As Cola was wandering the depths of this forest looking for game, he had little to do so he would let his thoughts wander, among the thoughts he contemplated, a change had been made to his perspective on this world.
«If i can gain strength as an individual that is stronger that the strength of a nation i will be able to do whatever i want to do, so instead of focusing on solely having fun, i should also become strong enough so that the repercussions of my actions are minimal.»
Thinking about everything between the earth and the sky and a little bit more, he had wandered into the territory of a fearsome creature, a ferret.
Now this ferret was about the size of a whale with a frightening speed, so Cola had little chance to evade his fate; that is being eaten by the ferret.
As indignance and disgust conquered his thoughts he noticed that the ferret was unable to properly harm him with its' teeth, so he was swallowed whole... feeling even more disgusted he entered the acid filled stomach which also couldn't harm him... thinking for a bit he decided to assimilate this ferrets' lifeforce, though it wouldn't help killing it as it would replenish faster than he could drain it, it was still very beneficial for himself, before he knew it he was back to his normal size, but his skeleton remained seethrough.
As he was wondering why it was seethrough he noticed that from the acidwater there seemed to rise something that covered his body in a thick layer of... lard? Or was it flesh, what ever it was it slowly covered his body once over, and there slowly came muscles he could use, but as he felt the experience was a bit peculiar; several tendons and flesh made contact with and entered his almost indestructible bones, and suddenly as if a lightning from a clear sky...
He felt pain, pain so terrible it would shock someone unconscious if they were a normal person, and as he had been a normal person until just recently; he fell unconscious, but not before a disgusting smile had formed from the flesh around his face.
But as a undead it was instinct to assimilate lifeforce from the living, and so he continued even while unconscious, once he woke up, he found himself to have been pooped out of the ferret, and several small scavenger animals were around him eating away at the remaining feaces surrounding himself, none of them seemed interested in himself though, as he was thinking about it he approached the animals, which backed off out of instinct.
It didn't show fear though, just a distaste towards him.
«So i'm actually so tasteless that these creatures would rather eat feaces than me...?» was the reigning thought within his head at that point, though he failed to consider the assimilation skill of his. It had saved him from being scavenged on as the creatures felt they lost more than they gained.
While taking stock of his surroundings he noticed he had ended up even deeper within the forest, however he couldn't help but do a double take when seeing a wooden hut within a clearing about 30 meters from his position.
Weighing his options he decided to throw caution to the wind as he approached and entered the hermits' house, within were a bed, a table with a chair containing some books, a fireplace doubling up as a cooking stove and a bookshelf containing the rest of the books.
While looking through the items as if a gamer on the look for loot, he found an open book on the table, the book was written like a diary and contained the uninteresting exploits of presumably the hermit who had lived here before he arrived, though the place looked to have been abandoned for a long time.
Looking through the diary did lead him to believe that this hermit was pretty strong though, as the hermit had eked out a living within such a dangerous forest. And there was mention of a skill of his, though it was only vaguely mentioned, after all the hermit was referencing his own knowledge in the book as if only himself would be able to read it, so there was no reason to over-elaborate on fine details, was what Cola imagined the hermits' thoughts to be in his irritation, after a quick scan of the titles of the books in the vicinity he could find none that would contain a skill or magic though, so he set to work restoring the hut as a livingspace for himself.
That was until his whole body froze while cold sweat ran down his back, a chilling thought had come to mind; he was unable to understand any written language as long as he had been here, in fact even verbal language was pretty much a mystery to him except for a few common words, but these books, going through them all would later reveal that all of them contained completely fluent english, as he thought about it; he hadn't heard of any country that was using this language though there might have been some outside his scope of knowledge, but those were in that case very far away from this forest. This hermit had obviously used this language as a sort of encryption to avoid leakage of his information, should anyone but him find it they'd disregard it as gibberish...
He soon calmed down though, having looked through the titles he deemed the books to be filled with uninteresting knowledge, though he soon forgot himself with time as he began reading one of them, having finished the book he realized these books were a whole lot more interesting than they seemed, thinking of which a common proverb came to mind 'don't judge a book by its' cover.' It would seem he didn't give these books a proper fighting chance in the marketplace of interest that was his headspace.
As he realized this he decided to read them all to stifle boredom, he was, after all, living for the fun of it.
While reading through the books stored in the hut, he came to understand many a thing about this world, but the main thing he learnt from all these books? In this world, it is illegal to be weak, for the strong rule, might makes right as they would say in his previous world.
He also realized that science looked a great deal different in this world than it looked in his previous, it was something he had noticed early on but never put much thought into, the only proper research being done was surrounding magic, and most of it was biased towards the «holier» magicks.
Though, like any world, there were wierdos who would explore wierd directions within the field of research, there was one scholar whom had used a cleansing spell as basis to create a spell that would pleasure women for example... of course this thinking was inline with the japanese hentai artists from his previous world as wierd magic tentacles that would spray you with thick «cleaning» juices would just pleasure the woman manually instead of just attacking the brain directly.
The worst part? The spell became extremely popular within the noblewomens' circle of that country, until the king deemed the spell indecent and banished the scholar and the spell from his country... «why?» i hear the Void whisper, because he felt inferior when the spell pleasured his woman more than he could himself.
«As they say, 'pride is the folly of man'» Cola thought as he felt pity for that king and impressed with the scholar. Though he had finished the last book he had been awake for over a month, with a rate of about 3 books read a day he had read through about 90 books by now and he felt tired. Actually undead normally don't need to sleep at all, but his mental capacity was reaching its limits so riding along with his habits as a previous human, he went into the bed to sleep.
Or he tried to, but the thing was so dusty and old that he felt like he had to clean it properly first, so he took the sheets and the mattress out of the house to atleast shake off the dust and such; as he couldn't do anything else without water, upon returning he noticed a book or to be more precise; something that looked like a booklet or a magazine, though not as flashy a cover or anything like that, brown in color as leather-bindings usually are, with a title that would spark a dose of joy in anybodys' mind upon witnessing. The booklet was lying where his mattress had been just before he went to clean it.
The title read «sage arts; volume one, physical combat and how to get strong physically.»