The flames were getting closer and closer.
I could feel their heat on the back of my neck as if a scorching hot iron rod was being held up extremely close to my neck to see how long I could go before exclaiming out in pain, yet even doing that would have burned my lungs so I persisted.
'WHY IS IT SO FAST!' I inwardly screamed.
I could feel the involuntary tears come out and begin heating up within my eyes, possibly even release steam?
That might have been my imagination, but still. I was here running for my life while the screams of other animals and beasts echoed from behind me, yet even then I did not dare look back.
Looking back would spell death, so why would anyone in their right mind do such a thing?
I couldn't really say that this was the fastest I had ever run before, but I could say that this is the faster than I had ever run while I had been alive if that life could even be considered to have ended.
The images of my family, my girlfriend, my best friend, that elf bastard, and everyone I ever know and loved kept flashing before my eyes.
I could see their faces while my mind recreated their death scenes even if I hadn't seen them when they had died.
I could tell that every time I watched them die, the images would get worse and worse. It was as if my mind was trying to sabotage me by showing me the worst scenes of my life, even if I happened to not have seen them.
'Crystal... you told me to survive right? Mom... Dad... Emily... You would all want me to survive too wouldn't you?' I inwardly asked myself, a new flicker of determination sparking within my eyes.
Remembering them, my suppressed memories of them had caused me to tear up a little yet my running alone had made the wind strong enough to dry them in an instant.
'Then I will survive...'
My eyes were naturally dark brown as I had not inherited the same color hair as my parents. I didn't really inherit much of their appearance either, or at least not as much as my sister had done. Of course, it had made me question if I was adopted or not, but my questions had disappeared after I had seen how much care and love they would give to me every single day.
However, even though my eyes were normally a color extremely close to black, now they were gradually turning crimson, the dark brown being devoured by the invading red lines that extended into my pupils making them slowly turn red in the process too.
At the same time, It felt as if my body was gaining strength close to the strength I had gained when fighting against those monsters from before.
No... This power was different from then.
I had gained that power from eating the fruit that had satiated my hunger even until now.
Now, the energy was a little different... It was as if something deep within me was being unlocked. I power that had been hidden within the depths of my DNA and consciousness.
A power beyond the understanding of the normal human being.
I could feel that my muscles were beginning to bulge a little, but not enough for it to become uncomfortable. The same thing was happening to all the veins in my body that stretched from head to toe before flowing with a crimson red energy.
Simultaneously, my eyes did the same and also began shining with the same color.
My eyes had become bloodshot now, yet the crimson of my irises had a significant difference in their shade that made it easy for anyone to differentiate between it and the bloodshot white of the eyes. That was if I were to not mention that the crimson irises were only around 70% red, the rest of it being a deep black that had resisted the invasion of the crimson light.
I could finally feel that the heat was beginning to get further away. Wait for no... I was running faster, much faster. In fact, I literally have not run this fast ever before. This speed was nowhere close to the speed of the woman I had fought the day before but if I had this power and speed then, I wouldn't have struggled as much.
'Maybe I would have even kept an ear.' I chuckled at my own dismay.
After running for about 5 minutes, I could feel that the power within my body was being drained at an extremely fast speed as if I was a bottomless well that the energy was being poured into.
My body slid to a gradual stop and my head turned back to see if the flames were getting any closer.
The bulging muscles and veins were beginning to fade back into my normal body where I didn't look like a man who could be killed with a single papercut.
"Phew" a breath that I had not realized I was holding in left my mouth and allowed my lungs to relax.
*Grrrrr*
A low growling entered my ear and made me snap in the direction of the noise.
A strong feeling of dread overcame me from several different angles but that simply was not enough to catch me off guard.
I could tell that the things that were attacking me were much weaker than the woman or the treant, you could call it an instinct that I had somehow developed in only 7 days.
When looking at something, I could feel a sense of danger from the stronger ones while the danger dropped significantly as you moved down to the weaker animals.
Of course, in a world like this, there was almost no animal that wasn't dangerous in some way or another, but I could easily tell which ones actually threatened my safety while also knowing which ones didn't.
I would get the same sense of 'danger' from hostile creatures, while creatures who seemed to be passive or nonchalant simply released a dangerous aura that suppressed everything around them rather than having a hostile killing intent that attacked anything within a certain range.
Right now, I could tell that the creatures that were attacking me weren't much of a threat to the current me. Hell, even the old me on earth could have run away from all but one of them.
Still, my eyes darted past every single one of me and analyzed them as fast as I could while I slowly drew my ax and began swinging to the right immediately.
The momentum of my drawing my ax had caused it to shoot down with extreme precision that I would not have been able to gain if I were fighting more dangerous animals/beasts.
The creatures that were attacking me were half my size, most of them either being bugs of some kind while others were some kind of 6-legged animals that I had never seen before.
Yet, they were still much smaller than me so all I had to do was slice them down and destroy their bodies.
I had killed all the smaller ones within a few seconds before finally jumping back and allowing my eyes to land on the human-sized rat in front of me, looking at me with its giant red eyes.
"Nice eyes" I chuckled with an enormous grin on my face. I had no idea that my eyes were red just a few seconds ago, and remnants of that crimson red still remained in my irises.
"Looks like I'ma have to kill you too big guy." I let out another chuckle that made it growl slightly and try to get down into a fighting position, yet without missing a beat my body had already burst from my position and had lunged itself towards the rat, slashing towards its throat with my ax with all intentions to decapitate it on the spot.
However, The rat had moved back slightly making my ax's blade barely graze its neck, allowing a small amount of blood to flow out of the wound without any signs of stopping any time soon.
The cut wasn't deep enough for the rat to drown in its own blood, yet it was not shallow enough for it to simply overlook as a battle injury.
It was only then that it had chosen that the best course of action was to run, a decision that made me pause, look at the running rat and laugh mockingly before lunging towards it at full speed.
Thankfully, however, I was way too slow to catch it immediately meaning that I was likely to never catch up to it especially after you see the speed it was moving at.
You might be asking yourself right about now, 'why thankfully? Isn't this something bad?'.
Well, he is the thing, it would be considered a bad thing for my prey to run away in normal conditions, but at that moment it could not have been better.
As the rat had begun running at full speed in another direction, I watched as the bushes to its right rustled, and before the rat could react it saw the insides of an enormous maw that had enveloped most of the rat's body before biting off everything other than its legs.
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