My body burned with inner heat. Sweat poured down my face. There was, I briefly imagined, smoke coming out of my ears and nose as I kept myself close to the creature’s back, holding on for my dear life.

  I was riding an Eagle.

  No big deal.

  It just so happened that the creature had been trying to work my body into tiny scraps a minute ago, but somehow, I climbed on its back and ruffled its feathers, swung myself round and scratched at its chin, knowing too well how depressed it actually felt, made a few comments about it, and it just… worked.

  “There’s always the next girl, you know?” I muttered shakily as the Eagle banked downward and toward the canopy, tilting its beak to take a glance at me. “And it’s not like I was the one who started that whole thing. Your girl took a swing at me. That changes things.”

  There was a faint murmur in my head, like a voice too distant for me to actually hear, but I could somehow understand it. That voice had generously informed me about this situation. As in, it knew this particular Golden Taloned Eagle was a troubled individual, and that so long as I remained on its back, calm and somewhat steady, it would refrain from tearing me into pieces.

  How, you ask?

  Damned if I know.

  I just listened to my inner voice and kept myself glued on the surprisingly soft feathers. There was the breeze brushing past my blond hair, and the clear sky stretching as far as I could see in the distance.

  This was a highly unexpected situation.

  What the hell was I supposed to do here?

  “Getting her Core won’t make a difference. It won’t bring her back. What’s done is done,” I said, the Eagle tilting once again its beak, blinking its fiery eyes round as if in understanding. Its head dipped a little, which oddly looked like a nod to me. “We have to move on. Make the best of it with what we’ve got in our hands.”

  That was true on many levels. Make the best of it part, I meant. I had a strange, chaotic mother and a host of problematic people around me. I had a mansion and a future too complicated for me to process. I had, to my knowledge, certain things expected of me, of which many likely would have me become a Celestial, if not more.

  Those were weights I’d been carrying in this second life without knowing. I got used to them. I learned with difficulty that certain people came with their own set of bags. Mother had them plenty. Radek’s past was full of solitude and pain. Belfray… well, Belfray had once told me he’d been called The Reaper back in the day, but it was hard to think of him as a killer getting his hands bloody on the battlefield.

  And yet, they moved on. Sort of. Life continued without giving a single flying fuck about your past.

  So what’s a man supposed to do when he’s faced with difficulties?

  Take them on, and deal with them.

  Maybe tell someone about them if he can.

  My body was still burning.

  “I could’ve died,” I muttered. Strange how easy it was to open up to a Golden Taloned Eagle. “I’ve lost control for just a second, yet that second would’ve had me killed if not for Radek’s treasure. I can’t stop thinking about it. Would there be a third life if I died?”

  Better not take the risk, in my opinion.

  I pulled at the feathers on the Eagle’s wide back, turned them a little to the left, the humongous beast gently swiveling toward an opening in the forest as though it understood my intentions. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I couldn’t trust this beast for long. I had to get down. Get away from it as soon as I could.

  “But I have to say that making mistakes felt good,” I continued, peering out into the forest, trying to decide on which opening I should land at as I kept blabbering. “I’d always feared them. Scared that a single missed step would be the end of me. That was how I lived back in my first life. Promised myself that I won’t take any risks. Turned out a life without risks wasn’t much of a life, after all. It gets boring.”

  It gets tedious and gray.

  The monotony of a day-to-day provided comfort for some. That was the main motivation behind my after-college days. Since I’d lived through hell in high school and college, I was firmly dedicated to creating my own little space and isolating myself from everything that could bring any unwanted troubles to my door.

  It worked. Perhaps a bit too much. It kept me safe from everything, in a small box where nothing hardly ever changed. That also meant I didn’t get to experience new things. I didn’t get to meet new people and have those happy little accidents that brought people together.

  In a way, I didn’t live a life past college. I just existed.

  It was the complete opposite in this life.

  I had a Mother who seemed decisively fixated on making a Knight out of me. I had teachers and people who felt like they were only there so I could be trained in the most optimal way possible. Even if there were some human interactions, they felt hollow at best, like snacks you’d eat even though you don’t really want anything.

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  The talk with Mother helped, but people didn’t change overnight. Certain habits were hard to shed. Expecting her to become someone else wasn’t realistic. She and all the others in the mansion had their flaws.

  Like me.

  Shivers ran down my spine. The heat intensified all around my skin, then suddenly began receding. I panicked as I looked down. There was still some distance from the ground. The Eagle was taking its time.

  I tried to reach that inner voice within me, to hear if it had anything to say. It was gone. The faint murmur wasn’t there when I probed my mind, which was when the Golden Taloned Eagle underneath me began to wriggle as if in discomfort. It jerked its head around, clacking its beak repeatedly and swaying out of the route.

  Okay.

  There was only one way out of this.

  I braced myself as the heat left me, eyeing a particularly thick branch that stretched from a long tree. My soul energy had slightly recovered. It was enough for a couple of Soft Anchors.

  “So long, friend,” I said as I patted the Eagle’s back. It answered with a pained shriek, after which it swayed dangerously in the air, nearly making me fall.

  I didn’t take the chance. Beatrice in my hand, and my bag strapped safely to my back, I launched myself off the creature and toward that branch with breath rasping in my chest.

  It was a long drop down the forest, the thick canopy stretching underneath me, the few openings looking like dangerous potholes. I risked an upward glance and saw the Eagle still swaying unbalancedly in the air. Then it stopped for a second and looked down, blinking its fiery eyes in confusion.

  My heart skipped a beat when I thought it would come back to finish the job, but instead, it turned around and flew away. It was gone in a blink.

  I was still falling.

  Activating the Soft Anchor, I grabbed at the overgrown branch with all my strength, grateful for this little body for not breaking the damn thing right away. I swung myself round and landed on top of it with grace, then began my descent with calculated steps.

  It was a day of unexpected things. I had come close to death way too many times to count. It was also the day I, perhaps for the very first time, felt truly alive.

  I couldn’t get enough of this feeling.

  ……

  I spent the rest of the day constantly looking over my shoulder, expecting any moment for a pair of talons to blast through the canopy and catch me like a little worm. The other beasts around the forest didn’t scare me. I just didn’t have time to be worried about them.

  Jogging across the trees, I drew circles upon circles and purposefully kept from following a single route. I even left the river behind and dove deep into the woods, thinking I could use anything at this point.

  The most pressing matter, however, remained the Golden Core. I had to deal with this thing as soon as I could, or else that angry bird could always sniff out my location.

  A safe place, then, it was.

  I found just the spot when I chanced on a cave.

  It wasn’t much of a cave as much as it was an outgrown patch of earth, but it had a ceiling and solid walls. Creeping in, I activated soul vision and scoured the place clean in a few seconds. If there had ever been a creature using this little spot as a den, then it was long gone since there were no signs of life here.

  Once I ensured I was alone inside, I got to work right away. I pulled the Golden Core first, then removed the corpses of the two birds and laid them gently on the ground. They didn’t have much meat. Beyond that, they were little creatures favoring speed, meaning what flesh they had around their bones would be chewy and tough, to say the least.

  What was the thing Mother taught me about unappetizing creatures?

  Boil their meat until you lose patience.

  I didn’t have a pot. I could make one out of clay and some rune work.

  Before that, though, back to the Golden Core.

  This thing looked like a real jewel. It radiated an intense warmth as I held it in my hands. There were golden lights streaking and swirling inside. Back on Earth, I could’ve taken this as a magical sphere, the ones mediums used to deceive people. Here, though, it was a source of internal energy.

  I sucked in a breath, remembering how it felt to absorb a Greytooth’s Core. That beast was a Bronze Rank, not to mention barely an adult. This Golden Taloned Eagle, on the other hand, was the real deal.

  This wouldn’t kill me, right?

  There was no way.

  I braced myself for the inevitable torture session, the Undying still working full-time to fix the bruises I suffered from dancing with eagles. My internal energy reserve was in good condition. The same couldn’t be said about the soul energy department, but I couldn’t afford to wait. I had to do this now.

  Cracking a Golden Core proved a challenge on its own. Working Beatrice’s tip into it took way too much time. Instead, I decided to smash it repeatedly against the solid earthen walls, Soft Anchoring the sphere to my fingers to keep it from slipping. Loud bangs echoed as I maintained the effort and finally earned myself a good crack to work with.

  Then Beatrice tore into the golden sphere.

  Unlike how it was with a Bronze Core, I could now actually see the glimmers of internal energy spilling into the air, like small clouds slowly fading into the distance. Without wasting any time, I swallowed the first chunk after breaking the Core into a hundred pieces.

  It burned a painful way down to my stomach, followed by an audible pop.

  I burped loudly, feeling like I was stuffed with a mountain of meat twice my size. My stomach bulged out, then drew painfully back as an intense sensation spread across my chest. My lungs itched like bastards. I labored a breath and leaned my back against a cold wall, stifling a scream that threatened to tear its way out of my throat.

  Soon, I could hear my own blood like a second heartbeat, ringing loudly in my ears. The pain was excruciating. I would’ve thrashed about and likely fainted had I been my former self, but now, even in this body, the sheer discipline drilled into me by the constant training forced me to manage a straight back.

  I could take it in.

  I could take this much.

  I could—

  Blood poured out of my lips. I couldn’t hold it in. My back arched as I slipped slowly on the ground, turning my head and questing for air. There were little dots in the ceiling looking down at me, tiny bugs reconsidering whether a suffering human child was worth the risk. If it were up to me, I would’ve called them to action and told them to take a bite. Surround me all they want, and feast on me.

  Because anything would be better than this burning, itching, prickling sensation that took hold of me.

  Worse yet, the Undying had to double its efforts to handle this fierce energy. I didn’t swallow the sun. I didn’t swallow the whole thing. It was just a single chunk. How come the difference was this steep?

  The only silver lining was that this would make me strong.

  Yes. If I could live through a hundred of these torture sessions, then I would’ve taken a huge step toward the Silver Rank. It wasn’t a big deal. Then, I had to repeat this nine more times to actually get into the Silver Rank.

  How good was that?

  Easy enough, if you asked me.

  Finally, I couldn’t hold my screams. I let them out one by one, then followed them with all the curses I’d learned in this world. They had weird ones. They liked to curse everyone’s capability. There were some about eyes and legs, but the general practice was to go for one’s lack of strength.

  So, I did that.

  It helped only a little.

  …..