As night crept in, Si Sheng reached the base of the mountain.
From the hill Si Sheng started on, the mountain looked small. But, as he stood under it, he saw it went up into the clouds causing the peak to be obscured. It was an enormous mountain covered in black, basalt-like rock; it was virtually absent of vegetation, except for small patches of grass here and there. There were no trees, as well; they all stopped at the forest edge and whichever way Si Sheng looked, he couldn't see a single tree on the mountainside.
Now that night was on Si Sheng's doorstep, he needed to find a place to sleep, otherwise, he'd soon find himself being hunted down by creatures like the wolf that took his fish or the owl from the prior night.
Wanting to be further away from the forest and on higher ground to have a lookout over the forest, Si Sheng hiked up the mountain to see if there was an inhabitable cave somewhere.
Si Sheng didn't need to hike up the mountain long as a shallow cave was spotted close to the base.
Si Sheng quickly scrambled his way towards the cave in order to take shelter for the night. When he got to the entrance, he saw it was just a shallow cave, nothing special, thankfully. It was made of the same rock as the mountain but lacked the sparse vegetation seen outside. It was fairly dry, as well. The length of the cave was deep enough that he would be protected from the elements if a storm were to pass by, but short enough that he wasn't in complete darkness when he was at the end of the cave.
One of Si Sheng's fears for when he found a cave had been that monsters would be living in the cave and attack him on sight. But, those fears were over now since he secured a cave for himself, safely.
Si Sheng had saved some of the bugs he caught back in the forest and decided to eat them now. He was hungry from all the walking and when he found the cave a wave of tiredness hit him along with his sense of relief. He unpacked some branches he had picked up while looking for tinder to sustain a fire whilst in the forest and lit a fire before roasting the bugs. They were crunchy and flaky, although the thought of eating bugs was disgusting, they tasted better than nothing, nonetheless.
Once again, Si Sheng didn't gain any skills from the bugs and only filled his stomach with them.
Shortly after eating, Si Sheng put out his fire and went to sleep—the tiredness he felt after getting to the cave eventually overcame him. He had grabbed a few large leaves from the forest as a makeshift backpack that he used to carry the tinder and bugs, which now substituted for his bed. At least it was better than sleeping on cold, hard rocks.
Si Sheng slept through the night soundly without a disturbance, unlike the one from the prior night.
***
In the morning, he got up and went outside to survey his surroundings.
The night prior, Si Sheng couldn't see much because it was dark, but now he could see the mountainside he had climbed up.
Si Sheng was about 50 meters away from the base of the mountain, pretty close to the forest. The mountain itself being barren of vegetation allowed him to easily see the whole mountainside or at least the portion that wasn't obscured by the mountain's curvature. Si Sheng was descending the mountain to gather supplies from the forest and look around the area when a sudden disturbance shook him.
SCREEEEAAAAAAAH!
There was a sudden screech that came from the top of the mountain! An incredibly vicious and head-splitting sound barreled down the mountain. As the roar passed over Si Sheng, it felt as if his head was being ripped apart.
"Aaaagh! My head—fuck! What the hell? Do I have to get a migraine every day now?!"
The sound went as quickly as it came and didn't repeat, thankfully. Si Sheng recovered from the sudden shock and pain and turned to look up the mountain where the origin of the sound was.
When he turned, he lost his balance and fell to his knees.
His legs were shaking something fierce and his whole body was in a cold sweat. His heart was beating rapidly and his breath was rough. It was like he had just run for his life and finally stopped after escaping.
Si Sheng had no idea what was going on, he wasn't scared at that moment, but his body was. The fear was instinctual, something that all animals would feel when facing an overwhelming presence.
Si Sheng lifted his head towards the peak above the clouds and caught a glimpse of what made the sound. There was a long, black, scaled tail slithering into the clouds. The scales looked like crystals at the level of national treasures, glittering and pure. It was a majestic form. Even the brief moment was awe-inspiring and a sight to behold—it couldn't be called anything but majestic.
'That'd make some nice armor. Hmmm, probably would die trying.'
Si Sheng didn't know what the creature was, but he knew it wasn't anything he could even approach. He was shaking in his boots after hearing a roar from it kilometers away. There was no chance of survival if he faced that creature as he was. It would just be suicide.
After the creature had disappeared into the clouds, Si Sheng's shaking slowed and his breathing became more regular. He slowly got up and walked back to the cave, needing to rest before he could do anything further.
You could say he was scared shitless. He felt like he was within inches of death just hearing that roar and decided to cool off his head before going out once more.
***
After calming down and drinking some water, Si Sheng decided to head out to grind for levels, disregarding the previous event. Only personal strength could allow him to feel secure and confident in this new world.
Si Sheng had realized that the amount of experience he needed to level up was quite large given rabbits only gave around 3 experience and bugs generally gave 1 experience. He would need to kill a lot of rabbits to just gain one level, and from his knowledge about games, once you leveled up, the amount of experience needed to level up again increased.
Si Sheng was weak and couldn't face even a slightly strong creature. He was like a normal human from Earth; he would have a slim chance of even killing a wolf from Earth, let alone one from this world.
Due to the open plains at the foot of the mountain, there were many small, easy to kill creatures, like rabbits, hopping about. It was a heavenly place for Si Sheng as he could kill as many as he wanted without reserve. There weren't any animals stronger or bigger than the rabbits visible and that meant it was a fairly safe place for Si Sheng and a place where he could kill and level up with relative safety.
So, Si Sheng went and killed them—a lot of them. He took many corpses of rabbits, small birds, rodents, bugs, and the like back to the cave he slept in the previous night.
"I might have killed a little too many..."
In the time he went out hunting, Si Sheng gained about 100 experience. Needless to say, he worked hard. He killed a den of rabbits, which got him about 25 experience points. The rest was a mix and match of other animals and creatures.
When Si Sheng got back to the cave, he decided to craft a makeshift knife out of stone and a small branch, as that would make hunting and cleaning the animals easier. He made it by using a technique called knapping, which is basically just chipping away at the stone until it forms into the desired shape, in this case, a knife.
"Shit! I hit my finger! Oh, wait. Heal."
Si Sheng baked the knife to sterilize it using his fire and water magic.
"Ignite. Clean."
Since Si Sheng couldn't store the meat for very long due to not having things like salt, a fridge, or virtually any material to preserve food, he decided to skin the animals and sun-dry the meat so it wouldn't spoil as quickly.
All these techniques Si Sheng knew of in theory, but this was the first time he had actually put them to use. So, the tools were very sloppy and a lot of the meat ended up spoiling due to not being properly handled. The skins from the rabbits and other critters were poorly removed and looked ragged.
To be fair, it was Si Sheng's first time doing this, so it was to be expected that he wouldn't be able to perfectly skin and prepare an animal, as well as make tools from stone.
Anyway, Si Sheng cooked a few rabbits and ate them. They didn't give him any new skills, unfortunately. It didn't bother him since he thought that Sprint was probably the only skill these rabbits gave, as they were low level and common—as if that affected the chance of getting a skill from eating a creature.
The mountain's base was a good place to level up because there didn't seem to be any predators stronger than Si Sheng around. So, he could level up in peace while eating all sorts of creatures. His main goal, though, was to level up and get stronger.
***
Si Sheng stayed at the cave and hunted there for around a week. In that time he gained another 635 experience, bring his total experience up to 993 experience—almost Level 2. Additionally, he had eaten all sorts of animals; rats, field mice, rabbits, ground birds, bugs, etc. He gained a couple of new skills as well. One came from a common-looking rat:
[Mountain Rat consumed: "Skill: Sneak (F)" Acquired]
The other came from a peculiar bug he killed higher up on the mountain, which looked like a mole with the limbs of a cricket—it was a pretty disgusting sight. It had been when he was curious what was up a little further, but after the experience with the creature up the mountain, he didn't want to risk going further up, even if there were better creatures to consume.
[Burrowing Mole Cricket consumed: "Skill: Awareness (F)" Acquired]
The skills were self-explanatory, Sneak allowed Si Sheng to remain undetected when moving around, it was similar to his other skill Presence Concealment in that it concealed him from others, except he was able to move around as opposed to the latter skill, which he had to stay still to use.
Awareness was also similar to the others except it was in reverse, where it allowed Si Sheng to be more aware of things around him instead of hiding from them. In essence, it heightened his basic senses.
Si Sheng was close to leveling up and he had acquired a couple of new skills, so he was feeling quite satisfied with his progress. Since it was night, he decided to sleep and see if he could level up the next day, anxiously awaiting the results of a "level up".