Red walked three days and three nights before he could exit the Almos megacity area. His physical fitness wasn't very good and so he could only walk at his own pace, ensuring he didn't lose direction. Every night he would stop to rest. By the time he had escaped the plateau of emptiness as he called it, he was shocked he hadn't died from exposure. The heat of the sun during the days and the cold winds at night on his naked body almost killed him, but somehow his body persevered. He had reached the outskirts and was happy to discover that the entire planet had not been destroyed yet. He was surprised that no one from the rest of the planet or the Kingdom had come to scout the area for survivors, or he could have been saved earlier. Regardless, he had arrived at a farming dome that was maintained by robots who were continuing their work with scant a regard for the world.
Red had clothed himself with the gear of the maintenance staff, should they ever come to check in. Replenishing himself on tomatoes, apples and roasting a chicken he picked up from the factory, Red thought about how bizarre everything was. It seemed he had been the only one to survive in the city of Almos. He was sure he too was swallowed by bizarre material but somehow remained intact. At the same time, he discovered something incredible during his three day journey through the apocalyptic wasteland. Every night, to try and ignore the cold, he practiced Pure Mind Threading as per his habit and discovered he easily surpassed into the first realm and over the three nights had reached the boundary of the second realm.
Red was also confused why no one had bothered to check in, however, his arrival to the farm dome had made him understand why. When he tried to access the global network through the farm's connection, he discovered that the planet was covered in radio silence. This frightened him. Were all other cities bombarded too? being the only survivor on the entire planet scared him. Not only could he not contact anyone on the planet, the planet it seemed was also cut off from the entire Kingdom.
Red decided he had to move towards other cities, but currently he could not afford to roam around mischievously. He decided to stay at the farm dome for a few days to replenish himself and hope for a rescue.
A week passed, and Red's mood turned increasingly gloomy. No contact, no help and no search and rescue. Instead things had taken a turn for the worse. Over the past few days the climate began changing to chaotic extremes, the earth became unstable. Hundreds of powerful earthquakes rocked the land and smoke had begun to cover the skies. Initially, Red had mistaken them for thunderclouds, but when it began to rain ash outside the dome, he paled. It seemed like volcanoes had popped up around the area and the constant earthquakes were unnerving him. Without any connection to the rest of the world he couldn't figure out if the scale was local or global in nature.
Red used the map of the farms and the closest city to Almos, Deutera in the mainframe of the autonomous farm dome to map out his path. He 'borrowed' the emergency vehicle stationed at the dome. Although it could not be used for long distances, Red planned to use it to hop from dome to dome on his path to Deutera. The vehicle could store food he would carry and also protect and shelter him from the weather as well as the wild beasts that roam the planet outsides the cities and factorized areas.
Days passed. Then weeks. Puratynt B had changed tremendously in this meantime. Isolated from humanity, the civil planet had turned into a chaotic cascade of terrible climate phenomenon, death and destruction. Tectonic plate collided, volcanoes erupted and powerful storms raged. Worst of all, however, was the terrible mutations that seemed to be occurring among the beasts and vegetation. Previously docile creatures which were afraid of humans had grown powerful, mutated and dangerous. Red's cargo vehicle was constantly attacked as he proceeded from farming dome to dome. The wilderness had become crazier, vegetation had become trees, many carnivorous that Red had seen impale and devour other beasts in vicious ways. Red wondered why he himself had not felt any effects of these mutations, after all he too was a living organism, perhaps it didn't affect humans, he thought.
Two months had passed. Red's progress had slowed to a crawl. Vehicles were unusable at this point. Many of the domes which were designed for far more inhospitable planets than the once docile Puratynt B had been destroyed by mutating vegetation inside the farms, weeds growing sentient or beasts looking for food. Red had been slowly traversing the planet, he had by now lost all sense of direction where he was going. With the break down of domes, Red had no anchor figure out where he was as the terrain was constantly changing into a hyper tropical lush planet.
Hiding and making himself scarce took all of Red's energy. With only a primitive food scanner to figure out if foods were toxic or not, Red was now depending on these mutating crops for sustenance as he had no other choice. Sometimes he would be lucky and encounter the consequences of predatory beasts, getting carcasses of prey left behind. He discovered that his health was constantly improving, becoming healthier and more robust the more he ate these wild foods. All this time he did not stop practicing the Pure Mind Threading. He had reached the peak of the third realm, which was what most geniuses with ordinary martial arts talent could achieve. For a person with no martial talent like him, such a result was simply extraordinary.
Red could already feel the amazing benefits of improved cognition. He could think orders of magnitude times faster than before, analyze things much easier and make quick deductions. His perception also increased tremendously, which was one of the main reasons he had remained unscathed for so long. Each day passed, Red would become more and more adept in the wild, turning to primitive means of survival. His bizarre fascination with ancient human traditions, history and traits happened to help him adapt. From making shelters, to making fires, finding caves, setting up traps, Red had turned into a hunter gatherer.
While he lost his accurate pointers of direction, with the help of the sun, Red managed to keep an approximate track of his location as he slowly made for what he thought was the city of Deutera. Three more months had passed. Red had fabricated tools and weapons. He had become a proficient hunter now. His strength was nowhere near these powerful mutated beasts, but with his extraordinary sense of perception, the constant life and death trial had birthed in him a vigorous killing intent. Hunting instincts were fine tuned in his body and mind and he began becoming ruthless and less fearful. The rapid changes in the environment had become a harsh training ground for the once innocent and physically weak youth. He was now muscular and well built, however, he still had an ordinary physique and had no talent to cultivate martial arts. However, he refined his own wild hunting killing arts, swift, ruthless, sudden, unpredictable and without any waste movements, it was purely designed for killing and hunting.
Several times, Red almost lost his life, it was a miracle that someone with no martial arts like him could survive. Although he escaped narrowly and would often be seriously injured, he rarely made the same mistake twice and learned quickly. Despite continuing to be a failure at martial arts, Red seemed to have become incredibly proficient in the mind art Pure Mind Threading, reaching an incredulous peak of fourth realm. It must be said that Pure Mind Threading had only five realms and reaching the peak of the fourth realm could be considered a rare cognitive genius in the entire Dwight Kingdom. Red had figured out by now that whatever he was tested with in the final experiment or the disaster material which engulfed Almos or a combination of the two had certainly caused a change in him which not only saved him from death but increased his ability to train in mental arts.