This forest wasn’t one full of activity. There were no cheetahs chasing deer, no sudden lunge from sneaking snakes, and no apes swinging from branch to branch. All the trees weren’t lined up or clustered together, but instead grew wherever they liked, mixing in similar to a ball house for kids. But thanks to that, their canopies also overlapped a lot more, which in a sense benefited the human currently strolling under their shade.

  He moved through the jungle in a good mood, humming his favorite country melodies and shaking his head like a wobble toy. Occasionally, he also threw the medium-length staff in the air, caught it, and spun it around.

  Having no target in mind, Zalanir was just a wanderer, exploring whatever interesting sections or corners he came across. At first, he was rather tense, fearing that he might encounter vicious beasts that were too much for him to handle. But after one-shotting three squirrels and a fox with his earth bolts, he had become more relaxed. The forest wasn’t like the ones in movies he watched on TV. It was serene, and a lot more primal. There was no road cutting through it, and no chopped trees lying in wait to be transported.

  But that didn’t mean he was careless. It was just that Sound Sense was crazy good in this environment. Within a radius of five meters, almost no sound could escape his ears. Unless the danger came from a spider. Just a moment ago, he saw a spider descending from a yellow seed right in front of his face, but he heard nothing. The action of pulling and stretching with its thread somehow invoked no sound. However, that would never become an issue. Those spiders were too small to cause him any harm. And if they were big? He still had his eyes. There was no way he could miss a big spider wanting to attack him.

  “Berry?”

  It was a good distraction to find food in the forest. He wasn’t hungry by any means. Somehow, he was fine without it. In this world, the three meals notion seemed like a foreign concept. His belly had been lazy, or perhaps well-behaved?

  But he wasn’t gonna say no to free food. Those plump berries were just there begging for him to take. Plucking several from the bushes and tossing them into his mouth, he could say that the world had become full. No longer suffering from bland rice balls, he now got the confirmation that this world also had tastes like sweet and sour. These blueberries ate just like their counterparts that he often bought at the mall back home.

  You have eaten [Faninn Blueberry]

  +3 Endurance for half an hour

  These berries were out in the open, free for all to take, so he took them. It was the most obvious and justifiable action to do. So when an antelope charged him from the back (he avoided it without any trouble) and growled in front of the bushes, why did he feel like a thief being caught red-handed?

  Two curvy horns were the nearest parts of its body that looked like they could pose any danger. Other than that, it was just a small orange deer with light flat yellow fur on the belly. It was cute, and using Identify made him even more reluctant to attack.

  [Faninn Juvenile Antelope — Level 20]

  It was looking at the bunch of six berries in his left hand. With an indecent and disgusted look on his face, he threw one into his mouth, causing the cute creature to snarl while jumping back and forth. Seemed like it didn’t want to leave the bushes behind unguarded. If that was the case, then another berry was lost to his belly. And another one. Up until the fourth one, it finally charged in again. He threw the two left-overs up in the air to each side, dodged the charge, and zoomed onto the bushes when the beast was busy catching the first berry. That action got him chased around by the angry and resentful creature for five minutes before it stopped and came back to guard the bushes. Its eyes glowed red. Real red.

  Well, he still got another bunch of blueberries, so it could have its peace for now. Enough playing around, he left the beast there to continue exploring the forest.

  Zalanir returned to the cave he had found earlier when the sun had signaled that was it for the day. He had explored inside up to the place where the light could no longer reach, and had found no danger, so he decided that this would be the place for him to rest for the night. If the dense canopies had been his friend during the day, then they had just made a 180-degree turn and acted as evil at the moment by blocking almost all the moonlight.

  Sitting at the entrance at three times his height, Zalanir could only see stuff in a small circle where the light met an object and formed a circle there, whether it was the earth, a trunk, or a stone. He missed the clear sky and torches back at the pit. He had never thought about it, but the importance of light in this situation had climbed to the top of his priorities. If only he had an additional skill point, he would go back through the notification list and pick the Ball of Light skill that he had considered being useless before. If he had that, he could have more options instead of sitting like an office person waiting for the workday to end.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  ***

  Zalanir woke up suddenly and stared into the red and orange sky hiding behind the green of the crowns. Sweat drenched his back. Huffing for fresh air, he joined his hands to stop them from trembling. The Red Nose had just slit his own throat in the dream while crying like a psycho and looking straight into Zalanir’s eyes. He didn’t kill the man this time, but somehow the way the man finished himself was even more terrifying. Not only that, but the thing that jump-scared Zalanir and caused him to stop sleeping — maybe it was good, since he escaped the nightmare — was the face of the hooded man appearing out of nowhere when the Red Nose broke his head backward. Why did he dream like that?

  Now he couldn’t go back to sleep. Thinking back, he hadn’t even planned to sleep, but instead just leaned back on the wall while guarding against any potential danger. Sighing, he went for a walk. At least the light was coming already.

  The next two days passed by in almost the same manner — except for no sleep. Treating the cave as an anchor, Zalanir explored the west and north, but he found nothing of interest. He did encounter a level 34 jaguar, but couldn’t kill it because the bastard just ran away after getting beaten down by him. He also tried to put Soul Collection and Lantern of Verizss’ia into practice, but was unable to sense any soul. What Verizss’ia did with the two ants looked so easy that he thought he only needed to mimic it, but turned out this stuff was just too abstract.

  Don’t tell me that I need to reach god-grade before I can use it? That would be one hell of a scam. Zalanir thought while lying and staring at a line of moonlight. His hand tossed two blueberries up and ding! they landed right in his open mouth.

  He ignored a soft breath at first, thought that it was just a harmless insect or a worm or something, but then he sat up and gripped the staff when one breath invited many. Something was out there. He checked all the circle spots illuminated by the moonlight, but registered nothing out of the ordinary. Which meant that whatever was out there was using the darkness as a tool. And they surely weren’t amateurs at this stuff.

  He hated this feeling. Having no agency sucked. That was the reason why whenever he faced a player that could bash the ball and rush him, he often did badly. He still remembered an atrocious match in the quarter-final in Australia when his opponent just redlined the first two sets and messed up his rhythm. After that loss, he put all the focus on honing his ball striking ability so that he could have the initiative more than half the time in a match, especially to use that aggression in the opponent’s service game. Putting the pressure on the opponent so that it was less on himself was a lesson he usually repeated to the students throughout the course.

  That was why sitting duck like this was frustrating, but not like he could just move. He needed to find out whether whatever was out there was friend or foe. And in the very likely scenario that they were predatory and could hurt him really badly, he would have to resort to an equally bad option: running and hiding inside the cave.

  Soon, there were sounds of footsteps. Slow, soft, but no doubt heading toward his position. Four. Zalanir counted at least four of them based on their patterns. The one on the left had quickened breaths. The other three were slightly farther away and grouped together. No, he wasn’t sure, because their signals were mingled.

  The one on the left pounced onto the translucent barrier Zalanir had erected in front of his body right at the moment he heard a kick to the ground. The force didn’t break his shield in one go, so at least he wasn’t overpowered. Not yet. Then, he got a glimpse of what the attackers were when a four-legged animal passed over a moonlight circle. Black and white patches of fur. Small. And fast.

  Another one joined the assault. Zalanir could still hold. Three at the same time? He started to pull back to avoid getting flanked. His barrier wasn’t big enough to cover the whole entrance. But when five of them struck his defense in quick motion, his barrier broke, releasing a wave of magic. He heard their yelps and then several thumps. With his left hand following a side of the cave, Zalanir fired earth bolts at the area where the sounds were.

  No kill notification. Not good. He didn’t want to recede further inside, but he was blinded and under assault. Darkness acted as a thick veil covering his eyes. In his current spot, the moonlight had shrunk into broken lines and dots only.

  The predators resumed their assaults. Fiercer this time. He could tell. Then what was overdue had finally come. His right thigh got bitten. The animal was trying to jerk his skin out, but he slammed it using the staff and kicked it away. Without him even finishing his kick motion, his left side got a scratch, and one of them was pulling on his left leg.

  Zalanir couldn’t fence all of them off. Some stayed behind his back after the attack, so basically except for the hard, reliable wall to his left that his back was leaning on, he was surrounded. Just hurling around the staff and firing off bolts randomly weren’t going to get him out of this situation. Energy Barrier could only shield them off from one direction, and even that couldn’t do it now, since they had adapted to the shield and circumvented it.

  As if these weren’t enough, his ears also pick up movements coming from the entrance. The soft sound of paws touching the ground when running, as well as the grrr in their throats, had painted a clear picture inside his head that reinforcements were coming. If only the new forces were here for him. Zalanir sighed. Well, they were indeed coming for him, but for a different purpose compared to what he desired.

  He really didn’t want to do this, but it seemed inevitable at this moment if he still wanted to live. At least this way, he would have a small chance of not getting his body torn apart and ending up in some beast’s bellies.

  Timing his action with the wave released by a broken Energy Barrier, Zalanir activated Hurukele Whirlwind and dashed toward the darkness of the cave’s interior. At this point, he had no time to check for obstacles. He just knew that he needed to angle himself away from the left wall to give himself the best chance. If there was a pillar or turn ahead, then guessed this might be the end for him.

  One second, the winds caressed his skin, but then they grew into a monster, devouring everything in proximity. Zalanir jumped and stretched forward when the sound of the collapsing ceiling knocked louder and louder in his ears. All he could think of at this moment was asking for the blessings of his ancestors and the supreme beings above.