Surviving the Primeval Era (2)
"Mana really rises at a damn crawl, doesn't it?"
With practiced ease, I shaved down the tip of a wooden spear before slathering mud across my face and bare skin. I wasn't entirely certain how well it worked, but it seemed effective enough at masking my scent.
A full week had already slipped by since I was dumped into this world. In that short span, my body had undergone several spurts of rapid growth. At this point, I felt as though I could put up a decent fight against something like that raptor I had encountered on my first day—not that I had any intention of playing fair and squaring up with one in close quarters.
Hand-to-hand combat had become something of a personal trauma. In the very beginning, taking down a random beast with my bare hands had been a colossal mistake. The physical disparity between us had been clear; I could have simply choked the life out of it or snapped its neck with minimal fuss. But driven by the raw nerves and adrenaline of killing a living creature for the first time, I had brought my fist down far harder than necessary.
And I nearly died for it. Truly, genuinely died.
Like any proper carnivores, the predators roaming this land were meticulously wired to pick up the faintest scent of spilled blood. If I hadn't stumbled upon a swamp in the nick of time, if I had hesitated for even a split second before leaping into the mire, or if the hulking brute pursuing me hadn't been far too heavy to wade into the muck without sinking... well, I would have been slaughtered. One hundred percent.
Ever since that ordeal, I had completely overhauled my approach to hunting. Now I scraped by at a safe distance, chucking stones and hurling spears. The hit rate was nothing to write home about, but safety always took precedence. Safety first, safety second, safety always.
Right on cue, Belba peered at me with evident curiosity.
"I've noticed this before, but your body really is quite extraordinary."
"Extraordinary how?"
"Even when you absorb a specimen that specializes heavily in one particular area, your growth remains almost entirely balanced. If you kill a beast with overgrown leg muscles, your overall muscular power still increases evenly across your entire frame. Yet when an ability surpasses mere physical prowess and develops into a full-fledged trait, you assimilate it undiluted without losing a shred of its potency..."
She rattled off words at breakneck speed, yet her enunciation remained utterly flawless. If she had been back on Earth, she probably could have made a decent living as a rapper.
"Get to the point. Say it in plain words."
"It means your efficiency is absurdly high. You're an absolute walking cheat code."
"You should have just led with that."
Even without her commentary, I knew my body was far from normal. Whether it was an aftereffect of dimensional transit or something else entirely, putting on this much strength in a single week was beyond the realm of ordinary biology.
Holding my breath, I activated the skill I had harvested from a bizarre quadrupedal dinosaur a few days ago. The moment it took effect, my presence dissolved into the air, and my breathing grew imperceptibly faint.
"Hey, compile a neat little list of these traits for me later, will you?"
Leaving the request with Belba, I began shimmying up a tree trunk. With my current grip strength, I could scale a tree several dozen meters tall using nothing but my hands. I had worried that packing on more muscle might drag my body weight up with it, but thankfully, that hadn't been the case. Still, it made me wonder if there was an ability somewhere out there that let you manipulate your weight at will. That would certainly come in handy.
Phew.
Looking down from up high felt wonderfully refreshing. Catching the cool breeze while gazing out across the dense canopy of the jungle brought a momentary swell of peace to my chest. Lately, however, the metallic tang of blood had begun appealing to me far more than the scenery.
The realization that taking a life directly correlated to becoming stronger and safer was powerful enough to condition a human being in some deeply twisted directions. Then again, that very conditioning was the sole reason I was still breathing.
"Look down there. Isn't that little guy already logged in my compendium?"
"Indeed it is. You've recorded it previously."
Down below, amidst the undergrowth, a tiny creature was fidgeting about. I recognized it immediately. It looked like a cross between a raptor hatchling and a squirrel, possessing twitchy, lightning-fast reflexes and the ability to discharge electricity.
A Zap-Squirrel.
Fortunately, it lacked any ranged capabilities and couldn't climb trees to save its life. As long as I pelted it from above with projectiles, it made for a completely risk-free target. Hitting something so nimble was a pain in the neck, but beggars couldn't be choosers.
Clack.
I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out a palm-sized stone. Perhaps out of some minimal regard for human dignity, I had been transported into this wilderness with a basic set of clothes, which now served as my sole makeshift inventory. Remembering that fact brought another pang of longing. If only I had a proper dimensional inventory, the quality of my life would have skyrocketed.
"Terribly sorry for the lack of amenities," my knockoff status screen chimed in apologetically.
Brushing off Belba's sarcasm, I let the stone drop.
Naturally, it missed by a wide margin. Not that it mattered. The first throw almost never connected anyway; the real hunt began right after.
Predictably, the creature coated its tiny frame in crackling static, bared its sharp little fangs, and glared directly up at my perch. It truly was a fascinating beast. Surviving at that size in a brutal ecosystem like this must have been an uphill battle, yet nearly every one of these electric rodents shared the exact same fiercely aggressive temper.
"Shall I translate its chirps for you again?" Belba asked.
"Don't bother. It's bound to be a string of profanities just like last time."
"Spot on!"
Did she really need to sound so cheerful about it?
Scowling, I hurled another rock. The creature swerved effortlessly, dodging the projectile with insulting ease. It was still leagues faster than me.
Lately, seeing that kind of agility stirred impatience rather than fear. Despite all the blood I had spilled, I remained desperately weak. Could taking down insignificant small fry like this ever grant me the explosive growth I needed? The longer I survived, and the more routine staying alive became, the more an itch gnawed at the back of my mind—a reckless, swelling desire to clash against something genuinely formidable. It was a suicidal impulse, yet dangerously alluring.
"You ought to exercise cautious judgment," Belba warned.
Caution was well and good. But every now and then, the futility of it all crept in. What was the point of living like this? Slinking through the brush to evade apex predators, sustaining myself on mindless beasts devoid of intellect or proper resistance... it was suffocatingly dull. I needed a clear objective.
Down below, the creature finally ran out of stamina and took a blunt stone directly to the skull, twitching once before going limp. Yet when its essence washed over me, the resulting change was microscopic.
After a moment of brooding silence, I climbed down from the branches. Ignoring Belba's frantic protests and pleas to reconsider, I firmly gripped my sharpened wooden spear.
"Urrgh..."
"See? What did I tell you? You could have waited until you developed your strength a bit more before picking that fight."
I would have loved to snap back, but the sheer agony tearing through my midsection robbed me of the breath to speak. The raptor's sickle claw had punched clean through my abdomen, delivering not just blinding pain, but a freezing splash of cold reality. If I fought like this, one single slip would send me straight to the grave. If that taloned foot had struck my throat, my skull, or my heart instead of my stomach, would I even be lying here right now?
I had screwed up big time.
Fortunately, slaying the raptor had triggered another explosive surge of growth, rapidly knitting the torn flesh and sealing the worst of the trauma. Even so, moving was an ordeal. Bracing my core or putting any tension on my abdominal wall sent spikes of white-hot agony through my gut. It was an absolute miracle that I had managed to crawl my way into this rocky crevice.
A faint chime rang out as Belba spoke up again.
"I've discovered another distinctive trait."
What is it this time?
"Whenever your growth surpasses a certain threshold, your physical vessel undergoes a comprehensive realignment."
So it's basically a level up.
Truthfully, I had already suspected as much. The noticeable gaps between my strength, agility, and stamina had narrowed significantly, leveling out across the board. More importantly, my mana stat had taken a massive leap forward.
Could my dream of wielding an Aura Blade actually come true?
"And what might that be?"
I conjured a rough mental image of a shining blade clad in shimmering mana. Having asked for permission before reading the thought, Belba let out a distinctly derisive chuckle.
"My, aren't we ambitious? Even entities possessing mana in the hundreds struggle to manifest a parlor trick of that caliber."
"You little punk..."
She was getting awfully cheeky lately. Did becoming familiar with me give her free rein to show her true colors?
Still, I knew she wasn't wrong. Expecting to pull off advanced techniques when I hadn't the faintest clue what mana actually felt like was the height of shamelessness. But there was no harm in giving it a shot while I was stuck lying down anyway.
I shut my eyes and focused inward, probing for the energy dormant inside my flesh. Thanks to the sudden burst of growth, I could detect something foreign nestled within me, lingering like an unswallowed lump of phlegm at the back of the throat. A rather gross analogy, perhaps, but fitting.
I concentrated on it for a long while, but the foreign mass refused to budge. All I got for my trouble was a throbbing headache. Staring at it passively wasn't going to accomplish a thing. But when I shifted my intent from simply moving it to giving it a firm mental nudge, the lump stirred ever so slightly.
"Oh...?" Belba murmured.
Fashioning an invisible hand from pure imagination, I pressed down hard on the concentrated knot of mana, pumping it like chest compressions during CPR. Under the force, the clump burst outward in a sudden rush, surging through my body along a defined network of channels. Branching and twisting like the intricate root system of an ancient baobab tree, it mirrored the path of blood vessels while existing on an entirely different plane.
So these are mana circuits.
The staple trope from countless fantasy novels and comics had taken physical form inside my own chest. To think something born of fictional human imagination actually existed in reality.
Unfortunately, the excruciating agony those stories often described was just as real.
"Ngh... kkh!"
Terrified that crying out would draw every predator within miles, I bit down hard on my own forearm. Warm blood welled between my clenched teeth. Every time the turbulent mana carved its way through a blockage, my entire body convulsed, and cold sweat poured off me in sheets. I had never experienced such wretched pain in all my life.
Yet as the raw energy tore through my interior, my senses grew unnervingly sharp—and the rampant mana circulating through my flesh had long since spiraled far beyond my control.