After the great escape, and that amazing landing that stretched the meaning of what was athletic and what was not, I wanted nothing more than to lie down and wait for my panicked breathing to calm down.

But I didn't dare to do so, for several reasons. The forest fire that was currently starting was one of those reasons. The sound of forest creatures, moving toward my location was another. A few creatures that passed near me were enough to confirm that, but I didn't know if the monsters would simply ignore me if the fire went out.

Or, the fire could just continue to grow, which was hardly a reason to stay either.

I began to run. One that would have been counted as a desperate dash, barefoot, a weapon in each hand, but with my supernatural enhancements, it felt more like a comfortable dash.

"Almost as wondrous as my new life," I found myself muttering, moving fast enough to put as much distance between me and the fire as possible, appreciating the weirdness of the life I found myself in after I had forcefully barged into the summoning ritual.

Life was strange, I thought, my mind drifted to the ritual, the choice I made, and whether that cost the young man I had pulled away his life… I wouldn't blink before saving my own life even if I faced the same choice, of course, but that didn't mean I was happy with the consequences.

"Onto more priority issues," I muttered shaking my head when a creature attacked me. A small beast, barely bigger than a squirrel, and shaped roughly the same except for the huge teeth he was displaying…

A slash of the ordinary knife was enough to decapitate it, making its regeneration capabilities useless.

[+3 Experience]

It wasn't exactly an impressive amount, but maybe it was wrong for me to expect it to be so. Curious about how much experience I needed, I sent a mental command, summoning the level screen.

[Class: Hero

Level: 10

Experience (0/43,500)]

"Wow, that's a lot of experience," I muttered when I checked the number. I had expected it to increase, but not to this degree. It was almost eight times the experience that was required to level up earlier.

It made the measly three-point that was represented by the rodent-like beast even more negligible, thousands required for just one level up, but I didn't spend much power on the economics of magical power, not when I had a much simpler problem I was facing.

Which direction to go?

I didn't have much in terms of clues. I wasn't able to see many signs of civilization during my descent, though I wasn't able to pay much attention, with other things taking priority.

Like trying to stay alive.

The best I could remember was the general direction the flying castle was moving forward, based on the alignment of the two mountains I could see at a distance. I could either try to follow that route, hoping that the castle's descent meant our destination — the capital — wasn't too far away.

Going to the capital was not really tempting due to all the talk I heard between Toross and Falael, about the value I represented, with the explicit referrals to the bidders. And, even worse, after what I had experienced during the Promotion, I had a sinking suspicion that those bidders didn't refer to humans.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I would have loved to stay away from the capital. Going to the exact opposite would be particularly tempting. Unfortunately, I didn't have the slightest idea about the world I was in. Maybe there wasn't even a city that I could reach.

"I don't have any option, do I?" I muttered as I looked at the rodent that burst out of the bushes, trying to ambush me, only to meet with its end as I swung the dagger.

[+2 Experience]

Sometimes, bad choices were the only choices.

Going to a place they wanted me to be was bad, but getting lost in a world that I had no idea how it worked was even worse.

I began to run. The fire was still going on at a distance, its unique glow enough to alight the night, still growing. I was only being attacked by small rodents, and I might have believed it was the limit of what the forest held, but I had seen the huge horde of flying beasts attacking the fortress.

I had a sinking suspicion that the only reason I was getting away was the distraction of the fire, which managed to grab the attention of the bigger and more dangerous animals enough make them ignore me completely.

With a shrug, I continued to run. Even if my assumption about the forest was wrong, as the occasional small beast was the limit of the danger it represented, there was no harm in moving faster.

Especially since, running near full speed barely drained my stamina. Interestingly, the increased Strength didn't allow me to run considerably faster than I was doing when I had been running away from the assassins.

But it wasn't the only weird thing about the System and how Stats worked, and experimenting was not exactly the biggest priority.

Getting away was.

I felt a movement to my right, and my dagger flashed. A bat-like creature fell on the ground, bisected. I didn't even blink at the threat.

[+4 Experience]

After the tentacle monsters, corrupting crimson energies, mad servants, and a madder man who was in the process of turning into a monster, a run through a monster-filled forest during the night was … almost comforting.

[+24 Experience]

" … maybe not so comforting," I muttered myself, pausing for a moment to look for a stone I could use to sharpen the dagger, looking at the bisected beast on the ground only for a moment.

It was the fifth time I stopped. I appreciated the opportunity to rest, as even with the boost given by the Stats, running for several hours with barefoot was uncomfortable. Still, the discomfort never reached the point to actually slow me down.

It was the dagger, losing its sharpness, that forced me to stop. During my run, I had to kill enough beasts to count in thousands. And that was not even an exaggeration, as I had a handy mental counter.

[Experience: 12194]

However, only as the distance between me and the fire increased, the beasts started to attack and get stronger. Some were bigger, some were faster but usually granted more experience.

Still, other than several practice swings, I didn't use the magical sword I had acquired and limited myself to the ordinary dagger. A part of the reason was familiarity. Unlike swords that I had never used before, I had used daggers extensively, sometimes to make sure a street fight didn't escalate to the point of using guns.

Sometimes, to deliver a solitary silent strike in the middle of the night, handling problems more permanently.

But, even more, important than the familiarity was the durability of the magical weapon. I had no idea whether they had such a problem, but if they did, I didn't have the ability to repair it, and I would much prefer to leave the tests until I met with a threat I couldn't deal with ordinary steel.

I grabbed the rough stone, and dragged the dagger, doing my best to maintain a twenty-degree angle as I dragged the dagger several times, creating a workable angle. Not perfect by any means, but useful when paired with the power I could put behind the blows.

"Hope I will come across a sign of civilization soon," I muttered. I had been running for almost six hours, and I did it with a speed that would have made any long-distance runner jealous. I didn't have anything to measure, but it wasn't wild to assume it was over ten miles an hour, six hours putting me just above sixty miles.

A considerable distance not to see any sign of civilization. "It can't be too far away," I muttered, still continuing, glad that Vitality allowed me to run without eating and drinking anything — an experiment that I wasn't willing to commit to until I had no other option.

Then, I looked back, only to see the forest fire getting even bigger, the flames still carrying that deep crimson color that awakened a strange sense of disgust in me. "It'll probably go off soon," I muttered, not sure how much I believed in my own words.

I broke into a run.

Again.