Viswa didn't see any creatures or any city nearby.
But he did see the sun. And luckily sun has a lot of benefits that could help him. One of them is that he can figure out the direction he should be moving towards.
He came to learn that Black Sand Village is on absolute south of the continent that is currently in. So, no matter where he is, as long as he can identify the south he can just move in that direction.
Of course, he didn't just rashly want to move without making any preparations. He finally recovered to the maximum, so he need to prepare as much as he can before leaving just so that he doesn't die.
Viswa came down from that tree and picked up a couple of bone knives he made along with a relatively larger sharpened bone that is bigger than a dagger and shorter than a short sword. He decided to scout the area around him for starters and see if he can find any water first.
He knew for sure that a stream is moving towards the Circle Forests within the academy. There is a stream that goes across those forests and enters the sea. If he can find a stream nearby that is moving in southern direction, it would most likely be leading him back to the academy grounds.
He started searching for the foot prints, feces or any other tracks nearby, but to his surprise he couldn't find any fresh feces. All the samples he found were from days ago.
As for the foot prints, there are no fresh ones either and those old ones are not exactly trackable.
After a very long search Viswa discovered some clear footprints after a long while.
But these are not just footprints of one animal. There are dozens of them. He could see the footprints of deers, boars, rabbits, foxes etc. Those are the ones he could recognize. He also some claw footprints that resembled wolves, some footprints that are very large hooves.
And all of these footprints are almost in a same state. They all seemed to have happened at the same time.
As soon as that thought popped in his mind, Viswa thought of his situation.
He was dragged away by a beast here after all and the beast also behaved abnormally. Not just that, at that moment there are a bunch of other beasts that behaved abnormally as well.
They all ran together irrespective of their size and their areas of activity. Then he thought of the rabbit which he caught before. It is supposed to be a herbivore, but it was eating the flesh of a deer that died.
That deer and this rabbit, both of them also happened to be demonic beasts that are partially transformed.
As he thought to this point, a speculation drew in his mind.
The beasts are all becoming demonic beasts and they were in a frenzy because of that change.
He might be able to assign all of that weird behavior to this change, but then he couldn't think of why these beasts ran here.
He couldn't find the reason at all.
And when the demonization came to his mind, he also couldn't help but think back to the shark as well as Mathur's gang. The people that were involved in the orphanage incident. They all went through this demonization process.
They partially became demons and controlled demonic energy. Then his thoughts went to the demonic egg and the seeds.
Even though he could think of that incident, he doesn't have anything substantial linking both of them. Maybe something happened deep inside the forest. Maybe an egg pod appeared deep inside the forest just like how it did in the sea.
He tried to think of any possible logic, but his limited knowledge, even including the knowledge of original Viswa was not good enough to make him get a clear idea of this situation.
As Viswa was thinking deeply, his instincts suddenly screamed.
*HISS*
A snake almost bit him from behind. It covered itself well in camoflauge of the leaves. If not for his reaction, he would have definitely been bitten.
Viswa looked at the snake and held his two bone knives vigilantly. He looked at the snake and noticed that it is actually bleeding and it came from the same direction that he found the deer's dead body and the rabbit.
He frowned and looked at the snake once again.
It is weak. Even at its full strength, it wouldn't have survived.
He threw his bone knife at it and it lodged into its head very precisely. Without much effort at all, he killed it very simply.
Viswa got the notification.
A partially demonized snake. Indeed it is. But there is one thing that troubled him. Its Karma points are way too less. He only got two points.
Viswa was puzzled. After all, even when he killed some unevolved beasts back in the forest behind the orphanage, he managed to get some points, but right now he got almost no points.
He couldn't understand the reason at first, but as he thought he arrived at a conclusion and at the same time his instincts screamed.
He ducked instantly.
*SWOOSH*
He watched as a Bandicoot just go past his head and it stood there like it owned the place. It is almost the size of a dog. Viswa frowned at this presence.
The bandicoot's eyes are also very much red. It is also demonized. But the surprising thing is, it seemed to be the hunter of the snake. In a normal scenario this would be reversed.
Viswa was confused, but he didn't let it cloud his judgement. The bandicoot is very small one and its strength is also very weak. So, he didn't need to worry about getting killed by it.
And the Bandicoot also seemed to have understood this, after baring its teeth for a few moments, it tried to leave in the direction that it came from.
But right now Viswa was in the middle.
So, it became vigilant and tried to be as slow as possible. It tried to circle around him while glaring and growling at him. Viswa understood its intentions. One throw of the knife and it will be dead.
But after a second thought, he decided to let it go. Of course he still showed that he could pose a threat and kill it at any given moment. The bandicoot vigilantly circled around him and ran away.
Viswa also discreetly ran on his toes after it. He kept a fair distance away just to make sure that he didn't spook it
Even then the bandicoot is very vigilant. It seemed to have sensed that someone is watching it and halted many times to check if it is being followed. But its senses are not sharp enough to pick Viswa's presence.
He used the terrain to his advantage and hid himself as he followed the bandicoot for a while.
He soon saw it going into a rocky terrain nearby and entered a small cave.
Viswa could see the inside of the cave vaguely, but he didn't focus on that at the start. At the mouth of the cave, he saw a lot of rotten carcasses with itty bitty bits of rotten flesh on the bones that could break at any given moment.
He could feel the stink from all the way there.
The surprising part is that all of these carcasses looked very familiar and eerily close to the body structure of the bandicoot that he followed.
He felt weird seeing that there are so many bandicoot carcasses right outside of what looked like their cave. As he was thinking, he saw the bandicoot that he just followed, come back out. It didn't just come back, it slid on the soil and stood up hurriedly as it glared at the entrance of the cave.
At that moment, another bandicoot came from inside the cave and looked at the first one.
Under Viswa' surprising gaze, both of them started fighting. Before he knew it, the bandicoot from inside the cave dug deep into the first one and started feasting on it.
In fact, even before the prey could fully die, it already started digging in.
Viswa felt weirded out. He doesn't know how prominent the cannibalism is in rodents, but he believed that even they didn't kill each other just for the sake of food.
He then looked at all the corpses around the cave and the sudden realization made him want to leave the area immediately, but at this moment, he noticed a horned goat that he was very familiar with run there.
It has blood all over its mouth, there are some wounds here and there. Its whole body is covered in blood as if it just took a bath in it.
The bandicoot was frightened by the presence, before it could do anything, Viswa saw the goat lunging and taking a bit of the bandicoot which was already eating another bandicoot.