When the words 'Race: Half-Spirit' settled in, my legs stopped and refused to budge. Touching my chest, I could feel my heart beating profusely.
'Alright now, calm down,' I pacified myself.
Breathe in "Haap!", breathe out "Fuuu..."
After calming down, I moved into the cover of the exposed roots of a huge tree.
'Now, Codex, show me what info you've got on half-spirits and spirits.' Even though I only half-trusted Codex, it never hurts to know more.
[Spirit: Entities that have no tangible bodies and are an amalgamation of natural energies in the atmosphere that have gained sentience over time.
Spirits are further classified into four ranks, Nascent Spirits, Lesser Spirits, Greater Spirits, and Primordials.
Nascent spirits are those who have just been born and are made up of a single, basic, and most abundant, mana type such as fire, water, wind, light, nature, etc.
Lesser Spirits are those who have gained basic control over a second and in some rare cases a third element. Though possible, gaining control over a fourth element at a lesser stage is almost impossible.
Fulfil requirements to unlock further information.]
[Half-Spirit: Not much is known about them, as they are a very rare find. They are born with the consent of a spirit to be fused with a creature, but the rate of successful fusion is around 1% and another negative point is that the spirits lose their intellectual ability and ability to think. If that's not enough they also lose their elementary powers and become empty slates.
This is why almost no spirit chooses to fuse with any creature of their own violation, that is unless the said creature is more important to them than their own life.]
"Hmm... What am I supposed to say to this... sh*t?"
I was genuinely speechless.
What would you say if someone told you that you were not the someone you thought you were, and had lived as, your whole life?
So my reaction was justified.
Not wanting to dwell on unimportant thoughts, I shook my head and focused on the present.
"What was I doing again...? Ah, right! I need food for Dia." Nodding to myself, I stood up and dusted my clothes.
—Rustle Rustle!
'Damn it!' Hearing the rustling sound nearby, I immediately became alert. I unsheathed my knife and held it tightly in my right hand.
A few moments passed in silence but I didn't dare move and stood still, holding my knife in a tight grip as a drop of sweat slid down my cheek.
All the while, I kept on darting my eyes around, looking for the slightest sign of movement.
—Creak!
From my immediate right, the sound of a twig breaking resounded.
"Huak!"
Before I could react, from behind me, something coiled around my left ankle, and pulled on it. All of it happened so fast that I fell forward, face first.
Feeling a tingling sensation on my back I rolled left on the ground.
—Dhub! —Dhub!
And thank goodness I did, because the next second, the sound of something piercing the dirt was heard from the place I was a moment ago.
Before I could sigh in relief, I realised to my horror that the thing that pulled my leg was growing larger.
Without further delay, I regained my composure, sat up, and swung my knife in on the green rope-like-thing, then got back on my feet.
—Creak!
Something snapped when I felt my knife cut through something, but the feeling of cutting through flesh never came.
I never killed anything before, except a few mosquitos... but that's beside the point!
In this life, I'd killed animals for food and materials, so I was well aware of how cutting living flesh feels. Although the number only reached two digits.
As my thoughts paused there, I realised that my assailant wasn't a flesh beast, but instead, a wood-walker.
Wood-walkers are creatures who don't have a body made of flesh but instead are made up of wood, or more like their whole body is just a small-sized tree trunk. The more powerful they are, the harder and thicker their trunk is.
They have vines in the place of limbs and they see out of the two holes in the middle of the trunk, just above the scary mouth that bore no similarity to any flesh beast's toothy mouth.
The wood-walker in front of me had a trunk about a foot in diameter (around 30 centimetres), it had a total of six vines. Of the six, it used three to walk and the other three to attack me.
But, on closer inspection, it looked kinda… weak?
Unless someone paid enough attention, they wouldn't notice that its wooden body looked dry, and that its wooden trunk was thinner than it should be.
But what confused me more was that these creatures are supposed to be deeper in the forest, and I was miles away from that area.
Since I was able to reach it and attack it with my knife, it proved that it was still an inexperienced newborn.
Because the main property of adult wood-walkers was that they could make a protective layer around themselves using their vines.
"Haap!"
I forcefully paused my thoughts there and jumped back multiple times to distance myself from it, since staying near these critters was just suicide if you couldn't overpower them singlehandedly.
By this time, it had retrieved its two vines from the ground. The part of the vine I cut earlier had also healed.
[Wood-walker(Young):
Rank: C (2nd Stage)
Strength: 12
Speed: 15
Endurance: 12
Mana: 19
Remarks: Strength: Versatile vines. Weakness: Weak Body.
Opinion: Run away while you can. You are still a kid, kid. This thing is not something you can fight.]
"Aren't you late to the party?" I mocked it with slight irritation.
[I was waiting for a chance so that you didn't get distracted and die because of me.] Codex spoke in my ears with a voice as righteous as it could get.
Ignoring Codex, I digested the information. 'This is troublesome.' I grumbled under my breath.
If we compared raw stats, then this thing was far superior to me. The only weakness I could exploit was its body being weak.
While I was contemplating whether to run or fight, three vines came at me from different directions, one behind me, one from my right and the last one was targeting my legs to prevent me from running.
"Like I'll let you!" I shouted and looked for a way to escape. In that one moment, my mind worked in overdrive and I ran multiple scenarios in my head.
In a second, I realised that only the way towards the wood-walker was open. So I jumped, with the knife held in both of my hands, held high above my head, with its tip pointing towards the woody beast.
Once I was close enough to the wood-walker, I brought down the knife as fast as I could, intending to use all the momentum I could muster.
While I was in the air, two of its vines met head on, while the third one came at me with full speed.
—Creak!
With the momentum of my fall and the force behind my hands combined, the knife plunged into the wood.
—Whip!
"Ugh!" I groaned in pain as the third branch whipped at my back. Tearing my clothes, along with my skin, leaving a minor gash on my back.
I persisted through the pain and wrapped my free left arm around its body. Then I pulled the knife out and plunged it into the same place as before.
By this time, all the three vines were behind me, whipping at my back.
—Whip! —Whip! —Whip!
"Argh! F*ck! @&#€¢!"
Every time a branch whipped at me, curses flew out of my mouth. But my hands didn't stop and kept repeating the same process, pulling out and thrust it in again.
By the 8th whip of the vines and 6th thrust of the knife, my back was riddled with gashes and it was completely covered in blood.
Clothes? They wouldn't be seen even with a magnifying glass.
Persisting through the pain, I moved the knife around in the hole, intending to make it bigger.
After the seventh thrust, when the hole was big enough to fit my fist, I buried my knife in another side of the trunk. After all, I am not stupid enough to throw it somewhere and hope I can still find it in my time of need.
Then I threw my fist into the hole I made when the wood-walker realised what I was trying to do. It panicked and started flailing its vines frantically.
But I persisted and pushed my hand in deeper, ignoring the pain that came from the vines and the sharpe nooks in the hole.
Soon enough, I could feel something spherical inside the wood-walker's trunk. A smile came on my face momentarily before I scrunched it up due to the pain.
Inside the wood-walker's body, there was a small cavity that housed an even smaller, pearl-sized object. Instead of touching the walls of the hollow cavity, the pearl was hanging in the middle of it.
There were tens of green, intangible threads, jetting out of it, into the walls of the cavity.
I tightly grasped the round object and pulled it out with all my strength, but since the wood-walker was still alive, pulling it out was a bit difficult since it was actively connected to the wood-walker.
—Squeal!
Fearing its death, the beast went berserk and wrapped all three of its vines around my waist and tried to pry me away with all its strength.
I removed my arm from around the trunk and gripped the wrist of the hand inside the wood-walker's body.
Its grip on my waist was so tight that blood started leaking from the sides of my lips.
'Just a bit… longer…'