Chereads / The Sinful Saint / Chapter 5 - The Forest

Chapter 5 - The Forest

Si Sheng set off traveling in the direction of the nearby mountains. This day, the sky was clear with nary a cloud in the sky. There was a slight pleasant breeze blowing through the forest, which rustled the branches above.

The forest's trees were tall, around 50 meters tall. The ground floor was relatively dark and humid. It was swampy down there and there were a lot of fungi growing. Who knew if any of them were edible.

Si Sheng walked into this swampy forest and started his journey.

***

While walking, Si Sheng summarized his knowledge about the stat information in his Status since he didn't know exactly what each did. For each stat category they functioned as followed:

Strength functioned to strengthen his muscle fibers, ligaments, and bones to able to have a higher capacity to exert force. Meaning, each of these were strengthened and allowed him to hit harder and apply more force. It didn't necessarily increase the mass of his muscles, mainly the quality and density of the muscles. Not to say that increasing Strength didn't lead to increased muscle mass. With increased Strength, the definition of muscles would come out, like how on Earth if someone worked out over a long period of time, their muscles would gain definition.

Intelligence worked just like its name, it increased his intelligence. However, while increasing his IQ, it also increased memory capability, mana capacity, and mana efficiency. Meaning, memories became clearer and more easily remembered. Also, it meant that he would be able to store more mana for use—an increase in MP—and the consumption of mana by certain skills would be reduced. Aside from these, it also provided defense from the non-physical attacks, like an attack on the soul, proportional to the increase in Intelligence.

With Defense, it toughened skin, hair, bones, nails, etc., making him sturdier and more resistant to physical attacks. It let him tank more hits as the stat increased since the damage taken would go down. It wouldn't cause any visual change, at least to the naked eye, like the increase in Strength did with muscle definition, however.

Agility worked in a similar way to Strength, in that, it strengthened muscle fibers. However, it only strengthened the fast-twitch muscle fibers, which allowed for more explosive and quicker motions. Aside from the muscles, Agility also increased how flexible he was, meaning, he could more skillfully use weapons, use his hands more dexterously, and many other things like improved grappling abilities.

With Vitality, it was similar to most of the aforementioned stats, besides Intelligence. Vitality increases the number of slow-twitch muscles in the body, the durability of the organs, and overall the efficiency of the body. This meant that he would have greater endurance due to more slow-twitch muscles and improved bodily functions, along with other benefits from the organ enhancement.

To better understand what Vitality really did, comparing and contrasting it with Defense would be the best. For example, if Si Sheng were to stay still, Defense would be the factor influencing the amount of damage he would take from a hit, while Vitality would determine the number of hits he could take. Effectively, Vitality was the factor determining HP.

The last stat category was Luck. Its name was self-explanatory. It influenced the probability of certain things happening. Like, if Si Sheng increased Luck, the probability that good things happen would increase. However, even with low luck, it didn't really make a difference since luck was random. It didn't mean that with low luck he would unconditionally have bad events take place, it just meant that he wouldn't have an increased chance for good things to happen. Due to this Si Sheng found this stat quite useless.

Due to each of these stats belonging to himself, he was able to obtain detailed information regarding them, even though they were foreign to his common sense and knowledge from Earth.

He had tried to inspect other things but didn't have as good a result as the things that were part of his status. Additionally, his level didn't have any signs of tampering, which meant that it was supposed to be out of 10. Si Sheng's current understanding of the Evil Eye he had was that he would have detailed information about anything he could see in his Status, but things outside his status would be influenced by his Intelligence stat and would only show as much.

While finishing his thoughts about his Status, Si Sheng noticed that there were many interesting looking plants down in the forest. There was an especially interesting one that looked like a box, which had a "hat" on top. Si Sheng walked up to it and pulled at the "hat" and it started to lift, making him think it to be a funny decoration or some random debris. When he thought he had gotten the "hat" off, it felt like a lever or switch was flipped. The next thing he knew there were vines lashing out from under the "hat" that caused Si Sheng to stumble backward in surprise. When Si Sheng looked back at the "hat" he realized there were eyes underneath it staring back at him coldly.

The tentacle-like vines retracted and so did the head with its "hat." Si Sheng decided to try out his Evil Eye on it.

"Identify."

Wung!

The status of the creature he could observe displayed in front of Si Sheng.

[Juvenile Box-Plant Hermit Crab | Level 3: A variant hermit crab that lives in box plants]

'That crazy looking thing is a hermit crab???' thought Si Sheng dumbfounded over the strange creature.

Saying it was a hermit crab with the tentacles it had was hard for him to believe, but he didn't question it since this was a vastly different world than he was used to living in, and his common sense formed there wouldn't necessarily apply here.

Si Sheng decided to pass by the strange crab and continue his trek.

Si Sheng walked for a number of kilometers and came across a river. Si Sheng didn't need a fresh water source for drinking water since he had water magic, but other creatures did and he thought he could kill some easy game; he was in need of food after all.

Si Sheng approached the river with caution. He had seen the weird crab-plant creature and wasn't going to leave anything to chance. He was quiet in his approach as to not disturb the wildlife. Si Sheng's thoughts were of catching some fish to eat since they were the easiest and quickest to prepare.

The river was wide and deep, about five meters wide and deep enough that the rocks at the bottom were magnified to look like boulders. The water ran smoothly and wasn't too rapid. There was a cool humid breeze running next to the river that Si Sheng found pleasurable. He couldn't see many animals around, but occasionally, he would see a fish rise near the surface as he approached the river.

Si Sheng approached a section of the riverside that wasn't covered in cattails and water plants so that he could peer into the water below. When Si Sheng got to the river's edge, he peered in to take a look at the fish that lived there.

What he saw sent a chill down his spine.

Despite it being the river's edge, there was a toothy four-meter long fish staring at him as he looked on. The fish's mouth was large and is stretched most of its head, which was a meter long. The scales were thin and patterned, just like the natural décor of the river. However, they didn't look as if they could protect the fish all too well. It could be described as a glass cannon with such weak scales.

From the size alone, the fish was a monster, almost spanning the entire width of the river, but the mouth was what made it truly fearsome. The mouth, being one meter long was lined with crocodile-like teeth that interlocked with one another, forming a gruesome visage. Si Sheng thought, if it wanted, it could bite him in half with ease. His only solace was that it was in the water and he was not.

Just as he had this thought, the fish made a swift moment and rushed to the surface breaching the water like a Great White Shark aiming straight for Si Sheng.

Si Sheng jumped back but was not caught off guard. He half expected the vicious-looking fish would make a move on him.

After dodging the fish's attack, he ran back towards the falling fish and grabbed it out of midair and threw it further onto land with much difficulty. It landed around a meter away from the water's edge. The weight and size of the fish made it hard to handle and only let it travel such a small distance. Adding on the slippery scales, it was a fortune that it Si Sheng could even move it away from the river.

Now, the fish was landlocked with Si Sheng in between it and the river. It'd have to go through him if it wanted to return. To add urgency to its predicament, it was running out of oxygen and would need to return to the water if it didn't want to suffocate.

The fish flopped its way forward gnashing its teeth in a threatening manner in an attempt to scare Si Sheng. It didn't work and Si Sheng simply picked up a large rock off the ground near the riverside, and walked over to the fish. He straddled it holding its mouth closed underneath him. Surprisingly, it held shut, just like a crocodile's would.

The fish's body was muscular and heavy making pinning it down all the more annoying. But, without much leeway to move, the fish couldn't properly utilize its musculature and was trapped underneath Si Sheng. The fish was in despair as its would-be prey was now on top of it, restricting its movements.

Si Sheng looked cold as he looked down at the fish with the rock in hand. The next moment he raised the rock with his dominant hand and smashed it into the head of the fish, firmly holding the fish's mouth shut with the other hand. It didn't kill it and the hit only made the fish flail in pain. Si Sheng then repeatedly smashed the head of the fish, over and over.

Blood flew and the sound of bone-crunching and snapping under the rock was heard. Brain matter and fluid leaked out of the wound as he continued to pulverize the skull. To add more difficulty to the situation, the fish thrashed harder with every strike and almost escaped a couple of times. Only momentarily stopping to reposition himself could Si Sheng continually bash in the fish's skull.

There was a massive hole in the skull of the fish after the repeated strikes. The fish was gasping for air as it could only lay there helplessly getting beat senseless in a brutal fashion.

After a couple of minutes of Si Sheng's brutalization, the fish finally kicked the bucket. Its head had turned into a soup of blood, rock fragments, brain matter, and pulverized bone. It was a disgusting and gruesome scene.

Si Sheng suddenly heard a sound through his panting ring in his head.

[Giant River Stalker killed: 250 experience gained.]

Si Sheng thought the amount of experience he gained was quite large. He had easily killed the Giant River Stalker and the experience gained had filled up by one-fourth of his total experience for that level. He didn't know if the experience system just worked like this or if the Giant River Stalker was just weird. Whatever it was, he wasn't going to complain—he had easily gotten a meal.

Si Sheng went around gathering dead and dry rubbish for a fire. It had been around a half a day or so since he had eaten anything and he was dying to try the meat of this fish.

After arriving in this new world, Si Sheng's body was already in a state of satiation. Meaning, he was full and not thirsty. While he wouldn't necessarily need to eat for a week or so, doing so would not be good for his health and it was always good to stay in top form, especially in the hostile environment he was in.

Si Sheng was no cook and only knew the basics of cooking since it never interested him on Earth, so whatever he would make wasn't going to be a gourmet dish.

Si Sheng laid out the dead rubbish in the form of a dead plant bed. He was going to use his fire magic to light a fire to cook the Giant River Stalker.

First, Si Sheng went to clean the fish. "Clean," chanted Si Sheng, as water poured over the fish scrubbing the scales and flesh free of dirt and grime as it went down. It even went inside the fish and cleaned out all the bile and blood, making the innards edible.

"Ignite," he lit the fire and placed the fish on the burning bed of plants. Si Sheng wasn't worried that he'd start a forest fire with this, the surroundings were moist and wouldn't catch fire easily.

The magic Si Sheng used he somehow knew. When he thought about using a certain type of magic, the various chants associated with them filled his head. It was almost like using GPS for his different skills, guiding him to the correct chant to use. He could always look at his status if he wanted to see all the spells, however.

The fish started to cook and gave off a mouth-watering scent. It was a salty and fishy smell that was almost tangible. Juice oozed out of the fish coating its body in a lustrous gleam of tantalizing sublimity. The scales on the body of the fish were thin and fell off with the contracting skin, leaving behind a perfectly descaled fish, well except for the parts where the scales were too small to pop off, like around the head. The image alone was enough to make Si Sheng's mouth water, but the smell sent him over the edge; he could barely control his urge to devour the fish then and there with his stomach growling like a lion.

The fish had finished cooking and the air was heavy with the scent of freshly cooked fish. Si Sheng put out the fire and let the fish cool down before trying to take a piece off.

After a few minutes of cooling, he grabbed a piece of the body and blew on it for good measure before taking a bite of the flesh.

'Ugh!' Si Sheng tasted it and felt like spitting it out; it tasted horrible. It tasted sour and burnt, like roadkill that had been baking on the side of the road in the summer heat. He didn't know if he cooked it wrong or if there was something wrong with the fish, to begin with, but it tasted awful. Although it smelt good and was pleasing to look at, the fish was barely edible.

Since he couldn't be picky with food in the forest he continued to eat despite the revolting taste. After the second bite Si Sheng took, he heard a voice ring out in his head:

[Giant River Stalker consumed: "Skill: Presence Concealment (C)" Acquired]

"Hm? That's how Gluttony works? That's pretty nifty. I just eat and I get stronger. Now that's nice," Si Sheng thought out loud. He thought this would eventually be one of his greatest skills out of all the ones he'd have. In theory, it had one of the highest potentials. Say you were able to acquire dragon meat, then you could eat it and gain skills that belonged to the dragon, possibly the Dragon's Blood skill he saw before. He didn't know whether or not the skill absorption had limitations, like time after death or percentage of total body size consumed, but he did know that he was able to acquire skills from any living thing he ate that had a skill. Over time, Gluttony would serve to greatly increase his power.

While Si Sheng was eating his fill and contemplating the Gluttony skill, he heard the rustling of leaves behind him. He turned around, altered to possible danger, to see the rustling turn into shaking as the bush violently thrashed.

Through the leaves, a long snout pierced through revealing a drooling mouth filled with large, knife-like teeth. Out stepped a two-meter tall, mangy, black wolf with glowing yellow eyes and a low snarl bellowing from its sloppily, drooling mouth.

The wolf eyed Si Sheng with bloodlust, which made his face run pale. He knew he couldn't compete with the wolf and every fiber in his being was telling him to escape at that point.

The wolf slowly approached Si Sheng with its head lowered and eyes fixed on him. Si Sheng slowly got up and backed away in the direction the wolf was heading. Running away from a predator such as this wolf would only make the situation worse. From Si Sheng's knowledge, running in this situation would only serve to agitate the wolf's predatory instinct to chase its prey, that is, if the same logic for wolves in this world applied.

After Si Sheng had gotten a few meters away from his original position, the wolf was where he had been—it stopped there. Si Sheng then heard what sounded like someone sloppily eating; the wolf was chowing down on the fish that he had killed and cooked. It looked like the wolf was just hungry and wasn't going to pass up on a free meal if it only meant letting the hairless ape go.

Si Sheng let out a sigh of relief easing some of his tension. This didn't upset Si Sheng that much, he was already full and the fish didn't taste that good, to begin with. He also didn't want to risk being killed over food such as this and wasn't keen on fighting right now.

Si Sheng continued slowly backing away until he could no longer see or hear the wolf. The time Si Sheng had spent walking and handling the fish was enough for the sun to begin setting since it was already near midday when he arrived in this world. He needed to find a place to sleep in safety for the night or he might end up like that fish; as something's next meal.