Adam pondered over how he could prepare these fish for him to eat, he couldn't just rip them up like Hunter did, and he didn't have anything sharp to descale them with nor gut them properly, after some thought and looking around Adam luckily remembered some stuff that helped.

First he found a palm sized stone with a flat surface and a similarly sized stone with a round surface which he used to chip away a blade shape on the flat stone, after which he luckily found a rock with a sharp point which he used to refine the edges of his new rock knife, during which he made sure to take plenty of sips from the river and cool his burns.

After this followed a process Adam was familiar with but still found rather disgusting which was removing the scales and gutting a fish, Adam had gone fishing before and had cooked for himself for a long time so he was quite familiar with preparing fish, he easily discalced, gutted, and cut apart both of the fish before taking out their bones, and throwing the remains like the head, the fins and the guts down in the pond bellow, all that was left was to enjoy his raw cold meal.

Which ended up being unexpectedly passable taste wise enough for him not to puke it out, though that wasn't the only surprise for Adam.

*Soul +1* *Mind+1*

"Oh nice but why though? I mean sure the golden fire but how long will that last? And how do you normaly go about raising the stats? What do the people and animals of this world do? Do they have a ‘personal archive seed’ too? If they do are their systems just like mine or different?" Adam scratched his chin while thinking, slightly annoyed at the lack of a beard.

Thinking about the stats he just got made him open the status screen again and look at his health.

Health Points: 16/62

‘I wonder whether when you gain a health stat do you just raise the maximum or get the health points with the stat, probably not, but it might increase your recovery rate, anyway let's keep moving, I still need shelter, I also want to see what this trait thing is about and if I could get some more skills and stats that would be nice, I should also do some physical exercises see if I can raise my stats like that'

Adam frowned as unknown warmth spread from his stomach through his body, however the worry soon went away, thrown out by a rising feeling of warmth throughout his body, closing his eyes Adam calmed down and focused on the warmth trying to figure out as much as he could.

'I feel it radiating from my stomach, I just ate the fish... so it probably has something to do with that, from what I know right now... this probably has something to do with mana... maybe? Who knows it might be something else, I'll just wait for now'

With the decision Adam got up, he would wait until the warmth went away to see if anything changed otherwise first what he wanted to do after washing his hands is to get a better look at his surroundings, firstly making sure there was nothing below the cliff he checked out the forest beyond and anything he could see, hoping to find some sort of sign of civilization but ending up with nothing, and even if there was a road the trees were too dense and probably hiding it.

Looking up he looked for the sun, finding it almost at its apex, the sun was the same as the one back on earth... Way too damn bright for his liking 'Thankfully at least the weather is nice, not too hot and not too cold, now that I think about it, what season is it?'

He looked back down with tears in his eyes, of course he didn't look directly at the sun, but his eyes were always quite sensitive to light, just being outside made his eyes hurt, which was one of the reasons he never liked going outside which was most likely the reason his eyes hurt in the first place, but hey he enjoyed life that way and anyone that judged how another lives while that someone isn’t harming anyone indirectly or otherwise can go fuck themselves.

'Let's see... I do remember Salmon having something like a seasonal moving in the late summer back on earth? Well, if it's the same as back on earth, which some things seem to be quite identical just with the add-on of magic, I wonder if this IS earth? And I was sent into the future after a magic cunt killed me or something... Oh, well, no use pondering over information that is rather useless right now'

Adam shook his head from his thoughts and went back to looking at his surroundings, since he didn't see anything of use in the distance he looked back at the river and looked upstream, it went on for quite a bit curving very slightly here and there, but what was important is that thanks to a lack of trees around the river beyond he was able to see a very wide but not that tall mountain in the distance that might have been the source of the river.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

'Alright, let's see my options, first is try and climb down the cliff, rather dangerous and the benefits of it are detrimental, second follow the cliff side until we reach the bottom might take a while, but I'll easily know where I am and will be able to cover a lot of ground since I can see the forest from above, and the last option would be following the river upstream which could lead to its source or a bridge, perhaps.'

Sighing Adam grabbed his shirt washed it and wrapped it around his hand again, next he walked over to the napping puppy and scratched it behind its ear waking it up successfully, he gave it a little pat and looked at the two leftover fish.

'Now that I think about it, I didn't get any notification from killing them, but then again I didn't finish them off and there aren't any levels it seems' he thought while scratching his stomach, the warm feeling still radiating from it.

He carefully started stretching a little trying to stretch his exhausted muscles, letting out a sigh as the warmth started to weaken it took only about five seconds for it to completely disappear and a couple notification to appear.

*Body +1* *Energy +1* *Health +1* *Arcana +1*

"Ho-ho-ho, I see, I see, so I can get stronger from eating magical beasts" He grinned while not forgetting to check his health points and saw that he indeed didn’t get “healed” by gaining a stat point.

Shaking his head Adam brought back his attention to the screen in front of him 'Now, I wonder what energy is exactly, the second notification is sort of understandable, it's clear the fish had mana, I ate it with its mana inside it, and its mana was absorbed into my body and became a part of my own, Soul also seems to be a magic-oriented stat...'

'Then I also assume a similar thing happened with this energy, just that it was more focused on my body...' Adam scratched away at his cheek while glaring at the screen for a dozen or so seconds.

'The best assumption I can make is that it's the same thing as the system uses to strengthen my body after my stats go up' Adam gave it a shrug, giving up on it for now, he really wanted to get a move on before he was found by some thunder spewing rat.

However, after a moment he already went back to thinking about the notification, 'I wonder how exactly pain nullification works... I am still feeling the damn stinging, kind of hurts that my first magical ability is pain nullification though... then again should I not at least have some “skill” from my last life... yea probably not' Adam stopped himself with a self mocking chuckle.

'Focus Adam, you need to find a way to carry these fish' Adam started looking around only to end up taking off the shirt that he had put on after it had dried and cutting off a large branch with his sharp stone knife which took a lot of time and arm pain and then even worse after he started trying to sharpen it.

Meanwhile, the puppy he awoke for no good reason was curiously staring at a normal looking butterfly that Adam failed to notice due to his attention being taken up by the branch, thankfully the butterfly was harmless as Hunter jumped after it for a bit but soon got bored as the butterfly had no interest in playing with him.

As Hunter looked back to the forest he saw and heard one of the bushes at the edge of the tree line shake with a leaf falling off it, the young pup grew curious as it approached the bush completely oblivious to the two creatures behind it.

As soon as it approached the bush a pair of small green hands shot out grabbing it by the leg and its snout, Hunter yelped out as it was pulled behind the bushes, notifying Adam of its kidnappers.

Hearing the yelp, Adam jumped to his feet quickly turning back to the bushes cursing in his mind as he grabbed the lightly sharpened branch and with a quick look rushed at the bushes praying he wouldn't be too slow.

In the next moment he saw a green almost child-like humanoid creature with brown hair wrapped in brown hide rush out of the bushes towards his direction while giving a shrill war cry raising a thick wooden bat in the air.

The green creature was as tall as his chest, and had young features almost like a teenager boy as it rushed at him with surprising speed much faster than Adam as he only had a second to barely dodge the wooden bat that was swung down at him.

His eyes glistened for a moment as he threw a punch with his right hand, nailing the creature right in the chin hard enough to shake its head with the body stat points he had.

The green creature he decided to call a Hobgoblin lost his balance and dropped to the ground as Adam rushed by him, passing the sharpened branch into his right hand as he aimed at a much smaller hobgoblin that was running away with a tied up Hunter in its hands.

However, as he wound up and threw the branch he felt a slight sting in his arm making his throw off while he caught glances of a group of the smaller ones starting to surround him 'Shit' he could only think of that one word as he grabbed the thing that was shot into his arm.

It was small and hard ripping it out he could see that it was a sharp thin bone, however what worried him was that he could see some weird slime on the bone, glancing over where it came from he caught a glimpse of a female hobgoblin with blonde hair that had light green skin and hides decorated with a few different colored feathers holding a flute like piece of wood and seemingly putting in another piece of bone in.

Adam did not have much time as he was quickly pounced by one of the smaller green creatures that he promptly named goblins that also looked more like children and were as tall as his thigh and some even only barely tall enough to reach his waist.

Except the runner and the two hobgoblins there were five other goblins each rushing at him with either bare hands or a thick piece of wood that they used as a club, the closest one jumped at him with a club reaching quite high.

Adam quickly reacted swinging with his left hand slamming the goblin in the face, catching it in the middle of its jump, but while he was focused on the one jumping he was hit in the thigh by another's club.

He could only grit his teeth through the pain and prepare himself to fight the rest of the goblins as another bone dart stuck him in the back, and soon a weird sluggishness began to envelop his body.