Alex paused for a minute, standing in the rain, taking time to enjoy the feeling of victory. He'd previously fought and beat both the murder chicken and the deer, but both those fights had been truly haphazard. He'd stumbled into those situations, uninformed, and while he'd earned his victories, and fought hard, he'd hardly utilized his capabilities to the fullest.
Short of exercising excessive caution and finding out about the primary alpha beforehand, he felt he wouldn't change much about this fight. He'd even learned about his powers midway through battle, and made excellent use of the knowledge to execute the secondary alpha.
A surge of emotions hit him: pride, satisfaction, and as he thought about his coming spoils - greed. Alex smiled up at the sky, enjoying the rain, and the brief moment of respite. The pounding rain had lessened into a light drizzle, and the dark clouds had lightened somewhat, brightening the surroundings.
Bending down, he grabbed the corpse of the primary alpha, and dragged it up out of the pit trap, causing his leg to ache.
'Heavy bastard. Even in death you're doing your best to piss me off.'
The fight and his crash landing seemed to have exacerbated the wound, and it would take a while to calm down. Alex stared down at the creature, trying to sort out how he was going to handle this. The rain would help keep away any insects, but he strongly suspected it would amplify any mold or bacteria.
Grabbing the knife stuck in its chest, he began dragging it down across the corpse, listening to the knocking of bones as he tore through them with his knife. Its bones were much harder due to the concentration of mana in the alpha, and it was making his life difficult. He grimaced as he sliced through the skin, carefully avoiding the organs - even having processed numerous corpses at this point, he still found the affair quite disgusting.
After digging through the corpse and removing the undesirable organs, he came across an interesting discovery in the creature's chest cavity. There was a small marble shaped object that gave off a warm white glow, he reached out to touch it, curious. It was super concentrated with mana, causing an almost electric sensation to shoot up his fingers.
'Is it because the alpha was so high in mana concentration? Or is this the reason the alpha was so high in mana?'
Alex glanced back at the alpha, then back at the little mana orb in his palm.
'The chicken and the egg?'
He let out a deranged cackle, before he stopped himself, somewhat disturbed. He hadn't spoken in almost a week, and the sound of his own voice was starting to sound foreign.
Pushing aside those thoughts, he glanced at the orb in his hand, trying to decide how he was going to transport the orb? Grabbing one of the deer stomachs tied around his waist, he popped the marble in and tied it off, before throwing the corpse of the alpha over his shoulder and heading towards the cave deeper in the forest.
Arriving at the cave, he was once again greeted by the carnage he had let loose on the world. The battlefield was covered with arrows, and corpses, though most of the blood had been washed away by the rain. Alex smirked, putting his free hand on his hip, he was once again greeted by a sense of pride.
'Serves those little bastards right.'
Putting his burden down, he walked over to the corpse of the secondary alpha, noting the carnage. The remains of his spear were stuck in the corpse of the alpha, and he slowly pulled it out of the corpse, holding it in his hand.
"You did good."
Alex smiled and pushed the spear into the soil, marking its end. He then began processing the body of the alpha
as he'd done with the first. He worked through the whole corpse, and came up empty handed, somewhat disappointed. As he was lifting up the corpse he noted a marble on the forest floor. Staring at the marble for a second, he once again touched it, feeling a similar mana concentration to that of the orb from the primary alpha.
'Strike two for high mana concentration and the marbles.'
'Why was it on the ground?'
Pocketing it and storing it in the deer's stomach along with the other marble, he returned his gaze to the secondary alpha, where he was reminded of the huge hole he'd blasted through its chest.
'I guess it fell out?'
'The hole would have gone more or less through the center of its chest.'
'System, do you want to explain this to me? Or are you going to continue being useless?'
He was greeted with radio silence, per usual - no answers today. Sighing, he slung the corpse of the second alpha over his shoulder, before walking back and grabbing the first, throwing it over his other shoulder.
He then began his trek back to the clearing, walking briskly through the forest. He'd have run, but these things were damn heavy, and he'd get knocked off balance. Eventually, he arrived back at the village, where he deposited the corpses inside one of the huts. Heading back outside, he noticed the rain had stopped, and the clouds had come out, brightening the forest.
Alex took a large inhale.
'How is it that dampness can have a smell? Almost like rot, and decay.'
'Maybe that's just me?'
Reminded of the demon bear, he shuddered. While its smell was different, it carried the unmistakable scent of rot. The memory enhancements associated with increases in cognition had their flaws as well - Alex didn't know if he'd ever forget the smell.
He grabbed a bunch of long vines he'd collected and set off for the cave again - he had more spoils to collect. After 15 minutes, he returned wearing a strange garb consisting of feathery murder chicken corpses. He'd threaded the vine through the corpses of 8 or so of the chickens, creating a big feathered sash, and the remaining four were gripped by their tails in either hand.
Alex then created three large fires, and spent the next few hours getting everything set up, where he started to smoke everything. Between the three deer he'd caught, the 12 murder chickens and the two alpha's, he was in for an ordeal. He'd only managed to eat one of the deer over the last two days, and that had already been exhausting.
He had a rough idea of how long the meat would last before it began to spoil, and he gave himself 5 days to eat it. After that point, it would begin to smell, and quite a bit of the mana would have been lost. He started doing some rough calculations, each of the chickens yielded around 17 pounds of edible flesh, and the alphas yielded around 50 pounds.
Right now, he was somewhat confident that if he absolutely stuffed himself, he could probably force down 30 pounds of food in a day - a feat that was already inhuman.
'I guess I'll be investing in vitality again.'
He began by chowing down on the deer meat, as it had to go first, and had the lowest concentration of mana. Alex had already intuited from his prior training that it was becoming increasingly difficult to get mana out of low concentration sources, so he focused on those first.
The next four days were dedicated exclusively to physical training, eating and sleeping. He'd had to upgrade his training equipment substantially after increasing his stats, and was now thoroughly in absolutely inhuman territory.
It was the fourth day, and Alex had completed his 10th workout and returned to the clearing, the sun having just gone down. He'd managed to polish off the alpha meat, having set aside the latter half of the third day, and the fourth day to consume it. He'd also managed to finish off the deer meat, but had failed to make it through the remaining smoked chicken.
He entered one of the huts - now his smokehouse - where he made eye contact with his remaining two racks of meat. Involuntary shudders wracked his body as he continued staring at it, his gaze drifting far away, seeming to stare into the abyss. Snapping out of it, he broke eye contact and stared off into the corner.
"Don't look at it, it can't hurt you."
Alex had started to develop a habit of talking to himself, for lack of hearing any human voices. He also wanted to make sure he hadn't forgotten how to speak.
Sighing, he walked over to the racks of meat, and used his mana sense to draw out the mana from the meat. He'd given up on eating, and had instead decided to just draw the mana from it directly - he'd bite the bullet on the absorption efficiency decrease.
The process of manually drawing mana from dead sources was quite time consuming, and it took him almost an hour to draw the mana from the meat. He'd performed a similar process on the skeletons and feathers of the creatures, as everything had mana, which he was happy to gobble up.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Alex released the tension in his body and collapsed on the ground. He then opened his system interface, glancing at his stats.
[Honor System]
[Name: Alex]
[Existence Tier: 1]
[Ability: Water Control]
[Ability points: 1]
[Mana: 220/(132->220)]
[Soul Force: 3830->4342]
[Strength: 10]
[Endurance: 20]
[Dexterity: 15]
[Vitality: 75]
[Resilience: 15]
[Cognition: 15]
[Perception: 25]
[Available stat points: 48]
At some point, Alex had acquired another ability point, not that he'd had any time to check it out in any detail.
He also wasn't sure how he was going to invest the rest of his points. He'd hold off for now until he came up with a decent idea.
Staring at the ceiling of the hut, he let the emptiness of his scenario sink in. He no longer had any immediate short term goal, and it left him feeling hollow. There was a chance that if he got strong enough, that the system might return him home, but he'd gotten no indication of that being a possibility so far.
The risk of imminent death from the demon bear remained, leaving him with a latent sense of dread, but it had faded quite a bit.
'I guess I could get strong enough to fight the demon bear.'
A problem for tomorrow.