When I woke up, it was because several spam messages notifying me.

After rubbing my eyes and clearing the messages, I noticed the wires surrounding me shaking wildly. Sitting up, I was stunned to find a green bird had apparently caught itself between my wires, even though I didn't mean to spread it that way.

Sighing, I got up and pulled the wires to inspect the bird. Although the bird wasn't big maybe I could use it as bait or distraction.

But then I shook my head. I realized if I wanted to use the bird that way, I needed to kill it. Although I already made up my mind, I didn't plan to kill something except it was an emergency. In fact, even just holding the bird and watching it flapping its wings was enough to disperse my resolution. grinding would become a chore after a while. Still, if I didn't get used to killing things, it would become a chore after at the later time.

“I really need to do this huh...” I muttered, my fingers were shaking. But then I snapped back to the moment, with nervous eyes I saw a bird with a broken neck.

What followed my action was total silence, only rustling of the leaves that echoed through the air and another screen appeared on the bird corpse.

Rivel Bird Convert (1 Cosmos Credit.) Absorb (2 Experience.) Exchange (Get 1 random item.) Salvage (Nothing happened.)

If this was a video game, I would totally happy with this discovery, no matter what this thing was... No, I did happy with this discovery, but the feeling of a corpse slowly went cold on my hand made me anxious.

I put the bird in front of me and after lamenting to the bird fate for a while, I shook my head and slapped my own face. "Focus... yeah, this is life or death matter, I need to get used to this kind of thing."

With a little determination, from my knowledge alone I knew Cosmos Credit was the money currency, so convert was the feature to turn the bird into a money or something like that.

Experience... if this was a game then absorb was a way to raise my level?

Already knew two options, and if Salvage meant nothing happened. Curiously I touched the third option, Exchange.

Blue lines circling around the corpse, but this time the corpse slowly turned into a dust, leaving nothing but a small pill.

I grabbed the pill and another screen appeared in front of me.

Monomed: Recover 30 Health.

"...A potion huh." Though, the thought of this pill coming from the bird somehow made me thought about the sanitation. Then again, the bird turned into a dust, with no traces of blood and feathers left, so I guessed this pill must be clean.

Sighing, I took another Episoth from the Storage and putting the pill in. After eating two Episoth fruits, I climbed my way down and sneaked around the jungle.

***

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When I strolled around, my sneak increased to rank 2. But seemed like this wasn't enough as I noticed several dogs were following me.

No... rather than following me, they were circling me. Maybe they were the same group and noticed their last tactic wouldn't work so they changed their tactic? Anyway, the dogs seemed hesitant to attack me as they realized they knew I noticed their presence.

As far as I noticed, five dogs on the back, and one on the front, left and right. I didn't notice if they had another dog behind their back though, either way, I didn't want to take my chance and climbed the tree near me.

Though, a moment I touched the tree and trying to climb it, the dogs were breaking their concealment and charging toward me.

But this was what I wanted them to do it. By turning my back and pretending I had a hard time to climb it, all of the 8 dogs were leaping out, and it seemed like they didn't have others back up.

Anyhow, at ease I jumped for about three meters, landing on the nearest branch and continued it for a few meters high.

" [Urchin Dart] "

As 10 darts appearing on my palm, in my heart, I kept repeating the word 'They want to eat me, this is self-defence.' to try to calm myself down as the dogs were climbing their way to the top.

Closing one of my eyes, I aimed at the dogs head and threw it as strong as I could.

The first dart flew right into the dog eyes, and with whimpering, voice it let its paws off from the tree and the first dog fell to the ground, seemingly dead as I noticed its chest didn't move.

And it might be because I was throwing it from the distance but I didn't feel guilty compared to the time I broke the bird's neck. 

It's just... The sensation of feeling a life slowly gone from your own hand and the feeling of throwing things and noticing a creature died because my action was totally different.

Firmly convincing myself, I repeatedly threw the darts at the other dogs. And when the sun reached its maximum height, six dogs were laying dead while the other two were running away as they noticed they couldn't take me down. After waiting and watching my surrounding for a few minutes, I noticed the area was safe and climbed my way down.

And if my guess was right, one by one I used the absorb options, the dog body turned into a shining dust but this time it flew to my body. One dog gave me 13 experience and by absorbing 5 dogs I received a notification telling me I reached level 2.

When I opened my stats it had [2] written on the side and all of my health//force and its regen rose one point higher than what the Techer supposedly to have; my best guess the +1 was the standard things that would happen every time I levelled up. 

Along with those bonuses, while wondering why my Photon increased by 9,  my best assumption it was because of Dexterity or Perception. Either way, I hadn't had a slight idea about with status would increase the photon number.

Next, the [2] itself meant I could raise my stats by two points. After thinking for a while, I still thought Perception was the best status to go, and for the other stats, I chose agility for my mobility.

Id: TRA-HMA-HOS-1000043667 Race: Terran [Humanoid] Cosmos Credit: 90 General Level: 2 Augmentation: Techer I Citizen Rank: ZZZ Health: 25 Photon: 24 Force: 12 Regen/minute: 0.4 Regen/minute: 0.5 Regen/minute: 0.4 Condition: Confused Respiratory level: 100% Bulk: 13 Head(s): 1 Arm(s): 2 Leg(s): 2 Strength: 3 Constitution: 3 Endurance: 3 Dexterity: 6 Agility: 4 Perception: 7 Mind: 3 Will: 3 Mental: 3

After putting the point in perception, nothing changed. And by putting 1 point in Agility, my photon regeneration rose by 0.1 points. Maybe it would be best to assume each point of Dexterity increasing maximum Photon by 3 and Agility increasing its regeneration by 0.1, outside of their respective bonuses.

And it seemed like the augmentation level and the general level had a different growth. Either way, on the last dog I chose Salvage. The screen was gone and just as the description said, nothing happened.

"Huh," I muttered in disappointment until I remembered I needed the material to construct the throwing weapons and the traps.