A half-dozen stones later, Teseu felt that it was finally over and sat down on the ground. The bird's head was firmly buried in the soft forest soil. Well, at least what was left of it. Now that the danger and adrenaline had passed, Teseu felt the pain from his injuries and forced himself to inspect them. Starting with his hand, which was by far the worst injury he had. There was a tear between the index and middle fingers that went almost halfway into his palm, translucent blood still oozing.
"Damn! A little more, and the damn thing would have cut my hand in half," he cursed as he picked up some leaves and cords he had stored to eventually make a makeshift bandage. The small cuts on his arms and chest were almost insignificant in comparison, but he still took the trouble to try to clean them; after all, he didn't yet know how far it was to the river.
Teseu soon got up to start working on his prize. It would be difficult with only one hand, but there was no other way. He just didn't expect to see a somewhat greenish mist emanating from the corpse. Actually, he wasn't really seeing it; it was more like a feeling that it was there and that it was a pale green color. He didn't know how, but somehow, this mist reminded him of the bright lights from the comet, and he instinctively reached out to touch it. He didn't even need to get very close to the mist for it to move toward his hand as if it knew his intention.
Once the mist entered his hand, he felt a slight tingling sensation along with a warmth spreading through his arm and body. In its translucent form, he could see/feel the energy flowing through his veins and spreading throughout his body at its own pace. He soon noticed that wherever the energy passed, besides the pleasant warmth, it also made the veins and tissues around it slightly more opaque, as if they were being replenished with blood that was now being pumped once again. But all the contentment Teseu was feeling vanished when the energy reached the veins of his injured hand. The pleasant warmth turned into intense heat, and the tingling that had felt almost like tickling was now almost unbearable. Of course, the unpleasant sensation came only from the left hand, but it overshadowed everything else.
The small amount of mist emanating from the corpse didn't last long, and soon all the energy was drained. The energy, apparently, was concentrating in his wounded hand and perhaps a bit in his other injuries. Teseu was clutching his wrist tightly in an attempt not to scratch his hand to avoid worsening the injury, which he somehow felt was rapidly healing, even without being able to see through the bandages/leaves.
About five minutes passed like this until all the energy was used up. Teseu, who was now breathing heavily, no longer felt pain in his hand and decided to remove the bandages to see if his suspicions were correct. Indeed, his hand was now completely healed, with a "scar" of pale skin and a good portion of the surrounding tissue in a deep dark blue hue that "faded" into the more distant tissues from the scar.
"It seems that if I kill enough animals, I can not only heal my injuries but also restore the color of my skin to normal, although it's a bit paler than usual. Maybe... No!" *slap* "Focus, Teseu. Find water first. If I stand here thinking about things I'm not even sure about, the sun will set, and I'll still be stuck here." With a sudden awakening of rationality, Teseu headed toward the bird's corpse, tied it to his waist, and returned to where he had picked up his first stone, hoping to find the path he had been following. Along the way, he seemed to remember something and quickly returned to the cluster of rocks. His arm was much longer than the bird's neck, and he easily reached what was probably the bird's target: a stone that looked like a light green quartz crystal, emitting a soft glow. Not wanting to waste any more time, he simply tied the crystal to the bird's body and headed for the river.
The walk took longer than expected; after almost two hours, he finally heard the long-awaited sound of running water and ran toward it with renewed vigor. The river didn't seem to be more than two meters wide, and the depth didn't even reach his knees. The ground around it was covered with gravel and circular stones that would be great for finding geodes if he were on vacation and not lost in a deserted place, facing life-threatening dangers.
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"With such crystal-clear water, I'm probably near a spring, which was to be expected since I'm near the base of a mountain." Now much calmer, he sat on a rock by the river and began to think about all the things he had avoided until now.
"First, why am I here? It's obvious that it's related to the comet's points of light, and there's not much else to think about. Second, how? I assume I must have died, and my soul somehow interacted with the energy from those lights, which somehow transported me to this fantasy world with a body made of... something. I'd say my soul was solidified here, but I don't have much evidence to prove that hypothesis. The third question is about this energy. I remember reading some cultivation stories where Qi behaved somewhat like this energy I absorbed from the parrot. Everything happened so quickly that I didn't have time to try to circulate that energy/Qi through my body, even though I think it was already doing so before I found my wound. Which leads me to the third question: if I absorb more of this Qi, will my body return to how it was before? I think this is the easiest hypothesis to test; I just need to kill something else and see what happens. Judging by the dark blue scars on my body and the obvious patch of 'normal' skin on my hand, the chances of being wrong are almost zero." *Sigh*
"I'd better start preparing a fire; I don't know what the nights are like in this world, but I don't think they're as warm and pleasant as the day. At least there are no annoying insects here like on Earth; the most I've seen were some crickets and grasshoppers on steroids." Teseu then began to work, choosing a spot near the river to set up camp. He collected some stones and arranged them in a circle with two large stones at opposite ends, where he intended to support the parrot's skewer so that it would be above the fire.
With the fire spot ready, he went back into the forest to gather branches and dry leaves to start the fire. Luckily, he came across a tree that must have fallen recently because its branches and leaves were dry and not rotten like most of the branches he had found so far. It took him a little while to gather what he needed, and when he returned, the sun was already low, and the forest seemed a bit darker. Placing a piece of dry log on the ground with the bark side down, he put some crumbled dry leaves on top and began rubbing a stick of nearly half an inch in thickness against the wood at a
45-degree angle, with its weight increasing the friction. Soon, some embers appeared, and he blew on them, causing the leaves to ignite easily.
"Yes! I knew those survival documentaries would come in handy for something, haha!" "Now, I just need to pluck the chicken and set up the skewer." He removed the "chicken" from his waist, dropping something he had forgotten was still there. He picked up the crystal from the ground and focused on it to see if the glow had any relation to the Qi, and to no one's surprise, it did. He tried to absorb the contents of the crystal, and a small amount of Qi flowed through his veins. Teseu focused on the sensation, trying somehow to interact with this energy. He found that he could only speed up or slow down the Qi, perhaps even direct it into a specific vein, but the crystal contained very little, and his body absorbed it like a sponge. What remained was just a common, slightly cloudy quartz.
"I guess I'll need to hunt something today; the fire is already lit, and I'm not that hungry... or thirsty. In fact, I don't even think I need to breathe. I feel like I'm doing it more because I need air to speak than because I need air to live. My body doesn't need oxygen anymore, or is it only while it's blue? One more reason to hurry and hunt." With that in mind, he placed the parrot's body on a rock and, using a stone he had split in two to create a sharp surface, he began to pry the bird's beak loose to use it as a knife and fashion a spear from one of the dry branches he had collected from the fallen tree.
It turned out to be surprisingly easy to chip the wood with the parrot's beak, which prompted Teseu to try chipping a thicker branch to create a crude but functional wooden club. Tying the club to his back and holding the spear in his hand, he decided to head upstream to see if he could find the source of the river, while dealing with any living things he might encounter along the way.