When darkness closed over Terry, he’d felt a certain malign satisfaction that he had, in some obscure way, won. He hadn’t fought a war. He hadn’t let them turn him into some caricature of a hero. He knew it was absurd, but he felt like he’d pulled one over Truck-kun. That stupid truck had isekai’ed him somewhere awful, but he’d escaped before he could become a trope himself. That was the kind of victory that Terry appreciated. He’d defied expectations. Sure, he’d die for that defiance, but he doubted he was going to end up somewhere worse. He’d gone out of his way to prove how unsuitable he was for the role of isekai protagonist. When light started to glow beyond his closed eyes, he smiled to himself. Time to go to heaven, or at least get to lobby for reincarnation somewhere better. Maybe, I’ll get to go home.
He opened his eyes and blinked against the blinding light. The light was abruptly blocked and Terry’s eyes came into focus. Horror coursed through him at what he saw. Staring down at him was the enormous, bird face of the chicken-lizard. It let out a curious noise that wasn’t a true squawk-roar, and more of a squawk-chirp. Somehow, the damn thing looked happy when it saw Terry open his eyes.
“Oh no!” wailed Terry. “How in almighty fuck did I survive that?!”
While not a doctor, up until that moment, Terry didn’t believe that you needed to be a doctor to know being bitten nearly in half was fatal. It just seemed like common sense. Plus, no matter how much his body had been bolstered by coming to Chinese Period Drama Hell, there was no way he’d acquired some mutant-level healing factor. He healed faster, but not that damn fast. It was supposed to be over, thought Terry. Lifting his hands to rub his face or maybe scream into them in pure anguish, he realized there was something in one of his hands. Sitting up, he stared at the… The fuck is this thing? It looked like a big, dull marble. As he kept staring at it, he saw a flicker of a very familiar, unsettling purple in its depths. That was immediately followed by a hard pull from that spot in his stomach where he suspected his core or whatever was located. That last flicker of purple was yanked out of the marble, dragged through his body – a wildly uncomfortable sensation – and somehow consumed by his own core.
A pulse of warmth spread to every inch of his body. Terry could actually feel his muscles and bones getting stronger. His already good vision sharpened enough that he could suddenly see birds high up in the air that had been hidden by distance before. He was flooded by a wave of new sensory information, much of it unpleasant. What had been the earthy smell that all forests seemed to possess was suddenly a thousand different smells. He could pick out the individual smells of different kinds of plant and animal matter rotting. Sounds that had been part of the ambient environmental noise blared in his ears for attention. He heard the sounds of insects crawling and flying. He could hear something snuffling the ground nearby. He turned to look, only to realize that whatever it was not only wasn’t nearby but wasn’t close enough for even his enhanced vision to pick out.
“Did I just level up, or whatever this world’s equivalent is?” he wondered aloud.
He glared down at the marble thing in his hand and then looked around. The remains of the foliasaur were nearby with his sword still sticking out of its eye socket. Things weren’t exactly as he expected, though, as the body had been ripped open. Terry thought that he knew what had happened. He looked from the corpse to the marble, and from the marble to the chicken-lizard. He didn’t need to ask. He could see the sap that passed for the foliasaur’s blood drying on the beak and talons. Somehow, someway, the beast had known that dropping that marble in his hand would restore him. Yet, incredulity forced the words out of his mouth anyway.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“You did this?” he demanded, holding up the lifeless sphere.
The chicken-lizard lifted its head, appearing both proud and vaguely regal. Terry felt homicidal rage threaten to overwhelm him. I was so close to getting away. How did I not see this coming? Of course, the annoying, seemingly helpless animal companion comes through with a clutch solution. Without even needing to test it, Terry knew that he had just become substantially harder to kill. He knew he wasn’t invulnerable, but he sincerely doubted that there was anything left in this forest that could do it. The foliasaur had peak predator written all over it. And he’d basically just eaten its strength. A thought occurred to him then, and he glared at the chicken-lizard.
“Is that why you’ve been eating everything I kill? To get stronger?”
The chicken-lizard immediately averted its gaze, but couldn’t seem to help moving in a guilty shuffle. Regular-Terry realized he didn’t actually care. Even if he’d known, he doubted he would have eaten them or taken their cores. He hadn’t wanted to get stronger. Not really. He’d been all but praying something would kill him. Of course, that had been before this whole brought back from the brink moment had occurred. He finally understood that the world was going to keep conspiring to keep him alive, at least for a while. He’d have bet money that the chicken-lizard didn’t come up with the saving him plan on its own. Something or someone had almost certainly planted that notion in its head.
There’s no escape, thought Terry. Not until this world either gets what it wants from me or decides I’m more trouble than I’m worth. In light of that revelation, or at least Terry’s acceptance of the inevitable, the chicken-lizard eating all of those beasts looked a lot more like stealing. Granted, he hadn’t done anything to try to stop it, but he wondered now how much extra strength he’d just given away. Given the volume of killing he’d done, he expected it was a lot. Maybe it wasn’t a lot in terms of quality, but just in raw quantity. He glared at the chicken-lizard.
“You ate all those monsters. Soaked up all that strength, and you couldn’t even be bothered to help me fight that thing.”
The chicken-lizard ducked its head and looked away. Terry wasn’t sure if it was actually embarrassed or just putting on a good show of it. Realizing he wasn’t getting anything out of shaming the monster, he looked at the body of the foliasaur. Something occurred to him. Given how dangerous that thing was, I can probably get something for killing it from the guild. They’ll want proof, he thought to himself with a sigh. He got up and briefly mourned the destruction of clothes he’d literally just bought and made his way over to the dead creature. He grabbed the hilt of the sword and gave it a hard tug, expecting to meet a lot of resistance. He almost took his own leg off it came out so fast. He gave the sword a speculative look and then brought it down on the foliasaur’s neck. The sword passed cleanly through the neck. I guess there are worse things than being stronger.
It took a while for him to track down where his pack ended up. He wasn’t sure exactly when in the fight it had gotten separated. He eventually found it hanging from a branch up in a tree. Shaking his head, he jumped up and grabbed it. Digging around for a moment, he finally came up with an old friend. It took a little doing, but he managed to get the foliosaur head stuffed into the canvas sack.
“This thing really is turning into a full-time head sack,” muttered Terry.