the momentum I had been given from the shockwave-like eruption of sound, I flipped in the air and tried to land on one of the tree branches that were closest to where I was, yet before I could even do that I felt something else hit me, or to be precise, I felt something hit the back of my head.

*Thud*

Without having realized it, I had reached one of the tree branches towards the top and had slammed my head into it, yet since most of my momentum had already dissipated, the hit was not enough to knock me out.

In a last-ditch effort to survive, I quickly threw out my hand and pushed away from the branch I hit and in the process barely dodged the incoming dread.

*ROAR*

The waves left the maw of the T-rex once again but I had found myself barely dodging them this time due to my quick thinking.

Not pondering over what happened just yet, I planted the soles of my feet on the trunk of a tree and slid down it until I found a branch suitable for me to grab on to.

It only took a few seconds but those seconds to me felt like an eternity.

I had to analyze and question which branch would hold me up the best, and even then, it was only after I had made a gamble did I jump to one of the tree branches hoping that it would not be slippy or weak.

Thankfully, it wasn’t weak but that was beside the point.

Once again, I could feel the dread getting closer by the second and so I had to move.

I quickly shifted my body and kicked the tree branch below me before jumping onto one of the tips and springing myself up to one of the higher branches on another tree right before the wave could hit me.

I could hear the wave absolutely eradicate the tree I stood on previously and immediately causing my heart rate to quicken in the face of complete and utter despair.

‘I can survive.’ I tried to convince myself

‘I survived against all odds… Against that crazy-looking woman. Against a treant. Against an oversized kimono dragon and even an invisible creature that probably specialized in assassinations. What’s the difference now? It’s just another oversized lizard… I am fine… I will be fine… Nothing can kill me as long as I don’t give up’

*ROAR*

下一页

Death is just another part of life…

*ROAR*

I swiftly flew down to another branch before running and jumping to one on the same level to avoid being thrown down alongside the obliterated tree.

This carried on a few more times until the creature seemed to have gotten fed up with me and finally began fighting close range as if the long-range attacks simply weren’t enough suffering for me and so it had begun to get close and personal to make sure that I suffered even more than I already am.

“If I had my other arm.” I let out a gasp while stealthily hiding behind trees, moving around them and with a sense of randomness to confuse the creature.

“YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME!” it bellowed but its voice was not what had caused me to freeze.

The smell of burning wood wafted into my nose and forced me to look behind at the orange landscape that looked like hell on Earth, only getting closer by the second.

‘I need to run’ I thought to myself, yet the creature’s next words threw that thought out of my mind.

“You think you can run away?” it asked, this time its voice symbolizing one of a calm woman rather than the bellows of a crazed one.

I did not answer of course. What kind of person would I have to be to answer to such an obvious trap?

“I see… So you aren’t going to answer… Well, that’s fine. I wonder though, how would your family look at you if they saw you like this?”

My movement halted while my eyes widened before eventually narrowing with a cold expression.

“What were their names again? Well, does it really matter? They are dead anyway, right?” I clenched my hand into a fist.

“Dead people can’t tell you what to do, yet they watch over you all the time. Imagine how disappointed they would all be after seeing that their son had come out as such a failure.” The creature chuckled while I simply stood behind one of the trees completely ignoring the oncoming flames.

Blood trickled from the center of my palms as my fingernails pierced them, dropping to the ground without a single audible sound.

‘It’s trying to provoke me…’

“To think you would be the last of their family bloodlines. How sad they must be. Imagine having someone so incompetent, so stupid, so weak and so pathetic as the sole anchor to your bloodline? they mut think that you probably disgraced their famil- no… You must have disgraced their entire race.” It chuckled again.

I could feel the blood boiling under my skin.

My teeth had been gritted so hard that my gums were bleeding.

I was feeling so much rage, not because it spoke ill of my family even though that happened to be an element, but because I kind of believed its words…

I felt weak.

I felt useless.

I felt powerless.

They were all feelings I felt when standing before creatures of this era, and they also were the same feelings I felt when standing before the elves.

“Don’t you just feel so w-” It bit its tongue when it began feeling something strange in the air.

For some reason, the air around it had started to feel heavy while breathing seemed to take more effort than it had previously done.

Its eyes darted all around the area but it simply could not find me.

The only thing it could see were the fires in the distance getting closer by the second.

It was almost sure that I would have come out by now, but then why couldn’t it see me?

Was I hiding somewhere?

Its heart rate had started to quicken but it did not understand why.

I was but a small bipedal animal.

Wait…

“Are you a dwarve!? An Elf? A mix-breed?” I roared yet it did not receive an answer.

It wasn’t shaking, nor was it even scared of me… then why, why was I feeling so anxious?

What was this feeling of dread?

*BOOM*

My body moved like a blur, yet it still wasn’t fast enough to completely miss the gaze of the T-rex. Hell, the T-rex even thought that the speed was slow compared to other creatures or even itself.

It growled once more before letting out a sky-shaking roar to once again decimate the tree I stood on. However, to its dismay, it could only watch and try to follow my figure as I continued to jump from one tree to the other without hesitation or fear in my eyes.

Of course, I was feeling fear. My hands were shaking uncontrollably while my breath was nothing but ragged.

On would be capable of seeing the immense dread and helplessness if they were to look me directly in the eyes, but this creature simply did not have that luxury.

Crouching down once again, I took the biggest jump yet since I could not see any trees nearby, and as if my jump was some kind of signal, it widened its eyes and snapped its maw towards me, ready to shoot out another roar.

Seeing this, I could not help but imagine my body turning into dust the moment that roar reaches me and so the determination within my eyes only burned more erratically.

It was do or die, and I was not about to die after everything I had just gone through.

I could see that I could not get to the other branch in time without any interference.

I did not have enough time to create anything that would help me in this situation.

The desperate nature of the situation began to seep into my mind and body.

I could feel every single muscle in my body scream at me to let it rest, yet I ignored them.

‘I just have to get the right timing…’ I finally thought.

It seemed like the world around me had dramatically slowed down and my thinking speed had reached a new height.

‘Maybe this is what being on the boundary between being alive and dying does to you’ I let out another sigh as my eyes finally sharpened while my new black irises with a crimson halo within them became oddly cold and distant.

My eye darted towards the T-rex that was opening its mouth to let out another roar while my hand reached back and grabbed something from the belt of my pants.

‘I’m not going to be the one who dies today… 8 Points into strength!’

下一页

My First Death

‘I’m not going to be the one who dies today… 8 points into strength!’

When its mouth had finally fully opened, I could see my vision narrowing and becoming stretched while everything other than my target became unfocused and blurry.

An unconscious grin stretched from the corner of my mouth and my hand tightened around the item I held.

‘YOU ARE!’ I roared within my hand and through a wooden stake with all the power and energy I could muster.

Suddenly, a red crimson aura exploded out of my body and enveloped the stake, and even though I was not on the other end of it, I for some reason knew that it was going to be a lot deadlier than it was before.

The stake ripped through the air before colliding with the sound wave of the roar, yet to both our surprises it did not stop there.

The stake, while having collided with the sound wave, still pushed forwards until it ripped through it and began to descend towards the throat of the T-rex.

I could see its eyes widen and the desperateness seep into its eyes as it tried to close its maw as fast as it could, yet before it could chomp down and close its maw, a wooden stake entered its mouth and plunged deep into the back of its throat.

I was immediately exhilarated, yet it was then that it had happened.

*BOOOM*

I felt a sharp pain shoot out from my ears indicating that my eardrums had been torn. I felt the sensation of having my face stretched back and almost torn due to the pressure thrown at it. I felt the blunt yet brain-rattling pains of bones from my legs to my nose being shattered.

Pops resounded in the area as if announcing the breaking of my bones, yet I could hear none of it. And even if I could have heard it, I would have been deafened and blinded by the pain shooting throughout my body.

I wanted to scream, find a way to nullify this pain yet it was all for naught.

My vocal cords seemed to have been completely destroyed, therefore making my screams only audible to my own mind.

The dread was slowly seeping in.

It was the same dread I felt right before being pierced through the heart back on Earth… Or if I can even call it that anymore.

I couldn’t think because my mind was becoming blank from the pain that had almost knocked me out of consciousness. Yet even then, I held and held on with a single phrase pushing me forward, telling me to fight this drowsiness that I knew would only take me into an eternal slumber.

‘Survive.’ I heard crystal tell me again and again.

It was no longer some kind of phrase I would remember every now and then… It was an order that I would religiously recite to never forget again.

I lay there in the middle of shattered and broken trees, unable to listen to my own wails due to my eardrums and vocal cords being completely destroyed.

My breathing had become close to nonexistent ever since I had started to feel the blood slowly trickle into my lungs, making me conclude that I would eventually drown in my blood.

With the rest of my diminishing energy, I forced a single eye open.

The only thing I could see was my vision gradually turning red as if they were being enveloped in this red cacoon.

It was like I was getting tunnel vision but instead of the sides being blurry or black, they were this beautiful bloody crimson.

I did not dare blink since I knew it would be the last of me.

I did not dare look away from the sky which looked down upon us creatures, fighting for what seemed like a pointless battle.

A battle for survival that it could not understand.

As the sky looked down at us, I could not help but peer into the depths of the immaculate skies.

The sun had not risen yet so it was still dark, yet I could still see the warm orange slowly taking over from the corner of my eye.

The stars shone brightly like tiny little pieces of glitter, yet at the same time, their beauty was something comparable to that of diamonds.

I could still see the moon shining down with its stunning lunar light. Of course, all I saw was the crimson mix of the silver light, yet I did not doubt that it would have been the most beautiful I’d ever see.

‘Maybe death isn’t so bad after all…’ I told myself, a tear barely trickling out of my eye.

‘I’m sorry Crystal, Mom, Dad, Emily… You too, dumbass.’ I tried to chuckle when thinking of my best friend who had died in the pursuit of finding my parents.

‘You won’t be angry with me if I die, right Mom?’ I tried to cry

‘Dad… I am sorry I failed you… Why did you have to have such a failure as a son? Why did I have to be the one you would let your legacy live upon.’ The tears that came out of my eyes felt like scorching hot magma, yet I couldn’t even think about that while the images and memories of my parents, girlfriend, sister, and best friend flashed in my eyes.

‘I’m sorry that I failed all of you.’

I once again looked into the deep blue sky and wondered… Wondered what my life would have been like if this catastrophe hadn’t happened.

‘Goodbye… Wo…rl…d’

[Emergency Mission: Survive against a Prime Tyrannosaurus Ancestor]

[Conditions: –

-Survive]

[Reward:

-Receive the skill ‘Life Drain’

-Instant Level Up]

[Mission Failed]

[You only survived for 13 minutes, leaving the Prime Tyrannosaurus Ancestor on the verge of death and several permanent injuries]

[Failure Penalty: –

-Lose 1 level

-Lose 4 stat points from the stat with the most points]

[Stats-

HP: 12

Strength: 16

Agility: 16

Intelligence: 12

Vitality: 11

Mana: 0

Defence: 0 ]

My eyelids felt heavy and began to shut by themselves.

My life flashed before my eyes. Every good, bad, grief-full, exciting memory replayed within my mind. It reminded me of everyone I lost and everyone I cherished.

‘At least I had a good life.’

These were the last words I could think of before my eyes shut and everything turned black.

…

…

…

“Your time has not come yet… Immortal”

“Awaken, and you shall never truly die again”

下一页

[The trial period has ended]

“Your time has not come yet… Immortal”

“Awaken, and you shall never truly die again”

Those words resounded and echoed within my mind, yet I could not hear them.

Everything was black, from my vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. I could simply not feel them anymore

It was as if my soul was being dragged out of my destroyed and ragged body and drawn into a higher realm. A realm of warmth, calmness, life… It was the light at the end of the tunnel.

I tried reaching out my hand toward it, yet I did not seem to have a hand. I didn’t have a body.

Everything was black except that peering light at the end of the tunnel.

[The trial period has ended]

[The Immortality System will now have all basic abilities unlocked]

[Please stand by as the Immortality System unlocks…]

[…]

[…]

[The Immortality System has been unlocked]

[Please stand by as the System calculated your grade]

[This might take a while, so please be patient…]

[…]

[…]

[…]

[Calculations complete]

[Welcome to the System, Immortal~]

[Ding!]

[Mission has been successfully completed]

[Trial mission: Survive for 7 days]

[Conditions: –

-All system-related advantages have been locked

-All blessings have been locked

-All affinities have been locked]

[Recognized accomplishments: – (Strength has been taken into account and will be used to assess the user)

-Indirect killing of 6 wasps

-Killed 20 wasps

-Found Shelter

-Did not activate the support feature of the trial period

-Killed 1 Shadow Spiked Wolf

-Indirect killing of 2 lesser Dragon Hybrid’s offspring

-Killed 2 creatures with the dragon bloodline (<1%)

-Killed 1 Skinwalker (Wearing the skin of a female human)

-Killed 1 Infant Treant

-Destroyed 83% of a forest and killed 68% of its inhabitants (Calculations are ongoing)

-Severerly injured a Prime Trynasaurus Rex ancestor and left it on the brink of death

-…

[The System had deemed your accomplishments near impossible]

[Completion Grade: S

Reward:

-1 Immortality Token

-Appraisal

-Bloodline has been given the Evolutionary trait (LEGENDRY)

-You have been given the title Craftsmith

-You have been given the title Warrior

-You have been given the title Seeker of Death

-You have been given the title Lumberjack

-You have been given an eye skill

-You have been given slight control over the mysterious energy

-You have been given the skill De($£*&th Lo2%$k]

After reading through all of the words that had appeared on the screen before me, I could not help but let out a soft sigh, or at least imagined myself doing so.

I could not really hear myself think, but I was thinking.

I couldn’t use my body or speak, yet I knew I was there in some way or form that I simply couldn’t understand.

It felt different compared to the last time I had died. The first time I died it felt like I simply could not think for myself and was forced to observe, but this time it felt like I could produce thoughts yet simply not hear them myself.

It was a feeling that made my previous trauma of having experienced death for the second time and suffering so much before it, simply dissipate like it was never there.

I couldn’t hear my own thoughts and therefore, I could not hear my own wails and screams of pain and anguish. My cries which represented every second I had suffered… My wails that told a story all on their own.

Of course, this was just a temporary solution to the suffering I had to go through since I would eventually be awoken again.

It was only then that I realized that the screen in front of me had begun to change once again, forcing me to read it.

[Status

Name: Ezra —-

Age: 19

Sex: Male

Immortality Tokens: 4

Affinities: $*&£

Bloodline(s): Lesser Human —–> Awakened Human

Unique Trait: Evolver

Title(s): Craftsmith (Lvl 1), Warrior (Lvl 1), Seeker of Death (Lvl 1), Lumberjack (Lvl 1), Transgressor of Time(Null)

Skill(s): Appraisal (Lvl 1)

Blessing(s): Chrono’s Blessing ]

I would like to think that my eyes would have widened at this revelation but I still seemed to not have a face or body so all I could do was feel the emotion of surprise without expressing it inwardly or outwardly.

After what seemed like a few hours of me drifting through the dark and infinite space, the screen before me finally changed again, and this time it read a short and concise message.

[A day has passed]

[All death penalties have been removed]

[The system will automatically assign 5 points to all stats for your accomplishments]

[Body has been reconstructed with all the additional system benefits unlocked]

[Your body has become more resistant to sound attacks]

[Your body has become more resistant to piercing attacks]

The screen then disappeared and reappeared in what seemed to be the same instant with a different message.

[Think ‘Status’ when wanting to open your status screen]

[Think ‘Stats’ when wanting to open your stats screen]

[Your consciousness shall now return to your newly constructed body]

I felt the sensation of being pulled towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It was like a drifting sensation where I would move fasted the closer I got, yet it seemed like I was not getting any closer to the white light yet my consciousness felt like it was moving at turbo speed by the 1-minute mark.

Eventually, at the 10-minute mark everything had turned into a stretched blur before finally, I saw that the light was close enough for me to touch if I had a body of course.

However, even after knowing I did not have a body, I still tried to stretch out my hand and peer into the beyond.

The feeling was close to instinctual, but at the same time, I felt like I was being commanded to reach beyond the light. And so when I did, the sensation of my soul and mind being ripped apart tore my consciousness to its core before seemingly.

A loud sound began to ring within my ears while my eyes felt like they were being burnt due to the brightness of the light.

*SHHHHHHHHHHHHH*

The sound only got louder and louder until finally

*BOOOM*

An explosion resounded within my ears forcing me away from my endless slumber.

*Thud*

And with it came the pain of bashing my head into the tree in front of me, causing it to shake while the leaves rustled, some even falling on me when I looked up.

“Bastards” I cried out in pain, yet that was not the only pain I was feeling.

I began to feel a burden on my mind, as if something had chosen to heavily stomp on it, putting it at risk of shattering into a million pieces.

The situation finally sunk in

I crouched to the floor with my head between my arms as I rocked back and forward, the memories, the pain, and the suffering of having to die again replaying in my mind over and over again in an endless loop that would haunt me for the days to come.

下一页

Struggles

[Ding]

[Notice: You have been idle for 2 hours and 32 minutes]

A faint ding entered my ears while a screen appeared before my eyes.

I immediately close my eyes, yet even after doing so it seemed like the screen would not go away.

I had been sitting in the same spot for several hours now, and it had gotten to a point where my rocking had seemed to immaculately blend in with the rest of nature as if it was just something meant to be.

Not for a single second did I forget the pain of death, the cold sensation that slowly seeps into your mind as you lie there defenseless.

I could vividly remember every moment of that nightmare and could identify it like the back of my hand.

My entire body had not stopped shaking ever since I had been given this new body to inhabit…

The worst thing about it was that the body didn’t even feel like it was mine.

Every physical movement and sensation felt oddly alien to me, as if I was a newborn trying to learn how to move for the first time, yet at the same time vividly remembering how to do so without the need for any help.

I could move fine, yet my movements were almost… rusty?

The moment I heard the sound of the system notification, I felt a strange jolt travel through my very bones.

I had once again remembered the moments before my death, the scenes playing out in my mind at a pace slower than the original.

It was as if my mind was trying to constantly sabotage me, making me suffer more and more every single time I watched it by slowing it down. maybe it was a way for my mind to force me into getting used to the scene, but even then it would not have been the best way to go about things.

The tears had not halted and instead, he only increased in volume in the last few hours.

*Rustle* *Rustle*

Yet, with a single sound, the tears that had been flooding out of my eyes stopped in their tracks. My high heart rate which had become erratic in the previous minutes had slowed down to about 40 beats per minute.

I couldn’t even understand how I knew that it was around that much, but at that moment it didn’t matter.

My body had sprung up and fixed itself into a fighting position. I only then realized that my left arm had come back, yet just like the heart rate problem that I was skeptical about, I simply did not have the time to think about it at that moment.

My eyes had become cold and calculating without a speck of remorse or other emotion that could get in the way of my conquest…

My conquest to survive once again.

*Rustle*

The rustle now was a lot closer and had come from one of the nearby large bushes, yet due to the size of everything in this world, I had found it a lot easier to identify the movement within the bush before eventually linking it back to an animal I had seen before.

*Screech*

A loud screech-like squeak left the mouth of the rate as it lunged towards me while baring its fangs at me.

Its movements felt oddly slow… Unlike the other rat, this one seemed to be a lot weaker, yet that was not the main focus of my surprise.

It had only taken me an instant however, I had already found myself in front of the creature with my palm extended and muscles I had not recognized until now bulging from my forearm alongside several nerves.

I looked at the rat with an unwavering stare of coldness and killing intent. A killing intent that dominated seemingly anything I looked at.

Unbeknownst to me, my eyes were now containing a faint yet visible crimson halo that surrounded my pupil.

I had been ready to kill from the moment I had heard its movement, and as if my body was moving instinctually to those thoughts, I could only watch as my body moved on its own and my hand turned into a blur before slamming into the figure that had charged at me.

*SLAM*

The sound of my palm hitting the creature resounded in the area alongside the cracking of several bones before eventually, having the rat flung across the area we were in just to slam into a tree, break the top part off and fall onto the broken tree just to have it get impaled in the same instance.

My sight did not move from where it had been situated as my gaze grew more intense by the minute, not even blinking with the worry that there might be a chance that the rat is still alive.

[You have killed a Swamp Rat]

[You have gained +15 EXP]

[You have leveled up]

[Level 7]

[Progress: 5/6400]

I had finally gotten an indication of the rat’s death, yet unlike others who would have let their guard down completely, I was still not completely sure if the rat had survived my attack and so I was still ready to attack at all times no matter what position I were to be put in. It was like I didn’t trust my own system.

I hated to admit it, but I was kind of scared. The simple palm attack I had done had already caused all alarms to ring within my mind screaming at me to stop and retreat, yet I knew that I had no choice in the matter.

It was as if my mind had a mind of its own, and while the situation was not as bad before I had died, the instinctual movements mainly activated whenever I was in a life and death situation, now they were activating no matter how weak the thing attacking was.

My body seemed to think of everything as an enemy, from the grass that brushed against the soles of my feet to the trees that moved a little after the wind blew.

Any movement, scent, touch, or sound would put me on full alert even though I knew that nothing could attack me without the feeling of dread overcoming me and in the process, also warning me of an incoming attack.

‘This is bad…’ I thought to myself with a frown eventually converging onto my cold facial expression.

‘I’m becoming too paranoid, and at this point, it isn’t even me, it’s this damn body moving on its own.’ My frown deepened but I couldn’t do anything to resolve my mental turmoil, or at least not for now.

The best thing I could do was try and overcome my fear of dying…

下一页

Skull

I had found myself sitting on the ground with my head tilted to look toward the sky.

My eyes seemed to have lost their previous glint. They had become lifeless and empty as if everything I had ever lived for was no more.

Still, if one were to look deep into my eyes they would see an unwavering fire in the middle of a cold antarctic, facing off and fighting the piercing cold winds with enough fervor and energy to go on like this for years.

However, to the passing observer, it might seem like I was simply looking into the sky and reminiscing something, I was looking at a brightly lit screen that floated in front of me and did not disappear even after I blinked or closed my eyes.

It had been almost 2 days ever since I had been rebirthed into this world with a new body that I could recognize as mine, yet not mine at the same time.

My eyes were telling me that nothing other than my muscle definition had changed, yet my mind and heart were telling me that the body I was now inhabiting was nothing like the one I had left behind barely 3 days ago.

I continued to look at the notification before finally looking toward the ground and letting out a heavy sigh that had been weighing down on my chest for as long as I could remember, yet I knew that letting it out would not fix anything since the weight would always be there.

It was something similar to feeling the weight of your sins, a weight that would always be there no matter how much you tried to forget. It was a weight ingrained into my very soul.

Over the last two days, all I had been doing was running, hiding, and eventually being forced into fights that I would easily dominate in.

I did not have to face anything like the treant, skinwalker, or even the creature that closely resembled a T-rex.

It had only been 8 hours ago that I had found a sign of shelter in the distance giving me a glimpse of hope that I did not hold on for more than a second.

I knew how cruel this world could be now, and therefore holding any semblance of hope would only equip you to have them shatter before your very eyes.

On the way there I met one reptile and got a weird pop-up from the system after killing it, but even though it had given me almost 90 EXP from killing it, it was nothing compared to the 6400 I had to collect to move up to level 8.

It took me about 6 more hours to find the shelter that I had seen before, yet from up close, it looked far different from what I had imagined it to look like.

Rather than being a random cave on the side of a mountain, I could see two holes in the upper middle of the structure as well as an enormous opening at the bottom.

It was all made of this grey-colored rock that seemed like it has been weathered into that color rather than being like that naturally.

I could tell that the material was supposed to be a milky white, yet here it was as a dark grey.

Before I could walk into it, I finally got a good look at the entire structure, and what I saw left me frozen and wide-eyed.

A shiver went down my spine while my breathing became erratic and quick.

I felt my heart drop while a distinct buzz resounded within my mind.

I could see a distinct hole in the middle of the entire structure… Well, I couldn’t even call it a structure anymore.

It was a corpse.

A skeleton the size of an entire mountain.

I didn’t even know if this highrise of a natural formation could even count as a mountain, but the thing in front of me certainly was a titan when it was alive.

I could imagine scenes of it walking and destroying everything within its path.

However, while I might have been temporarily scared and frozen, that did not last for very long.

I did not get a sense of dread when coming close or even being on the verge of entering the skull, so I simply did not see any point in being scared anymore.

No matter what this thing was, in the end, it was just a death assemblage stuck in a mountain. I can’t hurt me, and neither can I hurt it.

It was then that an idea struck me.

“What if I use bones as weapons!” I exclaimed to myself with excitement visible on my face.

I was like a child that had discovered candy, yet instead of it being candy, I had instead thought of something revolutionary.

My excitement didn’t last long, however. The moment I felt the joy sure within me, a sense of grief and guilt overcame me, yet instead of both emotions clashing, I simply felt the joy dissipate while the only emotion left inside me was the feeling of a cold energy swelling in my chest as well as the guilt…

How could I be happy while everyone I knew and loved had died? How could I feel joy when I had been put in such a cold and uncaring world?

As my mood dramatically plummeted, I found myself once again sitting, yet this time I was in a place that I had assumed was safe for me to stay in.

I sat there for hours waiting for something to happen. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, but eventually, I found myself having looked at the ground for hours while my hands held my head in place.

At certain points, I would start laughing out of nowhere, while other times I began to cry for minutes or even close to an hour. my emotions were rummaging and causing havoc within my mind. Everything had become a blur including the message that had appeared in front of me.

It was like my mind was purposefully trying to delay me from seeing it. I didn’t know why of course, the mind is quite the mystery. However, one thing I knew was that as seconds passed, I was beginning to lose my sanity.

***

3 days before, under the canopy of the forest stood a beautiful woman. Her ears were pointed at their ends, yet unlike the sharp pointy ears of an elf, her ears were a lot more round and gradual.

Vines covered most of her body making it so that the only thing uncovered was her face. Her facial features were round yet sharp in certain places. Her eyes were slightly small compared to what was normal, yet it had only added to her charm, even making her look a little bit ‘cuter’ in the eyes of many men.

Her skin was a tinge between olive green and oak-brown, making her seem more like a plant that had come to life rather than a sentient living being.

However, the most captivating thing about her was her emerald eyes which shone like two stars in the semi-lit sky.

She was simply standing on one of the larger leaves at the top of the canopy without causing it to move even a little bit. Her body seemed weightless to everything around her, and her graceful movements only made her seem like a butterfly landing on a nearby leaf.

Yet, unlike her graceful movements, her facial expression had been morphed into a scornful one, her eyes peering down at the person responsible for the destruction of more than half of the forest.

However, she could not stay angered for very long as she knew that the person responsible did not intend to burn down the entire forest and instead just wanted to make sure that the things that had attacked him were fully dead. She could sympathize with him, yet at the same time, she didn’t want to do so.

He was not one of her planet’s creations after all.

He was a human… A retched human that dared enter her planet without her consent.

She watched the human boy dash around from tree to tree dodging the attacks of the dragon-hybrid after having failed to kill it with the ax he had created.

She didn’t know how the human had gotten into her planet with such a weak physique, yet that was the smallest of her problems. Humans were not supposed to exist on her planet and if one were to try and infiltrate, she would have realized almost immediately.

‘I don’t have much time left… This vessel is losing its power too quickly and I need to keep some of it to stop the forest fire.’ She scratched her chin with her right hand and stood there pondering her next move.

‘Hmm?’

Her eyes quickly widened before darting toward the unknown human. It was only then that her eyes narrowed down to his figure and began to scrutinize every cell and atom of his being.

Through her eyes, she could see that a red hue had begun to seep out of the boy’s body while several strands of his hair became red as well as a crimson-halo forming within his iris.

She was left frozen in place with an agape expression. It was the first time in her life that she couldn’t understand what was happening. No… It was the first time in the last billion years that she felt energy she hadn’t seen before.

‘Blood? No that can’t be it. It feels like death with the scent of blood. He smells like a human and even had the aura of one, so what the hell is this crimson energy coming out of him?! Did he unlock some kind of genetic mutation when he ate the golden fruit? But that only happens in lesser races. He is a human for god sake!’

She could not wrap her head around the fact that she could not recognize the energy, yet it seemed like she didn’t have to.

She watched as I wrapped my hand around a wooden stake, enveloped it within my crimson energy, and threw it towards the open maw of the creature before me, allowing it to deeply impale the back of its throat.

However, her eyes turned dim when she saw that the sound wave was still coming toward me. Her mind was conflicted one whether or not she should save me from the attack, yet in the end, she still held a small grudge against me for what I had done to her forest.

She simply watched as the wave hit me and destroyed the entire front side of my body before throwing me into the, slamming me into a branch and allowing me to fall to the ground where I would once again be injured.

She could see my soul slowly leave my body as I lost the energy within me. She saw the fire within my eyes the moment I had been hit, and she saw the determination I had to not die, yet she still did nothing.

She believed that it was better to watch and do nothing rather than help me, and in reality, she had every right to do so.

Who would help a person who had invaded their territory, burnt their forests, and killed its inhabitants?

She began to turn away knowing well that I would most likely die of blood loss or drowning in my blood.

She didn’t look back for a second as she flew into the air, a strange surge of energies coming towards her in the form of visible specks. Her hands had been lifted and her palms were pointing towards the sky.

*Snap*

*Rumble*

With the snap of her fingers, she caused lightning to thunder and the skies to shower the earth with its tears. Countless lightning strikes could be seen hitting the highest trees, yet the rain had immediately extinguished them with the only trace of their existence being the scorch marks they left behind.

下一页

Appraissal

[Ding]

[Notice: You have been idle for 6 hours and 01 minutes]

This time I did not bother opening my eyes since I could already see the screen without doing so.

I could argue or complain that it was a little too bright for my fragile eyes that hadn’t seen light for 30 minutes, but I did not see the point in doing so.

I was feeling empty and dark thoughts were already filling up my mind.

I had this feeling that I would never be capable of finding happiness again, and once again, I found myself opening my eyes and staring at the ground under me that still had the faint wet marks which were the only traces of my tears.

‘Maybe I should just end it all?’ I asked myself while my eyes drifted towards the sky, eventually forcing me to squint due to its brightness.

‘They are all dead… Why does it matter if I die?’ I used my right hand to push me off the floor, allowing me to spring up and finally stand on my two feet for the first time in 6 hours.

They were a bit numb, yet at that moment nothing really mattered to me. With listless eyes, I began walking toward the entrance of the skull before using all the strength in my legs to climb up it.

Taking a few detours and shortcuts, my feet finally touched the top of the skull, allowing me to slowly turn around and face the endless drop which was the cliff.

My eyes did not waver from the edge of the cliff for a moment as the determination within my eyes burned brightly. I just wanted to see my family again. I just wanted to see Crystal, and Alex again. Why did fate have to go this way? Why did they all die while I survived?

I had so much to live for yet now that they are dead, I feel so empty.

My foot had finally hovered over the cliff, ready to jump off when finally, a realization hit me.

‘What if I die and have to go through the same pain once again, just to be rebirthed into this world to die over and over again?!’ I pondered as hesitation reached my feet, causing both of them to get planted into the ground.

“For god sake.” I sighed with exasperation at the fact that my body was so determined to not budge.

However, even the system seemed to not believe me as in the next moment, I watched it create a screen in front of me which read-

[Unknown energy had been detected within you]

[Please check your stats screen to allocate points]

‘Hmm?’ I mild amount of curiosity began to control me, and even though I did not want to admit it, this was the thing I was waiting for the whole time.

I was desperately trying to find a reason to survive, and now that I’ve seen a glimpse of hope flash before my eyes, I was hooked to it. My life literally depended on what I was about to see.

“Status.” I spoke out loud rather than my usual whisper, causing my voice to come out raspy and croaky due to me not having used it for so long, or technically not at all in this body.

[Status

Name: Ezra —-

Age: 19

Sex: Male

Immortality Tokens: 4

Affinities: None

Bloodline(s): Awakened Human

Unique Trait: Evolver

Title(s): Craftsmith (Lvl 1), Warrior (Lvl 1), Seeker of Death (Lvl 1), Lumberjack (Lvl 1), Transgressor of Time(Null)

Skill(s): Appraisal (Lvl 1)

Blessing(s): Chrono’s Blessing ]

“Can I not check what the titles or blessings mean or do? I mean, the least you can do is tell what the hell any of this means. I am not a psychic you know.” I crossed my arms and tried to let out a chuckle.

[Please say ‘Appraisal’ followed by stating what you would like to appraise.]

“Uhm… Appraisal Chronos’ blessing”

[Appraisal level is too low to appraise blessings]

“Then why would you give me the option to…” I almost facepalmed, but I quickly held myself back and moved on to the next unknown.

“Appraisal Unique Trait”

[Unique Trait: A trait that only one person can have. However, this can range from being only one person on a planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy, or in a whole section of a universe if not the only person in the universe to you that trait.]

I read the words that popped up carefully and quickly moved on to the next word that would have answered my questions.

“Appraisal Evolver”

[Appraisal level is too low to appraise the unique trait Evolver]

[System’s data has come back with a positive file on the unique trait evolver]

[Evolver: a unique trait created specifically for the user of the Immortality System. This Unique Trait allows its carrier to evolve every time it dies, making it more difficult for them to die the same way it had done previously.]

‘Did it just call me an ‘it’? Do I look like some kind of animal to you?’ I shouted within my mind and even though I knew that it was very unlikely for me to receive a response, I still let out a victory smile when I heard no response as if I had left the system speechless and frozen in its tracks due to my immaculate use of words.

“Appraisal Awakened Human.” I said out loud, half expecting it to not give me an answer.

[Awakened human: one of the several human races that have awakened mana within their systems from birth. They are the most versatile human race as every feature of their being changes and forms to create something new after every ascension of a plane.]

“Appraisal Ascension”

[Appraisal level is too low]

‘Damnit!’

“Appraisal Immortality Token”

[Immortality Token: is a token that allows the wielder to be resurrected from death with the only sacrifice being the token. Tokens can be gained through missions, accomplishments, and overall system merits/achievements. Other functions have been locked temporarily.]

“And finally… Appraisal, Transgressor of Time”

[Appraisal level is too low to appraise titles]

下一页

A War I Am Unwilling To Lose

[Appraisal level is too low to appraise titles]

“Then tell me before I start appraising everything you stupid mother-” with a blinding rage, I began to stomp on the ground, or to be exact, the top of the skull that I stood on.

I didn’t really understand why I was angry, but the moment I found a reason to become angry, I didn’t hesitate to take it and unleash my frustrations.

It took me around 10 minutes to calm down before taking me another 5 minutes to stand up again.

My anger had dissipated like a puff of smoke, yet I could still feel the frustrations within me get more energetic and even more powerful as time went on.

“I’ll need something to release my frustrations on…” I sighed with worry.

Every day I was becoming more and more different from who I was back on MY earth. And the thing that worried me most about these changes was the fact that none of them were actually good for me.

“I’ll need to make weapons first though, and the easiest way of obtaining a started weapon would be killing a beast and taking a bone to sharpen it into a weapon.” I analyzed with my hand to my chin while my eyes narrowed towards the distance.

I had realized that after my death a lot had changed about me, yet one of the main differences had been my intelligence as well as my physical strength.

I could now see far more than the human eye should, while my physical strength had reached points that no known human had reached before me.

Of course, something like a gun could probably kill me, yet even then my dread would always counter fast projectiles since it always told me what direction the danger was coming from, while my intelligence now would allow me to easily dodge an attack that would have scratched my cheek or even injured me.

*sigh*

With another sigh, I quickly jumped down the skull, turned around, grabbed onto the ledge of the eye hole, and swung inside to minimize the impact on my legs when I hit the ground.

After sliding a few meters, I finally walked back to the entrance and left the skull while looking down the ‘mountain’ in hopes to find the creature I was looking for nearby.

I knew that I couldn’t try using one of the Titan’s bones since they were too big and too tough, so I digressed and simply chose the easier option of finding another animal and using its bones as weapons instead.

“Pretty nice of the system to still let me have my old clothes though.” I chuckled while looking down at the gaping bloody hole in the chest area of the shirt.

These clothes were the same ones that I had died with, the only thing I didn’t have right now were the shoes that I for some reason could not locate or even recall wearing when I had been rebirthed.

“Maybe I lose one pair of clothing every time I die?” I chuckled once again, yet this time my face quickly went back to being serious and cold as I thought of my next moves.

“I should check my stats first… Stats!” I exclaimed, causing a screen to appear and hover a meter in front of me while blinking with the word “Stats” on it.

After a few blinks, I watched as the screen expanded and held several numbers, each one indicating a feature about me.

[Stats-

HP:23

Strength: 23

Agility: 23

Intelligence: 25

Vitality: 23

Mana: 4

Defence: 0 ]

‘That’s weird… I don’t remember my stats being this high… And why is strength so low compared to the others, while intelligence is higher? When the hell did I gain stat points for mana?’ I asked, seemingly perplexed by this sudden change in my stats.

The only reason I could think of was the red energy that was beginning to form within me, or maybe even my evolver trait… Yet even then a lot of this didn’t make much sense but I was not going to question any further on something that was clearly helping.

“Aren’t I still kind of weak though?” I asked myself out loud.

“I can barely fight the beasts with my bare hands and I still have to rely on weapons or other things in the forest that would make it easier to kill something as scaly as the lizard I met earlier. Many of my kills had been due to my luck or the stupidity of the other party.” I analyzed before letting out a sigh once again.

“I need to stop feeling sorry for myself. This isn’t a world for the weak, or at least it doesn’t seem to be. I can grieve, cry and scream later, but for now I only have one objective and it is to survive.” My eyes had become fierce and once again lit with life.

I was no longer going to accept death. No… I was going to fight for my life. I’m going to fight for what I want and I am going to fight and grow to never have to feel the same pain of losing someone ever again. I will fight to make sure that I won’t need to feel the pain of death again!

With that thought bouncing and reverberating throughout my entire mind, I solidified my morale and hardened my determination as I left the skull that I had situated myself within for the last few hours.

‘If I remember correctly, there is a shop feature… Open shop?’ I thought, and as if the system could hear me, a screen opened before me.

[Shop]

[Points]

[Items]

[Skills]

[Techniques]

My eyes glittered with excitement but a moment later, they turned gloomy while an almost angered expression showed on my face.

‘What is this expensive crap!’

From what I could see, the system expected me to gain these ‘immortality’ points, and even though they were much less expensive than an immortality token, the conversion being around 10000 immortality points for one token, everything in the shop was way too expensive, to the point I was almost certain that the system wanted to do nothing but reap me of all my immortality tokens by forcing me to convert them to points.

‘100 points for a single stat point? And even then, I can only buy 10 a life! 5000 for an intermediate martial art!? This is robbery in broad daylight!’

Seeing this, I could do nothing but sigh in frustration before changing my focus onto something else.

[Ezra ——]

[HP:103/103]

[Mana:20/20]

“hmm?” I was slightly confused by the sudden status notification but I did not think much of it.

I climbed down the mountain and ran walked in the forest, my eyes still darting around with worry evident within them.

I was still scared of feeling pain. Everything that I subconsciously touched sent a shiver down my bones while at the same time, pain felt amplified in my current state.

After what I had felt while dying, I would have thought that pain would only numb over time but I was wrong. It was the complete opposite.

Yet even with that disadvantage more than evident, I still chose to move forward.

No longer was I going to cower.

No longer was I going to hide.

This was no longer a fight… This was a war that I wasn’t willing to lose.

下一页

Light Bulb

In the middle of the wilderness, a sudden blur shot through the woodland while leaving a red light trail that radiated from its eyes.

The person was me of course, and I was currently pursuing a wasp that had attacked me, yet after it had seen that I had dodged as well as gotten ready to counter-attack, it immediately began to retreat to the thick parts of the woodlands.

However, while I simply did not care for the wasp, something had switched on a lightbulb within me and I wanted to try out the idea that had just hit me.

“If I can pull this off, the fight for a creature’s bones might become easier and swifter than I would have thought,” I muttered aloud.

I continued to pursue the wasp, hoping that it would eventually tire, yet even that seemed out of reach. Honestly, to me, it seemed like I might have tired out first and the chances weren’t really in my favor either.

[Unknown energy is beginning to awaken…]

[Analyzing energy…]

[Analysis]

[Name: ??? (Unknown Energy)]

[Description: An energy that seems to be fueled by the user’s emotions, primarily anger or thrill that transfers into an amplified killing intent or bloodlust depending on the situation. Mana can also be used to fuel the emotion, yet that is only a temporary and limited way of releasing this energy. This energy has never been seen before]

[Effects: Amplifies physical abilities? Most effects so far are unknown. Please I crease mastery over this energy to acquire more information]

“Well that’s useful ain’t it.” I chuckled while struggling to breathe due to the air smashing into me as I shot through the air.

I knew I had become physically stronger in the last few days, but I didn’t realize the sheer amount of change that had occurred within my body.

Before I would have struggled to jump from one root of a tree to the other, yet here I was now jumping from one tree branch to another without hesitation and without struggling for a second.

However, I did not have time to think about these mild things. These analogies and theories about my strength can wait until I am strong enough to not have to worry for my safety everywhere I go.

As the red energy activated, I felt energized and drained at the same time and it did not take me very long to find out why.

[Hp: 115/115]

[Mana: 5/20]

“It took 15 mana from me just for this,” I screamed and panted at the same time, unable to believe that so much of my mana had been used for something seemingly so useless even though I didn’t even know what mana was.

Yet even with the sudden exhaustion, the power that was running ramped within my body gave me a new sense of invigoration allowing me to push my body to its limits with one more jump.

My vision immediately turned black and white while countless red structures… No, they weren’t structures… they were plants and animals. All of them were shining with a distinct crimson red that allowed me to identify the wasp even after having hundreds of trees between us.

While plants like the trees and grass had these channels that ran up and down their ‘bodies’, animals and other creatures with the smallest amount of sentience, while still having these same channels, radiated a unique and striking aura/hue which the plants didn’t have.

This hue left behind a trail that I could easily pursue without much of a hitch. On the same note, it seemed like the energy wouldn’t dissipate any time soon therefore also making my return easier than it would have originally been.

I slowly lowered my center of gravity towards one of the branches, crouching and placing both my feet firmly onto the 70cm thick branch.

In the next instant, my feet left the branch and my body turned into a blur.

The force of launch had been so powerful that the branch had been flung back before whipping forward and destroying two of the smaller nearby trees.

My body flew through the air at an unimaginable speed. I could barely breathe anymore, yet that was the least of my worries.

‘I… miscalculated…’ I tried to say aloud yet all that came out was a muffled scream.

Thankfully, none of the trees in the area had been directly in the way of my trajectory, however, I still found myself missing branches by a hairsbreadth.

‘I can see it.’ My eyes began to widen in excitement, yet the wind pressure quickly forced me to shut them tightly.

This did not stop me from seeing however, instead, it had made my vision clearer while my field of view expanded to over 200°, allowing me to see almost everything in front of me as well as everything in my peripherals with crystal clear vision.

When I began to near the wasp, I also began losing speed and momentum however, my arms and hands moved on their own, snatching towards a branch, spinning around while landing my feet on the side of the tree before once again shooting towards the wasp yet this time using much less power than I had the first time.

The power I used was more than enough though.

My fist had clenched into a tight fist while red energy covered it.

[Hp: 115/115]

[Mana: 1/20]

*BOOM*

And with a swing of my fist, I watched as the upper portion of the wasp’s body exploded into remnants of its body.

Brain matter and blood splattered on one of the trees nearby and dyeing the leaves and the wood in the process with the color of its blood.

[You have killed a wasp]

[You have gained +10 EXP]

[Mastery over unknown energy: 0.01%]

I could see guts and other organs splattered all over the tree too, yet the two things that caught my attention more were both the pain in my hand as well as the new descending another half of the wasp.

I felt my feet land on another tree before I swiftly lunged up, half somersaulted and landed at the bottom of one of the larger branches.

Since my body was upside down now, all I had to do was crank my head up to look at the falling half of the wasp before pushing myself off the bottom of the branch and launching myself downwards at a speed faster than the wasp’s body’s slow descent.

When I finally landed on the floor, I had the body tightly embraced to my body using my right hand, yet while I would have been annoyed by the amount of blood that landed on my body, I was too busy looking at something else.

“Let’s test this out shall we.” my face contorted a beaming smile, my eyes staring at the long pointy spike poking out on the bottom of the corpse’s body.

下一页

Poison Spear

Holding up the remaining body of the wasp, I quickly pushed down on it and pushed out a long and pointy stinger. I did not even have to touch the stinger to see that it was extremely sharp and could pierce through almost anything and everything with a single stab.

“Goddamn.” I exclaimed with a beaming smile.

I was jubilant about how my mini-plan had to been going so far and it was for good reason.

Through that kill, not only had I gotten a weapon that would make other kills a lot easier and efficient, but I also gained something else through killing the wasp, something for later.

“I really don’t want to touch the fleshy part of the stinger, but at the same time I don’t want wield around a weapon I can barely use due to my grip.” I contemplated aloud while looking around to see or find something useful for a situation like this.

“If only I had rope…” My eyes wavered and finally landed on a plot of land filled with plant fibers and other straw-like materials.

For a second, it seemed like my brain might have short-circuited since I had found myself frozen in place with my eyes half squinted and my back laying on a tree, allowing me to relax and simply look at the same place for a few minutes.

I wasn’t wasting time if there was nothing specific to look forward to any time in the future, right?

Another lightbulb seemed to shine and hover over my head as it finally clicked.

“The string cheese method!” I shouted a little too loudly causing me to quickly cover my mouth, yet the excitement never left my eyes.

The string cheese method was a method where one can obtain lots of thin fibers, an example being the plant fibers I was looking at a few seconds ago. After obtaining them, you roll them and wrap them until you get something that resembles a rope.

I did not hesitate to follow the steps as I had remembered them.

I quickly separated the plants and fibers, and immediately got to making a rope. After completing the task on my second try, I quickly ran around for 30 minutes and found a rock and a fairly short branch which I spent another 45 minutes trying to form into the shape of a spear’s handle.

After getting something relatively close to what I wanted, I quickly shoved the stick into the fleshy part of the sting before wrapping both of them with the rope I had just made.

[Your crafting proficiency has increased]

[Craftsmith and reached level 2]

I grew even more elated after seeing the notification, but I quickly closed my eyes and shook my head after realizing a blaring issue with my current spear.

“I’m going to have to re-tie it every time I used it since it would probably become loose, but it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, right?” I asked myself with an inquisitive expression.

“Yeah, it should be fine.” I replied to my own question before chuckling a little and beginning to walk away from the body of the wasp before anything else comes.

However, right before I was about to leave, I heard a faint rustling coming from a couple of dozen meters away. I knew that the red energy hadn’t been activated which caused me to be subtly surprised by how far I could hear things as faint as a rustle.

My eyes immediately darted towards the direction of the sound, while my hand had tightly clenched around the handle of my makeshift spear.

I lowered my center of gravity and did not move my eyes away from the direction the sound had come from. I knew that the thing must not have been too dangerous since I didn’t feel any dread, yet there was a chance that it might have been as strong as me if not a little bit stronger.

‘Maybe my dread tingle is adapting to the threats around me? It might see things that are at the same level of strength as me, as being a non-threat, while only alerting me if my life is actually in danger… This might be a problem tho-‘ I couldn’t finish my thought since another rustle, one which was much closer than the other one, snapped me out of my daze.

“I’ll just run I guess.” I spoke out loud as if I was announcing my departure before sprinting the other way without looking back.

This did not stop me from hearing the rustles move immediately after I sprang into action, while at the same time sending a shiver down my spine due to how fast they were closing the distance between us

“There should be at least two…” I mumbled before taking a sharp right turn, running up a tree and beginning to jump from branch to branch.

*Bzzzz*

*Bzzzz*

*Bzzzz*

“Oh for god sake. Give me a break.” I cried as I once again jumped from one branch to the other.

The moment I landed on another branch, I felt a little bit of dread come from 5 different directions, 2 from below and 3 from the same level or above me, ones that I could only guess were the wasps that had appeared.

I instantly ducked down and dodged a stinger coming towards my face before turning around and thrusting my spear in another direction.

*Pitu*

The needle stabbed right through something, yet on further inspection, I realized that it was not a wasp that had come after me.

Yes, the one that had come after my head has been a wasp, but the second entity had been a dragonfly, one that looked identical to the ones that had attacked me a week and a half back when I had come into the world for the first time.

“Were they always so slow?” I asked under my breath, weirded out by the fact that the same creatures that haunted me on the first day were so weak compared to other entities that I had fought against.

“How the hell did they even catch up to me before.” I asked with a frown before quickly spinning my spear and smashing down on the dragonfly with the butt of it.

The spear once again twirled and deflected an incoming attack from the same wasp that had attacked me the first time before stabbing it in the head and ending its life.

*Swoosh*

Something shot right past me, yet it did not take me very long to realize what it had been.

My eyes squinted towards the direction it had come from, allowing me to see a mildly feathery bird flying high and raining down razor-sharp feathers like the ones that had just slashed my cheek and forced blood to be drawn out of me.

下一页

Bird

My eyes squinted towards the direction it had come from, allowing me to see a mildly feathery bird flying high and raining down razor-sharp feathers like the ones that had just slashed my cheek and forced blood to be drawn out of me.

“Now… How the hell am I supposed to attack that thhing if it is so high in the air?”

The bird quickly let out a cry as if taunting me, causing me to furrow my brows in anger and clench my teeth as my piercing eyes glared at it flying above me.

It continued to shower me in its razor-sharp feathers yet it seemed like its ain wasn’t the best since barely any of them actually came towards me or even got close to hitting me.

A low squeak left the mouth of a creature under me, forcing me to look down just to see a mouse half the size of a lion looking up at me with ferocious eyes as a feather stabbed into its back and locked it in place.

“You think I did that?” I pointed at myself with a chuckle, as if I had completely forgotten about the anger that had boiled within my blood a few seconds earlier.

“Hmm?” As if I was just reminded of the situation I was in, I instantly moved my head back and watched as a feather shot past me.

The feather, while looking like a normal white feather that just happened to fall from the sky with a velocity that did not match its design, also had something else that looked weird about it.

The feather shone with a specific luster as the lights of the sun reflected off it as if it was some kind of metal or reflective crystal.

“Well, that explains why they are so hard” I once again chuckled to my own joke before once again narrowing my eyes into a cold and serious expression.

“How do I deal with you… Oh wait, can’t I just run into a part of the forest with more dense trees and a short canopy? That way it would never be able to attack me without coming down from its flight, something I am willing to bet it won’t do” I concluded as I jumped to the ground and was immediately attacked by something to my right.

I of course already knew that it was there even with my red vision, something that I hadn’t gotten used to anyway, gone. I wasn’t about to base my entire strategy on getting back to the skull home I now situate myself in, one something one-time vision trick that happened to activate at a time I needed it.

I had already memorized and even left marks on the places I traveled past and I was going to continue doing so until the bird loses chase of me.

Anyway, I quickly stabbed my spear to the right without looking at what the threat was. The dread that came from the thing was low anyway, meaning that it was probably a weak creature anyway and the danger was only temporary since I wouldn’t have known where it was without the dread.

I instantly started sprinting in the direction of the thicker woods, and the direction that happened to be where I had ‘spawned’ after dying for the second time in my existence.

The sound of running water immediately hit my ears and I chose to avoid that area entirely since chances were that there would not be any trees around the river itself.

“The waterfall is a little far from her but I should be able to got there in an hour or so.” I muttered under my breath, my expression as cold and calculating as the time I followed the reptile creature that had attacked me a few days ago.

A few creatures popped out here and there yet, for the most part, they weren’t much of a problem for me.

I would just stab them through the throat before using my other hand to rip their heads off. Some of them were a bit harder to kill causing me to slow down and almost get hit by the feathers a few times, but for the most part, the journey was quiet.

*Qauwk!*

I could tell the bird was getting frustrated, and as if that was a sign, a began hearing the sounds of crashing water up ahead, causing me to smile lightly while taking one last glance at the bird flapping its wings wildly trying to hit me with its remaining feathers.

Of course, it had not been shooting the whole time and instead, had been shooting at intervals and whenever I slowed down or whenever it had a clear view of me, yet all it had done was give me 2 scratches that had stopped bleeding 30 seconds after being cut.

I swiftly ducked and rolled behind one of the nearby trees and allowing it to take the brunt of the attacks before running once again, trying my best to dodge any of the remaining feather attacks that were shot.

When I had finally run-up to the cliffside of the waterfall, I crouched down, bent my legs, and used all the strength within my legs to leap a few dozen meters before barely landing on a tree itself, not a branch.

This did not scare me much however since I immediately used my spear to stab into the tree, holding myself up in place and making sure that I would not fall.

“On the topic of being tired…” I panted while continuing a conversation that I had with myself while running. “I haven’t slept in over 24 hours. No wonder I feel so sleepy all of a sudden.” I tried to chuckle, yet it came out more forced than I thought it would have.

At the same moment, I felt a shiver go down my spine as the dread reached another level, yet I knew that was the sign I was waiting for.

The once majestic bird was now featherless as it penetrated through the high canopy of trees and shot down, yet before it could halt its movements to look for me, it saw movement in the distance wearing a white shirt with a huge red mark on the back and front.

Its excitement took over its emotions and caused it to flap its wings as hard as it could without a single bit of hesitation.

The bird immediately turned into a blur as it moved across the forest, dodging trees and branches in the way until it was finally in front of the thing that it had been chasing for several days now.

However, its eyes widened when it saw what it had charged at. A branch about 6ft tall with two smaller branches entering the holes where my arms were supposed to be, while the larger branch went from the bottom to the top.

Of course, it looked nothing like me, yet due to its emotions and the fact that it was looking at me from a distance, the only thing that mattered to it had been the color of my shirt.

Before it could move, it felt its whole body shake violently in fear.

Its eyes widened even more in desperation, while its wings tried their hardest to flap and get out of the situation, yet its reaction was a little too late.

A piercing pain shot through its body, its epicenter being its right wing as a pierced it with my spear that had become a little loose after my last act of using it to stay on the tree.

The bird did not have enough time, and simply could not move enough to get me off its back so it only took me another second to take out the spear and shove it into the other wing.

We destroyed several branches as the bird descended, yet not for a second did I care about the noise we made. The only thing on my mind was how I could kill the bird and I was already doing it.

The poison from the spear had spread deep into its bloodstream, now causing a painful burning sensation to pulse from every blood vessel as its heart struggled to beat.

It was letting out its final breaths while its body continued to be rammed and even pierced by the branches we fell on.

[You have killed a Metal Feathered Seagull]

[You have gained +100 EXP]

下一页

Speed

It was letting out its final breaths while its body continued to be rammed and even pierced by the branches we fell on.

*Boom*

A large dust cloud kicked up from the ground as we both slammed into the ground, yet I was left unscathed due to the bird taking the brunt of the fall.

I let out a few repressed coughs while swatting away the dust from my face. At the same time, I pushed off the bird and jumped to the ground.

“Good thing it didn’t have any feathers left, otherwise that would have gone a lot differently.” I tried to chuckle, yet I instead let out another choked cough as my eyes watered up due to some dust getting in them.

I slowly turned my head and looked back at the dead bird that was several times larger than I was. It had no feathers left on its back while its wings had the minimum amount needed to fly.

“The feathers are pretty sharp… And pretty big. If you think about it, aren’t they the size of a dagger, maybe a little bigger? Actually, I’m pretty sure its the size of a short sword…” My mouth was left agape as countless possibilities ran through my mind.

The spear was useful of course and would probably continue to be useful as long as I don’t meet anything with scales that are too hard, but other than that I should be fine to use it. The only problem is that the moment I do use it against something, their meat immediately becomes unedible due to the poison” I analyzed while narrowing my eyes at the tip of the spear, trying to see where the poison came from.

I searched without success, making me finally turn my head back towards the feathers before talking up to the wing and plucking one out.

The feather was about the size of my hand, and forearm and would go a little further than my elbow if I put it and my arms side by side.

“They’re pretty light!” I exclaimed while throwing it into the air and grabbing it by the stem of the feather.

“The handle isn’t too great tho…” I sighed in disappointment, yet I quickly brightened up after innovative ideas for a handle began to run through my mind.

I did not waste any more time around the bird’s corpse since I knew that I couldn’t eat it, making me ignore it and return towards the direction of the skull home I had created for myself.

I took a few feathers with me of course, around 5 or 6 while putting them on the belt that had stayed mysteriously clean and unscathed this whole time, unlike my t-shirt of course.

I had used my T-shirt since it had already been damaged far too much, to tie the poison sting spear to my back since I didn’t have any other way to hold it other than holding it with my hands, something I didn’t want to do since it would limit my mobility in situations like jumping from tree to tree or making long lunges in general.

I was running around shirtless and I simply did not care for the matter. There were no intelligent animals nearby so I felt no shame in walking around shirtless or maybe even pantsless. Instead, even if there would have been some intelligent species roaming around, I still wouldn’t have been too bothered about being shirtless and instead, might have even been proud of it.

My body had been toned beyond anything that I previously had back in my time period. Back then, my body was average at best yet now one could easily see my muscles without me having to tense.

It was as if my body had completely shifted and evolved after my death to reach peak conditioning for my situation.

I was still as flexible as ever while being even more agile than I was before. My reaction time and natural reflexes had reached a new level, while my bodily strength, in general, had also reached an all-time high, one I did not think any human of my era could have competed with.

I had already evolved past what was previously seen as possible, yet none of that mattered in a word like this. A world where the strong prey on the weak. A world where the only thing the weak can do is hide, while the powerful rule with an iron fist.

“Speaking of strength…” I opened my stats screen once again before muttering a question to myself.

“I wonder how I can increase them without the need for stat points. Is that even possible?” I scratched my head, but unexpectedly, I got my answer sooner than I would have thought.

[Stats can be increased after completing exercises that link to the attribute, as well as pushing yourself to your limit.]

“Ah… So like normal exercise then?” I asked yet this time I did not get a reply, not like I needed one anyway.

“Status…”

[Stats-

HP:23

Strength: 23

Agility: 23

Intelligence: 25

Vitality: 23

Mana: 4

Defense: 0 ]

[You have 3 unallocated attribute points]

“Oh crap, 3!? From where!? Was it when I fought against the Lizard after having died… No… I think it was after my death?” I halted my running and looked at the screen in shock.

“But what the hell do I put them in? uhhh… Oh well.” I scratched my chin before finally nodding as the obvious option flashed in my mind.

“Agility it is… 3 points into agility pleas-” I couldn’t finish my sentence since it only took the first 4 words to flash another screen before me.

[Stats-

HP:23

Strength: 23

Agility: 26

Intelligence: 25

Vitality: 23

Mana: 4

Defense: 0]

A sudden surge of power shot through my body before dissipating in a matter of seconds, however, it did not do so without leaving behind a gift of its own.

My body immediately felt much lighter while at the same time I felt it… An overwhelming sensation screaming at me to run as fast as I can roared within my mind. I could feel every fiber of my being wanting to run until I ran out of breath, yet I quickly shot those thoughts out of my mind the moment I felt them.

It would be extremely dangerous to tire myself out in the middle of the forest with possible threats lurking by, and since I didn’t increase my vitality, it meant that my speed and stamina simply did not correlate making me possibly tire out faster.

Letting a few breaths enter my lungs before allowing them to leave as quickly as they came, I finally opened my eyes and looked towards the direction of the skull mountain and crouched down to lower my center of gravity.

“I’ll try to not overdo it…” I smiled to myself before pushing as hard as I could with my front before shooting off without restraint.

下一页

Three-Part Mission

“I overdid it.” I cried aloud while trying to regain my breath.

I had run for 20 minutes straight and now stood atop the skull mountain, reaching it at a speed I did not think would have been possible for me any time soon.

“One stat point makes a huge difference… And to think I put them all into agility.” I tried to chuckle, yet all that was audible were the pants I let out after every word.

My eyes darted around one more time as I crawled into the skull, still exhausted even after having rested for several minutes now.

“Maybe it’s the sleep? Or maybe it’s the food… Talking about food, I haven’t eaten in a long time which makes me wonder, how the hell am I still alive?” I tried to chuckle but the sensation of my eyes becoming heavier by the second overcame me, forcing me into what seemed like a slumber that would force me to sleep for years.

When the darkness swallowed my consciousness, I felt the overwhelming anxiety, fear and pain leave my body. It was as if it had given in, simply wanting to fall into the deep sensation of nothingness, a place where neither my past nor my future could affect me.

I felt free for the first time in a long time.

I felt like I didn’t need to do anything. A place where nothing was expected of me. A place where my problems were simply part of my past, a past which I could easily swim away from.

Yet then it hit me…

The visions.

The nightmares.

The dread.

No more was there a peaceful atmosphere.

Everything I knew and loved about this realm was flipped on its head, throwing me into the pits of my darkest memories. Back to the days when my nightmares had crawled out of my mind and come to haunt me.

‘Death… Is… Inevitable.’ I whisper spoke into my ear before being thrown into…

Even though I was trying to pull my girlfriend Crystal, along with me, she found it extremely hard to keep up with my speed due to her wearing heels.

I was holding her hand in an ironclad grip, making sure to not let go, making sure that both of us would leave this mess together…

It was in the last stride where I had felt it…

The feeling of emptiness…

Why were my hands no longer being warmed by the hands of the girl I loved most?

Why were my hands empty of her’s when I had left the mall…

I swiftly turned around to catch her once again, yet, I was immediately tackled by my best friend Alex, and Crystal’s best friend Julia, causing my sister and me to get launched out of the mall alongside them.

In the next instant, a beam of light several hundred meters in length shot right through the city while simultaneously vaporizing everything within its wake.

The laser bore through reality.

I could see it getting closer.

It was aiming for the mall.

The mall where Crystal was.

I must help her out.

I must save her.

She must live on!

How can she die while I am still alive?!

How can I allow that?!

How can I forgive myself?!

*ZZZZZZZZ*

The last thing I saw before the light had swallowed the entire mall within it was the warm and loving smile laced with dread, terror, and fear looking back at me.

She did not know what was about to hit her, yet she knew it would be her last moment.

The fear in her eyes… Her eyes then once shone like bright stars in the dark night.

The dreaded feeling of knowing you would die.

Her pale face filled with terror…

Yet, through all of that, I could see a single thing that stood out more than the rest.

Relief.

Relief that other than her, no one else had to die…

Relief that she had been the only one amongst us to land in such a miserable state…

With her last breath, she mouthed me her final words.

“Sur-vive.” She spoke with a regretful smile. Regret washing over her as she knew that she would never be able to see me from that day onwards.

“Noooooooooo!” I bellowed while reaching my hand out towards her, just to see her disappear within the light.

I laid there frozen, not being able to move a single inch…

It was only then that my vision shattered and I was flung out of the vision and thrown awake but the sudden interference.

I was coughing and panting while the feeling of dread lingered deep within my chest.

‘I steeled my resolve… I pushed past the fear. I pushed past the guilt, the sorrow, and the grief. So why does it still hurt so much?!’ I began to sob to myself as my right hand clenched tightly above my heart as if it would stop the pain I was feeling

After a few more minutes of this, I rolled back into place and laid there with my back to the floor and my eyes facing the ceiling. Yet even though one might have thought that I had begun to randomly look at the ceiling of the skull, if one were to look closely they would be able to tell that I wasn’t…

My eyes were dull again and lifeless.

“To think I would fall back into this pit again…” I closed my eyes once more, yet this time I had no intention of opening them any time soon.

I stayed like that for a while. I didn’t know if it had been minutes, hours, or even days, but I had just stayed that way for as long as I could.

I recollected all the precious memories I made with everyone I knew. With Crystal, Alex, Emily, and my parents. I replayed a precious memory before bringing back the scene of their death again and again. Every time my body would instinctually wince as I was forced to watch the scene occur in front of me as if I had gone back in time to witness the scene again.

After what seemed like forever, I opened my eyes again however this time, they were no longer lifeless and as dull as they were before. No, they were filled with something else now…

‘I will not fall to my own self-pity again!’

[Intelligence +1]

“Hmm? What’s this? And why is everything black and white again?” I groaned while trying to get up.

“Hmm?” My eyes darted around, immediately allowing me to understand the situation without the need for the system to explain it.

[The Unknown Energy resonates with the Immortal’s burning rage]

[The Unknown Energy resonates with the Immortal’s grief and sorrow]

[The Immortality System understands your feelings of animosity towards the Elven race]

[Three-Part Mission Received]

[Mission 1/3: Locate the Elven settlements]

[Conditions: –

-Do not use more than 4 Immortality Tokens

-No time limit]

[Reward:

-20 Attribute points

-3 Immortality tokens

-Receive random affinity (Unique +)

-Receive the title ‘The Will Of Humanity’ alongside ‘Sovereign of ???]

“The hell does ??? mean?” I cried out, my rage and grief completely dissipating in my moment of annoyance, while my vision automatically turned back to normal allowing me to see that the sun was setting.

“Hmm… If I remember properly, the sun had been around there.” I used my index finger to point toward the sky before continuing with my other hand to my chin “Which means I’ve slept for at least 24 hours.” I analyzed without skipping a beat.

“The sky does look beautiful toda-.” My sentence was immediately interrupted by the sound of my stomach rumbling, something that finally snapped me back to reality and allowed me to recall when the last time I had eaten anything had been.

“Oh crap. If I don’t eat anything soon, I might die!” I cried before kicking up and off the floor before running towards the entrance of the skull’s maw, jumping over the teeth and beginning to run towards the forest as fast as I could to find something to eat.

下一页

Emergency Mission

*Crunch*

I was sitting atop my little skull home as I opened my mouth and took a huge bite out of a palm-sized nut that I held with my right hand since my other hand was too busy trying to keep the rest of the nuts from falling off the skull and being tainted with the germs and impurities of the ground.

“I can’t even imagine how many creatures have stepped on the surface of these lands, let alone that one that might have committed unspeakable acts on this soil.” A shiver went down my spine as I said those words as I imagined it.

“At least a few million, right? But I mean, technically us humans have always been drinking dinosaur pee, so why does it matter if one of the nuts fall down there? Its not like a creature could have done anything to it in the last few weeks, right?” I asked myself, nuts and saliva flying out of my mouth as I spoke.

It had been around 4 and a half weeks ever since I’d died for the second time, and nothing of real significance had happened in that time other than the mission I got exactly 4 weeks ago.

I’d say I’ve become mildly sleep-deprived in the last few weeks, sleeping for god knows how many hours, yet staying awake for far more than 24 hours at a time.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to sleep, it was just that every time I would close my eyes to fall into a peaceful slumber, I would either jolt up in a panic after hearing a loud noise which in reality was just me shifting my body a little, or I would wake up after a few hours in a cold sweat from the nightmares that forced me to watch the scene of Crystal dying over and over again.

Another thing I seemed to have forgotten about was my hygiene. Yes, I looked physically healthy since I for some reason could not lose muscle no matter what I did, but I still looked like a ruffled mess of a human who lay in the tatters of his clothes.

My body was covered in dried sweat, dried blood, and many bodily fluids that I could not differentiate at this point due to each creature having a different tint or color for their blood, and a crap-ton of mud that stained my skin all over and made me look exceptionally dirty.

“I’d love to argue that maybe not having a shower for such a long time is the reason for how miserable I’ve become, but I’m pretty sure it’s the sleep-deprivation. Hahahaha…” I began laughing hysterically to myself, not caring about the manners that had been ingrained into me from infancy.

Why would anyone follow the rules when there is no one to enforce them?

Morals you say? We are humans, not animals you say? Well, you are partially correct. We aren’t animals and morals drive many if not all our actions throughout our lives. But why would I want to follow something as unnecessary as etiquette when there is no one around to judge me?

Why would I care about closing my mouth while eating if there is no one to be disgusted by my action.

After laughing at my own joke for a few minutes, I randomly kicked up, landing on my feet merely seconds later. With the grace of a butterfly as well as a spring in my step, I found myself standing on the edge of the skull looking into the distance, reminiscing on what had happened over the last 5 weeks.

“To think I suffered more in the first week than I had suffered throughout the last 4 and a half weeks. If I think about it, I’ve fought at least 3 times more life or death battles in the first week than I had after my last death.” I muttered to myself, my eyes still lingering in the distance as if I was looking for something that simply was not there.

I had spent much of the last four weeks this way, looking into the sky and the forests, observing and waiting for something to happen. I knew that I had a mission to complete and I was still only on the first part of the three-part mission, yet even then I did not know where to start.

What was I supposed to do? Leave the comfort of the home that I created just to walk in a random direction to find some kind of civilization

“Ugh.” Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I quickly jumped down the skull before swinging myself into it and through the eye hole.

Sliding to a stop, my eyes darted around before finally finding what they had been searching for.

Walking up to one of the nearest rocks, I lifted it up and took a peek inside before closing the lid and moving back to check the fire.

After seeing that the fire had extinguished at this point, I swiftly moved across the room and rummaged through the countless items I had collected, trying to find the bow drill mechanism that I had crafted for myself to make fire-making easier and faster.

Moving countless bones, skulls, unfinished weapons, and even some molds to the side, I grabbed the bow as well as the wooden state that I had chosen would become the drill for today.

I carried out all the needed mechanisms and finally created a fire, leaving a satisfied smile on my face as I walked back to the stone, lifting it and taking out two leg pieces of an unknown species that I can’t recall killing.

Everything went as normal, allowing me to feast one more time before having to go out to get more food and supplies such as water and even plant fibers so I can make more rope.

“Wow, Ezra! You’re super clever. To think you could make a water filtration system with a few skulls, Brazillian nuts shells and a bit of gravel and sand.” I suddenly exclaimed, looking at the air in front of me with a sense of awe.

“Oh please, it was nothing!” I quickly turned around and looked the other way, as if I was creating a conversation that only seemed to happen properly in my mind.

After feasting for a bit longer, I quickly put on some armor that I had created before placing 4 of the sharp steel feathers on my belt while wrapping a cloth around my torso so I wouldn’t need to carry my spear by hand.

Out of the bones that I had collected over the last few weeks, I had used the vast majority of them to create armor pieces using a skull to make headgear and using a wolf’s spine to protect my own spinal cord from any significant injury.

After a bit of trial and error, I finally found a way to safely take the wolf’s hide without damaging it in the process, allowing me to now have a fur coat that would not only protect me from incoming attacks but would also keep my warm and covered at the same time.

[Status

Name: Ezra —-

Level: 9

Progress: 935/25,600

Age: 19

Sex: Male

Immortality Tokens: 4

Affinities: None

Bloodline(s): Awakened Human

Unique Trait: Evolver

Title(s): Craftsmith (Lvl 4), Warrior (Lvl 5), Seeker of Death (Lvl 1), Lumberjack (Lvl 1), Humanity’s Endling, Transgressor of Time

Skill(s): Appraisal (Lvl 1)

Blessing(s): Chrono’s Blessing ]

[Stats-

HP:23

Strength: 23

Agility: 26

Intelligence: 26

Vitality: 23

Mana: 4

Defence: +6 ]

“Was the Endling title always there or am I just tripping?” I asked myself before quickly ignoring the possible change to my status, thinking nothing of it for the meantime.

I finally left my skull home and moved back into the forest to find something to hunt down and kill, yet it was then that I had received a message that would send a shiver down the spine of anyone in the same situation as me.

[Emergency Mission Received]

[Emergency Mission: Survive the incoming beast horde]

[Information: After a large-scale forest fire, many of the inhabitants had been forced to move away and migrate to other regions. This has created large-scale territorial battles as well as many small-scale ones which eventually caused many of the creatures to instinctively team up with one another to take over different regions.]

[Conditions: –

-You have 30 minutes to prepare]

[Reward:

-A Basic Dagger Art

-2 attribute points

-Storage/ Inventory]

“Damnit! Why now!?” I exclaimed while trying to control my anger.

“Now of all times?! Give me a few days to assimilate myself into this lifestyle before I have to leave it for good!” I complained again, yet now I knew it was not the time for me to do such a thing.

Complaining will not help me survive after all.

My angry expression dissipated as fast as it had come while my eyes went back to being sharp and cold.

I was creating the expression of a cold and calculating man who was ready to kill if the situation were to come to it.

I didn’t like killing, but these were just animals, right? They aren’t intelligent beings, or at least not as intelligent as the Elves and Humans. It takes all the guilt out of killing them and would allow a man to commit massacres without batting an eye.

We did the same thing back in my era anyway, so what was the difference if I were to do it again?

After thinking for a while with my hand to my chin, a few different situations came to mind with a couple of obvious solutions, and since the situation right now was severe, nothing crossed the line. This was life or death.

“I could just burn down the forest again but that might set off some alarms with any nearby civilizations. At the same time, I lose the closest and most efficient source of food as well as one of the only secure and safe homes one could find on the entire continent if not the planet.

“I wonder what Earth looks like right now-… This isn’t time for curiosity!” Smacking my cheeks to regain my cold and calculating mind, I went over my options once again and realized one thing.

“The best option is to run and hide from the monster horde. Yes, I might lose the home I lived in for the last few weeks but I should find something close to it somewhere else…” My eyes slowly drifted back towards the direction the horde was probably coming from before squinting.

“I’m about to make one of the worst decisions of my life…” I let out one last exasperated sigh before steeling my resolve and straightening my posture.

“I really hope I don’t come to regret this…”

下一页

The Beast Horde

*Awoooooo*

*Roar*

*Screeeeech*

Several ear-piercing sounds thundered throughout the forest, each one sounding louder and more annoying than the other.

There were hundreds if not thousands of creatures that were running through the woods, each one kicking up dust in their wake and leaving a huge dust cloud behind them as if they were trying to display their power and dominance.

The beasts ranged from green wolves the size of horses, black ones with a dark hue overshadowing their figure as well as ones whose fur would perk up into spikes.

However, behind them stood the real monstrosities.

Wolves reached the size of the T-rex that I had died to, while others were as long as some of the trees around them if they were to stand on their hind legs or slither up them.

“I just have to avoid the bigger ones and I should be fine. Worst case scenario, I’ll have to burn the forest down.” I muttered while sitting atop a large branch looking towards the incoming horde of beasts that was now 100 meters away and closing in fast.

[The Immortal’s stress levels are high]

[The Unknown Energy is resonating with your determination and bravery]

[An Unknown Energy is rising within your body.]

My eyes slowly turned black and white before all the living creatures around me began to light up with their distinct crimson color alongside the channels of red energy that ran through their bodies and energized their bodies with both life and vigor.

[Hp: 103/103]

[Mana: 10/20]

‘It takes a bit less mana now, but 10 is still a lot especially since mana takes a very long time to regenerate.’ I thought to myself rather than speaking aloud, just in case one of the creatures heard me even though I highly doubted that would have been possible with the amount of noise they made.

For those of you who might be asking the question, “Hey Ezra. Why the hell are you going up against hundreds if not thousands of creatures?”, and to you my friend I applaud you for asking such an important question.

However, the answer to it was unknown even to me. I could have easily tried running away from the forest and leaving behind everything I had built in the last 4 weeks, and even though I knew that leaving the forest was an inevitable fate, I still chose to stand against the horde one last time before being forced to leave.

I’m not sure if my mind had short-circuited and just decided that rather than being a coward and running, I would not leave this place without a fight.

The only logical reason I could think of for me staying was actually just the fact that my body would be pushed to its limit, and while I am still extremely scared of dying, my desire for revenge on the elven race had overshadowed my fear, allowing me to now look forwards with confidence and unwillingness to give up.

After all, how am I supposed to get revenge when I am stuck being so weak and pathetic?

With that thought crossing my mind, my eyes immediately sharpened while my muscles tensed up, readying me to jump off this branch and kill any creature that dares stand in my way.

‘Just a little more…’ I thought to myself while pulling my hand back and grabbing onto the hilt of my feather blade.

’40 meters…’ My grip tightened around the hilt and my body leaned forward.

’30 meters…’ I quickly did the same with the other feather blade, yet this time I held it in a reverse grip rather than a normal one.

’20 meters…’ My body began to ooze out a red mist that shrouded my body from head to toe with its crimson glow.

’10 meters…’ I quickly shifted my feet and positioned myself at an angle that would allow me to shoot into the crowd if I were to kick off the branch.

“Five meters…” I spoke aloud, making several creatures halt their movements, frozen in place as their heads slowly moved up to look at me, or at least for as long as they could look at me.

*Boom*

*Snap*

*Pitu*

The image of my body turned into a blur as my figure pushed down on my legs, snapped the branch like a twig, and tore through the air just to appear in front of one of the wolves with my hand extended towards the eyes.

With my right hand right in front of the wolf, I pushed down and ripped through the wolf’s skull, splattering its brain matter everywhere and while staining my clothes.

[You have killed a Wind Wolf]

[You have gained +50 EXP]

‘I’ll need a shower after this…’

*Roooa-*

The wolf’s roar had been cut off as a blade immediately tore through its throat and forced it to drown within its own blood, incapable of making any other noise that did not consist of the gargling that came out of its maw.

[You have killed a Wind Wolf]

[You have gained +50 EXP]

Feeling a sudden sense of dread coming from my left, I lifted my foot and kicked the wolf into the sky before jumping up, somersaulting, and smashing my foot into its head before allowing the decapitated body to fall back to the ground.

[You have killed a Lightning Leopard]

[You have gained +50 EXP]

All of this occurred in merely a few seconds, yet to me, it felt like minutes had gone by as I calculated the best course of action, and which actions would give me the highest probability of survival.

Of course, the option to simply run had always been the option with the highest probability of survival, but I quickly suppressed my cowardly thoughts and went on to kill the creatures attacking me.

*Puff*

Looking forwards again, I watched as a hippo-like creature grew closer by the second while constantly releasing some kind of gas from its nose. At the same time, there was something else that caught my eyes, immediately giving me a flashback to my first day here in this world.

Images of my fingers piercing the eye of a hippo appeared in my mind and caused me to smile wryly as I looked at its closed eyes, realizing that I might have actually given it a permanent injury.

While I might have started reminiscing about the old times, I did not waste any time as I instantly sprang forward and pointed my feather knife/short sword toward the only working eyes of the hippo.

As I stabbed it, another sense of dread hit me and in the process forced me to swing myself away from the hippo, leaving behind my knife that was now protruding out of its only working eye.

‘Hmm?’ With the sense of dread still lingering, I waited for another second, analyzing the fluctuations in the amount of danger I felt until I sensed it.

My head tilted to the right and barely evaded a claw that was aimed towards my head and ready to rip it off in a single swing of its paw. Yet instead of attacking with my feather short sword again and killing it on the spot, I swiftly grabbed its neck with an iron-clad grip before turning around and aiming it in a certain direction.

I watched as several black spiked hairs short into the wolf’s body, making it struggle one more time within my grip before finally giving up and falling prey to its wounds.

I could see that almost 18 meters away stood a wolf with perked up black fur that it shot as spikes, capable of shooting me and turning me into swiss cheese without even batting an eye.

“Another shadow spiked wolf?” I muttered under my breath still didn’t lower my guard. Yes, I might have killed this creature before, but it still poses just as much of a threat as it did the first time I met it.

“Sorry…” I let out a wry smile and let go of the corpse I was holding. Before any of the beasts around me could realize what had happened, they watched as a foot landed on the chest of the corpse while launching it towards the shadow spiked wolf.

I could see that the body was slowing down dramatically since the shadow spiked wolf had not stopped shooting from the start, yet that did not matter to me at that very moment.

From behind the incoming corpse, the shadow spiked wolf saw a sudden burst of crimson light before a light darted up into the trees.

With its guard now up, it stopped shooting the corpse and instead looked in my direction. Little did it know that its decision to stop shooting the corpse would have been its last fatal mistake.

The corpse carried enough momentum to finally barge the shadow spiked wolf, making it lose its balance for a split second which was all I needed. In another flash of burning crimson light, I short from branch to branch and tree to tree until finally, I stood on a branch above the shadow spiked wolf.

Seeing that it was still in a state of confusion, I quickly put away my feather blade and grabbed onto my poison spear tightly.

I could feel my heart beating with a new rhythm.

Blood was shooting through my vessels alongside the adrenaline that made me forget about my fears of death.

It was almost like I had tunnel vision.

Everything before me had turned into a target rather than a living being, and the crimson highlights I got from my black and white vision did not help with that matter.

A smile perked up the corners of my lips before my hands gripped around the spear tightly and descended onto the wolf that finally understood what had happened.

It did not have enough time to react to my sudden ambush, leaving it to use its last resort, or maybe even an instinctual resort that had been developed throughout its evolution.

Its eyes began looking at me with a pleading in its eyes, yet I did not buy it.

The smile on my face grew when I saw that expression while a shiver of exhilaration shot through my body, reverberating in every cell until finally.

*Pitschh*

下一页

The Beast Horde II

*Pitschh*

My spear passed right through the head of the wolf before hitting the ground under it.

I could see that my spear had touched the floor and was not dripping with the blood of the wolf, but at that moment in time, I did not care.

[You have killed a Black Spiked Wolf]

[You have gained +100 EXP]

I could feel a new level of exhilaration. A new level of power running through my body. A feeling I had been completely ignorant to. It was an uncontrollable desire for blood that would send a shiver down my spine whenever I would recall it.

It was bloodlust.

In my now frenzied state, I pulled the spear out of the hole made in the wolf’s head before allowing my eyes to dart around for the next enemy. Throughout the moment, I kept an unconscious subtle smirk on my face that even if I were to try, I could not get rid of it.

They were cold, yet deep within those wintery eyes blazed an inferno that struggled to keep itself within. An inferno that represented my bottomless desire to kill.

Alongside that subtle smirk, I radiated terrifying killing intent. It was powerful and extremely dangerous to anyone weaker than me, yet due to the weakness of both my soul and body, I could not create a killing intent that represented the magnitude of my desires. However, the crimson aura that seeped out of me did do its best to represent those feelings to the furthest extent it could.

When my eyes landed on the struggling hippo, the scenes of a hippo just like it trying to snap its maw shut around my arm on the first day flashed before my eyes. This immediately triggered the memory of my arm actually being ripped off making it so I could not help but see a mirage of the lizard creature whenever I would look at the hippo.

Narrowing my eyes, I quickly put away my spear and disappeared from where I stood.

The moment my body could no longer be seen on top of the wolf that had still been suspended in the air after its death, the creatures around me could only watch as its body slammed onto the ground while kicking up a huge dust cloud that would make it hard for anyone to see anything for at least a few seconds.

Well, anyone except me of course.

Before the hippo could react to the danger that had appeared beside it, it felt a dullness that eventually spread throughout the left side of its jaw before becoming sharp and extremely painful.

With a knee to the jaw of the hippo, I had disabled its mouth and shattered its jaw bones into countless pieces, making its only weapon unusable in the process.

Not wanting to waste any time, I moved to its eye and violently pulled out my blade while making sure to make it as painful as possible as I pulled it out.

*ROOOOOOAAAAR*

Letting out a sky-shaking roar of pain, it instantly tried to attack the direction that it felt me going. Little did it know that what it was about to attack was one of its allies rather than its enemy.

Its body moved faster than anything I thought a hippo of its size could move. I would have struggled to keep track of its body with my normal eyes since it would have been moving at a blurring speed, but with my current ones, I could almost see all of its movements before it even began moving.

It was as if the energy within its body committed to an action before its mind or body did, and with the dread that I felt every time something dangerous is about to hit me, my current state made me close to unhittable.

That was beside the point, however, since it only took the hippo a second to slam its body onto the unsuspecting feline that was making sure to watch my every move rather than keeping track of anything else that might attack it.

“Too trusting…” I muttered under my breath and watched it get flung into the air and getting impaled by the horn of another beast.

Seeing that the hippo wasn’t going to be much of a problem anymore, I left it to do its own thing and searched around for more victims that I could slash with my blade.

***

A little bit over a kilometer away lay an enormous creature with a body that reached close to 150 meters in length. Its eyes we large and oval while its pupils were like two sharp slits that narrowed down on anything that caught their eyes.

While its eyes looked and seemed like a wild animal’s, it contained a glint of intelligence one wouldn’t see in any other beast, especially the smaller and weaker ones.

Two enormous fangs could be seen protruding out of its maw, while a forked tongue left its mouth almost rhythmically at different intervals and releasing a sound recognizable to most humans of my era.

As it slithered through the forest, its scales hit many trees, creating friction but never creating a fire in the process. However, one could say that the reflective surface of the creature’s scales was another story since their luster alone made it hard for anything to look at it directly.

Its scales were made out of a spotless white without a speck of dirt or mud on them even though they were constantly moving through those very things.

It was as if its scales were dirtphobic {Author’s note: Just a word I made up. Think of it as being ‘Hydrophobic’ but with things that might make it dirty}

It slithered its way around the trees, swerving from right to left, yet never finding itself entangled within an area no matter which way it moved.

Even if it were to be entangled, I doubt it would have made much of a difference to it since a single swift movement or uncalculated maneuver could send dozens of trees with trunks several times larger than me tumbling.

As it slithered past hundreds of trees, it seemed to finally halt its movement before perking up and towering over the trees to look from above.

Its head slowly moved from left to right, scanning, and sensing something it seemed to have felt ever since it reached this location.

‘This pressure…’ I thought, once again halting the movement of its head in a certain direction while releasing some kind of energy to scan the entire area it was looking at.

‘It must be strong.’ I thought and began to bear its fangs with an open maw.

*Rumble*

A distant rumbling confirmed the snake’s guesses and made it release its pure white aura.

From an outside point of view, this aura was beautiful. It was filled with a sense of holiness yet at the same time, one could see the determination and resolve it had without even having to feel it directly.

However, to anyone within the vicinity of 1 kilometer, this aura was everything but holy. One could feel the sinister nature behind it. Rather than an untainted white, the aura now looked like the cloth that would wipe away the blood that would stain the creature.

‘The cleanser is just as guilty as the one who wields the blade.’ was a sentence that resonated with the aura that the snake was letting off.

“AuuuuuuughhhhooOOOOOOO!” A voice thundered throughout the forest as if it had called upon the skies, it immediately began to rain and thunder as countless lightning bolts came down on the forest, setting alight countless fires.

‘It doesn’t seem intelligent though…’ The snake thought, yet not for a second did it lower its guard in front of this beast if you could even call it that.

下一页

Battle of Titans

“AuuuuuuughhhhooOOOOOOO!” The creature let out a sky-shaking roar, making the trees around it ruffle and dance while making all the creatures within a kilometer radius freeze in fear.

”It doesn’t seem intelligent though…’ The snake thought, yet not for a second did it lower its guard in front of this beast, if you could even call it that.

The creature was a complete monster that exceeded in both power and created fear in an opponent. It had countless tentacles and was by itself, much taller than the length of the snake. It had hundreds of eyes that opened on random parts of its body whether that would be the tentacle or within its mouth.

Its body was made out of azure-blue scales mixed in with a few pitch-black ones that stood out under the rays of the sunlight since they would always be the only scales to not reflect any light.

It had no hair but instead seemed to have 2 distinct wooden horns protruding out of its head. The horns seemed sharp but at the same time, they felt dull due to both the texture and luster.

“AuuuuuuughhhhooOOOOOOO!” It let out another roar, yet even though this one was a little quieter than the last one, it still held the same impact on the surrounding environment.

“Sssssstthhhh.” The snake let out a low hiss in return for receiving the roar. Right now the battle wasn’t about strength, it was about mind games. Who would attack first? Who would lose the advantage of having the unknowns that they could use in dire moments?

Right now, both of the creatures knew nothing about each other, yet that all changed when a subtle booming slamming sound shot through the forest.

One of the unintelligent creature’s tentacles hit the ground with an unfathomable power that sent shockwaves through the ground, making everyone within a certain radius feel it.

Countless trees around the creature flew up to the air, some of them having been uprooted from the ground while others just happened to be smashed to pieces, kicking them up into the air alongside a huge dust cloud.

The snake seemed to also lose all care for the environment around it as it slithered through the forest, destroying and creating havoc everywhere it moved.

When it had reached a 100-meter radius from the creature in front of it, it quickly opened its maw and began bearing its fangs towards it before finally…

*Pitu*

The sound of its fangs entering the body of the tentacled creature caused the forest to turn quiet. It was as if nature itself was waiting for the outcome of the clash with anticipation, every second that passed causing it to become more restless.

***

“AuuuuuuughhhhooOOOOOOO!”

My eyes immediately darted towards the direction of the roar, yet I only did so for a moment since I knew I was about to be attacked in the next few seconds.

However, to my surprise I watched every creature around me freeze in place, eyes wide open and maws left agape in both pure fear and horror. It was as if their muscles stopped working instinctually the moment they heard the roar.

While many of them collapsed out of the shock and the fact that they could not move their body, others stood there like frozen statues unable to even look at me anymore as their eyes had moved to either look at the ground or roll back into unconsciousness.

I on the other hand, while feeling a slight strain in my movements, could still move normally. Yes, sometimes it felt like I was trying to walk through water, but other than that feeling it wasn’t too bad especially when you compare it to the feeling of dread I felt almost all the time whenever I fought.

“If I think about it… Nothing compares to the dread that I felt a week before Earth’s invasion… Maybe I got a little used to it?” I asked myself before realizing that I had gotten a little sidetracked

Not wanting to waste any more time, I swiftly lunged at an incoming insect and plunged my blade into its head before spinning around and decapitating it with all the strength I could muster.

Without skipping a beat, I once again dashed in another direction, this time plunging my blade into the throat of a wolf and killing it instantly in the process.

[Mission Reinstated!]

[The system has recognized your actions of bravery and courage and due to this, will allow you to redo a mission from your previous life]

“What?!” I exclaimed while barely missing my attack, stabbing a leopard-looking creature in the side rather than in its throat.

[A Prime Tyrannosaurus Ancestor has been detected nearby]

[Mission: Defeat or kill]

[Information: Defeat or kill a Prime Tyrannosaurus Ancestor without sustaining severe injuries. The

[Reward:

-Receive the skill ‘Life Drain’

-Instant Level Up

My eyes widened in surprise while my jaw fell out of shock.

‘Is it the same one? I mean, how many Tyrannosaurus-Rex Ancestors can there be?’

The thought of revenge had made the corners of my lips curve into a cruel smile. I wanted to avenge my previous death no matter what, and the system had just given me a way to do so while gaining some system benefits.

‘If I gain a skill like life drain, I might become invincible. At the same time, life drain can somehow be the weakest skill ever, and since I’m getting it at level 1, I doubt that I’m going to be able to drain the life of a creature in a few seconds.’

With a slightly disappointed sigh, I finally stopped myself from being consumed by the rage that was unknowingly bubbling inside me for the last 4 weeks. Nevertheless, it would be stupid to say that the fire of animosity had been extinguished completely, but only time would tell.

Opening my eyes once again after having calmed myself down a little, I narrowed my eyes and searched the area around me until I saw it.

A faint outline of a silhouette resembling the creature I had fought against a little more than a month ago.

*Boom*

My body turned into a blur of white, black, and crimson red that shot through the forest with a speed unrivaled by any of the creatures around.

[Hp:94/115]

[Mana: 5/20]

*Boom*

I could feel my mana drain out of me for a second, but I was not too worried about that for now. All that was in my mind was all the ways I could end the life of the creature that had killed me earlier, and now that I had been given a chance to do the same to it, I would not let the opportunity slip by easily.

When I finally appeared in front of the T-rex, I quickly halted my movement and landed on a tree branch, looking down at it as it looked up at me.

I could see its eyes widen like saucers while its maw was also left agape due to my appearance.

‘Impossible!’ It roared through its mind linking ability.

“Tsk.” I did not waste another second and stepped off the branch before beginning to plunge towards it with my blade in hand and my rage flaring once again.

The sudden killing intent that dropped onto it like a mountain caused it to stop moving for a second. And that was all it took for me to get the advantage immediately.

When I reached the same height as the t-rex’s open maw, a cruel smile once again flashed onto my face. Images of what I had done to it last time crossed its mind as well as mine, meaning it knew exactly what I was about to do.

With the flick of my wrist, I recreated the same scene as last time, throwing my blade into its maw and hitting the back of its throat, making blood spill out while forcing it to drown within that very blood.

Without skipping a beat, I landed on the ground hands first before flipping back and creating some distance by sliding away.

My eyes never stopped looking at it the entire time, but I still couldn’t help but quickly analyze its body.

From the black and white vision alone as well as the red that highlighted all living creatures, I could see that the energy within its body was a lot lower than I had expected. Hell, it only double the amount the hippo had, and even then that shouldn’t have been the case.

This is a Prime Tyrannosaurus Ancestor we are talking about. There is no way in hell that this creature would have such a small amount of energy.

It was only when I stopped and thought of the situation that I understood what had happened. While I had my suspicions that this T-Rex was the same one that I had fought against and died to, I wasn’t too sure. I was simply releasing my anger on a creature that resembled it. Even after it said ‘impossible!’, I still assumed that it might have said that due to my similarities to the Elves or even the Dwarves that the last T-Rex had talked about.

Now, however, with the energy, speech, power, and similarities I could see, it was difficult to state that the beast in front of me was not the same one that I had fought against before.

下一页

We Meet Again

I quickly closed my eyes when the realization hit me, trying my hardest to not let anger take over me even after knowing that anger was the trigger for the red energy. I simply didn’t want to lose my self-control, and the bloodlust so far had been a little overwhelming.

‘How… How are you alive! I killed you! After what you did to me I destroyed your corpse and made sure that you could never be revived even by the work of a necromancer! Then how… HOW!’ It roared into my mind, only making me angrier.

“You want to know how?” I asked it with a slight smirk to cover my rage.

‘Bastard! How dare you smile! Just because you can use some silly trick to beat me doesn’t mean you are stronger!’ Its voice thundered in my mind once again and caused a vein to bulge on my forehead.

‘I’m going to kill this bastard…’ I thought to myself before shaking my head as if that action would have gotten rid of those thoughts.

“Let me tell you… How I did it…” I spoke, but unlike the last few times I had spoken, there was a strange authority within my voice that caused the T-Rex to shiver and shut up even while technically being on its death bed.

I didn’t understand why or how he could understand me, but I could only guess that it was due to his little sound ability. That is the only way the two of us could speak like this without having a language barrier.

Slowly, I walked up to the T-Rex, looking it in the eyes and not saying a single word the entire time. Its eyes also locked on me as I walked up to it, but it also chose to say nothing.

Unfortunately for it, I wasn’t planning on speaking. In fact, I wasn’t planning on saying anything to it. I just wanted to watch it die knowing nothing about my mysterious recovery. I wanted it to die while constantly asking questions.

But at that moment, a strange feeling overcame me once again, making me mutter a few words before…

“You’ve grown old…” I said while closing my eyes and grabbing my spear.

‘Hey! What are you doing!?’ It asked with a voice that tricked my eyes into thinking that its scales had become pale.

“Let me put you to rest…” I let out a subtle wry smile, one that was not filled with malice or anger. It was a warm smile that would have made anyone fall for my act as being one of kindness.

However, the T-Rex was not just anyone.

*ROOOOOAAAR*

I watched as its maw opened and a sudden sensation of dread hit me like a truck. Without hesitation, I quickly rolled to the side and evaded the sound wave that was about to rip me into pieces, or at the very least cover me with the blood of the T-Rex.

“I see…” My eyes narrowed at its maw, while the vision I had made it easy for me to see through it and look directly at the throat to know what happened.

“Where is it-…” I tried to whisper something under my breath, but my mouth was once again left agape when I saw that not only was my blade no longer in its maw, it had dropped into its stomach and had impaled itself within.

“Well, you’re not gonna have a good time pooping hahahaha.”

The T-Rex didn’t seem to find my joke as amazing as I did, making both of us stand there awkwardly as I laughed while the other looked at me like it wanted to end my life right there and then.

“Huh!?” My laughing immediately stopped when I noticed something strange happening. I could see the energy within it move faster than it had before, while the natural aura that had been surrounding it also became oddly chaotic in a sense.

I could taste its desire to kill me, while at the same time feeling all my dread alarms go off at the same time whenever it looked at me with those bloodshot eyes.

[Warning: Your opponent has entered a berserker state]

“Oh shiii-”

*BOOM*

The instant it had opened its mouth, I was forced to brace myself for impact while making sure that I wouldn’t hit any of the trees behind me, therefore making me have to think quickly on how I would position myself depending on the direction the sound wave came.

My stupidity was only recognized after I felt powerful energy hit my crossed arms and shattered the bone armor on both my chest and arms into pieces.

I was immediately launched back forcing me to slide and tumble before hitting one of the trees that I wasn’t able to evade in time.

While feeling immense pain coming from all parts of my body, I did not want to waste time grimacing in pain and immediately kicked up, standing tall once again but now wearing a cold and determined expression rather than the relaxed one I wore before.

“You can still stand?” Its voice boomed and even caused me to lose balance for a bit. It didn’t use the same trick it had done last time but I could easily tell why.

A sharp pain came out of my ear, but since I could still hear and there wasn’t any blood trickling out, I didn’t care. The pain was there, but I could only think of one thing the entire time.

‘This is nothing compared to last time.’ I shouted at myself and quickly clenched to help me ignore the pain or at the very least resist it to a certain extent.

I let out another breath as I moved my hand back to grab my spear, something that caused me to wince in pain while shaking a little the moment I felt it.

I knew that none of my bones were actually broken, nevertheless, the pain was still there to indicate that there was some kind of injury that I should be worrying about.

I let out another breath and pointed the tip of my spear towards the head of the T-Rex, my eyes flaring up in rage and determination once again while my face continuously scrunched up every time the pain hit me.

I’ve lived a life of peace. I hadn’t fought a life or death battle before coming to this era, so of course, something as basic as the pain would throw me off my game.

“This is nothing!” A spoke with the same authoritarian voice as before while trying to replicate the thing that the T-Rex had done without success.

“Hahahahah! For a small bipedal like you, you do have a lot of courage! Even after having been completely decimated by my attack last time, you still came back for more with your little revival trick? One question though… How did you do it?” The T-Rex started off laughing but eventually changed to a much more sinister and serious tone by the end of it.

“How about I give you a first-hand experience?” I smirked in response.

“You? A first-hand experience?! You think you can beat m-” It couldn’t even finish its sentence since it had immediately been interrupted by the loud sound of an explosion, followed by the kicking up of a dust cloud that reached several meters in height and width.

[Hp: 72/115]

[Mana: 2/20]

Having shrouded my foot with the red energy, I slammed my foot onto the ground below me with all the power I could muster, creating a dust cloud that would have stopped the T-Rex from seeing me as long as it did not have any ability like my eyes.

My body blurred once again and blitzed past the dust cloud and appeared on one of the trees out of the T-Rex’s line of sight, and from what I could see, that was the right call to make.

I watched as it opened its maw, but quickly turned away and jumped to the next tree, and then the next, and then the next while making sure that I did not lose momentum between every jump.

*ROOOOAAAR*

*BOOM*

A sound wave traveled towards the dust cloud that I had created before parting it and eradicating the trees behind it, turning most of them into pieces of their previous form while even grinding the closest ones into dust.

‘Good thing I moved in time…’ I thought as my eyes trailed off and trained themselves onto the destruction they saw in front of me.

However, I quickly smacked my cheeks lightly and closed my eyes to calm myself once again.

‘Why do I always feel like I’m about to break? Like I’m about to let go of some kind of emotion that would eventually lead to the end of me? I feel like the moment I begin to stop caring would also be the moment where something catastrophic leaves my body to reign havoc on to the world’

I slapped my cheeks lightly again, and with my spear in hand, I dashed towards the T-Rex while being shrouded in the red energy that was seeping out of my body.

My eyes locked onto the creature and allowed me to locate all its weak spots or at least the ones that I could reach.

Of course just like last time, the maw was the best place to aim, yet it would be too predictable since I had already done it twice before.

*Thud*

下一页

Forbidden Skill: Deathlock

Hearing a low thud from its left side, it turned its head and saw a blade stuck in one of the trees and implanted deeply into the wood itself.

Its eyes widened while its head perked up the moment it felt a sense of danger coming from the other side, making it only capable of guessing what was about to hit it.

*ROOOOOAAAAR*

It quickly let out another roar, yet instead of aiming at something specific, it had simply aimed for the ground.

*BOOM*

I could only watch as the enormous creature was catapulted into the air before it began to turn and look at me from the sides of its eyes, yet still incapable of fully facing me due to it being unable to turn its head any more than it had already done.

Seeing this, I kicked forwards once again and dashed to the side, getting out of the T-Rex’s line of sight while also taking a dagger out to complete my next move.

Without hesitation, I grabbed the hilt of my blade and threw it like a javelin towards the eye of the T-Rex after calculating how long it would take for it to turn, shift, and finally reach the right place and angle for me to throw the dagger.

*Pitu*

*ROOOAAAR*

The T-Rex let out another roar followed by a sound wave, yet since it didn’t know what direction I was in, it could not find which direction I had moved in and randomly picked an area to obliterate.

‘To think half of the trees around us had fallen just because this filthy creature lost one of its eyes. Honestly pathetic.’ I scrunched my face up in disdain as I landed back onto the ground after distancing myself from the T-Rex to not allow it to feel my presence around it, nor hear the sound of my footsteps or movements.

‘There is an injury on one of its scales that with enough force, will allow me to deeply impale it with my poison spear and kill it, yet due to where the scale was, it would become extremely hard accurately locate and confirm the scale’s existence.

‘I need to get closer without getting hit… Think Ezra, think! What would I have done if the creature in front of me was an elf?’

‘Where are you?’ The creature once again used its ability that allowed it to speak into the minds of other people in their language nonetheless.

Even though I didn’t say a single word, I felt its eyes move closer and closer to my location before eventually…

“Found you…” Its voice boomed, barely giving me enough time to roll into safety and evade the sound attack by a hairsbreadth.

‘Think!’ I shouted at myself. What would have Dad done? He’s a fighting genius, right? What would have he done if he was in this situation with the same amount of power as me?’ I asked myself while dodging continuously and evading all the sound waves coming my way by simply feeling out the dread and moving in the direction it willed me to move.

‘Think! Think!’ my life flashed before my eyes whole the dread reached the same level it had reached when I died to it the first time.

‘I’m not about to die to this thing… Not know and not ever!’ I positioned my legs into a running one which would allow me to gather a burst of energy from the start whole giving me a boost in momentum that wouldn’t stop until my sprint was over.

*Boom*

*Swoosh*

My body turned into a blur for the umpteenth time today, but instead of evading as I had done for the last 7 minutes or so, I instead ran straight at the danger while wielding my spear.

“So you’ve lost your mind now!?” It asked with mockery. Simultaneously, it used the sound that came out of its mouth to direct another attack toward me, shooting a sound wave that decimated the ground and left a trail wherever it moved.

Unlike the creature in front of me, however, I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Using the combination of both the dread I was feeling as well as my eyes, I quickly rolled to the side before it could even shoot the attack at me.

*Boom*

Even then I didn’t completely avoid the attack since I couldn’t move and react in time, but after cranking my head back to see what was left of the area the sound wave hit, I could only sigh in relief and run as fast as possible.

*Roar!*

The T-Rex let out several roars and aimed all of them at me.

Feeling the dread beforehand, I found that the only way was to duck, causing me to jump up to gain momentum before sliding down and narrowly evading the attack.

‘How do you keep dodging! You’re not even that fast!’ It roared into my mind, yet answering its question was the least of my priorities.

I kept dodging by rolling, ducking, and sliding away from the attack, and while I would still feel the shockwave, it was a lot better than being hit directly.

I was now around 20 meters away and I could even feel the intense killing intent coming out of the creature in front of me like never before.

I quickly analyzed it with my eyes, trying to find a weak point until…

[Ability discovered]

[New skill unlocked]

[Discovered ability: Blood Eyes]

[Description: Gives the user the ability to see features of a living creature that would have not been visible otherwise. Blood Eyes will automatically activate when the Immortal meets the conditions.]

[Cost: Starting cost of 5 mana for a manual activation, and 1 mana for every 10 minutes it is active.

The amount of mana needed will multiply depending on the level of the Blood Eyes (Example: Level 3 Blood eyes would take 15 mana points to activate while taking 3 mana points every minute. Automatic activation does not require mana to activate the eyes, but requires mana to supply the eyes every 10 minutes)]

[Conditions for automatic activation: –

-Burst of emotion

-Extreme Bloodlust ]

[Unlocked Skill: Blood Eyes – Pinpoint]

[Description: Allows the user to easily identify weak spots on the bodies of their enemies. This will show up as a distinct red cross indicating the area of the weak spot but does not explain why it is a weak spot, nor how it could be used.]

[Cost: 1 mana per minute]

Without hesitation, I activated my new skill ‘pinpoint’, and immediately dashed to the left to dodge the incoming strike.

I could see my vision flicker for a bit, but after a while, I couldn’t it stabilized and allowed me to look at the T-Rex. Now that I had the skill and had activated it, many of the things that I had been struggling to see became a lot more clear now.

All the areas, from the eyes to the throat lit up with a distinct red cross on that area.

I quickly dashed forwards once again, yet this time it wasn’t intentional.

I felt like my body was moving on its own even though it was technically doing what I desired to do. It was following my desires and forcing me to move forward, and so I did…

Images of places and memories I’ve never experienced or seen before appeared in my mind while simultaneously, an uncontrollable killing intent left my body and seeped into everything around me, shaking them to the core.

‘This killing intent…’ The T-Rex shuddered but wasn’t too bothered by the sudden change in the atmosphere until…

‘Why does everything have a red tint to it?’ It thought to itself before a screen only I was familiar with appeared out of thin air in front of it for no one by the T-Rex to see.

[Your fate has been sealed]

[The Immortal Ezra —– has activated ‘Deathlock’]

‘Huh? What is that supposed to mea-‘ It couldn’t even finish its thought since the meaning of those words hit it like a truck without warning.

A suffocating killing intent dropped onto its shoulders with the weight of the moon, making it unable to move a single inch while watching me close the distance between us within mere seconds.

It wanted to open its maw but it couldn’t.

It wanted to roar and get out of this situation but it couldn’t.

It wanted to survive but… It seemed like its fate had been locked and it knew that.

For some reason, its mind automatically believed the system like a message but it still tried to find a way to survive and struggle until the end.

I on the other hand was becoming more numb. My movements all felt wasteful and meaningless, while the spear in my hand felt lighter than it had ever felt before.

Suddenly, it felt like a beam of white light hit me before finding myself in a completely different location.

I felt suspended, trapped and unable to speak, move or think freely. All I could do was observe in the state that I had been put in, yet unlike what I would feel whenever I died, this time I could actually see through the eyes of something… Or someone?

A man, or at least what looked like one, stood atop a mountain of corpses and held a Suguyari spear in his right hand while simply holding his left palm out in a way that would signify he was ready to battle anyone who stood in his path.

下一页

Annihilation Beam

A man, or at least what looked like one, stood atop a mountain of corpses and held a Suguyari spear in his right hand while simply holding his left palm out in a way that would signify he was ready to battle anyone who stood in his path.

Thousands upon thousands of men looked at the man with fear in their eyes, while some even dropped to their knees out of either awe of his power, or terror that they might be next.

The aura he released would go unrivaled. It was one filled with bloodlust and rage, as well as the bottomless intent to kill that seemed to seep into his enemies and make them more susceptible to their minds.

However, within all the bloodlust stood the resemblance of a broken man. One who just wanted to avenge. One who just wanted to see his family again, living a happy life far away from all the havoc created when the 3 kingdoms clash.

“Guan Yu! Why have you done this! Why do you insist on resisting the sun!? Look where Resistance has gotten you! It has left you in the gutter! Look at you! Because of your foolishness you have no wife nor chi-” The man couldn’t finish his sentence since a blade had already impaled his throat before releasing some kind of toxin that killed him on the spot.

“Guan Yu! How dare you!” Another roared before slamming their foot on the ground and catapulting themselves towards me, or to be specific, the body through which I was observing everything.

The man, Guan Yu, didn’t seem to care about the raging ‘animal’, or at least that was what he thought of him at that moment. He was him as a raging animal who did not deserve an ounce of sympathy, especially after siding with the kingdom rather than him.

“We used to be close…” I felt my lips move but instead of hearing my voice, I heard the voice of Guan Yu. Being in his body was like inhabiting a completely different world.

Not only were his moves so much more efficient than my own, but there was also a certain grace to his every move.

Everything from his steps to his facial expressions felt graceful, but my amazement didn’t stop there.

*BOOM*

*SWOOSH*

Pushing his foot forward, he took a single step that catapulted him through the air and in the direction of the incoming man.

After having stepped forward, many of the corpses from the mountain he had created were kicked up, almost like it was their own dust cloud created to replace dust for bodies.

His body flashed from its place and appeared in front of the incoming man. The veins on his hands bulged as he held the Suguyari tightly.

The incoming man finally looked up to see the absolute behemoth that lay in front of him. A power beyond his understanding… A power beyond humanity’s understanding…

“An Ascender…” The man quietly muttered having already accepted his fate.

I watched through Guan Yu’s eyes as the man closed his eyes.

And so, Guan Yu pushed his spear, the Suguyari, forwards with all his might.

His spear seemed to explode with a dark red energy filled to the brim with negative emotions. Hundreds, if not thousands of illusory faces appeared within the energy, yet even that was not as terrifying as the scream of terror, created out of the voices of millions of people.

This sudden spike in energy and power shocked Guan Yu for a moment, but his face went back to his determined expression even though it was now tainted with a distinct evil.

Finally, the spear touched the man’s chest…

***

The winds howled and the skies roared with thunder and rain.

Lighting bolts lit up the dark sky white the clouds seemed to be black holes of their own, sucking in all the light and making sure not a single ray of sunlight hit the forest below.

Thousands of creatures could be seen fighting for their lives, each and every one of them roared, screeching and crying whether that would be due to pain or anger.

All of them let out distinct war cries, yet not one was as loud and sky-shaking as the roar of the beast that stood above the canopy and looked over the trees to meet the eyes of a white snake with red runes engraved occasionally throughout its scales.

While one would think that these engravings would have been a weak spot for the snake, reality begged to differ.

Every time the towering tentacled creature tried to hit the snake in those areas, it would constantly feel a scorching pain, as if the intention alone could cause it to burn and turn into ashes.

They looked at each other without blinking, the snake being moderately unharmed so far while the towering creature could be seen bleeding from several areas, blood pouring out like crimson waterfalls, while the poison inside its system had begun to take effect weakening it even further.

‘I can still feel the energy, but it’s not coming from this thing…’ The snake thought to itself while analyzing the creature for any resemblance.

*BOOOOM*

Suddenly, they both turned their heads and looked in a certain direction.

A huge torrent of dark red energy flowed from the area and created havoc while wilting all the plants around it. Hundreds of trees could be seen aging and decomposing, every time the red energy passed through them, but what came after was the real reason why both the ginormous creatures widened their eyes in horror.

A red and black beam of light shot through and decimated the forest before it, turning most of the trees and animals in the way into cinders while incinerating the tip of a mountain in the distance before beaming into the sky.

The behemoths weren’t the only ones who looked towards the energy. In fact, every single creature that could either hear or feel the energy had looked at it, creating a ceasefire for a couple of moments, allowing everyone to understand what just happened.

Not wanting to waste any more time, the snake opened its maw and created a white ball of energy with the center of it being

The color red.

Instantly, it let out the beam of energy and shot the tentacled creature in front of it through the chest, killing it instantly and forcing it to fall back into the forest, and decimating it even more than it already has.

‘I must see…’ The snake dropped to the ground and blitzed through the forest as fast as possible and eventually appeared in the area where the attack had been shot.

There it saw a man shrouded in dark red energy that formed into something similar to the armors its saw some of the bipedal creatures wearing.

Looking toward its hand, it could see a spear of sorts also shrouded in the red energy and pointed towards the torsoless corpse of a Tyrannosaurus. The only things that remained of it were the legs and tail, yet even those couldn’t let out blood since they were instantly cauterized by the beam.

The snake’s eyes widened, not in shock this time but in fear.

It couldn’t gauge the power of the thing that stood before it, but for some reason, it felt like it was looking at a titan rather than a small bipedal.

It could only watch as the figure’s spear lost the red energy and turned into the dust before flying away with the winds.

“I need to leave-” It choked on its own sentence and stopped speaking mid-way.

The red energy was slowly peeling off the figure while the armor slowly uncovered itself to look like pieces of bone roped together to make some armor, yet even that turned into ashes the moment the red energy left.

This went on until eventually, the red energy had completely dissipated while leaving a strange feeling of emptiness around it.

***

I slowly opened my eyes to see nothing but darkness in front of me. Dark crimson darkness seemed to swallow my being whole, leaving me defenseless and suspended in an area I could not even comprehend or understand.

Everything before me felt empty while I myself felt exposed.

‘To think I’d still feel so vulnerable after such a long time… I guess it’s a feeling you can never get used to.’ I tried to smile but was immediately taken out of my trance and thrown into another world. A world of brightness? A world of sunlight?

According to my vision, everything I just said was completely wrong. In fact, the place I had been thrown to was the complete opposite. It was pretty much pitch black due to the thick clouds, the only source of light being the occasional lightning strike.

‘I guess my Blood Eyes ability just ended…’ I concluded and looked forward.

Simultaneously, a lightning bolt lit up the area, allowing me to see what was in front of me for a millisecond.

My eyes widened in shock when I saw red energy leave my spear and turn into dust. At the same time, the thing that caught my eyes the most was the corpse of the T-Rex that I was fighting, laying in front of me dead with everything from the waste up seemingly incinerated out of existence.

[You have killed a Prime Tyrannosaurus Ancestor]

[You have gained +3000 EXP]

‘What’s going on!’ I tried to step back, but it was only then that I felt my body get a little lighter.

The bone armor that I had worked for weeks to craft and obtain turned into ashes before my very eyes. While yes, the chest piece and vambraces had shattered after having taken a hit, I still had the headgear and everything below, yet now it just turned into ashes without me even knowing why.

Suddenly, an intense feeling of dread overcame me and forced me to look to my right.

My eyes locked with two enormous yellow eyes with slits for pupils. Yet even though I was scared of it, I could see a deep fear within its eyes too.

It was weary of me the same way I was weary of it.

‘I guess I’ll be dying today after all.’

下一页

Mind Games

My eyes locked with the slit-like pupils of the snake.

I watched its head drop a few degrees before looking up again, allowing me to once again lock with its scrutinizing gaze. Yet even with the scrutiny within its gaze, there was one thing I could recognize. It was something that shone within its eyes brighter than any other feeling it was currently going through. It also happened to be a feeling that I had become too familiar with in the last 5 weeks of my life.

It was feeling fear.

Once I saw its hesitation, I finally snapped out of my trance and let out a wry smile.

‘I have to show it that I’m confident.’ I told myself while seriously pondering over my chances.