Fluffy Friends and Training Frenzy
Time passed, and the cave I called my hideout had changed a great deal.
I had leveled the ground inside, and a bed and other furniture now sat neatly in place. The entrance, sealed with a wall of charcoal mixed with clay and fitted with a wooden door, finally looked like somewhere a person actually lived.
What would I have done without real crafting mastery? I would have ended up living like a caveman…
As for clothes, I hunted more than a few animals nearby and made rawhide garments, stacking the rest of the hides, carefully dried, in a cool place.
Ahh… Do you know the rapture of escaping Pants Man status? It was the kind of joy you cannot put into words.
Food, next, overflowed — enough that I built a pantry deep in the cave just to store it all.
And last…
Whoosh! Whoosh!!!
I forged swords, spears, bows, and shields, swinging every kind of weapon as I trained. Choosing this place for training turned out to be a stroke of genius. Day by day my handling of each weapon, the flow between movements, and the speed of my swings improved so clearly you could see it. Whenever a motion was wrong or inefficient, the mastery for that weapon would toss me scraps of knowledge, and I grew even faster.
Control over my strength was coming along smoothly, too. I could already run and jump at whatever speed I wanted.
The way I tested weapons and power was on the animals around me — and I had never seen beasts so strange. A wild boar the size of a bus. A lizard that looked like a giant boulder. Truly a wondrous wild world. Looking at creatures like that, maybe traveling the world wouldn’t be such a bad choice. Isn’t there romance in seeing and experiencing all sorts of things?
Either way, training was pure joy every single day, because the growth was right there in front of my eyes.
Living in this body, I also found its bodily functions curious. At most I might go once a week, if that. And even after eating that much meat, so little came out. Truly the demon meant to destroy the world, I suppose — planning to devour everything until nothing remains. Terrifying.
Magic and skills I trained to use together with my weapon techniques. For example: flinging a basic spell like Ice Bolt, then activating Dash and swinging a sword or spear. Could I get even more creative with it? I pondered that every day.
I was living this unwearying life when one issue arose.
"Screee!!! Skreee!!!! Screee!!"
"Woof!!"
A hawk and a wolf were living in my house.
The hawk dive-bombed the wolf’s head at high speed and darted away; the wolf scrambled after him, desperate to catch up. They were playing just fine.
That male black hawk, head roughly the size of my own, was named Hugin. The name came from Huginn and Muninn, Odin’s ravens in Norse myth. I met him while exploring the forest, drawn by a strange presence beneath a great tree root. One wing and one leg were broken, a great many feathers torn out; he lay wheezing and dying. It looked as if he had fought another bird in the sky, fallen, and been injured.
At first I thought, Oh, free food! — but living alone in the mountains must have left me lonely. I brought him home and kept treating him with the basic spell Healing. After some time he was healthy enough to fly on his own, so I figured I should release him and sent him off from a high branch.
The next day, though, he showed up at the house and started living with me. Sometimes he even brought me berries. After that, we became friends. If this guy ever finds a mate, I’ll name her Munin.
The white wolf’s name was Hati. Male, like Hugin. His name came from the wolves Hati and Skoll in Norse myth.
One day Hugin — the same Hugin currently tormenting Hati over there — started squawking and led me somewhere. He guided me deep into the forest, and wow: two black wolves the size of houses lay dead. Looking closer, even the pups were dead. The wounds looked like something horned had gored them; holes that huge meant they had fought something enormous. If someone punches a donut that size through you, of course you die…
Still — why kill them and not eat them?
Curiosity was just starting to prick when —
"Skree!"
— Hugin circled a spot some distance away, calling me. I went to see what he wanted, and there it was: a white wolf pup? He was tiny — two or three times smaller than the black wolves’ pups.
"An albino?"
Some animals suffer from albinism; was this one of them? Small frame, and found so far from his family — he had probably been abandoned. Heaven was heartless: right after this little one was cast out, his family was attacked and killed. Truly a child of cruel fate.
"Whine… whine."
When I held out my hand he whimpered and came closer — unbearably cute.
"Want to come with me?"
"Whine!"
"Alright… let’s go together."
I scooped up the ball of white fluff.
"So this is why you called me."
"Skree!"
"Yeah, yeah, you’re a good boy."
Hugin, though — he seemed as sharp as a person. He understood everything I said, and bringing me here for the little one’s sake showed a deep heart.
"Our fluffy friend! Your name is Hati! If you ever find a mate, her name will be Skoll."
In the myths Hati and Skoll are brothers, but here I decided they would be lifelong partners.
There was nothing useful on the wolf corpses. They were old enough to be crawling with maggots, and the pelts were riddled with huge holes, so they weren’t worth taking. Leave them, and the forest’s cleaners would handle the rest.
Once we reached the hideout, Hati thrived on Hugin’s and my affection — and on the blood and flesh of animals — and grew… until he was as big as a person. He grew almost too well…
"Woof woof!!! Woof woof!!!"
Listen to that voice — a born general.
Hati sometimes left the hideout and brought back deer or boar. Was he a wolf who repaid kindness? Fully grown, and he still stayed. Strangely, he followed Hugin even more than me. Even when Hugin teased him like that, if Hugin was nearby Hati just licked him or shared food. He must have recognized Hugin as the benefactor who saved him.
And Hati was incredibly smart, too. Not quite on Hugin’s level, but he understood everything I said and showed every sign of thinking things through.
So the three of us lived together in the hideout. Sometimes, living alone in the mountains, I would feel a hollow chill in my side. Whenever that happened and I looked up at the sky from the peak, the two of them would quietly come find me and watch the sky at my side.
If I had never met them, I would have abandoned even half of half my training and gone looking for people long ago. Truly grateful friends.
Time flowed on.
My animal friends grew healthier, stronger, and tougher by the day. Hugin especially was astonishing. Watching him tear an animal apart with his talons in a high-altitude dive made a genuine wow slip out of me. Hati’s strength seemed to climb every day as well. And neither of them showed any aging curve from old age. They just kept getting stronger — still young, I guess…
And me? Earlier I had tried weaving magic and skills together creatively, and the results were showing now.
Among the basic spells was something called Magic Staff, remember? A technique that reinforces a staff so you can bludgeon mobs with it — the time-honored main skill of force-mage Gandalf types. But what if you applied it to other weapons?
In the game you could only reinforce a staff. This, however, was reality.
Magic Knife — a spell that shaped a knife from pure mana.
Magic Staff — a spell that made a wooden staff as hard as an iron bar and added extra damage.
I worked to combine the two into a technique I called Magic Weapon.
"Hmmm…"
I succeeded.
Threads of mana gathered and coiled around the blade; a sharp, warm aura lingered, glowing faintly.
Yes!!! I had seized this world’s version of Sword Aura!!
And the magic could stack. What happened when it stacked?
"Huuuummmmm!!!"
Stars fell upon the blade.
Yes — this was Sword Aura Star Force!!! Or for short: Sword Force!
This was wuxia! Why do people love wuxia? Not because the weapon makes you strong, but because the martial artist himself grows stronger, and the result of that realm appears right before your eyes! The overwhelming spectacle of a master slaughtering enemies with nothing but a twig!!!
Ha!!! This is wuxia!!! This is romance!!!
I kept training Magic Weapon — no, Sword Aura — until I could apply it to every weapon technique and use it fluently. Practicality needed no explanation. On a nearby cliff I held back my strength and swung with Sword Force alone, and a long diagonal scar carved itself across the rock face. Hugin and Hati froze at the sight, then fawned on me even harder. As expected — power pays dividends and then some!
I could also freely control my stats up to thirty now. Compared to the awkward, tottering walk when I was first summoned here, it was a quantum leap…
Lastly, I still couldn’t confirm the divine power I had thought so hard about. If it was the divine power from the game, it would be something like a panic button that nullifies damage and grants a few seconds of invincibility when you’re near death so you can dodge a pattern — or passives that let you hit a god-type boss. Nothing I could test. I wasn’t about to drive a knife into my own heart just to check.
Training was done. Time to leave. It was time to descend the mountain.
I was finally escaping Green Hell, a place of nothing but mountain and forest… but I had grown too attached after so long with these friends. I would have loved to take them with me, but I had to ask — they might not want to go.
In the hideout I spoke to Hugin and Hati.
"Living here in peace wouldn’t be bad either, but… won’t you come see the world with me?"
Hugin and Hati flinched at my words.
"It could be pretty dangerous. But in exchange, you’ll see a lot, and you’ll grow."
The two animal friends thought it over. Deep down I fretted that they might refuse and we would go our separate ways — but luckily, both seemed to have decided to come with me. Hugin answered by settling on my shoulder. Hati, thrilled by the word journey, started bouncing up and down.
I laughed at their reactions.
"Alright! Let’s go out into the world!"
"Screeeee!!"
"Woof woof!!!"
I began packing up life in the cave. I might return someday, so I stored the rest of my goods in the pantry and burned what I didn’t need. Then I made a leather pack bigger than a double backpack and filled it with daily necessities and other supplies — silver coins, smoked meat, a sleeping bag, spare clothes, even a leather tent… Looking at it all, there was quite a lot to take.
When I lifted the stuffed bag, though, it felt no heavier than a light shoulder bag.
For a weapon I took a very hard wooden sword carved from a tree blackened by fire, to serve as both weapon and walking stick. I had tested it on plenty of animals and even loaded it with Sword Aura; until I could get a decent iron weapon outside, this would do.
Last of all I fitted a wooden mask over my face.
As far as I could tell, I was ridiculously good-looking. I didn’t know this world’s standards of beauty, or even what era I was in, but I remembered the scene from my first day. The corpses’ clothes had been filthy rags, stitched together like patchwork — so I had probably dropped into a backward age. Being handsome then would do me no favors. I’d be branded a demon for bewitching people, or treated like a male prostitute. Worse, some elite bastard would try to force himself on me… Better to hide the face.
And so — me, fully armed!
Rough, thick rawhide clothes and a leather robe; a wooden staff about a meter long; a wooden mask suspicious enough to raise every red flag — I looked like a terrifying, heretical monk. Add a black hawk the size of a human head and a white wolf the size of a man, and any bandit or mountain thief who saw me would think five extra times before picking a fight. Don’t they say looks do half the work already?
I was thoroughly satisfied with the look.
And so, with my fluffy friends at my side, I began the descent.