I don’t think I slept in a conventional sense, I just drifted between the spaces of alertness and rest, my closed eyelids were just a flimsy barrier to my perceptions. Even in that state I could sense the flow of time; a giant ponderous clock, my aching heartbeat the tick. Each beat was defeaning.

The daylight slept, and the night crawled across my skin, my eyes opened and in a fluid motion I stood up straight, no aches, or pains for sitting in one spot for hours, my body visibly glowed with anticipation.

I could finally know where I was.

I left the cave, and passed through the curtain of water, I hopped across the rocks until my feet touched the sands, each individual grain sent tingles up my feet, and I found myself grinning with guilty pleasure, I bent down and ran my hands over the sand, it was wet with the sprays from the river, and it carried a scent I couldn’t help but indulged in.

I took a fistful and brought it closer to my mouth, a gluttonous urge made me taste it, it tasted of old waves and shells. I ran the grains through my mouth and swallowed.

Waste not. Want not.

I looked down across the beach, it was bereft of people and animals, I slowly began to walk down the shore line, my walk turned to a jog, I maintained that pace for a while, just letting the world move beneath my feet, I closed my eyes and sighed in contentment, I felt free.

With a barely suppressed whoop, I started to run. Hearing the winds whistling by my ears, pressing against my skin, the sheer sensation of speed that washed me, made the pains from my hearts secondary.

I began taking longer strides, actively pushing my feet against the earth, this sent me hurtling several tens of feet, the scenery zoomed pass me, as I pushed myself harder, the wind turning from a soft hindrance to a brick wall, it howled its fury into my ears. I gritted my teeth and pushed against it. I stared in amazement as a red line appeared in front of me, and parted the wind, the screams turned to soft sigh and a vacuum formed around me, and I went even faster. I laughed in joy.

In a blink of an eye I reached the forest. Perhaps in my excitement I did not accurately judge my speed, for I was heading full throttle to a huge tree, at the speed I was going, stopping myself before tearing through dozens of trees was impossible, I cringed inside as I imagined the loud commotion that was going to caused by this.

And in a weird instant, from full speed I came to a halt, the only thing separating me from collision with the tree in front of me, was an inch. I gasped in shock as an entire petal of energy faded.

I looked at my feet, there was no scruff marks to indicate my sudden pause of momentum, I had suddenly went still from a great speed. I took a step back from the tree, this little experiment had allayed a suspicion of mine, but I needed to confirm something first, before I drew a final conclusion.

I looked around and spotted a piece of rock on the floor, I picked it up, it should easily be at least fifty kilos, but I easily hefted it, it had an even striations of black and grey on one side, that side was smooth as if cut in one stroke, with a very sharp blade.

Holding it with both arms, I exerted myself a little, and a simple squeeze exploded the rock into pieces, it sounded like the crack of a gunshot. I idly noted to myself I could not draw a frame of reference to what a gunshot was, but apparently my mind could link words to events or knowledge I had lost.

I picked up a piece from the floor, cocking my head I observed it for a while, breathing loudly through my mouth, I did something I unconsciously had been doing all these while, I willed energy from the petals of energy in my stomach to the rock in my hand, it silently dissipated into dust, and one of the petals visibly dimmed.

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I frowned as I sank into my thoughts. It bothered me before why I were using energy so efficiently in some task, why others seemed to effortlessly drain my reserves dry.

Looking through my past actions, it was now clearly visible why this happened, the petals of energy was my energy reserves to power myself, but it also acts as a super charger for more impressive abilities I could not normally call upon, and to solve problems I was not equipped to handle.

I decided to call those task, feats. For Identifying the various aspects of my strength seemed to make them easier to manage and understood.

I could do amazing things, this were all benefits of having a powerful body of an hatchling dragon, and came with the territory. But the true mind bending stuff, like my sudden stop whilst in motion without any consequence, me disintegrating the rocks by touch, were not natural and used far more power than I anticipated.

So managing these feats was crucial. I did not need to disintegrate those rocks, I could have easily crushed it with my hands, I looked at my pale flawless hands, these hands held a frightening amount of strength.

I didn’t need to break the laws of reality, just to grind to a halt. I could as well plough through the trees. I paused at that line of thought, that could not necessarily be a good thing, after all, I had no idea if my body could conjure any defensive feats to shield me from the collision.

Since most of these feats were done unconsciously, perhaps the struggle here would be in stopping that flow of power to aid me, anytime I was in a bind.

It felt too eager, almost alive.

I felt a tingle of excitement, I could go back and retrieve the remaining pages of Millions Of Night. But lets first push that thought to the back-burner, first I had to find sustenance.

I entered into the dimly lit forest, my legs brushing across the wet shrubs on the ground, It was a good thing I didn’t need fire for warmth, because even the trees were also damp, I may also not have to worry about cooking my food, if I could get sustenance from bones, I could as well get it from flesh, taste was not an issue.

The twittering of birds and the small shrieks and call of living animals filled the forest with life, above me a bird with fanciful plumage and an overextended beak, dug into a branch, small chips of wood falling like rain, the staccato sound; like burst of gunfire.

I looked around, I spotted several animal trails, the use of traps and snares should be a viable option for me, already I could spot several vegetation that I could craft the materials needed from. I could spot various fibres and stems that could be used for trigger and spring devices, and also to anchor the snares. I also spotted several nuts that could be used as bait.

And I could make relatively simple but effective traps due to my strength. Digging deep holes with spikes inlaid inside, and covered with small fronds and branches, for felling bigger prey.

There was enough materials around the forest to achieve my goals. I looked around once more and turned away, out of the forest.

I back tracked to the trails in the forest I used yesterday to get to the cave, the idea was to set my traps as far away from activities of the natives, I knew I could not hide my activities from them perpetually, but I needed as much time as I could get to build up my strength and shore up my weaknesses.

Using the cave behind the waterfall as my starting point, I tried to range as far away from the trails used by the natives as possible, I had identified several. ideally it should be nearly opposite the direction in which the trails were clustered.

These led me to an untouched part of the forest, there were no trails leading here, dense jungle surrounded this place, I broke through that solid patch, and beheld something new.

A forest that was separated from the rest of the jungle by a black patch of empty land, the forest was filled with black tress with grey leaves, unlike the normal sounds of the forest, this one was filled with the brutal melody of slaughter, the roars of angry beasts, the death rattle of the damned.

A pungent smell of blood filled the air, and an aura of desolation rose up and turned the very clouds above the forest red, and huge bats with leathery wings frolic in the sky, their rhythmic flight suddenly turning to an arena of bloodshed as they ripped into one another, a rain of flesh and blood falling into the forest below, and as sudden as the surge of violence, it soon stopped, the remnants crying sorrowfully. They recovered quickly, and soon mingled with each other again... soon new batch of bats rose up from the forest and joined them in their dance of madness as a new wave of slaughter began anew.

This forest felt like a grind house of flesh, my skin crawled, but my mouth opened in a wide grin, I didn’t do that consciously.

I got closer to the forest, and hints of wrongness and rejection like little screaming voices hit me, a Feat materialised around me like a pale cloak, and the rejection flowed around me, I pushed through them, noting that I just lost another petal of energy.

But that concern was meaningless, as I saw a host of beast in front of me, meals were plentiful, and maybe here I could finally understand my limits.

Let the hunt begin